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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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World Economy
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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World Economy
Schmidt Number: S-4906
On-line since: 13th November, 2000
Dornach, 25th July, 1922.
It is precisely in this sphere of Political Economy that the first
conceptions and ideas which we have to develop cannot but be a little
complicated and for a perfectly genuine reason. For you must
imagine the economic process, considered even as a world-economy, as a
thing of perpetual movement. As the blood flows through the human
being, so do goods, as merchandise or commodities, flow by every
conceivable channel through the whole economic body. And we must
conceive, as the most important thing within this economic process,
all that takes place in buying and selling. That, at least, is true of
the economic life of today. Whatever else there may be and we
shall of course have to consider the most varied impulses contained in
the economic life whatever else there may be, the subject of
Economics comes home to a man directly [when/if] he has anything to buy
or sell. In the last resort the instinctive thinking of every naive man
on economic matters culminates in the process taking place between buyer
and seller. Fundamentally, this is what it all comes to.
Consider now: What is it that counts when buying and selling are
considered in the economic process? The thing that a man cares about
will always be the price of a commodity, the price of the piece of
goods concerned. In the last resort all the most important economic
considerations really merge in this question of Price. All the
impulses and forces that are at work in economics culminate at length
in Price. We shall, therefore, first have to consider the problem of
Price, but it is by no means a simple problem. You need only consider
the most simple case: At a given place, A, we have a certain
commodity: at place A it has a certain price. But suppose it is not
bought there but is first transported to another place, B. Our
endeavour will then be to add to the price whatever transport charges
had to be paid from A to B. Thus the Price changes in the process of
circulation. There we have the simplest if I may put it so, the
flattest instance: but of course there are far more complex
cases.
Assume, for instance, that at a given date a house in a large town
costs so much. Fifteen years later the same house may perhaps cost six
times as much: nor need we imagine that the main cause of the rise in
price lies in the devaluation of money. On the contrary, let us assume
that this is not the case. The rise in price may simply lie in this:
that in the meantime many other houses have been built around it: the
other buildings, now situated in its neighbourhood, greatly increase
the value of the house. Nay, there may be ten or fifteen other
circumstances accounting for the rise in price. Truth to tell, we are
never in a position to apply some general statement to the single case
to say, for instance: The price of houses, or railways, or
cereals, can he uniquely determined, at a given place, from certain
specified conditions. To begin with, we can say little more than this:
that we must observe how the price fluctuates with place and time.
Then, perhaps, we can trace some of the conditions whereby at a given
place a given price actually emerges. But there can be no such thing
as a general definition stating how the price of a thing is composed:
that is an impossibility. Again and again one is astonished to find
Price discussed in the ordinary works on Economics, as though it were
possible to define it. We simply cannot define it, for a price is
always concrete and specific. Altogether, in economic matters, it is
impossible to get anywhere near the realities by definitions.
I once witnessed the following case: In a certain district land is
comparatively cheap. There is a Society with a more or less famous man
in its midst. The Society buys up all the cheap plots of land, and
prevails upon the famous man to build himself a house there. Then the
plots of land are offered for sale. They can be offered at a
considerably higher price than they were bought for, for the simple
reason that the famous man has been persuaded to build himself a house
there.
Such instances will show you how indeterminate are the conditions on
which the price of a thing depends in the economic process. Of course,
you may say, such developments must be counteracted. Land reformers
and people with similar aims try to resist these things. Through
various artificial measures they desire to establish a kind of just
price for all things. Of course one can do so: but, economically
considered, the price is not changed thereby. In the above instance,
for example, when the plots of land are sold at a higher price, we can
take the money away again, in the form of a high property-tax. Then
the State will pocket the difference: but the reality remains as
before. In reality the increase in price has taken place just the
same. You can take preventive measures, they will but obscure the
issue. The price will still be what it would have been without them.
You only bring about a redistribution: and it is no true economic
thinking to say that the land has not increased in price during the
last ten years, simply because you have obscured the matter by
artificial measures. Economic Science must stand firmly on its feet,
on a basis of reality. In Economics we can only speak of the
conditions obtaining at a given time and at the actual place to which
we are referring. Needless to say, anyone who desires the progress of
mankind will still come to the conclusion that such and such things
are to be changed. But, to begin with, things must be observed in
their immediate reality at the particular moment. From all this you
will see how impossible it is to approach such a concept as this
the most important in Economics (I mean the concept of Price)
by seeking to grasp it with sharply defined notions. In the
science of Economics we can make no progress by this means: quite
other ways must be adopted. We must observe the economic process
itself.
