Rudolf Steiner

“ In the circuit of economic life there is nothing whatever that affords of itself any motive to guide that which runs all through the relation of man to man and proceeds from the sense of right. And if people insist on regulating this relation by economic motive the result will be, that the human being, with his labour and his control of the means of labour, will be bound hand and foot to the economic life. Economic life will go on like clockwork, and man will be a wheel in it,—Economic life has a tendency always to go on in one course, which needs rectifying from another side. ”

“ One may dismiss the opinion of those, who, even now, are still under the delusion, that it must be possible to maintain the old scheme of things against the new demands that are being urged by a large part of mankind. We may confine ourselves to examining what is going on in the wills of those people who are convinced that a remodelling of social life is necessary. Even so, we shall be forced to own to ourselves, that party shibboleths go wandering up and down amongst us like the dessicated corpses of once animate creeds,—everywhere flouted and set at naught by the evolution of facts. ”

“ One finds them meditating on virtue and how a man may best acquire it; how he should dwell in loving-kindness towards his neighbours, and how he may be so blessed as to find “a meaning in life.” And, all the time, one recognises the impossibility of bridging the gulf between what these folks call good, and sweet, and kindly, and right, and proper, and all that is going on in the outer world amongst men’s everyday surroundings, in the manipulation of capital, the payment of labour, the consumption, production and circulation of commodities, the system of credit banking, and the stock-exchange. ”

“ They see, how the modern form of industrial economy came about historically in the recent evolution of mankind. They see too, how it gave the commodity character to human labour-power. What they do not see, is, that it is a necessity inherent in economic life, that everything incorporated in it becomes a commodity. Economic life consists in the production and useful consumption of commodities. One cannot divest human labour-power of its commodity character, unless one can find a way of separating it out from the economic process. ”

“ It is so hard for the middle-class to-day to put themselves into the soul of the worker,—so hard for them to understand how the worker’s still fresh, unexhausted intelligence opened to receive a work such as that of Karl Marx,—which, in its whole mode of conception, no matter how one regards its substance, measures the requirements of human thought by such a lofty standard. ”

“ It is a feature obvious to anyone who keeps an unclouded insight for impulses of the soul that work from within outwards, out of hidden depths. It is quite true, that the worker’s demands have been evolved during the growth of modern technical science and modern capitalism; but a recognition of this fact affords no further clue whatever to the impulses that are actuating these demands, and which are in fact purely human in character. Nor, till one penetrates to the heart of these impulses, will one get to the true form of the social question. ”

“ This science is not felt as a stream flowing from a spiritual world into the soul of man, and on which man as a soul is buoyed and upborne. Whatever one’s opinion may be as to the relation of the religious impulses, and kindred things, to the scientific mode of thought of recent times, yet one must admit, if one considers historic evolution impartially, that the scientific conception has developed out of the religious one. ”

“ And so the modern worker was led on to believe, that the only welfare for the body social lay in converting all private ownership of means of production into a communal concern, or into actual communal property. This conviction is due to people’s eyes having been removed, as it were, from everything belonging to soul and spirit, and fixed exclusively on the purely economic process.
Hence all the paradox in the working-class movement. The modern worker believes, that industrial economy, the economic life itself, will of necessity evolve all [39] that will ultimately give him his rights as man. ”

“ Even in a society, where the development of individual ability is tied up with the administration of the political State, or to the forces of economic life, even there, real productivity, in everything requiring the expenditure of capital depends on as much of free individual power as can find its way through the shackles imposed upon it. Only, under such conditions, the development is an unhealthy one. It is not the free development of individual ability, exercised on a basis of capital, that has brought about conditions under which human labour-power can be nothing but a commodity ”

“ Not in what capitalism and the machine have implanted in the worker’s consciousness, not here lie the ideas and will-forces, that give its character to the present social movement. This movement turned in the direction of modern science to find its fount of thought, because capitalism and the machine could give the worker no substance with which to content his soul as a human being. ”

“ Only the subordination of the general economic prosperity to the common sense of right can prevent man from being so used up and consumed by economic life that his existence no longer seems to him worthy of his humanity. And it is this sense of an existence unworthy of human beings that is, in reality, at the bottom of the convulsions in the body social. ”

