HOW ACTUAL LIFE REQUIRES THAT WE SHOULD
SET ABOUT SOLVING SOCIAL NEEDS AND PROBLEMS
The characteristic feature, then, to which the special form of
the social question in recent times is directly traceable, may be
expressed as follows: The modern life of industrial economy, grounded
in technical science,--modern capitalism,--all this has acted in a
sort of instinctive way, like a force of nature, and given modern
social life its peculiar internal structure and method. But whilst
men's attention grew thus absorbed in all that technical industry and
capitalism brought with them, it became at the same time diverted from
other branches, other departments of social life,--departments whose
workings no less require direction by conscious human intelligence,
if the body social is to be a healthy one.
I may perhaps be allowed to start by drawing a comparison, in
order the better to describe what here, in any really comprehensive
study of the social question, reveals itself as a powerful, indeed
a main, actuating impulse. It must however be borne in mind, that
this comparison is intended as a comparison only, used to help out
the human understanding and give it the turn of thought needed for
picturing what health in the body social implies. Accepting this
point of view, then, if one turns to the study of that most complex
of all natural organisms, the human organism, it is noticeable,
that, running through the whole structure and life of it, there
are three systems, working side by side, and each functioning to
a certain extent separately and independently of the others. These
three neighbour systems may be distinguished as follows: One system,
forming a province all to itself in the natural human organism, is
that which comprises the life of the nerves and senses. It may be
named, after the principal part of the organism where the nerve and
sense-life is more or less centred,--the head-system. Second comes
what I should like to call the rhythmic system, which, to arrive at
any real understanding of man's organisation, must be recognised as
forming another branch to itself. This rhythmic system comprises the
breathing, the circulation of the blood,--all that finds expression in
rhythmic processes within the human organism. The third system, then,
must be recognised as comprising all those organs and functions that
have to do with actual matter-changes--the metabolic process. These
three systems together comprise everything which, duly co-ordinated,
keeps the whole human complex in healthy working order.
In my book, "Riddles of the Soul," I have already attempted to
give a brief description of this threefold character of the natural
human organism in a way that tallies completely with what scientific
research has as yet to tell us on the subject. It seems to me clear,
that biology, physiology, and natural science in general as it deals
with man, are all rapidly tending to a point of view which will shew,
that what keeps the whole complex process of the human organism in
working order is just this comparatively separate functioning of its
three separate systems, the head system, the circulation, or chest
system and the metabolic system,--that there is no such thing as
absolute centralisation in the human organism, and, moreover, that
each of these systems has its own special and distinct relation to
the outer world, the head system through the senses, the rhythmic
or circulatory system through the breathing, the metabolic system
through the organs of nourishment and organs of movement. What
I have here indicated goes much deeper down to spiritual sources
that I have tried to utilise for natural science. In natural-science
circles themselves, it is a fact not yet so generally recognised as
might perhaps be desirable for the advancement of knowledge; but that
merely means that our habits of thought, our whole way of picturing
the world to ourselves, is not yet completely adapted to the inner
life and being of nature's workings, as manifested, for instance,
in the human organism. People of course may say, "No matter. Natural
science can afford to wait. She will come to her ideals bit by bit,
and views such as yours will gain recognition all in good time." But
the body social cannot afford to wait, neither for the right views
nor for the right practice. Here an understanding is necessary,--if
only an instinctive one,--of what the body social needs,--and not
merely an understanding amongst a handful of experts, but in every
single human soul;--for every human soul takes its own share in the
general working of the body social. Sane thinking and feeling, sane
will and desires as to the form to be given the body social,--these
are only to be developed, when one comes to recognise,--even though
only instinctively,--that, in order to thrive, the social organism,
like the natural one, requires to be threefold.
Now, since Schäffle wrote his book on the structure of the social
organism, all sorts of attempts have been made to trace out analogies
between the organic structure of a natural creature,--a human being,
say,--and of a community of human beings. People have tried to map
out the body social into cells, network of cells, tissues and so
forth. Only a little while ago, there was a book published by Méray,
"World Mutations," in which various natural science facts and laws
were simply transferred to what is supposed to be man's social
organism. That sort of analogy-game has nothing whatever to do with
what is meant here; and anyone who mistakes what is said above for
just such another play upon analogies between the natural and the
social organism, has plainly not entered into the spirit of these
observations. The present comparison is not an attempt to take some
natural science truth and transplant it into the social system. Its
object is quite different:--namely, to use the human body as an
object lesson for training human thought and feeling to a sense
of what organic life requires, and then to apply this perceptive
sense to the body social. If one simply transfers to the body social
something one thinks one has found out about the human body,--as is
commonly done,--it merely shews that one is not willing to acquire
the faculties needed for studying the social organism in the way one
has to study the natural organism,--that is, as a thing by itself,
with special laws of its own.
