Thoughts on the Threefold Commonwealth
Excerpted from Joseph Weizenbaum's Foreward to Steiner's essays on the Threefold Social Order called 'The Renewal of the Social Organism, Anthroposophic Press, NY 1985.
These essays, written in 1919, address the reconstruction of a shattered Germany. They call for a proper separation of the three spheres of activity (economics, law, and culture), 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 chracteristic 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...
To understand the essential nature of the state we must recognize that people may differe among themselves with respect to musical and other talents, but...are equal with respect to voting rights. The state will be healthy when it concerns itself strictly with those matters wherein people are equal.
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.
A little reflection reveals that people are not equal culturally. ... It does suggest that the highly gifted ought to be given more space and time...to unfold their capacities for the benefit of society...(Cultural) activities originate in the creative depths of a unique individual. ...No external compulsion can bring forth inner creative activity. The individual does it freely or not at all....
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...
But to characterize actual economic life with the term 'brotherliness' is to contradict much of modern economic thinking (which is) more usually chracterized by terms like selfishness, personal gain, and survival. Steiner insists, however, that these ideas are inconsistent with fundamental ecnoomic 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...
