Rudolf Steiner's 1922 Economics Course

SYNOPSIS OF THE LECTURES

From the 1996 New Economy Edition ( click here)

1: From Industrialism to World Economy (24.7.22)

Contrast between England and Germany in 19th century - Instinctive and conscious transitions to industrialism - Virgin soil of India and old middle-European agrarian economy - Emergence of the State in German economics instead of 1830’s and 1840’s ideals (Liberalism) - Inability to enter world economy - Absence of life’s contrasts, in particular the contrast between cultural, rights and economic life - The threefold social order - Insufficient thinking in economics - Comparison of economics to a complete theory of light - Expansion beyond single personalities - Intelligence (ultra-violet)/Land (infra-red) - Unsuitability of natural scientific concepts - Invalidity of economics of isolated regions - World as a whole economic and social organism.

2: The Economic Process (25.7.22)
Economic process in perpetual motion - Exchange as essence of economics - Price - Fluctuation in price - Unreality of definitions - Ordinary doctrine of land, labour, capital - Animal economics - Apparent labour - Human labour connected to providing for more than oneself - Value created by elaboration of land by labour - Nonsense of Marx’s view of labour - Economic irrelevance of labour in itself - Labour directed by intelligence also creates value - Exchange of values - Price and interplay of values - Cannot observe at rest what is in flux.

3: Economic Science (26.7.22)
Proper form of economic science - Ethics and natural science - Religion and economics in early history - Distinction between commandment and law - Distillation of law and appearance of labour and emancipation from religious life - Rise of egoism and search for democracy - Division of labour - Individual works for community - Economic impossibility of egoism - Division of labour requires altruism - Egoism contradicts facts of world economy - Labour exchanged “for a living” - Mean price - Trader.

4: Division of Labour and Creation of Value (27.7.22)
Cheapening effect of division of labour - Origin of capital through division of labour - Intelligence emancipates capital from land - Money - Capitalism and finance - Money as realised intelligence - Intelligence envalues capital - Investments - Borrowings - The circulation of capital - “difference of level” in terms of capacities - Diversity of capacities - Relation of two value poles to commodities and money - Essential nature of commodity and money - Mobility of thinking.

5: The Production and Consumption of Values (28.7.22)
The polarity of production and consumption - The economic process as an organic process - Envaluation and devaluation - Value-creating tension and value-creating movement - Analogy to kinetic and potential energy - Personal credit and the rate of interest - Real credit - Congestion of capital in land and its disappearance in intelligence - Land has no value - Real and apparent values - Associations - Distribution of the workforce - Variety of skill.

6: “True Price” (29.7.22)
“True price” formula - Capitalised land opposes production of goods - Two rates of interest - The economic significance of freed activity - Pure consumption - Goods and payment - Capital and lending - Cultural life and giving - Gift as 100% interest on land.

7: Factors of Price Formation (30.7.22)
Purchase, loan and gift as three factors of price formation - The factors of rest - Fiction of purchase of labour - Reciprocal determination of values - Products of labour - True price and falsification of price - Origin of rent - Rent as compulsory gift - Creation of rent inherent in economic process - Agriculture as a single entity - Industrial capital constantly undervalued - Tendency of industrial capital to devalue - Self-provision with agriculture, not with capital - The need to establish equilibrium - Means of production - Industrial capital - Commodities - Goods - Need to be within process only possible in associations.

8: On Supply and Demand (31.7.22)
The idea of supply and demand - Supply, demand and price as primary factors - The role of rights - The role of individual faculties - Economic impossibilities - Economics and natural science - Associations for production, consumption and distribution - The economics of barter, of money and of human faculties.

9: The Forms of Capital (1.8.22)
Concept of “internal economies” - Distance between outlay and return - Role of gift - Association - Trade, loan and industrial capital - Loan capital and authority - Industrial capital - Raw materials and concepts of might - Markets and intelligence (wise or cunning) - Trade capital and competition - The rise of banking - The withdrawal of financial control from the human being - “Pure money business” and “objectless imperialism”.

10: On Associations (2.8.22)
Circulation of values - Profit - Exchange creates value - Transformation of commodity into money - Associations - Advantage (profit) as pressure - Loan capital (enterprise) as suction - Interest, human mutuality and lending - Imagination and economic judgement - Associations - Public spirit - Threefold social order.

11: The Conditions and Consequences of a World Economy (3.8.22)
Evolution of economic life - Private economies - National economies - State economies - State as economic and cultural organism - Profit by consolidation of economies - Ricardo and Smith - England as leader of world trade - Origin of gold-based currencies - Transition from world trade to world economy - World economy as the end of consolidation - The falsity of Versailles and after - World economy as a closed economy - Relation of commodities and money - The non-depreciation of money - Total consumption by all humanity - Unsuitability of national economic thinking for world economy - Closed economic domains presuppose free gifts - Non-capitalisation of land - Relation of food production to free gifts to cultural life.

12: Money (4.8.22)
Money and price - The envaluation of money - Money as a medium of exchange - Purchase money (exchange money) - Loan money - Gift money - Correcting the function of money - The ageing of money - Associative management - Money and control of the economy.

13: The Economics of the Spirit (5.8.22)
Valuing intelligence - Premise of cultural needs - Freed activity as saved labour - Inherent compensatory balance.

14: Key Concepts for World Economics (6.8.22)
Modern economic science - Living concepts - Parallelism of real and false values - World-wide book-keeping - Medium of exchange as proper quality of money - The polarity of spent labour and saved labour - Land and its elaboration as the basis - Stored up labour requires saved up labour - Money as sum total of means of production - Ratio of population to land - Relation of currency to land and to gold - Prices.