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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-4944
On-line since: 13th November, 2000
Dornach, 6th August, 1922.
You will have seen that the main object of our present studies was to
find concepts, or rather pictures, of the economic life, such as would
help us actually to get inside it. In no one of the activities which
are now being pursued in the Anthroposophical Movement and in
which I have myself been taking part is it my opinion that all
the existing scientific results should be simply flouted. On the
contrary, I am convinced that there is a wide range of very useful
results in the existing sciences. Only, the method of treatment, both
in Natural Science and in the other branches of knowledge, needs to be
developed in some essential respects. Thus, in the main, I have tried
to give you pictorial concepts, ideal pictures, to aid you in making
proper use of the wide range of valuable material which is already
there in Economic Science. For this reason I have given you such
pictures as could really live. A living thing, you may be sure, is
always many-sided and contains many meanings. Many of you may
therefore go away from these lectures with the feeling that various
objections can be made to what has been said. In a sense I shall be
rather glad if you do have this feeling, provided it is combined with
real earnestness and with a genuine scientific spirit. Faced by a
living thing, this feeling is indeed inevitable. Life will not endure
dogmatic theories; and it is in this sense that you must conceive the
ideal pictures I have given to you.
The thought-picture of money growing old or getting used
up is a particularly pregnant one. You must relate yourself to
such an ideal picture as you would do, let us say, to a growing human
being. You have a general feeling that he will prove a very able man
in one direction or another. You may have fairly definite ideas of
what he will accomplish. But these ideas will very likely turn out to
have been mistaken. He may accomplish what he has to do in quite other
ways. So too for the concept of money getting used up in course of
time, you may find various ways in which this can be brought about.
The way I have tried to present is one conceived as little as possible
along bureaucratic lines; it results naturally from the economic life
itself.
Many objections may no doubt be made. Here is a very easy one: How
will it be settled that a given enterpriser puts young money and no
other into his business? After a short time it may no longer be
recognisable whether the money was young or not, for his business will
be going on. In answer to this, you must bear in mind that he does not
simply get the money from the sky; he borrows it from someone.
Moreover, since you can see from my Threefold Commonwealth that
I do not think that interest on money should be abolished, provided
the money has real value (on the contrary I believe that up to a point
interest is actually necessary in the economic life), you may say: How
shall I as an enterpriser get money from those who might lend it to
me, if I am only going to pay them interest for an atrociously short
time? They will only wish to give me money on the assumption that they
will get interest out of my business for as long a time as possible.
Thus, you may find that it is not enough simply to let money grow old
in the way described. This may lead you on to think out the method in
greater detail. For instance, money issued today might be
date-stamped, not with the present year but with a future year, in
such a way that the value increased up to that year, and after that
decreased.
In short, a living thing may realise itself in a variety of ways. By
the act of grasping it livingly, you give it the possibility to
realise itself in the most varied ways, just as a living human being
can use his ability in various ways. This is the essence of a
non-dogmatic concept. To make such concepts your own, especially in
Economics, is to see how well these things enter into real life. Only
on this foundation will you be able to make proper use of what is
given in the so-called economic science of today out of quite good but
only partial observations.
Take for example what is said of Price. You will be told that the
conditions determining price-levels are the following, so far as the
seller is concerned: his relative need for money, the value of the
money, the costs of production which he has to meet and the
competition among buyers. But if you analyse these concepts you will
always find that, though you can think about them rightly enough, you
cannot enter with them into the realities of life. For you would first
have to ask yourself: Is it an economically healthy state of affairs
if it so happens that a particular enterpriser is in need of money at
a particular time and thereby, in accordance with his private need for
money, prices rise or fall in a particular direction? Can the
utility-value [Gebrauchswert] of money, if we may call it so, work in
a healthy way at all? Both things can work in a healthy and in an
unhealthy way. Or again, speaking of costs of production, it may be
desirable for the attainment of a healthy price not to think how the
price will come out if costs of production are looked upon as
something absolute, but on the contrary to think how the costs of
production for a given article might have to be reduced so that it has
a healthy price when it comes on to the market. In other words, you
need to have concepts which really begin at the beginning. You cannot
let a living man begin his life at the age of 25, nor should you let
your concepts, which are to enter into real life, begin at any
arbitrary point. You should not let your economic concepts begin, for
example, with the competitive relation between buyers or between
sellers. For the question is: May it not be, under certain conditions,
the fundamental error of our economic life that an excessive
competition should exist at all, as between sellers or between buyers?
