Fundamental Social Law

Formulated by Rudolf Steiner:

"In a community of people working together, the well-being of the community is greater the less the individual worker claims for himself the proceeds of the work he has done and the more he makes these over to his fellow workers. Similarly he allows his own needs to be met out of the work done by others."

Discussion

From http://wn.rsarchive.org/Articles/FuSoLa_index.html:

"Obviously this law says nothing less than this: man's welfare is the greater, in proportion as egoism is less. So for its translation into reality one must have

people who can find their way out of egoism. In practice, however, this is quite impossible if the individual's share of weal and woe is measured according to his labour. He who labours for himself must gradually fall a victim to egoism. Only one who labours solely for the

rest can gradually grow to be a worker without egoism.

But there is one thing needed to begin with. If any man works for another, he must find in this other man the reason for his work; and if anyone is to work for the community, he must perceive and feel the

value, the nature and importance, of this community. He can only do this when the community is something quite different from a more or less indefinite summation of individual men. It must be informed by an actual spirit, in which each single one has his part. It must be such

that each one says: 'It is as it should be, and I will that it be so'. The community must have a spiritual mission, and each individual must have the will to contribute towards the fulfilling of this mission. All the vague abstract ideals of which people usually talk cannot present such a mission. If there be nothing but these, then one individual here or one group there will be working without any clear overview of what use there is in their work, except it being to the

advantage of their families, or of those particular interests to which they happen to be attached. In every single member, down to the most solitary, this spirit of the community must be alive ..."

From http://wn.rsarchive.org/SocialIssues/19220726p01.html:

"the more the division of labour advances, the more it will come about that one man always works for the rest — for the community in general — and never for himself. In other words, with the rise of the modern division of labour, the economic life as such depends on Egoism being extirpated, root and branch. I beg you to take this remark not in an ethical but in a purely economic sense.

Economically speaking, egoism is impossible. I can no longer do anything for myself; the more the division of labour advances, the more must I do everything for others.

It is neither a God, nor a moral law, nor an instinct that calls for altruism in modern economic life — altruism in work, altruism in the production of goods. It is the modern division of labour — a purely economic category — that requires it."