Rudolf Steiner and the Social Economics of an Anarchist Utopia
ABSTRACT
Austrian mystic Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) devoted significant portions of speculative activity to socialand economic questions; during the fateful interwar period, he delivered remarkable lectures on the nature ofeconomics and the physiology of the social order. He fashioned analyses consonant with the intuitions ofmonetary reformer Silvio Gesell and kindred to institutional narratives of the old German school, providingpenetrating insight into the (perishable) nature of money, distribution, and the fundamental notion of the gift.His blueprint for social Utopia was the threefold social order, whereby three independent systems of collec-tive life (economy, state, and arts and sciences) are conceived to function as a harmonious whole. Steiner’scontribution to the social sciences, naturally obliterated in our opportunistic times of “ultra-economism,”would deservedly occupy a preeminent place among heterodox thought that awaits impatiently the demise ofmodern capitalism’s unreasoning appetites with a view to refashioning an alternative, more humane economy.
Keywords: Anarchism; Money; Institutions; Gift; Utopia
