> [!summary] Progressive Summary # Structured Notes ## Definitions ethical individualism - "an individualism that is permeated with social awareness and responsibility" fundamental social law - Steiner believed this had the same validity as a law of nature. "The more a person works for the benefit of the community, and the more the community is structured to provide for the needs of each individual, the greater the well-being of the whole community will be." > A main corollary to this law is that human suffering caused by social institutions is a result of egoism, and the more people work out of self-interest or egoism, the more poverty, want, and suffering will be introduced into social life somewhere, sometime. This, of course, is in stark contradiction to a central principle of the modern capitalist market economy: The more people work out of self-interest, the more productive they will be and, consequently, the more prosperous society will be as a whole. antthroposophy - a spiritual science threefold human organism - nerve-sense, rhythmic, and metabolic threefold social order - Steiner's division of social life into economics, culture and politics, which he developed in response to German diplomat Otto von Lerchenfeld who asked him in 1917 how they could avoid another war materialism - "a perspective that recognizes physical sense-perceptible matter as the only reality and asserts that everything, including thinking, feeling, and willing can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena." ## Chapter Summaries #### Chapter 2 - Rudolf Steiner as Social Reformer and Activist ##### Movements inspired by Steiner A list of alternative social movements influenced by Steiner: > There are several reasons why Rudolf Steiner’s social ideas should be considered when analyzing our current economic system and proposing systemic change. One is that his ideas already influence many leaders in alternative economic and social initiatives and movements. These include community supported agriculture, community land trusts, ethical banking, social finance, local or complementary currencies, sustainable agriculture, green politics, medical and educational freedom, and complementary medicine. Also, his spiritual and social ideas have inspired unique community initiatives such as the worldwide Camphill movement for children and adults with special needs, with over a hundred communities on five continents; lifesharing communities for adults with special needs in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and several other states; the Fellowship Community in Chestnut Ridge, New York, which offers elder care; and the multifaceted Sekem Community near Cairo, Egypt. In addition, many alternative economic endeavors that are not explicitly linked to Rudolf Steiner are guided by principles that coincide with his ideas, such as the decommodification of land, labor, and capital. Why engaging with Steiner is useful to an activist in this moment: > Steiner’s social ideas, usually referred to as the threefold social organism or social threefolding, provide a holistic conceptual framework that can be helpful in enabling people from various movements to work together practically. Collaboration of various alternative social movements is vitally important in order to build the force necessary to make fundamental changes in our current economic system and to combat the powerful, entrenched groups that are vested in maintaining the current economic arrangements. ##### Spirituality Putting spirituality at the heart of activism (ie [[inner-led change]]): > Perhaps the most important reason to bring Steiner’s ideas to bear on current social issues is that they take into account the spiritual dimension of the human being, social life, and the natural world. It is becoming apparent that nearly all leaders in the alternative social change movements have a spiritual worldview. Confirming this fact, Robert Karp, Executive Director of the Biodynamic and Farming Association, recently wrote, “Indeed, it is hard to think of a guiding light in the sustainable food and farming movement who [isn’t] a profoundly spiritually-minded person.” The economist and author David Korten has been expressing a similar thought for years: “I am struck by the fact that nearly every progressive leader of my acquaintance acts from a deep sense of spiritual connection. It is time to give voice to the spiritual foundations of our work through stories that celebrate the unifying spiritual intelligence that is the ground of all being.” And Susan Witt, director of the newly formed New Economics Institute, expressed at its founding meeting the need to create a new economic system in terms of spiritual responsibility with the following words: “It is our responsibility—our spiritual task, if you will—to create an economic system that embodies our highest ideals as human beings, one that builds community, advances ecological health, creates beauty, provides sustainability, and encourages mutuality.” What makes Steiner's social ideas bigger than socialism or capitalism: - three equally important contrasting yet interweaving and interdependent spheres—culture, law, and the economy—rather than an economy superior to and dominating the