To overcome materialism, the world needs anthroposophy

 

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland

July 4, 1920

Unfortunately, yesterday's lecture had to end on a note that did not sound very good, but from time to time we have to point out such things in our ranks. But what I had to say against my will at the end yesterday actually fits into the series of our reflections, because these reflections all basically aim to show how necessary a spiritual-scientific influence is for our culture. The day before yesterday I tried to show you what the background is for something like Oswald Spengler's reflection on the decline of Western culture. Yesterday I tried to show you how the shadows of older cultures reach into our time, how these shadows of older cultures turn against everything that must come from the spiritual science meant here, out of an understandable striving. Today I would like to add some principles to our considerations, so that in the next lectures we can follow the cultural development of the present more closely and in greater depth.

I have often emphasized how the actual effect of deepening one's spiritual knowledge should not be limited to certain truths established by spiritual science being absorbed by our soul, being preserved by our soul as content, as content about all kinds of life contexts that interest us as human beings. But that is not all that is intended for the human being as an effect of spiritual science in our time, as it is meant here. What should come from this spiritual science to the contemporary human being above all is that his whole way of conceiving, the configuration of thinking, feeling and willing, should undergo that transformation through this spiritual-scientific deepening that is demanded by the needs of the present, so that we not only enter into the decline of Western civilization, but so that we can carry out of this decline the seeds of an ascent. I have often mentioned that the limitation of thinking and feeling to the physical human organism, as materialism imagines it, is by no means a chimera. I have often emphasized that materialism is not just a false world view, but that materialism in the proper sense of the word is a view of time, or perhaps it is better said that it is a phenomenon of the time. It is not the case that one can simply say that it is untrue that human thinking, human feeling, and indeed the will of the soul, is bound to the physical organism, and that one must replace this view with another. This does not exhaust the full truth in this area; rather, the fact is that, as a result of what has been brought up in the civilization of the West over the last three to four centuries, the soul-spiritual life of the human being human being, thinking, feeling and willing, have in fact come into a close dependency on the physical organism, and that in a certain respect, today, a person is stating a correct view when they say: this dependency exists. For the task today is not to overcome a theoretical view, the task today is to overcome the fact that the human soul has become dependent on the body. The task today is not to refute materialism, but to do that work, that spiritual-soul work, which in turn frees the soul of man from the bonds of the material.

In order to see clearly in this field, to see that what I have just said does not appear as mere contradictions or paradoxical assertions, one can only gain a sufficient insight from spiritual science itself. Today I will have to pick out a special chapter from the life of more recent times, the present, to show you how that which is not just an opinion but a fact - the dependence of the spiritual and soul on the physical - how that affects social life. From this you will be able to see that there is more to overcome in our time than a mere theoretical view.

Perhaps I can make myself a little more understandable about what I have just said if I recall something that I have already mentioned here, but which can in a certain sense illustrate what I am saying today. I told you how I was thrown out as a teacher of the Workers' Educational School in Berlin because of the intrigues of the leaders of the Social Democracy, because what I had to teach in those days in the most diverse fields was not genuine Marxism and, above all, in the field of history, was not a materialist view of history. I had not advocated the view that the materialistic conception of history was absolutely false, but precisely the way in which I had to take a stand on the materialistic conception of history, on the view that all ethical, all scientific, all religious , all legal life was only a superstructure, a kind of smoke compared to what was the only reality in the material economic process, precisely the way I had to relate to this conception of history, that could not be understood. Of course, it could not be understood by those who had not even approached an inner penetration of the matter. The workers who listened to my lectures gradually understood the matter; but it was precisely through this understanding that the leaders found out about it at the time. What I taught was this: I said that it begins approximately in the middle of the 15th century, slowly at first, then more and more rapidly from the 16th century, that process in the history of the development of humanity, through which the intellectual, legal, and ethical productions of humanity are in full dependence on the production processes, on the way in which economic life proceeds. Little by little, everything intellectual and legal becomes dependent on economic life. Therefore, I said, the materialistic conception of history is relatively justified for the interpretation of the last three to four centuries of human history; but one arrives at an impossible conception of history if one goes back beyond the 15th century and wants to understand older times in the sense of the materialistic conception of history. And one is completely wrong if one regards this materialistic conception of history as something absolute and says: In the future, all ethical, all legal, all scientific life will be only a kind of smoke rising from economic life. — On the contrary, it is the task of the present to overcome what has developed as the dependence of spiritual life on the economic in the last three to four centuries. It is this that must be overcome as a fact, for which the materialistic conception of history is correct.