These are matters of principle, which must be taken very much in
earnest.
Quite apart from whether one or other of you may agree with particular
parts of our exposition, the endeavour has been throughout to make
our concepts living. If they are living, then, in the event, they
will show of their own accord how they need to be modified. What
matters is that we should be brought on to the path of these living
concepts. Thus, we can say: If we have money that is used up, i.e.,
grows old, then, inasmuch as money comes into circulation and figures
as purchase-money, loaned money and gift-money, the peculiar qualities
of money will bring it about in the natural course if they are
allowed to function in a purely economic and unhampered way
that the demand for young money will arise at one place and the demand
for old money at another.
I ought, of course, to be able to go on elaborating these things for
many weeks, and then you would see how well they fit in with a sound
economy. Wherever an illness arises in the body economic, you would
see that it is just by the observation of these things that it can be
healed.
What is it that really emerges when we think, in this way, that in
money in circulation we have a kind of reflection of that element of
use and wear which in fact is present throughout the whole range of
consumable goods and even spiritual services are consumable
goods for the economic life? In a money which wears out we have a
parallel process to goods, commodities, real values, which also wear
out. What have we, in effect, if we perceive this parallelism
we can extend it over the entire world-economy
between the real value and the token value? Truly we may
describe it essentially as a kind of book-keeping system for the whole
world-economy. It is the world's book-keeping. When some item is
transferred or delivered, this simply signifies the entry of an item
in another place. In actual practice the thing is done by passing
money and commodities from hand to hand. The principle is
fundamentally the same whether we contrive to record the items in
their proper places in an immense book-keeping system embracing the
whole world-economy, and so direct things simply by transferring
credits, or whether we write out a chit and give it to the person
concerned, so that the thing is done in external action. In the
circulation of money we have in effect the world's book-keeping. And
this is, as everyone can really see for himself, what should be aimed
at. For in this way we give back to money the only quality which it
can properly have that of being the external medium of
exchange. Look into the depths of economic life, and you will see:
Money can be nothing else than this. It is the medium of exchange of
services or things done. For in reality men live by the things
actually done, not by the tokens thereof.
It is quite true that money can create a false impression of things
done, and with the rise of a kind of middleman's trade in money, the
whole economic life can thus be falsified. But this kind of
falsification, this counterfeiting, is only possible when we do not
give money its true character.
It is important for us to see, as I emphasised in the last lecture,
that different kinds of services must be judged in different ways with
respect to the values circulating through the economic life. As we
showed yesterday, that which is gained from Nature to begin with, and
on which Labour is expended, corresponds to the picture: Labour
united with an object of Nature. In a certain sense, we can
begin the economic process at this point. Here, we may say, the value
is created by the Labour which I unite with a particular product of
Nature. But in the economic process there is also the contrary stream,
which comes into play the moment there are spiritual services. As soon
as spiritual services come into play, another formula of valuation, if
I may call it so, has to be introduced, namely: A spiritual
service is worth the amount of Labour which it saves to the person who
contributes it. Take for example the artist who paints a
picture and thereby provides a value, a value for which real interest
is felt (otherwise it would not be a value). If the production of the
picture and the existence of the artist are to be economically
healthy, the artist must value it in this way: It must save him the
amount of Labour required to satisfy his own needs during the time
which it will take him to produce a new picture in like manner. Thus,
in the economic process spiritual services ox products come to meet
those which are mainly based on the elaboration of Nature, i.e., on
manual Labour, upon, say, means of production. On the one side we must
have Labour uniting itself with the means of production, while on the
other side Labour must be saved or spared. Thus there arises the
economic circuit with its two opposing streams, which must
compensate each other in a healthy way.