Yet the problem of Price is of cardinal importance: all our efforts
must be directed to this. We must observe the economic process, and
try, as it were, to catch the point where (at any given place and
time) the actual price of a given thing results from all the
underlying economic causes.
Now if you take the ordinary economic doctrines, you will generally
find three factors mentioned three factors, through the
interplay of which the whole economic process is supposed to take its
course. They are: Nature, human Labour and Capital. It is true that we
can say to begin with: Tracing the economic process we find these
three: that which comes from Nature, that which is achieved by human
Labour and that which is derived from, or directed by means of,
Capital. But if we take Nature, Labour and Capital simply side by side
in this way, we shall not grasp the economic process in a living way.
On the contrary, we shall be led to many one-sided points of view
a fact to which the history of economic theory bears eloquent
witness. Some say that all Value is inherent in Nature and that no
especial value is added to the substance of natural objects by human
Labour. Others believe that all true economic Value is really
impressed on a piece of goods, on a commodity, by the Labour which, as
they some-times say, is crystallised in the commodity. Or again, the
moment you place Capital and Labour merely side by side, you will find
persons saying on the one hand: In reality it is Capital which alone
makes Labour possible and the wages of Labour are paid out of the
accumulated Capital. On the other side it is said: No, the only thing
that produces real Value is Labour, and all that Capital obtains for
itself is the surplus value abstracted from the yield of Labour.
Ladies and gentlemen, the fact is this: Consider the things from the
one point of view, and the one is right: consider them from the other
point of view, and the other is right. Over against the reality, such
ways of thinking remind one of many a method in book-keeping
put the item here and this will be the result: put it there, and that
will. One can speak with strong apparent reasons of surplus value,
saying that this is abstracted from the wages of Labour and
appropriated by the capitalist to himself. But one can say with
equally good reasons, that, in the whole connection of economic life,
everything is due in the first place to the capitalist, who can only
pay his workers from what he has available for the wages of Labour.
For both these points of view there are very good and very bad
reasons. In fact, none of these ways of thinking comes near the
reality of economics. Excellent as a basis for agitations, they are of
no importance in a serious economic science. Quite other foundations
must be found if we would hope for progress in economic life.
Up to a certain point, of course, all these systems have their
justification. Adam Smith, for instance, sees the real, original
value-forming factor in the work or labour that is expended on things.
Here again excellent reasons can be brought forward in support of this
view. Such a man as Adam Smith certainly did not think in a stupid or
nonsensical way. Nevertheless, here again there is the underlying idea
of taking hold of something static and giving it a definition, whereas
in the real economic process things are in perpetual movement. It is
comparatively simple to form concepts of the phenomena of Nature
even the most complicated as compared with the ideas
which we require for a science of Economics. Infinitely more
complicated, variable and unstable are the phenomena in Economics than
in Nature more fluctuating, less capable of being grasped with
any defined or hard and fast concepts. In effect, an altogether
different method must be adopted. You will only find this method
difficult in the first lessons: but as a result of it you will
presently see we shall discover the only real and possible
foundation for a science of Economics.
To begin with, we may say that to this economic process, which we must
now consider, three things contribute: Nature, human Labour and
(thinking, to begin with, of the purely external economic aspect)
Capital. To begin with, ladies and gentlemen!
But lest us consider at once the middle one of these three, namely,
human Labour. Let us try to form a conception of it by going down, as
I indicated yesterday, into the sphere of animal life. Let us observe,
instead of the economy of peoples, the economy of sparrows, the
economy of swallows.
