The Rudolf Steiner Archive

28. The International Economy and Tripartite Social Organism

[ 1 ] One of the most significant facts in the recent history of human development is the contradiction that has gradually emerged between the tasks that states have set themselves and the tendency that economic life has assumed. States have endeavored to include in the circle of their duties the organization of economic life within their borders. The persons and groups of persons who are responsible for economic life seek a support for their activities in the power of the state. One state stands opposite the other not only as an intellectual and political-legal cultural area, but also as the bearer of the economic interests asserting themselves within this area.

[ 2 ] The socialist way of thinking that emerges from Marxism not only wants to continue these endeavors of the states, but even develop them to the extreme. It wants to transform the private capitalist form of economy into a cooperative one by socializing the means of production, using the framework of the present states. The enterprises located in these states are to be combined to form economic organizations in which production is planned according to the existing needs and the distribution of the products to the people living in the state is taken care of.

[ 3 ] This aspiration stands in contrast to the development that economic life has undergone in recent times. This has the tendency to develop into a uniform world economy, regardless of the existing national borders. Mankind throughout the world wants to become a single economic community. In this community the states within it are so situated that the people living in them are held together by interests which to a great extent contradict the economic relations that want to develop. Economic life wants to grow beyond the state formations that have arisen from historical conditions that were by no means always adapted to economic interests.

[ 4 ] The catastrophe of the world war revealed the disproportion between the historical state structures and the interests of the world economy. A large part of the causes of the war must be sought in the fact that the states exploited economic life to strengthen their power, or that the economic people sought to promote their economic interests through the states. The national economies interfered with the world economy, which was striving for unity. They sought to take for themselves as profits what should only circulate in the general economic life.

[ 5 ] In the states, intellectual and political-legal interests are combined with economic interests. The way in which state borders have developed in the course of history means that the best way of dealing with spiritual or political-legal matters will not coincide with the most advantageous activities in the economic sphere. And if the justified demands of modern mankind for freedom in spiritual life, for democratization of state life and socialization of the economic system are taken seriously, then it cannot be thought that the administration of spiritual and legal relations should also be decisive for the ordering of economic life. For the international spiritual and legal relations would have to slavishly adapt themselves to the economic relations, which in their nature have something compelling for their organization.

[ 6 ] Theoretically, however, Marxist socialism easily overcomes the concerns outlined above. It is of the opinion that intellectual achievements and legal measures are ideological results of economic facts. It therefore believes that it does not have to worry about the organization of the spiritual and the legal. It wants to create self-contained large economies and believes that within them spiritual and legal living conditions will arise whose international relations will "come about of their own accord" when the large economies come into contact with each other. This socialism has seen through a truth; but this truth is a one-sided one. It has recognized that in the existing states branches of production are managed and commodities administered, and that this management and this administration are united with a government over men which does not correspond to the freedom of spiritual life and the perfect organization of legal life. From this realization he draws the conclusion that in the future the social organism should only administer commodities and manage branches of production. Because he thinks that the spiritual and the political-legal will result from this "by itself", he overlooks the fact that to the extent that the order of the branches of production ceases to govern the people working in them, this government must be replaced by something else.

[ 7 ] The idea of the tripartite organization of the social organism takes account of what Marxist socialism overlooks. It is serious about managing economic life only from the points of view that arise from it. But it also recognizes that the spiritual needs and legal demands of the people must be organized in special administrations. In this way, however, international spiritual relations and legal relations also become independent of world economic life, which must go its own way.

[ 8 ] Thus, conflicts that arise in one area of life will be balanced from another. Two states or confederations of states in economic conflict involve their spiritual and legal interests in the conflict if they are unitary states in the sense that spiritual, legal and economic regulations are combined in their administrations. In social organisms that have a separate administration for each of these three areas of life, the relationship of economic interests can have a balancing effect on conflicting spiritual interests, for example.

