The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Implementation of the Threefold Social Organism
GA 24

This third edition of volume GA 24 appears in a modified form under the new title Implementation of the Threefold Social Order (1920) and Essays, Appeals, Pamphlets on the Threefold Social Order (1919-1922). Texts that are not related to the threefold social order but to the events of the World War are no longer included; these are now contained in the new volume of the complete edition entitled Thoughts During the War (1915) and Other Texts on the Events of the World War (1917–1921) GA 19: the writing Thoughts During the War, a book review from 1917, the memoranda from 1917, a foreword from 1919, and an interview with Jules Sauerwein on questions about the events of the World War from 1921. GA 24, together with the key points of the social question GA 23, documents only Rudolf Steiner's writings and essays that arose in connection with the threefold movement.

This volume thus comprises texts of different character: a collection of essays published as a book, essays, appeals, leaflets, manuscripts, and communications. The first part consists of the independent work In Ausführung der Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus (Stuttgart 1920). This is followed by the remaining writings on the social question and the current situation, further essays from the threefold social order and from the journals Soziale Zukunft and Das Goetheanum, as well as leaflets, appeals, and announcements. In contrast to the first and second editions, the remaining essays are not arranged thematically, but in chronological order. Newly included is the first French edition of the article “State Politics and Human Politics,” followed by a reproduction of the German manuscript, which was not printed at the time.

I. Implementing the threefold social order

• Preliminary remarks
• The Threefolding of the Social Organism, a Necessity of the Times
• International Necessities of Life and Social Tripartism
• Marxism and Tripartism
• Free School and Threefolding
• What is Needed
• Ability to work, willingness to work, and the threefold social organismThe Ability to Work, the Will to Work and the Tripartite Social Organism
• Socialist Blindness of Soul
• Socialist Obstacles to Development
• What a "new Spirit" Demands
• Economic Profit and the Zeitgeist
• Cultivation of the Spirit and Economic Life
• Law and Economy
• Social Spirit and Socialist Superstition
• The Educational Basis of the Waldorf School
• The Fundamental Error in Social Thinking
• The Roots of Social Life
• The Foundation of Threefolding
• True Enlightenment as the Basis of Social Thinking
• The Path to the Salvation of the German People
• The Thirst of Time for Thoughts
• Insight Needed!

II. Essays. Appeals, Pamphlets on Threefold Social Order (1919–1922)

• To the German People and the Cultural World!
• Proposals for Socialization (Guiding Principles for the Work of Threefold Social Order)
• The Path of the “Threefold Social Organism”
• On the matter of works councils
• The threefold social organism, democracy, and socialism
• On the ”threefold social organism"
• International economy and the threefold social organism
• Spiritual life, legal order, economy
• Guiding principles for a new enterprise
• The Goetheanum and the voice of the present
• Misguided ideas and journalistic ethics
• New Czerninism must not replace the old
• Destruction and reconstruction
• Threefold Social Order and Social Trust (Capital and Credit)
• Insightful Will is Necessary
• The demands of today and the thoughts of yesterday
• Ideas and bread
• The leaders and the led
• Fatalism as a pest of our time
• The threefold social order and the intellectuals
• Shadow coups and the practice of ideas
• The spiritual heritage and the demands of the present
• The educational objectives of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart
• Defense against an attack from within the university system
• The threefold social order during and after the war
• State policy and human policy
• The path through the turmoil of the present
• Preface to a publisher's announcement
• Call to save Upper Silesia
• The real forces in contemporary social life
• Dead politics and living ideas
• Program limitations of the ”Coming Day"