My dear friends,
We have been
studying from many points of view the social impulses of the
present and of the future. You will have seen, among the many and
varied phenomena which these impulses bring forth, that there is
one apparently fundamental tendency. Social and antisocial
world-conceptions make their appearance. This or that action is
taken, inspired by these social or antisocial worldviews. But if
from the vantage-point now gained we put the question: “What
is it that really underlies these things? What is it that is
trying to work its way out to the surface in human destinies and
human evolution?” We may characterize it as follows: Man
wants to have a social order, he wants to give the life of
humanity in society a social structure within which, in harmony
with the age of the conscious soul, he may become conscious of
what he is and knows himself to be as human in his human dignity,-
in his significance and force as a human being. Within the social
order, he wants to find himself as human.
Formerly, impulses that were instinctive guided people to act, to
think, to feel about one thing or another. In the present age —
the age of the conscious soul, which began in the fifteenth
century and will last into the third millennium C.E
— these instinctive impulses are seeking to be transformed
into conscious ones. And man will only be able to introduce these
conscious impulses into his life if in the course of this age he
becomes more and more conscious of what he as man is and
can be within the social structure — the structure
of Society or of the State or whatever it may be — in which
he lives.
Spiritual Science is alone able to penetrate these
things clearly in the true direction of the age of the Conscious
Soul. They make their appearance here and there in a more or less
tumultuous form, not only in the thoughts and opinions but in the
events in which the people of the present day are living. It is
characteristic, for example, to see what comes to expression in a
recent speech by Trotsky. If you consider what I have just said
about the desire to place people in the very center of our
worldview, such words as Trotsky uses here will make an
overwhelming, shattering impression upon you. He says: “The
communist or socialist doctrine has set itself, as one of its
most important tasks, to attain at length on our old sinful Earth
a state of affairs when men will cease to shoot at one another.
Thus it is one of the tasks of Socialism or Communism to create a
social order where for the first time man will be worthy of the
name. We are wont to say with Gorki that the word human strikes a
proud and lofty note, yet in reality, looking over these three
and three-quarter years of bloody murder, we would fain cry out:
The sound of the word ‘human’ is shameful and
contemptible.”
Here we see the question: How can one become conscious of his
human being, his human worth and human strength placed in a
tumultuous way in the very center of attention at the beginning
of a political speech? And, if you observe more closely, you will
meet the same phenomenon in many people. What Spiritual Science
realizes in a clearer way has a shadowy existence in many human
minds. Now this is a phenomenon which we shall only understand if
we consider many things in the social thinking of the 5th
Post-Atlantean Age which we have not studied closely enough as
yet.
Truly, infinitely much has become different since the 15th
century when the fifth Post-Atlantean Age began, following as it
did upon the fourth Post-Atlantean age, which then came to an
end. (The Fourth, as you know, had begun in the 8th century B.C.)
We fail to notice how radically the constitution of soul in
civilized humanity had changed in the transition, for example
from the 13th or 14th to the 15th or 16th century. I have told
you of many phenomena in the realm of art, in the realm of
thinking and in other aspects of life in which you can recognize
the change. Today we will consider another aspect, an aspect
which is of particular importance for the forces which are
working themselves out in the present and in the immediate
future. We may truly say: It is only since the beginning of the
5th Post-Atlantean Age that men have consciously observed
economic and industrial life in respect to how it affects the
social structure. Previously these things came forth more or less
instinctively. It is only towards the 16th century that people
began consciously to ask the question: What is the nature of
economy? What is the best kind of economic order? What are the
laws that underlie it? It is from considerations of this kind
that the impulses of the socialistic worldview have evolved.
Formerly these things had been ordered more or less
instinctively, from person to person, from guild to guild,
corporation to corporation, and even from realm to realm. Only
since the rise of the modern political state which dates back,
approximately, to the 16th century, do we see this conscious
thinking about economic questions.
Now when you turn your attention to such a phenomenon as this,
you must remember the following important fact: So long as a
thing works instinctively, it works with a certain sureness. Call
it what you will, the divine order or the order of nature,
instinct is a force that works through all the evolution of
humanity with a certain sureness, unshaken by thought.
Uncertainty only begins from the moment when the things of life,
where the certainty of instincts was working hitherto, begin to
be penetrated by human thinking, the human
intellect. And only gradually, having gone through many and
varied errors, does man regain in a conscious way that sureness
and inner certainty which, under different conditions, he had in
former times by instinct.
Of course we must not make the mistake of saying: let us then
rather go back to instinct! The conditions have changed and under
the altered conditions instinct would no longer be the right way.
