Since the last foreword to this booklet on social organics
was written (July,1999), humanity has managed to enter the third millennium - and certainly one of the most striking developments that has since come to the
fore is the increasing vehemence and fervor with which the issue of
globalization, the world economy is not only being addressed in all sorts of
United Nations and World Forums and academic – including anthroposophic –
conferences, position papers and books, but is also being fought out violently
by extremists of all shades and colors in the streets. Who has not heard and been struck
by the violence of the “Battle of Seattle” during the World Trade (WTO) Summit
in the fall of 1999, the subsequent skirmishes and clashes at similar
high-profile events in Prague and Quebec and the most recent tragic shooting of
a violent demonstrator by police in the streets of Genoa during a meeting this
summer of the G-8, the political leaders of the eight leading industrialized
nations in the world? It is indeed difficult to imagine a more pressing and
explosive issue facing humanity on earth than this question of addressing
hunger, poverty, ill health, poor housing in the third and fourth worlds and
the preservation of the global environment in the face of a rich and prosperous
first world consisting of the three current world power centers: North America
(Canada and the USA), Western Europe and the industrialized nations in the
Pacific (mainly Japan, Korea and Singapore). To put it in a nutshell:
globalization is in. An example:
"When we focus on globalization,
we are focusing on the number one problem. Globalization must remain constantly
in view. Our Forum makes it clear that we need a permanent network structure
allowing civil society to interact with the UN and the media. I suggest an International
Council for Responsible Globalization. I see support for this idea. So let
us discuss this possibility together and hope that it works. I am, as always,
optimistic."
With this message, Mikhael Gorbachev opened the State of the
World Forum 2000, “Shaping Globalization: Convening the Community of
Stakeholders” that took place from September 4-10 in New York.
When I read a report by Ulrich Morgenthaler on this and
events surrounding the UN Millennium Summit at that time[1],
my immediate reaction was to try to draw attention again to the contents of
this little but remarkable booklet of three introductory lectures on Rudolf Steiner’s
Course on World Economy. For much more than the scarce allusions that Gorbachev
makes to “a permanent network structure allowing civil society to interact with
the UN and the media” and then already expressing the hope “that it works”, The
Just Price develops after all a much more detailed as well as intrinsic and
all-encompassing guideline for the justification, constitution and task of such
an International Globalization Council: economic associations consisting of
consumers, traders and producers to establish through the new royal art and
science of social organics the so badly needed just prices for the commodities
and services that humanity requires in order to live and progress comfortably
and safely on this earth. Or to put it in words of the last paragraph of these
three lectures:
"The working world economy and the social
community will not be rescued by a world computer (internet), but by a network
of associations covering the whole earth, a network in which community
consciousness and consciousness of productive and creative freedom can meet and
confer in human beings, because they have become capable of speech."
So I sent an e-mail the next day under the heading “Real
Alternatives to Current Globalization” to various friends and colleagues including
Bernard Wolf and Claus Sproll from the Social Science Section in America,
Nicanor Perlas, author of the book Shaping Globalization – Civil Society,
Cultural Power and Threefolding, the Working Group Global Threefolding
(GlobeNet3) and the Anthroposophical Society (Forum 3) in Germany, who together
had issued an invitation the “people all over the world all over the world to
work with spiritual substance and explore practical ways to engage in the
social movements of our time” (Das Goetheanum, nr 8/2001) during their
conference “Building a New Global Culture of Spirit” from June 20-24 in Stuttgart,
Germany and other friends and colleagues. I referred in this email to the news
in the said report by U. Morgenthaler that the IFG (International Forum on
Globalization) is planning a position paper “Beyond the WTO: Alternatives to
Economic Globalization” to answer the question often put to them: “If you are
an opponent of the current global regulation inclusive the WTO, what are you
for?”
I now quote from an updated, and here slightly revised
version of this e-mail done in Hillsdale, NY on July 31, 2001 that was sent to,
among others, Stuart Weeks of the Center for American Studies in Concord, MA
and John Friede from the Worldview
Institute and Lisa Beaudoin, who is campaigning for environmental justice in
the New Hampshire area. Why I am repeating this here will hopefully become
clear in due course:
"Now, as some of you may know, in
the summer of 1999 I translated and published with the help of among others
economist David Gilmartin in New York a working translation of Herbert
Witzenmann's introduction to Rudolf Steiner's course on World Economy, entitled
The Just Price – World Economy as Social
organics. This project grew out of
my experiences of the first meeting of the Social Science section of the
Goetheanum in North America that I attended in the summer of 1998 in Kimberton
Hills, Pennsylvania and where I presented a working translation of Herbert
Witzenmann's social-esthetic study The
Principles of the Anthroposophical Society as a Basis of Life and Path of
Training.
