The Threefold Commonwealth

by Rudolf Steiner

At the time when people first began to think about the question of capitalism, this same capitalism had already set up a disease in the body social. The disease is what people feel and are aware of. They see that it is something which has to be counteracted. But one must see further than that; one must recognise, that the origin of the disease lies in the fact, that the creative forces, at work in capital, have been absorbed into the circuit of economic life. If one is to work in the direction already urgently demanded by the evolutionary forces of mankind, one must not suffer oneself to be deluded by the type of thought, which regards as an unpractical piece of idealism the demand, that the spiritual life should be set free, and given control of the employment of capital.

At the present moment, certainly, people seem but little disposed to connect the spiritual life in any way directly with that social idea, which is to put capital on sound lines. They try to connect onto something that falls within the circuit of economic life. They see, that the manufacture of commodities in recent times has led to wholesale dealing, and this again to the present form of capitalism. And now they propose to replace this form of industrial economy by a syndical system, under which the producers will be working for their own wants. But since of course industry must retain all the modern means of production, the various industrial concerns are to be united together into one big syndicate. Here, they think, everyone will be producing to the orders of the community, and the community cannot be an exploiter, because it would simply be exploiting itself. And for the sake, or from the necessity, of linking onto something that already exists, they turn their eyes on the modern State, with a view to converting this into a comprehensive syndicate. One thing however they leave out of their reckoning, namely, that the bigger the syndicate the less possibility there is of its being able to do what they expect of it. Unless individual ability finds its place in the syndical organism in the manner and form already described, it is impossible that communal control of labour should result in a healthy commonwealth.

The reason why people are so ill-disposed to-day to form an unbiassed opinion as to the position spiritual life occupies in the social order, is that they are accustomed to think of what is spiritual as being at the opposite end from all that is material and practical. Not a few will find something rather absurd in the view here put forward, that the employment of capital in economic life must be regarded as the way in which one side of the spiritual life manifests itself. It is conceivable, that in characterising what is here said as absurd, members of the late ruling classes may even find themselves in agreement with socialist thinkers. If one would see all that this supposed absurdity means for the health of the body social, one must examine certain currents of thought in the present day,—currents of thought, which spring from impulses in the soul, that are quite honest after their fashion, but which nevertheless, wherever they find entrance, check the development of any really social way of thinking.

These currents of thought tend more or less unconsciously away from all that gives due energy and driving power to the inward life. They make for a conception of life,—an inner life of thought, of soul, directed to the pursuit of knowledge,—which shall be as it were an island in the common sea of human existence. Thus they are not in a position to build the bridge between this inner life and that other which binds men to the everyday world. It is not uncommon to-day, to find persons who think it rather “distinguished” to sit aloft in castles of cloudland, meditating in somewhat pedantic abstractness over all manner of ethico-religious problems. One finds them meditating on virtue and how a man may best acquire it; how he should dwell in loving-kindness towards his neighbours, and how he may be so blessed as to find “a meaning in life.” And, all the time, one recognises the impossibility of bridging the gulf between what these folks call good, and sweet, and kindly, and right, and proper, and all that is going on in the outer world amongst men’s everyday surroundings, in the manipulation of capital, the payment of labour, the consumption, production and circulation of commodities, the system of credit banking, and the stock-exchange. One can see two main streams running side by side even in men’s very habits of thought, one of which remains up aloft as it were in divine spiritual altitudes, and has no desire to build a bridge from spiritual impulses to life’s ordinary affairs. The other stream runs on, void of thought, in the everyday world. But life is a single whole. It cannot thrive unless the forces that dwell in all ethical and religious life bring driving power to the most commonplace, everyday things of life, into the sort of life that some persons may think rather beneath them. For, if people neglect to build the bridge between the two regions of life, then not only their religious and moral life, but their social thinking too, degenerates into mere wordy sentiment, far removed from commonplace, true realities. And then these commonplaces have their revenge as it were. For there is then still a sort of “spiritual” impulse in man, urging him in pursuit of every imaginable ideal and every conceivable thing that he calls “good”; whilst on the other side there are those different instincts, which are in opposition to these ideals,—the instincts that underlie the ordinary daily needs of life and require an economic system for their satisfaction, and to which he devotes himself minus his spirit. He knows no practicable path from his conception of spirituality to the business of everyday life. And so everyday life acquires a form, which is not even supposed to have any connection with those ethical impulses that remain aloof in the more distinguished altitudes, all soul and spirit. And then, the daily commonplaces are avenged; for the ethical religious life turns to a living lie in men’s hearts, because, all unperceived it is being dissevered from commonplace practice and from all direct contact with life.

