Political Economy Seminar

GA 341 — 3 August 1922, Dornach

Fourth Seminar Discussion

Question: Can we still speak of value when a thing has fulfilled its purpose? What about when the thing first enters the economic process? Does the demolition of a house mean devaluation through human labor? Does this devaluation have any meaning or not? Can we only speak of devaluation through human labor when new values are not created?

Rudolf Steiner: Please express your views on this! Topics will arise, for example, coal and lignite. Someone might come up with the idea that coal, as a substance, is simply a more valuable object than lignite. But then he would have to defend his “thesis.” The other thesis would be the somewhat daring one that mechanical work generally does not have the effect of increasing costs. The esteemed audience will have this or that objection. Then the question of valuation and devaluation is not exhausted by citing exceptional phenomena, such as submarines, but it would be a matter of having to bring about economically necessary devaluations through work in the continuous process of the national economy.

Various interposed questions.

Rudolf Steiner: The question is whether or not one can speak of appreciation and depreciation through work, even in a purely economic sense. If machines are devalued, then in economic terms this would be consumption. The question is not whether the goal of a work is depreciation, but whether depreciations are necessary in the economic process, and these can only be achieved through work.

X: The devaluation of values through work occurs for the purpose of subsequently placing higher values in the place (intermediate values).

Rudolf Steiner: This example can be given. However, it is not absolutely flawless. A much simpler example is an everyday one: if you wind thread onto a spool through work, you have created a product. It comes about through the work that is done, namely the twisting. If I continue the work, I have to unwind again. Work is actually necessary here. In the case of intermediate operations, it is necessary that the work created in the process is dissolved again.

Question: Would the same apply to the transfer of products?

Rudolf Steiner: It would at least take place if you move one orbit to another position. You have to devalue the first value in order to give the second the correct value. If you have an orbit here and you want to put it here, then you have carried out such a devaluation by rearranging it. And such things can be found everywhere. These would be devaluations that become necessary and that require work to be carried out. You just don't usually notice them. But they are everywhere. You just have to take the coal shoveler who shovels the coal for the locomotive. The stoker has to shovel it out again. If you just want to grasp the concepts, you can say: it's a continuous process. But that wouldn't be enough. You would have to calculate, since the continuous process cannot be directly achieved here, what the continuous process would cost if I had prepared the coal everywhere, in contrast to what it costs if I always carry out a sub-process and then have to destroy it again.

Question: Would the packaging industry also be an example?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, certainly. A very striking example where you really cannot use the concept of utilization and also not that of mere consumption through wear and tear, as in the sharpening of razors. A valuable product is destroyed, and that is a necessary economic task. Consumption consists only in blunting. But to devalue it completely, work is necessary.

Question: Collecting, selling, melting down and reusing scrap iron – can the melting down also be called a revaluation?

Rudolf Steiner: This is the same as recycling waste. You would not call that a devaluation.

Note: But one process is complete!

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, and then I discover that I can re-use what is present as a natural product. The criterion must be that human labor is necessary to bring about a devaluation process.

Melting down iron is not really a process of degradation. Of course, things can be ambiguous. They can be understood in different ways. They could also be understood as a product of devaluation.

Question: Devaluation through war – shells turned into powder?

Rudolf Steiner: For those who are not the victors, this is a devaluation.

Question: Can what happens to war equipment even be addressed as value creation in the economic sense?

Rudolf Steiner: This can only become economic in its consequences. The war industry is not value-creating as long as it is only for stock. In that sense, it is actually a form of labor, but one cannot say that it is a necessary form of destructive labor.

Note: What is consumed beyond normal needs, implements of war and so on, results in a shortfall, for example, after the war is over.

Rudolf Steiner: It must be borne in mind that the abnormal consumption that occurs here has a certain similarity to the consumption of rentiers in an economic community. This consumption is a given. If one wants to justify it - today one fights against it - then of course there is a certain justification for all things. The consumption of the rentiers can be justified if the land production yields a greater yield than can normally be consumed by the rest of the population. In order to establish economic equilibrium, the consumption of the rentiers is good under certain circumstances. And from this point of view, there is an economic justification for the armed forces. This justification lies in the fact that people say: the things are there and they can be produced. There would be no economic equilibrium, so many would remain unemployed if the military were not there to consume without actually producing. For it does not actually produce anything.