You see, if you really take a spiritual scientific approach, you are dealing with a different way of thinking, with the way of thinking that actually breaks more in the thought forms, in the whole structure of the world view with the traditional. And truly, for anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, it is much more important to educate in the development of humanity this transformation, this metamorphosis in the structure of feeling, thinking and willing, than to pass on to people just any kind of content about different human bodies and the like. Of course, these contents do come to light; these results present themselves to our spiritual vision precisely through such a metamorphosis of the structure of thinking. But the essential thing is the different attitude towards the world; the essential thing is that we are able to change the whole constitution of our soul to a certain extent. Only when we realize this do we actually notice how, in the present thinking of the broadest circles of Western civilization, the remnants of traditional thinking, feeling and will are still very much active, and how these remnants have simply been carried over into the present from the most ancient times. There have only been a few individuals who, I might say, have developed a feeling or an inkling in the most diverse fields, out of the broad masses, for how rotten the very forms and structures of thought of the old are. They were mostly unable to penetrate to spiritual science, and so they got stuck in the negative.

An extremely interesting phenomenon in relation to this stuckness is Overbeck, the friend of Friedrich Nietzsche, who taught at the University of Basel during Nietzsche's time and who, in particular, wrote an interesting book about the current justification of Christianity. It is one of the most interesting phenomena in the field of modern literature that a Christian theology raises the question: Are we still Christians? This question has been raised not only by the materialistic theologian David Friedrich Strauss, but also by the theologian Overbeck, who taught at the theological faculty in Basel and was a friend of Nietzsche. And Overbeck actually comes to the conclusion that there is still a Christian theology, but no longer a Christianity.

But in particular, I must say that it was a strange coincidence for me that, after I had to give you these various examples of theological thinking yesterday, in which I had to show you that one has to complain about theology just as much when it becomes a friend as when it becomes an enemy. It was very significant to me that just these days in the supplement to the Basler Nachrichten, a posthumous production of Overbeck is discussed, and that a sentence is pointed out that this Christian theologian wrote down. A Christian theologian wrote down the sentence: The theologians are the simpletons in modern society; that is a public secret in this modern society.

So said the theologian Overbeck in Basel! It is not necessary to go out of the sphere if one wants to collect such a judgment. However, Overbeck was a thinker in addition to being a theologian, and being a theologian was more his destiny than his will. Perhaps it was also his weakness to remain a theologian. But that is not for me to investigate today. But it is remarkable that such a saying was not coined by a monist, but by a theologian: theologians are the simpletons in modern society, and it is a public secret in modern society that this is the case.