[ 9 ] In the south-eastern corner of Europe, where the catastrophe of the world war began, it was possible to observe the effect of the merging of the three spheres of life through the unified states. The spiritual contrast between Slavism and Germanism was generally at the root of the events. It was joined by a political element of public law. In Turkey, the democratically-minded Young Turks replaced the old reactionary government. As a result of this political transformation, Bosnia and Herzegovina were annexed by Austria, which did not want to see the inhabitants of these countries incorporated into the Turkish parliamentary system through Turkish democracy, even though they had been legally part of Turkey since the Congress of Berlin. Thirdly, there was Austria's economic ambition. It intended to extend a railroad line from Sarajevo to Mitrovitsa and thus establish a trade connection with the Aegean Sea, which was in its interest. These three factors resulted in important elements of the causes of the war. If railroad lines were only built by economic administrations from an economic point of view, they could not be included in the forces of conflict that existed between states from other backgrounds.

[ 10 ] The negotiations on the Baghdad problem also clearly show how national-spiritual and political-legal interests continually asserted themselves over economic considerations. The economic advantages of such a railroad could be considered entirely from the point of view of the world economy if only economic administrations were involved in the negotiations, whose decisions could not be determined by their connection with other state interests.

[ 11 ] Of course, one can object that conflicts between states have also arisen in older times as a result of such intermingling of economic interests with spiritual and political-legal interests. But this objection should not be made against the idea of the tripartite organization of the social organism. For this idea is formed out of the present consciousness of mankind, for whom catastrophes arising in the historical way are intolerable, whereas they were felt differently by the people of earlier epochs. People who did not strive for the freedom of intellectual life, the democratization of political relations and the socialization of the economy as we do today could not envisage a social organism that alone would take these aspirations seriously. For the way they instinctively thought of the social organism as appropriate to them, the corresponding international conflicts were also something they had to accept as a natural necessity.

[ 12 ] The expansion of national economies into a unified world economy cannot be realized if economic life is not separated from spiritual and political-legal life in the individual social organisms. There are those who are generally sympathetic to the idea of threefolding because they see its justification in the vital necessities of the present and the future, but who do not want to approach it seriously because they are of the opinion that a single state cannot make a start on its realization. For the other states, which retain the unitary character, would make life impossible for the tripartite social organism through their economic measures. Such an objection is justified against the organization of a state in the sense of Marxist socialism. It cannot affect the idea of the tripartite organization of the social organism. A large economic cooperative forced into the framework of a present state administration could not develop economically advantageous relations with the private capitalist-economic foreign countries. Economic enterprises, administered centrally, are inhibited in their free development, which must prevail in foreign relations. The free initiative and the speed necessary for decisions within such relations can only be achieved if the domestic enterprise and the foreign market, as well as the foreign enterprise and the domestic market, are in direct contact, mediated solely by the persons involved. Those who emphasize this in relation to large-scale economic cooperatives, which are to be managed centrally, will always be right, even if the proponents of such cooperatives want to grant the company managers a high degree of independence. In practice, for example, the procurement of raw materials, in which all kinds of administrative bodies would have to be involved, would result in a course of business that could not be reconciled with the way in which foreign claims have to be satisfied. Similar difficulties would arise if orders were to be placed abroad.