Humanity is in the course of evolution, and evolution consists in
passing from instinct to conscious life with respect to all these
things. The demand that we should return to the old instinct
would be no wiser than if someone who had reached the age of
fifty suddenly resolved to return to the age of twenty.
Thus we see the beginning of conscious thinking on questions of
Political Economy during the 16th century. People directed their
conscious attention to things that were previously experienced and
carried out instinctively.
It is interesting to consider some of the thoughts and ideas
which people had about the social order. Thus, to begin with,
the Mercantilists
as they are called, appeared on the scene with certain ideas
about the economic life of society. On closer examination, their
conceptions appear entirely dependent on the legal and juridical
ideas which had already arisen in public life. Armed with these
ideas they tried to understand the course and evolution of trade
and of modern industry in its first beginnings. The ideas of
Mercantilism are dependent above all on the study of trade. But
they are also influenced by other things, influenced by the fact
that the modern, more absolutist form of monarchy, with all its
bureaucratic officialdom, assumed its configuration in their
time. Again, their conceptions are conditioned by the fact that
large quantities of precious metals were imported into Europe
through the discovery of America; and that the old form of
economy was replaced by that which deals in money. Such
influences as these determined the ideas of the earliest
political economists : the Mercantilists. It is evident from the
ideas they expressed that their effort was to base economics and
social life on the model of the old forms of private economic
activity. And as you know, for the old private economic
intercourse there were the Roman juridical ideas of legal rights.
Within the framework of these legal conceptions they simply tried
to extend the laws of private economic life into the sphere of
public life.
Such ideas gave rise to a peculiar result, and, as I said just
now, it is interesting to trace the several points to which
people directed their thoughts as time went on. As a result of
their ideas the Mercantilists concluded: The essential
thing in the economic life of any nation is to possess as large an
equivalent as possible for the commodities circulating in trade,
and produced by industry, within the given territory. In other
words, their desire was to think out a social structure whereby
as much money as possible should find its way into the country
for which they were concerned. They saw the prosperity of the
country in the amount of money it contained. “How then can
we enhance the prosperity of the country?” For they thought
that the prosperity of the individual would also be enhanced as
much as possible. By bringing about as far as possible an
economic structure whereby a large amount of money would
circulate within the country and very little would flow from it
to other countries. As much money as possible was to be
concentrated in the given country.
Against this idea there then arose another, that of the
Physiocrats:
Economic prosperity does not in reality depend on the amount of
money that is kept within the country; it depends on the amount
that is produced out of the land by human labor — on the
quantity of goods produced by exploiting the resources of Nature.
In effect, it is only an apparent prosperity that is achieved by
the circulation of goods in trade and by the accumulation of
money, which does not increase real prosperity. Here you see
arising, in two successive theories of economics, two altogether
different points of view. And this is what I would beg you to
observe. For one might well believe that once one had studied
these things, it should be quite easy to say what it is that
conditions prosperity, and what is the best form of economic
life. But when you see that the people who think about these
things, who even make it their profession to do so, arrive in
time at very opposite conclusions, you will no longer say
that it is quite so easy.
The Physiocrats, laying their main stress on the production of
goods by the tillage of the soil and the exploitation of Nature
generally, came to the conclusion that one ought to leave people
to themselves, for they would then be impelled by free
competition to produce as much as possible out of the
agricultural basis of existence. While the Mercantilists were
more concerned in erecting customs barriers and closing the
country, so as to limit the outward flow of money and increase
national prosperity by keeping the money in the country, the
Physiocrats came to the opposite conclusion. According to them,
free trade from one country to another was the very thing to
enhance the exploitation of the soil over the whole Earth, and
accordingly, the prosperity of every country.
Thus at the very dawn of conscious thinking on economic matters
you see these opposite and conflicting thoughts arise in manifold
directions. We may now go on and observe the entry of a most
influential theory of political economy, one that had an
extraordinarily powerful influence on legislation, and also a
powerful influence on the thoughts of economists themselves. I
mean the theory of Adam Smith , who asked himself this question
above all: “How should we bring about a social structure
such as to develop, in the best possible way, the welfare of the
individual and at the same time the welfare of the community?”
I will here emphasize one characteristic point. Adam Smith
arrived at the conclusion that an entirely individualistic
development of economic life is the best thing possible. He took
his start from the idea that goods, the commodities we buy and
sell — constituting after all the very substance of the
national economy — are in effect the result of human labor.
We may put it this way. Whenever we buy a thing, the thing we buy
has come into existence through the performance of human labor.
