The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] Many people today speak of “socialization” as though it could imply a number of external institutions in the state or in the social community, through which certain requirements of modern humanity might be satisfied. To them, the right institutions do not yet exist; that is why there is general social discontent and confusion. Once these institutions are in existence, orderly social life and social cooperation among men must follow. That so many people harbor this belief more or less consciously is the reason for the development of so many harmful notions about “the social question.” There is no form one can give to external institutions by which these institutions can, of themselves, enable us to lead a socially satisfying life. Such institutions will be good in a technical sense if they enable commodities to be produced and conveyed to human use in the most efficient manner possible. However, they will be good in a social sense only if socially-minded people administer the commodities produced in the service of the community. No matter what the institutions may be, there is always some conceivable way human individuals or groups can operate them antisocially.

[ 2 ] One should not give oneself over to the illusion that any kind of satisfying social life can be created without “socially-minded” human beings; such illusions are a hindrance to really practical social ideas. The idea of the threefold social order aims at complete freedom from such illusions; therefore it is not surprising that it is vehemently opposed by everyone still living within these illusory mists. The first of the three spheres of the threefold social order aims at a form of cooperation among men to be based entirely on free intercourse and free association between individuals. Here human individuality will not be forced into an institutional mold. How one person assists another, how one helps another advance will simply arise from what one, through his own abilities and accomplishments, is able to be for the other. It is no great wonder that presently many people are still able to imagine nothing but a state of anarchy as a result of such free human relations in the spiritual-cultural branch. Those who think so simply do not know what powers of our inmost nature are stunted when we are forced to develop according to patterns imposed by the state and the economic system. Such powers, deep within human nature, cannot be developed by institutions, but only through what one being calls forth in perfect freedom from another being. The effect of what arises in this way is not antisocial, but rather deeply social. The socially active inner person is stunted only when instincts originating in the prerogatives of the state or in economic advantage are engrained or handed down.

[ 3 ] Through its cultural branch, the threefold social order will uncover perpetual springs of social initiative. These springs will imbue the legal relations that are regulated by the democratic state with a social spirit, and they will spread the same spirit into the conduct of economic life.

[ 4 ] Within the economy, the forms of modern life afford no means of counteracting the antisocial tendency. For the whole community is best served when the individual is left unchecked to apply his abilities to the common good. To do this, however, it is necessary that individuals should accumulate capital, and be free to combine with others in utilizing it. The socialists have been deluded in thinking that these masses of ever-accumulating capital could in the end simply be transferred from their private owners to the cornmunity, and that thereby a socialist society would necessarily be realized. In reality, the economic productivity of capital would inevitably be lost in such a transference, for this productivity rests upon the private abilities of the individual. One must admit to oneself quite frankly that the economy will have the greatest vitality not when it is deprived of the antisocial element within its own domain, but instead when it is kept supplied from another domain—the cultural branch of the social order—with forces that will constantly correct antisocial tendencies as they arise and convert them back into social ones.

[ 5 ] In my Toward Social Renewal I have tried to show that a truly social way of thinking will not aim at a transference of capital from the control of private persons (or groups) to the community as a whole; on the contrary, it is essential that the private individual should have means, by the use of capital, of placing his abilities, unopposed, at the service of the community. When this individual is no longer willing or able to direct his abilities to the use of capital, this use must be transferred to another person of similar abilities. It will not be transferred by state prerogative or by economic power, but by finding out, on strength of the training acquired under the free spiritual life, which person will make the most suitable successor from the social point of view.

[ 6 ] Whoever speaks in this manner about the remedy for our social malaise sees in his mind's eye the scorn of all those today who consider themselves experts in the practicalities of life. For the moment he must endure this scorn, knowing well that the other's way of thinking is what brought about the dreadful human catastrophe of recent years. The scorn may continue awhile; then, however, even the most obstinate of such people will no longer be able to resist the hard lessons of social realities. The phrase: “Schemes such as the threefold order may be all very fine, but the people to carry them out aren't there,” will be silenced. The coiners of this phrase are certainly not “the people to do so.” Therefore, it is to be hoped they will retire and will not, with their brute force, block the way of those who are doing fruitful work and who would gladly provide a free spiritual life for the development of social impulses in men.

[ 1 ] Among the various objections that can be made to the threefold social order is one that can be phrased somewhat as follows: The efforts of political thinkers in recent years have been directed in part towards creating legal provisions appropriate to the existing conditions of economic production. It might be said that the idea of the threefold order totally disregards all the work done in this direction and wants merely to detach the legal sphere from the economic altogether.

[ 2 ] Those who raise this objection imagine that thereby they can dismiss the idea of the threefold order as something that throws practical experience to the winds and claims a role in the reconstruction of society without this experience. How-ever, the reverse is true. The opponents of the threefold social order say: “One should reflect on the difficulties that have attended every attempt to arrive at a legal system adapted to modern conditions of production. One should consider the obstacles met by all who have made such at-tempts.” However, the adherents of the threefold order must answer: These very difficulties are proof that people were taking the wrong road. They persisted in trying to contrive a social form in which certain demands of modern times were to be satisfied through a single combined economic and legal sytem. They ought, however, to recognize that economic life, when conducted expediently, promotes conditions that necessarily tend to counter the sense of right and justice, unless this tendency is deliberately counteracted from outside the economy. It is to the advantage of economic life that individuals or groups who have special qualifications for a particular business of production are able to accumulate capital for their business. Presently, the best services can be rendered to the community as a whole only by qualified persons through the control of large sums of capital. However, the nature of economics dictates that such services can only consist of the most efficient production of the goods that the community needs. A certain amount of economic power flows into the hands of the people who pro-duce such goods. It cannot be otherwise, and the threefold social order recognizes this. Accordingly, it aims to bring about a society in which this economic power will still arise, but out of which no social evils can grow. The threefold idea does not propose to hinder the accumulation of large sums of capital in individual hands; it recognizes that to do so would be to lose the possibility of employing socially the abilities of these private individuals in the service of the general public. It proposes, however, that the moment an individual can no longer attend to the management of the means of production within his sphere of power, these means of production should be transferred to another capable person. The latter will not be able to obtain these means of production through any economic power he may possess, but solely because he is the most capable person. In practice, however, this can only be realized when the transfer is directed according to principles that have nothing to do with the means of economic power; such principles become possible only when the people themselves, with their interests, are engaged in spheres of life other than the economic. If men are joined together on a legal foundation which produces interests other than economic ones, these other interests will then be able to assert themselves. If the human being is absorbed by economic interests alone, those other interests never develop. If the person who possesses the means of production is to have any feeling whatever that the best and most efficient person in any economic position is one who obtains it by ability and not by economic power, such a feeling must grow in a sphere established apart from the economic. In and of itself, the economic life can call forth a sense for economic power but not, simultaneously, a sense for social justice. Therefore, all attempts to conjure out of economic thought itself a code of social justice were bound to fail.

[ 3 ] Such matters are based upon the actual realities of life; these are the things taken into account by the idea of the threefold social order. It is guided by the practical experiences met by those who attempted to create legal structures for the modern economic forms; but it will not be led by these experiences to add a new attempt that resembles the many that have already failed. Its aim is not to try to produce social laws in a field of life where they cannot grow, but to bring about that life itself from which such laws can grow. In modern times this life has been absorbed into the economy; the first step is to restore its independence. To perceive clearly the idea of the threefold order, one must be willing to understand that the economic life needs to have its own forces continually corrected from outside, if it is not to call forth out of itself obstacles to its own growth. This necessary corrective will be supplied when there is an independent cultural life and corresponding independent legal sphere to make provision for it. The unity of social life is not thereby destroyed; in reality, it arises thereby for the first time in its true sense. This unity cannot be brought about by the ordinances of a central authority; it must be allowed to arise out of the interaction of those forces that each need to exist separately in order to live as a whole. Experiences met with in attempting to create for modern economic life legal relations that are drawn from the economy itself, should not therefore be regarded as arguments against the threefold social order. On the contrary, these experiences should be seen to lead directly to the recognition that the threefold organism is the idea modern life demands.

