I. DYNAMIC
MONETARY FUNCTION
A Sensible
Criterion for Distinguishing
Positive from Negative Monetary Functions in Organizations
Translator's preliminary note: This lecture was delivered on October 26, 1984 in Darmstadt, Germany
at the firm L.C. Nungesser during a
conference initiated by the entrepreneur Kurt Eisele with the theme "The
Nature of Money and the Current International Money Economy". Among the
speakers were Prof. Dr. H. Binswanger on "The Origins and Problems of Money”,
Dr. Walter Ochynski, who asked, "Is the International Financial System in
a Crisis?" and Prof. Dr. Karsten, who spoke on "The International
Debts of States and Corporations." Herbert Witzenmann's talk was first
published in the magazine Korrespondenz, No. 6, February 1991.
Dear friends,
"Management is the most creative of all arts. It is the art of
using talents in the right way." This is what McNamara once said - the same one [former Minister of Defense under
President Kennedy], who once prophesied that, should development continue at
the present rate, Europe would soon end up at the level of a developing nation
in relation to the United States.
This statement
sounds good because it attributes a decisive economic and social significance to
intellectual and monetary credit for the development of skills.
Yet such a statement
says nothing as long as it is unclear what it will be used for, in what
civilizational framework it should be placed.
I am deeply
convinced that the situation in which we find ourselves requires the most
comprehensive points of view from us. For it is easy to see, in my opinion,
that within probably not too long a period of time (there are, of course,
periods of stagnation and decline with every development) other social
groupings will replace the present ruling classes. The decisive question will
be what role the individual will be assigned in the community, in the culture
to which he belongs. And here another question will take on decisive
significance, a question which perhaps first of all causes some surprise:
"Is money a means of reducing the transaction and information costs of
covering the necessities of life or, apart from the fact that it can of course
have this function, should it rather be assigned another task?"
The Dance Around The
Golden Calf
Let's take a cursory look at the way that the human being is nowadays embedded in the environment and
social context. For this purpose, this look does not have to reach very deep
for the time being. It is immediately apparent that in our political system
there are increasingly sharply profiled interest and self-help groups, whose
growing influence competes with political ordering measures. These groups all
have related problems, for each one of them strives to push itself through
against the other groups, or to maintain itself more or less as an outsider
within them. Foreigners, young people, workers, industrialists’ associations
are a few important examples of such group formations. They are linked by the common
interest of fulfilling demand, meeting a need - with the demand or need being
interpreted completely differently for each specific grouping. Nevertheless, it
is the need that is considered necessary to cover a certain life-value fulfilling
claim. This need or demand is the physical-bodily existence, the features of
which are presented very differently for each grouping. The proper employment
of a talent signifies in this network of fulfillment of demand the allocation of a workplace, which through
participation in covering the need of the other guarantees its own fulfillment
of demand, which is felt to be relatively qualified. And the motivation that proceeds
from such an employment consists in joining an interest group for the benefits
that it guarantees, which within the group is combined with essentially aligned
interests, but with respect to the groups among themselves comes up against
far-reaching opposing interests.
Characteristic of this
employment and this striving to be the object of the employment procedure is
that the labor-sharing process in turn provides a quid pro quo for its own needs.
If one wonders how
such a system can function that contains so many inner tensions, one can
immediately see that it would have to collapse through its internal centrifugal
forces, if it were not held together by the general recognition of a supreme
good. Rudolf Steiner has once said that every community that is not held
together by a cult must in time perish. The cult is the esteem, preservation,
and increase of the highest good or goods recognized by it, which weaves the
social binding. It is hardly possible to mistake what kind of cult and its
highest good holds together the civilization of our time. It is the attribution
of the high or highest esteem to the physical value of life and the nurturing
of physical existence, of the comforts it provides and, in case of need,
securing its survival. It is the dance around the golden calf of the physical
body, not the sanctification of its beauty and wisdom and of the capacity for
devotion disposed in it, but of its ponderable existence and biological function.
I propose to put what has been roughly outlined in the foregoing into a
still somewhat larger context.
The cult of the
body is the expression of the religion that is to the highest possible extent
gripping humanity today. This religion is materialism, the belief or
superstition that the material is the one and only reality. This belief results
in a certain basic mood, which of course often retreats deep into the subconscious.
