Money

5 dollar banknote showing a plantation scene with enslaved cotton pickers with an overseer, in South Carolina. Issued by the Planters Bank, Winnsboro, South Carolina, USA, 1853.

Money, as the generally accepted means of exchange and payment in a society, is essentially a function and can therefore take various external forms, such as metal coins and paper money, gold and electronic book money. In order to fully understand money, one must be able to imagine it in a mobile way as living concepts (Lit.:GA 340, p. 202). In the course of time, money assumes various functional states, which Rudolf Steiner called purchase-money, loan-money and gift-money (Lit.:GA 340, p. 176).

Money is spirit realised

„Money is nothing other than the externally expressed value which is generated by the division of labour and which is transferred from one to the other.

We see, then, in the pursuit of the division of labour, capitalism appear; we see in the pursuit of capitalism, and quite soon, the money economy appear. Money is a complete abstraction in relation to the particular economic events. If you have five francs in your pocket, you can buy a midday meal and a supper with it just as easily as you can buy a suit of clothes. For money, it is irrelevant what is acquired for it, what it is exchanged for in the economic process. Money is absolutely indifferent to the individual factors of the national economy, insofar as they are still influenced by nature. For this reason, however, money becomes the expression, the handle, the means for the spirit to intervene in the national economic organism, which stands in the division of labour.

Without the creation of money, it is not at all possible for the spirit to intervene in the national economic organism when we speak of the division of labour. Thus we can say that what is originally together in the state of the national economy, what each individual works out in his egoism, is distributed among the whole. - That is how it is in the division of labour. In capital, details are in turn combined into an overall process. The formation of capital is a synthesis, absolutely a synthesis. Thus the one who has acted in this way as a capital builder, who through the necessity of the appearance of money can transform his capital into money capital, becomes a lender for one who has nothing but spirit. He receives the money. This is the correct representative of economic values raised by the spirit.

We have to look at the matter from an economic point of view. From a religious and ethical point of view, money may be a bad thing, but from an economic point of view, money is the spirit that is active within the economic organism. It is no different. So money must be created in the national economic process, so that the spirit may find its progress at all from the starting point where it turns only to nature. It would remain in primitive states if it applied itself only to nature. In order to pour the attainment of the spiritual into the economic process, it must be realised as money. Money is spirit realised. But the concrete comes in again immediately. First of all, money is an abstract of which one can say: It is the same whether I buy a part of a suit for five francs or have my hair cut - it need not be a single haircut - I mean, it is indifferent to money. But when money comes back to the person of man and thus to the spirit of man, at that moment money becomes that which is now in turn active in the national economy in its concrete particular fact. That is to say: the spirit is economically active within the money.“ (Lit.:GA 340, p. 58ff)

Money and Ahriman

„Ahriman is the lord of the material laws, those laws which indeed can only be spiritualised after the whole earth evolution will have run its course, those laws which remain active, which remain effective. Ahriman is the rightful master of the material laws. If he did not abuse this dominion, if he did not extend it to something else, he would be the only necessary being of his kind within the evolution of the earth. But what is written in the cosmic Lord's Prayer is still true: "The guilt of self, owed by others, is experienced in daily bread, in which the will of heaven does not prevail. It is true that man in his earthly life is bound to material laws, and that he cannot attain the immediate spiritualisation of that which comes from material laws by a merely inner, spiritual process, but that something external is necessary for this. Everything that is connected with rich and poor is connected with this question. Everything that binds us into a social order, so that we are under the yoke of laws which we can only spiritualise in the overall course of the earth's development, belongs here. And in connection with this - as I said, I have to say something trivial, but the trivial is not meant in this way - is the fact that the social order is gradually being dominated by everything that can be called money, the dominion of money, which makes it impossible to live directly in spiritually-influenced laws. Everyone understands what is meant by such a thing. But because of the impossibility of turning "stones into bread", the impossibility of having the spiritual in matter directly, independently of the material, because of the existence of this impossibility and its mirror image, the dominion of money, Ahriman has dominion. For Ahriman also lives socially in money.“ (Lit.:GA 148, p. 149)

Purchase-money

When one exchanges money for a commodity, the money at that moment has the character of purchase money. (Lit.:GA 340, p. 172) Essentially, then, money is an intermediary of exchange. (Lit.:GA 340, p. 173) It mediates the exchange of economic services between people. (Lit.:GA 23, p. 130) It is actually a pure measure of value of the goods and services circulating in an economy. (Lit.:GA 23, p. 132) The value of (purchase) money in this case results from the economic value of the commodity. (Lit.:GA 340, p. 174)

Loan-money

Money enables it to be accumulated into monetary capital and lent to a person as a loan. (Lit.:GA 340, p. 60) As a result, this person can found a business or realise an idea. In this case, the value of the (loan) money results from the spirit of the entrepreneur, i.e. whether or not the debtor can use the money capital economically successfully. (Lit.:GA 340, p. 176) The emergence of loan money, i.e. money that made the function of money capital formation possible, presents itself as a compelling developmental step in history, so that man with his spirit (synonym (simplified): intelligence) could seize into economic life. In other words, one can also say that money was necessary to enable the developmental step towards the modern economy based on the division of labour. (Lit.:GA 340, p. 58)