Question: Shouldn't the military be viewed in a similar way to the winnowing of wheat or something similar?

Rudolf Steiner: This view is to be found in the school of Rodbertus. Defense is counted among the productive factors. The question is whether we are thinking of an economy under certain conditions or without these conditions or with other conditions. If we were to imagine that defense by a military force were not necessary, it would be dropped. But the fire engine cannot be dispensed with because it corresponds to a necessary consumption, like breakfast. Those who consider the military to be absolutely necessary must regard it as a necessary consumption. But this is where the possibility of a discussion about the consumption question begins. We know people who consider the strangest things to be absolutely indispensable. The concepts of use play a role in the evaluation. And they are unstable.

Question: Mechanical work, for example, water power through turbines, saves human labor. Is the assessment made as if the mechanical work were done by human labor?

Rudolf Steiner: Imagine a scale with unequal arms. If I have a large load on one lever arm, I then have to shift the weight on the other. In this way, I can keep a very large weight in balance with a very small weight here purely through the position. This is how it is with the economic distribution of such things as you have called 'mechanical work'. The work that has to be done only decreases in the same proportion as here with the scales. But you will always find a certain amount of work that has actually been done, even with mechanical work. You cannot simply get something from nature without further ado. If you just want to put a stone on something to make it do work, you have to at least fetch it. You always have to put in a little human labor. But these things do not belong in the national economy at all, where the ratio of labor expended to the output is functionally determined by the circumstances.

Question: But mechanical work in itself does not make the products more expensive?

Rudolf Steiner: If you look at the work in its entirety, then you have to calculate a quota everywhere.

Question: How does devaluing work fit into the economic process?

Rudolf Steiner: If you have a continuous economic process in which you have to devalue – let us assume you have such a large shaving shop that you have to employ a special worker to sharpen the razors – then of course you have to account for this worker's work in a different way than you account for the work of the people who are sharpening the razors. Of course, on the surface it also looks like work, but in the economic process it is different, namely negative.

Question: What happens in the case of devaluation work? It is a gift because it has no equivalent value.

Rudolf Steiner: Only the signs of the value change. It is the same everywhere. If you have a value creation that you describe as positive (+) in the ongoing economic process, then you have to describe the devaluation as negative (-), while if nothing happens you have to insert zero. Note: When a new machine replaces a process, the product becomes cheaper simply because labor is saved. Whether it is value-forming or devaluing work, it makes no difference.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, the thing is that you can always bring out the same result. But it still remains a division into value formation and devaluation. It is self-evident that if you draw a sum from it, a positive sum results if a machine is to be used at all. ... The only question is whether it is necessary to expend labor on dissolutions, that is, on devaluations of values that have already come about in the economic process.

Question not noted.

Rudolf Steiner: It will be necessary, so that no unclear concepts remain, to discuss the cup of tea, the drinking of which is said to be economic work.

Objection: I cannot accept that as work. The criterion of labor is missing. Further remark: When one takes in food, one first creates the values within oneself that are capable of producing further work, just as when one creates machines that are intended to produce values.

Rudolf Steiner: But it is not possible to include what happens in a person in the national economy. That would lead to the Marxist theory.

The Lord must have thought of something else. You do realize that drinking a cup of tea could provide economic value, that is, economic work.

Note: If a spiritual worker is supported with economic values, the immediate success will be that he can eat and become spiritually active or refreshed. The consequence will initially remain within his personality; but it does not stop there. The consequences radiate out into the economic process. These would be the consequences emanating from the subject.

Rudolf Steiner: But these cannot be readily incorporated into the economic process unless something is added. Because you cannot regard drinking a cup of tea as productive. The cup of tea would only be economically relevant if you wanted to produce something, you would drink a cup of tea in addition to your usual food and thus be able to work more than you would have worked without the cup of tea. The question would then be whether this could be seen as an economic service.

Note: The fact that I consume tea means that tea can be picked in the colonies. I actually devalue by creating the possibility for new economic values to be generated.