It might again be thought, that this manner of depicting the social
organism arises from the belief that it should be "built up" after
some cut-and-dried theory borrowed from natural science. Nothing could
be further from all that is here in question. What I am trying to
shew is something very different. The present crisis in the history
of mankind demands the development in every single human being of
certain faculties of apprehension, of which the first rudiments must
be started by the schools and system of education,--like the first
four rules of arithmetic. Hitherto, the body social received its
older forms from something that never entered consciously into the
life of the human soul; but in the future this force will cease to be
active. Fresh evolutionary impulses are coming in, and from now on will
be active in human life; and it is part of them, that every individual
should be required to have these faculties of apprehension, just as
each individual has long been required to have a certain measure of
education. From now on, it is necessary that the individual should
be trained to have a healthy sense of how the forces of the body
social must work in order for it to live. People must learn to feel,
that it would be unhealthy, anti-social, not to possess such sense
of what the body social needs and to want to take one's place in it.
One hears much talk to-day about "socialisation" as the thing that
the age needs. But this socialisation will prove no true cure but a
quack remedy, possibly even a fatal one for social life, unless in
men's hearts, in men's souls, there dawns at least an instinctive
perception of the necessity for a threefold division of the body
social. If the body social is to function healthily, it must regularly
develope three organic divisions such as here described.
One of these three divisions is the economic life. It is the best
one to begin with here, because it has obviously, through modern
technical industry and modern capitalism, worked its way into the
whole structure of human society, to the subordination of everything
else. This economic life requires to form an independent organic branch
by itself within the body social,--relatively as independent as the
nervous and sensory system within the human body. Its concern is with
everything in the nature of production of commodities, circulation
of commodities, consumption of commodities.
Next comes the life of public right,--political life in the proper
sense. This must be recognised as forming a second branch of the
body social. To this branch belongs what one might term the true life
of the State,--taking "State" in the sense in which it was formerly
applied to a community possessing common rights.
Whilst economic life is concerned with all that a man needs from Nature
and what he himself produces from Nature,--with commodities and the
circulation and consumption of commodities,--the second branch of the
body social can have no other concern than what is involved in purely
human relations, in that which comes up from the deep-recesses of the
inner life and affects man's relation towards man. It is essential
to a right understanding of the composition of the social organism,
that one should clearly recognise the difference between the system
of "public right," which can only deal from inner and purely human
grounds with man-to-man relations, and the economic system, which is
concerned solely with the production, circulation and consumption of
commodities. People must become possessed of an instinctive sense for
distinguishing between these two in life, so that in practice the
economic life and the life of "right" will be kept distinct;--just
as, in man's natural organism, the lungs' function in working up the
outer air keeps distinct from the processes going on in the nervous
and sensory life.
As the third division, alongside the other two and equally independent,
are to be understood all those things in the social organism which are
connected with mental and spiritual life. The term "spiritual culture,"
or "everything that is connected with mental and spiritual life,"
is scarcely a term that accurately describes it in any way. Perhaps
one might more accurately express it as "Everything that rests on the
natural endowments of each single human being--everything that plays
a part in the body social on the ground of the natural endowments,
both spiritual and physical, of the individual."
The first function,--the economic one,--has to do with everything
that must exist in order that man may keep straight in his material
adjustments to the world around him. The second function has to do
with whatever must exist in the body social because of men's personal
relations to one another. The third function has to do with all that
must spring from the personal individuality of each human being,
and must be incorporated as personal individuality in the body social.
The more true it is that our social life has of recent years taken its
stamp from modern technical industry and modern capitalism, the more
necessary it is, that the injury thus unavoidably done to the body
social should be healed by bringing man, and man's communal life, into
right relation to these three systems of the body social. Economic
life has, in recent times, singly and of itself, taken on quite
new forms. And because it has worked all alone, unbalanced, it has
asserted undue power and preponderance in human life. The two other
branches of social life have not until now been in a position to work
themselves in this matter-of-course way into the social organism and
become incorporated with it according to their own proper laws. Here
man must step in, with the instinctive sense I spoke of, and set to
work to evolve the threefold order, each individual working on the
spot and at the spot where he happens to be. To attempt to solve the
social problem in the way meant here, will leave not one individual
without his task, now and in the days that are coming.