In a report about this conference that the Willehalm Institute in Amsterdam
published in a booklet Munsalvaesche in
America – Towards the New Grail Community [2] I wrote (on. p. 23 ff.) the following remarks, which have
in essence not been outdated by the march of time:
‘Having hopefully made the point that mutual
brotherly criticism, if it is immanent, can be constructive and even uplifting,
let me now proceed to some fundamental observations I felt called upon to make
during the conference, and concerning which it is necessary to gain clarity in
our ranks, if the goals set by the conference are to be properly realized.
The first one recalled to mind that Rudolf Steiner, to my
knowledge, never once spoke or wrote of the threefold society as such, but always of the threefold social organism. This is of fundamental importance, because the
concept of the social organism includes the whole earth, while the concept of
society does not.[3] Secondly, this social organism is the
functional counterpart of the threefold physical
human organism, and in the first instance not of the human being as body, soul and spirit as was maintained
during the conference. (Why the economic life for example is functionally
related to the nervous and sense system, the rights sphere to the rhythmic
system and spiritual life to the metabolism of man cannot be dealt with here.
See Rudolf Steiner’s book Threefold
Social Renewal).
Thirdly and most important of all, if we are speaking of the
threefold social organism, it is
important to realize the weight of Rudolf Steiner's indication in his lectures
on World Economy, already referred to
here, that the form in which the idea of the threefold nature of the social
organism is presented must, from now on, be based on these very same lectures.
Concerning this point, I allowed myself the sad but true observation that,
apart from a few true and hardy souls, this crucial change of form has not
(yet) been taken to heart within our movement, including the Social Science
Section under the current leadership, with all the dire consequences for
humanity and the earth. This point seems especially important for the following
conferences that the Social Science Section in America as a three-year plan has
in mind, namely, as the conference text further stated "to support the developing
of threefold concepts and recognizing their emergence. Future conferences
concerning threefoldness on a world-scale and threefoldness in the individual
are planned."
Lastly, if we are speaking of a threefold society, we can, nay must look at the Anthroposophical Society as the universal prototype for such a
society, i.e. regard the 'principles' as the archetypal charter for a general
human society on earth (see Herbert
Witzenmann’s booklet on The
Principles of the Anthroposophical Society).[4]
Grasping this
distinction may be especially relevant to someone who not only spoke with great
enthusiasm about the threefold society, but also has written and acted on it,
namely Nicanor Perlas from the Center for
Alternative Development Initiatives (CADI) and author of the Philippine Agenda 21 Handbook (PA21).
What is striking about this Agenda, which is fully endorsed by the current
government of Philippine President Ramos, is the implicit similarity between
the central objective of this official document, which sees a threefold society
in terms of Civil Society, Polity and Economy (Business), and the first
(central) paragraph of the 'principles' (originally called statutes) of the Anthroposophical
Society! For the central tenet of PA 21 is sustainable human, spiritually
liberating development. Is this not another way of saying that the Philippine
people are striving to be "a union of people who wish to cultivate the
life of soul in the individual as well as in human society on the basis of a
true knowledge of the spiritual world" – the first statute of the Anthroposophical
Society? This striving could be a fruitful basis for further dialogue and
deliberation during the proposed international conference on Shaping The Future: Globalization, Anthroposophy
And The Threefold Social Order form October 26 to 30, 1998 in Metro Manila,
Philippines on, among other things, the all important question on how to
realize the objectives of this PA 21 in the light of the research already done
on the 'principles' of the Anthroposophical Society and the experiences (and mistakes)
made in the attempt to implement them.[5]
Having translated this booklet by Herbert Witzenmann on World
economy as social organics during two sizzling hot summer weeks in the cool
marble halls of the New York Public Library, I was able to refer to it during
the social science meeting in Upstate New York later that summer of 1999 and
provide some copies to friends and the bookstore of the New York branch of the
Society.