The piece of goods, the commodity is, as it were, crystallized
human labor. And Adam Smith thought: Just because this was the
foundation of economic life, prosperity will best be brought
about if we do not hinder people through any kind of legislation
from producing freely. The individual will do the best for the
community if he does the best for himself. Roughly speaking, this
is Adam Smith's idea: We shall do the very best for all humanity
if we do the very best for ourselves, for then we shall best be
able to produce the goods. It will be best both for the
individual and for humanity as a whole to arrange the economic in
an individualistic way and not to erect hindrances by legislation
or the like.
Such, my dear friends, is the whole direction of thought in all
these theories of political economy. “What is the best way
of arranging the social structure?” In this connection one
idea may possibly occur to you and if so it may well seem to you
the most important of all. It is a question which was not really
clearly seen even by the Physiocrats. In all the systems of
political economy of which I have spoken, they
considered what is the best way of arranging and producing the
economic structure of society. But as we follow the thoughts that
emerge we are reminded again and again that there is also another
question, namely this: What is the essential purpose of this
economic life? Its object cannot merely be to distribute whatever
is available. Surely it must also see to it that something shall
be available; that the necessary material goods shall really be
produced. The point is, after all, to produce the necessary goods
from the earth. What then is the relation of man to the goods
that are to be derived from the earth? It was
Malthus
who first put forward conscious thoughts upon this question, and
it must be said that his thought took a line which may well cause
humanity considerable misgiving. The cardinal question which
Malthus brought to light, and the view which he put forward in
answer to it, are by no means quite unfounded. He says: Let us
consider the increase in the human population of the Earth. He
believed, as many modern people do, that the population of the
Earth is always increasing. Then let us consider the increase in
the food that is produced. We shall obtain a certain ratio.
Malthus expresses it somewhat mathematically. He says: The
increase in food-stuffs will take place in arithmetical, and the
increase in population in geometrical, progression. I may make it
clear by a few numbers. Let us assume that the increase in the
food-stuffs produced is in the ratio 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Then we shall
have the corresponding geometrical ratio, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25. In
other words, his idea was that the population will increase much
faster than the available food supply. Humanity in its evolution cannot
escape the danger that a struggle for existence will arise, for
in the last resort there will be far too many people in relation
to the increase in the available food. Thus he conceives the
economic evolution of humanity from quite a different point of
view, namely from the aspect of the connection of man with the
conditions of the Earth. He comes to the conclusion, or at least
his followers come to the conclusion, that it is against the real
line of evolution to practice much charity and welfare work for
the poor. For by so doing we only encourage
over-population, and this is harmful to the evolution of
humanity. He even comes to the point of saying: Whosoever is weak
in life, let us leave him unsupplied, unsupported, for it is
necessary that the unfit should be weeded out. And he conceives
other methods of which I will not speak at this point. I will but
indicate their nature. He recommends especially the two-children
system in order to counteract the natural tendency to
over-population. Wars he regards as something that must
necessarily arise in human evolution, because it is a tendency of
nature for the population to increase far more rapidly than the
necessary means to support it.
You see, it is a very pessimistic conception of the economic
evolution of humanity which here appears upon the scene of
history, nor can we say that much attention has been devoted in
more recent times to this question: How is man connected with the
nature-basis of his economic life? In more recent times there is
not even a clear consciousness that one do research in this
direction. For in the subsequent period attention was directed
again and again to the social structure itself; to the way in
which people should distribute what is available in order to
attain the greatest possible prosperity. The question was not
“How shall we derive as much as possible from the earth?”
It was more a question of distribution.
Along these lines of thought many different theories emerged which
are important to observe, since they prepared the way for the
socialistic thinking of the present day, which has already led humanity
to a large extent into a kind of social chaos and will
do so still more in the future, and from which it is essential to
seek the right path of escape. One of these things I have just
indicated, when I mentioned how distinctly there emerged, in Adam
Smith for example, the idea that the commodity, the piece of
goods that we buy, represents stored-up labor. Increasingly, as
though by an inevitable process, there arose the thought: That
which appears as a commodity can be regarded in no other way than
as stored-up labor. This idea has dominated man to such an extent
that it is one of the main motive forces in the proletarian
thinking at the present time. For on the economic premises which
I have characterized, there has entered the minds of the modern
proletariat a keen vision of the fact that in the economic
order, the social structure of today, the labor-power of
the worker who has no property, who can only bring the labor of
his hands to the market, is a commodity. Just as we buy
many other things, so do we buy his labor-power from the
proletarian worker.
In respect to the question: What am I in reality as a
human being? — the modern proletarian feels this as the
thing that most oppresses him, and from this his social demands
instinctively proceed. He does not want any part of him to be
bought and sold, as though he could sell his own hands and arms.
