6.1 On the Issue of Motions (Proposals) and the Submission of Motions
What moves the author becomes more readily apparent in view of certain questions. In order for that which has only been implied so far to come to the fore in full clarity, a whole row of such questions would have to be considered under the viewpoints indicated. One of these questions shall be dealt with here in connection with the already mentioned problem of motions (proposals) that also played a considerable role at the General Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society in 1972.
This problem cannot be dealt with abstractly in the form of conclusions drawn from certain presuppositions, but only in view of the living reality of the Society in which motions are submitted, of the conceptions that are formed about this reality and of the impulses for responsibility and realization that are shown for social design. Therefore, the preceding is the necessary basis for the following.
At the General Meeting of the year 1972, similar already to earlier General Meetings, several of the motions submitted were, as mentioned before, regarded as being disruptive or even worthy of a worse predicate, because they were supposedly in contradiction to the nature of the General Anthroposophical Society, and because they unduly confined the space for so-called more positive matters, e.g. reports from various factual fields of interest and local areas.
Concerning the reports; they are certainly in the framework of a General Assembly of the General Anthroposophical Society of considerable importance, namely in connection with the complete overview of the year that must result from the full report of accounting from the Council. However, to ascribe them the leading role within a General Assembly would be misplaced, for the main content of this yearly coming together of the members must be the essential process of society-forming, thus an actual event happening with dramatic decisiveness, not the retrospective of what was achieved in the past. Not the contemplative but the active Society, giving itself an example of anthroposophical action, is the actor that the podium of a General Meeting is waiting for.
This consciousness-raising action and active consciousness-raising is according to the preceding remarks to be recognized in the overcoming of administrative thinking and action, in the metamorphosis of the administrative mentality in a consciousness mentality, thus in the depoliticization according to way that the Society and above all the School have been tasked by the “Principles” given to her by Rudolf Steiner. In view of the high mission of the Anthroposophical Society, it would be disastrous to want to believe that this administrative mindset could be overcome by abstract conclusions and by rules and regulations that have after all themselves an administrative character. Rather, this victory presents itself in one’s mind eye as a spur to long and laborious but also auspicious work. In view of this task we cannot deceive ourselves about how far we still are away from the goal that we are all basically striving for. The scope of the task must have become most poignantly aware for the impartial observer especially through the course that the General Meetings have taken during the last few years. We should espouse as the positive result of these meetings the warning that we cannot avoid the extra-ordinary problems that we are facing, and that from the very nature of our cause we must face, by viewing them lightly and taking tactical measures or through enforcing regulations. Instead, the most seminal social scientific and social therapeutic work is to be done here. For a new mode of human cooperation and social life can only emerge through a restructuring and reassessment that questions everything coming from the past – i.e. thus from a situation of helplessness that, in the absence of the normal basics, does not lean on the crutches of the bourgeois mentality and way of life, but that can only from inwardly achieved strength stand up to the awareness of its task.
In order to characterize this task with a saying by Rudolf Steiner we may be reminded of the “breaking with everything that smacks of associations“ that he repeatedly described as a vital feature of the Society and School founded by him. Such a break, however, cannot ensue from the outside through violating the laws of associations or by repealing them through the abusive maintenance of these laws. What is needed here can only be reached from the inside through a social organic process; through leading new society- and community-forming life force to the socio-spiritual existence of the Anthroposophical Society; through exhausting the valid legal norms, not by violating them; by fulfilling, not by annulling them.[1] Such a break with everything that smacks of associations can therefore not be a unique act, it must be a continual striving and indeed not only so because the magnitude of the task at hand requires the appropriate earnestness, but even more so because what is meant here can in no way be thought and realized in the form of a successful state of being (with maintaining an arsenal of rules and regulations) but only in the form of an aspiring happening.
Now it is naturally a matter of course when in this context, as if it would be appropriate to this “break”, the argument is raised that it is not possible to vote on cognitive questions and that in a free society there could and should be no coercion. Motions, however, so it is argued, have by necessity a coercive tendency. Even though this is, or seems to be, obvious, it is nevertheless also to be asked here, if this obviousness comes closest to the matter at hand. Naturally it cannot be denied that the problem that motions indeed pose within the social life of a free society require a meticulous treatment, something that cannot, like several other themes, be done extensively here. The following indications however may perhaps focus the reader in the direction in which the author gazes.
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[1] The same is of course true for all working communities aiming to organize themselves in the sense of the modern principle of civilization characterized here.