This is the sense of not feeling at home
in the inhumanity of this material world. This feeling of not belonging is one
of the root causes of the tendency to seek protection in groups, which
withdraws even further into the protective cover of physical corporeality. Thus
arises the protection granting cult of physical corporeality, which is actually
a cult of inhumanity. For when the only real thing about us is the perishable
carnal body, then our soul-spiritual experiences, that is, everything of which we
become conscious of as human beings, are mere fantasies. The social groups are
the various cultic forms of materialistic belief, in which the body cult is
celebrated. Yet this is still the expression of an agreement that for the time
being prevents the War of All Against All, since all have an interest in bodily
protection (cf. the East-West problem).
But it is also
clear that the stimuli and anesthetics of the materialistic cults are not
sufficient to continue deceiving its participants in the long run about its
meaninglessness. This results in the upsurge of social unrest on the part of the
new social groups or cult forms.
"Man Is A Thought
Being"
Now I would like to introduce another point of view - and this is again a saying of Rudolf
Steiner. In his book Theosophy we
read the statement, "Man is a thought being." He is therefore not a
being that, like minerals, plants and animals, arises from natural processes,
at least not for the actually human part of his being. He is not, like the
creatures of nature, a being who derives the content of his being from the
general processes of the environment to which he belongs. He is a thought
being, thus a being who must and can shape his being himself in an individual
manner. For his thoughts man must and can produce himself. His being is thus
his task. He is his own producer. This self-production is connected with
another production, that of reality. The latter is at the same time
self-production. Man emerges as a "self" from his production process
of the world. This is caused and made possible by the way he is physically
organized.
A different form of
cult emerges from this than the currently dominant body cult. The latter is a cult of inhumanity, which is now
contrasted with the cult in which man activates and experiences himself as a
thought being - the actual cult of humanity. This is a production cult, while
the body cult is a consumption cult.
What I call cult,
and indeed production cult, is nothing but the development of a new principle
of civilization. It is that change of consciousness, which many recognize and
also call out, e.g., [former West-German president] Carl Friedrich von Weizäcker,
that it is the only way out of our state of emergency. The materialistic cult
of behavior in our civilization indoctrinates people to use all their faculties
to create the most favorable consumption conditions for their physical
prosperity. The idealistic cult of behavior, on the other hand, directs the use
of human faculties toward something else. That is precisely in the direction of
self-production, i.e., the physiological, ecological, economic, and social
conditions that give room for the best development of one's spiritual
faculties, - i.e., in the direction of a free educational system. Whereas the
materialistic cult chains man's spiritual faculties to his physical organism,
the idealistic cult frees man from it and makes possible his free development
in the sense of his actual task.
This brings about not
only a completely new attitude to life as compared to the present, but also a
completely changed social climate, yes, even a changed natural climate.
I seem to have
strayed from my theme, which was to deal with the financial system and the
effects of money. But on the contrary: I wanted to create the condition enabling one to clarify in what way the
civilizational principle of a community influences the monetary order and, vice
versa, the monetary order influences the civilizational principle, - and how
from this a possibility arises to distinguish favorable from unfavorable effects.
In order to clarify
this in a way that seems to me desirable, I must, however, include a further
thought in my remarks.
The Body Cult Of
Inhumanity Celebrates The War Of All Against All
The body cult cultivates the preservation of the body and the increase
of its comforts. However, it leads to the opposite of what it is interested in,
namely, to bodily destruction and ecological catastrophe.
But these are in
comparison to the radical annihilation effect proceeding from body worship,
annihilation effects of a lesser kind. For the absolute, definitive destruction
is the destruction of the meaning of corporeality and embodiment. After all,
the meaning of the physiological basis of our existence is to be the basis for
our freedom, for our idealistic self-production. When our bodily existence is
elevated to the rank of chaining our spiritual existence to the concentric employment
of skills rather than making it free, it is robbed of its meaning. This
destruction of its meaning is the most radical form of bodily destruction and
therefore human destruction. The body cult must therefore lead to existential
human destruction, which is far more fearsome than the material one. By entangling
all its participants in a process, in
which each one takes part in the destruction of the meaning of the human body
and thus of humanity in general, the body cult celebrates the war of all
against all. I believe that today everyone must ask himself, whether he or she
want to participate in the preparation of that war or rather in the preparation
of such measures that can prevent it.