This seems to him intolerable. No matter in what form the feeling
finds expression, in Marxist or in some revolutionary thought, or
however we may call it, the underlying feeling is, “Other
people buy and sell commodities, but I am obliged to sell my
labor power.”
My dear friends, it would be a simple error to object that other
people too sell their labor. That is not true. In the social
structures of the present day, it is really only the proletarian
worker who sells his labor. For if one is connected in any way at
all with property, one ceases to sell one's labor power. Thus the
bourgeois does not sell his labor, he buys and sells commodities.
He may sell the products of his labor, but that is a different
thing from selling one's labor. The modern proletarian has very
keen and sharp ideas on these things, and if you know the
thinking of the modern proletarian you will know that the
significance of this concept the “proletarian worker”
is that he is one who sells his labor power. And you will know,
moreover, how strongly this idea works as the real driving force
in the proletarian thinking of today, from its most moderate to
its most radical forms. Anyone who is unable to read this out of
the phenomena themselves, simply fails to understand this present
time. And it is a sad thing how many people fail to understand
it. It is through this that we go more and more deeply into
confusion: people do not really try to understand their own times.
That is one thing. The other thing is this: However modified by
later, albeit somewhat instinctive points of view, a certain kind
of thinking has arisen in connection with what I have now
characterized. We find this thought expressed in the idea of the
Law of Wages. It is true that in the modern proletarian thinking
this idea no longer exists in the same radical form. Nevertheless
we must know the form in which it was held, for instance, by
Lasalle. For only then shall we perceive what exists in the
present-day proletarian as a kind of residue of this idea. The
so-called iron Law of Wages
was clearly formulated by the economist Ricardo, and in the
middle of the last century Lasalle stood up for it with all his
energy. It is somewhat as follows. Under the social structure of
today, with the form that Capital assumes in this social
structure, he who is obliged to work as a proletarian can never
receive beyond a certain maximum of wages for his labor. His
wages will always fluctuate about a certain level. They cannot
rise beyond it, nor can they descend beneath it. The objective
facts make it necessary for a certain level of wages to be paid
in the long run. The level of the worker's wages cannot rise
beyond or descend below the maximum, or, if you will, the
minimum. They cannot depart from it to any considerable extent
for the following reasons: so thought Ricardo. He says: let us
assume that through some circumstance — a favorable period
in trade or the like — there would arise at any time an
unusual increase in wages. What then would happen? The workers
would suddenly receive higher wages. Their standard of life would
be improved, they would attain a certain prosperity. Consequently
it would be more attractive to seek for labor as a proletarian
than under the preceding level of wages.
There will therefore be a larger supply of proletarian labor.
Moreover, owing to their increased prosperity, the workers will
multiply more quickly — and so on. In short, the supply
will be increased. As a result, the laborer will be easier to
obtain; and we shall therefore begin once more to underpay him.
The wages will therefore fall back to their former level. Through
the very rise in wages, phenomena are induced which causes them
to fall again. Or let us assume that wages fall through any
circumstance. Poverty and wretchedness will be the result and the
supply of labor will be reduced. Workers will die more quickly,
or they will get diseases. They will have fewer children. So the
supply of labor power will be reduced, and this in turn will
bring about an increase in wages. But the increase cannot go on
essentially beyond the level of the iron law.
Of course, my dear friends, Ricardo, and Lasalle too, in
propounding this iron Law of Wages, were thinking of the
determination of wages in the purely economic process. Today, nay
even twenty or thirty years ago, even proletarians, when one
cited the iron Law of Wages in the history of economic science
would reply: That is incorrect, there Ricardo and Lasalle were
wrong. But this objection is really incorrect. For Ricardo and
Lasalle could only have meant that if the social structure is
left to itself this iron Law of Wages will begin to work. It was
just in order that it should not work, that Workers' Associations
were founded and that the help and influence of the State was
called into play. As a consequence the level of the Law of Wages
was artificially raised. Thus whatever goes beyond the iron level
is brought about by legislation or by unions or the like. The
objection is therefore not really valid. You see, it all depends
on the way in which we turn the thought.
Well, these things might of course be multiplied without limit. I
only wanted to place them before you in order to show how the
conscious thoughts of men about economic questions have gradually
evolved during the age of the Consciousness Soul. People's
opinions were always dominant in one direction or another.
Some held the opinion that national prosperity would be greatest
if economic life were arranged on an individualistic basis,
leaving the individual as free as possible. Others thought that
this would put the weaker at a disadvantage; the weaker brethren
must be supported by the assistance of the state or unions.