6.2 Motions and Concerns (Wishes)
At first, it may be recalled that the “Principles”, which Rudolf Steiner during the Christmas Conference as the exoteric metamorphosis of the words of the Foundation Stone[2] spoken by him, gave as an example to the newly emerging Society[3], do not distinguish between “concerns” and “motions”. In the “Principles” only “motions” are mentioned, whereby they are expressly recognized as constitutional elements of the Society. The distinction between “concern” and “motion”, which plays a considerable role in the General Assemblies of the General Anthroposophical Society appears already less reasonable when one considers that in general everything that is brought forward is a matter of concern on the part of the submitter, namely the expression of an item of knowledge or supposed knowledge and an appeal for sharing this knowledge. In this sense a motion is naturally a matter of concern and could be understood as such.
Now, one can indeed be of the opinion that every speaker appearing at a General Assembly must be free to abstain from a vote about the subject he brought forward. By abstaining from a vote or refusing it, a speaker would express that he makes use of the modality of a concern. But this is to begin with opposed by the idea that thereby the submission of a motion is not eliminated, since each participant of a General Assembly with regard to its consciousness-raising task brings his own wish to expression by his participation in this event, even when he does not make use of the modality of the motion, which apart from that is at his disposal. Every wish for consciousness-raising and stimulus to become active must come above all from the representatives of the Council at the Goetheanum (or a similar constituted society, whose task it also is to inform themselves about the formation of judgement within the Society and therefore not only to further this, but to render it as process and result as perceptible and assessable as possible. Besides that, in reality the casting of a vote also takes place with regard to a so-called concern, when this is brought to the attention of the audience and when the latter respond to it with active interest. They will do this in the form of agreement, of rejection or of restraint at least inwardly, thus in the same way as during a vote that is registered in the usual form. To believe that the coercion that is in the sense of public law supposedly connected with each vote would be eliminated, when a vote according to the law of associations is omitted, would be a serious mistake. For even when a coercive mindset would be compatible with the attitude of the members, the coercion could not be eliminated by intimidating members through suppressing their views and willingness to cooperate. The problem can be repressed by displacing it, but not solved. Were one again to counter that blocking a vote (at least in certain cases) would be necessary, because in that way unpleasant or even disastrous legal consequences for the Society and the School would be averted, then one can only reply that the belief that one would be able to ban evil by a self-contradictory attitude and action is blind. Evil cannot be banned by injustice. This is also the case when the illusion of the moment conjures up a different image for the eye of the observer that can be led astray. Similarly it is true that a speaker who chooses for his address a form contrary to the real event can hardly feel himself to be in undisturbed harmony with the impulses that want to shape the epoch of the consciousness soul (fully awake self-control). He can nevertheless do what his supposed insight leads him to do. This action is however hardly cleared, when it does not understand the social and cognitional character of its attitude. Performing exact research into the problems that are thereby only indicated is the task of social science. That this in the future would have to be extended to all vital and cognitional processes of the Anthroposophical Society and the Free School, if these are to be further developed on the basis of creative impulses, is something that the General Assemblies of the last years have most clearly shown.[4] Apart from that, the following supplementary considerations are an attempt to place the problem of motions in a wider context.
The distinction between motions and concerns becomes disputable, if not even abusive when it is connected with a ruling based on the law of association that concerns are only to be brought forward, but not taken up in the discussion within the Assembly. Thereby concerns are stripped of the society-forming process that is the actual “concern” of a General Assembly of the General Anthroposophical Society. Certainly, so-called concerns do not need to remain hovering in a semi-alive space, rather they can be taken up by the Assembly and further developed in the discussion. But thereby they become motions, something that is submitted to the Assembly and the leadership of the Free School (as in general to office holders of a modern society) and on their part can be met by the addressees with affirmative, negative, contradictory or pro-active responses and initiatives.
Up to this point, several proponents also go along with the view that considers motions in principle or to a great extent irreconcilable with the nature of an anthroposophical General Assembly. They too, however, refuse generally, as shown by experience, to enter into a discussion within a General Assembly about statements that they consider to be “unconstitutional”. But recently within the Anthroposophical Society everything that has the form of a motion pertaining to the sphere of initiative of the Council appears to be labelled “unconstitutional”, because the result of a vote on the motion would place the council under executive coercion. It is clear that according to this view motions are in principle rejected all together, for in the domain of the General Anthroposophical Society (as in every modern society permeated by ideational formative impulses) there is nothing that would not pertain to the initiative sphere of the Council. But even when it is attempted to restrict the “unconstitutionality” to such motions that expressly pertain to the sphere of the leadership of the School (or the ideational representation of a modern society), it will be difficult by consequently thinking this through to omit the justification of a certain sector of motions, because within the Anthroposophical Society (a truly modern society) there is and can be nothing that not at least indirectly concerns the leadership of the School (its ideational representation). Indeed, an observer at the General Assembly of the year 1972 would have to gain the distinct impression that many of its participants and namely those with leading positions saw the removal of motions from the course of the Assembly as a sort of ideal. None any of them were probably clearly aware as to what extent they placed themselves in contradiction to the “Principles” and the constitution, even though nobody could escape noticing that there was always talk about “unconstitutionality” when thereby the aim was to prevent a knowledge aspiring discussion about a problem.
