Editing Rudolf Steiner (section)

=== Social reform===
{{main|Threefold Social Order}}
For a period after World War I, Steiner was active as a lecturer on social reform. A petition expressing his basic social ideas was widely circulated and signed by many cultural figures of the day, including [[Hermann Hesse]].

In Steiner's chief book on [[social reform]], ''Toward Social Renewal'', he suggested that the cultural, political and economic spheres of society need to work together as consciously cooperating yet independent entities, each with a particular task: political institutions should be democratic, establish [[Equality before the law|political equality]] and protect [[human rights]]; cultural institutions should nurture the free and unhindered development of science, art, education and religion; and economic institutions should enable producers, distributors, and consumers to cooperate voluntarily to provide efficiently for society's needs.<ref name="Essential">{{Cite book |last=Steiner |first=Rudolf |title=The essential Steiner : basic writings of Rudolf Steiner |date=1984 |publisher=Harper & Row |isbn=0-06-065345-0 |editor-last=McDermott |editor-first=Robert |edition=1st |location=San Francisco}}</ref> He saw this division of responsibility as a vital task which would take up consciously the historical trend toward the mutual independence of these three realms. Steiner also gave suggestions for many specific social reforms.

Steiner proposed that societal well-being fundamentally depends upon a relationship of mutuality between the individuals and the community as a whole:

{{Blockquote|The well-being of a community of people working together will be the greater, the less the individual claims for himself the proceeds of his work, i.e. the more of these proceeds he makes over to his fellow-workers, the more his own needs are satisfied, not out of his own work but out of the work done by others.|Steiner|The Fundamental Social Law<ref name="Fundamental" />}}

He expressed another aspect of this in the following motto:
{{Blockquote|The healthy social life is found <br />When in the mirror of each human soul <br />The whole community finds its reflection, <br />And when in the community <br /> The virtue of each one is living.|Steiner|The Fundamental Social Law<ref name="Fundamental">Steiner (1917), [http://wn.rsarchive.org/Articles/FuSoLa_index.html "The Fundamental Social Law"], translated in ''Selected writings of Rudolf Steiner'' (1993), Richard Seddon (Ed.), Rudolf Steiner Press, Bristol. {{ISBN|1 85584 005 7}}</ref>}}

According to Cees Leijenhorst, "Steiner outlined his vision of a new political and social philosophy that avoids the two extremes of capitalism and socialism."<ref name="Hanegraaff Faivre van den Broek Brach 2005 p. 1090">{{Cite book |last=Leijenhorst |first=Cees |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HCUOAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA1090 |title=Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism: I |publisher=Brill |year=2005 |isbn=978-90-04-14187-2 |editor-last=Hanegraaff |editor-first=Wouter J. |page=1090 |quote=Steiner outlined his vision of a new political and social philosophy that avoids the two extremes of capitalism and socialism. |access-date=2 January 2024 |editor-last2=Faivre |editor-first2=Antoine |editor-last3=Broek |editor-first3=Roelof van den |editor-last4=Brach |editor-first4=Jean-Pierre}}</ref>

According to Egil Asprem, "Steiner’s teachings had a clear authoritarian ring, and developed a rather crass polemic against 'materialism', 'liberalism', and cultural 'degeneration'. [...] For example, anthroposophical medicine was developed to contrast with the 'materialistic' (and hence 'degenerate') medicine of the establishment."{{sfn|Asprem|2018|p=494}}