Holy And Unholy
Monetary Forms
From here an aspect of money becomes apparent, to which I attach great
significance. Money, as a reference order and means of supplying needs of all kinds,
undoubtedly has a transfer function. The only question is how this transfer
function is qualified. It is qualified by the normative principle of
civilization and qualifies it in reverse. Money is thus the form of expression
of the prevailing cult, the expression for what highest value serves the
cooperation of a community. This is actually its meaning, not that of making
the supply of demand cheaper. In this sense, it was once holy and is still
basically holy or rather unholy today. Unholy money is money that is in the
service of the materialistic cult of destruction. Sacred or holy money is money
that serves the idealistic cult of self-production.
We may now ask, which kinds of money in this sense are holy or unholy, destructive or creative.
I am not now making
a case for enumerating or characterizing all the metamorphoses in which money
can appear. I am merely picking out a few that seem to me to be of special
significance.
To this end, I
first remind you again of what has already been mentioned: Man, as a thought
being, is a self-producing being who, in the cognitive production of his world,
produces himself. It is therefore an expressive being that expresses itself in
its world.
As a physical
being, man is a being subject to impressions, completely determined by the
action of his environment. Thus a being that in order to secure its existence must
strive to seize these impressions. Expressing oneself creatively and seizing
impressions are thus opposed to each other. Thus, destruction money has the
character of seizure money and creation money has the character of expression
money.
Real-Estate Credit Contributes to the War of All Against All
With these points of view in mind, let us first consider the money
created by so-called real estate credit, thus money created by the granting of
credit on unprocessed land. This is typical seizure money with the aim of
obtaining means of subsistence by seizing nature resources. It is typical seizure
money because unchanged natural resources
lack any expressive content. This money therefore not only has no
expressive value, but no value at all, because its mode of creation cannot
contribute to human physical or spiritual existence. As a false value, it thus
distorts the overall balance of the economy. Moreover, it represents the body-related
principle of civilization and is therefore
unholy money, destruction money that contributes to the preparation of the war
of all against all.
Thus, mortgage
money is a real cult symbol. It should be counterbalanced by a real symbol of
the cult of humanity. This, in contrast to the lust for seizure, could extend gratitude
toward the Earth. For we owe the Earth the greatest debt of gratitude, because,
as the Mother of all the processes of nature, she gives us our bodies and thus
the physiological basis for our freedom. This gratitude should leave its mark
on our dealings with the Earth, her substances, forces and ceatures. It should
determine not only our technology and the way in which we cultivate the Earth,
but first and foremost our mindset, which should also find its expression in
feasts (Michael's Feast). This mindset would have just as important a healing
effect on the seriously diseased Earth as certain agricultural and ecological
measures. The human capacity for expression could be used here in a
particularly effective way.
Wage Money As a Root
Cause Of Unemployment
Let us take wage money as the second topic of our consideration. This is
also paid out for an pseudo value. Admittedly, every performance also results
in a change in the performer. "The shaper forms himself" (Hegel).
However, this change remains attached to the personality and cannot be sold as
a commodity. Neither does it have to be,
because it is directly operative in the encounter exchange and works free of
charge (business environment). The product or partially finished product could,
however, be paid for. It would have to be valued according to the basic need
formula. But that is not a wage table either since in a economy based on a
fully division of labor the product is not sold either, but passes into the
total economic process. The basic formula then only has a value determining
function. Wage money thus amounts to self-perpetuating seizure. In addition to
excessive rationalization, it is a root cause of unemployment. In a complete
labor-sharing economy, the work performance is donated, given away and thus
passes into the total value-creating process along with its result and the need
of the performer (according to collective and individual criteria) is given back.
Only in this way is it possible that the creation and distribution of surplus
value becomes so absorbed in the process and flows from it that the highest
value-creation is guaranteed, not as quantitative value-maximization, but as
the creation of expression values. These are the only ones that are holy. The
self-sufficient retention of surplus value is an expression of weakness and
therefore unholy and unhealthy.
Instead of Speculative
Money Endowment to the Free Spiritual Life
This applies to an even greater extent to speculative money created by
stray capital. The nominal values thus created are expressionless pseudo values
that are not related to expressive value creation. Instead of speculation
money, there should be gift money to the free spiritual or cultural life. Such an endowment can be considered true
speculation, the hallmark of speculation being a return that is
disproportionately large in relation to the stake. Through an endowment to the
free spiritual life, the highest speculative gains can arise. For a
comparatively small endowment to a bearer of the free spirit can enable him or
her to perform unusual feats. The speculative gains accrue not to a single
person, but to the community. The expression value can be exceptionally great
(trust money).