Now, the things that are only shadows of old worldviews, ways of life and so on are still present today. To be a Christian today, one needs a new grasp of the mystery of Golgotha, as I already explained to you yesterday. But to understand today's social demands, one needs a completely different structure of thinking and feeling than the one that extends from ancient times into the broad masses of contemporary humanity. And today I would like to give you an example of this. You can take two such different social thinkers as, say, Marx, who is the idol of social democracy, and Rodbertus, who is more, I would say, a support for those who seek a solution to the social question on a national level. In a certain respect, both Rodbertus and Marx are socialists; but they are actually antipodes. But in one important point they agree. They agree on a certain conception of the fundamental question, which is actually raised today by all those who are fundamentally more deeply concerned with the social question. The question is: What actually produces economic goods? What produces economic goods that circulate in economic life, goods that are useful for the economic consumption of man? Marx and Rodbertus both answered this question by saying that only physical labor produces economic goods. Thus everything productive in economic life can be traced back to physical labor. In other words, if we want to speak of the labor that produces any coherent series of economic goods, then, for example, in the case of a railroad, we have to start with the groundbreaking, but not with the work of the engineers, nor with the work of those who, based on some life circumstances, produce the idea that a railroad should be built in this or that area. Karl Marx, for example, says that only labor, physical labor, produces economic goods. If, he says, you hire an accountant in a community in India, that accountant's work is not something that produces real economic goods. Although the work of this accountant is necessary, it does not produce economic goods. Economic goods are produced solely by the physical labor of those who are directly involved in the physical production of goods. Everything else is excluded from being counted as a productive element in the production of economic goods. What, says Karl Marx, is the Indian accountant paid with? With a deduction that is made. You first have to deduct something from what everyone else who works physically should actually earn, and give it to him because he is necessary. You can't produce without him, but he doesn't produce any goods. So you have to take from those who produce goods what you have to give him. – And by pursuing this line of thought, Karl Marx finally comes to the conclusion that all intellectual work, all intellectual production, is not taken out of economic goods in such a way that it would participate in the production of these economic goods, but that it is subtracted from those who really produce economically.

And Karl Marx's antipode, Rodbertus, comes to exactly the same conclusion. Such views arise out of the thinking that has emerged in the course of the last three to four centuries as a shadow of older ways of thinking. For one can see how such views arise when one observes the way in which such theorists view labor and the relationship of labor to the production of economic goods, and the view of these theorists has now been adopted by the entire proletariat. What exists in the entire proletariat as a view of life is a direct result of such ideas, of which I will now give you some examples. People like Karl Marx ask: Why does the worker receive a wage? They answer this question by saying that the worker receives a wage for the work he has done, that the work he has done should be paid for, and they say: It must be paid for, because by producing goods, the worker gives up his own labor. I have often characterized this view as the one that represents the present proletariat: the worker gives up his labor power, his labor power is expended; it must be replaced. He is therefore given wages, that is, economic goods, because only the wage as a representative is used for this; he is given wages so that the physical labor power that has been used up in the production of economic goods can be replaced. This idea recurs again and again, and we find it in the most diverse variants.

What is the underlying view here? The underlying view is best seen by looking at a word that Karl Marx and his followers used again and again. They used the word: labor runs into the product. — To a certain extent — when the product is produced, labor has run into the product. Thus, the labor force or its result would also have been incorporated into the economic good, into the product. One says: intellectual power cannot be incorporated into the product, only physical power can be incorporated into the product. - So one has the idea that the labor force somehow passes from the person into the product, then it is out there, incorporated into the product; then one eats and then it is replaced.

Such a notion is deeply rooted in people from certain materialistic backgrounds of recent times, and if you fight against such a view, you even appear to be a person who tends towards the paradoxical, because these things have gradually become something that seems quite natural to today's people. And in Russia socialism is now being practiced only under the influence of such views that have grown out of the underground of materialism.

Now it is really so – it is extremely difficult to admit, but it really is so – that sometimes views become popular, are advocated everywhere as if they were self-evident, and they actually have no basis at all. This view, as if labor were simply transferred into the product, has no foundation whatsoever, for it cannot be said that what is expended during the work is replaced by the food. One need only seriously ask whether someone who does not work at all does not also have to eat if he wants to live. Surely the replacement of a “lost power”, which is what is at issue here, cannot depend on whether this power has gone into the work, because if it does not go into the work, it must also be replaced. There must be a major flaw in the reasoning, a major flaw in the reasoning that has simply become popular. You cannot believe how deeply we are stuck in wrong thinking habits today. We must awaken our soul to these wrong thinking habits. It is unacceptable that our soul continues to sleep to these wrong thinking habits.