I should have to go on for a long time if I were to describe all
the ideas that emerged as time went on. In many different regions
of the civilized world ideas about political economy arose.
Fundamentally speaking, it was the aim of all of them —
those that I have characterized and many others — not only
to study the nature of the social structure that had evolved
until then, but also to consider what is the best thing to do in order that people do not have to live in poverty; in order
that they may have prosperity, and so forth. Economic science,
did after all set out with the strong desire to better the
economic life of the people. Utopian characters and such
characters as the French Socialists, Saint Simon for instance,
Auguste Comte, Louis Blanc and others had this in view. Their
thought was somewhat as follows: Until now society being left
more or less to itself has evolved in such a way as to produce
great differences between the poor and the rich, the well-to-do
and the miserable This state of affairs must now be changed. To
this end they studied the laws of economics and propounded many
varied ideas with a view to bringing about some kind of
improvement. Naturally in doing so many of them had the opinion
that it should be possible to establish some kind of Paradise on
Earth.
In the modern proletariat, however, the conscious thinking about
the social structure assumes a special form. We have already
spoken of the reason why the proletariat above all was
predestined to develop these ideas. But there is one special
aspect on which I now want to dwell a little further. It is true
that what Karl Marx brought to expression in his book “Das
Kapital” (and those which he wrote in collaboration with
Engels) has been considerably modified since then. Yet the
changes are small compared to the basic impulses which these
thoughts contain. And though the statement only holds true in a
modified form, nevertheless in general we can say: Throughout the
countries of the civilized world, from the far West to Russia,
the proletariat are dominated by the Marxist impulses, albeit no
longer explicitly by the precise outlines of the Marxist
thoughts. And the conscious thinking about the social structure
appears in a quite particular form in this modern Marxist
proletarian thinking.
The thoughts that we have today unfolded — those therefore
which appear already in the bourgeois political economy since the
beginning of the age of the Consciousness soul — are taken
up into socialist thinking, which, however, modifies and recasts
them in the direction in which the worker from the proletarian
class must necessarily think them. And this is the particular
thing: the thought — “Within the modern capitalistic
social structure, man as a proletarian is obliged to sell his
labor-power” — this thought however theoretically
elaborated, becomes the driving force of proletarian thinking.
And now the thought emerges: “How is it to be avoided; how
is it to be made absolutely impossible for labor-power to be
brought on to the market and sold like a commodity?”
Needless to say this impulse is strongly influenced by the idea
which is clearly formulated already by Adam Smith and others —
the idea that in the commodity we have to do with so much
stored-up labor-power. It is an immensely plausible idea, and one
that leads on to the logical conclusion: “If this is so,
what then can we do? If I buy a coat, the work that was
done by the tailor, or whoever else took part in bringing the
coat into existence, is there in the coat; it is stored-up
labor.” Thus they never put the question in this way at
all: “Can we separate the labor from the commodity?”
But they take it as axiomatic, as an absolute matter of course,
that the labor is inseparably bound up with the commodity. Hence
they look for a social structure which shall make this inevitable
economic fact, that the labor remains bound up with the product
of the labor, as harmless as possible for the worker.
Under the influence of such ideas the belief arose that a just
remuneration for labor can only be brought about in a certain
sense, by making the means of production public property, that
is, by making the community itself in some way the owner of the
means of production — of the machinery, the land and the
means of transport and distribution. The question simply did not
arise: “Can we make the commodity independent of the
remuneration for labor?” but they put the question thus:
“How can we bring about a just form of remuneration,
assuming as an obvious axiom that the labor flows into the
commodity?” That is how they put the question, and on this
everything else depends. Indeed even the materialistic conception
of economic science, the extreme “Materialist Conception of
History” depends on this way of putting the question. I
have already explained to you the materialistic conception of
history, where the modern proletarian thinks: Everything that
works within the civilization of humanity, all spiritual
creation, all thought, all politics, in a word everything other
than the economic processes themselves — is a mere
super-structure, an ideology erected on the foundation of what is
worked-out economically. Economic life is the real thing. The
way the human being is placed within the economic structure —
this is the real thing in human life. The thoughts he has
result from his connections with economic life. Thoroughly
rigorous Marxists, like Franz Mehring for example, wrote in this
fashion even about Lessing. (I only give this one example.) They
ask: “What was the nature of economic life in the
second half of the 18th century? What were the methods of
manufacture? What were the methods of purchase? What was the
relation of industrial life to the remainder of humanity? And
as a consequence, what was the origin of humanity's thoughts? How did
such a phenomenon as Lessing arise?” This individual
personality, Lessing,
with all the works that he produced, is explained by the economic
life of the second half of the 18th century! Kautsky and others
like him even try to explain the appearance of Christianity from
this point of view. They investigate the economic conditions at
the commencement of our era. Certain conditions of production
were holding sway. As a consequence, men began to unfold what
these writers describe as a kind of communistic thinking, which
was then christened by the name of Jesus Christ. The true, the
real thing, was the economic order at the beginning of our era.