To begin with the first division of the body social, the economic
life:--This is grounded primarily in conditions of Nature,--just as
the individual man starts with special qualities of mind and body
as the basis for what he may be able to make of himself by study,
education and the teaching of life. This nature-basis sets a unique
stamp on economic life, and through economic life on the whole
organism of society. It is there, this nature-basis, and no methods
of social organisation, no manner of socialising measures, can affect
it,--at least, not radically. One must accept this nature-basis as
the groundwork of life for the body social,--just as, in educating an
individual, one must take his natural qualities as groundwork,--how
nature has endowed him in this or that respect, his mental and physical
power. Every experiment in socialisation, every attempt at giving
man's communal life an economic form, must take this nature-basis
into account. At the bottom of all circulation of commodities,
of all human labour, and of every form of spiritual life too, there
lies something primal, elementary, basic, which links man to a bit of
nature. The connection between a social organism and its nature-basis
is a thing that has to be taken into consideration,--just as one has
to consider an individual in regard to his personal endowment, when
it is a question of his learning something.--This is most obvious in
extreme cases. Take, for instance, those parts of the earth, where the
banana affords man an easily accessible form of food. Here, it will
be a question of the amount and kind of labour that must be expended
to bring the banana from its place of origin to a convenient spot
and deliver it ready for consumption; and this will enter into all
considerations of men's communal life together. If one compares the
human labour, that must be exerted to make the banana ready for human
consumption, with the labour that must be exerted in Central Europe,
say, to make wheat ready for consumption, it is at least three hundred
times less for the banana than for the wheat.
Of course that is an extreme case. But similar differences in
proportion to the nature-basis exist between the amounts of labour that
are requisite in the other branches of production represented in the
various social communities of Europe. The differences are not so marked
as in the case of bananas and wheat,--still, they exist. Accordingly,
it is inherent to the body economic, that the amount of labour-power
which man has to put into the economic process is proportionate to
the nature-basis of his economic activities. Compare the wheat-yields
alone:--In Germany, in districts of average fertility, the returns
on wheat cultivation represent about a sevenfold to eightfold crop on
the seed sewn; in Chile, the crop is twelvefold; in Northern Mexico,
seventeenfold; in Peru, twenty fold. (See Jensen.)
The whole of this living complex of processes, that begin with man's
relation to nature, and continue through all that man has to do to
transform nature's products, down to the point where they are ready for
consumption,--these processes, and these alone for a healthy social
organism, comprise its economic system. In the social organism, the
economic system occupies somewhat the same place as is occupied in
the whole human organism by the head-system, which conditions the
individual's abilities. But this head-system is dependent on the
lung-and-heart system; and in the same way the economic system is
dependent on the services of human labour. The head, however, cannot
of itself alone regulate the breathing; and neither should the system
of human labour-power be regulated by the forces that are operative
within the economic life itself. It is through his interests that man
is engaged in economic life, and these have their foundation in the
needs of his soul and spirit.--In what way can a social organism most
expediently incorporate men's interests, so that on the one hand the
individual may find in this social organism the best possible means of
satisfying his personal interest, whilst being economically employed
to the best advantage?--This is the question that has to be practically
solved in the institutions of the body economic. It can only be solved,
if these individual interests are given really free scope, and if at
the same time there exists the will and possibility to do what is
necessary to their satisfaction. These interests arise in a region
outside the confines of the economic life. They grow up as man's
own being unfolds its soul and physical nature. It is the business
of economic life to make arrangements for their satisfaction. The
only arrangement however that the economic life can make, are such
as are limited to the delivery and exchange of commodities,--that is
of goods which acquire their value from men's wants. The value of a
commodity comes from the person consuming it. And owing to the fact,
that its value comes from the consumer, a commodity occupies quite a
different position within the social organism from other things that
have a value for man as part of that organism. Study the whole circle
of economic life, putting aside all preconceptions,--the production,
circulation and consumption of commodities going on within it. One
observes at once the difference in character between the relation
that arises when one man makes commodities for another, and that human
relation that has its foundation in mutual right. One will not however
stop short at merely observing the difference; one will follow it up
practically, and insist that economic life and the life of "right"
should be kept completely separate within the body social. Institutions
devoted to the production and exchange of commodities require men
to develope forms of activity that are not immediately productive of
the very best impulses for their mutual relations in "right." Within
the economic sphere man turns to his fellow because it suits their
reciprocal interests. Radically different is the link between man
and man in the sphere of "right."
It may be thought perhaps, that the distinction which life requires
between the two things is adequately recognised, if the institutions
established for the purposes of economic life also make provision
for the "rights" that are involved in the mutual relations of the
people engaged in it. But such a notion has no root in reality. The
relation "in right," that necessarily exists between a man and his
fellows, is one that can only be rightly felt and lived outside the
economic sphere, on totally different soil, not inside it. In the
healthy social organism, therefore, there must be another system
of life, alongside the economic life and independent of it, where
human rights can grow up and find suitable administration. But the
"rights" life is, strictly, the political sphere,--the true sphere of
the State. If the interests that men have to serve in their economic
life are carried over into the legislation and administration of the
"rights" State, then these rights as they grow up will merely be an
expression of economic interests; whilst, if the "rights" State takes
on the management of economic affairs, it is no longer fitted to rule
men's "life of rights"; since all its measures and institutions will
be forced to serve man's need for commodities, and thereby diverted
from those impulses which make for the life of rights.