But the point I want to make, or rather the question I want to
raise is this: Why has this booklet – apart from criticism by Gary Lamb,
co-editor of the American journal "The Threefold Review", in a
(private) letter, which we will deal with shortly – been largely, if not
completely ignored (as far as I can see) in the subsequent world-wide
discussions about Globalization and World Economy,[6]
and, more important:
Is it not finally time to start considering, and if
found to be valid to start acting on the main point of this booklet, namely that
the World economy lectures by Rudolf Steiner still form today the new
exposition of the idea of the threefold social organism and that the
presentation (not the contents) of his earlier book on Threefolding (Towards
Social Renewal) in 1919 as he himself has stated, is outdated, and
therefore, as experience has shown, doomed to failure?
As I see it, the world asks of us a
twofold task that proceeds from the common spiritual font of social organics as
the new Royal Art:
1. Realize and implement the lectures on world economy as the
new conception and language of global threefolding, and
2.
Realize and implement the 'principles' of the Anthroposophical
Society as the universal charter for a truly civil society of free spirits.
This was my
motivation for translating and presenting the two above mentioned working
translations by Herbert Witzenmann (1905-1988), former member of the executive
of the General Anthroposophical Society in Dornach and head of the Social Science
Section at the Goetheanum." (End of the quotation from the email)
The foregoing may serve to make it
quite evident that the most pressing issue occupying the minds (and bodies) of
so many of our contemporaries is the globalization issue and that exactly this
issue was already addressed through the new way conception and language that
Rudolf Steiner developed in 1922 in his Course on World Economy. But the notion
that this Course also inaugurated a new, universally valid, form for the
representation of the idea of the threefold idea of the social organism has not
totally convinced the editors of The Threefold Review. As mentioned, the
only criticism of the argument presented in this booklet that I received was
from Gary Lamb in a letter in which he maintained – after admittedly only having
read the first of the three lectures presented – that “Herbert Witzenmann erred
in his conclusion that in the World Economy lectures Steiner was presenting a
new conception or metamorphosis of threefolding in which the economy is no
longer to be viewed as a component of a threefold organism."[7]
He conceded that Rudolf Steiner presented the threefold idea a new form in his
World Economy Course – he could hardly deny this, as Rudolf Steiner states this
quite clearly himself in the first lecture – but did not indicate what exactly
this new form consists of. He then furthermore strongly urged me to reconsider
my attempt to introduce this conception of social organics to America.
Now Lamb’s criticism on this point is shared by
his co-editor of The Threefold Review, Joel Kobran, with whom I recently
spent a congenial afternoon in the company of John Root Sr. and Famke Zonneveld
in North Egremont (MA) discussing it at some length. We parted company,
however, without coming to any real consensus. Since I consider the issue at
stake absolutely fundamental and vital to the development of the royal art and
science of social organics, I will attempt to present both sides of the
argument here and then draw some conclusions. Hereby I will denote the two
editors as “the critics”, Rudolf Steiners course on World Economy as “the
Course”, the idea of the threefold nature of the social organism as “social
organics”.
The critics make several points:
1. The Course does not represent the new way for
the presentation of social organics, or at least not in the West, because immediately
after its conclusion, Rudolf Steiner gave three lectures on social organics in
Oxford, England on August 27, 28 and 29, 1922, the last two of which are
published under the title Threefolding – A Social Alternative (London,
1980), in which he spoke in the “usual” manner of the book Towards Social
Renewal and did not mention the Course at all.
Commentary: It is true that Rudolf Steiner does not mention
the Course by name, but he certainly does so judged by its contents.
In the lecture on August 18 e.g. he compares among other things the rate of
industrial development between England and Germany in the course of the 19th
century and then states that precisely because his book Towards Social
Renewal was not understood and as such acted upon the horrendous inflation
that was scourging in Germany at that time came about. Therefore “it is quite
natural that in Germany my book Towards Social Renewal is almost
forgotten today…, while in 1919 it was soon read far and wide. The moment in
time when the contents of the book should have been realized is now past as far
as Central Europe is concerned. The moment was past when that strong decline of
the German currency began which now completely fetters the German Economy.”[8]
Here is the point where Rudolf Steiner could have said something like the
following: “An just because of this abominable situation in Central Europe,
which made it impossible for my book to be read anymore, I took pains to
present the threefold idea in a new way in my Course on World Economy.” As pointed
out and developed by Herbert Witzenmann in the second lecture of his booklet,
the social organism as a social organic work of art originated in its
cultural-symptomatic mode of appearance, on the one hand, by the emerging
economic contrast between England and France in the 19th century and
on the other hand by its conceptual structure: this forms the introduction and
fundament of the Course. Thus looked at contextually, Rudolf Steiner certainly
does mention elements of the Course in his lectures in Oxford.
