Current Social and Economic Issues

GA 332b — 3 August 1921, Dornach

Conversation between Rudolf Steiner and Arnold Ith

On Export Industries and Associative Economy

Conversation between Rudolf Steiner and Arnold Ith

We must distinguish between:

A) Export industries that are based on speculation. These are all those industries that only export in order to sell their products somewhere in the world, and in doing so compete with the local industries of the same sector in every area they supply, . The export of such industries is thus only due to their drive for expansion and can be seen as a sign of successful competition. B) In addition, there are export industries that are dependent on the local natural occurrence of the product in question. Chile saltpeter and the potash deposits of Alsace are necessarily export industries because more or less the entire civilized world must obtain its supply from places where these deposits are found.

In principle, one can no longer speak of export industries in associative economies, because the term “export industry” actually refers to an industry that exports the majority of its products beyond the borders of the state economy, that is, beyond political borders to other states. Since economic relations in the associative economy are formed independently of political state borders, the associations will also draw their contractual threads according to purely economic aspects, so that associative units can overlap one or more state borders. Therefore, at most the terms of territorially extended and territorially narrowly limited associations can appropriately be used in place of the terms “export industry” and “industry for domestic demand”. Remarks

1. Even in the case of export industries, there are therefore more or less permanent and fixed, that is, contractually bound, customers abroad.

2. Customs issue: Does Switzerland also have to go back to the mid-nineteenth century? From this time on, free trade efforts were no longer pursued. The free trade efforts were abandoned and replaced by protectionist efforts.

3. Practical start of associative economy: example of a knitting factory: The opposite of what exists today should be striven for, that is to say, the factory owner should no longer send agents to consumers to sell his goods, but consumers would have to send their buyers to the manufacturer. These buyers would provide the manufacturer with a clear picture of demand, and the manufacturer would have to adjust the expansion of his business accordingly. To get off to a practical start, a number of consumers would have to have an actual understanding of the associative economy in the manner indicated, and would have to enter into a contractual agreement with a manufacturing company for the supply of goods. They would then have to stand by the company, out of the economic insight indicated, even if its products were initially and temporarily to be priced somewhat higher than other competing products. Such a higher price of the association factory compared to other competing products would be possible in the transition period because the competition could achieve lower prices at the expense of quality or at the expense of social balance by reducing employee salaries or by speculative exposure to current economic conditions.

4. Taking into account that the Anthroposophical Society currently has a total of 9,000 members, it should be assumed that, if they were organized, factories like our knitwear factory and so on could integrate their operations into a kind of associative relationship with these 9,000 members as consumers.