others; - self-administration for all three spheres instead of corporate-run states or state-run corporations; - a fair distribution of wealth rather than an unjust distribution of wealth or reliance on a redistribution of wealth; - means of production held in trust on behalf of a community and privately managed instead of private- or state-owned and managed; - true democratic equality in the political realm instead of interest group pluralism; - efficient, highly personal, non-competitive markets instead of impersonal competitive markets or impersonal state-controlled markets; - a foundation for moral and social development that resides in individual human freedom rather than in the so-called morality of the market, moral imperatives of the state, or religious or scientific fundamentalism; - workers as co-producers and partners with management rather than as competitors or as a pawns of the state. ##### The years 1899 to 1922 Steiner and Marx: > From 1899 to 1904, Steiner taught at the Berlin Workers College, a school for men and women from the working class, started by Wilhelm Liebknecht, an associate of Karl Marx. Although not a supporter of Marxism, Steiner quickly became one of the most popular teachers at the college. He was eventually forced to leave by the leaders of the college against the wishes of the students. The main factor in his dismissal was his unremitting support of human freedom, which clashed with the school’s Marxist ideology. Why Steiner's three fold ideas failed to spread in Germany: > By 1922 most efforts by Steiner and his colleagues ceased to publicly promote social threefolding. As the World War receded into the background, hyperinflation in Germany, misapprehension by labor union officials, and the tendency to revert to old thought habits all contributed to the relatively short-lived interest in Steiner’s social ideas outside the circle of people who valued his insights in other areas. Steiner never gave up on social threefolding: > Steiner never relinquished his insistence on the importance of social threefolding even though it was not taken up in any significant way during his lifetime. Shortly before his death in 1925, he stated that all initiatives that are a part of the Anthroposophical Society, which fosters the spiritual-scientific worldview that he developed, should strive to promote social threefolding even if the rest of the world was rejecting it. 40 year hibernation of social threefolding: > All public efforts in the direction of a threefold social organism had to cease in Germany around 1935 and throughout World War II because the National Socialists considered it a threat to their nationalist views and aims. It wasn’t until the 1970s and 1980s that diverse alternative movements in various locations began to take up threefold ideas with significant albeit local impact. ##### Threefolding and spheres of justice > He maintained that all three of the main spheres of social life—culture, law, and the economy—were of vital importance, and no one of them should dominate or control the others. > – Lamb, Associative Economics compare: Walzer's [[Spheres of Justice]] #### Chapter 3 - Economic Renewal, Cosmology, and the Meaning of Life ##### Steiner and Rosenberg Similarity of Marshall Rosenberg and Rudolf Steiner's ideas: > All social institutions are an expression of what we think and feel about > the world and our fellow human beings, whether we are conscious of it or > not. Our thoughts and feelings, in turn, are a reflection of our worldview, > which includes our views on the nature of the human being, the meaning and purpose of life, and our core beliefs and values. > – Lamb, Associative Economics Rosenberg would close the loop and say that our institutions shape our worldview, in a circular loop. --- > Steiner describes what he calls an archetypal social phenomenon that takes place in every human encounter. Whenever two or more people communicate there are two polar tendencies at work. One is a social disposition: the tendency to diminish one’s self-concerns and thoughts and rather live into the thoughts of the others. The other inclination is the antisocial tendency to remain awake exclusively to one’s own thoughts and opinions. > > For the most part, there is a continual subconscious oscillation in every human exchange between self-focused attention and attentiveness to the thoughts of others. Since antisocial forces are growing ever stronger, we need to make a continual effort to counterbalance them by developing a greater interest in the thoughts and feelings of others, even if they differ from our own. Rudolf Steiner calls the development of ever more interest in others the foundation or backbone of social life in the future. > > – Lamb, Associative Economics Again, NVC is a very practical tool to balance the polar opposites, and to reside in "the space between". ##### Gaia Alchemy > From the perspective of spiritual science, the physical or material world as we know it is the result of a spirit-to-matter condensation process that occurred over great eons of time. > – Lamb, Associative Economics In Gaia Alchemy, nature goes through 7 stages of transformation. Goethe described the alchemical process thus: > True observers of nature, although