[ 1 ] The aims Emil Molt is trying to realize through the Waldorf School are connected with quite definite views on the social tasks of the present day and the near future. The spirit in which the school should be conducted must proceed from these views. It is a school attached to an industrial undertaking. The peculiar place modern industry has taken in the evolution of social life in actual practice sets its stamp upon the modern social movement. Parents who entrust their children to this school are bound to expect that the children shall be educated and prepared for the practical work of life in a way that takes due account of this movement. This makes it necessary, in founding the school, to begin from educational principles that have their roots in the requirements of modern life. Children must be educated and instructed in such a way that their lives fulfill demands everyone can support, no matter from which of the inherited social classes one might come. What is demanded of people by the actualities of modern life must find its reflection in the organization of this school. What is to be the ruling spirit in this life must be aroused in the children by education and instruction.

[ 2 ] It would be fatal if the educational views upon which the Waldorf School is founded were dominated by a spirit out of touch with life. Today, such a spirit may all too easily arise because people have come to feel the full part played in the recent destruction of civilization by our absorption in a materialistic mode of life and thought during the last few decades. This feeling makes them desire to introduce an idealistic way of thinking into the management of public affairs. Anyone who turns his attention to developing educational life and the system of instruction will desire to see such a way of thinking realized there especially. It is an attitude of mind that reveals much good will. It goes without saying that this good will should be fully appreciated. If used properly, it can provide valuable service when gathering manpower for a social undertaking requiring new foundations. Yet it is necessary in this case to point out how the best intentions must fail if they set to work without fully regarding those first conditions that are based on practical insight.

[ 3 ] This, then, is one of the requirements to be considered when the founding of any institution- such as the Waldorf School is intended. Idealism must work in the spirit of its curriculum and methodology; but it must be an idealism that has the power to awaken in young, growing human beings the forces and faculties they will need in later life to be equipped for work in modern society and to obtain for themselves an adequate living.

[ 4 ] The pedagogy and instructional methodology will he able to fulfill this requirement only through a genuine knowledge of the developing human being. Insightful people are today calling for some form of education and instruction directed not merely to the cultivation of one-sided knowledge, but also to abilities; education directed not merely to the cultivation of intellectual faculties, but also to the strengthening of the will. The soundness of this idea is unquestionable; but it is impossible to develop the will (and that healthiness of feeling on which it rests) unless one develops the insights that awaken the energetic impulses of will and feeling. A mistake often made presently in this respect is not that people instill too many concepts into young minds, but that the kind of concepts they cultivate are devoid of all driving life force. Anyone who believes one can cultivate the will without cultivating the concepts that give it life is suffering from a delusion. It is the business of contemporary educators to see this point clearly; but this clear vision can only proceed from a living understanding of the whole human being.

[ 5 ] It is now planned that the Waldorf School will be a primary school in which the educational goals and curriculum are founded upon each teacher's living insight into the nature of the whole human being, so far as this is possible under present conditions. Children will, of course, have to be advanced far enough in the different school grades to satisfy the standards imposed by the current views. Within this framework, however, the pedagogical ideals and curriculum will assume a form that arises out of this knowledge of the human being and of actual life.

[ 6 ] The primary school is entrusted with the child at a period of its life when the soul is undergoing a very important transformation. From birth to about the sixth or seventh year, the human being naturally gives himself up to everything immediately surrounding him in the human environment, and thus, through the imitative instinct, gives form to his own nascent powers. From this period on, the child's soul becomes open to take in consciously what the educator and teacher gives, which affects the child as a result of the teacher's natural authority. The authority is taken for granted by the child from a dim feeling that in the teacher there is something that should exist in himself, too. One cannot be an educator or teacher unless one adopts out of full insight a stance toward the child that takes account in the most comprehensive sense of this metamorphosis of the urge to imitate into an ability to assimilate upon the basis of a natural relationship of authority. The modern world view, based as it is upon natural law, does not approach these fact of human development in full consciousness. To observe them with the necessary attention, one must have a sense of life's subtlest manifestations in the human being. This kind of sense must run through the whole art of education; it must shape the curriculum; it must live in the spirit uniting teacher and pupil. In educating, what the teacher does can depend only slightly on anything he gets from a general, abstract pedagogy: it must rather be newly born every moment from a live understanding of the young human being he or she is teaching. One may, of course, object that this lively kind of education and instruction breaks down in large classes. This objection is no doubt justified in a limited sense. Taken beyond those limits, however, the objection merely shows that the person who makes it proceeds from abstract educational norms, for a really living art of education based on a genuine knowledge of the human being carries with it a power that rouses the interest of every single pupil so that there is no need for direct “individual” work in order to keep his attention on the subject. One can put forth the essence of one's teaching in such a form that each pupil assimilates it in his own individual way. This requires simply that whatever the teacher does should be sufficiently alive. If anyone has a genuine sense for human nature, the developing human being becomes for him such an intense, living riddle that the very attempt to solve it awakens the pupil's living interest empathetically. Such empathy is more valuable than individual work, which may all too easily cripple the child's own initiative. It might indeed be asserted—again, within limitations—that large classes led by teachers who are imbued with the life that comes from genuine knowledge of the human being, will achieve better results than small classes led by teachers who proceed from standard educational theories and have no chance to put this life into their work.

[ 7 ] Not so outwardly marked as the transformation the soul undergoes in the sixth or seventh year, but no less important for the art of educating, is a change that a penetrating study of the human being shows to take place around the end of the ninth year. At this time, the sense of self assumes a form that awakens in the child a relationship to nature and to the world about him such that one can now talk to him more about the connections between things and processes themselves, whereas previously he was interested almost exclusively in things and processes only in relationship to man. Facts of this kind in a human being's development ought to be most carefully observed by the educator. For if one introduces into the child's world of concepts and feelings what coincides just at that period of life with the direction taken by his own developing powers, one then gives such added vigor to the growth of the whole person that it remains a source of strength throughout life. If in any period of life one works against the grain of these developing powers, one weakens the individual.

[ 8 ] Knowledge of the special needs of each life period provides a basis for drawing up a suitable curriculum. This knowledge also can be a basis for dealing with instructional subjects in successive periods. By the end of the ninth year, one must have brought the child to a certain level in all that has come into human life through the growth of civilization. Thus while the first school years are properly spent on teaching the child to write and read, the teaching must be done in a manner that permits the essential character of this phase of development to be served. If one teaches things in a way that makes a one-sided claim on the child's intellect and the merely abstract acquisition of skills, then the development of the native will and sensibilities is checked; while if the child learns in a manner that calls upon its whole being, he or she develops all around. Drawing in a childish fashion, or even a primitive kind of painting, brings out the whole human being's interest in what he is doing. Therefore one should let writing grow out of drawing. One can begin with figures in which the pupil's own childish artistic sense comes into play; from these evolve the letters of the alphabet. Beginning with an activity that, being artistic, draws out the whole human being, one should develop writing, which tends toward the intellectual. And one must let reading, which concentrates the attention strongly within the realm of the intellect, arise out of writing.

[ 9 ] When people recognize how much is to be gained for the intellect from this early artistic education of the child, they will be willing to allow art its proper place in the primary school education. The arts of music, painting and sculpting will be given a proper place in the scheme of instruction. This artistic element and physical exercise will be brought into a suitable combination. Gymnastics and action games will be developed as expressions of sentiments called forth by something in the nature of music or recitation. Eurythmic movement—movement with a meaning—will replace those motions based merely on the anatomy and physiology of the physical body. People will discover how great a power resides in an artistic manner of instruction for the development of will and feeling. However, to teach or instruct in this way and obtain valuable results can be done only by teachers who have an insight into the human being sufficiently keen to perceive clearly the connection between the methods they are employing and the developmental forces that manifest themselves in any particular period of life. The real teacher, the real educator, is not one who has studied educational theory as a science of the management of children, but one in whom the pedagogue has been awakened by awareness of human nature.

[ 10 ] Of prime importance for the cultivation of the child's feeling-life is that the child develops its relationship to the world in a way such as that which develops when we incline toward fantasy. If the educator is not himself a fantast, then the child is not in danger of becoming one when the teacher conjures forth the realms of plants and animals, of the sky and the stars in the soul of the child in fairy-tale fashion.

