The Threefold Social Order-1
- We'll begin the study with the first part of an article Steiner wrote on his ideas for the healthy working of society in 3 spheres. The article is entitled "Culture, Law, and Economy" and was published in Sept. 1919. I'm going to take it section by section, but I'll put the entire article in The Files section for anyone who wants to read the whole thing first.
Culture, Law and Economy
by Rudolf Steiner Sept. 1919
In the present social movement there is a great deal of talk about social institutions, but very little talk about social and antisocial human beings. Very little regard is paid to the "social question" that arises when one considers that institutions in a community take their social or antisocial stamp from the people who run them. Socialist thinkers expect to see in the community's control of the means of production something that will satisfy the demands of a wide range of people. They take for granted that, under communal control of the economy, human relations will necessarily assume a social form as well. They have seen that the economic system along the lines of private capitalism has led to antisocial conditions. They believe that when this industrial system has disappeared, the antisocial tendencies at work within it will also necessarily come to an end.
. Undoubtedly, along with the modern private capitalist form of industrial economy there have arisen social evils evils that embrace the widest range of social life; but is this in any way a proof that they are a necessary consequence of this industrial system? An industrial system can, in and of itself, do nothing beyond putting men into life situations that enable them to produce goods for themselves or for others in a more or less efficient manner. The modern industrial system has brought the means of production under the power of individual persons or groups. The achievements of technology were such that the best use could be made of them by a concentration of industrial and economic power. So long as this power is employed in the one field the production of goods alone its social effect is essentially different from what it is when this power oversteps its bounds and trespasses into the fields of law or culture. It is this trespassing into the other fields that, in the course of the last few centuries, has led to the social evils that the modern social movement is striving to abolish."
To Be Continued....
Commentary to follow.