A healthy social organism, therefore, requires, as a second branch
alongside the body economic, the independent political life of the
State. In the separate body economic, the forces of economic life
itself will guide men to such institutions as best serve the production
and interchange of commodities. In the body politic, the State,
institutions will arise, where dealings between individuals and groups
will be settled on lines that satisfy men's sense of right. This demand
for complete separation of the "rights-State" from the economic sphere
proceeds from a standpoint of reality. Reality is not the standpoint of
those who seek to combine the life of rights and economics in one. The
people engaged in economic life of course possess the sense of right,
but they will only be able to legislate and administrate in the
way "right" requires,--i.e., from the sense of right alone without
any admixture of economic interests,--when they come to consider
questions of right independently, in a "rights" State that takes,
quâ State, no part in economic life. A "rights" State, such as this,
has its own legislative and administrative bodies, both constructed
according to those principles that ensue from the modern sense of
right. It will be built up on those impulses in human consciousness,
which go to-day by the name of "democratic." The legislative and
administrative bodies in the economic domain will arise out of the
forces of economic life. Such transactions as are necessary between
the executive heads of the legislative and administrative bodies of
"rights" and economics respectively, will be carried on pretty much as
between the governments of sovereign states to-day. This co-ordination
of the two systems will make it possible for developments in the one
body to exert the needful influence on the other. This influence of
the two spheres on one another is prevented, when one of them tries
to develope within itself the element that should come to it from
the other.
The economic life, then, is dependent on the one hand on those
relations in "right," which the State establishes between the persons
and groups of persons engaged in economic work, just as, on the other
hand, it is subject to the conditions of the nature-basis (climate,
local features, presence of mineral wealth, etc.). The bounds are
thus marked out on either side for the proper and possible activities
of economic life. Just as nature creates predetermining conditions,
which lie outside the economic sphere, and must be accepted by the
man at work in it as the given premises on which all his economic
work must be based,--so everything in the economic sphere that
establishes a "relation in right" between man and man, must, in a
healthy social organism, be regulated by the "rights-State," which,
like the nature-basis, goes on alongside and independently of the
economic life. In the present social organism,--as developed in the
course of mankind's historic evolution up till now,--economic life
occupies an unduly large place, and sets the peculiar stamp that it
has acquired from the machine-age and modern capitalism upon the whole
social movement. It has come to include more than it should include
in any healthy society. In the present day, trafficking to and fro
within the economic circuit, where only commodities should traffic,
we find human labour-power, and human rights besides. 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. (By "commodity"
I mean everything which through human activity has acquired the form
in which it is finally brought by man to its place of destination for
consumption. Economists may perhaps find this definition objectionable
or inadequate; but it may be serviceable towards an understanding of
what properly belongs to economic life. [3])
When anyone acquires a plot of land by purchase, one must regard it as
an exchange of the land for commodities for which the purchase money
stands proxy. The plot of land however does not act as a commodity in
economic life. It holds its position in the body social through the
"right" the owner has to use it. There is an essential difference
between this right of use, and the relation of a producer to the
commodity he produces. From the very nature of the producer's relation
to his product, it cannot possibly enter into the totally different
kind of man-to-man relation created by the fact that someone has been
granted the sole right to use a certain piece of land. Other men are
obliged to live on this land, or the owner sets them to work on it
for their living; and thus he brings them into a State of dependence
upon himself. The fact of mutually exchanging genuine commodities,
which one produces or consumes, does not establish a dependence that
affects the man-to-man relation in the same kind of way.
To an unprejudiced mind it is clear, that a fact of actual life,
such as this, must, in a healthy society, find due expression in
its social institutions. So long as there is simply an interchange
of commodities for commodities in economic life, the value of these
commodities is determined independently of the relations-of-right
existing between individuals or groups. Directly commodities are
interchanged for rights, the "rights relation" is itself affected. It
is not a question of the exchange in itself; such an exchange is the
inevitable life-element of the modern social organism, resting as it
does on division of labour. The point is, that through this interchange
of rights and commodities, "right" itself is turned into a commodity,
when the source of "right" lies within the economic life. The only way
of preventing this, is by having two sets of institutions in the body
social,--one, whose sole and only object it is to conduct commodities
in the most expedient manner along its circuit, the other regulating
those human rights involved in commodity-exchange which arise between
the individuals engaged in producing, trading and consuming. Such
rights are not distinct in their nature from any other rights that
necessarily exist in all relations between persons, quite independent
of commodity-exchange. If I injure or benefit my fellow-man by the
sale of a commodity, it falls within the same social category as
an injury or benefit due to some action or negligence not directly
expressed in an exchange of commodities.