The great question is: How shall they compensate each other? In the
first place we need only bear in mind the universal bookkeeping of our
world-economy. It is here that we should find the items on either side
which must somehow be mutually balanced. And this would be the source
of Price. But the point is that the items in this universal
book-keeping must mean something. An item A which I
insert, will correspond to what we may describe as Labour
united with Nature, or another item B will
correspond to so much Labour is saved by this service.
Every such item must have concrete meaning. But it can only have a
meaning if it represents something which is comparable, or which is at
least made comparable by the economic system. We cannot simply ask:
How many nuts is a potato worth? We cannot ask a question like that
without more ado. First we must say: Nut signifies a
Nature-product united with human Labour: Potato
signifies a Nature-product united with human Labour. And then we can
ask how the two values are to be equated. The problem is to find
something which will enable us to assess economic values one against
the other. It becomes still more difficult if you take, say, a
literary essay. The essay, too, must be, economically, worth the
amount of physical Labour upon some means of production which is saved
by it, minus the very small amount of physical work spent on the
actual writing. At any rate you can see that it is not altogether easy
to work out how these things are to be equated or assessed as against
each other. Nevertheless, by taking hold of the economic process from
another angle, we shall find means of reaching such an assessment. For
on the one hand we have the physical Labour spent on the means of
production, including Nature herself. At a given time it is quite a
definite amount of Labour. I mean that at a given time a definite
amount of Labour is needed, shall we say, to produce wheat over a
given area, say x square metres of land, taking
production as ending in the moment when the wheat is in
the merchant's hands, or at some other given point. Once more then, a
definite amount of Labour is needed to produce wheat. It is a given
magnitude, which under certain conditions can actually be ascertained.
Properly regarded, all human economic service or achievement of
whatsoever kind eventually takes us back to Nature. There is no
other possibility. The farmer works upon Nature directly. One who
provides, shall we say, clothing, works not directly upon Nature, but
ultimately his work goes back to Nature. His Labour will contain an
element of Labour saved to the extent that he applies
Spirit or intelligence to it. Nevertheless even his work has its
connection with Nature. Everything, right up to the most complicated
of spiritual services, eventually goes back to Nature to Labour
that is expended upon the means of production. Think it through
clearly and you will see that everything in economic life can be
traced back in the long run to bodily work upon Nature. The process
begins from Nature; values are created there by the application of
Labour; and it is these values taken to some definite point
still as close to Nature as possible which have to be
distributed over the whole of a closed economic domain.
Go back to the hypothetical case I took yesterday the closed
village economy, In such a self-contained village economy you have the
manual workers, but I assumed that the only spiritual workers were the
parson and the schoolmaster and possibly the parish clerk. It is a
very simple economy! Most of the people are doing bodily work, bodily
work upon the soil; only, they have to do in addition enough bodily
work to provide for the needs food, clothing, etc. of
school-master, parson and clerk. It will be additional, for the
schoolmaster, the parson and the parish clerk do not do their work
upon Nature for themselves. Say that the village economy consists of
30 peasants plus the three what shall we call them?
worthies. These three supply their spiritual services.
They need the spared Labour of the rest. Suppose that every one of the
30 peasants gives to these three, or to each one of them, a token, a
ticket, on which is written so much, say x, of wheat
that is, wheat elaborated to a certain point. Another member of the
community might give a ticket on which something else was entered,
something comparable to wheat for purposes of consumption. These
things can be ascertained. The schoolmaster, the parson and the clerk
will collect these tickets. Instead of going out into the fields to
fetch their wheat and rye and beef for themselves, they will hand over
their tickets to those concerned, who in their turn will do the
necessary Labour in addition to their own and will give them the
product in exchange. That is a process which cannot help developing of
its own accord. It cannot possibly be otherwise, nor does it make any
difference if it occurs to some bright individual to introduce
metallic coin instead of tickets. It amounts to this: Some kind of
tokens must be devised, based on the stored-up material Labour
Labour expended on means of production, Labour invested in economic
values. And these tickets must be handed over to those who need them,
so that they can save themselves the Labour.