But what about the question of the new form? After all, he
states in the same lecture on August 28: “So I believe that in future my book
should be read more in the West and in Russia, but that it has no chance of
becoming effective in Germany. The West, for instance, can learn much from this
book, for in a non-utopian manner it simply states how the three spheres
co-exist and should interact. For the West the moment in time does not matter,
for much is still to be done for the right interaction of the three currents,
the spiritual life, the economic life, the politic-legal life.”[9]
Here my answer would be that Rudolf Steiner probably believed
that for some time to come his book from 1919 could be read in the West and
Russia. The question however is: for how long? Perhaps it was read for some
time, but the fact of the matter is: social organics was not understood and
implemented in the West, let alone Russia. And it is my contention that
after the economic crisis and crash in 1929, a second world war as a
continuation of the first, brought on largely by economic causes, the
establishment of central banks as the (partly hidden) real centers of
world-wide power and control, rampant inflation and huge debts in third world
countries and the so-called victory of capitalism (the West) over communism
(the East), in which economic forces predominate over anything else, we must
now turn to the Course as the most viable way to present social organics as a real alternative to the current form of
globalization to the world.
Update for this edition: We include
here the words that Rudolf Steiner spoke during the Christmas
Conference 1923 concerning the effects that the march of time has on the
presentation form of the social threefold idea. This reference was inserted as
an addendum to the previous edition; they are, to our knowledge, the last words
with which Rudolf Steiner addressed this theme. They are not given here as
proof that our viewpoint is necessarily correct, since there is after all a
time span of some 78 years separating us from them. They do serve to show
however that the way of representing social organics from 1919 is out of date;
they can be read in the lecture “The Idea Of Future Building in Dornach” on 31
December 1923, in the volume entitled The Christmas Conference For The
Foundation of the General Anthroposophical Society 1923/24 (Anthroposophic
Press, 1990, 214 ff.):
"I have often
stressed amongst ourselves that if you want to live in reality and not in
ideas, then the realities of time must be given particular recognition. The
time in which one lives is a reality. But it is difficult to generate an
understanding for this time as being something real. There are still people today
who represent the threefolding of the social organism with the very sentences I
used to use with regard to the conditions prevailing at the time, in 1919.
History is indeed advancing so rapidly just now that if someone describes
things in the way they were described in 1919 this seems to be hundreds of
years out of date."
I did quote these words in my presentation of The Just
Price in the Rudolf Steiner Library on Sunday, August 26, 2001 and
expressed the hope that our critics will include them in their (hopefully) forthcoming
response to our response, which was done in the spirit of a brotherly
competition for the truth (update 2012: no response was made. Joel Kobran in
the meantime has passed away.).
2. “Herbert Witzenmann erred in his
conclusion that in the World Economy lectures Steiner was presenting a new
conception or metamorphosis of threefolding in which the economy is no longer
to be viewed as a component of a threefold organism."
Commentary: Implicit in this critique is that Herbert
Witzenmann would somehow negate or even destroy the usual image of the social
organism as consisting of the spiritual-cultural, politico-legal and economic
sphere as given in Towards Social Renewal. For, so it is further argued,
just as the spiritual sphere is threefold, so the economic sphere is threefold.
This is a serious but unfounded charge and results from a lack of conceptual discrimination,
from not adopting or understanding the view that Herbert Witzenmann, in line
with Rudolf Steiner, is taking in the Course in order to develop the new
threefold language. And in order to adopt this novel view, which requires
mobility in thinking, it is certainly necessary to read beyond the first
lecture from this booklet, because it is really in the second and third
lectures that Herbert Witzenmann further presents and rounds of his argument.