In the organisation of economic life, that familiarity with business,
which comes from practical experience and specialist training,
will give the point of view needed by the person at the head of
affairs. In the "rights" organisation, the laws and administration
will give effect to the general sense of right in the dealings
of persons and groups with one another. The economic organisation
will assist the formation of Associations amongst people who from
their calling, or as consumers, have the same interests or similar
requirements. And this network of Associations, working together,
will build up the whole fabric of industrial economy, The economic
organisation will grow up on an associative basis, and out of the
links between the Associations. The work of the Associations will be
purely economic in character, and be carried on on a basis of "rights"
provided by the rights-organisation. These Associations, being able
to make their economic interests recognised in the representative and
administrative bodies of the economic organisation, will not feel any
need to force themselves into the legislative or executive government
of the "rights-State" (as, for instance, a Landowners' League, or
Manufacturers' Party, or a Socialist party representing an industrial
programme), in order to effect there what they have no power to achieve
within the limits of the economic life. If the "rights-State" again
takes no part whatever in any branch of industrial economy, then the
institutions it establishes will be such only as spring from the sense
of right amongst its members. Although the persons who sit on the
representative body of the rights-State may, and of course will, be
the same as are taking an active part in economic life, yet, owing to
the division of function, economic life will not be able to exert such
an influence on the "rights life," that the health of the whole body
social is undermined,--as it can be, when the state itself organises
branches of economic life, with representatives of the economic world
as state-legislators, making laws to suit economic interests.
A typical example of the fusion of the economic life with the
rights-life was afforded by Austria. According to the constitution
adopted by Austria in the eighteen-sixties, the representatives of the
imperial assembly, the "Reichsrat," of that compound territory, were
elected from the communities representing the four branches of economic
life:--the landed proprietors,--the chambers of commerce,--the towns,
markets and industrial centres,--and the rural areas. Obviously, in
this composition of the representative State-assembly, the first and
only idea was, that of playing off the economic interests against one
another, in the belief that a system of political rights must be the
outcome. No doubt the disruptive forces of her divers nationalities
contributed largely to Austria's downfall. But it may be taken as no
less certain, that if an opportunity had been given for developing
a system of "rights," working alongside and outside of the economic
one, it would, from the common sense of right, have evolved a form
of society in which the different nationalities could have lived
together in unity.
A person engaged in public life to-day usually turns his attention
to things in it that are only of secondary consideration. This is
because his habits of thought lead him to regard the body social as
uniform in structure. As a uniform structure, there is no form of
suffrage he can devise that will fit it; for the economic interest
and the impulses of human rights will come into mutual conflict
upon the representative body, however it may be elected; and the
conflict between them will affect social life in a way that must
result in severe shocks to the whole organism of society. The first
and indispensable object to be worked for in public life to-day
must be the radical separation of economic life from the "rights"
organisation. And as the separation becomes gradually established,
and people grow into it, the two organisations will each in the
process discover its own most appropriate method of selecting its
legislators and administrature. Amongst all that at the present moment
is clamouring for settlement, forms of suffrage, although they bear
on fundamental issues, are nevertheless of secondary consideration.
Where the old conditions still exist, these can be taken as the basis
from which to work towards the new separation of function. Where the
old order has already melted away, or is in process of dissolution,
there individuals and little groups of people must find the initiative
to start reconstructing along the new lines of growth. To try in 24
hours to effect a transformation in public life, is recognised by
thoughtful socialists themselves as midsummer madness. They look to
gradual opportune changes to bring about what they regard as social
welfare. The light of facts, however,--must make it plain to any
impartial observer, that a reasoning will and purpose are needed to
make a new social order, and are imperatively demanded by the forces
at work in mankind's historic evolution.
These remarks will be regarded as "unpractical" by someone who regards
nothing as practicable outside the narrow horizon of his customary
life. Unless he can see things differently, any influence he may
retain in any sphere of life will not tend to heal the disease
in the body social, but only to make it worse. It was people of
his way of thinking who helped to bring about the present state
of affairs. There must be a reversal of the movement which has
set in in leading circles, and which has already brought various
departments of economic life (e.g., the postal and railway services,
etc.), within the workings of the State. Its opposite must begin:
a movement towards the elimination of all economic activity from the
domain of politics and State organisation. Thinkers, whose whole will
and purpose, as they believe, is directed to the welfare of society,
take this movement towards State control, started by the hitherto
governing circles, and push it to its logical extreme. They propose to
socialise all the materials of economic life, in so far as they are
means of production. A healthy course of development, however, will
give economic life its independence, and will give the political State
a system of "right" through which it can bring its influence to bear
on the body economic,--so that the individual shall not feel that his
function within the body social gives the lie to his sense of right.