Rudolf Steiner: If you want to determine economic values in a positive sense, you come to a different level when you discuss the question of the extent to which consumption is necessary to continue the economic process. That is a question that actually has nothing to do with the economy as such.

Note: I would like to put the devaluation that occurs when the cup of tea is drunk so that one can work again on the same level as the example of the doctor and shoemaker. The tea picker applies labor. I drink the tea. The tea picker serves to enable me to work again.

Rudolf Steiner: If we put the question this way, then tea picking turns the natural product tea into an economic value. That is the creation of an economic value. But will an economic value arise or disappear in the same sense when the tea is drunk?

X: It will disappear, will be devalued. Y: I would like to say that it is revalued.

Rudolf Steiner: This translation cannot actually be carried out; because then you would have to describe every consumption, every use, merely as a conversion.

Remark: conversion into energy.

Rudolf Steiner: Then we go from the economic realm into the realm of natural science. There you are engaging a natural process that no longer belongs to the economic realm.

Take the process of drinking tea! You drink the tea up. Now you have this value, which has been produced, made to disappear from the economic process. There is no question about that. Now, for my sake, you will even be strengthened by the tea – I will make this assumption – and do an economic job. This in itself is not yet value, but it is value when you apply it to a natural product. And only now does the economic formation of value begin again at the moment when you approach the natural product. The question of whether you have become stronger or not does not arise in the formation of value, but the formation of value only begins after you have become stronger. So, what happens in you when you drink tea, even if you become an athlete by drinking tea, is not what you contribute to the economic process.

This natural process must be excluded in the same way as the value of land. Of course, you can include it, and then it is analogous to including earthworms in the economic process without human labor being used for it. When the earthworms go through the field, they make the field fertile. You cannot include this in the economic process. Just try to follow this in the further results. You will also see: if you were to be strengthened by consumption, it would be seen as value-forming. Then you would enter into an economic order in which work alone would be value-forming. It is only in connection with nature or the human spirit.

It is not possible to arrive at a political economy if one includes processes that lie in human beings or in nature in the political economy.

Question: How do you want to look at the gift?

Rudolf Steiner: I may speak of a devaluation in the gift, because as long as I only have human abilities in mind for which I can use the gift, I am not yet speaking of economics. First, when I give a scholarship, I let this value disappear into the economic process until it comes up again.

Note: One can almost see how the gift continues to work.

Rudolf Steiner: What continues to have an effect depends very much on such factors, which absolutely elude any accounting approach. Otherwise, for example, you would have to use diligence in economic terms. But diligence would be a fictitious value in economic terms, not only a fictitious value, but even an impossible value.

In the moral sense, if I had, say, a workshop, I would reprimand my workers if they were lazy; in the economic sense, I would only reprimand them if they did not produce anything for me. In the economic sense, I am only concerned with what they produce. Morally, I am concerned with whether they are hardworking or lazy.

Question: Can we only speak of work in an economy based on the division of labor?

Rudolf Steiner: We can only speak of economic work when reciprocity begins for one another in the work.

Question: Can we speak of work in the primitive economy?

Rudolf Steiner: We can only speak of work in primitive societies if we consider that the father does a certain job, that he consumes and his wife, sons and daughters also consume, the daughters do different work and so on, in other words, work for each other.

Question: So how do we even arrive at a concept of work?

Rudolf Steiner: It is very easy to form a concept of work in the economic sense. It exists when we have a natural product that has been transformed by human activity for the purpose of being consumed.

Question: Does it matter whether it is consumed or not?

Rudolf Steiner: It must at least be made consumable, because then it has value.

Question: Do you always have to look at the natural product or the object when a value is created through spiritual organization of work, or do you have to see if there is an object on which the organized work has been applied?

Rudolf Steiner: You cannot look at an object, because in the context in which you are dealing with it, a lasting object is not there. The mind can only be used for the organization and structuring of the work. Then, under certain circumstances, you are not dealing with an object.

Question: Then it does not fall within the concept of work?

Rudolf Steiner: That is a secondary concept. Work is the human activity that is expended to make a natural product consumable. That is work in the economic sense. You must now understand this as a final concept. Now the spirit can take over and organize this work. But in the process, what you now want to grasp as a coherent economic process can simply move away from the natural product. It can consist in mere structuring, in mere division of labor.