The above sentence must furthermore be place in the right context. We quote
from the end of the first lecture of this booklet, at the place where Herbert
Witzenmann comments on Rudolf Steiner’s announcement calling for a new language
and way of thinking:
“That only means: Today one cannot
speak anymore about the threefold idea in the way that one did when it was
inaugurated. With that the threefold idea is not suspended; on the contrary, it
is a matter of becoming aware of the way it can become active among people in a
new form and be understood. The decisive
sentence here is the following one (p.102)[10]:
‘We have found, within the economic process itself, a division that is
threefold. Only, it is necessary that we begin to think of this threefold order
in the right way.’ That is the decisive sentence: The threefold idea was
inaugurated in a period of extreme economic, political and cultural turmoil. It
was the period of complete collapse after the First World War. That would have
been the moment to make the three members of the social organism mutually independent
and in their independence bring them into a proper working relationship with
each other. That would therefore have been a point in time to find the proper
place and function for the economic life etc. within and out of this threefold
social organism. Unfortunately this fruitful moment was lost; it was not
recognized and seized. Time moved on and Rudolf Steiner says: We cannot speak
anymore as we did then, because the economic, political and monetary
straitjackets and automatisms have gotten much, much worse; and because the
situation is no longer so open as it was then, we cannot make any headway
directly in threefolding the social organism. Instead we must see how these
three components, i.e. the economic proper, the rights and the spiritual, are
latent within the economic life; we must see how actually all economic and social
problems arise because these three components do not function together
properly. We must develop the threefold idea out of the economic life, so that
we recognize: These three components function together within the economic
life, but we cannot come to a proper conscious awareness of their significance
and function; here lies the cause for all economic and social problems. The
transformation of the threefold idea therefore means that the economic life can
no longer bring itself to bear as a component within the three independent components
of the social organism, but that the threefold idea must be recognized as
consisting of the three economic archetypal forces and be taken up within this
economic life, if this economic life is to be saved from destruction.
This is directly and indirectly
expressed by Rudolf Steiner in many passages. At one point, he says (p. 134):
‘And you can see it also from the other side. I pointed out how in the simple
case of exchange, where money becomes more and more important, or indeed where
exchange is recognized at all, the economic life enters directly into the
sphere of rights.’ One person gives and the other one takes in the economic
life. By becoming aware of this, we realize that these rights components and
this rights sphere cannot be omitted in any way, for in giving and taking it is
the just balance that matters. To this can be added the following: ‘The moment
that reason is to enter the economic life, we must once again let that which prevails
in the free spiritual life flow into the economic sphere.’ The organizing in
the spiritual life, the justice in giving and taking, and the actual economic
activity of enhancing products of nature: in this sense you therefore have in
this course a continuation and at the same time a re-inauguration of the threefold
idea. To say it once more: The economy is not a component within the
threefold social organism, but the threefold organism is a component within the
economic life. That is the interesting new situation that is characterized
by this Course.”
The sentence that made our critics stumble is put in italics
here, but it can obviously only be understood when it is realized that in
this booklet Herbert Witzenmann is talking about two forms of the economic life:
the economic life (proper) in a narrow and in a larger, extended sense. In the above sense the word economy must be
taken in the latter, extended sense as containing the (half free) spiritual
life, the rights sphere (exemplified through just price) and the economic life
proper (work applied to nature). Thus the economic life in a larger sense
assumes the position of the social organism as a whole in which all three subsystems,
including the economic life proper – the transformation (transubstantiation) of
nature – can be found. Only seen in this way does the above sentence make sense
and can the new social organic paradigm be understood.
3. Our critics further maintain the following: When Rudolf
Steiner at the end of his first lecture in the Course (p. 16) said: “And now
the position is such that if we are to speak once more today to people such as
you, we can no longer speak in the same terms as we did then; today another
language is necessary, and that is what I now want to give you in these
lectures. I want to show you how today one must think once more about these
questions, especially if one is still young and can participate in what has to
take shape in the near future.” he was addressing students of economy, hence
the Course is meant only for economists and therefore deals exclusively with
the organization of the economic life.
