Part 1
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THE THREEFOLD COMMONWEALTH
Authorized Translation by E. Bowen-Wedgwood
BY
RUDOLF STEINER
Author of "The Philosophy of Freedom," "Die Sociale Zukunft," etc.
LONDON The Threefold Commonwealth 46, Gloucester Place, W. 1.
NEW YORK The Threefold Commonwealth Publishing Association 701, Carnegie Hall
A FOREWORD AS TO THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK
The social life of the present day presents grave and far-reaching problems. We are confronted by demands for social reconstruction, which shew that the solution of these problems must be sought along paths unthought-of hitherto. Borne out by the actual events of the hour, the time has perhaps come for someone to gain a hearing, who is forced by life's experience to maintain, that the neglect to turn our thoughts into the paths that are now needed has stranded us in confusion and perplexity. It is under that conviction that this book is written. Its purpose is to discuss what needs doing, in order that those demands, which are being urged by a large part of mankind to-day, may be turned in the direction of a determinate social will and purpose.
Personal likes and dislikes should enter but little into the formation of a social purpose. The demands, welcome or unwelcome, are there; and they must be reckoned with as facts of social life. This should be borne in mind by those who, from their personal situation in life, may be inclined to be annoyed at the author's way of discussing the demands of the working-class, because in their opinion he lays too one-sided a stress on these demands, as on something that must be reckoned with when determining on a social purpose. But what the author wants, is to present life as it exists to-day in all its full reality, in so far as he is able from his knowledge of it. He has ever before his eyes the fatal consequences that must ensue, if people refuse to see facts, which are actually there, which have arisen out of the life of modern mankind,--and if they accordingly persist in ignoring a social will and purpose in which these facts find their place.
Those people again will not be pleased with the author's remarks, who regard themselves as experts in practical life,--or in what, under the influence of fond habit, has come to be regarded as practical life. They will be of opinion, that whoever wrote this book was not a practical person. These are just the people, who, in the author's opinion, have everything to unlearn and re-learn. Their practice of life seems to him the very thing, which is demonstrated by the actual facts from which mankind are suffering to be an utter mistake,--that very mistake that has led to boundless and immeasurable fatalities. These people will be obliged to recognise the practicability of much that has seemed to them absurd idealism. And although they may condemn this book at the outset, because its opening pages say less about the economic than about the spiritual life of modern mankind, yet the author's own acquaintance with life forces him to the conviction, that, unless people can bring themselves to pay due and accurate attention to the spiritual life of modern mankind, they will only go on adding fresh mistakes to the old ones.
Neither will what is said in these pages altogether please those, who are for ever repeating with endless variations the phrases: that man must rise above absorption in purely material interests,--that he must turn to "ideals," to the things of the "spirit." For the author does not attach much importance to mere references to the "spirit" or to talk about a vague spiritual world. The only spirituality he can acknowledge, is that which forms the substance of man's own life and manifests its power no less in mastering the practical problems of life than in constructing a philosophy of life and of the universe, which can satisfy the needs of man's soul. The important point, is not the knowledge,--or supposed knowledge,--of a spiritual life, but that such a spiritual life shews itself in a practical grip of realities, and is not a special preserve for the inner life of the soul, a backwater alongside the full tide of realities.
And so, what is said in these pages will seem to the "spiritually-minded" too unspiritual, to "practical persons" too remote from practice. But the author's view is, that he may have his own special use at the present time, for the very reason, that he neither tends towards that aloofness from life, which is to be found in many a man who thinks himself practical, nor yet can hold in any way with the kind of talk about the spirit, which conjures up a mirage out of words.