Here, you see at once, Nature is the basis of economy. True, even the
sparrow has to do a kind of work: at the very least, he must
hop about to find his food. Sometimes he has to hop about a very great
deal in the course of a day to find what he requires. The swallow
building her nest also has to do a kind of work, and she again has
much to do to build it. Nevertheless, in the true economic sense, we
cannot call this work, we cannot call it
Labour. We shall make no progress in economic ideas if
we call this labour. For if we observe more closely, we shall have to
admit: The sparrow and the swallow are organised precisely in such a
way as to do the very things fulfil the very functions
which they fulfil in finding their food, etc. They simply could not be
healthy if they had no opportunity to move about in this way. It is
part and parcel of their organisation: it belongs to them, no less
than their legs and wings. In seeking to build up economic concepts,
we can therefore leave out of account what we might here call a mere
apparent Labour, a semblance of Labour. In
such cases Nature is taken just as she is, and the single creature,
merely to satisfy its own needs or those of its nearest kin, carries
out the corresponding semblance of Labour. If, however,
we wish to determine what is Value or a
Value in the true economic sense, we must disregard this
apparent Labour. And this must be our first object to approach
a true concept of economic value.
Consider the animal economy once more. There we may say: Nature alone
is the value-forming factor. If we now ascend to man, that is, to
political economy, it is true we still have from the side of
Nature the same starting-point of Nature Value.
But the moment human beings no longer provide merely for themselves or
for their nearest kindred, but for one another, human
Labour, properly so called, comes into account. Indeed, the
moment a man no longer uses the Nature-products for himself, but
stands in some relation to other human beings if only to the
extent of bartering his goods with theirs what he then does
becomes, in relation to Nature, human Labour. Here we
arrive at the one aspect of Value in Political Economy. It arises
thus: Human Labour is expended on the products of Nature, and we have
before us in economic circulation Nature-products transformed by human
Labour. It is only here that a true economic value first arises. So
long as the Nature-product is untouched, at the place where it is
found in Nature, it has no other value than it has, for instance, for
the animals. But the moment you take the very first steps to put the
Nature-product into the process of economic circulation, the
Nature-product so transformed begins to have economic value. We may
therefore characterise this economic value as follows: An
economic value, seen from this one aspect, is a Nature-product
transformed by human Labour. Whether the human Labour consists
in digging or chopping, or merely moving a product of Nature from one
place to another, is irrelevant. If we are seeking the determination
of Value in general, then we must simply say: One value-forming
factor is human Labour, transforming a Nature-product so as to pass it
into the economic process of circulation.
If you consider this, you will see at once how very fluctuating is the
value of a piece of goods circulating in the economic life. For Labour
is something always present, perpetually being expended on the goods.
You cannot really say what Value is you can only say: Value
appears in a given place and at a given time, inasmuch as human Labour
is transforming some product of Nature. That is where Value emerges.
To begin with, we cannot and will not try to define Value: We simply
point out the place where it appears. I will put this down
diagrammatically. (see
Diagram 2)
Here on the left side of the drawing we have Nature
as it were in the background. Human Labour approaches Nature: what
then becomes visible appearing, as it were, through the
interplay of Nature and human Labour that is the one aspect of
economic value? It is by no means a faulty image if we say, for
instance: Look at a black surface or at anything black through a
luminous medium and you will see it blue. According as the luminous
medium is thick or thin, you will see various shades of blue:
according as you shift it, its density will vary: it is for ever
fluctuating. So it is
with Value in the economic life, it is really none other than the
appearance of Nature through human Labour. And that, too, is always
fluctuating.
To begin with, we are gaining a few abstract indications and little
more: but these will give us our bearings during the next few days and
help us to reach more concrete things. After all, you are accustomed
to this: for in all sciences one takes what is most simple to begin
with.
You see, labour as such has no purpose at all in Economics. A man may
chop wood, or he may get up on to a wheel like this. (There are such
wheels for the benefit of fat people who go on climbing from step to
step; the wheel goes round under them, and so they hope to get
thinner.) The man who treads this wheel may be doing just as much work
as the one who chops wood. To consider Labour as Marx did, when he
said that we should look for its equivalent in the amount that is
consumed in the human organism by the Labour, is a colossal piece of
nonsense. For the same amount is consumed whether a man chops wood or
dances about on this wheel. How much is done in the human being is not
the point in Economics. We have already seen how the subject of
Economics borders on uneconomic matters. Purely economically speaking,
it is quite unjustifiable to point to the fact that Labour uses up the
human being's forces. I mean it is unjustifiable in this connection,
where, to begin with, we wish to establish a concept of Labour in the
sense of Economics. Indirectly it is of great significance, for on the
other side the needs of men have to be cared for. But Marx's way of
thinking at this point is a colossal piece of nonsense.
