Rudolf Steiner Library Newsletter: Reviews It was from this insight that he suggested the importance of an associative economics that would bring consumers, traders, and producers together in associations in order to arrive at an approximation of true price. 4. The author makes five basic recommendations for renewing and transforming the international financial system. The first is to recognize that the world economy is global and will require an international reserve currency, such as John Maynard Keynes suggested with the creation of the “bancor.” Such a suggestion rests on the understanding that money is an agreement among people about a medium of exchange, and is based on the economic activity of a society made visible through loan and purchase transactions. Secondly, the international economic and financial system will need to be self-administered by associations of consumers, traders, and producers. Thirdly, as one would expect given the author’s previous work, he advocates that the financial system needs to rely much more on accounting, and in particular, double-entry book-keeping, to connect individuals to economic life (micro-economics) and to the broader field of macro-economics. Greater reliance on accounting would create a self-balancing economics, as those who required liquidity would need to be balanced by those offering liquidity, so that all accounts would sum to zero. The fourth recommendation, articulated rather poetically, is a plea to recognize the existence of a “choir of cultures” (free cultural life); a group of states (rights life); and a global world economy, each of which needs to be independently administered according to its own inherent principles. The last proposal, previously mentioned—and to my mind, critical—is to recognize the need to spend the economic system’s inevitable excess liquidity through gifting to youth and to educational and cultural life. Finance at the Threshold is an intriguing and stimulating book. Its limitation, besides its high price, is the author’s understandable use of academic language and mode of presentation. I do wish that a simpler, shorter, and cheaper version of this book would be published in paperback, because as a trained economist and social scientist also interested in bringing Steiner’s social and economic ideas to a broader audience, I find Christopher Budd’s examples and conceptual discourse compelling. Many chapters deserve special study: for example, chapter 2, “When the Banks Stopped Lending to One Another,” features many interesting quotes from both liberal and conservative economists; and chapter 4, “It’s the Epistemology, Stupid,” raises basic questions about our current 14 •
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understanding of economics. For a new edition, I would suggest a deeper look at how the present financial and economic system has created distortions and suffering in the United States and Great Britain, since in these countries economic and financial elites have determined political discourse and government decision-making for the last three decades with devastating consequences for their own citizens and for the world. I would also recommend that readers look at Martin Large’s book, Common Wealth: For a Free, Equal, Mutual and Sustainable Society (Hawthorn Press, available from the Rudolf Steiner Library), for a complementary presentation on the ways in which threefold perspectives are alive in many efforts at social reform. I can also suggest Gary Lamb’s recent study, Associative Economics: Spiritual Activity for the Common Good, (AWSNA, available from the Rudolf Steiner Library) for its comprehensive presentation of Steiner’s ideas on economics. At a time when the limitations of both socialism and capitalism have been made abundantly clear, all three books should be read and worked with as a way of enlivening a new imagination of society appropriate to our time and our consciousness.
Easter: Rudolf Steiner’s Watercolor Painting By Angela Lord. SteinerBooks, 2011, 79 pgs. Review by David Taulbee Anderson Rudolf Steiner’s painting, Easter, is taken as the subject of meditation for this book. The author, who has worked with the Easter motif as a painter for many years, approaches the picture out of her experience with color and her research into anthroposophical and other sources on the esoteric significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. A history of the crucifixion as a theme in art leads us into our contemplation. Other references are the apocryphal gospels that illuminate the picture’s theme, which is the descent of Christ into hell on the Saturday after the crucifixion. The author explores what took place in the realm of the dead from many angles, and also discusses how the twenty-third psalm is related to the picture, using it as a means of understanding its depths. Other references are Rudolf Steiner’s Soul Calendar, and an account of the ancient Adonis festival. Part 2 leads us into the most significant means of understanding the picture, color itself. The author dem-