Preface to
the German Edition
A central thesis of Herbert Witzenmann in this work reads: The normative
principle of civilization confers quality on the prevailing monetary order and
vice versa. To put it another way: the financial system is the mirror of people's
mindset, and the practiced monetary order acts back on people's consciousness
and attitude. As a result, people's ideas determine the functions and types of
money in accordance with their world view.
This view offers an
original starting point. It stands in clear contrast to modern financial theory
and politics, which deals with questions of monetary creation and destruction,
with theories of cash management or the monetary theory of Keynesians and
monetarists, without taking into account the different attitudes and positions
of people in the theories.
More and more
people are dealing with money earlier and more intensively. People measure
their income and the prices of goods in money, buy goods and services with
money, lend their money to a bank or private person, borrow for an investment,
act with money as with a commodity, donate their money to a "good
cause" or look for ways of investing to secure or increase the money. Even
though we think more and more in terms of money, we hardly know its powers and effects.
Without awareness, we use one of the "greatest means of freedom"
(Friedrich August von Hayck) without understanding its essence.
The descriptions of
the so-called objective functions of money (medium of exchange, unit of
account, means of determining value) forget the subject: the person who handles
the money. He is the one who gives money a certain quality only when it is used
in different ways.
Depending on the
capacity and skill of the "financier and the financed", money can or
cannot develop its effectiveness. In this respect, everyone who handles money
also shapes the social process.
Irrespective of
whether money is paid, borrowed or donated, people determine the path that
money takes in the future. This will be
clarified by the example of an exchange transaction. In a situation of buying
or selling, goods and money are exchanged. The buyer asks for a commodity and
offers money, while the seller asks for money and offers commodities. For the
seller, the completed product is the end of the value creation process. That process
was made possible by financial resources that were borrowed, for example, and
by the consciously designed work of people who worked on machines to perfect
the purchased partial products. The seller can only be active in the future if
buyers are interested in his products and he receives money for them, with
which he can pay for his goods, etc., and for the income of his employees. To
this extent, the money in the hands of the seller is a prerequisite for his
future creative activity.
For the consumer, the situation is exactly the opposite. For him, money means the possibility of being able to buy goods that he urgently needs to be able to satisfy his needs in the future. In the hands of the buyer, the money of the past has come to an end (this becomes particularly clear, if one keeps it in an old sock in the bedroom). The money is brought back to life when it passes into the hands of the seller. In exchanging, we have, as it were, a lemniscatic movement, when the seller's wares produced in the past are exchanged for the buyer's money involved in the past; the wares in the buyer's hands and the money in the seller's hands represent an option that becomes possible in the future.
At the same time, for the money in the hands of the buyer, a possibility
of frequent individualization was thereby lost, because it was exchanged for a
certain commodity. The seller, on the other hand, has exchanged a
"certain" commodity in favor of the most frequent individualization
forms of the money in the future.
The example makes
it clear how in a buying and selling situation in a workaday social organism,
life processes can be unfolded anew and thus stagnation prevented. For the
dynamics and effects, the skills of the people involved in the exchange are
decisive.
With the choice of
the quality of the product he buys, the buyer decides whether he wants to ruin
or promote his bodily organization. Since he himself is not only a consumer but
at the same time an employee in a performance community, his choice has
far-reaching effects. The buyer decides by the choice of the seller to whom he
offers the money, whether capable or incompetent people will be enabled to work
more vigorously in the sense of the entire social organism in the future. If
the money ends up in the hands of the seller, therein is expressed not only an
appreciation for past performance, but also an incentive for future production.
Conversely, the
seller can also determine the quality of the product and decide to whom he
sells it.
This small example,
far from being worked out in all its aspects, shows that human consciousness
essentially governs the quality of monetary activity.
According to
Dostoevsky, money is "solidified freedom." We would thoroughly
misunderstand the Russian poet if we believed that money automatically makes
one free. "Money is like a sail in your pocket" (Japanese proverb),
which you can hoist according to your intention for the sake of freedom or
unfreedom, which fills with wind according to our abilities and moves the earth
ship and its inhabitants forward or spins rudderless around the mast.
The lectures and
texts by Herbert Witzenmann collected in this book provide a solid basis for a
modern monetary system based on a spiritual principle of civilization from many
different perspectives. The texts collected here were not edited by the author
for print and thus were not coordinated with each other.
The model developed
by Herbert Witzenmann for a threefold design of associations as an expression
of Rudolf Steiner's dynamic theory of money shows a new way of shaping the
economic cycle of money and goods. It invites discussion and was published by
the author for that purpose.
In that sense, I hope that this book will stimulate as many readers as possible to think about money in a new way.
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