When one considers the work that a man does for the body social
by means of his physical labour-power, it is plain that the above
reflections are grounded in the actual life of men. The position which
labour has come to occupy in the social order under the capitalistic
form of economy, is such, that is purchased by the employer from the
employed as a commodity. An exchange is effected between money (as
representing commodities) and labour. But in reality no such exchange
can take place; it only appears to do so. [4] What really happens is,
that the employer receives in return from the worker commodities that
cannot exist, unless the worker devotes his labour-power to creating
them. The worker receives one part, the employer the other part of
the commodity so created. The production of the commodity is the
result of a co-operation between employer and employed. The product
of their joint action is that which first passes into the circuit of
economic life. For the product to come into existence, there must
be a "relation in right" between worker and "enterpriser"; but the
capitalist type of economy is able to convert this "rights" relation
into one determined by the employer's superiority in economic power
over the employed. In a healthy social order, it will be obvious that
labour cannot be paid for, that one cannot set an economic value upon
it comparable to the value of a commodity. The commodity produced by
this labour first acquires an economic value by comparison with other
commodities. The kind of work a man must do for the maintenance of the
body social, how he does it, and the amount, must be settled according
to his abilities and the conditions of a decent human existence. And
this is only possible when such questions are settled by the political
state, quite independently of the provisions and regulations made in
the economic life.
This settlement of labour conditions outside economics, pre-establishes
a basis of value for commodities comparable to the basis already
established by the conditions of nature. The value of one commodity,
as measured by another, is increased by the fact that its raw material
is more difficult to procure; and, similarly, the value of a commodity
must be made dependent on the kind and amount of labour which the
"rights" system allows to be expended on its production. [5]
Thus economic life has its conditions fixed on two sides. On one,
there is the "nature-basis," which man must take as he finds it;
on the other, will be the "rights-basis" which has to be created on
the free and independent ground of the political State,--detached
from economic life, and out of the common sense of right.
It is obvious, that in a social organism conducted in this way the
standard of economic well-being will rise and fall with the amount of
labour which the common sense of right expends upon it. This however
must be so in a healthy society. 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.
Should the general standard of economic well-being be too greatly
lowered on the "rights" side, there is a way of preventing this,
just as there is a way of improving the nature-basis. One can employ
technical means to make a less productive soil more productive; and,
if prosperity declines over much, the mode and amount of work can
be changed. Only, such changes should not be a direct consequence of
processes in the economic life; they must be the outcome of insight,
arrived at on the free ground of "rights," independent of economic
life.
There is, however, another element again, which enters into everything
that is contributed towards the organisation of social life, whether by
the economic life or by the "rights-consciousness." This element comes
from a third source: the personal abilities of the individual. This
third domain includes everything from the loftiest achievements of
the human mind to that element in all the works of men which comes
from their bodily ability to render greater or less service to the
body social. A healthy social organism must necessarily receive
and assimilate whatever comes from this source in quite a different
manner from what comes to it from the life of the State or that finds
expression in the interchange of commodities. To absorb this element
healthily into social life can only be done in one way, and that is,
by leaving it entirely to men's free receptivity and to the impulses
which personal ability itself brings with it. What is performed at
the promptings of personal ability, loses to a great extent the very
groundwork of its existence, when subjected to artificial influences
from the State organisation or from the economic system. For the
only true groundwork of such performances lies in that inherent force
that finds its evolution through human performance itself. If again
the way in which such individual performances are taken up into
the body social directly depends on the economic life,--or if the
State organises it,--there is then a check upon that free spontaneous
receptivity, which is the only sound and wholesome channel for their
reception. For the spiritual life of the body social, there is but one
possible line of healthy evolution;--and it must not be forgotten,
by what innumerable fine threads this spiritual life is connected
with the evolution of all other individual potentialities in human
life. What it does, must be the outcome of its own impulses; and those
who receive its services must be closely bound up with it in sympathy
and understanding. Such, as here sketched, are the requisite conditions
for a sound evolution of the spiritual life of the body social. What
prevents them from being clearly perceived, is that people's eyes
are blurred through constantly seeing the spiritual life in great
part fused and confounded with the political State system. The
fusion has been taking place through several hundreds of years,
and they have grown accustomed to it. They talk, it is true, about
"freedom of knowledge" and "freedom of education"; but, all the same,
they consider it a matter of course that the political State should
have control of this "free" knowledge and "free" education. They do
not see nor feel, how in this way the state is bringing all spiritual
life into dependence on state requirements. The notion is, that the
State provides the educational posts, and that the spiritual life
then unfolds "freely" under the hands of the people who fill these
State posts. Through long thinking in this way, people come to forget
what an intimate connection there is between the inmost nature of
man and the substance of the spiritual life growing up within him,
and how impossible it is for the growth of this spiritual substance
to be really free, if it owes its place in the body social to any
other impulses than those alone which proceed from the spiritual
life itself. 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?