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[2] The Foundation Stone Mantra’s, in which Rudolf Steiner expressed the spiritual act of the refoundation of the Anthroposophical Society, were entrusted to the consciousness of the members of the reconstituted Society as meditative (esoteric) contents. They were and are meant to form the bio- spiritual cognitive basis (the Foundation Stone immersed in every musing heart) of the Society and the School. For as intrinsic spiritual structures they can only exist in modes of consciousness and can as such only be symbolically represented through external modes of existence.
[3] See the publication of the author “Charter of Humanity – The Principles of the general Anthroposophical Society”.
[4] The same again is true for all working communities. For their creators a study of the processes within the Anthroposophical Society can provide insight by way of an example given here. Thereby they can be spared from making mistakes and taking wrong turns.
6.3 The Societal and Communal Constitutive Function of Motions
The abstract conclusion concerning the so-called coercive character of a vote connected with every sort motion, loses however in the face of the facts every significance. That a vote in fact also occurs with regard to concerns, has already been mentioned. Furthermore, the public principle (see § 8 of the “Principles”) may be mentioned that belongs to the basics of the reconstitution of the general Anthroposophical Society (as in every modern society). An infringement on this Principle is no doubt “unconstitutional”. Therefore public law must also be adhered to in a members meeting of the General Anthroposophical Society in so far as its management may not contradict the law of associations of the guest land. A ban on motions or a ruling based on the law of associations against the right to submit motions as well as, which in a spiritual sense would even be far more serious, a crackdown on motions through the way the Assembly is prepared and led without the intention being clearly perceptible, assessable and discussable would basically be, independent from the formal or non-enforceability of such an intention, in contradiction to the spirit of the Swiss law of Association and the therewith corresponding feeling of equity. Even when on the basis of a motion a decision would be taken to refrain from submitting motions in a single case or in a wider sense, this would be in view of the specific task of society-forming as consciousness-forming incumbent on an anthroposophical General Assembly (as in every modern General Assembly), only of a negative, not contentual significance, because it is intrinsically preposterous, namely not based on something real but on a mistake. For, as has already been indicated here and further to be indicated, society-forming in the sense of the Christmas Conference (the foundational conference of the general Anthroposophical Society) is based on the fact that in a knowledgeable discussion and through confidence in the power of insight the higher spiritual presence of a common consciousness is continually enhanced und turned into a happening. This is a view that in the sense of the modern principle of civilization is of basic significance for all ramifications of social life.
This conscious-raising event is also part of the approval given by the Assembly to what is submitted to it that, even when it is modified to outright rejection, retains the basic consensual character of the receptivity, which integrates the things brought forward into the consciousness community. When understanding herefore is lacking or when even the responsible office holders were to act in contradiction to the sense and content for this understanding, an anthroposophical General Assembly would through self-annulment lose its significance, indeed completely forfeit its validity and authority. The spiritual consequences of such a process, which extend far beyond the single case, shall not be pursued further at this point. It should be emphasized however that the meaning and content of approval of the voting procedure is of social-constitutional significance.
[5] Article 8 of the Principles reads: "All publications of the Society shall be open to the public as is the case in other public societies.* The publications of the Free School of Spiritual Science will not be exempt from this public availability; however, the direction of the School reserves the right from the outset to challenge the validity of every judgment on these works, that is not based on the schooling of which the works themselves are the outcome. In this sense the direction, as is altogether customary in the recognized scientific world, will acknowledge the validity of no judgment that is not based on the appropriate preliminary studies. Therefore the publications of the Free School of Spiritual Science will contain the following annotation: "Printed in manuscript for the members of the Free School of Spiritual Science, Goetheanum, Class ... No person is held qualified to form a judgment on these works who has not, through the School itself or in an equivalent manner recognized by it, acquired the preliminary knowledge advanced by the School. Other opinions will in so far be rejected as the authors of these works in question will not enter into any type of discussion concerning them."
* Publicly described as well are the conditions under which one enters a path of scholing; which are to be continued.
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