Christianity is an ideology, a super-structure, a reflection as
it were, of the economic order. There is nothing else than the
economic order. All other things hover above it like a Fata
Morgana, a mirror-image, an unreality, or at most as something that reacts in respect to other events.
And now, the two things which I have described work together.
First there is indignation at the fact that man must submit to a
part of himself, namely his labor-power, being treated as a
commodity; and this works in conjunction with the Materialistic
Conception, driving to its uttermost extreme, that the Economy
is the only real thing in life.
Of course, people of today, though not all, have given themselves
up to this idea. But among the proletariat millions and millions
are more or less dominated by it. As to the rest, the
non-proletarians, other customs have become fashionable among
them in relation to these things. The things that are done in the
proletariat class are of course simply “not done” in
the other classes. When proletarian workers have worked their
eight or ten or sometimes even more than ten hours a day, they
come together in the evening and discuss these questions, or they
get lecturers and teachers to explain them. There are women's
meetings too. Every one of them is seriously concerned
as to the nature of the social structure, and in their way they
think about it seriously. They see to it that those who have
thought about these things shall tell them their results. And so
forth. In a word, they are well-informed, albeit in their own
way. In the next higher level of Society, which we call the
bourgeoisie, you must admit this is not the case. When “the
day's work is done” — let us put this phrase in
quotation marks — they concern themselves with quite other
things. They will concern themselves with the working classes at
most (and if they do this much, they make a great fuss about it)
by letting it be played out before them on the stage —
dished up by some bourgeois pedant as dramatist or poet. But as
to thinking any thoughts about the economic order of society,
they leave this to the university professors, that is their
job, they will see to that all right! Needless to say, the people
of this age are not believers in authority. Still, they swear by
what the university professors say about these questions. What
they say must of course be correct, for they are the experts,
they are paid to do so by the proper authorities, they are the
people appointed for that purpose.
Speaking of these professors, it is a curious school of economics
that has lately evolved. Nowadays when they write their books,
they call it the “Historical School of Economics.”
They deal with the Mercantilists, the Physiocrats, Adam Smith,
Socialism, Anarchism, and so on. And when they come to their own
idea — well, that is the “Historical School.”
They are more or less of this opinion: “However shall
we arrive at any real thoughts as to how things should be done?”
Truth to tell, they are helpless when they come to this. They
cannot rouse in themselves a sufficient activity of thinking: they
cannot rise to ideas as to how we should set about it, to bring
about a [decent]structure of society. To a comfortable bourgeois pedant
like Lujo Brentano, or Schmeller, or Roscher, it simply does not
occur to bring thinking into such activity. Their idea is: We
must observe the phenomena just as the natural scientist does.
Such a person then lets the phenomena take their course and
studies them. He simply studies the historic evolution of
humanity, or at most, the historic evolution of the ideas of men
about economic life. He describes what exists. The most he will
do is, like Lujo Brentano — if he does not find it
convenient to observe these things in his home country —
travel to a representative country of the economic life, to
England, and make his investigations there. He will then describe
what is the relationship of employer and employed in that
country, and so forth. If there are rich people there he learns
to know how they acquire credit, how Capital works. If there is
poverty there, if there are those devoid of property, some of
whom have more or less or nothing to eat, he will describe it as
the result of this or that circumstance. And at last such a
person will say: After all, it is not the task of science to show
how things ought to evolve, but only to point out how they
in fact do evolve.
Yet after all, what will become of a science which deals with the
things of practical life in this way, merely watching and
observing how these things evolve? Truly it is as though I were
about to train an artist and I said to him: You must go to as
many artists as possible and observe — “This one
paints well,” “that one paints badly,” and so
on — but above all things, you yourself must do nothing at
all! In such a sphere the thing becomes absurd at once. And yet,
my dear friends, it is a true comparison. It is indeed enough to
drive one out of one's mind — forgive the expression —
when one studies such things: I cannot say what is done, but
what is wasted and fooled away nowadays where they claim to apply
“the scientific method” to economics and such things
of life. For the result is absolutely nil, since if we go to the
root of the matter, the very premises from which they start are
abstract and unreal. At most there will arise from among their
ranks the so-called “professional socialists” whose
observation of existing things leads them to the conclusion:
“Something must be done” and they then make laws
pretending to investigate or remove this or that distress.