The peculiar stamp thus acquired by our present-day mental conceptions,
in which the scientific turn of thought predominates over every
other, is just what makes them a mere ideology as they affect the
working-class. The workers have observed, how men's thoughts acquire a
certain character, arising out of the requirements of state life,--a
State life that suits the interests of the ruling classes. It was a
reflection of material interests, and of the war of interests, that
the worker saw when he looked into his thoughts. Thus there arose in
him a sense that all spiritual life whatever was ideology, a mirrored
image of the economic order of affairs. Such a view of things works
havoc with men's spiritual life. But its blighting effects will cease,
once it becomes possible for them to feel that in the spiritual domain
there reigns a reality that transcends material outward life and
bears its own substance within itself. No such sense of a spiritual
reality can, however, possibly arise, unless the spiritual life is
free within the body social to expand and govern itself according
to the impulses inherent in it. Only those, who have their part in a
spiritual life thus freely expanding and freely governed, can represent
it with that strength and vigour which shall ensure it its due place
within the body social. Such an independent position within human
society is indispensable for art, science and a philosophy of life,
with all that goes with these. The freedom of one cannot prosper
without the freedom of all. Although in their substance mathematics
and physics may not be influenced directly by State requirements,
yet how they are applied, the estimate people form of their value,
the effect their pursuit has upon the rest of spiritual life, all
these and many other points are determined by State requirements,
whenever some of the branches of spiritual life are under State
control. It is one thing, when the teacher of the lowest grade in
the school follows the line along which the State impells him; it is
another, when he takes his line from a spiritual life that rests on
its own independent footing. Here again, social democracy has done
no more than take over a habit of thought and conventions inherited
from the ruling classes. Social democracy sets before itself as
an ideal the incorporation of spiritual life in a social structure
based on a system of industrial economy. But, were its aim attained,
it would be only a further step along the same road that has led to
the present depreciation of spiritual life. It was a right feeling,
but a one-sided one that found expression in the socialist maxim:
"Religion is a man's private affair"; for, in a healthy society,
all spiritual life must in this sense be a private affair, so far
as concerns the State and economic life. Only, social democracy does
not relegate religion to the sphere of private affairs with any idea
of thus establishing its status as spiritual wealth, and giving it a
position within the social order where it may attain to a higher and
more worthy development than under the State's influence. No; it's
idea in so doing is, that the resources of the body social should
only be used to cultivate what it needs for its own existence, and
that the religious kind of spiritual wealth does not come under this
head. This is not the way in which one branch of spiritual life can
prosper, singled out as an exemption from public life, whilst all the
rest remain in bondage. The religious life of mankind in this new age
will go hand in hand with emancipated spiritual life in every form, and
grow to a force able to bear up the souls of the men of the new age.
It is a matter for the soul's own free demand, how the spiritual
life is received into men, no less than how it comes forth from
them. Teachers, artists and others will find, that they have an
altogether different influence, and are able to awaken an understanding
amongst the public for what they are creating, when they themselves
have a place in the social order which has no direct connection
with any legislature or government, but only with such as arise from
impulses that lie in the course of the spiritual life itself; when too
they are appealing to people, who are not simply under compulsion to
labour, but for whom an autonomous and independent political State
also ensures the right to leisure,--leisure which awakens the mind
to an appreciation of spiritual values. Here one will very likely
be told by someone, that his own "practical experience,"--of which
he has a great opinion,--convinces him, that if this notion were
carried out,--if the State made definite provision for leisure
hours, and if school attendance were left to people's own sense,
it would simply mean that people would spend all their leisure in
the public house and relapse into a state of brute ignorance. Well,
let such "pessimists" wait and see what will happen when the world
is no longer under their influence. Their line of action is all too
often prescribed by a subtle feeling, a secret voice, that whispers
in their ear, how they themselves like to spend their leisure hours,
and the steps that were necessary to ensure themselves having a decent
education. Of the free spiritual life, of its power to fire and kindle,
when left to itself within the body social,--of this such persons
naturally take no account. They know the spiritual life in bondage
only, and so it has no power to kindle any spark within themselves.
Both the political State and the economic system will obtain from the
body spiritual, when under its own self-administration, that steady
inflow from the spiritual life, of which they are in need. Practical
training too for economic life will for the first time fully develope
its full possibilities, when the economic system and the body spiritual
can co-operate in freedom. People will come with a suitable training
into the economic field and will put life into all they meet with
there, through the strength that comes from spiritual endowment set
free from restraint. And people, who have won their experience in the
economic field, will find their way into the spiritual organisation,
and help to fertilise what there needs fertilising.
The effect within the political State of spiritual abilities being left
free, will be the growth of sane and sound views, such as are needed
in this field. The man who works with his hands will be able to feel
contented with the place his own labour fills in the body social. He
will come to realise that the body social cannot float him, unless
his hand-work has the guidance requisite for its organisation. He
will acquire a sense of the solidarity of his own labour with those
organising forces which he can trace to the development of personal
talent. The political State will afford him a ground on which he can
establish the "rights" that secure to him his share in the proceeds of
the commodities he produces; and he will freely allot to the spiritual
property, from which he benefits, a portion sufficient to keep it
productive. There will be a possibility for producers in the spiritual
field, too, to live on the proceeds of their work. What anyone chooses
to do in the matter of spiritual work, will be nobody's affair but his
own; but for any service he may render to the body social he will be
able to count on willing recompense from people to whom spiritual goods
are a necessity. Anyone, who is not satisfied with the recompense he
receives under the spiritual organisation, must have recourse to one of
the other fields, either to the political state, or to economic life.