Instead Of Interest Money
Credits On Future Performance
Let's talk about interest. The income gained as interest from a constant
nominal amount is impossible, if one conceives of money in strict correlation
with its value coverage by goods. As its value devalues, its money value must
also devalue. Moreover, saving is also not an achievement worthy of reward.
Instead, there could be credits on future performance. Those credits create an
enhanced ability to cover earlier needs that is amortized by the renunciation
of need-to-know at a later date. Waiving fulfillment of demand instead of
saving (in contrast to unholy hoarding) has a place within the functional
context of an expressive total event.
Mortgage money, wage money, speculation and interest money are therefore
unholy types of money, which are to be counterbalanced by expressive, holy
types of work and money, namely thanksgiving, performance-focused gifts, free gift
speculation (in the sense of trust money referred to here) and the renunciation
of fulfillment of demand in order to amortize a credit for the fulfillment of
demand.
Therefore, from the
view point of the cult of ideas and the sacred effects proceeding from it, only such means of transfer can assume a real
(healing) monetary function that remain in constant correlation with human
expressive creation. They cannot therefore be tied to static correlations.
These human expressive creations must
undergo a change for two main reasons:
1. It lies in the nature
of human expressive creation that thereby (as indicated here) Man is changed , that
thus also the individual as well as epochal style of expression undergoes a development, leaving older obsolete forms of
expression behind.
2. No material medium
can maintain its level of expression in the long run, it decomposes; the
expression that is imprinted is all the more permanent, the less the material
nature of the medium is absorbed during the transfer of the expressive value by
the recipient. Works of art are therefore all the more stable in their expressive value, the more matter by them is destroyed through the form.
Of all value creations, works of art are therefore the most stable in
expression and thus in value. Their stability of value can as a result enter
into a contrast with their temporary validity.
Sacred, holy money
must therefore be expression money, dynamized money, - a healthful, peaceful
monetary order must be a dynamized monetary order.
Viewpoints Towards a
Sacred Monetary Order and Oases of Humanity
Thus whoever would like to do something that can stop the decay of our
earth and the decline of our world, may adopt the most broad-minded, grandiose
point of view. These are the viewpoints that can lead to the emergence of the
featured sacred monetary order. These are: Thanksgiving to the Earth in a festive-serious mood;
performance-focused gifts to a society organized exclusively according to
criteria of expression; free gift speculation according to a trust that places
all its hope only in individual originality and the renunciation of the
fulfillment of demand with a view to strengthening fulfillment of demand. These
are both the technical and emotive characteristics of a dynamized monetary
order. In oases of humanity they could be cultivated as models of new community
forms in view of the emergence of new social groupings that will probably soon
replace the older ones. Of what can arise today, only oases of the cult of
expression are likely to remain.
I know that there
is nothing more obvious than to label thoughts of this kind that I have allowed
myself to express as utopian. If they were not so in relation to the current situation, they would be worth
nothing.
These are
peacemaking thoughts. Against them stand thoughts that unconsciously (and
sometimes also consciously) bring closer the War of All Against All with all
the brutality of the power behind them.
Since we are no
longer far from Christmas, a statement made by Rudolf Steiner on December 21,
1916 in Basel comes to mind when one could still cherish the hope that the
worst would not happen. Since we are again, in the run-up to Christmas, on the
threshold of the worst of tidings, but also in a situation which still leaves
room for hope, should we decide to act decisively, Rudolf Steiner's words are
as valid and shocking as they were then:
"It must cut
deep in the heart that we live … in a
time in which the longing by people for
peace is being bellowed against." [This roar comes not only from the
threat of war, but much more from the homage paid to the unholy cult, as I
tried to make clear). "Today, while we are not yet facing the very worst,
let us cherish the hope that souls may come to repentance, and that instead of
that bellowing against the desire for peace, a Christian feeling, a will for
peace may come. Otherwise, perhaps not those who are at present governing in
Europe, but will be those who will one day avenge from Asia that roaring
against the yearning for peace, who will have to proclaim to mankind, on the ruins
of European spiritual life, Christianity and the Mystery of Golgotha."
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