This very helplessness has done much to bring about the present
situation; and today it would be cowardice if we failed to point
out the facts. Needless to say the public of today worships no
authority at all. But the pretentious nonsense they accept in
this domain of life (and declare themselves satisfied!) is very
largely to blame for the chaos that has come upon us. These are
serious matters, and we must grasp them in their true shape and
form. For then, my dear friends, the question will emerge: What
is it that is working still more deeply in all these
things? Why has it all come about in this way? Why are such
changing and wavering ideas at work in a realm of life that is of
such cardinal importance to humanity?
Let us consider such an idea, illusory as it is but
extraordinarily effective; let us consider the Marxist idea,
however modified — it does not matter. It is in all
essentials the idea of the professional minds of our time.
Consider this idea: Only the economic life, only the economic
structure is the real thing; everything else is ideology,
super-structure, Fata Morgana. Truly, it is an extraordinary
thing — this absolute unbelief in all that man can produce
by way of spiritual things, evolving out of the thoughts that
have arisen since the dawn of the age of the Consciousness Soul.
People are being diverted more and more to the things that are
outwardly known, outwardly and tangibly present to their senses.
All other things they flee from and avoid. The fact is that not
only the social thoughts but the social feelings and in the last
resort the social events of our time have evolved under the
influence of this flight from the spirit, this avoidance of
spiritual things. And they will continue to evolve under this
influence, if the call for a true spiritual-scientific
penetration of the facts is neglected.
What is the deeper underlying truth? It is this, my dear friends.
We have entered on the age of the Consciousness Soul; we are in
it since the 15th century. Through the very development of this
age of the Consciousness Soul, through the awakening of the
Consciousness Soul, man is unavoidably approaching ever nearer and
nearer to a point in his evolution where, through
counter-instincts in his nature, he would prefer to take flight.
It will be one of the most essential things for modern man to
overcome this instinct of flight. At all costs he wants to flee
from what he must nevertheless carry out.
The other day, the last time I spoke to you here, I said: Over
the various national regions, the West, the Middle Countries, and
the East, the way man approached the Guardian of the Threshold
when he enters into the spiritual world, is differentiated. Now
people are moving towards the conscious experience of such
things, so that these experiences can be undergone consciously
when they meet the Guardian of the Threshold; and more or less
instinctively they must be undergone by human beings in the
course of time, during the age of the Consciousness Soul. People
are being driven to this experience when they face the Guardian
of the Threshold. It is this which works in a special, albeit
external form, like an impulse, like an instinctive urge, in
people of modern times. And it is this from which they flee. They
are afraid to go where they really ought to go.
This is a law in the modern evolution of humanity. Take what I
said before as an external characterization of modern striving.
Man strives to know what he is as a human being, what he is worth
as a human being, what is his strength and potentiality as a
human being. Man strives to see himself as Man, to arrive at a
picture of his own Being. But we cannot arrive at a picture of
Man if we are determined to remain within the world of the
senses, for he is no mere physical being. In times of instinctive
evolution, when one does not ask for a picture of humanity, when
one does not ask what is the dignity and strength of humanity,
one may overlook this fact — that to know Man one must
transcend the world of the senses and gaze into the spiritual
world. But in our age of consciousness, we must make
acquaintance, at any rate in one form or another, be it only
intellectually, with the super-sensible world. The same thing
that the Initiate has to overcome consciously is working in our
age unconsciously. Unconsciously as yet, there lives in our
contemporaries, and in the people whose social thoughts I have
described today, this fear of the unknown — the unknown
which they are nonetheless being driven to observe. Fear,
cowardice, lack of courage dominates the humanity of today. And
if it is declared: “Economic life is the tangible thing
which determines all other things,” this view itself has
arisen simply through the fear of the invisible and the
intangible. This they will not approach, they will avoid it at
all costs, and so they transform it into an ideology, a Fata
Morgana. The modern worldview, my dear friends, is born of fear
and terror in relation to those points which I have
characterized. However outwardly courageous some of those within
the stream of the modern social worldview may show themselves to
be, they are afraid of the Spiritual, which must meet them in one
form or another, and in whose domain, after all, they long to
know the human being. But they are afraid of it; like cowards,
they recoil from it.