How many people there are to-day, who, from a certain ethical or religious distinction of mind, have all the will to live on a right footing with their fellow-men, who desire to act by others only in the best conceivable way, and yet fall short of the kind of feeling that would enable them to do so, because they cannot lay hold upon any social conception that finds its outlet in practical habits of life! It is people such as these, who, at this epoch-making moment in the world’s history when social questions have become so urgent, are blocking the road to a true practice of life. They reckon themselves very practical persons, and all the time are visionary obstructionists. One can hear them making speeches like this: “What is really needed, is for people to rise above all this materialism, this external material life which drove us into the disaster of the great war and into all this misery. They must turn to a spiritual conception of life.” And to illustrate man’s path to spirituality, they are forever harping upon great men of byegone days, who were venerated for their conversion to a spiritual way of thinking. One finds, however, that directly one tries to bring the talk round to the very thing that the spirit has to do for real practical life, and what is so urgently required of the spirit to-day: the creation of daily bread, one is at once reminded, that the first thing, after all, is to bring people again to acknowledge the spirit. At this moment however, the urgent thing is, to employ the powers of the spiritual life to discover the right principles of social health. And for this it is not enough that men should make a hobby of the spirit, as a bye-path in life. Everyday existence needs to be brought into line with the spirit. It was this taste for turning spiritual life into bye-paths, that led the late ruling classes to find their pleasure in social conditions that ended in the present state of affairs.

In the social life of the present day, the control of capital for the production of commodities is very closely bound up with the ownership of the means of production, amongst which capital is of course included. And yet these two relations between man and capital are quite different as regards the way they operate within the social system. The control of capital by individual ability is, when suitably applied, a means of enriching the body social with wealth which it is to everyone’s interest should exist. Whatever a person’s position in life, it is to his interest that nothing should be wasted of those individual abilities which flow from the fountain-head of human nature, and through which things are created that are of use to the life of man. These abilities, however, never become developed, unless the human beings endowed with them have free initiative in their exercise. Any check to the free flow from these sources means a certain measure of loss to the welfare of mankind. Now capital is the means of making these abilities available for extended fields of social life. It must be to the true interests of everybody in a community to have the collective property in capital so administered, that individuals specially gifted in one direction, or groups of people with special qualifications, should be able to acquire the use of capital, and should use it in the way their own particular initiative prompts them. Everybody, be he brainworker or labourer, if he consults his own interests without prejudice, must say: “I should not only wish an adequate number of persons, or groups of persons, to have absolutely free use of capital, but I should also like them to have access to capital on their own initiative; for they themselves are the best judges of how their particular abilities can make capital a means of producing what is useful to the body social.”

It does not fall within the scope of this work to describe how, in the course of mankind’s evolution, as individual human abilities came to play a part in the social order, private property also grew up out of other forms of ownership. Ownership has, under the influence of the division of labour, gone on developing in this form within the body social down to the present day. And it is with present conditions that we are here concerned, and with what the next stage in their evolution must be. But in whatever way private property arose,—by the exercise of power, conquest, etc.,—it is an outcome of the social creativeness which is associated with individual human ability. And yet socialists to-day, with their thoughts bent upon social reconstruction, hold the theory, that the only way to obviate what is oppressive in private ownership, is to turn it into communal ownership. They put the question thus: How can private property in the means of production be prevented from arising, so that its oppressive effect upon the unpropertied masses may cease? In putting the question in this way, they overlook the fact, that the social organism is something that is constantly changing, growing. One cannot ask about a growing organism. What is the best form of arrangement to preserve it in the state which one regards as the suitable one for it. One can think in that way about something which starts at a certain point and then goes on in the same way ever afterwards without any essential change. But that will not do for the body social. Its life is a continual changing of each thing as it arises. To fix on some form as the very best, and expect it to remain in that form, is to undermine the very conditions of its life.

