Michael Spence: After capitalism
Introduction
This book was written, in the main, before the present financial crisis unfolded. But what happened then and all that has unfolded since confirm the need to find new forms of financial structures within society. Three things have become very clear to any open minded objective observer. Firstly, the dogmatic belief in our present form of capitalism is so deep seated that in many circles there is absolutely no possibility of objectively discussing it, let alone questioning it. Secondly, the belief that money is a value in itself is so all embracing and widespread that there is no looking to see or questioning what lies behind it at what any particular money stands for in the financial transactions within society.
The people holding to this dogma are just those in positions to observe most clearly its true nature and so to make changes. But they are also the people who benefit from the present set up and would lose the most by radically changing it. The deep seated belief of money as a value in itself and the ingrained greed in present human nature make it almost impossible to hope for any change coming from the financial leaders themselves. The present structure gives them the power to prevent governments acting alone to make any effective change. Only governments of countries acting together could achieve what is needed could do that, but that is hardly likely to happen in our time.
The only thing that seems certain today is that nobody knows what is actually happening and even less how to overcome the chaos that has arisen and so how to bring the financial world back into some sort of order. Is it really no more than that in the striving after profit irresponsible judgements and decisions have been made as to the proper asset value of mortgages and other securities or is there some much deeper seated flaw in the present financial set up of the markets?
In their origins and up to comparatively recent times banks and the related institutions that arose round them developed out of and on the firm foundation of the „real“ economy, the economic activity that produced the actual commodities that people needed to live, work and play. Behind money was a reality of actual products produced or to be produced in the future. But the financial world has moved away from that which gave it a firm foundation and has now come into some kind of illusory realm founded on values that come into being and disappear again according to the way people think them. An ever increasing proportion of the money or money value that forms the wealth of today has no foundation in reality. Yet the world has come to see and treat money as having value in itself.
There was a time when the bulk of money in circulation represented real values created through people’s work in the cooperation of division-of-labour. But today money comes into being through the buying and selling of what are called assets but which would more properly be described as rights, that is rights of ownership of land, houses, businesses and the products of other people’s work. I show in this book that the profits generated through the trading of these „rights“ work within society in exactly the same way as does counterfeit money except that the one is legal and the other illegal. After all, if at some time it became apparent that a vast amount of the money and money value in circulation was counterfeit and so had no value it would create a situation not very different from the present crisis. Then too governments could be forced to buy up the counterfeit money to avert a total collapse of the economy.
Further, I show that payments such as rents and dividends are parasitic forms of compulsory gift that enable some people to live off the work of others, and I do this on the ground of observable economic and social facts, not of morality.
However this crisis is resolved some very serious questions will remain. Capitalism as it operates today by its nature creates huge quantities of what I call „capitalised debt“. This debt builds up and must of necessity at some time be cleared. The present crisis shows that this „clearing of the debt“ inevitably causes considerable personal suffering and huge disturbance to the fabric of society. Clearly the present financial system of capitalism cannot continue unchanged. Some other social form must be found.
This book is based on an observation of life, not on any established economic, political or religious beliefs or theories. It starts from the perception that society, or human community, is formed of an interweaving of three quite differently functioning sectors or strands. It then leads over to show that many of the social problems of today, particularly those around money and the growing gap between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the defenceless, are consequences of a social structure founded on remnants of the old theocratic forms of community and the failure to distinguish between the three sectors of society.
We are all conditioned by the ways of thinking that are the norm in the society in which we live and it is often difficult to recognise these and free ourselves from them. Some of the ideas and observations made here may be difficult to accept. They will require a willingness to put aside the usual and established ways of thinking and an openness to quite new ideas that may at times seem very much at odds with normal and accepted wisdom. But to maintain openness does not necessitate an automatic acceptance of these ideas. That should only come out of the readers own free observation and judgment.
Some ideas presented here, particularly in the sphere of economics and money, may appear to turn conventional understanding on its head and so may require a considerable amount of thought to follow through. They will be seen to make sense only when they are looked at within the context of the whole.
So too, some of what I put forward concerning the nature of human evolution and the development of human consciousness may appear to conflict with much of modern teaching. As human consciousness evolves each new development does not completely replace what was there before but the earlier continues on in a subsidiary form. What existed in the past leaves its remnants and is still perceptible today. Through careful and disciplined observation it is possible to discern within one’s own inner nature as well as in others and in society itself, particular feelings, inclinations and traits which can be seen to be of an older nature, a carry-over from former times. Others are clearly of more recent development.
I shall not try to put forward observations or theories for the purpose of disproving any normally accepted social or economic thinking, but will try to offer an alternative view of social life, one derived from a quite different base, and will leave the reader to decide for him or her self which is the truer picture in its totality and which will lead to a firmer basis for future social ordering.
Much that will be presented may well seem impossible of realisation - utopian. But everything derives from an observation of actual life, of what exists in reality. It can be verified by anyone able to bring the necessary capacity to observe life itself unencumbered by prior assumptions or theories. If it seems impossible of realisation it is our present way of thinking, our present assumptions that we take as realities that make it so.
