Politics and Life

Alexey Alexndrovitch was standing face to face with life, with the possibility of his wife's loving someone other than himself, and this seemed to him very irrational and incomprehensible because it was life itself. All his life Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived and worked in official spheres, having to do with the reflection of life. And every time he had stumbled against life itself he had shrunk away from it. Now he experienced a feeling akin to that of a man who, while calmly crossing a precipice by a bridge, should suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and that there is a chasm below. That chasm was life itself, the bridge that artificial life in which Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived.
                                                                                                               -- Tolstoi, Anna Karenina

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...

...and when it's all over, the mass madness, the delight in roaring crowds, the flag waving; when this illness of our age, pretending that base instincts are good and battles for radical conservatism necessary, is gone, then one day someone will make an earth shaking discovery. They will discover the individual human being. They will say: Everything depends on individuals. The question will be: are they happy, and the goal: are they free. Groups will be secondary. The State will be secondary. Important will be not that the State lives, but that the human being lives...People will cheer and say: 'how novel! What courage! We never heard that before! Books will be written, not by that first person but by his successors because the first is always stupid. And the result will be that thousands of banners and brown, red, and blue shirts will be thrown in the trash and people will start to have courage and believe in themselves without fear of the State, before which they previously grovelled like beaten dogs...

--written by the German author Kurt Tucholsky in 1931

Albert Schweitzer and Rudolf Steiner

Meeting Steiner

by Albert Schweitzer (1875 – 1965)

My encounter with Rudolf Steiner took place on the occasion of a theosophical conference in Strasbourg. If I'm not mistaken, it was in 1902 or 1903. Annie Besant, with whom I was acquainted through Strasbourg friends, introduced us.

At that time Rudolf Steiner acted in connection with the Theosophical Society, not so much because he shared its convictions, but because he found in its members the possibility to find understanding and interest for the spiritual truths which he had to make known.

I knew that he had completed a study of Goethe’s works in Weimar. He of course knew nothing of the young Strasbourg University instructor [Schweitzer] who was occupied with Kant’s philosophy and the problems of the life of Jesus research. He was fourteen years older than I.

The language mostly used at that theosophical conference was French. So they counted on me, because I spoke German, to take care of the Austrian guest, which I gladly did. I arranged it so we were neighbors at meals during the conference. From the beginning on he was the talker and I the listener and questioner during our conversations.

Before we had consumed the soup, the discussion arose of itself about his studies on Goethe in Weimar and about his [Goethe’s] Weltanschauung (world view). I immediately became aware that my neighbor possessed extensive knowledge in the field of natural science. It was a great surprise to me that he spoke of the need to recognize the importance of Goethe’s knowledge of nature. In his researches he had been able to penetrate from superficial knowledge of the sense world to a more profound knowledge based on its spiritual being. I knew something about Goethe’s natural scientific writing and the places where he sought a perceptual knowledge.

My table partner realized that he had an attentive listener beside him. He held a lecture. We forgot that we were supposed to be eating.    

In the afternoon we stood around together, not paying much attention to what was happening at the theosophical conference.

When the discussion turned to Plato I could participate more. Steiner surprised me here as well, in that he revealed to me hidden and not yet appreciated aspects of Plato’s knowledge.

When Steiner asked me what concerned me especially in theology, I answered that it was research into the historical Jesus. Well, I felt the moment to have come in which I could take the conversation in hand and began to lecture him about the state of the life of Jesus research and about the problem of which Gospel contained the oldest tradition. To my astonishment, a discussion about this subject did not come about. He let me lecture on without saying a word. I had the impression that he was mentally yawning. I got off my theological social scientific high horse and put it in the stable, and waited for what would come.

And something remarkable happened. One of us, I don’t remember which, began to speak of the spiritual decline of culture as the fundamental, unnoticed problem of our time. Thus we realized that we were both occupied with it. We had not expected it of each other.

A lively discussion resulted. We learned from each other that we had both taken on the life mission of working for the emergence of a true culture enlivened by the ideal of humanity and to encourage people to become truly thinking beings.

We parted with this consciousness of belonging together. A re-encounter wasn’t decided upon. But the consciousness of togetherness remained. We each followed the activities of the other.

To take part in Rudolf Steiner’s flights of thought in the spiritual sciences was not granted me. I know though that he elevated many people through this and made new men of them. His disciples have made excellent contributions in many fields.

I have continually followed Rudolf Steiner’s life and activities with heartfelt participation. The successes until the First World War, the problems and hardships which accompanied them, the courageous efforts in the post-war confusion to create order through his teachings about the Threefold Social Organism, the founding of the Goetheanum in Dornach, where his thought-world found a home, the pain caused by its destruction by fire on New Year’s Eve 1922/23, the courage with which he went about its reconstruction, and finally the spiritual greatness which he retained in tireless teaching and activity during the suffering of the last months of his life on earth.

On his part, he also didn’t lose sight of me. When in 1923 my Verfall und Wiederaufbau der Kultur and Kultur und Ethik were published together, he took note and was appreciative of the analysis of the cultural problems offered in them in a lecture, whereby he made no secret of his regret that I undertook the solution to the problems with only profound ethical thinking and without the help of spiritual science. 

During my meeting with him his face with the wonderful eyes made an unforgettable impression on me.