It is as a question of economics, of human rights and of the spirit, that the social question is discussed in this book. The author thinks that he perceives, how the true form of the social question emerges as an outcome of the requirements of the economic life, the life of "rights" and the spiritual life. Through such a perception alone can the impulses come, which shall make it possible to give these three branches of social life a shape that permits of healthy life within the social order. In the earlier ages of mankind's evolution, the social instincts secured these three branches being woven together in the whole life of society in a manner adapted to human nature at that period. At the present stage of his evolution, man is faced with the necessity of working out this combination of function by conscious, determinate social will and purpose. Between those earlier ages and the present, in the countries where the question of a social purpose is most immediate, we find the old instincts and the new consciousness overlapping and playing through one another in a fashion quite inadequate to the needs of modern mankind. In a great deal of social thinking, which people believe to be clear-sighted and conscious, the old instincts are still at work and enfeeble men's thought for dealing with urgent facts. It requires a much more radical effort than is usually supposed, for the man of the present day to work his way out of the husks of what is dead and done with.
One must first be willing to recognise this fully, before, in the author's opinion, it is possible to see the forms that industrial economy, human rights, and spiritual life must take, in order to be in keeping with a healthy social life such as the new age demands. What the author feels called on to say as to the lines that these new forms must inevitably follow, is submitted to the judgment of the day in the following pages. The author's desire, is to give the first impetus along a path, that shall lead to social ends in keeping with the actual realities and exigencies of life at the present time; for he believes, that it is only through effort thus directed that our social will and purpose can get beyond mere utopianism and wordy sentiment.
And if anyone still thinks that this book has somewhat of a utopian character, the author would ask him to consider the pictures which people draw in their own minds of the kind of society that they look to see arise,--how very wide of life such pictures are, and how apt to degenerate into mere moonshine. That is the very reason, why, when these people do meet with something that is drawn from actual reality and experience,--as attempted here,--they regard it as a utopia. To many persons, nothing is "concrete" outside their own customary line of thought; and so the concrete itself is to them an abstraction, when they are unaccustomed to think it. [1]--Hence they will think this book abstract.
With people again, whose minds are harnessed hard and fast to a party-programme, the author's views will at first find no favour. Of this he is well aware. Still he believes, that it will not be long before many party men come to the conclusion, that the actual facts of evolution have got far beyond the programmes of the parties, and that it is urgently necessary to free oneself from all such party-programmes and to form an independent opinion as to the immediate objectives of the social will and purpose.
THE THREEFOLD COMMONWEALTH
INTRODUCTORY PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION OF 1920
The problems presented by social life for solution in our times can be understood by nobody who approaches them with the thought of any kind of utopia in his mind. One's views and sentiments may lead one to the belief, that certain institutions, which one has mapped out according to one's own ideas, must be for the happiness of mankind. This belief may carry all the force of passionate conviction; and yet one may be talking quite wide of the actual social question, when one tries to obtain practical recognition for what one believes.
One will find this assertion hold true at the present day, even when pushed to what may appear an absurd extreme. Suppose, for instance, somebody possessed a perfect theoretical solution of the social question, he might nevertheless be acting on an utterly unpractical conviction, if he tried to press this carefully thought-out solution upon mankind. For we are no longer living in an age, when one is justified in believing that public life can be affected in such a way. Men's souls are differently constituted; and they could never say about public affairs: Here is somebody who understands the social institutions that are needed; we will take his opinion and act on it. Ideas concerning social life simply cannot be brought home to people after this fashion; and it is a fact that is fully recognised in this book, which is already known to a fairly large public. Those who have set it down as utopian, have totally missed its whole aim and intention. Especially has this been the case with those, who themselves cling to a utopian form of thought:--they attribute to the other person what is essentially their own mental characteristic. A practical thinker to-day recognises as one of the experiences of public life, that nothing can be done with an utopian idea, however convincing it may be in appearance. Nevertheless, many people have some idea of this type, which they feel impelled to bring before their fellow-men, especially in the field of economics. They will be forced to recognise that their words are wasted. Their fellow-men can find no use for what they have to offer.
This should be treated as a piece of practical experience; for it points to a fact of importance in public life: namely, the remoteness of people's thoughts from real life:--how wide their thoughts are from what reality,--economic reality for instance,--demands.
Can one hope to master the tangled intricacies of public affairs, if one brings to them a mode of thought altogether remote from life? This question is not one likely to find general favour; for it involves the admission that one's way of thought is remote from life. Yet, until this admission is made, it is not possible to approach the other question--the social one. For the remoteness of thought from life is a question of grave concern for the whole modern civilised world; and only when people treat it as such will they see light as to what is needed for social life.