they may think differently, will still agree that everything that is, everything that is observable as a phenomenon, can only exhibit itself in one of two ways. It is either a primal polarity that is able to unify, or it is a primal unity that is able to divide. The operation of nature consists of splitting the united or uniting the divided; this is the eternal movement of systole and diastole of the heartbeat, the inhalation and exhalation of the world in which we live, act, and exist. This was remarked on by Iain McGilchrist in his conversation with Charles Eisenstein, when he talks about the One and the Many: https://youtu.be/0Qo0ODiOsmY?feature=shared&t=1293 Rudolf Steiner was heavily influenced by Goethe, and his ideas of social threefolding probably had its roots in Goethe. ##### Indigenous worldviews and evolution of consciousness > If we go back in time far enough, we find an innate spirituality as part of the consciousness of all peoples, somewhat similar to the consciousness of indigenous peoples of only a few hundred years ago. Human beings in those earlier times perceived spirit in nature. Consciousness for them was an experience of participation and oneness with nature and with each other. With ever-deeper research into and mastery of the material world and the development of technology—a kind of sub-nature—we have come to experience an increasing separateness from our spiritual heritage. Modern consciousness has enabled us to gain mastery over the physical world but has brought with it a consequent loss of spirit-experience. > The emergence of individual self-consciousness is an important result of this descent into matter. This enhanced sense of individuality is reflected historically in the demand for democracy or political equality. From a spiritual-scientific perspective, the development of natural science, technology, and commerce, with the attendant loss of connection to spiritual realities, is an appropriate and necessary step in the evolution of human consciousness, at least up to a certain point. However, through the course of human evolution, we are meant to reawaken to the objective reality of spirit, but now in full consciousness. The loss of instinctive, innate (automatic) spirituality has made individual freedom a possibility, and has allowed us to develop a strengthened “I” consciousness through which we can and should become conscious co-creators of future human evolution. > > – Lamb, Associative Economics #### Chapter 4 - Threefold Nature of Social Life and Associative Economics > We as a global society are confronted with three root questions. I find these root questions alive in the hearts and minds of people across various cultures and civilizations. They are: > > 1. How can we create a more equitable global economy that would serve the needs of all, including today’s have-nots and future generations? > > 2. How can we deepen democracy and evolve our political institutions so that all people can increasingly directly participate in the decision-making processes that shape their context and future? > > 3. How can we renew our culture so that every human being is considered a carrier of a sacred project—the journey of becoming one’s authentic self? > > – C. Otto Scharmer, Theory U Steiner was one of the first sociologists to speak of a three-part society. The French slogah "Liberty, Egalité, Fraternité" also refers to this. Steiner spent decades studying the human being, and the interrelationship of body, soul and spirit, before he felt ready to speak about social life. ##### Threefold structure Lamb, Associative Economics: > It is essential for the future development of a healthy social life that each sphere be enabled to fulfill its vital function. The function of the spiritual-cultural life, which includes education in the broadest sense, is to foster the full development of each human being, from outer practical skills to the highest moral and social virtues. It follows from this fact that an independent cultural life needs to be based on individual freedom. The function of a healthy political or rights sphere is to foster human relations by recognizing and upholding human rights and maintaining safety and security. Its foundation therefore should be democracy and equality. And finally, the function of the economy from a threefold perspective is to provide for the earthly and spiritual needs of human beings. Its proper basis is altruism or concern for others and society as a whole. > An authentic cultural life is: > - comprised of education in the broadest sense, including science, art, and religion; > - based on individual freedom, including freedom of thought, choice, expression, and association; > - related initially to self-interested behavior, the soul function of thinking, and the development of innate capacities; > - characterized by individualism and competition; which in turn is > - balanced by the conscious cultivation of tolerance and a love that leads to concern for others, and the development of capacities for being of service to society. > Therefore, we can view a socially responsible economic life as: > - comprised of the associations of producers, distributors, and consumers that support all three spheres—cultural, rights, and