Hence you will see that no kind of money can in reality be any
other than an expressions of the sum-total of means of production
available in a given region means of production including in
the very first place the land itself reduced to the form in
which it can be most suitably expressed. This will relate the economic
process to something which we can at least take hold of. It is not
possible to bring about an economic paradise anywhere on earth. Let
those believe it is, who invent Utopias without reference to reality.
It is so easy to say that an economy should be thus and thus. But,
ladies and gentlemen, an economy including that economy of the
entire Earth which we can call world-economy
cannot be absolutely determined, but only relatively so. Suppose that
in a closed economic region we have an area, say Ar, of land.
Now supposing all the people in this area are doing everything which
it is possible for human beings to do, then a different amount will be
available for consumption if B million people live in this area
of land, than will be the case if the population is
B1 million.
Thus in effect it depends on the ratio of population to the area of
land, and on how much a given population can get out of the given
area, for it is from the land that everything ultimately comes. Take
now the hypothetical case: An economic area has a population of, say,
35 millions the number does not matter. What holds true, here,
of a self-contained economic territory, is true also of the
world-economy. Assume 35 million inhabitants at a given time; and that
the problem is to bring these 35 million people economically into an
economically just relation. (I may not be putting it quite clearly and
precisely, but you will soon see what I mean). What would you have to
do if you wished such a condition to prevail among these 35 million as
would bring about feasible prices? The moment you begin to lead over
the economic life of the region into a healthy condition, you would
have to give each one of them an amount of land corresponding to one
35-millionth of the entire area available for production, adjusted
according to fertility and ease of cultivation. Suppose that every
child were to receive such an area of land at birth, to be worked by
him in perpetuity. The prices which would thus arise would be feasible
prices for such an area, for things would then have their natural
exchange values.
Now the curious hypothesis which I have here put forward is nothing
else than the reality. The economic process actually does this of its
own accord, Of course you will not believe that I mean what I am now
saying in any other than a figurative sense. Yet these are the actual
conditions. You can imagine the entire area distributed among the
people concerned, remembering that they will also have to elaborate,
in the proper way, such products as become detached from the soil. You
can imagine the entire area divided up among the population, and it is
in fact this which gives to each individual thing its exchange value.
Indeed it might well be that if in some place you were to note down
the actual exchange values, you would find a very close approximation.
But if you now compare this with ordinary present-day conditions, you
will find the price of one thing far above and the price of another
far below that level. Still, if you like to suppose a Utopia
somewhere, populated solely by newborn children (looked after by
angels to begin with), to each of whom you have given his piece of
land, then, when they are able to begin work, you will have produced
conditions under which the natural exchange values will arise. And if
after a time prices are different, it can only mean that one has taken
something away from another, It is this kind of thing which produces
the various social discontents; men dimly feel that here something
works into the process which does not correspond to the real prices at
all.
Yet if the economic life becomes permeated with a way of thinking such
as we have here adopted, the actual measures we shall take will bring
about the result I have stated. It all depends on that. We shall find
that our currency, representing, as it were, the day-to-day
book-keeping of world-economy, will have to be inscribed, let us say:
Wheat producible over a given number of acres, and this
will then be equated to other things. The different products of the
soil are the easiest things to equate. So you see where it is we must
start from our figures must mean something. It simply leads
away from reality if money has inscribed on it: So much
gold. It leads towards reality if it has inscribed on it:
This represents so much Labour upon such and such a product of
Nature. For we shall then have this result: Say there is
written on the money x wheat, all money will be
stamped x of wheat, y of wheat, z of
wheat. The real origin of the whole economic life will then be
made evident. Our currency will be referred to the usable means of
production upon which bodily work is done the means of
production of the given economic region. This is the only sound basis
of currency the sum-total of the usable means of production.
