{"id":66390,"date":"2025-06-10T21:38:36","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T19:38:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/?p=66390"},"modified":"2025-06-12T22:35:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T20:35:12","slug":"beyond-gold-money-as-bookkeeping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/beyond-gold-money-as-bookkeeping\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Gold\u2014Money as Bookkeeping"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Surprisingly few anthroposophists know of Rudolf Steiner as an economist, let alone as a credible contributor to current monetary affairs.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Yet, Steiner’s reputation as an economist is being quietly established through master’s and doctoral theses and academic activities of members of the Economics Conference of the Goetheanum.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Whether this be in Campinas, Brazil,<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Delft University in the Netherlands,<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Buckingham University in England,<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Fribourg in Switzerland<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> or in proximity to the Bank of England,<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> these works have not only received high marks but been supervised by experts in their fields. In each case, the relevance and validity of Rudolf Steiner as a modern-day voice had to be established; not an easy task in modern academia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much of this work turns on two topics which Steiner concerned himself with intimately following the debacle of the 1920 Treaty of Versailles, known as \u201cThe Peace\u201d by the victors and as Der Diktat<\/em> [The Decree] by Germany. The first topic concerns the end of the road for gold as a monetary medium; the second is Steiner’s idea that the world needs a single currency but that it should take the form of \u201cmoney as bookkeeping\u201d, meaning that instead of coins and notes, money has the form of accounting, shared ledgers, and a common language or chart of accounts.<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Both of these topics occupied the second half of Steiner\u2019s economics course,<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> where he had to introduce seminar sessions because of the complexity of his subject matter, as attested to by Guenther Wachsmuth, Emil Leinhas, and other associates of Steiner\u2019s linked to finance and business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steiner belonged to Central Europe, whereas the locus of monetary evolution was \u2014and remains \u2014London. There, in those days, Steiner had no voice, and monetary evolution proceeded without his ideas, let alone his advice. For one hundred years, this absence has been evident, but now, perhaps, a new possibility exists. I take this up in my book Beyond Gold: Hayek, Keynes and Steiner in Concert<\/em>.<\/span>9<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hayek and Keynes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Hayek who? Friedrich von Hayek grew up in Austro-Hungary and knew well the Central European world centred on Vienna of which Steiner spoke, but which collapsed in 1914.<\/span>10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Hayek spent much of his life in London as an economist, advocating the denationalisation of money,<\/span>11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> so that the issuing of money no longer relied on political interference and responsible behaviour on the part of banks, especially when it came to printing money in the abstract or allowing themselves to be rescued by government bail-outs. In 1944, Hayek co-founded the Mont Pelerin Society, the group of people who, for good or ill, in the early 1980s found their champions in Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and through them were able to usher in the marketisation that exposed service industries to market forces in most of the non-communist world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keynes who? Keynes is Britain\u2019s most famous economist. A Germanophile, he resigned from the British government in 1919 to publish his book protesting the injustices and ultimate economic futility of the Treaty of Versailles.<\/span>12<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Steiner referred to him several times in 1920.<\/span>13<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Like Steiner\u2019s Threefold Commonwealth<\/em>,<\/span>14<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Keynes\u2019s book was a best seller at the time. He accompanied the entire 20th century as one of its foremost commentators and designers of economic policy, especially with his idea of an international clearing union, whereby the countries of the world could maintain balanced trade and credit together through the use of a non-national currency, the bancor<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hayek and Keynes clashed a great deal when Hayek first appeared in London, muscling in on Keynes\u2019s patch, as it were. So much so that the popular image is of them at loggerheads and holding diametrically opposed views. This is not the historical truth, however, as they came to have a fruitful and harmonious working relationship later in their careers.<\/span>15<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond the Gold Standard<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