[ 11 ] Visual aids are undoubtedly justified within certain limits; but when a materialistic conviction leads people to try to extend this form of teaching to every conceivable thing, they forget there are other powers in the human being which must be developed, and which cannot be addressed through the medium of visual observation. For instance, there is the acquisition of certain things purely through memory that is connected to the developmental forces at work between the sixth or seventh and the fourteenth year of life. It is this property of human nature upon which the teaching of arithmetic should be based. Indeed, arithmetic can be used to cultivate the faculty of memory. If one dis-regards this fact, one may perhaps be tempted (especially when teaching arithmetic) to commit the educational blunder of teaching with visual aids what should be taught as a memory exercise.

[ 12 ] One may fall into the same mistake by trying all too anxiously to make the child understand everything one tells him. The will that prompts one to do so is undoubtedly good, but does not duly estimate what it means when, later in life, we revive within our soul something that we acquired simply through memory when younger and now find, in our mature years, that we have come to understand it on our own. Here, no doubt, any fear of the pupil's not taking an active interest in a lesson learned by memory alone will have to be relieved by the teacher's lively way of giving it. If the teacher engages his or her whole being in teaching, then he may safely bring the child things for which the full under-standing will come when joyfully remembered in later life. There is something that constantly refreshes and strengthens the inner substance of life in this recollection. If the teacher assists such a strengthening, he will give the child a priceless treasure to take along on life's road. In this way, too, the teacher will avoid the visual aid's degenerating into the banality that occurs when a lesson is overly adapted to the child's understanding. Banalities may be calculated to arouse the child's own activity, but such fruits lose their flavor with the end of childhood. The flame enkindled in the child from the living fire of the teacher in matters that still lie, in a way, beyond his “understanding,” remains an active, awakening force throughout the child's life.

[ 13 ] If, at the end of the ninth year, one begins to choose descriptions of natural history from the plant and animal world, treating them in a way that the natural forms and processes lead to an understanding of the human form and the phenomena of human life, then one can help release the forces that at this age are struggling to be born out of the depths of human nature. It is consistent with the character of the child's sense of self at this age to see the qualities that nature divides among manifold species of the plant and animal kingdoms as united into one harmonious whole at the summit of the natural world in the human being.

[ 14 ] Around the twelfth year, another turning point in the child's development occurs. He becomes ripe for the development of the faculties that lead him in a wholesome way to the comprehension of things that must be considered without any reference to the human being: the mineral kingdom, the physical world, meteorological phenomena, and so on.

[ 15 ] The best way to lead then from such exercises, which are based entirely on the natural human instinct of activity without reference to practical ends, to others that shall be a sort of education for actual work, will follow from knowledge of the character of the successive periods of life. What has been said here with reference to particular parts of the curriculum may be extended to everything that should be taught to the pupil up to his fifteenth year.

[ 16 ] There need be no fear of the elementary schools releasing pupils in a state of soul and body unfit for practical life if their principles of education and instructions are allowed to proceed, as described, from the inner development of the human being. For human life itself is shaped by this inner development; and one can enter upon life in no better way than when, through the development of our own inner capacities, we can join with what others before us, from similar inner human capacities, have embodied in the evolution of the civilized world. It is true that to bring the two into harmony—the development of the pupil and the development of the civilized world—will require a body of teachers who do not shut themselves up in an educational routine with strictly professional interests, but rather take an active interest in the whole range of life. Such a body of teachers will discover how to awaken in the upcoming generation a sense of the inner, spiritual substance of life and also an understanding of life's practicalities. If instruction is carried on this way, the young human being at the age of fourteen or fifteen will not lack comprehension of important things in agriculture and industry, commerce and travel, which help to make up the collective life of mankind. He will have acquired a knowledge of things and a practical skill that will enable him to feel at home in the life which receives him into its stream.

If the Waldorf School is to achieve the aims its founder has in view, it must be built on educational principles and methods of the kind here described. It will then be able to give the kind of education that allows the pupil's body to develop healthily and according to its needs, because the soul (of which this body is the expression) is allowed to grow in a way consistent with the forces of its development. Before its opening, some preparatory work was attempted with the teachers so that the school might be able to work toward the proposed aim. Those concerned with the management of the school believe that in pursuing this aim they bring something into educational life in accordance with modern social thinking. They feel the responsibility inevitably connected with any such attempt; but they think that, in contemporary social demands, it is a duty to under-take this when the opportunity is afforded.

[ 1 ] An idea such as the threefold social organism is constantly met with the following objection: “What the social movement is striving for is the elimination of economic inequalities. How will this end be attained through changes in the cultural life and the legal system when these are governed quite independently of the economic process?”

[ 2 ] This kind of objection is made by people who can see the existence of the economic inequalities, but do not see that these inequalities are produced by the human beings living together in the social body. They see that society's economic order finds expression in people's life conditions. They aim at making it possible for large numbers of people to enjoy what seems to them to be better life conditions. They believe that when the changes in the social order that they have in mind come about, this possibility will exist.

[ 3 ] For anyone who looks more deeply into the state of human affairs, the principal cause of today's social evils is seen in the very fact that such a way of thinking has become the prevalent one. In the eyes of many people, the economic system lies too far removed from any of their concepts of the cultural and the legal spheres for them possibly to perceive how the one can be connected with the others in the whole chain of human existence. People's economic conditions are an outcome of the positions they assume toward each other through their spiritual faculties and through the legal code that prevails among them. Anyone who perceives this will not imagine he could devise any system of economics that could, of itself, place people living under it in life conditions that will seem suitable to them. In any economic system, whether one's own services meet with the reciprocal services needed for a suitable life situation will depend on how the people in this economic system are spiritually attuned in their minds, and on how their sense of right and justice leads them to regulate their mutual affairs.

[ 4 ] During the last three or four centuries, the civilized portion of humanity has owed its evolution to impulses that make it exceedingly difficult for them to have any perception of the real relation existing between economics and culture. We have become entwined in a complex network of interrelationships; the achievements of industrial technology have made a mark upon it that no longer corresponds to the cultural and legal concepts we have developed historically. People have become accustomed to viewing the cultural progress of recent years with unalloyed appreciation; but in doing so they overlook one thing: this cultural progress has been achieved mainly in fields directly connected with industry. Science undoubtedly has tremendous achievements to record; but its achievements are greatest where they have been called forth in the economic field by the demands of industrial life.

[ 5 ] Under the influence of this particular kind of cultural progress the leading circles have developed a mental habit of basing their opinions in all life's affairs upon economic grounds. In most cases, they are not aware of forming their opinions this way. They employ this mode of judgement unconsciously. They believe that they act out of all sorts of ethical and aesthetic motives; but, unconsciously, they act upon opinions originating within the technical-industrial economy. They think in economic terms, but believe that their principles are ethical, religious, and aesthetic.

[ 6 ] This mental habit of the ruling classes has been made into a dogma in recent years by the socialists. They believe that all life is conditioned by economics because those from whom their notions are inherited had acquired, more or less unconsciously, this economic way of thinking. Thus these socialist thinkers want to change the system of economics according to the same viewpoint that led to what they believe so urgently needs changing. They fail to notice that they would call forth even more strongly the very thing they do not want if their actions were guided by ideas that have led to the very thing they wish to change. The reason for this is that men cling much more tenaciously to their ideas and their habits of mind than they do to external institutions.

[ 7 ] Today, however, a point has been reached in human evolution when the very character of this evolution demands progress not only in our institutions, but also in our thoughts and habits of mind. This is a demand of human history; and the fate of the social movement depends on whether this demand is heeded. Strange as it still may sound to many people, it is nevertheless true that modern life has assumed a shape which can no longer be mastered by the old kinds of ideas.