One of the conditions of life for the body social is, that whoever can serve the community through his individual abilities should not be deprived of the power to do so freely of his own initiative. Where such service involves free use of the means of production, to hamper free initiative would be to injure the general social interests. I am not proposing here to urge the argument commonly used in this connection, namely, that the prospect of the gains associated with the ownership of means of production is needed in order to stimulate the “enterpriser” to exertion. The whole form of thought represented in this book, with its conception of a progressive evolution in social conditions, must lead to the expectation, that this kind of incentive to social activity may be eliminated, through the emancipation of the spiritual life from its association with the political and economic system. Once it is free, the spiritual life will of itself inevitably evolve a social sense; and this social sense will provide incentives of a very different kind from the hope of economic advantage. But it is not so much a question of the kind of impulse which makes men like private ownership of the means of production, as of whether the necessary conditions of life for the body social are best fulfilled when the use of the means of production is free, or when it is directed by the community. And here, one must always clearly remember, that one cannot draw conclusions for the social organism of the present day from the conditions of life supposed to be found in primitive communities, but from such only as correspond to man’s present stage of development. At the present stage, it is not possible for individual ability to find fruitful exercise through capital in the round of economic life, unless its use of capital is free. For fruitful results in any field of production there must be opportunity for the free use of capital; not because it gives an advantage to some individual or group; but because, opportunely directed by a social sense, it is the best way of serving the community. Whether he is producing alone or in company, the material a man is working on is in a manner bound up with himself, much like the skill of his own arms or legs. To interfere with his free use of the means of production, is like crippling the free exercise of his bodily skill. Private ownership, however, is simply the medium for this free use of the means of production. As regards ownership, all that matters to the body social, is that the owner should have the right to use it of his own free initiative. Clearly, two things are joined together in social life, that are of quite distinct implications for the body social—one, the free use of the capital basis of social production; the other, the “relation in right” which arises between the user of capital and other people, from the fact that his right of use precludes these other people from free activity on this same capital basis.

It is not the free use of itself in the beginning, which does the mischief in society, but the continuance of the right of use after the circumstances have come to an end which linked that use opportunely to individual abilities. Anyone who looks upon the social organism as a changing, growing thing, cannot fail to see what is meant. He will look about for some possible mode of arranging what is helpful to life in one way, so that it may not have bad effects in another. For a live thing, there is no possible mode of arrangement, that can lead to fruition, in which the finished process in its growth will not in turn become detrimental. And if one is oneself to collaborate at a growing organism,—as man necessarily must in the body social,—one’s business cannot lie in checking necessary developments, for the sake of obviating detrimental consequences. That would be to sap every possibility of life for the body social. It is solely a question of intervening at the right moment, when what was helpful and opportune is beginning to turn detrimental.

Free use of the capital-basis through individual ability:—this must be an established possibility. The ownership right involved in it must be shiftable, directly this right begins to turn to a means of unrightfully acquiring power. There is one institution, introduced in our times, which partially meets this social requirement, though only for what one may call “spiritual property.” “Spiritual property” when its author is dead, passes after a while into the ownership of the community for free use. Here we have an underlying conception, that is in accordance with the actual nature of life in a human society. Closely as the production of a purely spiritual possession is bound up with the private endowment of the individual, yet this possession is, at the same time, a result of the common social life, and must pass at the right moment into the common life. But it is just the same with other property. By aid of his property the individual person produces for the service of the community; but this is only possible in co-operation with the community. And accordingly the right to the use of a piece of property cannot be exercised apart from the interests of the community. The problem is not, how to abolish ownership of the capital-basis? but, how can ownership be best turned to the service of the community?