The Social Question, Reincarnation, and Labor as a Sacrifice for Mankind

The French Revolution (1789-1799) brought the slogan “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” and “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.”^[1] These core concepts of individual liberty and democracy were insufficient to resolve the continuing social and economic inequalities in France, leading to the June Days uprising of June 23-26, 1848. The question of class inequality, which is at the core of the social question, “was brought to the attention of the public due to the intense participation of socialist workers and artisans in the social struggles in the spring of that year, and particularly in the ‘June Days’ in France.”^[2] This uprising “would stand as the clearest example of class struggle in the modern European experience.”^[3] “At that time [the 19th century in Europe] the social question was the central subject of volatile political conflicts between the ruling classes and working-class movements.”^[4] In modern times, the social question continues and pertains not just to socioeconomic inequalities but also to the inequalities of race, sexual orientation, gender identification and religious beliefs, also including inequalities of workplace inequality and equality for persons with disabilities. These inequalities share a common theme:

[T]he social problem as Steiner identified it was that individuals are prevented from fully developing, but the focus here is not on the end-state of a ‘developed’ individual, but on the process of continual transformation.^[5]

To understand the history of the revolutions that have occurred in Europe and America^[6], we can bring to our awareness that the need for freedom and equality arose from our previous incarnation around the time of Christ and early Christianity.  From a lecture Steiner gave to the Theosophical Society on October 26th 1905 entitled “The Social Question and Theosophy” (GA 68d):

…all those souls who today cry for liberty and equality have learned it at another stage of their existence, in an earlier incarnation. The greatest needs of the human being of today were embodied in the early time of Christianity, in the first Christian centuries. All human beings have taken up this press for equality, before which the human being of today stands in spiritual life. Christianity brought the message of equality before God. In times prior to that, there had been no such equality.^[7]

This leads our thinking to the question, if we stand equal before God, why do we not stand equal before our fellow man? Unfortunately, the concept of “equal before our fellow man” turned away from equality in justice, freedom and dignity and instead descended into seeking material equality: 

The soul that 1800 years ago was accustomed to claiming equality for the beyond now brings the impulse for equality with it, but in connection with what is important today: “equality before Mammon.”^[8],[9]

This descent must be corrected:

If it [the soul] is to find an ascent again, it must find the spirit in the present, the inwardness, in the soul element itself. That is what the Theosophical world movement is striving for: to prepare the soul for the third stage [see John Root’s comments about this phrase “the third stage”], because it is filled with God, filled with divine wisdom, and will thereby again know how to place itself in the world, so that it will again find the harmony between itself and the surrounding world.^[10]

As an aside, note the phrase “the spirit must find” (as it has been translated in English), and how fourteen years later in 1919, Steiner introduces the three aspects of the social question in GA 332a, Lecture 1, with this statement: “The spirit must give the answer to the following [three questions].”^[11]

Furthermore, Steiner emphatically stated that the idea that we are victims of our environment, a product of our circumstances, is completely wrong:

Our national economists and our social theorists today so often say: the human being is only the product of outer circumstances. The human being has come to this because he has lived in these or those outer conditions. Thus speaks, for example, in earnest, social democracy, saying that the human being becomes what the environment makes of him, that because he has become a proletarian worker, due to the entire development of industry, he has also become one in his soul, the way he has evolved through just these conditions. The human being is a product of circumstances. We can often hear that. Let us study the conditions themselves, let us consider what is round about us, what we are most dependent on. Are we dependent merely on nature? No!^[12]

Rather:

The deepest humanity, the deepest soul-inwardness must first stream out of our own hearts into the world. Then the world will be an image of the soul, and in this soul there will be an image of the world. This will be able to satisfy people again…The first things that have to be worked over, what we have to take up first as the social question, are the souls of today, which produce the environment of tomorrow.^[13]

This “deepest humanity” is concretely acquired through acquiring Theosophical knowledge and the development (at least a kernel) of universal brotherhood (brackets are John Root’s):

If human beings realize that the improvement of conditions depends on themselves, if they acquire Theosophical knowledge, and if they cognize the first fundamental principle to establish the kernel of a universal brotherhood [Refers to the first fundamental principle of the Theosophical Society: “To form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or color.”] and develop it in themselves as a social feeling for the surrounding world, then the actual social is possible, and one is prepared for what will happen in the near future.^[14]

Let us remember that universal brotherhood is characteristic of the sixth epoch for which we are being prepared through the development of our consciousness soul:

In the sixth epoch … it is the spirit self that must be developed within the souls of men, just as now the consciousness soul is being developed. The nature of spirit self is that it must pre-suppose the existence in human souls of the three characteristics of which I have spoken: social life in which brotherliness prevails, freedom of thought, and pneumatology. These three characteristics are essential in a community of human beings within which the spirit self is to develop as the consciousness soul develops in the souls of the fifth epoch.^[15]

Steiner then very elegantly (and quite unexpectedly in my opinion) connected the social question and universal brotherhood to the false premise of economic theory! The false premise of economic theory is that production of commodities is associated with the wage paid for the labor to produce those commodities. If instead one works from premise of universal brotherhood that “arise[s] out of the human being and from humanity”^[16] one arrives at the realization that a “…commodity is the result of something other than directly compensated work. Thus its value also has nothing to do with what is to be paid in wages.”^[17]

And now we get to the crux of the matter, the resolution of the social question:

Just as the Greek laborer did his work under the compulsion of his master and a present laborer works under the compulsion of wages, just so in the future only freedom will obtain.[sic] Labor and compensation will in future be completely separated.

That will constitute the health of social conditions in the future. You can see it already today. Work will be a voluntary performance out of the recognition of necessity, out of the realization that it must be done. People perform it because they look at the person and see that he needs work done for him. … Labor in the past was tribute, in the future it will be sacrifice. It has nothing to do with self-interest, nothing to do with compensation. If I base my labor on consumer demand, with regard to what humanity needs, I stand in a free relation to labor, and my work is a sacrifice for humanity. Then I will work with all my powers, because I love humanity and want to place my capacities at its disposal.

I often find it useful to rework Steiner’s logic in reverse. When, in the future, labor is a sacrifice for humanity because I see the need of humanity, then I do this work because I have a developed consciousness soul and spirit-self. I produce commodities completely independently of any wage for this labor and so “I stand in a free relation to labor.” From this ascent of my soul, I am no longer bound by the materialistic thinking Mammon. I stand equal not only before God, I stand equal before my fellow man. “Thus labor becomes anything but a burden. It becomes something into which we place what is most sacred for us, our compassion for humanity, and then we can say: Labor is sacred because it is a sacrifice for mankind.”^[18] I am not a product of my circumstances, instead I am producing the environment of tomorrow. In this future of brotherhood, the issues of inequality no longer exist.

As a final word, one of the posters on Janusz Korczak that Mariola Strahlberg put up for her presentation “Children as Stars” is a quote by Korczak that I find succinctly reflects the topics discussed in this essay: “I exist not to be loved and admired, but to love and act. It is not the duty of those around me to love me.  Rather, it is my duty to be concerned about the world, about man.”

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^[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_of_the_Citizen

^[2] F. Andreucci, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001, Chapter 3 titled “Marx and Engels”

^[3] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp0574

^[4] Thomas Faist, The Transnationalized Social Question, Oxford University Press, 2019, p. 33

^[5] Brogan, A. Steiner Shorts 3: The Social Problem

^[6] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/theminewars-labor-wars-us/

^[7] Steiner, R. GA 68d: The Social Question and Theosophy, translated by John Root, Sr., Lecture given to the Theosophical Society on Oct 26 1905, online at https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA068d/

^[8] Mammon in the New Testament of the Bible is commonly thought to mean money, material wealth, or any entity that promises wealth, and is associated with the greedy pursuit of gain.

^[9] Steiner, R. GA 68d, Lecture 1

^[10] Ibid.

^[11] Steiner, R. The Social Future, Lecture 1, The Social Question as a Cultural Question, a Question of Equity, and a Question of Economics, October 24, 1919

^[12] Steiner, R. GA 68d, Lecture 1

^[13] Ibid.

^[14] Ibid.

^[15] Steiner, R. Preparing for the Sixth Epoch, Lecture given on June 15, 1915

^[16] Steiner, R. GA 68d, Lecture 1

^[17] Ibid.

^[18] Ibid.

The Davos Manifesto 2020 compared to True Social Renewal

What is social renewal? In the social ferment of postwar Europe in 1919, Steiner presented his insights concerning the three autonomous domains of social life that are fundamental to the nature of human relationships in our time: the economic, political/rights and cultural domains. As he explained, all three of these essential dynamics must be recognized and consciously cooperated with if any real social renewal is to be achieved. In this essay I will be comparing the dynamics of social renewal that Steiner revealed with some of the ideas of Klaus Schwab, Chairman of the World Economic Forum. Quotes from what Schwab has written are from his web article, The Davos Manifesto 2020: The Universal Purpose of a Company in the Fourth Industrial Revolution,^[1] posted on Dec 2, 2019. See footnotes for references to the quotes from Steiner that I have used.

Schwab’s article introduces several topics which after closer examination can be contrasted with what Steiner wrote and said.

Value

Schwab defines the purpose of a company as matter of “value creation”:

The purpose of a company is to engage all its stakeholders in shared and sustained value creation. In creating such value, a company serves not only its shareholders, but all its stakeholders – employees, customers, suppliers, local communities and society at large.

His further description:

A company serves its customers by providing a value proposition that best meets their needs. It accepts and supports fair competition and a level playing field.

The term, ‘value proposition’ (introduced by Lanning and Michaels in 1988), is “a clear, simple statement of the benefits, both tangible and intangible, that the company will provide, along with the approximate price it will charge each customer segment for those benefits.”^[2] Schwab has a ‘value proposition’ where the price fluctuates based on need and competition and is therefore subjective, whereas for Steiner, a commodity has an objective value determined by people with expertise in the characteristics of the commodity[1] .

Steiner:

[A commodity] has an objective value, to the degree that it is durable or the reverse, lasting or perishable; to the degree that by its nature it is more or less serviceable, plentiful, or scarce. All these things condition an objective, actual economic value, the determination of which demands an objective expert knowledge.^[3]

Dignity and Respect

Schwab:

A company treats its people with dignity and respect. It honours diversity and strives for continuous improvements in working conditions and employee well-being. In a world of rapid change, a company fosters continued employability through ongoing upskilling and reskilling…It integrates respect for human rights into the entire supply chain.

Schwab frames dignity and respect in the context of how an employee is treated and trained. Conversely, Steiner frames dignity in the context of the value of work for humanity as a whole.