I have already expressed this thought to you in a different form. Those for whom it is not a need, or who, let us say, have not been placed in such a situation through their life circumstances that they chop wood or do similar physical work, will sometimes live out their strength, let us say in sport. There they also apply their strength. And you will easily admit that under certain circumstances one can use the same amount of strength for chopping wood as for sports. You can get just as tired from sports as from chopping wood. You can get just as good a night's sleep after sports as after chopping wood. The same amount of work can be done in a purely formal way in one case and in the other. So it cannot be a matter of how much work one does and how much energy one expends in this working and performing, but it is obvious that it is something completely different, the way in which work is integrated into the whole social process. It is a matter of learning to see beyond the way in which human life force is expressed in work, in the production of goods. At most, it may be that the industrious person needs a little more to eat than the lazy one, although this also does not quite correspond to the eating habits of some people. But in any case, this strange way of thinking, as if in economic thinking one had to look at how the expended human labor power had to be replaced by what one receives in wages, this way of thinking is in any case completely unfounded. It simply cannot be thought of this way if you want to achieve any goal.

I wanted to draw attention to this from a different angle, to show how our whole life is dominated by wrong ideas, by habits of thought that may have been justified in earlier times, but that no longer have such justification today.

Another train of thought, which also often recurs in those who observe economic life and are more or less dependent on Karl Marx, is this: they say that when physical labor is performed and an economic good is created in the course of performing that physical labor, then that labor is consumed. If the good is to be there again, it must be produced by the same labor. When someone thinks up an idea, that idea is there. It remains there, it is not consumed. And perhaps countless work processes can be carried out on the basis of this idea. — So: physical labor applied to the production of goods is consumed in its product, intellectual labor is not consumed in its product, but the products remain — this seems terribly plausible when you express such an idea. But then the question arises: is there anything to be gained in a fruitful way in economic thinking from such an idea? It is always the case that those who pursue such an idea are unable to follow the whole process through which such an idea goes in becoming reality. Is there, one might ask, a single case in which an inventor produces an idea and, without any further intellectual work being done, this idea can be realized countless times? That is not the case. Rather, the following must be said: What is the actual connection between what is produced by the spiritual man and what are external, for example, economic goods? Just take a look at the production of economic goods. Can you imagine that economic goods are produced without spiritual guidance being at the root of it? You can actually prove that spiritual guidance comes to the fore in material work, in the production of material goods, right down to the very core. You just have to go back far enough. I have often given you the example: we look at the Gotthard tunnel or the Suez Canal or something like that; such things cannot be done today without differential or integral calculus. All physical labor is in vain if these things are not taken as a basis. These things, however, differential and integral calculus, were once developed in the lonely study of Leibniz or – we do not need to get involved in a national priority dispute today – in the lonely study of Newton, but in any case these ideas originated with thinkers, in intellectual production. In all that is basically there in the Gotthard Tunnel, in the Suez Canal and in similar works, which in turn underlie the production of economic goods, in all this only the results of what was once a spiritual germ are present. And none of the physical labor could have been there if the spiritual germ had not been present. Look at anything that is produced, you will have to say to yourself everywhere: physical labor cannot even begin if spiritual labor has not gone before it; and if it does begin and the spiritual labor stops, it will not get very far either. Yes, one could prove just as rigorously as Karl Marx and Rodbertus thought they proved that economic goods arise from physical labor alone, that only mental labor produces economic goods, that physical labor is altogether entirely the result of mental labor. These things are entirely relative to each other. And the same rigor of reasoning that the Marxists can apply to the idea that only physical labor produces economic goods, the same rigor of reasoning could be found in the idea that only intellectual power produces economic goods.

What follows from this? I say explicitly: the same rigor of reasoning can apply in the one case as in the other; that is, the following can occur in one case or in the other. Karl Marx advocated the one. Someone might come along who proves just as rigorously that only intellectual labor produces economic goods. It is only due to the materialistic conditions of modern times that no such Marx has emerged for spiritual conditions as Marx emerged for material conditions. But both, if they had emerged, could have won followers. Karl Marx won enough followers; the other could have won followers too. The arguments of both could point to the same strict line of reasoning that you find today when people, of course always in good faith, discuss these or those reform issues in modern gatherings. There, everything is usually proved very strictly, because people are very clever today. Or when the people at the lecterns prove this or that, everything is strictly proved. But one can prove the opposite just as strictly. One just does not want to believe that logical proof is not something that can sustain life, but that a sense of reality and a connection with reality must be added to the logical proof or to that which is only gained from the logical proof. Only out of life can life be sustained, not out of intellectualistically oriented proofs. It is only due to the fact that the instincts of people in the last three to four centuries have been materialistically oriented that the presentation of evidence on the materialistic side has become so strict as in Marxism. As a rule, one does not get along with refutations, because the point of proof is not that one proves something, but that the other accepts the proof. But the acceptance of the proof does not rest on the logic of the proof, but — as people are when they do not penetrate into spiritual science — it rests on certain instincts, on habits, especially on habits of thinking. And so it must be said that life today is confused for us by the fact that souls do not want to awaken from their sleep to the impulses of reality, that souls, above all, do not want to penetrate to the point of saying to themselves: It is important to find the right point of view, not to look at the world from any point of view.