[ 13 ] The idea of the threefold organization of the social organism aims to place economic life on its own ground. Marxist socialism turns the state into an economic organization. Threefolding detaches economic life from the state. It cannot therefore envisage any other measures than those which arise from the requirements of economic life itself. This, however, will be destroyed if it is based on a centralized administration; it must be based on the free initiative of economic people with regard to the arrangement and execution of the work to be done for production. Connected with this free initiative can be that the fruits of production within the social organism correspond to consumer needs through socially justified prices, as characterized in my previous article. It is only possible to preserve the free initiative of the management if they are not tied into a central administration, but if they join together in associations. This ensures that a centralized administration does not determine what happens in the factories; instead, the factories retain their full freedom, and the social orientation of the economic body emerges from the agreements of the independent factories. A company management that works for export will be able to act on its own initiative in its dealings with foreign countries; and it will maintain relations at home with such associations as are most conducive to it in the supply of raw materials and the like for the satisfaction of foreign demands. The same will also be possible for an import company. It will be necessary, however, that through trade with foreign countries products are not brought into the country whose production costs or purchase price adversely affect the standard of living of the population. Nor will relations with foreign countries be allowed to destroy necessary branches of production in the home country because they cannot be worked in because of the cheapness of the corresponding foreign goods. But all this can be prevented by the effect of the association institutions. If a firm or a trading company were to wish to work in the manner indicated to the detriment of the home country, they could be prevented by the corresponding associations, from which they cannot exclude themselves without making their work impossible. It may, however, be necessary to pay too high prices for certain products which, for one reason or another, must be obtained from abroad. For this necessity, what is said on page 126 of my " Key Points of the Social Question " will come into consideration: " An administration which has to do only with the circulation of economic life will also be able to lead to compensations which arise as necessary from this circulation. If, for example, a business is not in a position to pay its borrowers interest on their labor savings, then, if it is recognized as meeting a need, it will be possible to make up the shortfall from other businesses by free agreement with all those involved in the latter. " In the same way, the excessively high price of a foreign commodity can be compensated for by subsidies that come from businesses that can deliver excessively high yields compared to the needs of those working in them.

[ 14 ] In addition to all such precautions by which a tripartite social organism can compensate for the damage it suffers from economic intercourse with states that do not want to know about tripartism, others may be necessary that correspond to the principle of protective tariffs. It is easy to see that the independence of economic life creates a different basis for such measures than exists when the treatment of imports and exports is dependent on majority decisions based on the legal and intellectual interests of united groups of people. For the activity of economic organizations cooperating for objective reasons will (in the sense of the principles asserted) aim at socially effective price formation and will not be able to emerge from the profit interests of individual economic groups. Therefore, an economic life of socially tripartite organisms will strive towards the ideal of free trade. In a unified world economic area, this will provide the most favorable basis for ensuring that production is not too expensive or too cheap in individual regions of the world. A social body surrounded by non-socially tripartite organisms with an independent economic administration will, however, be compelled to protect certain branches of production from an economically impossible cheapening by levying customs duties, the administration of which will be entrusted to associations within the circle of economic life for the benefit of charitable works.

[ 15 ] If disadvantages are prevented in the manner indicated, it will result for the single tripartite organism that it will act vis-à-vis foreign countries as a comprehensive economic entity whose internal structure has no significance for itself in its dealings with unorganized states, because these dealings are based on the free initiative of the economic people and not on the internal structure. On the other hand, the progress towards a threefold structure in an individual state will have a highly exemplary effect on the others. And this not only in a moral way through the socially organized way of life of the inhabitants of the tripartite organism, but also through the emergence of purely economic interests. Such interests will result from the fact that the tripartite organism will prove less profitable for the unorganized states if they remain with their unitary structure than if they were to switch to a tripartite structure. Thus a single tripartite social organism can provide the impetus to remove the obstacles to the development of a unified world economy. That it itself suffers no damage as an individual economic body, it can bring about by its structure based on free association; that the disturbance it causes for the unitary states does not lead to a boycott of its economy, it can achieve by producing certain products through rational organization of its work, which foreign countries can best obtain only from it; The fact that it forms an oasis within the area in which it lies together with the national economies will be proof for them that the transition to tripartism is an economic and a general progress of mankind.

[ 16 ] It is emphasized today - and rightly so - from many sides that the salvation of the world economy must come through the increase of the willingness to work, which has declined to the highest degree under the world catastrophe. Anyone who knows human nature can know that this willingness to work can only come if the conviction spreads that work in the future will be under social conditions that ensure a human existence for people. The belief that the old social conditions can still bring this about has been shaken in the widest circles. And within certain areas it was completely destroyed by the catastrophe of the world war. The idea of the threefold structure of the social organism will have a convincing force in the direction indicated. It will generate impulses for work through the prospects it opens up for the social future of mankind. Spreading it in such a way that it can be received with understanding and silences the opposing reservations appears to be an essential part of the task that has arisen for the social problem in the present.