This working translation of The Just Price is a second attempt to
bring the concept of social organics as developed by Herbert Witzenmann on the
basis of Rudolf Steiner’s idea of the threefold nature of the social organism
to these American shores. The first attempt in this campaign took place last
summer (1998) when Herbert Witzenmann’s profound contemplation on the
social-organic nature of the principles of the Anthroposophical Society
entitled The Principles of the
Anthroposophical Society as a Basis of Life and a Path of Training was for
the first time translated in full for the occasion of the annual meeting of the
Social Science Section of the Goetheanum, Free School for Spiritual Science in
North America. In this first Social
Esthetic Study the emphasis is on social organics related to the principles
as a universal charter of humanity embodying the archetype of a living society
of free spirits. As such it makes manifest why Rudolf Steiner attached such
great importance to the realization by the leadership of the Goetheanum of
these all-encompassing principles of freedom, which were originally called
statutes, when he said:
The central Council will have to consider its task to be
solely whatever lies in the direction of fulfilling the Statutes. It will have
to do everything that lies in the direction of fulfilling the Statutes. This
gives it great freedom. But at the same time we shall all know what this
central Council represents, since from the statutes we can gain a complete
picture of what at any time it will be doing.[1]
The task of realizing the principles also includes furthering
Rudolf Steiner’s Course on World Economy, originally called Course on National
(or Political) Economy. This course expresses, as will be shown in these three
lectures, the new form for the exposition of the idea of the threefold social
organism, to which this working translation is an introduction. This task
follows from the explicit mentioning of the World Economy Course by Rudolf
Steiner during the discussion of the central paragraph nr 8 of the principles [2] at
the Christmas Conference 1923/24, in which the question arose whether the
imprint of the Goetheanum, Free School for Spiritual Science should also be
printed in this lecture course as a manuscript for members of this School. The
relevant part of this discussion went as follows:
Dr Steiner: On the whole the imprint will apply only to the lecture cycles and
those publications which are equal to the cycles.
Herr Werbeck: What about the National Economy Course given here. Does that count as a
cycle?
Dr Steiner: The matter is somewhat different regarding
the few works which have not been published by me or the Anthroposophical
Publishing Company…. In one way I am quite grateful to you for giving me the
opportunity to speak about this rather vexed question. In the case of these
papers it should be a matter of course that they are only to be used by those
who have been permitted to do so. This National Economy Course is one, and the
medical course is another, and so on. If they were to be published more widely,
the author’s rights would have to be returned to me. If we were planning to
transform these papers into the form given to the cycles bearing this note,
they would have to be returned to me, and they would only be brought out by the
Philosophical – Anthroposophical Verlag as cycles published bearing this note…”
[3]
In so many words, Rudolf Steiner
therefore states that his World Economy Course too is to be nurtured, further
developed and spiritually protected by the Anthroposophical Society and the
Goetheanum. In effect, this means nothing less than that since the Christmas Conference
the Goetheanum School also has the task of realizing the new form of the idea
of the threefold social organism, here called social organics, in the world.
This is something Herbert Witzenmann has constantly endeavored to do from the
time that he became leader of the Social Science Section at the Goetheanum in
1965 until his – as he himself writes – removal under coercion from this
position by a majority decision of the Executive-Council (Vorstand) of the
General Anthroposophical Society in 1972. Afterwards he continued this task, so
to speak, in the shadow of the Goetheanum until his death in 1988. To what
extent he succeeded in that task may be left up to the judgment of the reader.[4]
The foregoing serves to explain to
those anthroposophical readers who were perhaps inclined to ask why these three
lectures by Herbert Witzenmann on Just Price were not given in Dornach, but in
the nearby village of Arlesheim. Those readers interested in the related
question why it has taken 25 years for these three lectures to reach American
shores, I refer to my booklet Munsalvaesche
in America – Towards the New Grail Community and other relevant literature
listed at the end of this publication (not included here, will eb put online soon). Suffice
it to say, that after the removal of Herbert Witzenmann from his chair at the
Social Science Section, the threefold social idea in this crucial new form was
unfortunately all but neglected by the new occupant of this chair in the person
of the late President of the General Anthroposophical Society, Manfred
Schmidt-Brabant.[5]
Be that as it may, the concept of
social organics has reached American
shores in the form of these two booklets on social organics by Herbert
Witzenmann and my introductions and talks on this subject. In the introduction
to my translation of Werner Greub’s third volume From Grail Christianity to Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy of his
Grail trilogy for the occasion of the recently held astrosophy conference on
the Grail Astronomy at the StarHouse in Boulder, Colorado, I wrote the
following:
"What brings me back to
these United States for the third time now are invitations from friends and
some welcome financial backing from both sides of the Atlantic to participate
in three summer conferences: the one in Boulder already mentioned, then a
conference for members of the Social Science Section of the Goetheanum in
America on Deepening our Understanding of
Threefolding, followed by a public conference The Threefold Social Order and the Challenge of Elite Globalization
from July 7-11, in a Shaker village, New Lebanon, NY, and finally The Other America Convocation in
Concord, MA, from July 11-14 by keen followers and kindred souls of Emerson, the American Goethe, and his friend Thoreau. What connects all these
three endeavors is indeed the Grail, for the Grail impulse of the 20th
century – and no doubt also for the coming one – lies in transforming the
driving force of the world economy from egoism to altruism. This is the mission
of inner spiritualization of John. Based on indications by Rudolf Steiner and
Walter Johannes Stein, the Dutch writer Willem Frederik Veltman expounds in his
book Temple and Grail (not
translated) on the three grades of chivalry. The first one is the grade of
Faith (Peter), the second one of Hope (James) both lying in the past, while the
current and future one is the grade of Charity or Love (John). Veltman writes:
‘This Grade of John can only be realized today and has to do with a world
economy based on a truly Christian love. But for the time being, the world
economy as a world power is still developing in an opposite direction.’