[ 8 ] Many say, correctly, that the social problem must be approached in a way different from that, for example, of St. Simon or Owen or Fourier; that spiritual impulses like theirs are of no use in effecting a change in economic life. Thus they conclude that spiritual impulses are entirely incapable of exerting a transforming effect on social life. The truth of the matter is that these thinkers drew their mental concepts from a form of spiritual life that, of its very nature, was no longer adequate to the economic life of modern times. Instead of then coming to the sound conclusion, “In that case, what is needed is a new form of spiritual and legal life,” people form the opinion that desired social conditions to rise up of themselves out of the economic sphere. But economic chaos will result unless the further progress of evolution is effected by a step forward in the spiritual-cultural and legal spheres such as the new age demands.

[ 9 ] All that must come about in the social sphere now and in the near future, depends on the courage to take this step forward in the cultivation of the spirit and the establishment of law. Whatever does not spring from this courage may be very well meant, but will not lead to a sustainable state of affairs. Therefore the greatest social need is to arouse far and wide a clear perception that the only basis upon which humanity can evolve in a healthy way is the cultivation of a new spiritual life. The fruits of this cultivation will be borne in the structuring of the economy. If economic life tries of itself to evolve a new form, it will only propagate—and intensify—its old evils. As long as economic life is expected to make of us what we may become, new evils will be added to the old. Not until humanity comes to understand that the human being—out of his own spirit—must give to the economic life what it needs, will men be able to pursue as a conscious aim what they are demanding unconsciously.

[ 1 ] In my book Toward Social Renewal, the comparison between the social organism and the natural human organism is used as an analogy; at the same time it is pointed out how misleading it is to suppose that concepts acquired from the one can simply be transferred to the other. Anyone who forms a picture of the function of the cells or of an organ of the human body, as natural science represents them, and who then proceeds to look for the social cell or the social organs in order to learn the construction and conditions of life in the social body will very soon fall into an empty game of analogies.

[ 2 ] It is a different matter to point out, as in Toward Social Renewal, that by an intelligent study of the human organism one can train oneself in the kind of thinking required for a real understanding of the working of social life. Through such a training, one acquires the ability to judge social facts not according to preconceived opinions, but to judge them according to their own laws of existence. This above all is necessary in our present times. People today are tied up tightly in their party opinions regarding social judgment; and party opinions are not formed on grounds that lie in the conditions of life and organic requirements of the entire social organism, but by the blind feelings of particular people or of particular groups. If the methods of judgment employed in party programs were transferred to the study of the human body, it would soon be seen that instead of assisting an understanding of it, these methods are only a hindrance.

[ 3 ] In an organic body, the air that is inhaled must constantly be converted into an unusable substance; oxygen must be converted into carbon dioxide. Accordingly, there must be arrangements by which the changed and no longer usable substance is replaced by a usable one. Anyone who now brings to bear a judgment schooled by study of the human organism, and applies it with common sense and without preconceptions to the study of the social organism, will find that there is one system within this social organism, the economic system, which, if functioning properly, is constantly bound to produce conditions that must be counteracted by other functions. Just as the organ system in the human body that is designed to consume inhaled oxygen cannot be expected to make the oxygen usable again, it should not be supposed that the economic circulation itself can give rise to the functions needed for making good what it is the business of this system to convert, out of life, into a life-restricting product.

[ 4 ] The necessary counteraction can be supplied only by the separate working of two other systems alongside the economy: a body of laws that determines its own form out of its own proper nature, and a spiritual-cultural life growing freely from its own roots, completely independent of the economic system and the legal system. Only a superficial critic will say, “What, then! Is the cultural life not to be bound in its pursuits by existing legal relations?” Certainly it must be bound by them. However, it is one matter if the people, who pursue the cultural life, are dependent on the legal life; and quite another matter if the pursuit of the cultural life rises on its own from the institutions of this legal sphere. The idea of the threefold social order will be found to be one that makes it very easy for objections that abide by preconceived notions; but also that these objections fall to pieces when one thinks them through to the end.

[ 5 ] The life of the economy has a lawfulness of its own. In following this lawfulness, it creates conditions that destroy the social organism, if only this law is at work. If, however, one tries to abolish these conditions by means of economic measures, one then destroys the economic process itself. In the modern economic process, evils have arisen through control of the means of production by private capital. If one tries to exterminate these evils by an economic measure, such as the communal control of the means of production, one undermines modern industry. One can, however, work against these evils, by creating alongside the economy an independent legal system and a free life of the spirit. In this way, the evils that result—and result continually—from the economic life will be removed as they arise. It will not be a case of the evils arising first and people having to suffer under them before they disappear; rather, the other organic systems that exist alongside the economic institutions will, in each instance, turn aside the mischief.

[ 6 ] The party opinions of recent times have distracted men's judgment from the laws of life in the social organism and have diverted it into the currents of sectarian passion. It is urgently necessary that these party opinions should undergo correction from a quarter in which one can learn to be impartial. One can learn this through the study of conditions which of their own nature elicit impartial judgment, and in which thinking therefore becomes its own corrective. The human organism affords such conditions.

[ 7 ] Of course, if only the conventional scientific concepts are applied as correctives, they will not go far. In many respects, these concepts lack the kind of force necessary to strike deep into the facts of nature. Yet if one tries to keep to nature herself, and not merely to these concepts of nature, one will be in a better position to learn impartiality than one would be amid party views. Despite the good will of many natural scientists, who have endeavored to overcome materialist convictions, the usual concepts of natural science are today still strongly imbued with materialism. A spiritual contemplation of nature will shed this materialism; and spiritual contemplation of nature will provide means for the kind of training in thought which, among other things, makes it possible to comprehend the social organisms.

[ 8 ] The idea of the threefold social order does not simply borrow facts from natural science and transplant them into the field of social life. It uses the study of nature only as a way of gaining the ability to observe social facts impartially. This should be kept in mind by those who learn about the idea in a superficial fashion—the threefold idea talks of a threefold division of social life in much the same way as one might talk of a threefold division of the natural human organism. Anyone who studies seriously the characteristics of the human organism will be made aware that the one can-not be simply transferred to the other. However, the method of study one is obliged to use on the human organism will awaken the kind of thinking that will enable one to find his way among the social facts.

[ 9 ] Such a method will be thought to remove all social ideas to the far-off region of “gray theory.” It may perhaps be said that such an opinion can only be maintained as long as one regards this “removal” from outside. Then, certainly, everything that is seen indistinctly at a distance seems gray. On the other hand, those things that are born of more immediate passions will have color. Yet go nearer what seems gray and one will find that something begins to stir which is not unlike a sort of passion—but it speaks to all that is truly human, that of which one loses sight when looking from the standpoint of parties and group opinions.

[ 10 ] There is today a burning need to draw nearer to what is truly human. The polemical postures of rival camps have done enough. It is time that one comes to see that the damage cannot be undone with new rival camps, but rather only by observing what history itself demands at this present moment of humanity's evolution. It is easy to see evils and demand programs for their abolition, but what is necessary is to penetrate to the roots of social life. By healing these roots, healthy blossoms and fruits can be brought forth as well.

[ 1 ] The essence of the threefold social order is that it looks at social relations without party or class prejudice and poses the question: what must be done at this juncture of human evolution in order to create viable social forms? Anyone who strives earnestly and honestly to answer this question shall confront one fact he or she cannot possibly disregard: namely, that in modern times the economic and political spheres have come into devastating conflict with one another.

The class strata that are the basis of contemporary social life arose out of economic circumstances. In the course of economic evolution (and as a result of that evolution) one person became a worker and another an industrialist, while a third became engaged in some cultural activity. Socialist thinkers never tire of putting this fact in the forefront of their programs, thinking it will lend them an aura of necessity. However, they do not realize that the important point is to see why economics was able to exert such a tremendous influence upon the stratification of society. They do not see that this stratification came about because the industrial system was not opposed by a political and legal system that could have counteracted its influence. Each person was swept by the forces of the economy to a point where he stood alone. It was possible to live only within the conditions that economic life afforded. One person ceased to understand the other; he could only hope to outvote or overpower him with the help of those who stood upon the same ground. There has yet to arise from the depths of human evolution a political or legal form capable of bringing together the isolated groups of humanity. People did not see that the old currents of politics and law run counter to the new economic forces.