What do we need in order to take hold of Labour in the
economic process? It is necessary, to begin with quite apart
from the human being to observe how the Labour enters
into the economic process. This labour (of the man on the wheel) does
not enter it at all: it simply adheres to the man himself. The
chopping of wood, on the other hand, does enter the economic process.
The one thing that matters is: How does the Labour enter the
economic process? The answer is this: Nature is everywhere transformed
by human Labour and only in so far as Nature is transformed by human
Labour do we create real economic values on this one side. If, for
instance, we find it necessary for our bodily health, having worked
upon Nature in some way, to dance a little or to do Eurhythmy in the
intervals, all this may of course be judged from another standpoint:
but what we do in the intervals cannot be described as work or Labour
in the economic sense, nor can it be regarded as in any way a factor
creating economic values. Seen from another side, it may well be
creating values, but we must first get our concepts pure and clear
concerning economic values as such.
Now there is a second, altogether different, possibility for economic
values to arise. It is this: We turn our attention to labour as such:
we take labour as the given thing. To begin with, as you have seen
just now, labour, economically speaking, is some-thing neutral and
irrelevant. But it becomes an economic value-creating factor the
moment we let it be directed by the intelligence of man. I must now
speak in a somewhat different sense from before. Even in the most
far-fetched cases, you can imagine some-thing that would otherwise not
be Labour at all being transformed into real Labour by human
intelligence. If it occurs to a man, in order to get thinner, to set
up that apparatus which we spoke of in his bedroom and practise on it,
there will be no economic value in it. But, if somebody winds a rope
round the wheel and uses it to drive some machine, the moment this is
done, that which would not otherwise be Labour at all, in the economic
sense, is turned to good account by the Spirit. Incidentally the
fellow who treads the wheel will get thinner just the same, but the
essential point is this: Through the Spirit by intelligence,
reflection, perhaps even speculation Labour is given a certain
direction: the various units of Labour are brought into certain mutual
relations, and so on.
Thus, we may say: Here we have the second aspect of the value-forming
factors in Economics. Here Labour stands in the background, and before
it is the Spirit which directs the Labour. Labour shines through
the Spirit, and this creates once more an economic value. As you
will soon see, these two aspects are present everywhere. Having shown
in this
diagram (left)
how an economic value emerges when we have
Nature appearing through Labour if we now wish to represent
diagrammatically what we have just explained, we shall have to put
Labour in the background and in the front of it the spiritual, which
gives it a certain modification (right).
These are the two essential poles of the economic process. There are
indeed no other ways in which economic values are created. Either
Nature is modified by Labour, or Labour is modified by Spirit (human
intelligence). The outer expression of the Spirit, in this connection,
is in the manifold formations of Capital. Economically, the Spirit
must be looked for in the configurations of Capital: these at any rate
are its outward expression. We shall realise the facts more clearly
when we come to consider Capital as such, and then Capital as a
monetary medium.
So you see there can be no question of arriving at a definition of
economic value. Once more you need only consider on how many
circumstances on the cleverness or stupidity of how many
different people the modification of Labour by the Spirit in
any given instance will depend. There is every kind of fluctuating
condition. Nevertheless, this fact will always be in evidence: The
value-creating factors in the economic process will always be found at
these two opposite poles.
Suppose now we find ourselves at any given point within the economic
process. The economic process takes its course in the activities of
buying and selling. Buying and selling are essentially an exchange of
values: there is, in fact, no other exchange than that of values.
Properly speaking, it is wrong to speak of an exchange of goods. The
goods that play a part in the economic process
whether they appear as modified products of Nature or modified Labour
are always values. It is always the values that are
exchanged. Whenever a process of buying and selling takes place,
values are exchanged. Now what is it that emerges in the economic
process when value and value, as it were, impinge on one another in
the process of exchange? It is Price. Wherever Price emerges, it is
always through the impact of value on value in the economic process.
For this reason you cannot think truly about Price if you have in mind
the exchange of mere goods. If you buy an apple for a penny, you may
say that you are exchanging one piece of goods for another the
apple for the penny. But you will make no progress in economic
thinking along these lines. For the apple has been picked somewhere
and then transported, and it may well be that various other things
have been done around it. All this is Labour which has modified it.
