This
occurred in his Course on World Economy in Dornach for students of economy.
What exactly this new paradigm is, can be gathered from an introduction to this
Course by Herbert Witzenmann, the former head of the Social Science Section
at the Goetheanum, entitled The Just
Price – World Economy as Social Organics, in which he wrote (in my
translation): “Rudolf Steiner’s social organic course presents a new conception of
the idea of the threefold nature of the social organism, in accordance with the
social, cultural and historical situation, which in the year 1922 was already
different from the time that the threefold idea was inaugurated and which
today is altogether different. Yet the threefold impulse was not given up, but
transformed in a way that is also for us today, I believe, of the greatest
importance.
We
can rely on the words of Rudolf Steiner in order to show how this Course
presents a metamorphosis of the threefold idea. Already in the first lecture
Rudolf Steiner states: ‘And now the position is such that if we are to speak
once more today to people such as you, we can no longer speak in the same terms
as we did then;’ – when the threefold idea was inaugurated – ‘today another
language is necessary, and that is what I now want to give you in these
lectures. I want to show you how today one must think once more about these
questions, especially if one is still young and can participate in what has to take
shape in the near future.”
That
only means: Today one cannot speak any more about the threefold idea in the way
that one did when it was inaugurated. With that the threefold idea is not
suspended; on the contrary, it is a matter of becoming aware of the way it can
become active among people in a new form and be understood. The decisive
sentence here is the following one: ‘We have found, within the economic process
itself, a division that is threefold. Only, it is necessary that we begin to
think of this threefold order in the right way.’ That is the decisive sentence:
The threefold idea was inaugurated in a period of extreme economic, political
and cultural turmoil. It was the period of complete collapse after the first
World War. That would have been the moment to make the three members of the
social organism mutually independent and in their independence bring them into
a proper working relationship with each other. That would therefore have been a
point in time to find the proper place and function for the economic life etc.
within and out of this threefold social organism. Unfortunately this fruitful moment was lost; it was not
recognized and seized. Time moved on and Rudolf Steiner says: We cannot speak
anymore as we did then, because the economic, political and monetary
straitjackets and automatisms have gotten much, much worse; and because the
situation is no longer so open as it was then, we cannot make any headway
directly in threefolding the social organism. Instead we must see how these
three components, i.e. the economic proper, the rights and the spiritual, are
latent within the economic life; we must see how actually all economic and social
problems arise because these three components do not function together
properly. We must develop the threefold idea out of the economic life, so that
we recognize: These three components function together within the economic
life, but we cannot come to a proper conscious awareness of their significance
and function; here lies the cause for all economic and social problems.
The transformation of the threefold idea therefore means that the economic life
can no longer bring itself to bear as a component within the three independent
components of the social organism, but that the threefold idea must be
recognized as consisting of the three economic archetypal forces and be taken
up within this economic life, if this economic life is to be saved from
destruction.”[1]
In this new conception of the
threefolding the social organism, seen from an economic viewpoint, encompasses
the whole earth and not individual nations. Its starting points are now the
three production factors of the social organism: nature, labor and capital (or
spirit). The interrelation between these three factors, i.e. labor applied to
nature and spirit or intelligence
applied to labor produces two
economic values, which in order to produce just, fair prices need to be brought
and held in balance by economic associations. This balancing act is the rights
sphere in the economy.
In his article Crisis and Alternative[2] Herbert
Witzenmann views this balancing act to generate just prices as a new form of
the creation of economically active, productive justice: “The creation of justice must be achieved within the creation of value
(as one of its functions), the right that decrees must be transformed into a
right that is productive.
That
this is indeed possible and that thereby completely new social expectations and
willingness will be engendered becomes clear the moment one considers the
activity that creates economic value – human labor. The latter is composed of the
two functional currents: qualifying
labour (so-called manual labour, i.e. work that is applied directly
or with the use of tools and machines to our natural resources) and organizing labour (so-called
headwork). Scientific and artistic work is also of an organizing nature,
because all work directed toward human achievements and performance is
primarily of an organizing nature).
The
constantly occurring interaction between these two functional currents results
in the formation of price. Just prices, i.e. such prices that do no falsify the
value produced by one functional type of labour to the disadvantage of the
other type are only brought about however when the value-creating currents are
guided along the lines of a balanced price-formation by planning bodies. These
can be nothing more than advisory boards (associations), in which people active
in the whole spectrum of social and economic life and therefore competent, come
together. Their function is not to issue directives far removed from economic
reality, but to establish inner-economic justice. For by means of the steering
and equalization of the value-creating currents, just prices are generated,
resulting therefore also in an equitable distribution of the GNP already on the
basis of its genetic conditions. Not personal advantage and profit are the
inner consequences of true insight into the living conditions of the social
organism. On the contrary, the devotion of skills and abilities, enhanced by
being exercised, to the social organism is the motive force of an economic life
permeated by productive legal development and effect.
Inner-economic
value-creating justice is the radical alternative that Rudolf Steiner’s social
science pits against the critical disorders of our times. It supersedes the
quantity principle by the function principle and does not lead to the
overcoming of the desire for possession though moral imperatives but by raising
the social organic functional context into conscious awareness.
In
this new creation of justice all problems besetting and oppressing us are drawn
together as in a matrix of cumulative solution.
To be sure, the new paradigm that follows from overcoming the quantitative habits of thought, their expectations and claims, requires the supporting background of a meaningful world view in which the psychic-spiritual dimension of the human being finds a harbor. The new creation of justice that is here merely hinted at can only then be realized when at the same time it can install new dimensions of meaning. Mankind longs for truly just law and right, but these must be a mirror in which it can recognize itself.”
The
justification for maintaining that this new paradigm is still valid for today,
and therefore that the macro-social form (not the content) as presented in The Threefold Social Order in 1919 is
outdated, lies in the undeniable observation that the all too negative effects
of the economic and financial forces have in the last 95 years only become ever
stronger and stronger, running wild as it were an causing untold worldwide havoc.[3]
But the Course on Social Organics, as Witzenmann calls the Course by Rudolf Steiner on World Economy[4], is as such obviously not the actual solution to creating a world economy based on altruism, instead of greed and unbridled egoism. This solution can only come about when a group of engaged people devote themselves to further developing this new science of world economy and present it to the outside world as a viable alternative to the (neo)liberal world order and the Great Reset championed by Dr. Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum: “You will owe nothing and you will be happy.”
[2] See http://willehalminstitute.blogspot.nl/2011/10/crisis-and-alternative.html
/ This article was first published in the Daily Basler Zeitung in Basel, Switzerland on September 27, 1989.
[3] In his essay “Monetary Order
as a Matter of Consciousness” (http://monetary-order.blogspot.nl)
Herbert Witzenmann shows how these “wild horses” running rampant and causing
worldwide havoc can be tamed.
[4] At the beginning of his first lecture of the already mentioned The Just Price.
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