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| Philosophy of Freedom Social threefolding |
Social threefolding is a sociological theory that suggests increasing the independence of society's three primary realms (economy, politics and culture) in such a way that those three realms can mutually correct each other in an ongoing process. The movement aims for equality of rights in political life, freedom in cultural life, and associative cooperation in economic life. It originated out of the philosophy of Anthroposophy founded by Rudolf Steiner.[1][2] Steiner held that it is socially destructive when one of the three spheres attempts to dominate the others; for example, theocracy means a cultural impulse dominates economy and politics; conventional shareholder capitalism means economic life dominates the polity and culture; and state socialism means government dominates culture and economy. A more specific example: Arthur Salter, 1st Baron Salter has suggested that governments frequently fail when they begin to give "discretionary, particularly preferential privileges to competitive industry."[3] Steiner said the three social spheres had very gradually, over thousands of years, been growing independent of each other, and would naturally tend to continue to do so. Consciously effecting stages of this independence thus works in accordance with society's natural evolution, and gradually leads society beyond the three forms of domination mentioned.
Many institutions have striven to realize a relative independence of the three spheres within their own structures; the Waldorf schools deserve special mention in this regard.[2] Another application has been the creation of various socially-responsible banks and foundations. Though many concrete reform proposals to advance a "threefold social order" at various scales have been advanced, Steiner emphasized that the specifics of how this could best be done are contingent on the particular situation.[4] Bernard Lievegoed incorporated significant aspects of social threefolding in his work on organizational development.
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Prior to the end of World War I, Steiner spoke increasingly often of the dangerous tensions inherent in the contemporary societal structures and political entanglements.[1] He suggested that a collapse of traditional social forms was imminent, and that every aspect of society would soon have to be built up consciously rather than relying on the inheritance of the past. After the war, he saw a unique opportunity to establish a healthy social and political constitution and began lecturing throughout post-war Germany, often to extremely large audiences, about his social ideas. These were taken up by a number of prominent cultural and political leaders of the time, but did not succeed in affecting the reconstitution of Germany that was taking place at the time.[1]
After the failure of this political initiative, Steiner ceased lecturing on the subject.[1] The impulse continued to be active in other ways, however, in particular through economic initiatives that were intended to provide support for non-governmental cultural organizations. Banks, such as;
All were later founded to provide loans (and sometimes grants) to socially relevant and ethically responsible initiatives. Steiner himself saw the continuation of this impulse in the Waldorf schools, the first of which also opened in 1919.[2]
Steiner distinguished three realms of society:
He suggested that the three would only function together harmoniously when each was granted sufficient independence.[1][5] This has become known as "social threefolding".
Examples: A government should not be able to control culture; i.e., how people think, learn, or worship. A particular religion or ideology should not control the levers of the State. Steiner held that pluralism and freedom were the ideal for education and cultural life.[1] Concerning children, Steiner held that all families, not just those with economic means, should be enabled to choose among a wide variety of independent, non-government schools from kindergarten through high school.[6]
Examples: The fact that places of worship do not make the ability to enter and participate depend on the ability to pay, and that libraries and some museums are open to all free of charge, is in tune with Steiner’s notion of a separation between cultural and economic life. In a similar spirit, Steiner held that all families, not just those with the economic means, should have freedom of choice in education and access to independent, non-government schools for their children.[6] Other examples: A corporation should not be able to control the cultural sphere by using economic power to bribe schools into accepting ‘educational’ programs larded with advertising, or by paying scientists to produce research results favorable to the business’s economic interests.
Examples: A rich man should be prevented from buying politicians and laws. A politician shouldn’t be able to parlay his political position into riches earned by doing favors for businessmen. Slavery is unjust, because it takes something political, a person’s inalienable rights, and absorbs them into the economic process of buying and selling. Steiner said, "In the old days, there were slaves. The entire man was sold as commodity... Today, capitalism is the power through which still a remnant of the human being—his labor power—is stamped with the character of a commodity." [5] Yet Steiner held that the solution that state socialism gives to this problem only makes it worse.
Steiner advocated cooperative forms of capitalism (what might today be called stakeholder capitalism) because conventional shareholder capitalism and state socialism, though in different ways, tend to absorb the State and human rights into the economic process and transform laws into mere commodities. Steiner rejects state socialism because of that, but also because it reduces the vitality of the economic process. Yet Steiner disagrees with the kind of libertarian view that holds that the way to keep the State and the economy apart is through absolute economic competition. For one thing, under absolute competition, the most dominant economic forces tend to corrupt and take over the State, in that respect merging State and economy. Second, the State tends to fight back counter-productively under such circumstances by increasingly taking over the economy and merging with it, in a mostly doomed attempt to ameliorate the sense of injustice that emerges when special economic interests take over the State.