economic; > - related to the soul function of willing and to the kind of work that meets material and spiritual needs of human beings; > - based on altruism, caring for others and the environment, and the soul attitude of fellowship, all of which carry on into the future; > - characterized by private initiative and entrepreneurship; > - balanced by cooperation, collaboration, and interdependence. > The rights realm in a threefold society is: > - comprised of recognizing and upholding human rights through voting, legislation, and law enforcement, as well as non-codified social awareness and qualities such as civility and respect; > - related to human relationships and the soul function of feeling and the need for its continual refinement; > - based on the democratic principle of equality for all; > - balanced by individuals yielding to majority rule and the obligation to uphold the rights of others; > - characterized by dignity, respect, and a sense of each person being an equal and worthy member of a community. ### Chapter 5 - The Fundamental Social Law There is not much new in this chapter that isn't covered by NVC, Sociocracy, Elinor Ostrom, gift economy ideas, and other forms of encouraging prosocial behaviour. The following makes me think of sociocracy, as it is defined as governance by those who associate with each other: > The organizing principle for an economy working in harmony with the Fundamental Social Law will be neither impersonal competitive markets nor a centralized state, but a new third way of organizing economic activity: associations of producers, distributors, and consumers collaborating together. > – Lamb, Associative Economics Supports time-date currency such as the German Chiemgauer. - [Gelleri 2009 - CHIEMGAUER REGIOMONEY: THEORY AND PRACTICE OF A LOCAL CURRENCY](zotero://select/items/1_AIVPQZZZ) ### Chapter 6 - Transformation of the Competitive Market and Capitalism: Building an Associative Economy This chapter is about bringing the whole human being back into associative life. Milton Friedman extolled the impersonal nature of markets: > There is no personal rivalry in the competitive market place. …The wheat farmer in a free market does not feel himself in personal rivalry with, or threatened by, his neighbor, who is, in fact, his competitor. The essence of a competitive market is its impersonal character. > – Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom > This thinking is abstract and disconnected from reality. We must recognize that the modern competitive market is not merely impersonal; it fosters ignorance and cold indifference about the effects of one’s economic transactions. In contrast, an associative economy is highly personal, given that producers, distributors, and consumers are encouraged to know and understand each other’s situation through their associations. We have already noted that they will necessarily confront the social and environmental effects of their own intention and activities, whether they are buying or selling, lending or borrowing, donating or receiving. > – Lamb, Associative Economics At the moment, the market economy is primarily an investor-driven economy. But even Adam Smith held that the primary purpose of economic activity is to meet consumer needs, not those of producers: > Smith, Wealth of Nations, p. 660: “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.” Workers should not be seen as commodities, but should fall under the "rights" sphere, with regulations protecting their income and working conditions. ### Chapter 7 - Trans-Sector Economic Associations > In democratic societies, the science of association is the mother of science; the progress of all the rest depends on the progress it has made. > – Alexis de Tocqueville, *Democracy in America* Steiner suggested that people should form associations across these sectors of the economy - production, distribution, consumption. A good example of this is Community Supported Agriculture. Or Fair Trade movements. > Steiner goes further by taking into consideration the attitude or disposition of soul that a person carries into the dialogues and activities of associations. The spoken word in conversation is the artistic and scientific medium for modern associations. From a spiritual perspective, every human association—whether it be a congregation, school, political party, business, or informal gathering—is an opportunity to collaborate with higher powers. The collective feelings of the participants in the group stream together to create a vessel for divine beings to connect with the activity. The intentionality, level of attentiveness, and the quality of feelings and thoughts that a group of people bring to a gathering will determine what kind and degree of spiritual support they will attract while working together. > – Lamb, Associative Economics > When human beings find themselves together in voluntary associations, they group themselves around centers. The feelings streaming in this way to a center … give beings the opportunity of working as a kind of group soul. …Indeed, in a certain respect we may say that they support their existence on human harmony; it will lie in individual souls whether or not they give as many as possible of such higher