What you are dealing with is not an apple but a Nature-product
transformed by human Labour, representing an economic value. In
Economics we must always take our start from values. Similarly,
the penny represents not a piece of goods but a value, for after all
(or so at any rate we must suppose) the penny is but the sign for the
fact that there is present, in the man who has to buy the apple,
another value which he exchanges for it.
Today I am anxious for you to get a clear insight into this fact: In
Economics we must not speak of goods but of
values as the elementary thing. It is wrong to try to
consider Price in any other way than by envisaging the interplay of
values. Value set against value gives you Price. And if, as we saw,
value itself is a fluctuating thing, incapable of definition, may we
not say that when you exchange value for value, Price which arises in
the process of exchange is a fluctuating thing raised to the second
power?
From all these things you may see how futile it is to try to take hold
of values and prices with the idea of finding a firm and fixed ground
in Economics: and it is still more futile, if your object is to
influence the economic process in practice. Something altogether
different is needful something that lies behind all these
things. You may see this from a very simple consideration.
Consider this for a moment: Nature appears to us through human Labour.
Suppose we obtain iron at a given place under extraordinarily
difficult conditions. The value that is thus produced through human
Labour is a modified object of Nature. If at a different place iron is
to be produced under far easier conditions, it may happen that an
altogether different value will result. You see, therefore, that we
cannot grasp the reality in the value itself: we must go behind
the value. We must go back to that which creates the value: here alone
can we gradually find our way to the more constant conditions on which
we can exercise a direct influence. The moment you have brought the
value into economic circulation, you must let it fluctuate with the
economic organism as a whole. Consider the finer constitution of a
blood corpuscle: it is different in the head and in the heart and in
the liver. You cannot say: We will now seek the true definition of
blood. The most you can do is to consider what are the more favourable
foodstuffs in the one case and in the other. Likewise there is no
point in talking round and round about Value and Price. The important
thing is to go back to the primary factors, back to that which, if
rightly formed, will actually bring forth the proper price. The proper
price will then emerge of its own accord.
In the study of Economics it is quite impossible to stop short at
definitions of Value and Price. We must always go back to the real
origins whence the economic process is nourished, on the one hand, and
by which, on the other hand, it is regulated Nature on the one
hand, Spirit on the other.
In all economic theories of modern time, this has been the
difficulty: they have always tried to hold fast at the outset that
which is really fluctuating. As a result, one who can see through
these things finds himself confronted not with wrong
definitions scarcely any of them are wrong: they are generally
quite right! (Though, it is true, one must make an exceedingly bad
shot to say: The amount of Labour corresponds to that which has been
expended and has to be restored in the human body: it corresponds,
therefore, to the expenditure of substance. Such a statement is really
a howler, and he who makes it has failed to see the simplest things).
No, the point is that even men of considerable insight, in developing
their theory of Economics, have stumbled again and again over this
obstacle: They have tried to observe at rest things that are always in
a state of flux. For the things of Nature one can and must often do
so: there, however, it suffices to observe the state of rest in a
quite different way: and if we have to observe a state of movement,
all we have come to do in the modern science of Nature is to regard it
as though it were composed of a multitude of tiny states of rest and
jump from one to the other. For when we integrate, we regard
even movement as if it were composed of states of rest.
On the model of such a science we cannot study the economic process.
This, therefore, must be said: The first thing needful in grappling
with the science of Economics is to consider how, on the one hand,
Value appears inasmuch as Nature is transformed by human Labour
Nature is seen through human Labour while, on the other hand,
Value appears inasmuch as Labour is seen through the Spirit. These two
origins of Value are the real polar opposites: they differ as, in the
spectrum, the one the luminous or yellow pole differs
from the other the blue or violet. You may well hold fast this
picture: As in the spectrum the warm colours appear on the one side,
so on the one side there appears the Nature-value which will show
itself more in the formation of rents. On this side we perceive Nature
transformed by Labour. On the other side there appear to us instead
those values which are translated into Capital: here we see Labour
transformed by the Spirit. Then, indeed, Price can arise, inasmuch as
values of the one pole impinge on values of the other. Or again, the
several values within the one pole come into mutual interaction. The
point is that every time, wherever it is a question of
price-formation, there will be a mutual interaction of value and
value. We must therefore disregard everything to do with the
substances and materials themselves; we must look away from all this
and begin by seeing how values are formed, on the one side and on the
other. Then we shall be able to press forward to the problem of Price.
Last Modified: 02-Nov-2024
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