Commentary: The first
thing to note here is that Herbert Witzenmann calls this a Course on Social
Organics, a term which – it must be admitted – rolls much better of the
tongue than the Threefold Social Order, the Threefold Commonwealth
(smacks of the British, no offense meant), Triformation etc. all of
which do not convey the real meaning of the German word Dreigliederung,
which is not so much a folding than an organic “membering” process. The term
furthermore directs the attention to the main concept at hand, namely that of
the social organism a term which, as we have seen, goes much more in the
direction of the green concept of environment, than the term society. At the end of the first lecture of the
Course, Rudolf Steiner says that above all else the social organism has to be
understood: “The first thing needful is to describe the economic process.” (p.
22). But even before this can be done, the social organism must be understood:
“The old State frontiers and limitations are interfering with the economic
process. The latter (i.e. the economic process) must indeed be understood, but
we must first gain an understanding of the social organism.”(p. 22).
That this Course is not exclusively the domain of economists,
but for all those who are concerned with the proper production, care and
management of humanity’s needs on earth is one of the many contributions that
Herbert Witzenmann makes in this booklet to understanding the Course. As he
develops in the second lecture, far from being only a course for economic
experts, it is “a practical book, purely by the fact that by serving as a sort
of social scientific meditation, it elevates the mind and develops a
worldview.”
This brings to mind another aspect of the change in form
initiated by the Course, showing how it differed qualitatively from the book Towards
Social Renewal. In a footnote to his “Preliminary Remarks Concerning The
Purpose This Book” Rudolf Steiner wrote (on p. 27)
“The author has purposely avoided
confining himself to the customary political economic terminology. He knows
exactly which are the passages a ‘specialist ’will call amateurish. His form of
expression was determined not only by his desire to address himself also to
people who are not familiar with political and social scientific literature,
but primarily because of his view that a new age will judge most of what is
specialized in this literature, including its terminology, to be one-sided and
inadequate.”
In his Course on World Economy this was different; there he addressed
himself to the scientific world in order to develop out of the terminology and
concepts of the traditional, national or political economy a science of world
economy, a new form of the threefold idea to meet the needs of the time. This
is why, like all the other professional courses he gave, he emphasized – as I
have shown in the introduction to the first edition to this booklet – that the
annotation of the Free School for Spiritual Science should be inserted in it,
stating among other things that these manuscripts are, as it were, text books,
study-material of the School for Spiritual Science – something which
unfortunately was broken with in the course of the dramatic history of the
Anthroposophical Society, a tragic and still unresolved chapter known as the
“book question.”[11]
By now it may be obvious that the Course far extends beyond
the usual scope of the (academic) economist, for by taking as a starting point
for the genesis of the social organism the three production factors nature,
labor and capital (spirit) and showing how through the
interaction between these three factors, economic values arise that ultimately
need to be balanced by economic associations in order to establish just prices,
it touches on the three major issues that all have their particular lobbies and
political parties vying more or less against each other for political power and
clout: the Greens have nature as their prime concern, the Democrats in
the US and the social-democrats in Europe are concerned with labor and
have historical connections to the unions, while the Republicans here and the
Liberals and Conservatives in Europe see capital as their mainstay of
power. There is at present no real world-wide alternative movement with the
foresight and vista to help bring about economic associations, internationals
councils for responsible globalization, that alone are capable of harmonizing
these three productive components of the social organism: a movement for social
organics as a Grail impulse of the 21st century could.
Acknowledgments
This third edition with the above foreword was written, and
is also to be presented, in the Rudolf Steiner Library in Ghent NY. I am extremely
grateful to Fred Paddock, the librarian here and John Root Sr. from the
Berkeshire-Taconic Branch of the Anthroposophical Society in America for
providing me with the facilities to complete this work and for making it possible
to send out a newsletter announcing these talks to the members and friends of
the Society in this area. I also want to warmly thank newly found friends such
as Dennis Evenson for his (late night) editing work and his help in getting
this booklet to Pro Printers in nearby Hudson, and Richard Roe who, while away
on holidays these last few weeks in August, let me stay in his snug little
cottage just a couple of houses up from Fern Hill where the Library stands.
Lastly, I thank all those who attended my first talk and presentation at the
library of Werner Greub’s book How The Grail Sites Were Found – Wolfram von
Eschenbach And The Reality Of The Grail and all those who bought copies of
it. This enabled me to find and partly finance my way over here and made my
stay, on the whole, a fruitful and even joyous occasion. Perhaps it can lead to
the establishment here of an American branch of the Willehalm Institute for the
advancement of anthroposophy as grail research, royal art and social organics.