One who can look into the realities with open mind will see, as he
looks, that this is so. It may be objected that no one value can be
precisely equated to another. But to a great extent this can be done.
For since in this method of valuation everything is ultimately valued
through consumption, the values of different kinds of services do not
differ so very much from one another. However spiritual a worker I may
be, I need so much saved Labour every year namely, as much as I
require to maintain myself as a human being. Moreover, by this means
it will be evident how and to what extent a spiritual worker needs
something in addition, beyond what a manual labourer needs. And when
the thing has become as transparent as this, it will be acknowledged
because it is transparent. Even today though they become
increasingly rare conditions do exist in selfcontained
economies under which the spiritual workers receive all that they
need; where the others give it them gladly, without even writing it
down on slips of paper beforehand. In saying this, I do not wish to
reduce an economic to a sentimental argument. I say it simply because
this, too, is part of the realities of economics and because in an
economic system you are after all always dealing with human beings.
Above all, you will attain in this way to a relationship between the
members of an economic whole which will be really visible to all. Each
one in every moment will then have his connection with Nature, even in
the money. It is just this which makes our present-day relations so
unsound; they have become so far remote from Nature the
connection with Nature is no longer there. If we can bring it about
(and it is only a question of evolving the necessary technique in the
associative life) that we really have the Nature-value recorded on our
paper-money in place of the indefinable gold value, then we shall see
directly in every-day business and intercourse how much
a given spiritual service is worth. For I shall know, when I paint a
picture, that for me to have painted this picture so many workers on
the land, for example, have to work for so many months or years on
wheat or oats, etc. Think how transparent the economic process would
become. The ordinary way of putting it today would be to call it the
substitution of a Nature-currency for a gold-currency. Yes, and that
is just what we need. For by this means true economic conditions will
be brought about.
Once again I have placed a picture before you. I have to speak in
these pictures, for they give the reality. What people generally have
in their heads in economic intercourse today is not reality. He alone
has the reality who in receiving a piece of money of a certain
magnitude in exchange for something, knows that it signifies so much
work upon the land. We must, of course, include in our calculations
the work that is done on other means of production. These will,
however, be equivalent to Nature. For the moment they are finished,
and thus leave the realm of commodities altogether, they are devalued
inasmuch as it is no longer possible to buy or sell them. They thus
becomes equivalent to the means of production which we have in Nature
directly. It is therefore only a continuation of the part which Nature
already plays in the economic process, when we say that means of
production should be dealt with in this way. Moreover, it is only in
this way that we can have a clear idea of Nature herself, considered
as means of production. The concepts of land which you will generally
find in Economics are always open to objection, unless you conceive of
means of production in the way I attempted in my
Threefold Commonwealth. You need only consider this: Even a
given region of Nature may have to be worked upon to some extent
before it is available as land before it is fit
for cultivation. Up to the moment when Nature or a given part
of Nature has been cleared and can be handed over for use,
during this period also, some Labour must be expended on it. In other
words, by the time this Labour has been done, even a piece of land may
justly be reckoned a commodity, an economic value, in the sense that
it is a piece of Nature combined with human Labour.
Only by formulating the ideas in the way we have done will you get the
concept means of production clear and transparent, and
you will then be able to work it out in the most varied spheres. You
will perceive, when for example an author writes an article, that the
main value of it, economically speaking, consists in the Labour saved;
from which you would only have to deduct the minute amount of bodily
work which the actual writing entails. Your concepts will be capable
of differentiation in manifold directions so that you stand with them
in very life, inasmuch as you are forming them out of life itself. And
then, if for example you are concerned with some question of prices,
you will no longer be content merely to trace it back to the immediate
costs of production; you will have to trace it back to the primal
phase of all production. You will have to see what are the conditions
of price-formation right from the primal phases of all production. It
is only then that you will be able to trace them rightly up to any
given point in the economic process.