Into the economic life pass those technical ideas which originate
in the spiritual life. Their origin is in the spiritual life, even
although they proceed directly from persons belonging to the State or
to the economic world. In the spiritual life originate all those ideas
and organising capacities that enrich the life of the State and of
industrial economy. For everything thus supplied to both these fields
of social life from the spiritual source, the recompense will either,
as in the other cases, be raised through voluntary recognition on the
part of those who directly draw from this source, or else it will
be regulated by the "rights" that gradually become built up in the
political sphere. What the political State itself needs for its own
maintenance, will be raised by a system of taxation, which will be the
outcome of a harmonious co-ordination of the claims of economic life,
on the one hand, and those of the "rights-consciousness" on the other.
Alongside the political sphere and the economic sphere in a healthy
society, there must be the spiritual sphere, functioning independently
on its own footing. The whole trend of the evolutionary force of
modern mankind is in the direction of this threefolding of the social
organism. So long as the life of the community could be guided in all
essentials by the instinctive forces at work in the mass of mankind,
so long there was no urgent tendency towards this definite separation
into three functions. At bottom, there were always these three distinct
sources; but in a yet dim and dully conscious social life they worked
together as one. Our modern age demands conscious co-operation on
the part of man, and that he should take his place open-eyed in the
workings of the body social. This new social consciousness must,
however, be directed from three aspects, if it is to shape men's life
and conduct healthily. It is this threefold line of evolution towards
which modern humanity is striving in the soul's unconscious depths;
and what finds outlet in the social movement is but the stormy light
cast up from the fires below.
At the end of the eighteenth century, under different circumstances
from those in which we are living to-day, there went up a cry from
the hidden depths of human nature for a re-formation of human social
relations. Through all the scheme of the new order ran like a motto
the three words, Fraternity, Equality, Liberty. Of course, no one
with an unprejudiced mind and normal human feeling for the realities
of human evolution can fail to sympathise with all that these three
words imply. But still, in the course of the nineteenth century there
were keen thinkers who were at pains to point out the impossibility
of realising the three ideas of brotherhood, equality and freedom in
any homogeneous and uniform order of society. It seemed to them clear,
that these three impulses must contradict one another in social life,
if carried actually into practice. It was, for instance, very cleverly
demonstrated, that if the impulse towards equality were realised
there would be no possible room for that freedom which is so inherent
in every human being. And whilst one cannot but agree with those who
see the contradiction between them, yet at the same time, one's human
sympathies must go out to all and each of these three ideals in itself!
These three ideals appear contradictory, until one perceives the
necessity for establishing a threefold order of society; and then
their real meaning for social life first becomes apparent. The three
divisions must not be artificially dovetailed together and centralised
under some theoretical scheme of unity, parliamentary or other. They
must be one living reality. Each of the three branches of the body
social must centre in itself; and the unity of the whole will first
come about through the workings of the three, side by side and in
combination. For in actual life it is the apparent contradictories
that make up a unity. Accordingly, one will come to comprehend what
the life of the body social is, when one fully perceives the part
played by these three principles of brotherhood, equality and freedom
in a real, workable form of society. It will then be recognised, that
men's co-operation in economic life must rest on that brotherhood
that springs out of the Associations. The second system is that of
"common rights," where one is dealing with purely human relations
between one person and another; and here one must strive to realise
the idea of equality. Whilst in the spiritual field, which stands
comparatively alone within the body social, it is the idea of freedom
that needs to be realised. Seen in this way, these three ideals reveal
their value for real existence. Thy cannot find their realisation in a
chaotic stream of social life, but only in the threefold working of a
healthy social organism. No social state, constructed on an abstract
centralised scheme, can carry freedom, equality and brotherhood pall
mall into practice. But each of the three branches of the body social
can derive its strength from one of these ideal impulses; and then
all three branches will work fruitfully in conjunction.
Those people who, at the end of the eighteenth century, first demanded
the recognition of these three ideas, Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood,
and those who took up the cry again later on,--they had already a dim
sense of whither the forces of human evolution were tending in modern
times. But they had not got beyond belief in the onefold State. And
in the onefold State these ideas involve a contradiction. They
pinned their faith to the contradiction, because, deep-down in the
sub-conscious depths of their souls, there was this striving towards
the threefold order of society, in which their trinity of ideas can
actually achieve a higher unity. To lay hold on those evolutionary
forces, which through the growth of mankind all through these latter
times, are working towards the threefold order,--to make of them a
conscious social will and purpose,--this is what is demanded of us
at the present day in unmistakeable language by the hard facts of
the social situation.