How
this can be done has been shown by Rudolf Steiner in his course on World
Economy in Dornach 1922. In the first of these 14 lectures he states that what
he is about to deliver is the new language, even the new way of thinking with
which to present the threefold social order in the near future, and that it is
above all necessary to come to an understanding of the concept social organism as consisting of humanity
and the earth as a whole. This unity was already seen in the spirit by Casper
Hauser, who is a vital link in the historic Grail line. The social organism is
thus essentially the body of Christ; but He can only wholly incarnate into this
earth, if we as humanity practice the threefold order in the sense of Rudolf
Steiner’s World Economy by creating the right balance among the production
factors of the social organism: nature, labor and capital (spirit). This is the
Christian justification for taking up the threefold social order or social
organics, a term I think that Thoreau would welcome into his Walden and Walt Whitman would plant in
his Leaves of Grass.
A
most enlightening introduction to these green economic matters are three
lectures from the year 1974 entitled The
Just Price - World Economy as Social Organics by Herbert Witzenmann, the
late leader of the Social Section at the Goetheanum. From 1972, however, he was
unable to continue his work there, because as he himself writes (Im Bemühen um Klärung p. 4, see also Munsalvaesche in America), he was
“forced out” in connection with the “book question”: the living spirit and
creative work of this genial human being exchanged for the dead letter of the
book, be it even a book by Rudolf Steiner! [6]
Again, this veiled ‘internal’
opposition to the true proponents of Rudolf Steiner’s impulse is one of the
main reasons that it has taken so long for these vital matters to reach American
shores, but come they must and come they will. I am therefore grateful for the
support of the organizers of the second and third conferences, namely Bernard
Wolf (Social Science Section) and Stuart B. Weeks (Concord Convocation), and
others such as the New York City economist David Gilmartin given to my proposal
to translate these three lectures during the two weeks between the first and
second conference, and present them afterwards as study material. This as a
further step in introducing the concept of social organics to America."
The actual translation of The
Just Price was begun on my laptop on June 21 in David and Laura Lee
Tresemer’s Morning Star House just
outside of Boulder, Colorado, and continued three days later in the great New
York Public Library, whose marble walls provided a welcome albeit temporary
relief from a blistering heat wave. Over the 4th of July holiday the
proofreading was done with the help of David Gilmartin, who was also so kind as
to put me up during most of this time and who also helped finance the printing.
Without his help, this working translation would have hardly made it.
The synopsis here was translated from a summary made for a Dutch working
translation of The Just Price that
was presented in Amsterdam in 1994 by the translator as study material for the
Willehalm Institute for Social Organics. The foreword to the German edition of The Just Price by Dr Götz Rehn was not
included here, because of lack of time. In this foreword, credit is given to
Hans Mrazek who wrote in shorthand the lectures on which the German text is
based. The quotations from the World Economy Course are taken from the version
by A. O. Barfield and T. Gordon Jones published by the Rudolf Steiner Press in
1972, but here and there I have made what I consider some improvements. I have
not made the English pronouns gender neutral, with my apologies to the
feminists.