[ 2 ] One cannot carry on economic life in the way made necessary by the circumstances of the last two centuries, and at the same time put people into social positions evolved from political theories belonging to bygone times. Nor should one hope that the class structure, which arose apart from any new political aspirations, can represent a point of departure for the reconstruction of the social organism. Obviously, the classes who feel themselves oppressed will not acknowledge the justice of this statement. They say, “We have had new political aspirations for more than half a century.” In my Toward Social Renewal, I demonstrated that this is not the case as a first premise for all further consideration of social renewal. Karl Marx and his adherents have certainly summoned one class to battle; yet they have merely set forth the same thoughts learned from the adherents of those classes they are to oppose. Therefore, even if the battle could bring about what many desire, nothing new would come of it. It would lead to the same old end; there would merely be a different group at the helm.

[ 3 ] This realization does not, of course, lead directly to the idea of the threefold order; but it is a necessary step in that direction. Until this realization has dawned upon a sufficiently large number of people, they will go on trying to extract from old ideas of politics and law the impulses that are supposed to be equal to present economic conditions. Until they see this, they will be afraid of a threefold articulation of the social organism because it clashes with their accustomed thinking.

[ 4 ] It is understandable that, in times that have brought so many disasters, people should shrink from any call for original thinking—thinking born of the depths of human life. Many feel themselves crushed by the weight of the times, and despair of the power of ideas as creative forces. They are “waiting” until “circumstances” produce a more favorable state of affairs. However, circumstances will never produce anything but what has been implanted in them by human ideas.

[ 5 ] “Yet, after all,” many say, “the very best ideas are powerless in actual practice if the circumstances of life reject them!” This is precisely the point of the threefold social order. The threefold idea begins with a recognition that neither praxis without theory nor impractical ideas can ever lead to a viable social organism. Accordingly, it does not promote an old-fashioned program. There are enough of such programs to teach one that they may be very “excellent” or “high-minded” or “inspiring” in the abstract, but that reality rejects them. In the field of economics, the threefold idea works with the natural and social realities of modern life; it works with the sense of right and justice that has evolved over the last few centuries; it works with a cultural life that provides the social organism with men and women who understand its organic laws and promote them to the benefit of society. It believes that, within a threefold order of the social organism, human beings will find it possible to work together in such a way that out of this cooperation, they shall create what cannot be brought about by any programmatic theory.

[ 6 ] Anyone who is unwilling to see the distinction in principle between the threefold idea and the usual programs will refuse to be convinced that it could bear fruit. The idea is one attuned to reality; it does not try to tyrannize life with a program, but aims at creating a basis that allows the life from which social impulses spring to develop freely. The questions of the present and the near future are not of the kind that can be solved by the intellect; they must be solved in a life-process, and that life-process must first be created. Modern humanity has only a first inkling of the real nature of the social question. It will assume its real form when the structure of the social organism is such that the three life forces underlying all human existence can rise in their true form from a vague instinct into conscious thought. Much that is said today about the social question, when measured against a real understanding of life, gives the impression of immaturity. It is said that people are too immature to shape their lives by ideas. That is not the case: people will be mature enough for answers as soon as they are presented with questions that are divested of ancient prejudices.

[ 7 ] Such is the present situation perceived by one who, out of a living experience of the full reality, has struggled through to the idea of the threefold order. He would like to see this perception translated into action. However, words enough will have been exchanged only when deeds are born of them.

[ 1 ] An ever-increasing number of people are beginning to declare that no way out of the social chaos of our time will be found unless our minds and hearts take a new turn toward the spirit. It is a confession to which many are led by disappointment with the results of a political economy that tried to base its ideas merely on the production and distribution of material wealth.

[ 2 ] It is also quite clear how few are the fruits of this profession of the spirit in our times. If expected to produce ideas for political economy, this profession is a failure; more is wanted than mere reference to the spirit. This does no more than give expression to a need; when it comes to the satisfaction of the need, it is helpless. One should recognize in this fact one of the problems of the present day and ask oneself, “How is it that even those who today regard this turning toward the spirit as necessary for social life do not get beyond talking about the necessity of it? Why do they never quite manage actually to suffuse our political-economic thought with spirituality?”

[ 3 ] The answer to this question will be found by observing the form the evolution of thought has taken in modern times among the civilized portion of humanity. Those representatives of modern civilization who have found their way to a world-conception, consider it a mark of their superior “cultivation” to speak of “the unknowable” behind all things. It has gradually become a widespread belief that only a very unenlightened person still talks about the inherent “essence of things” or “the invisible causes of the visible.” Now this thinking can be maintained for a time regarding the study of nature. The phenomena of nature lie before our eyes, and even those who will not hear of inquiring into their causes can describe them, and so arrive at a certain substantiality of thought.

[ 4 ] In matters of political economy, however, such a mode of thinking is bound to break down. For here the phenomena proceed ultimately from human beings; demands arise from human wants and preferences. Within us there lives as substance that to which people shut their eyes when they accustom themselves to talk about “the unknowable” (as do many disciples of the newer schools of thought). So it has come about that the age just passed has continued to evolve its habits of thought into the present—habits of thought which break down completely in matters of political economy. One can observe the freezing of water or the development of the embryo, and talk in a very “distinguished” manner of “the unknowable” in the world, cautioning one's contemporaries not to be led into fantastic speculations about this unknowable realm. But one cannot master economic matters with a way of thinking based on such a disposition, for economic affairs require that one should enter into the fullness of human life. Here one finds spirit and soul at work, even though they are revealed only in the demand for the satisfaction of material needs.

[ 5 ] We shall not develop the science of political economy that modern times require until people cease to be content with merely “referring” to the spirit and the soul, and cease to stigmatize all endeavors to arrive at an actual knowledge of the spirit as “unscientific” and unworthy of any enlightened person. The human soul will remain beyond their understanding until they recognize its connection with what they desire to avoid in their study of nature.

[ 6 ] If one speaks today from one's own perception of the supersensible, and argues that the only way to overcome the prevailing materialism is through research into the supersensible, one is met with the reply that materialism has been overcome “scientifically.” There have, it is claimed, been ample discussions on the subject which prove, on “genuinely” scientific grounds, that materialism is insufficient to explain the processes of nature. To this assertion it must be replied that such discussions may be very interesting theoretically, but they cannot overcome materialism. Materialism will be overcome only when it is not merely proven theoretically that there are more facts in the world than are perceived by our senses, but when living spirit inspires our study of the world and its processes. Only this spirit, directing human vision, can survey the many mingling currents at work in the material life of human communities. One can go on forever proving that “life” is not merely a chemical process; materialism will in no way suffer. One will combat materialism effectively only when one has the courage not only to say, “Our views of the world must be suffused with spirit,” but really to make this spirit the focus of their consciousness.

[ 7 ] The idea of the threefold social order addresses itself to people who have this courage. Courage of this kind does not stop short at the externalities of life, but seeks to penetrate its inner being. It grasps the necessity of the cultivation of a free, independent spiritual-cultural life because it perceives that a spiritual-cultural life in bondage can, at most, “refer” to the spirit, but it cannot live in the spirit. It also grasps the necessity of a self-subsistent legal life, because it has learned that our sense of right and justice has its roots in regions of the human soul that must remain independent of both the spiritual-cultural and the economic spheres. One perceives this only by recognizing the human soul. World-views inculcated by the theory of the unknowable (this is the line of much modern thought) will always tend to the fallacy that one can devise a social framework determined solely by the material facts of economic life.

[ 8 ] This courage will not be daunted by the theory that men are not mature enough for such a radical change of thought and feeling. Their “immaturity” will last only as long as science expounds to them that recognition of the spirit is an unwarranted assumption. Immaturity is not causing the present chaos; the chaos is caused by the belief that recognition of the spirit is a mark of unenlightenment. All attempts at shaping social life that proceed from this spiritless enlightenment are doomed to failure because they exclude the spirit. The moment one banishes the spirit from one's conscious mind, it asserts its claims in the unconscious regions. The spiritual forces can further human aims only when we do not work against the spirit. Only those who take the spirit into their conscious mind work with the spirit. There must he an overcoming of the false enlightenment that has arisen from a mistaken view of nature, and has become a sort of lay-gospel among widespread masses of people. Only then will the ground be prepared for a genuine social science that can have a fruitful influence upon real life.