This question brings us to the consideration of the form taken by modern spiritual life. Modern man has evolved a spiritual life, which is to a very great degree dependent on state institutions and on economic forces. The human being is brought whilst still a child under the education and instruction of the state; and he can be educated only in the way permitted by the industrial and economic conditions of the environment from which he springs.
It might easily be supposed, that this would ensure a person's being well qualified for the conditions of life at the present day, for that the state must possess every opportunity of arranging the whole system of education and instruction (which constitutes the essential part of public spiritual life) in the best interests of the human community. It might well be supposed too, that the way to make a person the best possible member of the human community is to educate him in accordance with the economic opportunities of the environment from which he comes, and then pass him on, thus educated, to fill one of the openings that these opportunities afford him.--It devolves upon this book,--an unpopular task to-day,--to shew, that the chaotic condition of our public life, comes from the spiritual life's dependence on the State and on industrial economy--and to shew further, that one part of the burning social question is the emancipation of spiritual life from this dependence.
This involves attacking very widespread errors. That the State should take over the whole system of education, has long been regarded as a beneficial step in human progress; and persons of a socialistic turn of mind find it difficult to conceive of anything else, than that society should educate the individual to its service according to its own standards.
People are loathe to recognise, what nevertheless, in this field, it is absolutely necessary should be recognised; namely, that in the process of man's historic evolution a thing, that at an earlier period was all right, may at a later period become all wrong. In order that a new age might come about in human affairs, it was necessary that the whole system of education, and with it public spiritual life, should be removed from those circles that had exclusive possession of it all through the middle ages, and entrusted to the State. But to continue to maintain this state of things, is a grave social mistake.
This is what the first part of the book is intended to shew. The spiritual life has matured to freedom within the framework of the state; but it cannot rightly enjoy and exercise this freedom unless it is granted complete self-government. The whole character assumed by the spiritual life requires that it should form a completely independent branch of the body social. The educational and teaching system, lying as it does at the root of all spiritual life, must be put under the management of those people who are educating and teaching; and none of the influences at work in state or industry should have any say or interference in this management. No teacher should spend more time on teaching than will allow of his also being a manager in his own sphere of activity. And in the way that he himself conducts the teaching and education, so too he will conduct the management. Nobody will issue instructions, who is not at the same time actively engaged in teaching and educating. No parliament has any voice in it,--nor any individual, who once on a time may have taught, but is no longer personally teaching. The experience learnt at first hand in actual teaching passes direct into the management.--In such a system, practical knowledge and efficiency must, of course, tell in the very highest possible degree.
It may no doubt be objected, that even under such a selfgoverning spiritual life things will not be quite perfect. But then, in real life, that is not to be looked for. All one can aim at, is the best that is possible. With each child of man there are new abilities growing up, and these will really be passed on into the life of the community, when the care of developing them rests entirely with people who can judge and decide on spiritual grounds alone. How far a particular child should be brought on in one direction or another, can only be judged in a spiritual community that is quite free and detached. What steps should be taken to ensure their decision having its "rights," this too is a matter only to be determined by a free spiritual community. From such a community the State and the economic life can receive the forces they need, and which they cannot get of themselves when they fashion spiritual life from their own points of view.
It follows from the whole tenor of the following pages, that the directors of the free spiritual life will have charge also of the arrangements and course of teaching in those institutes also, which are specially directed to the service of the State or of the economic world.--Law-schools, Trades-schools, Agricultural and Industrial Colleges, would all take their form from the free spiritual life. Many prejudices are bound to be aroused, when the principles stated in this book are pursued to these, their right consequences. But from what do such prejudices proceed? The anti-social spirit in them becomes evident, when one recognises, that at bottom they proceed from an unconscious persuasion, that people connected with education must necessarily be unpractical persons, remote from life,--not the sort of people whom one could for a moment expect to institute arrangements that would be of any real use for the practical departments of life, and that all such arrangements must be instituted by the people actively engaged in practical life, whilst the educators must work on the lines laid down for them.