"The sense for reality living in the idea of the threefold social organism will not be found by comparing it with what traditional education and habits have taught people to think. The reason for our present confusions in government and society is that these traditions have led to habits of thought that life itself has outgrown...

The threefold social order is founded upon the idea that a belief in the old impulses is the worst obstacle to healthy and progressive steps, taking into account our present stage of evolution. The impossibility of continuing the old impulses should be clear from the fact that they have lost their power as an incentive to productive labour. The old economic motives of capital returns and wage earnings maintained their power as long as enough of the old treasured objects remained that could arouse people's inclination and love. These treasures have plainly become exhausted in the age that has just ended. Ever more numerous were the people who no longer knew why they were amassing capital; ever more numerous too, were wage earners who did not know why they were working.

The exhaustion of the impulses that kept together the nexus of the state is shown in that many people have come to regard the state as an end in itself, and to forget that the state exists for the sake of human beings. Regarding the state as an end in itself is possible only when one has so much lost the ability assert one's inner human individuality that one no longer expects from the state the kind of institutions this self-assertion would demand. Then, contrary to its proper task, more is put into the institutions of the state than is needed for the self-assertion of the people who compose it. Yet every such more in the state evidences less in the human beings who bear the burden of the state.

In cultural life the sterility of the old impulses is displayed in the mistrust with which people look on the spirit. What proceeds from life's unspiritual concerns arouses people's interest; they form views and concepts of it. What originates in spiritual productivity is regarded as a private affair and people are inclined to hinder rather than help if it tries to find a place in public life. One of the most widespread characteristics of our contemporaries is that they remain closed to the individual spiritual achievements of their fellows. ...

A split has come about in the constituition of the human soul. In the instinctive, unconscious impulses of human nature something new is stirring. In conscious thought the old ideas refuse to follow these instinctive stirrings. However, when the best instinctive promptings are not illuminated by corresponding thoughts, they became barbaric, animalistic. Modern humanity is rushing into a dangerous situation through this animalization of the instincts. Salvation can be found only in striving for new thoughts to meet a new world situation.

-- Rudolf Steiner. Essay written in 1920 and published as "What is Needed" in the book The Renewal of the Social Organism.

working together

...we will have to learn to work together with each other in groups in order to cope with the future. It does not matter what kind of groups: study groups, life sharing groups, working groups...join together to run a school, a business, or a farm in a deeply human way. We have to be ready for the things that are coming towards us...  

--Bernard Lievegoed, The Battle for the Soul.

Working with the Universe

"...when we work with tools or till the soil or do any other knd of work, but especially when we weave something into the fabric of the social order, then we are doing something that does not concern human beings alone, but belongs to the whole universe. When a steam engine is built, or when a telephone or a lightning conductor or a table is constructed, or if a sick person is healed, people assume as a matter of course that these are things which take place merely within human evolution on the earth. But that is not the case...events take place in the whole of the universe when something happens here on earth. This is a profound truth..."

--Rudolf Steiner, Ideas for a New Europe.

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

“...Is there not a great deal of superstition where numbers are concerned? What can in some way be counted is accepted in science. Science loves to weigh, to compute; and social science loves statistics--again a matter of computation and reckoning. It will be difficult indeed for people to bring themselves to admit that all knowledge of the external world acquired through measure and number is so much delusion.

To measure--what does it mean, in reality? It means to compare something with a given dimension, be it length or volume...with a smaller unit. In such measurements, no matter whether of lengths or surfaces or weights, the qualitative element is entirely lacking. The number three always remains the same, whether one is counting sheep or politicians. It is not a matter of quality but merely quantity. The essential principle of volume and number is that the qualitative aspect is left out of account. 

But for that very reason all knowledge derived from the principle of volume and measure is illusory; and the fact to be taken in all seriousness is that the moment we enter the world that can be weighed and measured, the world of space and time, we enter a world of illusion, a world that is nothing but a mirage as long as we take it to be reality. ...in truth, what things signify in space and time is their external aspect only, and we must transcend space and time, penetrating to much deeper levels if we are to reach the innermost truth, the innermost essence of things. -- Rudolf Steiner, Dornach 2/11/19

"There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." --Lenin, as quoted by John Maynard Keynes in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace. 

Quality versus Quantity
an excerpt from 'The National Being' by George Russell (AE), published in 1930. (the few comments in parentheses are mine--SCM)

"Often with sadness I hear people speak of industrial (commercial) development in Ireland, for I feel they contemplate no different system than that which fills workers with despair in countries where it is more successfully applied. All these energetic people are conspiring to build factories and mills and to fill them with human labour, and they believe the more they do this the better it will be for Ireland. They talk of Ireland as if it was only admirable as a quantity rather than a quality. They express delight at swelling statistics and increased trade, but where do we hear any reflection on the quality of life engendered by this industrial development? Our civilization is to differ in no way from any other. No new ideal of life is suggested to differentiate us. We are to go on exploiting human labour. Our working classes (the people) are to...earn profits for an employing (ruling) class, as labour has done from time immemorial in Babylon, in Nineveh, in Rome, and in London today. But a choice yet remains to us, because the character of our civilization is not yet fixed...It fills the spirit with weariness to think of another nation following the old path without thought or imagination of other roads leading to new and more beautiful life..."