[ 1 ] “Well meant thoughts don't make bread.” Such is the wisdom heard today the moment one speaks of ideas like those underlying the threefold social order. In view of the gravity of the times, this piece of wisdom may rank with another frequently heard today: “The social question will look different only when people return to work.”

[ 2 ] Whoever does not hear these two truths constantly repeated has no ears for the language of public discourse in widespread circles. And even if they are not expressly spoken, one hears these words behind much that is said publicly.

[ 3 ] It is hard for the ideas that the age requires to compete against such founts of wisdom because these objections are so incomparably “insightful.” A person need only say, “Show that they are wrong!” for the keenest thinker to recognize his powerlessness. Of course they cannot be refuted; they are obviously perfectly true.

[ 4 ] Is this all that is important in life—to say something that is perfectly true? Is not the all-important task to find thoughts that can set the facts of the matter into motion? It is a feature of modern public life (and one which does it great harm) that people will not combine their thinking with
a sense of reality.

[ 5 ] It is only this lack of a sense of reality that stands in the way when one tries to bring fruitful ideas to bear upon modern social troubles. People have long been accustomed to such deficient thinking; however, now it is truly time for a radical change of habits, especially in this aspect of human life.

[ 6 ] First, one must perceive how people came to slip into this kind of thinking. One must look at the kind of thought valued by our age.

[ 7 ] One such cherished train of social thought goes back to the life and customs of primitive times. People burrow into “primeval ages” to find communistic customs and such things, and draw from this certain conclusions about what should be done today. This train of thought has become very fashionable in pamphlets on the social question, and has thus spread throughout large circles. It may be found today in a great many ideas about “the social question,” especially among the masses.

[ 8 ] People might actually have arrived at this particular train of thought with far less effort than has been devoted to it in many quarters. They might have compared human social life with the lives and habits of various wild animals. They would have found that the animals have instinctive functions which lead them to satisfy their needs, and that these instinctive functions are adapted to acquiring in the best way the things nature provides.

[ 9 ] The essential point is that in the human being this instinctive functioning must be replaced by conscious, intentional thought. We must build upon the foundation of nature, just like every other creature that must eat to survive. The “bread question” touches the natural foundation of our very existence. But this question exists for every creature that needs food; one cannot possibly talk of “social thinking” in this regard. Social thinking begins only when the human being works upon nature by means of his intellect. Through thinking he makes himself master of the forces of nature; through thinking he brings himself into association with other human beings in a labor process through which the “bread” won from nature becomes a part of general social life. For this life, the “bread question” is an intellectual one. It can mean only, “Which are the fruitful thoughts that can, when realized, guide human labor to the satisfaction of our needs?”

[ 10 ] One can readily agree with anyone who, after hearing such an argument, replies, “Really, that is a very primitive piece of wisdom! What is the use of expounding anything that is so self-evident?” Indeed, one would very gladly stop expounding it, if only those who believe it is so superfluous were not the very people who cast it to the winds and destroy all sound social thinking with these words of wisdom: “Bread is not made by thoughts.”

[ 11 ] It is the same with that other wise saying, through which people seek to evade the gravity of the social question: “First of all, people should get back to work.” We work when a thought stirs in our soul and sets us working. If one is to work as a member of society as a whole, and at the same time feel one's existence to be one worthy of a human being, social life must be shaped by thoughts that reveal our contribution in the light of human dignity. Certain circles, it is true (socialist ones, moreover), would like to replace this incentive to work with compulsory labor. That is their particular way of avoiding recognition of the need for fruitful social ideas.

[ 12 ] The world has been brought to its present pass by those who make it impossible for ideas to effect anything because they run away from them. Salvation is possible only if a strong body of people, who are still able to rouse themselves to sufficient consciousness of the true state of affairs, join together. These people must not grow faint-hearted at this critical time, for they will be buffeted with the scornful words: “Impractical idealist! Utopian dreamer!” These people will do their duty and build, while the scoffers tear down. For everything that the others, with their “magnificent accomplishments,” have built or still wish to build, will fall into ruin because with their dread of ideas and their “practical life” they have built upon a quagmire of false “realities.” Such people are merely weaving delusions around their own routines, and procuring themselves a cheap complacency by scoffing at life's real work. To the open-minded, it is as clear as day; to look at such things clearly is the urgent duty of all who are unafraid to change their way of thinking. The age longs for creative thoughts. This longing will not be silenced, however noisily the foes of thinking may try to drown it out by thoughtlessness and grandiose gestures.

[ 1 ] A complex of ideas such as that of the threefold social order is often accused of having no “practical recommendations” on this or that specific issue. [ 2 ] “Now there is the collapse of the currency! What does the proponent of the threefold order suggest as a remedy?” The only reply he can give is, “The whole recent course of world economy has been one that meant competition between the different nations, and thus it led to the depreciation of money in one particular case. Improvement can begin only when, instead of instituting specific measures with a view to remedying this or that, the whole course of economic life is transformed by means of the threefold system. Specific measures may of course improve particular aspects for a while; but so long as the character of economic methods remains essentially the same, isolated ‘improvements’ can do no good. In fact, an ‘improvement’ in one quarter is bound to make matters worse in another.”

[ 3 ] The only really practical means to rebuild what has been destroyed is the threefold social order itself. For example, if people would make comprehensive changes consistent with the threefold order within a part of the economy suffering under depreciation, the actual course of events would remedy the evil. Only someone who is for one reason or another afraid of practical work in the sense of the threefold social order could ask the question mentioned above. Such a person wants the proponents of the threefold idea to tell him how to cure particular symptoms without applying the three-fold cure to the disease itself.

[ 4 ] In this point lies the variance between the representatives of the threefold idea and all those who fancy it possible to retain the old form of social life with its unified state, and to succeed in building up a new structure within it. The whole idea of the threefold social organism rests on a perception that the old social orientation of the unified state is what has brought the world into its present catastrophic situation; and that one must therefore decide to rebuild from the ground up in keeping with the threefold idea.

[ 5 ] Until the courage for such a thoroughgoing measure is aroused in a sufficiently large number of people, our diseased social life will never be restored to health. Without this thoroughgoing change, the only thing that can possibly take place is a hoarding of economic and political power by the victorious nations and the oppression of the vanquished. The victors can, for a while, continue with the old system; the evils that result from it at home can be balanced through their domination of the vanquished. However, the vanquished are at this very moment in a plight that necessitates the instant, thoroughgoing action proposed here. It would, of course, be better if the victors, too, acquired insight. The conditions they are bringing about at home must, as time goes on, lead to a recognition of the intolerable situation in the vanquished country—and thus to new catastrophes. The vanquished, however, cannot afford to wait, for each delay makes their life situation more and more impossible.

[ 6 ] The threefold idea is certainly one that runs counter to the habits of thought and feeling of those who favor a unified national state. To admit to themselves candidly that the evils they now see around them are the result of this idea is, for many today, like being asked to stand with no ground beneath their feet. The ground these people want to stand on is the unified state. They want to take it as given, and build upon it institutions they hope will lead to an improved state of affairs. However, what is necessary is to create new ground; for this, the courage is lacking.

[ 7 ] The main thing that is necessary in order for the three-fold idea to take effect is to see that as many people as possible realize nothing but a radical change can do any good. Far too many people have already allowed the narrowest range of life to shape their judgment in public affairs. This is especially true of the very people who are active in the large industrial concerns. They credit themselves with an all-embracing faculty of judgment in large affairs; actually, they are capable only of what their own narrow range of life has taught them.

[ 8 ] What must be done is to promote a clear understanding (of which there is so little today) of the circumstances of public life. The more people there are who know how the forces of public life have operated until now, and how they have inevitably led to the present catastrophe, the fewer will be the obstacles to the threefold social order. Everything that can help to spread such clear perceptions prepares the soil on which the threefold idea can take practical effect.

