Personal Life and Class Struggle

Abstract

If we want to ‘justify’ what we do, we have to show that it fits into the whole pattern of personal life of which we approve. Many people desire to call on God’s command; but often the believer has difficulty in concluding from holy scriptures and church rules of the distant past what God’s will may be in a special case at the present moment. For example, do the Ten Commandments, through dogmatic decrees of the church and other binding decisions, order a Catholic to fight for or fight against the system based on private property of the means of production? There are other people who do not call on God any longer, but who still have in their innermost heart the wish — formed through tradition and childhood experiences — to base their action on commandments which stand outside man, strange and strict. What we could call ‘commandments without a commander’ play a considerable role. Kant’s ‘categorical imperative’ can probably be traced back to theological roots.

[1928, Bibl. No. 172 — Ed.]. [The German original has four additional sections: Rationalization and Labor Movement; Anthroposophy and Class Ideology; Catolic Church and Proletariat; Statistics and Socialism — Ed.]