Today it is a matter of gaining a point of view that no longer gives rise to prejudice in the sense that one considers a one-sided line of argument to be correct, but rather one that allows one to see life so universally that one can truly weigh the weight of the one side's reasons as well as the weight of the reasons on the other side. Today we must recognize how much weight the arguments on one side, the materialistic side, carry, and how much weight the arguments on the spiritual side carry. This means that it has never been as necessary as it is today for people not to be fanatical. But fanaticism, which is virtually a modern phenomenon, can only be overcome if man opens within himself the source that leads him to a real insight into the spiritual connections of the world. That is why the fertilization of our Western civilization with the results of spiritual science is so eminently necessary. It can therefore be said, in a rigorous argument, if one wants — it always depends on whether one wants — that spiritual labor can be seen in the product. One can also say that physical labor can be seen in the product. But what are we really dealing with? In reality, we are dealing with the fact that certain processes in the external world are performed by human beings in a certain way. Let us suppose that I pick an apple from the tree. This is something that also has something to do as an addend in the sum of economic interrelations. We have to see what elements make up reality. When I pick an apple from the tree, I bring about a change in the external world, a metamorphosis: first the apple is up in the tree, then it may be lying in my basket. I have brought about this change. Certainly, a process has taken place in me, in the course of which physical strength has also been expended, which has been replaced again. But if I had taken a few steps on my walk at the same time as I would have picked the apple, I would have expended the same amount of strength. It is not a question of what happens inside me, and in an economic context it cannot be about anything that relates to the human organism. It cannot be a matter of raising the question: What does a person get in return for the physical strength expended? Rather, it can only be a matter of What is the inner significance of the metamorphosis that basically takes place entirely outside of the human being, which he only directs, which he only guides, that metamorphosis, that the apple is first at the top of the tree and then in his basket? Imagine you were to draw the whole process, or paint it. You paint the tree, then the human being next to it. You now paint how the person reaches out his hand, sets up a ladder and reaches out his hand, picks the apple, and then paint how he puts it in the basket. Now, just for the fun of it, let's say you erase everything that your painting was of the human being, and just look at what is happening objectively outside of the human being: the apple is up, moving down, is in the basket; you have completely eliminated the human being. But you have strictly focused on the process that is considered economically in life. That is what is at stake when the economic aspect is considered. And every time the purely economic consideration is based on false premises, when the consumption of vitality or physical strength and the like is included in the economic consideration, as Lassalle, as Marx, as almost all other academic economists do.

What matters, then, is that we can eliminate the human being where economic interrelationships are concerned. We must then be able to consider this eliminated human being in his or her own right. This is where we come to other contexts, to contexts that are based on a different foundation. When we say, “Yes, but people have to work, otherwise the apples won't fall from the trees into the baskets!” — when we say this, we realize: Now we cannot erase the human being! But above all, we cannot erase his soul if he is to remain human. If man is to remain human, then the impulse to work must come from within himself. He cannot remain human if a machine is devised by which he is driven through some technical process to the ladder, where his arm is raised, his fingers bent, and so on, or if the state were to introduce compulsory labor; both basically come down to the same thing. The point is that the impulse must lie within the human being. It will not lie within the human being unless it is ignited by the relationship, by the interaction between human beings.