“ One can no more work for oneself, than one can eat oneself. One can, however, establish practices, that are in direct opposition to the very essence of division of labour;—as, for instance, when the whole system of goods-production is based on transferring to the individual as private property what he is only able to produce through occupying a place in the [170] social organism. Division of labour makes for a social organism in which the individual shall live in accordance with the conditions of the whole body of the community. Economically, division of labour precludes egoism. ”

“ No new views nor teachings, that do not aim at establishing confidence in this respect, will attain the object which it is absolutely necessary to attain, namely, an unbroken course of evolution, in which all that men have hitherto achieved, the wealth they have worked for, and the faculties they have won, are not cast to the winds, but stored up. Even the most sweeping radical may feel confidence in a form of social reconstruction that still preserves the old heritage, when he has ideas laid before him which are capable of initiating really sane and healthy developments. ”

“ Human labour one talks of, as the thing that, together with capital and the nature-basis of industry, goes to the creation of economic values, and through which the worker becomes conscious of his social position. ”

“ And if one reads social life with the eyes of the spirit, one can perceive everywhere the ghastly signs of social tumours forming. Here is the great menace to our civilisation, manifest to anyone [189] able to read below the surface of existence. It is this that is so appalling, so overpowering, that—even if one could otherwise repress all zeal on behalf of a science in which spiritual knowledge is made instrumental to the knowledge of life’s events,—these things alone would impell one to speak, to proclaim the remedy, to hurl one’s words as it were in the face of the world. ”

“ The entire man was sold as a commodity. Rather less of the man, but still a portion of the human-being himself was incorporated in the economic process by serfdom. To-day, capitalism is the power, through which still a remnant of the human-being,—his labour-power,—is stamped with the character of a commodity. I am not saying, that this fact has remained unnoticed. On the contrary, it is a fact which in social life to-day is recognised as a fundamental one, and which is felt to be something that plays a very important part in the modern social movement. ”

“ For profits,—as shewn above,—go to the community only to the extent of what is over, after deducting the quota due to the producer for improvements in production. And it is in the spirit of the whole thing, that, if production falls off, the producer’s income must diminish in proportion as it rises with the enhancement of production. But always, in every case, the manager’s income will come out of the spiritual work he has done. ”

“ The coat is, really, a means of production. Many people may call this “splitting hairs”;—but one sees that it is not so, when one comes to consider the formation of commodity-values in the economic process. It then becomes obvious, that in an economic organism based on division of labour it is absolutely impossible to work for oneself. All one can do, is to work for others, and set others to work for one. ”

“ At the present day, within the body economic, one can truck not only commodities for commodities, but commodities for human labour,—and for human rights as well, and all by the very same economic process. ”

“ In the kind of connection which the medieval handworker felt between himself, as a human being, and his craft, there was something that shewed life within the whole human confraternity in a light which made it seem, for his individual consciousness, worth living. ”

“ Science, with all that part of spiritual life which it affects, has received its whole cast from the fact of its management forming part of the State system in recent centuries. And not only so, but this fusion with the State has set its stamp on the substance of science as well. Of course, the results of mathematics or physics cannot be directly influenced by the State. But consider history and other subjects of general culture:—Have not they come to reflect the connection of their professional representatives with the State system?—to be an obedient mirror of State requirements? ”

“ One cannot look to a spiritual life, that one feels as ideology, to open up the way out of a social situation, which one has resolved to endure no longer. The scientific cast of his thought has turned not only science, but religion, art, morality, and right also for the modern worker into so many constituent parts of human ideology. Behind these branches of the spiritual life he sees nothing of the workings of an actual reality, which finds its way into his own existence, and can contribute something to material life. ”

“ The first objection comes from thinking unreally, from presupposing that unity of life is only possible in a community of human beings, when the unity is introduced by ordinance. What life in reality requires is, however just the reverse. Unity must be the result, the final outcome of all the streams of activity flowing together from various directions. This idea is the one in accordance with life; but it had the evolution of the latter age against it; and so the tide of life in men bore down against the artificial “order” in its path,—and landed in the present social conditions. ”

“ Within the sphere of economic activity, commodity-values are the only things dealt with; and in this sphere, not only anything made, but also anything done, originating in the spiritual or State organisations, also takes on the character of a commodity. What a teacher does for his pupils, is, for the economic circuit, a commodity. The teacher’s individual ability is no more paid for, than the worker’s labour-power is paid for. All that can possibly be paid for in either, is that which proceeds from them and can pass as a commodity or commodities into the economic circuit. ”