[ 9 ] Accordingly, one must not expect much to come of discussions with members of one or another party; for in the end, as long as they choose to remain within their party, they will still tend to interpret every thought put forward by supporters of the threefold idea according to the party's convenience. Once one has recognized the value of this impulse, one should make it understood far and wide. One can do nothing with people who do not want the threefold social organism, but only with those who are filled with the idea. Only with these people is it possible to discuss the details of public affairs. One really ought to see that one simply cannot speak with Mr. Erzberger about public affairs as long as Mr. Erzberger is Mr. Erzberger!

[ 10 ] I write this because I see that, in this respect, not all those who have embarked upon the threefold idea are sailing on the right tack. The threefold social order is an idea one must serve unreservedly if one wants to serve it at all. It affords a basis for mutual discussions with each and every one; but the idea must lose nothing of its radicality in discussion. People will take this course of action once they perceive the real causes of the downfall. Such a perception will give the needed courage for thoroughgoing measures. For the prevailing helplessness is, after all, simply the consequence of a lack of insight.

by Joseph Weizenbaum

History often provides insight into the present. Consider the American South one hundred and fifty years ago, for example. There human rights and economic servitude were compressed into a single domain for black Americans. They became a means of production that could be bought and sold as a commodity. In many parts of the South it was forbidden to teach blacks to read. Control by law of education, part of culture, was found necessary to subordinate human rights to economics. The domain of rights and economics thus also engulfed culture.

Today we recognize rights which are independent from economic power, at least in principle. Modern workers must accept the authority of their superiors but only in matters directly related to their employment. Human beings no longer can be treated as mere means of production. We have separated economic power from civil rights at least to the extent of making slavery illegal.

If we can perceive how law, economics, and culture grew independent of one another relative to their nearly complete interdependence one hundred and fifty years ago in the South, then we can imagine the possibility of their even greater separation. This greater separation of the three domains - economics, law, and culture-forms the core of Steiner's social thought. Written in 1919, the essays contained in this volume address the reconstruction of a shattered Germany. They call for a proper separation of these three spheres of activity arguing that only this would allow each to express its essential nature and thereby enable human society to revitalize itself.

To understand this separation we must understand the component activities. For law the essential characteristic is human equality. Law both guarantees and limits rights, and it does this equally for each person. It governs the democratic political process in which each person's vote carries equal weight. Inasmuch as rights must be protected and the law enforced, it encompasses both the police and the military. The state is its administrative body. The modern national state, however, oversteps its essential boundaries, creating a kind of social indigestion in its attempts to legislate both in the domains of economics and of culture. Economic interests, in turn, influence legal judgments, often making a sham of human equality.

In the United States an important barrier to this overstepping is the constitutional doctrine of the separation of Church and State. The reasoning behind this doctrine has received considerable interpretation by legal experts and by the Supreme Court. Part of the discussion revolves around the ways in which people are considered equal. Thomas Emerson¹ argues that we are equal in one way through our need for self-fulfIllment or self-development, a fundamental aspect of which is belief formation. Consequently each individual has the right to form his or her beliefs without government interference. From this follows the separation of Church and State.

Religion is one pan of cultural life; another part is education. The separation of the three activities of society implies that education should be as independent of the state as is religion. In “The Separation of School and State” Stephen Arons presents a legal argument for this separation in the context of U.S. Constitutional law. He states that the case would have “for its central principle the preservation of individual conscience from government coercion. The specific application of this principle to education is that any state-constructed school system must maintain a neutral position toward parents' educational choices whenever values or beliefs are at stake. If schools generally are value-inculcating agencies, that fact raises serious constitutional questions about how a state can maintain a sufficiently neutral posture toward values while supporting a system of public education:”² In other words public schools as a matter of course tend to transmit those values deemed appropriate by the majority of the public. This implies choices among such conflicting values as competitiveness and cooperation, intellect and wisdom, and the status of manual work vis-a-vis intellectual work. Parents not accepting the majority view have the right to alternatives.

Current rulings protect the existence of private schools and their right to determine their own curricula with minimal state interference. These rulings exclude “any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only.”³ Arons feels that their implications go further than is generally accepted. First, they can be interpreted as prohibiting state financing systems from favoring those who are in agreement with public school values. In effect every child has the right to the same educational support at the school of his or her parents' choice, whether public or private. Otherwise constitutional rights are reserved for the rich. Second, state regulation of private schools cannot effect value transmission unless there is legally compelling justification given by the state. Putting these implications into effect would increase the separation of school and state.

Steiner argues for separation of culture and state in order that the essential nature of each can find a healthy form. To understand the essential nature of the state we must recognize that people may differ among themselves with respect to musical and other talents, but that the same people are equal with respect to voting rights. The state will be healthy when it concerns itself strictly with those matters wherein people are equal. This human equality is fundamental to the state.

Freedom is the quality fundamental to the life of culture. It is interesting that freedom is often thought to be the characteristic of the political system. On reflection, however, it becomes clear that what is usually meant by freedom is equality under the law. Indeed, by majority consensus absolute freedom is limited. For example, a person is not free to murder or steal. A little reflection also reveals that people are not equal culturally. Few would deny the cultural superiority of Mozart, Hilbert, Schweitzer, or Emerson. Thus superiority does not effect the essential equality of all before the law. It does suggest that the highly gifted ought to be given more space and time than the merely moderately gifted to unfold their capacities for the benefit of society.

To understand Steiner's thinking consider briefly what is involved in a cultural creation, be it KeKule discovering the benzene ring, Saul Bellow writing a novel, or Joan of Arc planning a battle. Each of these activities originated in the creative depths of a unique individual. It issued forth from soul and spirit under the guidance of his or her own volition and intentionality. No external compulsion can bring forth inner creative activity. The individual does it freely or not at all.

Steiner's thinking about cultural life was directed more toward this inner activity than to its result or product. For him culture is that realm of society in which people acquire inner activity and mobility through interaction with others who have developed this mobility. In the essay “Cultivation of the Spirit and Economic Life” he says that cultural life

“aims at a form of cooperation among men to be based entirely on the free intercourse and free association of individualty with individuality. Here human individuality will not be forced into an institutional mold. How one person assists another, how one helps another advance will simply arise from what one, through his own abilities and accomplishments, is able to be for the other. It is no great wonder that presently many people are still able to imagine nothing but a state of anarchy as a result of such a free form of human relations in the social order's spiritual-cultural branch. Those who think so simply do not know what powers of man's innermost nature are hindered from expanding when man is forced to develop in the pattern into which the state and economic system mold him. Such powers, deep within human nature, cannot be developed by institutions, but only through what one being calls forth in perfect freedom from another being.”

As Steiner mentions above, real freedom in culture need not result in chaos. He provided an example of this in the Waldorf School, which he founded in Stuttgart in 1919. Based on that impulse the Waldorf Schools have grown in number to a worldwide confederation of over 350 independent private primary and secondary schools. The teachers in these schools retain complete control of the activities within their own classrooms, as well as of the operation of the school as a whole through a collegial administrative body. The heart of the pedagogy is a developmental picture of the child compatible with that of Piaget, whom Steiner predated. The developmental phases that are outlined in the essay “The Pedagogical Basis of the Waldorf School” provide a context for the Waldorf teacher's interaction with children of different ages. This interaction follows a structured curriculum, where subjects are chosen to assist the developmental process of each child. The curriculum and the concept of the developmental phases can be compared to an instrument that the teacher creatively plays in order to help the students actualize their potentials. In this way the schools provide an example of free creative activity within a structure. It is not chaos. Being personally acquairited with a number of Waldorf students, I can say that they come closer to realizing their own potentials than practically anyone I know.

This is in striking contrast to what one finds in the public primary and secondary schools in the United States. A recent study points to a catastrophic situation. The report titled A Nation at Risk⁴ literally states that if a foreign power had imposed our current educational system on us, we would have taken it as an act of war. Just how bad conditions are can be deduced from the results of an English proficiency exam, given this September to incoming freshmen at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with a standard of passing which was embarrassingly low. Of 1131 students who took the exam, about 800 failed. Considering that MIT is among the highest quality institutions in the country, receiving applications only from top students and accepting only the best of them, it is clear that standards of mastery of their native language among average students in our secondary school system must be very low indeed.