May this working translation be followed soon by an official
one, where of course this introduction would have to be revised in order to
address a more general public. This official publication could perhaps include,
or be followed by, two further booklets by Herbert Witzenmann with his
enlightening approach to social organics: Currency
as Consciousness and Social Organics
– Ideas for the Reorganization of the Economy. [7]
New York City, July 6, 1999
Robert J. Kelder
Robert J. Kelder
[1] Rudolf Steiner, The
Christmas Conference For The Foundation of the General Anthroposophical Society
1923/1924, Anthroposophic Press 1990, p. 115 ff. In this translation, the
last part of the last sentence reads “what it (i.e. the Council) is doing”, which weakens this statement
considerably, for the German word jemals, meaning ever or at
any time, has been omitted. Another, more fundamental problem is the
question of the title of this book, which refers to The Foundation of the General
Anthroposophical Society. As pointed out in the forewords and footnotes to the
statutes in my working translation of Herbert Witzenmann’s social esthetic
study The Principles of the Anthroposophical Society, which is appearing
simultaneously in an updated edition with this present booklet, it was not the
General (note the G written as a capital letter) that was founded, but the
general Anthroposophical Society (i.e. general as opposed to the national or
particular Anthroposophical Societies that were founded as groups of the
general society) . During the Christmas Conference, Rudolf Steiner uses both
terms interchangeably, but he emphasized that there is in effect only the
Anthroposophical Society, the rest are local groups. Moreover, the statutes
that were endorsed as well as the membership cards that were issued both read Anthroposophical
Society. The General Anthroposophical Society as such derived its name and
identity from the Goetheanum Building Association that on February 8, 1925
changed its name accordingly and added to it three sub-divisions, namely the
administration of the Anthroposophical Society, the administration of the
Goetheanum building itself, the Anthroposophic-Philosophical Publishing Co. and
the Clinic. See the foreword to the fifth edition of above-mentioned booklet on
the principles for further background information to and insight into this
thorny constitutional issue and a solution in the form of a three-act real life
mystery play entitled the Kardeiz Saga. See also the coming, revised
edition of Munsalvaesche in America – Towards the New Grail Community.
[2] This paragraph reads (in my translation): “All publications of the Society shall be
open to the public as is the case in other public societies. The publications
of the Free School of Spiritual Science will not be exempt from this public
availability; however, the leadership of the School reserves the right from the
outset to challenge the validity of every judgment on these works, that is not based on the schooling of which the works
themselves are the outcome. In this sense the leadership, as is altogether
customary in the recognized scientific world, will not acknowledge the validity
of any judgment that is not based on the appropriate preliminary studies. Therefore
the publications of the Free School of Spiritual Science will contain the following
imprint: "Printed in manuscript for the members of the Free School of
Spiritual Science, Goetheanum, Class ... No person is held qualified to form a
judgment on these works who has not, through the School itself or in an
equivalent manner recognized by it, acquired the preliminary knowledge advanced
by the School. Other opinions will in so far be rejected, as the authors of the
works in question do not enter into any type of discussion concerning
them."
[3] Rudolf Steiner, The
Christmas Conference…, p. 153 f.
[4] See the foreword to this third edition for a response
to criticism of the editors of the American journal The Threefold Review
that Herbert Witzenmann misinterprets and misrepresents Rudolf Steiner’s Course
on World Economy.
[5] M. Schmidt-Brabant, who passed away earlier this year,
was a brilliant speaker and did much to somehow improve the (outward)
appearance of things. However, next to his discontinuation and glaring neglect
of the new, actual form of the idea of the threefold nature of the social
organism as developed by Rudolf Steiner and expounded by Herbert Witzenmann – a
form which later in this foreword is referred to as a, or even, the Grail
impulse of the 20th and 21st century – he withdrew the
attention from Arlesheim Hermitage to Santiago de Compostella in northern Spain
(formerly Portugal) as the central Grail area. See also my introductions to
Werner Greub’s How The Grail Sites Were Found – Wolfram von Eschenbach and
the Reality of the Grail that was recently published by the Willehalm
Institute Press in Amsterdam and presented in Montreal and various libraries in
New England including the Rudolf Steiner Library in Ghent NY.
[6] On the vitally important but still relatively unknown,
so-called, book question, which in fact is a question concerning the proper
representation of Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy, the nature of the
Anthroposophical Society and its research and development center, the
Goetheanum, Free School of Spiritual Science, see H. Witzenmann The
Principles of the Anthroposophical Society and Munsalvaesche in America by
the author.
[7] German titles: Geldordnung als Bewusstseinsfrage,
Gideon Spicker Verlag, 1995 and Sozialorganik
– Ideen zu einer Neugestaltung der Wirtschaft, G. Spicker, 1998.
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