By contrast, uncoerced, freely self-organizing forms of cooperative economic life, in a society where there is freedom of speech, of culture, and of religion, will 1) make State intervention in the economy less necessary or called for, and 2) will tend to permit economic interests of a broader, more public-spirited sort to play a greater role in relations extending from the economy to the State. Those two changes will keep State and economy apart more than can absolute economic competition in which economic special interests corrupt the State and make it too often resemble a mere appendage of the economy. The latter corruption leads in turn to a pendulum swing in the opposite direction: government forces, sometimes with the best of intentions, seek to turn the economy increasingly into a mere appendage of the State. State and economy thus merge through an endless iteration of pendulum swings from one to the other, increasingly becoming corrupt appendages of each other.
State and economy, given increased separateness through a self-organizing and voluntarily more cooperative economic life, can increasingly check, balance, and correct each other for the sake of continual human progress. Steiner held that the place of the State, vis-a-vis the self-organizing, cooperative economy, is not to own the economy or run it, but to regulate/deregulate it, enforce laws, and protect human rights as determined by the state's open democratic process. Steiner emphasized that none of these proposals would be successful unless the cultural sphere of society maintained and increased its own freedom and autonomy vis-a-vis economic and State power. Nothing would work without spiritual, cultural, and intellectual freedom.
Cooperative forms of capitalism are more widespread now than they were in Steiner's time, so perhaps there is reason to expect their continued expansion and growing sophistication, as Steiner hoped and advocated. One example is the Mondragon Industrial Cooperatives (started by Catholic priest José Mª Arizmendiarrieta, who was not associated with Steiner, but whose economic views overlapped in some important ways with Steiner's economic views). By the end of 2010, the Mondragon Industrial Cooperatives employed over 80,000 people.
Dr D. Brüll, a co-founder of the Triodos bank, did work on social three-folding and its relationship to money in a study group. Several books were published on this by Dr D. Brüll and his colleagues in the Netherlands. Similar work has been done by Michael Spence, an English author. Money could be defined as: 'A token or representation of the work done for society by a business or individual; the amount society is indebted to the individual in services'. Money is earned through effort by the individual/business carrying out work for society, i.e. producing a product.
Money used to purchase goods is earned by doing services for society and can be exchanged for services or consumables in society.
Money lent to fund economic ventures has been earned by individuals or businesses who have chosen to use it for this purpose rather than to purchase consumables. This includes capital venture, which is effectively a loan which gives rights of all or a share of the profits to a funder.
The cultural realm (education, religion, research etc.) by businesses and individuals is largely supported by donations.
Dr D. Brüll suggested that all the profits from businesses - i.e. what remains after the workers have been paid a share and loans and interest have been paid back - should be freely donated to education and cultural endeavors. According to social three-folding giving rights of all profits to shareholders leads to an unhealthy social organism.
In 'Maatschappijstructuren in beweging'[7] it states that "In business profits are made through creativity and inspiration. People get creativity and inspiration from the cultural realm. It therefore makes sense to return the profit back to the cultural realm of society. Taxes are a form of forced donation, it acts as a pump forcing profits from businesses into the cultural realm. It means, since taxes are controlled by the government, that the cultural realm is indirectly controlled by the government, which leads to an unhealthy social organism."
According to social three-folding, in a healthy social organism money ideally should be donated in freedom to the cultural sphere.
Steiner’s view of education’s social position calls for special comment. For Steiner, separation of the cultural sphere from the political and economic spheres meant education should be available to all children regardless of the ability of families to pay for it and, on the elementary and secondary level, should be provided for by private and|or state scholarships that a family could direct to the school of its choice. Steiner was a supporter of educational freedom, but was flexible, and understood that a few legal restrictions on schools (such as health and safety laws), provided they were kept to an absolute minimum, would be necessary and justified.
Steiner held that the French Revolution's slogan, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, expressed in an unconscious way the distinct needs of the three social spheres at the present time:[1][5]
According to Steiner, these values, each one applied to its proper social realm, would tend to keep the cultural, economic and political realms from merging unjustly, and allow these realms and their respective values to check, balance and correct one another. The result would be a society-wide separation of powers. Steiner argued that increased autonomy for the three spheres would not eliminate their mutual influence, but would cause that influence to be exerted in a more healthy and legitimate manner, because the increased separation would prevent any one of the three spheres from dominating. In the past, according to Steiner, lack of autonomy had tended to make each sphere merge in a servile or domineering way with the others. Among the various kinds of macrosocial imbalance Steiner observed, there were three major types:
Steiner points toward social conditions where domination by any one sphere is increasingly reduced, so that theocracy, state socialism, and traditional forms of capitalism might all be gradually transcended.
For Steiner, threefolding was not a social recipe or blueprint. It could not be "implemented" like some utopian program in a day, a decade, or even a century. It was a complex open process that began thousands of years ago and that he thought was likely to continue for thousands more.
Institutions of civil society -- non-profits that for the most part are independent of both the State and the economic life—are globally on the rise. This is seen by some observers as a sign of the cultural realm developing independence from governmental and economic institutions.
Nicanor Perlas, winner of the alternative Nobel prize, has recently (in 2009) announced his candidacy for the presidency of the Philippines. Perlas has developed and applied Steiner's social threefolding ideas for decades.
Apart from his central book on social questions, Toward Social Renewal, there are at least two others available in English: World Economy (14 lectures from 1922) and The Social Future:
Books, journals and articles
Training programs