In this way, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps I may have been able to
give you an idea which will at least guide you on your way towards the
cardinal question of Economics namely, that of prices. For to
engage in economic activity at all is to bring about the exchange of
products among human beings, and this exchange lives itself out in the
forming of prices. It is the forming of prices that matters, and in
this respect you do not have to go back to anything vague or
indefinite, For you can always follow things back to the fundamental
relationship of value which is brought about by the very fact of work
upon the land, namely the proportion of the population to the
available area of cultivation. In this relation you will find that
which originally underlies the formation of values. In effect, all the
Labour that can be done must come from the given population and, on
the other hand, all that this Labour can unite with must come from the
given land. Everyone needs what this Labour brings about and, as to
those who can save themselves the Labour on account of their spiritual
services, the others must perform it for them in addition to their
own. Thus we arrive at the actual basis of economic life.
Looking at things in this way, we shall admit that even in our present
highly complicated economic life, that which was universal in the most
primitive conditions where the simple exchange of goods, shall
we say, was the essential thing still plays its part. The
difference is that we are no longer able to see the connection clearly
everywhere. But we shall have it before us always, when the connection
with Nature is expressed in our currency notes. Whatever we may do,
the connection with Nature is always there. Do not let us forget it!
It is reality. Once more, speaking pictorially, let me say: While I am
giving my shilling quite thoughtlessly for this or that, there is
always a little demon who writes on it how much Labour, actually done
upon Nature, it corresponds to; for this alone is the reality. Here,
too, if we would get at the reality, we cannot stop short at the outer
surface.
Well, it has not been possible, ladies and gentlemen, within this
fortnight to give you more than a few stimulating suggestions to guide
you on your way. Nevertheless, as I well know, these are the
suggestions which need to be developed in every possible direction.
And I know that the most important thing of all is that you should
perceive how, compared with the usual ideas, the ideal pictures we
have here evolved do represent something living.
If you have absorbed that which is living in these ideal pictures, you
will not have spent these fourteen days here in vain. For it is this
that weighs on one so heavily. Great issues are impending. Human
beings are in need of free and clear insight into the essentials, for
the healing of so many ills of our civilisation. There is much talk of
what should be done, but there is little will, alas, to dive down into
realities and to draw forth from there the word which tells what
should be done. We have gradually departed from the sphere of
Truth, and from the real life of Rights Rights
that spring forth from the very nature of man and from that
which must unfold in man if he is to be of value to his fellows
namely the genuine Practice of life. Out of the word of Truth
we have slid into the empty phrase out of the sense of Right
into mere convention; out of a practical hold on life into dead
routine. We shall not escape from the threefold untruth of
phrase, convention and routine till we develop
the will to go down into the facts and to see how things are shaped in
their own real nature. But if we do so, then, precisely as persons who
approach the matter as students, we shall be met with understanding.
There are so many agitatory phrases in the world today, doing
appalling harm just because there are so few men with an earnest will
to go into realities.
For this very reason, ladies and gentlemen, it gave me deep
satisfaction to see you here, prepared to work with me during this
fortnight, thinking through the realm of Economic Science. I thank you
heartily. I may express this thanks, for I believe I see how important
it is how very much those whose position in life today is that
of students of Economics can contribute to the healing of our
civilisation and to the reconstruction of our human life.
We must endeavour to make Economic Science not a mere theory; it must
be our aim that it should prove itself of real economic value, so that
the Labour we are being saved can be put to good use by those who
relieve us of it, for the benefit and progress of mankind. I believe
that in resolving to come here you were thus mindful of the task of
the economist; and I hope that this has been confirmed in you by what
we have attained, however inadequately, through our united work. Let
us look forward to an opportunity of working at these things again
another time.
Last Modified: 02-Nov-2024
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