In thinking like this, people do not see, that the educators need to fix their lines of work themselves, from the smallest things up to the biggest, that it is when they cannot do so that they grow unpractical and remote from life. And then you may give them any principle to work on, laid down by apparently the most practical persons, and yet their education will not turn out people really practically equipped for life. Our anti-social conditions are brought about, because people are turned out into social life not educated to feel socially. People with social feelings can only come from a mode of education that is directed and carried on by persons who themselves feel socially. The social question will never be touched, until the education question and the question of the spiritual life are treated as a vital part of it. An anti-social spirit is created not merely by economic institutions, but through the attitude of the human beings within these institutions being an anti-social one. And it is anti-social, to have the young brought up and taught by persons, who themselves are made strangers to real life by having their lines of work and the substance of their work laid down for them from outside.
The State establishes law-schools. And it requires, that the substance of the jurisprudence taught in these law-schools should be the same as the State has fixed for its own constitution and administration, from its own points of view. When the law-schools proceed wholly from a free spiritual life, this free spiritual life itself will supply the substance of the jurisprudence taught in them. The State will wait to take its mandate from the spiritual life. It will be fertilised by the reception of living ideas, such as can issue only from a spiritual life that is free.
But the human-beings, growing up to life, are within the spiritual domain, and will go forth with views of their own to put into practice. The education given by people who are strangers to life, inside educational institutes planned by mere practicians,--this is not an education that can be realised in practice. The only teaching that can find practical realisation comes from teachers who understand life and its practice from a point of view of their own. In this book an attempt is made to give at least a sketch of the way in which a free spiritual organisation will shape its details of working.
In Utopian minds, the book will rouse all manner of questions. Artists and other spiritual workers will anxiously ask whether genius will find itself better off in the free spiritual life than in the one at present provided by the State and the economic powers? In putting such questions, however, they must please to remember, that the book is in no respect intended to be Utopian. Hence it never lays down a hard and fast theory. This must be so and so, or so and so.
Its aim is to promote the formation of such forms of human social life, as, from their joint working shall lead to desirable conditions. And anyone, who judges life from experience, and not from theoretic prejudice, will say to himself "When there is a free spiritual community, whose dealings with life are guided by its own lights, then anyone who is creating out of his own free genius will have a prospect of his creations being duly appreciated."
The "social question" is not a thing that has cropped up at this particular point in the life of man, which can be solved straight away by a handful of people, or by parliaments, and, once solved, will remain solved. It is an integral part of our new civilised life; and it has come to stay. It will have to be solved afresh for each moment of the world's historic evolution. For man's life has entered with this new age upon a phase, when what starts by being a social institution turns ever and again into something anti-social, which has each time continually to be overcome afresh. Just as an organic body, when it has once been fed and satisfied, passes after a while into a state of hunger again, so the body social passes from one state of order again into disorder. There is no more a panacea for keeping social conditions in good order, than there is a food that will satisfy the body for ever and always. Men can however enter into forms of community, which, through their joint action in actual life, will bring man's existence constantly back into the social path. And one of these forms of community is the self-governing spiritual branch of the body social.
All the experiences of the present time make it plain, that what is socially needed is, for the spiritual life free self-administration, and for the economic life associative labour. Industrial economy in modern human life is made up of the production of commodities, circulation of commodities and consumption of commodities. These are the processes for satisfying human wants; and human beings and their activities are involved in these processes. Each has his own part-interest in them; each must take such a share in them as he is able. What any individual actually needs, only he himself alone can know and feel. As to what he himself should perform, this will be judged by him according to his measure of insight into the mutual life of the whole. It was not always so; nor is it so to-day all the world over; but in the main it is so amongst the at present civilised portion of the Earth's inhabitants. Economic evolution has kept widening its circles in the course of mankind's evolution. Household economy, once self-contained, has developed into town economy, and this again into State economy. To-day we stand before world economy. No doubt, in the New much still lingers on of the Old; and much that existed in the Old was already a forecast of the New but the above evolutionary order is the one that has become paramount in certain relations of life, and the destinies of mankind are conditioned by it.