The first edition of 50 copies of The Just Price was printed in New York
City overnight on the eve of July 6 and picked up the next morning – the day
that the internal part of the Social Science Section Conference Deepening our Understanding of Threefolding
in New Lebanon NY, was to begin. During the three days of lectures, research
reports and deliberation on the conference theme, I was able to refer, among
other things, to the new and actual form of threefolding as propounded in this
working translation. Unfortunately, I cannot report that the indications given
by Rudolf Steiner in 1922 to think and talk about Threefolding in a new way –
indications which are taken up by Herbert Witzenmann in this volume, and to
which I referred at last year’s annual meeting of the Social Section – have as
yet had any noticeable effect.[1]
Practically all the participants spoke of threefolding in the manner that
Rudolf Steiner presented in his book Towards
Social Renewal from 1919, which was updated, and – thereby, as regards the
form – outdated in 1922 by the World Economy Course.
The one who most closely approached
this fundamental new approach (for particulars I refer to the following three
lectures) was the last speaker of the public part of the conference on the
theme of elite globalization, Joel Kobran, one of the co-editors of the American
journal The Threefold Review, who –
not being a member of the Social Section, and thus not having attended its
annual meeting – was therefore not in a position to react to my critical
remarks. Another newly found ‘comrade in arms’ strongly tending towards this
new approach advocated by Rudolf Steiner to present the threefold idea, was the
international numismatist and monetary speaker, Hank Passafero from Oregon.
From this conference site – a former Shaker Village in New
Lebanon, where in 1787 the first celibate Shaker Order in America devoted to
“Hands to work – Hearts to God” was established – two other participants and
myself were given a ride by John Moses to the “Other America Convocation” in
Concord MA, organized by Stuart Weeks of the “Center for American Studies”. It
turned out to be a ride of some three hours filled mainly with conversations on
how to counteract Mammon and his cronies who – through their control of
international capital and the central banks – are, next to our own spiritual
indolence, the most formidable opponents to the realization of a world economy
that is not only efficient, but also just.[2]
After this eventful Convocation on some of the historic sites
in and around Concord – during which I was given ample time to present this booklet
– I spent a few days assisting Stuart Weeks in an effort to lay the social
organic groundwork for a series of public summits in New Hampshire with
presidential candidates this coming fall. More about this later. Stay tuned!
Robert J. Kelder, Ithaca, July 22, 1999
[1] See my report Threefoldness
and the Anthroposophical Society on last year’s Social Science meetings Munsalvaesche in America, p. 21, 4th
edition Amsterdam, which was to be presented at the Rudolf Steiner Library on
September 2, 2001, but which will appear later this fall (2001). A slightly
revised version of the report on this conference itself is given in the
following foreword.
[2]
See the statement by the British economist Richard Jolly in Globalization Widens Rich-Poor Gap, U.N.
Report Says, The New York Times, July 13, 1999: “The international
community has yet to figure out how to deal with global market concentrations
of economic power.”
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