souls the opportunity of descending to humanity. The more people are divided, the fewer lofty souls will descend into the human sphere. The more associations are formed where feelings of fellowship are developed in complete freedom, the more lofty beings will descend and the more rapidly the earthly planet will be spiritualized. > – Steiner, *The Influence of Spiritual Beings on Man* While specialisation has enabled much economic productivity, it has also caused separation between workers and owners, between workers and their output, between producers and consumers, etc. Following the Goethean principle of division and union, we are now entering a stage where we must find unity again through economic associations. The goal of trans-sector associations should be to make decision-making and activities open and transparent, not only to participants, but to the broader public as well. ### Chapter 8 - Freedom, Funding and Accountability in Education > For the last three decades education reform, which includes the implementation of national goals, standards, and assessments, has been the collaborative effort of the federal government and big business. The Goals 2000 Educate America Act and the No Child Left Behind Act, created by Democratic and Republican administrations respectively, are nothing more than financial and corporate interests and thinking codified into law. > – Lamb, Associative Economics Government schools served a useful purpose at one period of time. But the time has now come to diversity the education system. More parents than currently do would choose independent schools if they had the choice and could afford it. Having independent schools as an option is as important as the separation of church and state. There should be a variety of education options available, including government schools, independent schools, and home schooling. There should be a level financial field so that parents from any income level have a choice. Teachers should remain free to tailor the curriculum to the needs of each individual child. Independent schools are accountable to the families they serve, the accrediting bodies they choose, and the state where they are located. ### Chapter 9 - The Economic Necessity for Educational and Cultural Reform > In every generation, through the children we teach at school, something is given to us, something is sent down from the spiritual world. We take hold of this in education—this is something spiritual —and incorporate it in economic life and ward off its destruction. For economic life, if it runs its own course, destroys itself. > – Steiner, *The New Spirituality* > An economic system that dictates a society’s education policy and culture through the coercive powers of the state is on a suicidal track. It will cultivate only those capacities and skills needed to perpetuate the existing economic and political order, and in doing so economic life will strangle the source of its own creative life forces—the inexhaustible fount of human capacities and creativity arising from cultural life. > – Lamb, *Associative Economics* ### Chapter 10 - Individual and Cultural Freedom To develop an independent cultural life and education system consistent with a three-fold social order, the following four factors are needed: - Liberty from political, economic or religious oppression - Full development of individual capacities, including imagination and empathy, that often aren't captured by standardised tests and objective metrics - Overcoming inner obstacles; inner-led change; composting one's inner shit - Economic support - education of all children to their full potential, and access to capital for individuals who want to meet a community or societal need ### Chapter 11 - Rights and Single-Payer Systems for Education and Health Care Steiner believed that education should be funded directly from the economic sphere, not from the political sphere. That's because public funds require public oversight, and state-funded projects are subject by necessity to majority rule and bureaucratic regulations. The same thinking applies to health care. ### Chapter 12 - Economic Indices and Basic Human Needs We need economic indicators for 3 key areas in order to provide essential information for monitoring our efforts to transform and renew economic life: - are basic human needs being covered? - is capital available for socially beneficial enterprises? - how much is concentrated philanthropic wealth being used to promote narrow agendas? ### Chapter 13 - Money and Morality: From Citizens to Supra-Rulers The current monetary system might be described as a government-bank oligarchy. Steiner believed that currency shouldn't be issued by the state or private banks. Instead, money would be issued and controlled by economic associations, and used to facilitate economic production and exchanges. One idea might be Thomas Greco's idea of voluntary direct mutual credit-clearing systems. These structural changes must be accompanied by an inward awareness of our moral obligation to others: > How many people there are today who have an abstract and confused conception of their personal lives. If they ask themselves, for example, “What do I live on?” … they would say to themselves, “Why, on