The Threefold Social Order

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The Threefold Social Order
The Threefold Social Order

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Threefold Social Order—Basic Points

  • The great ideals of the French Revolution
  • Freedom, Equality, Fraternity (better than Brotherhood)
  • Very real but impracticable ideals in any centralistic government
  • Must impede each other (antagonistic, polarity)
  • Freedom for spiritual life; Equality for sphere of law and rights; Fraternity for economic sphere
  • Threefold nature of man (body, soul, and spirit)
  • Threefold nature of soul: Thinking, Feeling, Willing (see Steiner, Riddles of the Soul, vol. 21)
  • Relation to past, present, future (?)
  • Exactly 100 years ago, Steiner gave the “World Economy” Lecture Course (vol. 340)

Further fundamentals of the Threefold Social Order (not discussed in the interview):

  1. Labor cannot be paid, for this means paying the laborer, a human being. What can be paid has to be independent from the human being: a mere product of labor and work. If you pay someone’s time, you indirectly still pay the human being. You cannot separate the time used for some work from the worker. A form of slavery.
  2. The means of existing/existence (food, housing, etc.) must come from a different source than the income.
  3. This source is the social community which provides the means for someone to produce in a certain time a similar product (for example, shoes). It also has to provide these means for people in infancy or old age. Right of existing.
  4. Land cannot be an object of buying or selling (since it is limited).
  5. Money has no value in itself, but only in relation to a real value produced (only a bookkeeping function).
  6. Money is, therefore, no good to be acquired.
  7. Money has to circulate as buy-money, lend-money, or gift-money.
  8. It must not be stowed in land-property.
  9. The means of producing (e.g., in a factory) belong to the person(s) best able to make use of it, as long as he is making use of it. They cannot be owned independently of this individual usage.
  10. Function of “associations” (Producers, Distributors, and Consumers) to establish the “right” prize.

To be clarified in further discussion!

Further Reading:

Rudolf Steiner, “Spiritual Science and the Social Question” (vol. 34)

Rudolf Steiner, Nationalökonomischer Kurs, Vierzehn Vorträge, gehalten in Dornach vom 24. Juli bis 6. August 1922 für Studenten der Nationalökonomie

Grundfragen der sozialen Dreigliederung

Related Solari Reports:

Spiritual Science in the Present Age Series: The Threefold Social Order with Thomas H. Meyer

Special Solari Report: The Three Fold Social Order with Thomas Meyer