Gift-money

Gift-money results from the fact that commodity values are perishable and thus money as a commodity equivalent must also "die" or lose its value. (Lit.:GA 340, p. 176)

Literature

• Hans-Georg Schweppenhäuser: Das kranke Geld. Vorschläge für eine soziale Geldordnung von morgen, Fischer TB, Frankfurt a.M. 1982
• Hans Georg Schweppenhäuser: Die organische Geldordnung, Institut für soziale Gegenwartsfragen e.V. Berlin, Freiburg i.Br., 1975, PDF
• Hans-Georg Schweppenhäuser: Das Mysterium des Geldes. Geisteswissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse zum Verständnis einer organischen Geldordnung, Vlg. Die Kommenden, Freiburg i.Br. 1981, ISBN 3-7823-0172-2
• Dieter Suhr: Alterndes Geld. Das Konzept Rudolf Steiners aus geldtheoretischer Sicht, Novalis Vlg., Schaffhausen 1988
• Dieter Suhr: Gleiche Freiheit - Allgemeine Reziprozitätsdefizite in der Geldwirtschaft, Augsburg: Lothar Mette Verlag, 1988, Nachdruck "Fragen der Freiheit" Heft 259/260, 2001, PDF
• Stefan Leber et al.: Wesen und Funktion des Geldes. Kaufen, Leihen und Schenken im volkswirtschaftlichen Prozess, Sozialwissenschaftliches Forum Band 3, Vlg. Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3772509045, Buchbesprechung und Inhaltsangaben von Peter Exner, 2004
• Mehr als Geld - Wirtschaft gestalten, Flensburger Hefte Nr. 111, Flensburger Hefte Vlg., Flensburg 2011
• Ware Mensch. In den Ketten des Geldes, Flensburger Hefte Nr. 119, Flensburger Hefte Vlg., Flensburg 2013
• Michael Heine/Hansjörg Herr: Volkswirtschaftslehre - Paradigmenorientierte Einführung in die Mikro- und Makroökonomie, 4. Auflage, Oldenbourg Vlg., München 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-71523-1
• Georg F. von Canal: Geisteswissenschaft und Ökonomie - Die wert-, preis- und geldtheoretischen Ansätze in den ökonomischen Schriften Rudolf Steiners. Vorwort von Prof. Hans Christoph Binswanger, Novalis Vlg., Schaffhausen 1982, ISBN 3-7214-0634-6
• Günter Hoffmann: Tausche Marmelade gegen Steuererklärung, Piper Vlg., München 1998
• Margrit Kennedy: Geld ohne Zinsen und Inflation - Ein Tauschmittel das jedem dient, Goldmann Vlg., München 1991
• Margrit Kennedy: Geld geht auch anders. Gute Gründe, Geld neu zu gestalten, in: Erziehungskunst, 01/2012, S. 10-13, PDF (Das Heft enthält weitere Beiträge anderer Autoren zum Thema Geld)
• Michael Heinen-Anders: Aus anthroposophischen Zusammenhängen Band II, BOD, Norderstedt 2012
• Caspar Dohmen: Good Bank. Das Modell der GLS Bank, Orange-Press, Freiburg i.Br. 2011
• Christian Felber: Retten wir den EURO, Deuticke Vlg., Wien 2012
• Rudolf Isler: Nachhaltigkeit?! Wege aus der Krise durch freie Initiativen, Vlg. am Goetheanum, Dornach 2013
• Christian Kreiß: Profitwahn. Warum sich eine menschengerechtere Wirtschaft lohnt, Tectum Vlg., Marburg 2013
• Themenheft Die Drei: Die Zähmung des Geldes - Aufgaben einer modernen Kapitalwirtschaft, Themenheft Nr. 2, 2007, [1]
• Stephan Eisenhut: Kapital und Postmaterialismus. Die materialistische Kapitalauffassung bei Karl Marx und in der neoliberalen Wirtschaftskultur der Gegenwart im Vergleich mit der postmaterialistischen Kapitaltheorie Rudolf Steiners, 2006, PDF
• Christoph Strawe: Das Ringen um eine soziale Geldordnung im Spiegel der Geldtheorien, Rundbrief Dreigliederung Nr. 4/2004, S. 1-9, PDF
• Gerard Klockenbring: Geld - Gold - Gewissen, Vortrag Christengemeinschaft, 1974, ISBN 3878381840,
• Rudolf Steiner: Die Kernpunkte der Sozialen Frage, GA 23 (1976) English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Die geistig-seelischen Grundkräfte der Erziehungskunst. Spirituelle Werte in Erziehung und sozialem Leben., GA 305 (1991), ISBN 3-7274-3050-8 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Die Befreiung des Menschenwesens als Grundlage für eine soziale Neugestaltung. Altes Denken und neues soziales Wollen., GA 329 (1985) English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Betriebsräte und Sozialisierung, GA 331 (1989), ISBN 3-7274-3310-8 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Soziale Zukunft, GA 332a (1977), ISBN 3-7274-3325-6 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Nationalökonomischer Kurs, GA 340 (1979) English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Die soziale Grundforderung unserer Zeit - in geänderter Zeitlage, GA 186 (1990) English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated. Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com. Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English. Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA) Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.