my money.” … Money is not something on which we can live. … My money has no value other than that of giving me the power to make use of the labor of others. Under the social conditions of the present time, we do not begin to have an interest in our fellow men until … we hold the picture in our minds of a certain number of persons working for a certain number of hours in order that I may live within the social structure. …No one loves people if he supposes that he is living on his money and does not in the least conceive how people work for him in order to produce even the minimum necessary for his life. …But the thought that a certain number of persons labor in order that we may possess the minimum necessities of life is inseparable from another. This is the thought that we must recompense society, not with money but with work in exchange for the work that has been done for us. We feel interest in our fellow men only when we are led to feel obligated to recompense in some form of labor the amount of labor that has been performed for us. …The feeling of obligation to the society in which we live is the beginning of the interest that is required for a sound social order. …Enjoyment should really never be accepted without repaying its equivalent to the whole of society. > – Steiner, Rudolf. *The Challenge of the Times*, Spring Valley, NY:Anthroposophic Press, 1941, pp. 55-57 This quote suggests that Steiner would have approved of time banking. It also shows the importance of cultivating the concrete imagination, so that we understand things not in the abstract. If we only relate to other people abstractly, we cannot care for them. A Steiner education uses storytelling to activate the impulse towards empathy. ### Chapter 14 - True Price > Those who to this day are still mere wage-earners—earners of a living for themselves—how are they to be placed in the whole economic process, no longer as such earners but as men who work because of social needs? Must this be done? Assuredly it must. For if this is not done, we shall never obtain true prices but always false ones. > – Steiner, *World Economy* Under Steiner, an essential part of a true price formulation is that it points to the future. This is for financial and spiritual reasons. Financially, it is important that the worker's future needs are taken into account, not just past needs. Spiritually, it frees people to work on behalf of others, not just selling their labour. Steiner felt that the means of production (such as land, human-made tools, etc) should be community assets, and not sold for their surplus value. In this, he seems to be holding a Marxian view of trying to create an economy based on use-values. > In the market economy there is seldom an occasion where the needs of producers (including the workers) and consumers are taken into consideration in open dialogue. In fact, producers and consumers are pitted against each other in the market. One seeks the highest possible price and the other seeks the lowest possible price, with little knowledge or concern for the other. We have seen that economic associations would provide the opportunity for all parties—producers, distributors, and consumers—to bring their needs to the table in full openness. Each party is then faced with the needs of the others. Thus, the agreed-upon price is established by the actual stakeholders through informed decision-making. It is not imposed from outside by the state, nor simply left to the chances of the market and subject to the uncontrolled forces of supply and demand, nor is it determined through price-fixing by colluding parties to maximize profits. Through associations, prices can be determined through transparent accounting and informed analysis that reveal the complete costs and needs of each party involved. > – Lamb, *Associative Economics* The above makes me think of the de natura economics of Otto Neurath. True prices are a reflection of a healthy dynamic among the three spheres of social life. > A price is true when: > > • Economically: products and services are produced in an efficient manner that meets real human needs, as determined by economic associations; > > • Democratically: land, labor, and capital are no longer treated as commodities; workers receive a living income for themselves and their dependents; and the environment is protected from unjustified exploitation; > > • Culturally: people are educated to develop their full creative capacities and to feel an ethical obligation to give back to the greater community whenever possible an equivalent value to what they have received from the labor of others. The above seems a bit circular to me. I'm not sure if this chapter illuminates anything about prices for me. I feel a deeper analysis is explored by Anitra Nelson in Beyond Money, or in [[Reference Notes/Half-Earth Socialism|Half-Earth Socialism]]. # Rough Notes # Quotes > First of all, get a broom and out with everything that negates the spirit in economic life. On that depends the future welfare of mankind. …Away with everything that rejects the spirit in economic life. … Otherwise, economic chaos will result and with it the general chaos of civilization. > – Rudolf Steiner, Spiritual Science as a Foundation for Social Forms