Steiner:

[A large part of humanity] no longer wants to be led to work by economic compulsion. They want to work from motives more befitting human dignity…It [the three-membered organization] aims at establishing within an independent, self-sustaining cultural life a realm where one learns in a living way to understand this human society for which one is called upon to work; a realm where one learns to see what each single piece of work means for the combined fabric of the social order, to see it in such a light that one will learn to love it because of its value for the whole.^[4]

Regulation and Transparency

Schwab:

[A company] has zero tolerance for corruption. It keeps the digital ecosystem in which it operates reliable and trustworthy. It makes customers fully aware of the functionality of its products and services, including adverse implications or negative externalities…It ensures the safe, ethical and efficient use of data.

The company is to be the guard against corruption and the assurance of transparency. This is not something that should be left within the purview of companies as a matter of self-regulation. Zero corruption and transparency can only be achieved through an autonomous rights domain holding sway over the economic domain to ensure human dignity and quality of life.

Steiner:

The political state must be based upon, and occupy itself with, those requirements which are common and equal to all.^[5]

It is essential for knowledge about the members of the social organism to be able to differentiate between the legal rights system, which can only concern itself with relations between human beings that derive from human sources, and the economic system, which can only be concerned with the production, circulation and consumption of commodities. It is necessary to sense this difference in life in order that, as a consequence of this sensibility, the economy be separate from the rights member.^[6]

The Environment and Technology

Schwab:

[A company] acts as a steward of the environmental and material universe for future generations. It consciously protects our biosphere and champions a circular, shared and regenerative economy. It continuously expands the frontiers of knowledge, innovation and technology to improve people’s well-being.

Here, companies act as guardians of the environment and oversees technical advances on behalf of everyone. Though the environment and technology were not of the same level of concern in the early 20th century as they are today, it is not the purview of companies to be the stewards of these. As Andrew Brogan concisely summarized from Steiner’s insights on the rights domain: “… the role of politics is to ensure equality in interpersonal relationships through the establishment and promotion of human rights which contribute to a dignified life.”^[7] Environment issues and the application of technology are directly impacting our ability to lead a “dignified life.” It is the responsibility of the rights domain to ensure quality of life – people’s well-being – which would of course include living conditions, the environment and the biosphere as a whole. It is out of the spiritual/cultural domain that innovations will emerge, which then are taken up by the economic cycle.           

The Social System

Schwab:

A company is more than an economic unit generating wealth. It fulfills human and societal aspirations as part of the broader social system.

Schwab believes that “generating wealth” (profit) at least partly fulfills the aspirations of human beings. Even in Steiner’s time, the reason for why we work was shifting away from a purely profit motive. In our times, this is even more relevant – people are more and more concerned about the environment and other people rather than their personal profit. When Schwab wrote “more than an economic unit” we see how he frames “upskilling and reskilling” (modern corporate words for education) as also being fulfilling to people and their “societal aspirations,” a nod to the expression attributed to Malcom Forbes: “He who dies with the most toys wins.” Conversely, in the healthy social organism, education is in the purview of an autonomous cultural domain, not the economic domain.

Steiner:

An economic management that does not include this profit motive among the forces at work within the economy cannot of itself exert any effect whatever upon the human will to work. And precisely because it cannot do so, it meets a social demand that a large part of humanity has begun to raise in the present stage of development. This part of humanity no longer wants to be led to work by economic compulsion.^[8]

In conclusion,  hopefully this short essay provides some counterpoint to Schwab’s model, which he calls ‘stakeholder capitalism,’ and its fundamental impulse that it “positions private corporations as trustees of society, and is clearly the best response to today’s social and environmental challenges”^[9] (my italics). It is important to be aware of Schwab’s thinking and to counter his views with the concrete reasoning that Steiner brings to our consciousness regarding social renewal.

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^[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/12/davos-manifesto-2020-the-universal-purpose-of-a-company-in-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/

^[2] Lanning, Michael J., and Edward G. Michaels. “A business is a value delivery system.” McKinsey staff paper No. 41. July, 1988.

^[3] Steiner, R. (2013) The Social Future. Revised by Henry B. Monges. SteinerBooks. Lecture 5, 29 October 1919, Zurich

^[4] Steiner R. (1985) Renewal of the Social Organism. Translated by E. Bowen-Wedgewood and Ruth Mariott, revised by Frederick Amrine, Anthroposophic Press, GA 24, article 6

^[5] Steiner, R. (1977, 2019) Toward a Threefold Society: Basic Issues of the Social Question. Translated by F.T. Smith. Rudolf Steiner Publications. GA 23, Ch. 3

^[6] Steiner, R. (1977, 2019) Toward a Threefold Society: Basic Issues of the Social Question. Translated by F.T. Smith. Rudolf Steiner Publications. GA 23, Ch. 2

^[7] Brogan, A. Steiner Shorts 3, The Social Problem https://www.academia.edu/67073076/Steiner_Shorts_3_The_Social_Problem

^[8] Steiner R. (1985) Renewal of the Social Organism. Translated by E. Bowen-Wedgewood and Ruth Mariott, revised by Frederick Amrine, Anthroposophic Press, GA 24

^[9] https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stakeholder-capitalism-new-metrics-by-klaus-schwab-2019-11

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Book on Social Renewal

In collaboration with Kate Reese Hurd, we have written a book entitled The Three-Membered Organization of the Social Organism In the Context of the 21st Century and America and its Individual and Group Realization.

Yes, it’s a long title!

It should be noted that the intended audience for this book are people familiar with Anthroposophy and particularly the writings/lecture Rudolf Steiner gave in the early 1900’s on social renewal.

This is a preview of the book, which includes the following sections:

• Preface
• Introductions
• Chapters 1 and 2
• About the Authors

If you are interested in a PDF of the complete November draft of this book, please leave a message on this post.

excerptDownload

The full table of contents (apologies for the underscores, getting WordPress to indent is not simple!):

Preface   1

Introduction by Marc Clifton   7

Introduction by Kate Reese Hurd   9

What is The Social Organism (The Social Order)?  12

__Social and Antisocial 12

Fundamental Concepts of the Social Organism    15

__Autonomy, Independence, and Interdependence  17

__The Premises of The Three-Membered Organization   20

__Developing a Healthy Social Life and its Organization   24

____From Unconscious to Conscious  24

____Healthy Thinking, Feeling and Willing in the Context of Mental Health   25

____Healthy Thinking, Feeling and Willing in the Context of Spiritual Science   27

____Free and Ethical Action   28

____Primal Thoughts  34

____What is a Healthy Social Organization?  36

__A Heightened Sensibility  37

__The Critical Role of Administration   38

Characteristics of The Spiritual/Cultural Domain   40

Education   40

Free Ethical Action   41

____Bias  42

__Self-Development  43

__Carrying out Justice, Adjudication   45

Characteristics of Rights Domain   46

__Quality of Nature   47

__Quality of Life   48

__Equality of the People   50

__Land Use Rights  52

__Taxation to Support the Rights Domain   53

__The Effectiveness of the Rights Domain   54

__Rights Within the Economic and Cultural Domains  55

Characteristics of The Economic Domain   56

__What is a Commodity?  56

__Core Concepts  58

____Land   58

____Labor  59

______The Service Sector  60

______Intangible Commodities  61

__Wage/Salary  62

__Taxes and Money  65

__The Entanglement of Labor and Wage/Salary  67

__The Decoupling of Commodity Price, Labor and Wage/Salary: A Thought Experiment  69

__Debt and its Effect on Wage/Salary and Product Price   72

__Unsecured and Secured Debt  74

__Stakeholders  76

__Credit and Debt  76

__Influences between the Economic Domain on the Other Two Domains  78

__Replacing Human Labor with Machine Labor  80

__The Division of Labor  82

The Primary Types of Capitalism    85

__Oligarchic Capitalism    85

__State-Guided Capitalism    86

__Corporate Capitalism    86

__Crony Capitalism    87

__Entrepreneurial Capitalism    87

__Laissez-Faire Capitalism    89

__Welfare State Capitalism    90

____Tuition   90

____Healthcare   92

__Shareholder Capitalism    93

__Stakeholder Capitalism    94

__Customer Capitalism    96

__What is Value?  97

__Toward True Social Renewal 99

Individual and Group Realization of the Three-Membered Organization   100

__Begin Small and With Conviction   101

__Begin With Ourselves  102

____Core Questions in Light of These Correspondences  103

__Ourselves and Others  104

____As a Consumer  104

____As an Entrepreneur  106

____As a Producer / Worker  107

__Group Realization   108

The Future of the Three-Membered Organization   110

__The Will to Work  110

__The Four Day Work Week  114

__Is Technology The Answer?  115

__Country and Local Realization of The Three-Membered Organization   117

__The Three-Membered Organization and the Environment  118

__The Gift Economy  119

__Imagining The Three-Membered Organization   121

__Working out of an Independent Life of Thought  122

__Associative Economics  125

Concluding Thoughts  133

Online Resources  134

__The Seminal Works of Rudolf Steiner  134

__Books and Lectures on the Social Organism and the Three-Membered Organization   135

____Works by Rudolf Steiner  135

__Works on the Social Question by Others  137

__Holding Conversation, Study Groups, and Workshops  137

__Gross National Happiness  137

__Other Sources  138

About the Authors  139

__Marc Clifton   139

__Kate Reese Hurd   139

Human Relationship is the Foundation of Social Renewal

Steiner’s book Basic Issues of the Social Question (GA 23), first published in 1919, introduced the necessity of a social organism in which the activities of the economic, political (rights) and cultural domains unfold autonomously and of necessity do so in such a way that each interpenetrates in their rightful place the other two through human-to-human relationships.  Only in this manner can human development and activity be healthy in our time.  In late October 1919, Steiner developed this concept further in a series of lectures entitled, The Social Future (GA 332a), giving much more grounding for an understanding of the three domains and laying out in particular detail the workings of what he had spoken of as ‘associative economics’ (Lecture 2). Between 1919 and 1920, Steiner wrote many articles, some of which were published as The Renewal of the Social Organism (GA 24), which further deepened the concepts that inform the three-membered interpenetrating structure of social life.  Although the terms ‘tripartite’ and ‘threefold’ do not suggest the interpenetrating nature of this truly social structure, for brevity I will use the term ‘tripartite,’ but amend it as ‘tripartite society.’

In the works just mentioned (and others) Steiner described the situation that led up to World War I, discussed the concerns of the proletariat after the war, and provided an intricate and detailed analysis of a tripartite society that would correct the inequalities experienced by the proletariat and ideally prevent the catastrophe of a world war from ever occurring again.  Steiner’s work is highly relevant today, with the issues he discussed exacerbated greatly by the circumstances we now face which involve the environment, technology, race and gender equality, class disparity, and ongoing conflicts across the world.