Modern man must learn to know three things. In the first place he must achieve a clear feeling,
or at least a clear intellectual conception of those forces of
the universe which are the forces of decline and destruction. The
forces to which we are fond of turning our attention (and for the
very fondness, we delude ourselves about them) are of course the
upbuilding forces above all others. We always want to build and
build. But in the world there is not only evolution or
upbuilding, there is also devolution, demolition. We ourselves
bear the process of demolition within us; our evolved nervous
system, our brain system, is perpetually engaged in demolition or
destruction. With these forces of destruction man must make
himself acquainted. With unprejudiced and open mind he must say
to himself: Along the very path that unfolds in the age when the
Consciousnss Soul shall awaken fully, the forces of destruction
are most active. When suddenly they concentrate or consolidate;
then such a thing arises as in the last four and a half years.
Then there appears to humanity in a concentrated form what in any
case is always there. But this must not remain unconscious and
instinctive: it must become a fully conscious thing, above all in
the present age. The destructive forces, the forces of death, the
paralyzing forces — how gladly would man turn his face away
from them! But in so doing he only blinds himself. In fleeing
from the destructive forces he learns not to cooperate in real
evolution.
The second thing with which man must make himself acquainted and
from which again he flees is this, my dear friends: In the
present age of intellectual evolution — that is to say, in
the evolution of the age of the Consciousness Soul, it is
absolutely necessary for man to seek within himself a new center
of gravity of his own being. Instinctive evolution gave him even
in his thinking a center of gravity. He imagined that he stood
fast on the views, the opinions, the ideas that came to him
through inheritance or in some other way.
Henceforth man can do this no longer. He must free himself from
these things on which he formerly stood so fast and firm, which
arose in him instinctively. He must take his stand, as it were,
at the edge of the abyss. He must feel beneath him the void of
the abyss. He must find within himself the central point of his
being. Man is afraid to do this, he recoils from the task.
And the third thing, my dear friends, is this: Man must learn to
recognize the full power of the impulse of self-seeking, the
impulse of egotism. Our age is destined to make it fully clear to
man to what an extent, if he lets himself go, he is a selfish
being. To overcome egoitsm, we must first have probed and
realized all the sources of egotism that are in human nature.
Love only arises as the counterpart to self-love. We must cross
the abyss of selfishness if we would learn to know that social
warmth which has to penetrate the social structure of the present
and the future; if we would learn to know it, above all, not only
in theory but in practice. And to approach this feeling —
which the Initiate sees with fully conscious clarity, when
face-to-face with the Guardian of the Threshold as he enters into
the sense-world — this again fills man with fear. But there
is no other way of entering into the age which must necessarily
bring forth a social structure, than by a Love which is not
self-love, which is a true Love for other people and interest in
other people. Men feel this as a burning fire, as something that
would consume them and take their own being from them, inasmuch
as it deprives them of self-love, or the right to self-love. Even
as they flee the super-sensible, of which they are afraid because
it is to them an unknown region, so do they flee from Love,
because it is to them a burning fire. And even as they bind their
eyes and shut their ears to the truth of the super-sensible, when
in Marxism and in the misguided proletarian thinking of today
they keep repeating that all things must be based on the tangible
and the material — even as in this domain they go after the
very opposite of that which lies in the real tendency of human
evolution — so do they also in the realm of Love. Even in
the catch-words and slogans this finds expression. They set up
idealism, the very opposite of what really lies in the evolution
of humanity and must be striven after.
Already in 1848, when Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto —
the first and most significant declaration of the modern
proletarian conception of life — was published, we find in
it the words which are now printed as a motto on almost every
socialistic book or pamphlet: “Workers of the world,
unite!” If we have but a little sense for realities, we are
bound to pronounce a precise if strange and paradoxical judgment
upon these words. What does it mean to say “Workers of the
world, unite!” It means, work together, work with one
another, be brothers, be comrades one to another! That is nothing
else than Love. Let Love sway among you. Tumultuously the
tendency arises — yet how does it arise? —
Proletarians, you must be conscious that you are a class apart
from the rest of humanity! Proletarians, hate the others who are
not proletarians! Let hate be the impulse of your union. In a
strange way, wedded together, we here have Love and Hate —
a striving for union out of the impulse of hatred, the very
opposite of union. The people of today only fail to notice such a
thing as this, because they are so far from connecting their
thinking with reality. Yet in truth this thought represents the
very fear of Love, which Love, though it is striven for, is at
the same time avoided, because they are afraid and recoil from it
as from a consuming fire.
Only through Spiritual Science can we come to know the realities.
Only through Spiritual Science can we perceive what is really
working in the present time; what we must indeed perceive and
recognize if we would take our place with real consciousness in
this our time. It is by no means a simple matter to perceive all
that is throbbing in the humanity of today. To do so, Spiritual
Science is necessary. This should never be forgotten. And he or
she stands rightly within our spiritual movement who knows how to
take these things sufficiently in earnest.
Thanks to the Rudolf Steiner Archive