Question: But what if devaluation is added through labor?

Rudolf Steiner: Devaluation is only negative for the value. In terms of making it fit for consumption, you are not going back. You are only going back in terms of assigning value.

Remark: In terms of making consumption possible, there is indeed a decline from a higher process to a lower one.

Rudolf Steiner: First you wind the spool. This requires work. You have created value here. And now you unwind the spool. You destroy the value. But if you look at the matter, you will find that a consumable product has been created up to the point of destruction, and afterwards the end goal of the work is once again a consumable product. The work consists of making a natural thing consumable. They have just switched on a sub-consumption. They need so and so many such processes to have them consumed by other processes. In this consumption, where the devaluation must take place, a necessary work is done.

Note: Useless labor must be designated as labor because its product has been brought to the point where it can be consumed.

Rudolf Steiner: If you want to have the concept of economic work, then you have to define it that way, but the concept of economic work is not yet a value. Only work is defined. The point in economics is not to apply economic work, but to produce values.

X: The teacher also does work.

Rudolf Steiner: That is the question. It is not so easy to answer.

X: I am talking about free spiritual activity.

Rudolf Steiner: This belongs to the realm of devaluation, but not devaluation through work.

A: But in the future he is the producer. For this purpose he does 'work.

Rudolf Steiner: This gives us the opportunity to pursue the concept of work ever further. Of course, teaching must be described as an economic value to the highest degree, but the question is whether, if we begin to imagine the concept of work in the economic process, we can still hold on to anything if we call teaching work. Of course, work is already being done as the teacher speaks, walks around, wears himself out. A kind of work is being done. But that is not what flows into the economic process. What flows into it is his organizing activity, which is not even related to what he does as work. That is why work as teaching is so different. A fidget can do a lot of work by fidgeting. Another can do a lot of work by cutting. But the one who teaches with a certain calm pace will also do a job. But that is not what goes into the economic process, but rather his free spiritual activity.

Note: In the performance of work, too, there are those who work hard and achieve little, and those who work little and achieve much.

Rudolf Steiner: Here we already have work that liberates itself relatively. On the one hand, we have work that is actually bound to the object. This work becomes increasingly free of the object. In the case of free spirituality, it is completely detached from the object. And what the person in question “works” is irrelevant. For the economic process, the work of the teacher is not what comes into consideration in the economic process. His capacity, his education, everything else is taken into account economically, except for the work he does.

Question: Why is free spiritual activity devaluing?

Rudolf Steiner: It is devaluing in the sense that it cancels out the values that are formed on the one hand. The Romans had a very fine, instinctive sense of economics - it was just right for a different national character - in that they did not just talk about bread, but about bread and games. And from their point of view, they included both bread and games in what should be included in the social organism. They said to themselves: Just as, when I produce a loaf of bread, it in turn must disappear – it must really disappear – so the labor that is there for the production of bread must actually disappear again in the social process through the labor that is used to perform the play. It is a mutual consumption, as everywhere where there is an organism, there is a mutual building and breaking down. So it is here too. So you can actually see how the mental activity that is carried out on the other side does not continue the process, but takes it backwards. That is why I have always drawn it as a cycle. Nature, labor, capital. Nature, labor, capital returns to itself and the whole process is suspended when it has come back to nature.

Question: Can private economic activity also be included in the concept of the national economy?

Rudolf Steiner: You have to! Within the private economy, certainly.

Objection: I think I cannot include private work in the concept of the national economy.

Rudolf Steiner: That comes from the fact that there is a lack of clarity in the word. The lack of clarity lies in the fact that one already calls a national economy a summary of private economies. One should have a superordinate concept.

Question: Is work only the activity that is to be directed at a very specific object in order to make it consumable?

Rudolf Steiner: That is the case. In economics, one does not have the task of simply, I would like to say, forming abstract philosophical definitions. Under certain circumstances, this is something that one can well impose on oneself as a philosophical pastime or as a form of training. But in economics, the aim is not to create correct terms, but terms that can be applied. People like the economist Lorenz von Stein have created wonderfully astute terms; but a whole host of terms are only of interest to economic philosophers, so to speak. They have no economic application.