Note by the translator: This appeal by Rudolf Steiner, written in March 1919 and signed by hundreds of influential people including the author Hermann Hesse, was translated in many European languages and published spread by the “Bond for the Threefolding of the Social Organism” centered in Stuttgart. It appeared as an Appendix to “The Threefold Social Order”. This version has been newly translated.
The German people believed that their empire, which
they had built half a century ago, was secure for an unlimited period of
time. In August 1914, it believed that
the catastrophe of war, at the beginning of which it saw itself embroiled,
would prove this edifice invincible.
Today it can only look at its ruins. Self-reflection must arise after
such an experience. For this experience
has proved the opinion of half a century, especially the prevailing thoughts of
the war years, to be a tragically effective error. Where are the reasons of this fatal error?
This question must induce the souls of the German people to practice
self-contemplation. Whether the strength
for such self-examination is now present depends the potentiality for life for
the German people. Its future depends on
whether it is able to seriously ask itself the question: How did we fall into
error? When it asks itself this
question today, then the realization will dawn on it that it founded an empire
half a century ago, but failed to set this empire a task arising from the
nature of the German people.
The
empire was founded. In the early days of its existence, efforts were made to
put its inner life in order according to the requirements that arose from old
traditions and new needs from year to year. Later, its external position of
power, based on material forces, was strengthened and increased. This was combined with measures in regard to
the social requirements born of the new age, which, although they took into
account many things that the day proved to be necessary, lacked a great goal,
as should have resulted from a realization of the evolutionary forces to which
modern humanity must turn. Thus the
empire was placed in the context of the world without any essential objective
justifying its existence. The course of
the catastrophic war revealed this in a sad way. Until the outbreak of the war, the non-German
world could see nothing in the behavior of the Reich that could have aroused
its opinion: the authorities of this Reich fulfill a world-historical mission that
must not be swept away. The failure of these authorities to find such a mission
has necessarily created the opinion in the non-German world which, for the
truly discerning, is the deeper reason for the German collapse.
For
the German people, an immeasurable amount now depends on their unbiased
assessment of this state of affairs. In
this state of misfortune, the insight should emerge which failed to show itself
in the last fifty years. In place of
trivial thinking about the most immediate demands of the present time, there
should now arise a broader view of life,
which strives to recognize the evolutionary forces of modern humanity with powerful
thoughts, and which dedicates itself to them with courageous will power. The
petty urge should cease, which would that term all those harmless as
impractical idealists who direct their gaze to these evolutionary forces. The arrogance and haughtiness of those who
think of themselves as practitioners, and who have brought about misfortune by
their narrow sense masked as practice, should cease. What the practitioners, who are called
idealists, but in reality are real practitioners, have to say about the
developmental needs of the new time, should be taken into account The
"practitioners" of all directions saw the emergence of completely new
human demands for a long time coming.
But they wanted to meet these demands within the framework of old
traditional habits of thought and institutions.
The economic life of the modern times has brought forth the demands. Satisfying
them by private initiative seemed impossible.
The transformation of private work into social work was a necessity for
one class of people in individual areas, and it was carried out wherever it
seemed to be profitable to this class of people according to their view of
life. The radical transformation of all individual work into social work became
the goal of another class, which, through the development of the new economic
life, has no interest in the preservation of the traditional private goals. They urge for socialization of the private
sphere and count on the takeover of the latter by the communities (state,
municipality), which originate from preconditions that have nothing to do with
the new demands. Or, they count on newer communities (for example,
cooperatives), which have not been created fully in the sense of these new
demands, but which are modeled on the old forms out of handed-down habits of
thought.
The
truth is that no community formed in the sense of these old habits of thought can
absorb what wants to be absorbed by it.
The forces of the times are pressing for the recognition of a social
structure of mankind which envisages something quite different from what is
commonly envisaged today. Social communities have hitherto been formed for the
most part from the social instincts of mankind. To penetrate their forces with full
consciousness will be the task of times.
The
social organism is structured like the natural one. And just as the natural organism must think
through the head and not through the lungs, so the social organism must be
divided into systems, none of which can take over the task of the others, but
each of which must cooperate with the others while preserving its independence.
Economic life can flourish only if it develops as an independent member of the
social organism according to its own forces and laws, and if it does not bring
confusion into its structure by allowing itself to be absorbed by another
member of the social organism, the politically active one. This politically
active member must rather exist in full independence alongside the economic
one, as in the natural organism the respiratory system exists alongside the
head system. Their wholesome interaction cannot be achieved by managing both
members from a single legislative and administrative organ, but by each having
its own legislation and administration interacting in a living way. For the political system must destroy the
economy if it is to take it over; and the economic system loses its vital forces
if it is to become political.
To
these two members of the social organism must be added, in full independence
and formed out of its own possibilities of life, a third: that of spiritual
production, to which also belongs the spiritual portion of the other two areas,
which must be handed down to them by the third member endowed with its own
lawful regulation and administration, but which cannot be administered by them
and influenced in any other way than the member organisms of a natural total
organism existing side by side influence each other. Already today, what has
been said here about the necessities of the social organism can be
substantiated and developed in all details in a fully scientific way. These remarks can only serve as guidelines
for all those who want to pursue these necessities. The founding of the German
Empire took place at a time when these necessities came to the attention of
modern mankind. Its government did not
understand how to set the Reich a task by looking at these necessities. This
view would not only have given it the right internal structure; it would also
have given its foreign policy a justified direction. With such a policy, the
German people could have lived together with the non-German peoples. Now,
insight would have to mature from the calamity. One would have to develop the
will for a possible social organism. Not a Germany that is no longer there
would have to face the outside world, but a spiritual, political and economic
system with its own administrations would have to work to regain a possible
relationship with those who have crushed Germany that has not recognized that,
in contrast to other national organizations, it is the first to need to gain
its strength through the threefolding of the social organism*.
* This sentence had the following wording in the
appeal published in March 1919, which was otherwise identical: "Not a
Germany which is no longer there would have to face the outside world, but a
spiritual, political and economic system through its representatives would have
to want to negotiate as independent delegations with those by whom the Germany
has been crushed, which has made itself an impossible social entity through the
confusion of the three systems". From the change of this sentence, which
is merely due to the events of the time, i.e. the coming negotiations leading
to the Treaty of Versailles, one can see that the content of the author's
appeal today is exactly the same as it was in March.
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