What is offered will not satisfy anyone looking for any kind of “quick fix”, “sound bite” or “sticking plaster” that will offer an immediate solution to any of the many problems besetting social life today.
The idea that human social life, or community, is actually formed of three quite separate and individual sectors was put forward at the beginning of the last century by Rudolf Steiner the Austrian philosopher, scientist, educator and social thinker (1861-1925). Towards the end of and immediately following the first world war he wrote articles and a book as well as giving many lectures on the subject of what is often referred to as “The Threefold Social Order”, or “The Threefold Commonwealth" as it was first translated. His main book on the subject is now published as “Towards Social Renewal”. In 1922 he gave 14 lectures to students of economics in which he set out a quite new approach to money and to economic thinking. These are published in English translation as “World Economy”. (Rudolf Steiner Press)
What Steiner then gave opened up for me a completely new approach to the social, economic and monetary questions of today. From this foundation I have from my own studies and observations of life come to the ideas presented in this book. I could not have come to what I attempt to put forward here except on the foundations of what I met in his ideas, but, though based on what Steiner gave, there is nothing here that I have not confirmed for myself through my own working experience and observation of social life, and the application of thinking and “common sense”.
It is not possible in one book to give anything more than an outline of the three sectors of social life and of the nature of each. Social life is a very deep and complex subject and to research it to its depths would take very many books, and certainly would be beyond the scope of any one person. There is much that can here be no more than indicated in outline. It is not intended to demonstrate how such ideas can be applied to any particular community in practice, but rather to point to the reality of the threefold nature itself and to much that is hidden or distorted in our present social life. It is the overall picture that is important and that it is hoped will be perceived by the reader. The detail is intended as a step towards that bigger picture, not as important in itself in isolation.
At the beginning any such radical study of social life is like trying to put together a complex jigsaw puzzle without having available before one the picture of what the completed puzzle will look like. We can assemble a few pieces here and a few more there. We then see fragments of the picture, but there is nothing to suggest how these come together within a whole, they themselves do not indicate the totality nor how and where they might relate to each other or fit into that totality; that only gradually emerges as the fragments grow and begin to fit together. A further complication is that whereas a jigsaw puzzle is complete when all the pieces are assembled, this cannot be said of the puzzle of social life. Humanity is in a constant state of growth, evolution and change, or of decline. We ourselves are part of society, we are conditioned by it and our actions in turn affect it. But in doing a jigsaw puzzle we do not enter into, nor are we changed by it. In attempting it, we must refrain from starting with any preconceived but possibly incorrect idea of what the whole will look like.
A person who sets out to gain a picture of society as a threefold structure will at first come to see only a few separate and disjointed parts of it. It can be a long study before he is able to arrive at a picture of how all the different pieces form a whole. Even then he will not necessarily have arrived at any idea of what he can actually do about it. All this will be that much more difficult if he continues to hold within his thinking, even unconsciously, remnants of the picture of a unitary and hierarchical society.
Readers who look for confirmation of ideas presented here by quotes from other writers, or through reference to particular events will be disappointed. In my view real working knowledge arises when a person can verify or otherwise something for himself through his own actual experience and observation of life, rather than by being given references to one or other authority or what might be isolated events.
It is what we ourselves come to out of our own quest for knowledge that leads to real understanding and action, not what we are told and that leaves no question in us. If readers end the book having more questions than they started with, then it will at least have been partially successful. This might seem to ask much of the reader, to make it more difficult than may appear necessary, but life also shows that little is gained by always following the easier way. If that was so, then surely many of our problems would have been understood and resolved long ago.
It will not be possible immediately to achieve practical realisation of what is briefly described in this book. Some of it could take very many years, even generations, to realise. What is immediately important is that this inherent threefold nature is observed and understood. There are actually very many people, in all walks of life, who already see something of it, but it needs now to be taken much further.
Observation of life shows that there are individuals in business and industry, the trade unions, politics, the media and in many other spheres of social life who are looking for new ways of thinking, people who have a sense that the old ways can no longer cope with the complexities of the social conditions of our time. Such people are often ones of great capacity and already in positions where possibilities exist to begin transforming the social structures if given thought forms and concepts that are real. What is offered here is intended for such people in the hope that it can give them, at the very least, some new ideas and concepts which they will be able to take further into actual practical life.
It does not matter that the goal is not immediately achieved; the moving towards it will itself bring about great changes in people’s sense of social awareness and behaviour.
In the English language there is a constant problem if one does not want to appear to discriminate between the sexes. Whereas it is possible to use „person“ or „human being“ instead of „man“, and this I have tried always to do, there is no alternative to „he“ or „she“. Rather than always using the „he/she“ or using them alternately I have used the „he“ to denote both. In the writing there has been, and I hope in the reading there will be, a constant consciousness of the dual meaning intended.