Robert J. Kelder,
August 23, 2001
Rudolf Steiner Library, Ghent
[1] I read this report on October 8, 2000 in the German
Weekly Das Goetheanum, the organ for the General Anthroposophical
Society in Dornach, Switzerland, a report that later appeared in translation
under the title “An International Council for Responsible Globalization” in News
for Members (Winter 2001) the organ of the Anthroposophical Society in
America, Ann Arbor, MI.
[2] Munsalvaesche is the name given by Wolfram von
Eschenbach in his poem Parzival to the Grail Castle. The Goetheanum as
the physical and spiritual center of anthroposophy – the science as distinct to
the poetry of the Grail – could be seen as a modern Grail Castle, the idea with
respect to America being that as a necessary supplement to the idea of a modern
Camelot that John F. Kennedy’s administration seemed to embody in the eyes of
many of his contemporaries, America needs a Goetheanum, a modern Munsalvaesche
in order to search and find its bearings.
[3] “The whole Earth, considered as an economic organism,
is the social organism.” Rudolf Steiner, World Economy (London, 1977), p.23.
[4] A new edition of this working translation is to be
presented during the third of three talks at the Rudolf Steiner Library in
Ghent, NY this summer. See the poster in the appendices for further details.
[5] This conference was organized by the Anthroposophical
Group in the Philippines, 110 Scout Rallos Street, Timog, Quezon City,
PHILIPPINES, tel. No. (63-2) 928-3986 fax (63-2) 928-7608; Email:
nperlas@info.com.phNicanor Perlas. In the
conference text Rationale and Need for
the Conference another striking similarity is the observation made on the
failure of what here has been called the social organic counter principle.
Under the heading Internal Crisis and
Loss of Moral Authority it is written: "Of equal concern, the global
anthroposophical movement is minimally prepared internally to deal with the
challenge of elite globalization. It has not threefolded many of its key
institutions around the world. As such, it does not have the moral authority to
advocate threefolding since it does not do what it champions. The global
anthroposophical movement is also embroiled in internal disputes, losing sight
of the great task ahead at the end of the 20th century." The
text then goes on to quote the late Hagen Biesantz, former member of the
Council in Dornach: "He refers to the importance of the organic working
and mutual strengthening of the Center (Dornach and Central Europe) and the
Periphery (all other national societies, groups and individuals) of the global
anthroposophical movement. Problems arise in the anthroposophical movement, if
this healthy working of Center and Periphery is interrupted or is not
functional." Biesantz could well have referred here to the writings of his
former colleague on the Council, Herbert Witzenmann, such as The Spiritual and Social Significance of The
Principles of Rudolf Steiner and To
Create or Administrate/ Rudolf Steiner’s Social Organics - A New Principle of
Civilization. During the conference in Kimberton Hills I mentioned the
possibility of translating these studies as study material for the next
conference, as well as for the coming Manila gathering. (Update: this proposal
was not accepted and so still awaits realization).
[6] In the preface to his book Shaping Globalization
N. Perlas writes on page xxiii: “I would deeply appreciate comments of any
kind, positive or negative.” I do not know if he regards my comments as
positive or negative, since I have not (yet) received any response from him.
[7] I do not have
the complete letter in my possession during this stay in America, but hope to
give the complete gist of his critique here, complemented by the discussion I
had with his co-editor Joel Kobran. I have not been able to ask Gary Lamb for
permission to make a quotation from his letter semi-public, semi-public because
this booklet is not publicly for sale but meant as private study-material. In
any case, I thank Gary Lamb for taking the trouble to make his critique and
sincerely hope that the editors of The Threefold Review will now finally
proceed to raise this argument on fundamental Threefold strategy in the pages
of their magazine, so that more interested parties can take note of, and
possibly join in, the discussion.
[8] Rudolf Steiner, Threefolding, p. 18.
[9] Rudolf Steiner,
Threefolding, p. 19.
[10] All page numbers
from quotations of the World Economy Course in the three lectures refer to the
translation by A.O Barfield and T. Gordon-Jones (Third edition, paperback,
London,1977).
[11] For further
information and background see Herbert Witzenmann’s social esthetic study on
the Principles of the Anthroposophical Society (Willehalm Institute, 5th
ed. Ghent, NY, 2001).
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