From the point of view of the one-world economy that had come about during World War 1, both economists were clear that gold and the gold standard, and with it western hegemony, had passed its \u201csell by\u201d date. And both sought to overcome this, each in their own way. Hayek suggested free issue of money by whomever, with acceptance, not issuance, being the deciding factor in its use. Then, as now, this was a severe challenge to central banks. Keynes published his seminal A Tract on Monetary Reform<\/em> in 1923,<\/span>16<\/sup><\/a><\/span> the thesis of which sits back-to-back with Steiner\u2019s economics lectures. Indeed, then, as now, the way for English economists to reach Steiner passes via Keynes, as does the way for Steiner\u2019s ideas to get mainstream traction in the so-called Anglo-Saxon world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Keynes, this is due in part to his Aristotelian background\u2014although stemming from the philosophy of George Moore, it was somewhat hedonistic. But it is more challenging to align Hayek with Steiner because of the key question of how modern humanity can get to grips with today\u2019s world economic realities. While both Hayek and Steiner agreed that the lone individual cannot do so, they disagreed on how to solve the problem. Hayek claimed that the limits to knowledge require us to listen to and obey the dictates of the market. Steiner regarded there to be no limits to knowledge and articulated what is becoming known formally as \u201cassociative economics,\u201d that the parties involved talk and work with one another, and don’t leave everything to \u201cmarket forces\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There, for the most part, the story ends with humanity stuck in a seemingly endless debate between the state and markets, and with associative economics in the margins, at best, an outlier far from the centre of policy influence or business school tenets. However, all three\u2014Hayek, Keynes and Steiner\u2014can be brought together around the subject of \u201cmoney as bookkeeping,\u201d which is also the way beyond gold and all that the adherence to gold implies: the uncertainty of many central bank reserves, the disturbance of the gold market, and above all the inability to pass from blind, instinctive economics to what Keynes called \u201cdeliberate and scientific\u201d management of economic life\u2014in other words, consciousness displacing the unseen working of gold to, eventually, conscience-led consciousness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both Hayek and Keynes were familiar with bookkeeping, but both had reached a dead end. Hayek, because he was never an entrepreneur, and so did not have bookkeeping as lived experience. Keynes because he could not get beyond the \u201cbookkeeping money\u201d created by fractional reserve lending, whereby banks lend money in considerable excess of their deposits, seeming to create money \u201cout of nothing,\u201d but in fact reflecting the creativity of human beings by providing credit not to buy things but to finance that creativity. Had either met Steiner and his idea of \u201cmoney as bookkeeping,\u201d things might have been different. And they might still be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instruments of Perception<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It is possible that through encountering Steiner, the seemingly different objectives of both Hayek and Keynes would have been met, because bookkeeping is a neutral science and an objective process on which the global financial system itself actually rests. When not captured by narrow national interests, it can be seen to be the very condition needed if economic life is to be conducted on its own principles. This is the central argument of Steiner\u2019s perspective. Bookkeeping is the same all over the world, allowing different currencies (today, there are 180+) to coexist while all use the same shared framework. No central banks and no overarching regulation are needed: accounting does the work. In this way, the world\u2019s currencies are no longer weapons of economic rivalry and warfare, but become instruments of perception of the working and dynamics of the many sectors and regions in today\u2019s one-world economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it na\u00efve or ambitious to position Rudolf Steiner in this way? I think not. Indeed, I see no other way to trim-tab the direction of modern economics and with it the direction of economic life as such, let alone slow its pace or turn the ship around. Any candid survey of the world of economists will not find Steiner\u2019s ideas having an influence or gaining traction, nor will they, unless he is given a seat at the \u201ctop table,\u201d as an economist among others\u2014\u201cthe other Austrian\u201d, as I call him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This year we bring you a series of articles titled \u201c<\/em>Rudolf Steiner as\u2026<\/a>\u201d to honor the 100th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s death\u2014sometimes an essay, sometimes simply a thought or reflection\u2014always, an aspect of his being.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Surprisingly few anthroposophists know of Rudolf Steiner as an economist, let alone as a credible contributor to current monetary affairs. Yet, Steiner’s reputation as an economist is being quietly established through master’s and doctoral theses and academic activities of members of the Economics Conference of the Goetheanum. Whether this be in Campinas, Brazil, Delft University in the Netherlands, Buckingham University in England, Fribourg in Switzerland or in proximity to the Bank of England, these works have not only received high […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21898,"featured_media":66488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11614],"tags":[11664,11665,8814],"class_list":["post-66390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-steiner-as","tag-ausgabe-22-2025-en","tag-english-issue-24-2025","tag-musings"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21898"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}