The Core Points of the Social Question

In the Necessities of Life of the Present and Future

by Rudolf Steiner (CW 23, 1919)

This book explores a pathway to social renewal that is urgently needed in our times. Since it was written in 1919, just after World War I, the social questions may have shifted yet our fundamental dissatisfactions remain. Our deep human longings for fellowship, fairness, and freedom remain largely unmet by contemporary social institutions and by society as a whole.

These deep longings can only really be satisfied by a new social form – called social threefolding – in which society is decentralized into three independent administrations: economy, rights-state, and the spiritual-cultural life. Only by separating society into these three distinct yet collaborating areas can we hope to overcome the divisions, inequities, and unfreedoms we currently experience.

This accurate yet easily-readable translation of one of Rudolf Steiner’s most important basic books brings the English reader closer than ever before to the experience of the original German. Steiner’s words come to life in a clear and powerful way, lighting an inner fire – a “goal-conscious social will.”

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This is an all-new, improved translation of Steiner’s book (CW 23), which was previously published as Towards Social Renewal and The Threefold Social Order.

The cover depicts the human being unifying the three separate social principles. The single ellipse depicts the one world economy and the head system; the two parabolas represent the rights life with its duality of entitlements and obligations, as well as heart and lung; and the three hyperbolas convey the open, dynamic will and limb gesture of the free spiritual-cultural life – with its three branches of science, art, and religion. These three different conic sections, each with its unique geometric quality, weave together to shape the human being, who brings the three separate social areas together as a unity (Chapter 3).