The report goes on to urge that something must be done to improve this situation, giving two compelling reasons. The first is that without a better educated public the United States will be unable to compete with foreign economies in the struggle for markets. This is an economic reason. The second is a political one. Lacking an educated public America will not be able to keep up its military strength. In Steiner's terms the report suggests that we nurture the germ which is the underlying cause of the problem. It should be clear that if these two are the primary reasons for improving the educational system, then they will influence how it is “improved.” In reality it is exactly such influences from the state and from economics that have caused the current catastrophe.

Unhealthy connections and influences among the several activities of society have caused catastrophies in economic life as well. Two cases which illustrate this are developments in the American rail and steel industries since the second world war. At the beginning of the war the U.S. railroad system was quite superb. It covered the entire country and was fast and comfortable. But then companies like New York Central started examining themselves and decided the business they were really in was making money and providing dividends for their shareholders. On this basis they took their surplus funds and bought companies which were unrelated to railroading but which were judged more profitable than rail. Today we call this diversification. The deterioration of the railroads' infrastructure was the consequence. Within a decade the system was in disarray. Similar events took place in the U. S. steel industry. American steel became uncompetitive. Those foreign steel manufacturers who had decided that making steel was their business, and who consequently invested in renewal and improvement of their plant, became even more efficient while the American steel-making plant deteriorated.

The decline of American rail and steel can be traced to neglecting the essential nature of economic life: meeting human needs. They turned, instead, to the rights of owners, myopically pursuing shareholder profit and probably management compensation. This is the “pig principle.” The net impact on society can be found by adding the shareholder's gain to the external effects, such as the cost of finding and using alternatives to rail transportation, which are costs to society. The net, a big negative, is the logical outcome of economic activity losing its primary focus of meeting needs.

To be healthy economics must start from and keep this primary focus. Those at work in economic life concern themselves primarily with the production and circulation of commodities. What is produced is usually not consumed by those who produce it. The product serves the needs of others. For this reason Steiner used the term “brotherliness” (and we should add sisterliness) to characterize economic activity. He stressed that this applies only to economies in which the division of labor is the norm.

But to characterize actual economic life with the term “brotherliness” is to contradict much of modern economic thinking. Human economic activity is more usually characterized by terms like selfishness, personal gain, and survival. Steiner insists, however, that these ideas are inconsistent with fundamental economic realities. Since the division of labor, few individuals have really provided for themselves. We all rely on the efforts of thousands, indeed millions of others to produce the car we drive, the food we eat, and the clothes we wear. The reality of modern economic life is that we take care of one another, i.e., true brotherliness. Thinking that overlooks this fundamental reality is likely to misguide economic decisions, as in the two examples cited.

The proper separation of the three activities of society-economics, law, and culture-would make it possible for economic life to keep its focus on human needs and maintain its true brotherly character. Steiner envisioned this coming about through the working of motivational forces different from those to which we are accustomed. Self interest, profit, and personal gain could be replaced by the satisfaction of knowing one is working for the community good. Steiner argued that this is not a utopian dream; rather it is a motivation suitable to true human dignity. He also described new ways of working with wages, capital, and credit that would aid the advent of this new motivation. The key to its possibility and practicality is again the proper separation of the three activities.

He explains in the essay “Ability to Work, Will to Work, and the Threefold Social Order” that this socially responsible motivation would not arise from the economic life at all, because purely economic work has become inherently uninteresting since the division of labor became the norm. This was not the case for the medieval craftsman who produced his product in its entirety and then, taking pride in it, received thanks from his customer. The modern worker is confined to a task that, taken by itself, i.e., out of the macroeconomic context into which it fits, is meaningless. The existing economic motivation, money, leads people to do whatever is necessary to get paid. But it does not activate their interest in a task that is inherently uninteresting, with the consequence that absenteeism, alienation, and poor performance have reached alarming levels. Steiner recognized that socially responsible motivation could arise only from an independent cultural and political life. In the above mentioned essay he says that within the cultural life the individual

“learns in a living way to understand this human society for which one is called upon to work; a realm where one learns to see what each single piece of work means for the combined fabric of the social order, to see it in such a light that one will learn to love it because of its value for the whole. It aims at creating in this free life of spirit the profounder principles that can replace the motive of personal gain. Only in a free spiritual life can a love for the human social order spring up that is comparable to the love an artist has for the creation of his works.&rdquo

From a separate democratically ordered life of law there would also arise motives to work for society.

“Real relationships will grow up between people united in a social organism where each adult has a voice in government and is co-equal with every other adult: it is relationships such as these that are able to enkindle the will to work ‘for community.’ One must reflect that a truly communal feeling can grow only from such relationships, and that from this feeling the will to work can grow. For in actual practice the consequence of such a state founded on democratic rights will be that each human being will take his place with vitality and full consciousness in the common field of work. Each will know what he is working for; and each will want to work within the working community, of which he knows himself a member through his will.&rdquo

If we attempt to fInd examples of this type of motivation operative in contemporary society, we often fInd negative instances. This is nowhere better exemplified than at the highest levels of computer research at MIT. This research is paid for almost entirely by the military. While it is possible to view it, if one wears just the right kind of glasses, as a pure science and as “value free,” it is, in fact, in the service of the military. Scientific results are swiftly converted to the improvement of implements of mass destruction and of death. Young men and women work in these fields trying to maintain the illusion that they are doing abstract science, a “value free” science. They ultimately have to come to believe that they are not in any way responsible for the end use of their labor. It is often said that the computer is a tool having no moral dimension. Clearly this position can be maintained only if one thinks of human society in abstract terms, i.e. if one denies the concrete historical and social circumstances in which one lives and works.”

The effect of this situation on the researcher needs emphasis. It takes enormous energy to shield one's eyes from seeing what one is actually doing. The expenditure of this energy on the part of individuals is expensive in emotional terms. Ultimately this is the real tragedy, for it reduces the person to a machine.

There is a sort of irony involved, a chilling irony. A fear is often expressed about computers, namely that we will create a machine that is very nearly like a human being. The irony is that we are making human beings, men and women, become more and more like machines. For it is human to find the motive for work, consciously and with conscience and compassion, in the concrete historical and social context in which one lives. When this is not possible human beings are robbed of essential humanity.

The quest for a motive to work befitting human dignity extends from research scientist to factory worker. One might think, for example, that the steel worker, if he were educated to picture the use of the product of his work, would find in the pictures the motivation to work for social good instead of merely for a living. This presumably could be measured in higher quality work and reduced absenteeism. On closer inspection, however, it is doubtful that a look at the actual American context could bring about such motivation. A large percentage of steel manufactured in America is used for nothing but trivia. For example, there are on the order of ten million new automobiles produced in this country every year. If we restricted ourselves to a replacement market without model changes and alterations that are purely cosmetic, then we might easily get by, building, say, half a million cars a year. It is difficult to believe that the steel worker could be proud of his contribution to society if underneath he knew that the car his neighbor bought was unnecessary and that it might have been better to put the resources it required into feeding the 600 million people on the planet who are malnourished.

In a volume to be published subsequently to this one Steiner's concept of “unnecessary production,” i.e., trivia, planned obsolescence, etc., is introduced. With that discussion and much of what is presented in this volume it should be evident that Steiner's ideas will be of interest to those who concern themselves with issues of ecology and stewardship of the earth. In the broader context ecology must also encompass a social dimension, making it a social ecology that considers questions such as right motivation to work. In this sense Steiner's work also relates to the efforts of E.F. Schumacher, who read Steiner, and who tried to introduce us to ideas of appropriate scale and healthy approaches to post industrial society. These connections should help dispel any thought that this volume is dated. Rather, Steiner was far ahead of his time.

Joseph Weizenbaum
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1984

• 1. Toward a General Theory of the First Amendment (New York: Random House, 1966).
• 2. “The Separation of School and State: Pierce Reconsidered,” Harvard Educational Review, 46 (February 1976):1, pp. 96–97.
• 3. United States Supreme Court, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. at 535 (1925). 4. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform; A Report to the Nation (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983).
• 4. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform; A Report to the Nation (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983).