In my collaboration with Kate Reese Hurd on a book entitled, The Three-Membered Organization of the Social Organism (The Threefold Social Order) In the Context of the 21st Century and America and its Individual and Group Realization, I have become aware that when we are attempt to work with the ideas of social renewal, and in particular with the functioning of the three domains – economic, rights, and cultural – it is often the case that we are altogether missing the fundamental foundation upon which Steiner’s thinking is based.  The idea of a tripartite society composed of three autonomous domains is not actually the foundation of social renewal.  Instead, such a society and social renewal must be the outcome of fundamental changes in human relationships.  Steiner pointed out the need for these fundamental changes in human relationships repeatedly, not just in the context of social renewal, but in much of the entire arc of his life’s work.  In the case of social renewal, we can feel-sense-perceive and recognize that within the very nature of our relationships with each other we do in fact meet in three distinct ways, which require us to fashion a tripartite social organization and organism.

The foundation I will describe here is not a recipe of ‘do this first, then that next, then that third.’ The points I make here are dependent upon each other simultaneously.  While this foundation is described in a linear manner due to the limits of how one can write about these things, they should, if at all possible, be held in one’s being collectively, explored individually or in pairs, and then brought back into the ‘collective.’

The core of Steiner’s social renewal is relationship, and in particular, real human-to-human relationships.  The relationship between producers, distributors, and consumers; the relationship between those with capital and the entrepreneur in need of capital; the relationship between worker and entrepreneur, and so forth.  Our understanding of social renewal must first and foremost begin with a deep understanding of the significance of human relationships.  “People cannot be social if they do not see the human quality in one another, but live entirely within themselves. Human beings can only become social if they really meet one another in life, and something passes between them. This is the root of the social problem.”[i]

Once we really understand the need to start from human relationships, we can begin to apply two concrete and foundational activities: 1) taking a genuine interest in each other, and 2) acting out of interest in the dignity of our fellow human being.  These are deeply entwined.  One cannot act with dignity towards another without taking an interest in what that other person requires for the preservation of their human dignity.  Just as Gary Chapman pointed out, that people experience love in different ways (the five ‘love languages’), each of us has a different set of ‘relational activities’ that we find honors our dignity as a human being.  These can only be discovered by taking a genuine interest in the other person, which is in itself a path to the experience of human dignity.

This task of taking interest is developed in what Steiner said in his lecture, “The Work of the Angels in Man’s Astral Body” (GA 182, 9 October 1918, Zürich): “we must confront every human being with the full realisation that in him something is revealing itself from the divine foundations of the world, revealing itself through flesh and blood.”  Holding the thought ‘here in this person is something revealed from the divine,’ not only eliminates racial, cultural, and ethnic biases, it actually spurs an interest in the other person to ask, “what is being revealed in this other?” and also to ask the question, ‘how can I help this other reveal what is living in them from the divine foundation of the world?’

We discover, however, that taking an interest in another human being regularly results in polarization because our thinking is almost always one-sided.  Steiner remarked that “the truth lies in the middle between the opposing assertions/claims, just as the real tree lies in the middle between two photographs that I take from one side or the other. In this regard, one must point out the dangers of one-sided thinking.”[ii] Also: “A middle course is appropriate when the opposing sides are also present and are recognised as forces.”[iii]  Rather than trying to solve/resolve the polarities, those polarities must be worked ‘in and through.’  The middle path is not a passive compromise but rather an active, evolving and creative space that constantly works with the polarities.  The middle path requires concrete, human work.  It is not sufficient to repeat abstract phrases about love and altruism in an attempt to ignore the conflict.  Does Christ ignore the polarities of Ahriman and Lucifer?  No!  Christ is ever active in working with the necessity of those polarities to ensure that human freedom is continually developed.  Similarly, when we as human beings are in conflict, we must willingly take on the active work in the middle space that recognizes the necessity of our polarities and that does so without creating a loss of freedom or impairment of dignity on the part of either person holding opposing views.

How do we work in the middle?  Besides the various forms of conflict resolution that our society has developed, a primary requirement is that we see each other as co-equal.  Steiner wrote: “Real relationships will grow up between people united in a social organism where each adult … is co-equal with every other adult.”   Being viewed as co-equal is a foundational requirement for human dignity.  It is also a fundamental requirement for the active work that the middle space requires.  While we obviously have differences in skill and knowledge, polarities are usually not primarily the result of those differences or of those alone, but rather the result of differences in individual life experiences that result in differing viewpoints, visions, goals and needs.  

Taking these foundational steps concretely into our thinking, feeling and willing can bring us to what Steiner refers to as an ‘ennobled egoism’ (from GA 332a, The Social Future, Lecture 6 – see the December 2022 Chanticleer Newsletter to read the whole passage):

For the point is, that he who meets his fellowmen with a purely human interest and understanding acts differently from one whose interests are narrow, and who gives no thought to all that fills the hearts and souls of his fellow creatures, and who is without interest for his surroundings. On this account, the former, who is truly interested in his fellowmen, need not be less egoistic in life than the other; for his egoism may be precisely his desire to serve human beings. It may call forth in him a feeling of inner well-being, of inner bliss, even of ecstasy, to devote himself to the service of his fellowmen. Then, as far as the outer life is concerned, deeds which are absolutely altruistic to all appearance may proceed from egoism; in the life of feeling they cannot be appraised otherwise than as egoism.

To think we are ever acting purely altruistically is self-delusional.  There are two points here: first, we can be active in these foundational steps while still having a feeling life in which we feel good when we devote ourselves to the service of others.  Second, an ennobled egoism is what is very much required to work with these foundational principles.  Instead of an ‘egotistic’ (with a ‘t’ – meaning habitually talking about oneself; indifferent to the well-being of others; selfish) it is our egoism[iv] (the endnote offers an interesting discussion on egoism) that must be ennobled so that it becomes an interest in others as the foundation of morality.

Out of these foundational ways of relating with each other, we have the tools and means to develop the concepts of a tripartite society.  As previously stated, these qualities of human relationship do not develop as a result of a tripartite society; rather, they are a requirement for the development of a tripartite society.  Ideally, these new forms of human relationship would be accomplished through the education of our children in an autonomous cultural domain: “The kind of education that makes human beings of people also enables them to recognize people as human beings.”[v]  This can no longer be the province and responsibility of our educators and our children to carry forward, but instead, as adults, we must take up our own re-education.  In 1912, Steiner said: “Our modern culture and—more importantly—the prospects for the approaching future will doubtless lend ever-increasing importance to what is called adult education.”[vi]  That ‘approaching future’ is upon us now. 

To summarize the foundational steps of social renewal (imagine these points to be living in an interconnected, dynamic space rather than as bullet points):

• Keeping human relationships at the core.
• Taking a genuine interest in another person.
• Acting out of the interest in the dignity of the other person.
• Eliminating racial, cultural, and ethic biases by consciously experiencing that in every person is revealed something from the divine foundations of the world.
• Being active in ‘the middle’ as co-equals and working with polarities that leaves each person feeling heard and their dignity whole.
• Ennobling egoism: shifting from the focus on and role of self with regards to motivation to the focus on and role of the other with regards to our own motivation.

The realization of a tripartite society does not require us to be perfectly practicing the above steps, but rather that we at a minimum begin practicing these foundational steps.  How can we start this practice?  I propose that perhaps the simplest starting point of all is: instead of asking ‘how are you?’, ask instead, ‘what lives in you today?’, and accompany this with intentional listening.  Another practice is to actively meet ‘the other’ with the conscious thought, ‘here is a person that is revealing something from the divine,’ and discover how this changes our interaction with the other person.

---

[i] GA 191, October 4, 1919, “Social Understanding Through Spiritual Scientific Knowledge,” a few paragraphs from end of lecture

[ii] Soziale Zukunft, GA 332a, Question/Answer following Lecture 6, translation by Kate Reese Hurd

[iii] GA 141, Between Death and Rebirth, Lecture 7

[iv] https://www.studysmarter.us/explanations/politics/political-ideology/egoism/

[v] GA 191, “Cosmogony, Freedom, Altruism”

[vi] GA 61, March 14, 1912, “Self-Education in the Light of Spiritual Science”

The Servitude Language of Corporations and Managers

I was reading Don’t Let Employees Pick Their WFH Days and, like so many other articles of this kind, am struck by the use of “servitude” language when speaking of employees. Or, to use the more politically incorrect term, “master/slave” language. As Merriam-Webster defines servitude: a condition in which one lacks liberty especially to determine one’s course of action or way of life.

Examples:

How much choice should workers have in the matter?

When someone curtails the freedom of choice of another, that is control, and in the workplace, servitude.

On the one hand, many managers are passionate that their employees should determine their own schedule.

While that sentence sounds rather positive, the subtle message here is that managers have control over their employees schedule.

after talking to hundreds of organizations over the last year, have led me to change my advice from supporting to being against employees’ choosing their own WFH days.

“against employees’ choosing” – servitude.

So I have changed my mind and started advising firms that managers should decide which days their team should WFH. For example, if the manager picks WFH on Wednesday and Friday

Just amazing to me, the idea that someone else can have such control over my life.

Thankfully, there is this manager:

One manager told me “I treat my team like adults. They get to decide when and where they work, as long as they get their jobs done.”

An employer/employee relationship is an agreement that among other things usually includes an expectation of work hours. Where the work is done can be explicitly stated (and often the work must be done in “the office”, but it is also frequently ill-defined. However, in many cases, particularly in the tech industry, the requirement to work at the office is entirely arbitrary. It is often prejudiced, with managers having more flexibility to work from home than the non-manager employees. It is often arbitrary, where one manager in the organization is very flexible regarding work-from-home and another manager is a militant about his team working in the office.

I have been lured into employment in the past with a stated “very flexible work from home schedule” during the interview, only to find myself “managed” by a militant dictator who doesn’t allow any work from home.

I have worked successfully as a contractor for 20 years, where it is illegal to require the contractor to work on premise unless required by the work itself.

And I have worked for companies where the response to working from home is “no problem!”

During the pandemic, I have had the luxury (many do not) of being able to work from home. This has dramatically and ironically improved the quality of my life. I live in a very rural, artistic, community. Working from home has afforded me the luxury of meeting with people in my pod with much greater flexibility. This includes artistic presentations, outdoor gatherings, and so forth, that I would have missed if I were in the office from 8 to 5 (all of course following the guidelines of the CDC.) And simple things as well, like running an errand during lunchtime or even when I just need to take a break and think about a problem away from the computer screen.

At the other extreme, 21% tell us they never want to spend another day working from home. These are often young single employees or empty nesters in city center apartments.

Corporations and their managers need to embrace diversity, as everyone’s individual needs are different.

They [managers] often confided that home-based employees in their teams get passed over on promotions because they are out of touch with the office … given the evidence that working from home while your colleagues are in the office can be highly damaging to your career.

This isn’t the responsibility of the employee to fix. It is the responsibility of the company and the managers.

While we have laws against slavery, in many ways working for corporate America is a silent, permissible, accepted form of servitude, and like slavery, does not recognize the free human being. While often we have little or no choice regarding the employer for which we work, that does not mean that the employer should treat us with any less human dignity.

To conclude, Merriam-Webster has this to say:

Servitude is slavery or anything resembling it. The entire black population of colonial America lived in permanent servitude. And millions of the whites who populated this country arrived in “indentured servitude”, obliged to pay off the cost of their journey with several years of labor. Servitude comes in many forms, of course: in the bad old days of the British navy, it was said that the difference between going to sea and going to jail was that you were less likely to drown in jail.

So I ask, why are we so willing to pay off the cost of “our journey through life” in servitude, rather than the antonyms of servitude. freedom, liberty? What are managers so afraid of?

Generosity Communities: Core Questions

I’ve been working with some folks on the concepts of and around generosity communities. When I explore this concept, I discover that there are some fundamental questions about the premise for a generosity community that I think need to be looked at.  This is the working list of questions that I’ve come up with so far that I believe are important for each participant of any community, not just a generosity community, to explore by themselves and in community groups:

Values

1. What do I value about the other person?  What do I value about myself?
2. When do I “invest” in the other person?  When do I invest in myself?
3. Does the other person feel valued?  Do I feel valued?
4. What prevents me from valuing myself and others?

Authority

1. What are the explicit relationships of authority between us?
2. What are the implicit relationships of authority between us resulting from our life experiences (parenting, prior relationships, social mores, etc.)?
3. How do these relationships of authority influence how we express our needs and hear the needs of others?

Wealth

1. In what ways do I feel wealthy?
2. In what ways do I feel impoverished?

Balance

1. When do I feel out of balance with each other people?
2. How do I address that imbalance currently?
3. How would I, in the future, like to address imbalance?

Health

1. Do I feel “in healthy movement” with the community?
2. Do I feel “the illness of being stuck” with the community?
3. Where am I, and what is needed?
4. How do I get out of the way of myself?

Body / Soul / Spirit

1. Body: What is the physical expression of my community?  For example, meeting places, places where people live, the neighborhood, etc.
2. Soul: What are the qualities of my community?  For example, what are the members passionate about and how is this expressed in the “interests” of the community?  What does community value and what does it disdain?
3. Spirit: How do I describe the identity of the community?  What is its mission statement, its “folk soul”?  (From the psychology dictionary: “a group’s perpetual and fundamental features, morals, norms and values that can’t be explained solely in terms of characteristics of each member.”)

Communication

How can I articulate a spiritually-based value system in such a way that it is capable of entering into a dialog with other conventional value-based systems?  This is an important question for “interfacing” something like a generosity community with, for example, monetary-valuation systems (banks, businesses, the stock market, Wall Street, etc.)

Other Thoughts

We can replace the words “person”, “people”, “community” with other concepts: “partner”, “business”, “co-worker”, “boss”, “child”, and so forth.  These questions are not limited to our relationship with a generosity community but are valuable whenever we are in relationship with something or someone else.

Also, we have many relationships with people and entities (work place, church, charity, grocery store, etc) based on the context of our needs.  What is still a question for me, when I look at the trends of generosity communities, Local Investment Opportunity Networks, income pooling, and crowdfunding, is that these all express the need to fill a void that people are experiencing.  I am still unclear on what exactly that void is that isn’t being filled by our current social structures and how to clearly articulate that void in an objective and concise way.  That will be the topic of further investigation and discussion.

What is Civil Disobedience?

Background

On July 4th, 2012, my neighbor, Travis Henry, attempted to commit an act of civil disobedience, which led me to study the definition of civil disobedience.  Travis documents his actions here.  Travis was arrested and charged with two misdemeanors: Entering a Closed Federal Area and Interfering with a Federal Officer.  He was released the next day, fined $375 and required to attend a court appearance.  On October 25th, 2012, Travis wrote a “Letter on the Nation’s Probation” to the U.S. Probation Office, which you can read here, in which he refused to pay the fine and attend the court (besides also stating his aim of replacing our current system of government with what Travis calls a “Threefold Republic.”  On Nov 19th, 2012, ten U.S. marshals showed up next door to where I live to arrest him, apparently for failure to pay the fine.  To further understand why Travis took those actions, you can read more about Travis’ Threefold Declaration here and download the declaration here.

The discussion that follows is not concerned with Travis’ agenda, nor is it concerned with the response of the U.S. government in his arrest by ten U.S. marshals.  What is of concern in this discussion is the understanding of civil disobedience, the confusion that can surround the topic, and why this confusion exists.

Concepts of Civil Disobedience

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an excellent essay on the topic of Civil Disobedience (see footnotes.)  Among other things, this essay identifies that the characteristics of civil disobedience fall into two camps, one fairly narrow and the other broader, encompassing / permitting more varied forms of law breaking but still falling under the concept of civil disobedience.  There are several characteristics of civil disobedience in which this division is present:

Narrower Definition	Broader Definition	Summary
Direct	Indirect	Pertains to whether the person is breaking a law that is also the law they are protesting
Open and Public	Covert	Pertains to how the person notifies the authorities of their actions
Non-Violent	Violent	Pertains to whether the action harms a person or property
Fidelity to the Law	Continued Disobedience	Pertains to whether the person accepts the consequences of their action or uses refusal to pay fines, etc., as further protest

Direct vs. Indirect Action

The distinction between direct and indirect civil disobedience was brought about as a result of the 1991 court case United States v. Schoon.⁴  A direct act of civil disobedience is one in which the law being broken is the same law that the person is protesting against.  Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger, protesting bus segregation.  Thoreau refused to to pay the state poll tax – this was in direct response to the taxes being used to fund the war in Mexico and enforce the Fugitive Slave Law and constitutes an act if direct civil disobedience because a portion of the taxes funded the war and the slave laws.

A broader definition of civil disobedience does allow for what is termed “indirect” civil disobedience:  “civil disobedients can … breach a law … they do not oppose in order to demonstrate their protest against another law or policy.”¹   An example of indirect civil disobedience would be “[t]respassing on a military base to spray-paint nuclear missile silos in protest against current military policy..”¹

The acts of civil disobedience most often cited are direct, showing a clear correlation between the law and the protestation of the law, and are preferred from a strategic perspective.⁵

Open vs. Covert Action

A narrower characteristic of civil disobedience is that it “is never covert or secretive; it is only ever committed in public, openly, and with fair notice to legal authorities.”¹  Furthermore, “Openness and publicity, even at the cost of having one’s protest frustrated, offer ways for disobedients to show their willingness to deal fairly with authorities.”¹  This touches on the subject of fidelity to the law, discussed in the next section.  Lastly, among some thinkers “usually it is essential to the dissenter’s purpose that both the government and the public know what she intends to do.”¹

The broader characteristic states that “publicity sometimes detracts from or undermines the attempt to communicate through civil disobedience. If a person publicizes her intention to breach the law, then she provides both political opponents and legal authorities with the opportunity to abort her efforts to communicate…For this reason, unannounced or (initially) covert disobedience is sometimes preferable to actions undertaken publicly and with fair warning.”¹ An example of covert disobedience would include “releasing animals from research laboratories or vandalizing military property; to succeed in carrying out these actions, disobedients would have to avoid publicity…”¹  However, note that: “Such acts of civil disobedience nonetheless may be regarded as ‘open’ when followed soon after by an acknowledgment of the act and the reasons for acting.”¹

Fidelity vs. Continued Disobedience

Fidelity to the law, in which the “the persons who practice civil disobedience are willing to accept the legal consequences of their actions”, appears to be one of the defining features of civil disobedience:  “…as Martin Luther King Jr observes: ‘If you confront a man who has been cruelly misusing you, and say “Punish me, if you will; I do not deserve it, but I will accept it, so that the world will know I am right and you are wrong,” then you wield a powerful and just weapon.’ “¹  Fidelity to the law is pertinent not just to whether the person accepts the consequences of their actions or not.  It is also relevant to obeying laws before (such as communicating intent) and during (such as non-violence) the action.  “Non-violence, publicity and a willingness to accept punishment are often regarded as marks of disobedients’ fidelity to the legal system in which they carry out their protest.”¹

Conversely:  “Barkan writes that if defendants plead not guilty, ‘they must decide whether their primary goal will be to win an acquittal and avoid imprisonment or a fine, or to use the proceedings as a forum to inform the jury and the public of the political circumstances surrounding the case and their reasons for breaking the law via civil disobedience.’ “² “Those who deny that [non-violence, publicity and a willingness to accept punishment] are definitive of civil disobedience endorse a more inclusive conception according to which civil disobedience involves a conscientious and communicative breach of law designed to demonstrate condemnation of a law or policy and to contribute to a change in that law or policy.”¹

Non-violent vs. Violent Action

The definition of violence is itself difficult to reach.  “If the significant criterion for a commonsense notion of a violent act is a likelihood of causing injury, however minor, then these kinds of acts count as acts of violence.”¹ The salient point of this view is that any act, that causes injury is considered an act of violence, no matter how minor the act.

An opposing view states “It is unclear, for example, whether violence to self, violence to property, or minor violence against others…should be included in a conception of the relevant kinds of violence.”¹

Agreeing on a definition is one thing, but another thing is determining whether an action even falls in the “however minor” category.  More on this later.

Civil Disobedience, the Political Context, and Further Broadening of the Concept

One of the reasons for the range of characteristics of civil disobedience is the political context in which the action takes place: “it grants that the appropriate model of how civil disobedience works in a context such as apartheid South Africa may differ from the model that applies to a well-ordered, liberal, just democracy.”¹  However, one thing is clear – as we continue to broaden the concept of civil disobedience, we start treading on other forms of protest “such as conscientious objection, forcible resistance, and revolutionary action.”¹  As the concept of civil disobedience broadens, blurring the lines between these different types of protest, it begins to “weaken claims about the defensibility of civil disobedience and invite authorities and opponents of civil disobedience to lump all illegal protest under one umbrella”¹, which might be considered an undesirable consequence.

Civil Disobedience and Travis’ Actions

I encountered confusion resulting from my having a poor understanding of civil disobedience when considering whether Travis’ actions are civil disobedience.  Ironically, I had a few weeks before his arrest read Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience and also found myself questioning whether Thoreau’s views can even be applied in today’s entangled society, in which it is effectively impossible to isolate oneself from “supporting” the very systems with which one disagrees (the issue of taxes falls into this category.)  This led me to do some research on the definition of civil disobedience, and I discovered the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the essay on Civil Disobedience, which mirrored much of the polarity in my thinking and brought further clarity to those and other aspects of civil disobedience.

There are two distinct actions that Travis took:

1. Crossing the rope and signing his Declaration of Interdependence on the desk of John Hancock.
2. Refusing to pay the fine and appear in court as a result of the his first actions, which violated various laws.

The answer to the most obvious question, “why?”, is in his Letter on the Nation’s Probation: “I aim to end your Uniform States and…vigorously replace it with a Twofold, and then Threefold Republic.”  It should also be noted that Travis was not arrested for the  views stated in his Letter of the Nation’s Probation but rather for the laws that he broke, although the manner in which he was arrested was likely influenced by his Letter.  “In democratic societies, civil disobedience as such is not a crime. If a disobedient is punished by the law, it is not for civil disobedience, but for the recognized offences she commits, such as blocking a road or disturbing the peace, or trespassing, or damaging property, etc.”¹

Here is how I would map Travis’ actions into the narrower and broader concepts of civil disobedience:

Crossing the Rope and Signing his Declaration on John Hancock’s Desk

Narrower Definition	Broader Definition	Summary
	Indirect	Travis’ action is clearly indirect.  He is breaking laws that have nothing to do with his convictions of injustice in the political, economic, and social spheres.
Open and Public	Covert	Travis’ actions were covert to begin with – he did not notify the authorities of his intention before hand, but could be considered open afterwards because he has written about his action and the reason for it.
Non-Violent		While I could argue that, if a million people were to do what Travis did the desk would definitely suffer damage from use, this seems a bit far-fetched, and coupled with the ambiguity of the definition of violence, it seems to me that Travis’ act is inherently non-violent.
	Continued Disobedience	Travis’ actions are clearly not in accordance with fidelity to the law – he did not communicate his intention before hand and he has also continued his disobedience by refusing to pay the fine after his action.

Refusing to Pay the Fine and Appear in Court

Narrower Definition	Broader Definition	Summary
Direct		Here we might consider Travis’ actions more direct, as he is at least protesting the laws of the government, the change of which is one of his aims.
Open and Public		Writing his letter is clearly an open (and since it was posted on the Internet, public as well) expression of communicating his intention.
Non-Violent		I would find it difficult to argue that writing a letter is anything but non-violent.
	Continued Disobedience	The reader may disagree, but this strikes me simply as continued disobedience – in the sense that Travis, in writing his letter, continues his disobedience.  Travis is not accepting the legal consequences of his actions, using them instead to further his protest.  At least, this is as much as I know of the situation as I am writing this.

Concluding Thoughts

If anything, Travis’ arrest has brought me to a deeper understanding of the complexity of civil disobedience.  His actions are literally all over the map when it comes to figuring out whether they fit into the narrower or broader conception of civil disobedience, and this can result in confusion.  My aim here has not been to judge Travis’ actions nor the response of the U.S. government.  Rather it is to understand where the confusion regarding civil disobedience comes from, both with regards to Travis’ actions and with the concepts of civil disobedience.  Hopefully I have provided the reader with some understanding of the complexities surrounding the definition of civil disobedience and provided some food for further discussion.

Additional Reading

Civil Disobedience, Peter Suber, Philosophy Department, Earlham College

Ohio State, Don Hubin

Footnotes

¹ – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the essay on Civil Disobedience.

² – Legal Implications of Civil Disobedience

³ – Civil Disobedience: a legal handbook for activists

⁴ – How Civil Disobedience Has Affected Our Legal System in the U.S.

⁵ – Waging Nonviolence: People-Powered News and Analysis

Social Finance

What follows is a paper that last year I commissioned Peter Buckbee to write, looking at social finance models from the perspective of Steiner’s threefold social model.  Additional editorial contributions were made by Hillary Corsun.  I’m finally getting around to posting his paper here.  Enjoy!

In its essence Social Finance, or Socially Responsible Investing, is about making investments that provide not just a financial benefit but also a social and environmental one. This is often referred to as looking out for the ‘Triple Bottom Line’ of People, Planet, and Profit. Investors can affect the Triple Bottom Line by choosing to invest in projects that are directly aligned with it, by choosing to screen out any investment from their portfolio that may be harming people or the planet, or by using their power as shareholders to advocate for social and environmental policies within a given corporation.

Generally people think of the Stock Market when they think of investing, but Socially Responsible Investing often operates outside of the Stock Market, relying on independent for-profit and nonprofit institutions to make investments, loans, and gifts that yield a Triple Bottom Line. This document investigates some of these institutions and the various financial vehicles they employ including:

1. Microfinance
2. Socially Responsible Loan Programs
3. Investment Clubs and Impact Investing Networks
4. Program-Related Investment
5. Social Impact Bonds
6. Community Development Investment
7. Grantmaking and Donor Advised Funds
8. Crowdfunding

The organizations that use these vehicles run the gamut from a loose network of investors and businesses to big banks with billions of dollars in assets.  Any one organization may use a combination of practices. For example, Alternatives Federal Credit Union (AFCU) is a Community Development Investment Institution based in Ithaca, NY, that offers Microloans and Program Related Investments among other usual banking services.  AFCU also receives Grants, Community Development Investment funds from the government, and Program Related Investments.

This document provides a brief definition of each of these eight Social Finance vehicles and then explores a number of examples – organized on a spectrum from diffuse networks, to platforms, to clubs, to partnerships, to single institutions – which include:

1. Local Investment Opportunities Network (LION)
2. Kickstarter
3. No Small Potatoes Investment Club
4. Kiva
5. Create Jobs for USA
6. Carrot Project
7. Social Finance US
8. La Mantanita Fund
9. Alternatives Federal Credit Union
10. RSF Social Finance

For each example, this document addresses:

1. Type of organization
2. Financial vehicle used
3. Type of funding offered and received
4. Minimum or maximum levels of investment
5. Who takes the risk and how risky is it
6. Whether or not collateral is required and, if so, who provides it
7. From which sphere(s) of society (economic, political/rights, or cultural) does funding originate and where does it go (for an explanation see Three Spheres of Society, P. Buckbee, at the end of this document)
8. How the money flows

Definitions

Microfinance

Microfinance is the practice of providing small loans, credit, and other financial services to people who otherwise lack access to such services due to low income level, limited credit history, or remote location, for instance. Services are generally offered to promote entrepreneurship and economic independence with the belief that, if given access to capital, poor people can raise themselves out of poverty. Organizations such as Kiva achieve this through securing many small loans from people all around the world, and working with field partners and volunteers in poor regions to match investors with borrowers.  Other microfinance organizations may focus more narrowly on a given sector or region. The Carrot Project, for instance, focuses on creating financing opportunities for small-scale, sustainable food production in the Northeast U.S.

Examples: Kiva, Alternatives Federal Credit Union, Create Jobs for USA, Carrot Project

 Socially Responsible Loan Programs

Loan programs can exist as an independent entity or as a part of a larger financial institution. Socially Responsible Loan programs differ from conventional ones in that they are mission-aligned and serve the Triple Bottom Line in some way. While microfinance tends to emphasize small loans to low-income communities, Socially Responsible Loan programs may offer more conventionally-sized loans to a broader contingency within the parameters of Social Finance.

Examples: Carrot Project; RSF Social Finance, No Small Potatoes Investment Club, La Mantanita Fund

 Investment Clubs and Impact Investing Networks

Investment Clubs and Impact Investing Networks are a very direct flavor of Social Finance. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) defines Investment Clubs as “a group of people who pool their money to make investments.” Investment clubs are not regulated and do not have to register as an Investment Corporation if ‘Interests’ (investments) in the club aren’t considered securities, or if they have an exemption such as “non-public offering” status. Interests aren’t considered securities as long as every member of the club plays an active role in decision-making.

Clubs such as the No Small Potatoes Investment Club in Maine focus on Loans to small businesses, while others may choose to make equity investments or partake in some other form of investment. Investment clubs typically file as partnerships or LLC’s. Impact Investing Networks may be as simple as an email list of potential investors and businesses and a quarterly meeting, like the Washington State-based Local Investment Opportunities Network (LION), or may be a more structured nonprofit which partners with other foundations, family offices, and investors.

 Examples: Local Opportunities Network (LION), No Small Potatoes Investment Club

 Program Related Investment (PRI)

Program Related Investment (PRI) is the practice of providing equity investments, loans, or loan guarantees at lower-than-market rates to mission-aligned projects with a charitable purpose. Given the expected return of principal, at minimum, and interest, in many cases, foundations may designate a portion of their assets or grant budget to PRI as a way to recycle capital to charitable projects. PRI allows foundations to provide such projects with larger amounts of capital than a typical grant size. The largest sectors funded by PRI include Education, Affordable Housing, Economic and Community Development, and the Environment (Source: Foundation Center, 2010, “Doing Good with Foundation Assets”).

Examples: RSF Social Finance

Community Development Investment (CDI)

Community Development Investment (CDI) is a catch-all term within Social Finance for practices that focus especially on the “People” aspect of the Triple Bottom Line. Like Microfinance, CDI targets low-income communities and addresses such issues as affordable housing, job creation, education, and small business development. Common vehicles for CDI include Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI), Community Development Credit Unions, Community Development Corporations, and Community Loan Funds. These are usually nonprofit organizations that offer financial services such as loans, bonds, and public and private equity, as well as education and consulting to the specific underserved communities they are embedded in. Funds are often matched by the Federal Government’s CDFI Fund.

Examples: Alternatives Federal Credit Union, Create Jobs for USA, Carrot Project

 Social Impact Bonds (SIB)

A Social Impact Bond (SIB) is a kind of contract between private investors, government, and nonprofits. Investors provide funding to nonprofits who in-turn provide preventative solutions to social problems like drug addiction and juvenile delinquency, which might otherwise escalate and place demands on federally-funded social programs and the justice system. If the agreed-upon outcome is achieved, as assessed by a third party, then the government reimburses investors with interest or performance bonuses. If the outcomes are not achieved, the investment becomes a donation to the nonprofit and the investors receive no financial return.

In other words, when an SIB successfully meets its goal, government sees improved social outcomes at a reduced public expense, investors see a social and financial return, nonprofits obtain a revenue stream, citizens see safer, healthier communities, and the individuals served by the nonprofits receive help getting their lives on track.

Examples: Social Finance US

Grantmaking and Donor Advised Funds

Many Social Finance organizations include Grantmaking (the offering of grants) in their repertoire. Grants are most often made to mission-aligned nonprofit organizations but may also be made to socially responsible businesses, educational institutions, or individuals. While Grantmaking does not see the direct financial returns that loan and equity investments do, Grantmaking does provide tax-deductions and sought-for social or environmental outcomes. Grantmaking can also help an institution or program become profitable in the long run. Grants have to be applied for and recipients usually must write a report upon completion of the funded project demonstrating they met the intended outcomes.

Donor Advised Funds are an intermediary between direct philanthropic gifts or pledges and formal Grantmaking. Donors (families, individuals, or organizations) place funds into an institution with a Donor Advised Fund program and advise that institution as to how they want their money used. Organizations or individuals can then apply to the Donor Advised Fund to receive grants or donations. The Institution does the administrative work and provides the opportunity for a tax deduction. In turn, the institution has access to capital that can be invested for a return. While Donor Advised Funds allow donors to make recommendations as to what they want their money to be used for, institutions overseeing the funds have full control of the capital once donated and are not obligated to follow the recommendation.

Examples: RSF Social Finance

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is another way to make donations. As the name implies, it relies on many small donations from friends and supporters to help fund things like artistic projects, citizen journalism or disaster relief. Web platforms like Kickstarter and online social networking sites like Facebook are instrumental in this type of funding.

Examples: Kickstarter

Examples

Local Investment Opportunities Network (LION)

Narrative: The Local Investment Opportunities Network (LION) started in Port Townsend, Washington. There is no legal entity; it is simply a network of individual investors interested in investing in locally operated and locally owned businesses looking for funding. There is, however, an application process to become a member in which the applicant outlines his/her profile and the opportunities he/she is looking for and completes a confidentiality agreement. Members have access to an email list of interested parties as well as community social events and quarterly meetings.  LION provides some standard investment agreement templates but does not offer legal or financial advice. Investors and borrowers can choose to involve their own lawyers or financial advisors. Interest rates and other terms of investment are set for each investment opportunity between parties involved. It is standard for borrowers to provide investors with a business plan.

Type of Organization: Informal Network

Financial Vehicle(s): Impact Investment Network

Type of Funding Offered: Debt, Equity

Type of Funding Received: Debt, Equity

Minimum Investment: $10,000

Maximum Investment: None

Risk: Per investment, investors take the risk

Collateral: Per investment

Sphere of Origin of Funds: Economic

Sphere of Destination of Funds: Economic

Money Flow: Investors make loans or purchase equity shares in local businesses and get aid back on the terms they set with the borrower.

Kickstarter

Narrative: Kickstarter is a New York City-based online fundraising platform to support creative projects in the fields of film, music, journalism, technology, food, etc. Projects funded through Kickstarter rely on Crowdfunding, which takes the form of small donations from friends and supporters. Donors receive a ‘reward’ in return for their donation, which generally comes out of the project itself. For instance, a reward could be a copy of the music cd or comic book created, or a ticket to a dance performance.

Projects have to have clearly defined goals and expectations and a creative purpose. Charities cannot apply. Individuals and organizations can post their project on the Kickstarter website to solicit donations. The amount of money needed to complete the project and the timeframe for completion must be specified. If the project doesn’t achieve its fundraising goal it doesn’t receive any funding.  There is no fee for posting a project. Kickstarter only charges a fee if the project successfully reaches its fundraising goals.

Type of Organization: For-profit corporation                

Financial Vehicle(s): Crowdfunding

Type of Funding Offered: Donations, ‘Rewards’

Type of Funding Received: Fees

Minimum Investment: None

Maximum Investment: None

Risk: Donors take on the risk

Collateral: None

Sphere of Origin of Funds: Economic

Sphere of Destination of Funds: Cultural

Money Flow: Individuals make donations online towards creative projects. If the project successfully raises the amount of money specified within the timeframe specified by the project creator, the donor’s credit card will be deducted, Kickstarter will charged a 5% fee, and Amazon will charge an additional 3-5% credit card processing fee.

No Small Potatoes Investment Club

Narrative: No Small Potatoes Investment Club incorporated in Maine in the spring of 2011. The club makes low-interest loans to Maine-based food businesses and farms. There are two basic requirements to join the club: A minimum initial investment of $5000 and active participation in investment decisions upon joining. One does not have to be a certified investor to join the club. Active participation from all members makes it so the club does not have to register its investments with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Type of Organization: LLC

Financial Vehicle(s): Investment Club, Loan Program

Type of Funding Offered: Debt

Type of Funding Received: Equity

Minimum Investment: $5,000

Maximum Investment: None

Risk: LLC takes the risk. Risk level depends on given

investment opportunity

Collateral: Unknown

Sphere of Origin of Funds: Economic

Sphere of Destination of Funds: Economic

Money Flow: Investors buy into the club. The pooled investments are used to make low-interest loans to Maine-based food businesses and farmers. Farmers pay back loans with interest.

Kiva

Narrative: Kiva is a non-profit organization out of San Francisco, California. Kiva’s goal is to help alleviate poverty. On its website, the organization highlights lending opportunities to underserved individuals all around the world. The average loan size for the recipient is about $400. Loans are given for agriculture, housing, and small business development. Loans are sometimes pooled to make them more substantial and also distributed as a ‘pool’ to be divided amongst a group of people. There is no return for the lender. Loan recipients are charged interest to cover the costs of the loan. 100% percent of the lender’s money goes to the borrower. Kiva partners with independent, pre-existing microfinance institutions called ‘field partners’ which are firmly established in the borrower’s community. Field partners help to match lenders with a best-fit loan opportunity. Kiva is funded by grants, donations and corporate sponsorship.

Type of Organization: Nonprofit online platform

Financial Vehicle(s): Microfinance

Type of Funding Offered: Debt

Type of Funding Received: Grants, donations, corporate sponsorship

Minimum Investment: $25

Maximum Investment: None

Risk: Risk levels vary depending on recipient. Kiva rates risk for each loan opportunity. While microloans are often considered risky, Kiva has a 98% pay back history. Lenders take on the risk. Field partners pursue collections procedures in case of loan default

Collateral: Unknown

Sphere of Origin of Funds: Economic, Political/Rights

Sphere of Destination of Funds: Economic,

Political/Rights

Money Flow: Lenders make a no-interest loan to Kiva from anywhere in the world; kiva gives a no-interest loan to a field partner in the community of the specified borrower; field partners provide a loan with interest (to cover their costs) to an individual borrower or group of borrowers; borrowers repay field partners; field partners repay kiva; kiva repays lenders. Kiva covers its own costs from public and private grants, donations and corporate sponsorship.

Create Jobs for USA

Narrative: Create Jobs for USA is a brand new program initiated by Starbucks’ Chief Executive, Howard Shultz. Create Jobs for USA is a partnership between Starbucks and Opportunity Finance Network (OFN). Starbucks will pay for marketing and operating costs of the program, as well as make a $5 million donation for seed funding.  Once the program is up and running, it will depend on small donations from Starbucks customers and individual online donations. Donations become equity for Community Development Financial Institutions, which can leverage the equity 7:1 and make loans to underserved communities in the U.S..  Donors receive a patriotic bracelet in exchange.

Type of Organization: Corporate and CDFI Partnership

Financial Vehicle(s): Community Development, Investment, Microfinance

Type of Funding Offered: Debt, Equity

Type of Funding Received: Grants, Donations, CDFI funds

Minimum Investment: $5

Maximum Investment: None

Risk: Donors, CDFI’s

Collateral: Businesses provide collateral on the terms of the particular CDFI they are working with

Sphere of Origin of Funds: Economic, Political/Rights

Sphere of Destination of Funds: Economic, Political/Rights

Money Flow: Individuals make a donation either at Starbucks or online. The donation goes to a fund at Opportunity Finance Network (OFN), which is a network of CDFI’s. Donations become equity for CDFI’s, which can be leveraged 7:1. Government matches investments from CDFI Fund.  CDFI’s make loans to underserved communities for small business development, job creation, housing, or banking services. Borrowers pay back the CDFI.

Carrot Project

Narrative: The Carrot Project, based in Somerville, Massachusetts, partners with other nonprofits and Community Development Financial Institutions to create regional financing programs as well as business and technical support for small and mid-sized farmers and food-related businesses, to collaborate on innovative agricultural research, and to provide investment opportunities in sustainable agriculture. They offer four loan programs in Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont geared towards providing farmers and food-related businesses with start-up capital, working capital or funding for capital improvements. Loans vary in size from $3,000 to $75,000, typically have a 7% interest rate, and 1 to 7 year terms.

Type of Organization: Nonprofit

Financial Vehicle(s): Microfinance, Loan Program

Type of Funding Offered: Debt

Type of Funding Received: Donations, CDFI funds, Debt

Minimum Investment: $3,000

Maximum Investment: $75,000

Risk: Investors, Carrot Project, partner organizations assume the risk

Collateral: In some cases, the Carrot Project will collateralize loans from Partner Organizations; farmers and food businesses provide collateral on capital loans to partner organizations

Sphere of Origin of Funds: Economic, Political/Rights

Sphere of Destination of Funds: Economic

Money Flow: Carrot Project receives donations and investments; then provides capital or

collateral to a partner organization. Partner organizations may match Carrot Project investments with CDFI or private funds, or leverage them to make loans. to farmers and food businesses, who, in-turn, pay back the partner organization, who then pays back the Carrot Project.

Social Finance US

Narrative: Nonprofit organizations like Social Finance US, based in Boston, MA, are ‘blazing the trail’ in the U.S. for Social Impact Bonds (more common in England), and consequently have taken on a comprehensive strategy to advocate for SIB’s. SIB’s must first be legislated by the state or federal government so Social Finance US lobbies government. They also find investors to provide initial capital, identify and council nonprofits that can provide the social service, structure terms of the SIB, provide management and oversight of the SIB for the nonprofit, and hire third-parties to assess outcomes.

Type of Organization: Nonprofit

Financial Vehicle(s): Social Impact Bonds

Type of Funding Offered: Debt, Grants

Type of Funding Received: Debt, Equity, Grants

Minimum Investment: Unknown

Maximum Investment: Unknown

Risk: Investors assume the risk

Collateral: None

Sphere of Origin of Funds: Economic, Political/Rights

Sphere of Destination of Funds: Political/Rights

Money Flow: Investors place funds in a Social Impact Bond, administered by Social Finance US.  Funding goes to a nonprofit that, in-turn provides a preventative social service. If the nonprofit successfully achieves expected outcomes, the Government compensates investors with interest or performance bonuses.

La Mantanita Fund

Narrative:  La Mantanita Fund (LaM FUND) is a program of La Mantanita Co-op, a food co-op based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The fund was created to provide “pre-payment” for product loans to farmers and food producers who sell their products at the co-op. In the last year the Fund expanded by selling “interests” (shares). Interests were set at $250 each. 400 units were issued in total – 100 A-Interests and 300 B-Interests. The Co-op bought all 100 A-interests in order to cover any outstanding balances in the event of loan default. This way the coop also showed their support for the program and lessened the risk for other investors. B-interests were made available on a “first come first serve” basis to co-op members living in the state of New Mexico. In order to keep the grassroots nature of the Fund, a peak on investment was set at $10,000 per individual. Any Income generated by the Fund is divided in proportion to number of shares. Payment on investments is approved by a vote of the Co-op Board of Directors, in a similar manner as annual membership patronage refunds get approved. Interests have a one year term.

Type of Organization: Program of La Mantanita Co-op, a Consumer Cooperative

Financial Vehicle(s):  Loan Program

Type of Funding Offered: Debt

Type of Funding Received: Equity

Minimum investment: $250

Maximum investment: $10,000

Risk: High.  Investors take risk

Collateral:  Equity investments (“interests”) are used as collateral for loans

Sphere of Origin of Funds: Economic

Sphere of Destination of Funds: Economic

 Money Flows: Co-op members buy interests.  Funds are placed in a money market account at the New Mexico Educators Federal Credit Union and held as collateral for loans.  Loans are decided upon by the La Mantanita Fund loan advisory committee, and administered by the credit union.  Loan recipients pay back the credit union with interest

Alternatives Federal Credit Union

Narrative: Alternatives Federal Credit Union, out of Ithaca, New York, is a Community Development Credit Union (CDCU). CDCU’s are set up to serve low-income and minority communities with imperfect, limited, or no credit background. Like conventional Credit Unions, they are nonprofit, tax-exempt, government regulated and insured, and cooperatively-owned and governed. CDCU’s provide loans, savings, affordable banking, and products and services to help members free themselves from high-cost, predatory debt. They also offer financial education and counseling to their members and community.

Community Development Credit Unions are a particular kind of Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI). CDFI’s serve a variety of needs, including job creation, business and commercial real estate development, affordable housing, and basic financial services to underserved communities. An organization meeting such a need can apply for CDFI certification from the U.S. Department of Treasury’s CDFI Fund. The fund provides CDFI’s with monetary awards (at least a 1:1 match on private investments) and tax credits. As a private-sector organization, each CDFI takes a unique approach to the issues. Alternatives has a number of innovative financial and educational services. For example, they have a Community Partnership Lending program for clients of partner nonprofits where the nonprofits raise funds and deposit them at Alternatives, then Alternatives will lend double that amount to the clients of that nonprofit.

Type of Organization: Community Development Credit Union (CDCU)

Financial Vehicle(s): Community Development Investment, Microfinance

Type of Funding Offered: Microloans, subsidized loans, loan guarantees, equity investments, savings, line of credit, bonds

Type of Funding Received: Deposits, grants, donations, loans, CDFI funds

Minimum Investment: Minimum one-time $20 membership fee plus $5 deposit.

Maximum Investment: $50,000 (business loan)

Risk: Depositors risk is low as Alternatives is NCUA insured.  The Credit Union’s risk varies depending on the financial product they are offering. Microloans are generally considered high-risk to the investor, though in reality high payback rates are common. Government Bonds are low risk.

Collateral: Alternatives offers several different kinds of loans and loan guarantees, each with unique collateral demands.  In all cases the borrower is responsible for providing collateral.

Sphere of Origin of Funds: Economic, Political/Rights

Sphere of Destination of Funds: Economic, Political/Rights and Cultural

Money Flow: Funds come from member equity and deposits, non-member deposits, private and government grants and investments, and government bonds and subsidies. Funds go directly to small business development, mortgage and personal loans, and educational efforts.

Rudolf Steiner Foundation (RSF) Social Finance

Narrative: RSF Social Finance (RSF) is a pioneer Social Finance organization dedicated to transforming the way the world works with money. Their target areas are sustainable agriculture, education and the arts, and the environment. RSF offers a range of financial products and services, from $500 seed fund donations to 5 million dollar loans and capital lines of credit. The organization stands out among Social Finance organizations for their integration of Investing, lending, and giving within a single nonprofit. RSF Social Finance also hosts and sponsors educational events and initiates various forms of dialogue around money and transparency.

Type of Organization: Nonprofit

Financial Vehicle(s): PRI, Loan Program, Grantmaking, Donor Advised Funds

Type of Funding Offered: Debt, Donations

Type of Funding Received: Debt, mezzanine capital (warrants, notes royalty streams), donations

Minimum Investment: Minimum donation for Donor Advised Fund is $5,000. Minimum gift awarded by RSF Seed Fund is $500. Loans offered by RSF range from $200,000 to $5 million.

Maximum Investment: None

Risk: Investors take on risk. Loan repayment history is 100% so risk is low.

Collateral: Provided by borrowers

Sphere of Origin of Funds: Economic

Sphere of Destination of Funds: Economic, Political/Rights, and Cultural

Money Flow: There are various and complex money flow circuits around RSF. Basically though, investors place financial resources with RSF and RSF administers them, providing loans, gifts and other forms of investment to for-profit and nonprofit enterprises.

Three Spheres of Society: Economic, Political/Rights, and Cultural

This threefold articulation of society has its origins with the Austrian-born philosopher and educator Rudolf Steiner (b. 1861 – d. 1925), but is increasingly referenced in contemporary innovative social thought. For instance, David Korten, Founder of YES! Magazine, recently wrote about rebuilding the economy by starting new economic initiatives, redefining our cultural narratives, and changing the rules (or laws) around how we do economics (Source: D. Korten, YES Magazine Blog, 2011).

According to Steiner’s original articulation, the Economic Sphere has everything to do with how we meet one another’s needs in society – through the cycle of production, distribution and consumption. The Political/Rights Sphere has everything to do with how we live together in a peaceful and equitable way within society – through the laws, agreements and political structures we create. And the Cultural Sphere has everything to do with how we nurture and develop human capacities – both mental and physical – as individuals and within society (Source: R. Steiner, The Social Future, 1919).

So, education, science, art, and religion are all examples of cultural phenomena because they develop and nurture human capacities. Governance – as far as it involves the making of laws that protect human rights, democracy, and civility are examples of political/rights phenomena because they all have to do with making society more peaceful and equitable. And finance, manufacturing, trade, and consumption are all economic phenomena because they have to do with meeting human needs.

This document references the three spheres (Economic, Political/Rights, Cultural) in relationship to which sphere of society funds originate in and which sphere they are destined for through the flow of Social Finance Capital. Funds, or Capital, or Money, are always circulating between the spheres, making it difficult to say exactly where funds originated. For instance, the government may offer funding to a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) or a Social Impact Bond (SIB) but that money first came from taxpayers who earned their money within the Economic Sphere working at their job. This document provides a snapshot of an isolated phenomenon.

The true origin and ongoing circulation of money is more complex and involves all three spheres: It has to become ‘Fiat’ (made into legal tender) within our political system; it must have a corresponding value which is created, in part, through human intelligence and capacities of refining labor (developed within the Cultural Sphere) refining labor and, in part, through labor working on ‘land’ or on a ‘nature product’ to create a commodity within the Economic Sphere.

For this snapshot view of Social Finance examples, any funds that were not allocated by the government are considered to have their origin in the Economic Sphere. Bank deposits, private investments, and personal donations all come from the economic sphere because they were earned at some point, directly or indirectly through production, distribution (or trade), and consumption.

Only two of the Social Finance practices mentioned in this document rely on government funding: Social Impact Bonds and Community Development Investment.

Funds going to support education, art, science, research, social work, and assessment are considered to be destined for the Cultural Sphere. This is the case with Kickstarter, RSF Social Finance, Alternatives Federal Credit Union, and Social Finance US. Assessment, as in the example of Social Finance US, is included in the Cultural Sphere because it relies on the capacity of judgment and concerns itself with human development – i.e. whether or not the clients of the nonprofit in question have progressed inwardly and outwardly through the service provided.

Social work, or charity, is hard to place. On the one hand it belongs in the Political/Rights Sphere because it raises human beings up to a more equitable and dignified place in society and helps them secure their rights. On the other hand it belongs in the Cultural Sphere because it relies on the ‘healing arts’ of the care providers, which help to nurture and educate their clients. In recognition of this dichotomy, the administration of the service has been placed in the Cultural Sphere and the receiving of the service in the Political/Rights Sphere.

Funds going directly to government through Treasury Bonds or taxes, for example, as well as funds going to support the clients of nonprofit charities are considered destined for the Political/Rights Sphere. This is the case with Alternatives Credit Union, LION, No Small Potatoes Investment Club, and Kickstarter.

The Threefold Nature of Social Issues

It is not always so straightforward. Social issues are complex; and in our current social system the three spheres are often entangled in unhealthy ways. Take homelessness, for example. Is this a political/rights issue, a cultural issue, or an economic issue? In some ways, it involves all three spheres. It is an economic issue in that it has to do with whether or not a person can afford a place to live; it is a political/rights issue in that it has to do with how we organize our society in a more or less equitable way; and it is a cultural issue in that it has to do with the person’s biography, the social or cultural environment he/she comes from, and whether or not we, as members of society, through our self development, feel inclined to care for our fellow human beings.

Most big issues have roots in all three spheres, but one can usually tell where the primary root is. Issues like homelessness, poverty, and joblessness, for instance, appear to have their primary root in political/rights life. The main function of this sphere is to maintain fairness and equity. That there are some people in society that cannot get a job, do not have enough money to live, or lack a home appeals to our sense of fairness and human dignity. In a healthy society, these issues are addressed in the political system and made the concern of each and every citizen. Once they are recognized in the political/rights life, then it becomes the responsibility of economic and cultural life to align itself accordingly and administer the appropriate services.

Today, however, the mandate does not always come from government. Virtually all of the institutions cited in this document take on a social mission of their own accord and only a few receive government funds for their work. Among these examples, certain institutions focus on issues of equity (equality) more directly. Kiva, Alternatives Credit Union, Social Finance US, Create Jobs for USA, and RSF Social Finance all designate funds to charitable causes such as alleviating poverty and providing housing and jobs to underserved communities. Their means are economic (loans, grants, etc) but the ‘ends’ or outcome they affect is rights-oriented – i.e. an improved, more fair and equitable standard of living,

The Ninefold Social Organism

Looking deeper into social life, it becomes apparent that there is a threefoldness within each of the three spheres of society. There is a culture to economics and politics, economics to culture and politics, and politics, governance, legal, or rights concerns in economics and cultural life. Colloquially, we speak of ‘consumer culture’ or ‘business culture’ when referring to certain behavior and practices within the economy. The culture of a car manufacturing company might be blue collar, rough around the edges, and direct, while the culture of an IT company might be progressive, entrepreneurial, and quick to shift. And in politics, the way campaigns are run, how candidates present themselves, and how rhetoric is used in debate is all reflective of a certain political culture.

Looking at economics in politics and culture, one could note how schools, churches, political campaigns and government programs are financed. And finally, looking at politics, governance, legal, or rights concerns in economics and culture one notes how institutions are governed, how consumer and employee rights are acknowledged, and what laws are upheld in different cultures. This just begins to give a sketch of how the three spheres intersect with one another and co-exist within a single sphere.

Together the three spheres make a whole. In any society, organization, or group founded by human individuals, regardless of whether the primary function is cultural, economic, or political, all three spheres find expression. The expression will, of course, look different in quality and magnitude depending on the main purpose of that group or organization. The examples cited in this document embody how an organization can work through primarily economic means to affect not only the economy but also culture and political/rights life. By choosing to include ‘people’ and the ‘planet’ in addition to financial profit in their value sets, such companies change the culture of the Economic Sphere – the way we think about doing business; and, they change the standard of living and the health of the planet, thus affecting the Political/Rights Sphere.  In the drawings, this accounts for placement of organizations on the overlapping lines between spheres.

Each of the three spheres finds its truest expression, however, when it is on its own, autonomous from the others; however, that is not to say that the three should not come together in organizations or groups. There is both healthy and unhealthy overlap. An economic organization without culture or rights obligations would be soulless and inhumane. When business interests control politics and education it is democracy and human development that suffer.  Yet, knowledge and skill developed through education in the cultural sphere can only find useful application in the spheres of economy and politics.

In a healthy society, each of the three spheres come to expression autonomously and in relationship to the others, and each sphere finds ample and balanced expression within the whole of society.

About the Author

Peter Buckbee lives in Philmont, NY, with his wife Kristin and eight-month-old daughter Isabel. He is a co-founder of Think OutWord, a peer-led educational platform focused on the study and implementation of new cultural, political and economic ideas based on the social philosophy of Rudolf Steiner. He has taught economics at the Hawthorne Valley Waldorf High School and has been involved in various entrepreneurial undertakings. Having undertaken this research project, he is now very interested in finding ways to get community capital to community initiatives.

About the Contributors

Hilary Corsun, Director of Marketing and Communication at Hawthorne Valley Association in central Columbia County, NY, enjoys brainstorming new business ventures and envisioning a generative and just new economy. She graduated from Cornell University in 2006 with a dual-major in Applied Economics & Management and Animal Science. She has served as Purchasing Manager in her family’s manufacturing business, worked at a microfinance fund in Senegal, and operated her own small enterprise for ten years beginning at age thirteen.

Marc Clifton by trade is a software developer/contractor and has an interest in social transformation, microfunding research projects on finance, education, and fundraising. He also has been known to occasionally run an unintentional community and a for-loss bed & breakfast. He occasionally blogs on https://marcclifton.wordpress.com/

Occupy Patent Office – Apple Patents that fail

We really need to start an action group (Occupy Patent Office???) to stop idiotic patents. I’ve been reading the patent that Apple sued HTC over, and came across this one as well, and I must say, these are so blatantly obvious ideas, they cannot possibly be patentable in my mind. A patent should be an “invention”. Algorithms like these are not inventions, they are simple parsers that anyone with a modicum of intelligence will think of.  You can tell they are trying to turn it into an invention with terminology and processes like this:

The system provides an analyzer server, an application program interface, a user interface and an action processor.

So, how did HTC get sued over this implementation? You don’t need an analyzer “server”, or an “API”, or an “action processor” to do this stuff. WTF? Yes, those are nice abstractions, but that’s all they are, not some “invention”.

From dictionary.com, “invention”:

U.S. Patent Law . a new, useful process, machine, improvement, etc., that did not exist previously and that is recognized as the product of some unique intuition or genius, as distinguished from ordinary mechanical skill or craftsmanship.

Apple. You FAIL. Patent Office. You FAIL.  These patents are not a display of some unique intuition or genius.  They are very ordinary, obvious, solutions to improving the user experience.

This is why I don’t by Apple stuff. I refuse to feed the monster.  Of course, that just means I’m feeding a different monster.

Social Finance

There’s an article today on MarketWatch “Can social investing replace government?” by Thomas Kostigen (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/can-social-investing-replace-government-2011-09-30?dist=beforebell)

There are a few buzzword sentences that caught my eye:

“It puts social responsibility on the shoulders of the local community…”

“Kindling idle money toward activism is a fine idea and should be embraced here, too.”

“In May, Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to formally explore implementing social impact bonds to funds housing, elderly care, and juvenile detention programs, among other social initiatives. Social Finance’s $100 million announcement would roll out investment programs throughout the country.”

And also piqued my curiosity regarding this:

“Here’s how it works: social impact bonds raise private capital to fund nonprofit prevention programs aimed at achieving improved social outcomes that generate government savings. If an independent evaluator determines that the pre-defined outcomes have been achieved, the government repays investors their principal and a rate of return that account for a share of the savings. If the pre-defined outcomes have not been met, the government owes nothing.”

Wanting to learn more, I googled “social finance”, coming up with:

http://www.socialfinanceus.org/

and interestingly enough, also a link to the Rudolf Steiner Foundation social finance website: http://rsfsocialfinance.org/

It strikes me that here is an opportunity to compare/contrast the two models.  From the About page of Social Finance US (quoted in full):

“Social Finance is a Boston-based nonprofit dedicated to mobilizing capital to drive social change. We exist to address a specific set of problems: social service agencies throughout the U.S. are overburdened and underfunded, and effective nonprofit organizations struggle to raise the funds needed to deliver on their mission. Governments and philanthropists, as providers of social program funding, strive to document accountability and results, but aren’t always successful. We work to solve these problems by structuring and managing innovative investment instruments that address the needs of governments, nonprofit service organizations, and socially motivated investors and philanthropists. The Social Impact Bond (SIB), pioneered by our UK-based sister firm, Social Finance, Ltd., is at the heart of our work. We seek to assist three main groups:

• We help effective nonprofit organizations receive sustainable, multi-year funding, so they can focus on what they do best: providing services to citizens.
• We work with government agencies to help them sponsor innovative and preventative programs without the fear that taxpayer dollars will be wasted on ineffective programs. And by focusing on preventative programs, we help governments mitigate spending on crisis intervention over the long term.
• We raise funds from investors and foundations seeking both social and financial returns. If the funded programs achieve a measureable impact, our government partners repay the investors who provided up-front capital and assumed the investment risk. If measured outcomes do not improve, the government pays nothing and the investors’ capital effectively becomes a donation.

For philanthropists and mission-driven investors, SIBs are a financial innovation that allows them to potentially recycle the capital they deploy against their mission. But SIBs also have the potential to attract institutional investors to impact investing, and dramatically grow the available funding for social programs. This will benefit all of our partners as well as our ultimate beneficiary: society and citizens.”

I can see a sort of threefolding model, which if you’re unfamiliar with the concept, this diagram from Sebastian Parson’s blog entry I found to be an excellent summary:

Sebastian Parson's Three-Fold Diagram

For the sake of argument, I’m going to sort out the three entities of Social Finance in this way:

• Nonprofit organizations go into the Cultural Realm.  This is debatable but it makes a certain sense to me that, in the cultural realm, groups of individuals can form loose organizations whose intent is to participate together in a “cultural” activity.  A nonprofit organization is a necessary cultural entity (in my opinion) as an interface to the economic (for-profit businesses) and rights (government) realms.
• Government agencies are of put into the rights realm, again this isn’t ideal.  However, in this Social Finance model, the government is participating in the economic realm via taxpayer money and also has its fingers in the cultural realm in deciding what programs to sponsor.
• I put “investors and foundations” into the economic realm.  Again, this is debatable, but my reasoning is that investors and foundations participate mostly in the economic realm and are separated usually from the direct, local, community needs.

The following diagram illustrates my understanding of the Social Finance model:

Social Financing US

Now, mind you, this is not intended to be representative of a threefold social model, but rather of “forcing” certain entities into the model, based on “how things are” with our current system, mainly that government is directly involved in the creation, funding, and management of social programs.  We still have the complexity that the return on investment (ROI) comes from the government via taxes collected on citizens and businesses.  We have this complexity because the Social Financing model is attempting to work within the existing framework of sponsoring and funding programs through taxpayer dollars.  The motivations are as follows:

• Both businesses and people want to ensure that their taxes is well spent;
• Foundations and investors are interested on a return on their investments, which usually prevents completely altruistic funding as these are usually not investments that have an ROI that can be measured monetarily–hence the phrase “seeking both social and financial returns”;
• To attract investors, a “bond” is set up in which taxpayer money is returned, with ROI, to the investor;
• A third party determines the success of the program, and if deemed to have failed, the taxpayer’s money is not “wasted” and the investor’s money is considered a donation (presumably a tax write-off.)
• The investor, not the taxpayer, assumes the risk.

There is an underlying premise that the direct “program-investor” relationship is not possible, which I have two ideas of why this may be:

First, the investor of, say, a social project will not see an ROI on their investment because the result probably doesn’t have a monetary value that can be linked to the initial investment in some clearly defined way.  For example, funding trainers in Non-Violent Communication to provide workshops might be considered a worthwhile social project but has no measurable monetary return.

Second, large scale projects (let’s say a “village” providing training, child care, health care, small business opportunities, etc.) is not something a low income area can fund directly nor can it return the investment, with interest, on such a project—how would you go about “taxing” the “income” generated, and over what time frame?

Government in this case, and in its present form, provides a valuable service of collecting taxes from a far wider pool of people which can then be distributed to specific areas of need.

The RSF Social Financing Model

This model works with individuals all the way up to foundations and corporations to provide investment services and gifting opportunities, the funds for which are then lent to non-profit and for-profit organizations that meet specific criteria.  Investments are intended to return rates similar to CD’s or money market accounts and gifting is tax deductable via laws governing contributions to non-profit organizations.  One of the unique things about the gifting model is that you can control the dispensation of your own giving to other non-profits via the RSFSF.  The resulting model (assuming I have conveyed this accurately!) is significantly different, notably the activity that occurs in the cultural realm:

Noteworthy are:

• Investment and gifts can come from both private and public sectors, individuals all the way up to corporations
• Both investments and gifting models are supported
• Government is involved solely for the laws determining and regulating of non-profit status and tax deductible contributions
• Funding of initiatives supported by the RSF are through loans (I’m not clear as to whether the RSFSF does gifting itself)

This model (and for this reason I placed the RSFSF outside of the cultural realm) is also intended to be an intermediary between the economic and cultural realms.  Unlike the SFUS described earlier, there is no government involvement in the flow of funds.  Similar to the SFUS, the RSFSF has the ability to pool funds, enabling it to fund large scale projects.  Unlike the SFUS, this pool does not come from taxpayer money (which has more of an anonymous quality to it) but rather the investments of citizens, communities, trusts, foundations, businesses, etc.  Like the SFUS, I see the RSFSF attempting to work within the confines of the existing economic architecture.

Conclusions

There aren’t any particular conclusions to draw here in this cursory overview of these two models.  Both are attempts to meet the needs of both investors and social renewal projects, and within the framework of the current economic system, personally I think both models express some creative thinking, which we need more of, if I were to make any conclusion at all.

From the perspective of Steiner’s Threefold Social Renewal, the RSF model is closer to that vision, but in my mind, that doesn’t, in itself, make it a superior model–though that would be my personal bias.

I am curious though, what do readers think?