As you can see, when we move on to the impulse to work, our considerations also enter a completely different realm from the economic realm. When it comes to the impulse for work, you cannot look away from the human being, but you also cannot look away from the innermost part of the human being. If you follow this matter in a realistic way, you will find that the one thing I mentioned, the economic process, is so radically different from what actually leads to work, what the impulse for work is, that this difference must be rooted in social reality itself.

Now there are many ways of thinking in order to arrive at the threefold social organism. But one should follow many paths of thought, because people today need a strong impulse; they are so sleepy when it comes to thinking! Above all, you will find that this tangle of ideas, which seeks to weld together everything that is economic, legal, and state-related with everything that is spiritual, has sprung entirely from materialism, which, however, at the same time, by arising as a world view, also binds the soul to bodily processes, but in doing so, also makes this soul passive, deadens this soul in its activity. We have not merely become materialistic, theoretically materialistic; we have become material. Therefore man cannot extricate himself from the catastrophe in which he finds himself today by a mere change of his way of thinking, but he can extricate himself only by a stimulation of his will. For the will is that which is the first soul-life to be independent of the body, and not entirely so, if it is ever harnessed to an end, can be harnessed to the body. For every time I perform an external act, I am given direct, vivid proof that the will is independent of the material body. For the will is active in taking the apple down from the tree and putting it into the basket. I can exclude from the purely economic process what a person eats; but I cannot exclude the will of human beings.

Today, I just wanted to give you another example of a train of thought by which you can find the deep justification of these ideas of threefolding. First, I showed you how completely different the impulse of work is from everything else that is included in economic life. You know, of course, that in the threefold organism it should be in the field of the state and the law. But if you follow the lines of thought stimulated today in other directions, for example, the way in which ideas become confused with regard to the share of physical and mental labor in the production of the product — if you think as people have learned to think during the last three to four centuries, then you will also see how this tangle of thoughts, which has arisen, also has a confusing effect when one wants to separate the spiritual life purely from the legal and economic life. For there is no necessity for work if one has the view that man simply uses physical strength in his work, which must be replaced by wages. We have seen that there is no such necessity for work. How does one come to entertain such a train of thought? How does one come to formulate this idea at all? One comes from materialistic backgrounds. One cannot free one's thinking from matter. One cannot find anything that originates in man and is independent of his body. Thus one is chained to the body with one's ideas. Political economy is chained to the body in a materialistic way. Because it cannot see the purely spiritual connections in the external world in economic life, it is diverted to the purely material process of consuming physical energy and replacing it: giving off energy, absorbing energy, giving off energy, absorbing energy, and so on! People want to operate entirely in the material world and therefore cannot arrive at anything other than, so to speak, the incorporation of the human being as a machine into the economic organism.

It is already the case today that we are not stuck in disaster because of the institutions, but that we are stuck in disaster because of the deepest thinking and feeling and the will impulses of people, and that it is eminently necessary to get away from the prejudice that a social upturn can somehow happen through mere institutions. It is urgently necessary to recognize that a social upturn can only come about through a transformation in the direction of people's thinking and feeling, through the eradication of old habits of thought that threaten to drag us deeper and deeper into decline. We must get used to following with a certain deepest interest what is alive in the thoughts of contemporary humanity. It will be found that it is of no use to continue these thoughts in any particular direction, but that it is essential to leave these lines of thought in the most important areas today and to take up new lines of thought. But these can only emerge from the deepest foundations of human nature itself. And they can only enter into human culture if impulses that are original and elementary are really taken into account and accepted by people. But today such impulses can only be found in the spiritual realm of anthroposophical science. We need a new understanding of humanity, because the old understanding of humanity has led to error even in such a field as that which I have characterized for you today. The old view has already gone so far as to regard the human being as a machine and to fail to recognize the absurdity of the idea that consuming human physical strength and replacing it with wages as an equivalent is an economic category. All this is based on the fact that within today's way of thinking, one cannot know human beings at all and that one needs to gain knowledge of human nature in the deepest sense of the word. However, this will only be possible if our whole way of thinking is oriented towards anthroposophy.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive