Libertarians apparently believe
that money itself, i.e. the currency or legal tender provided
and controlled by the state, will bring forth a perfectly free
society like a magician pulling a rabbit from his hat if only
taxes and fees be reduced do an absolute minimum.
When I argue that the libertarians
are wrong, fatally wrong, it's because I find their level of
reasoning terribly superficial - even more superficial than Karl
Marx. Marx made an accurate analysis of social conditions that
arose from the industrial revolution, but he made a big mistake
by projecting those social conditions far into antiquity, claiming
that human society has always been economically oriented and
involved in a perennial "class struggle" based upon
economic inequality and injustice.
Libertarians are making a
similar mistake, which means we're headed for trouble. Big trouble.
Because just like Marxism in practice has proven disastrous for
the world, the libertarian laissez-faire system of values is
holding sway today and is about to engulf the entire global society
with little or no resistence. And that's trouble - especially,
perhaps, for anarchists.
Why? Simply because what is
widely ignored today is that the economically oriented structure
of society, which has produced such phenomena as Marxism and
laissez-faire Libertarianism, did not emerge before the Reformation
and the Rennaissance. In antiquity, society was ruled by the
pharaos, the high priests, the initiates of the Mysteries, their
astrologers etc. Later on, in the Middle Ages, the monarchs and
the clergy took over the lead. And then, who took over after
the monarchs and the clergy? The answer is: The economists. During
the last 300-400 years, the economists gradually transformed
society in such a way that every political system, regardless
of ideology or color, was controlled by economically oriented
individuals. The invention of paper money was of tremendous importance,
and this evolution was strenghened considerably in the 19th century
when finance and banking emerged in such a way that the economic
factor invaded (or infected) practically every imaginable human
relationship. More and more, all jurisprudence and all legislation
became products of economically oriented social thinkers, and
such is reality today.
This is what we are up against:
The banks, the stock exchange, the market manipulators. Anarchists
who still gripe about the churches and the monarchs are living
in the 13th century.
We have now vaguely touched
the tip of an iceberg. When I take my argument one step further,
it would be polite of me to warn my fellow anarchists that I'm
not a regular anarchist but an anarchosophist, i.e. an anthroposophically
oriented Christian anarchist. Because the way I see it, the power
at work in the modern economically controlled global power structure
has its genesis, or at least its roots, in the civilization of
the Romans, and this makes certain passages in The New Testament
extraordinarily interesting.
Let's start with the well-known
episode where the adversaries of Jesus Christ ask him whether
or not one should pay taxes. His answer is somewhat enigmatic.
Because the coin bears the portrait of Caesar, it belongs to
Caesar, according to Jesus. In other words, Christ admits Caesar
the right to take any share of people's money he pleases because
it's his to begin with.
I won't go further into this
here except to mention that "the kingdom not of this world"
which Christ represents, is the opposite of the world represented
by money. It is obvious that Christ stands forth as a purely
spiritual liberator, not as a political or an economic one. (Thus
the political and economic liberation becomes the subsidiary
and subsequent task of man after liberating himself from within.)
The other passage of great
interest is the first temptation of Christ. He is in the desert,
having fasted for 40 days. Let's imagine that Christ was a deity,
a god - just as a thought experiment here. Let,s also imagine
that he did not come into the flesh of Jesus before the baptism
by John in the Jordan River. So he runs into the desert, goes
without food for over a month, and discovers that a physical
human being must eat in order to exist.
Now the temptation: the being
which The New Testament calls "the Prince of This World"
approaches the hungry Christ with the following proposition:
"Because you are the Son of God, why don't you command these
stones to become bread?"
I hope we don't get any funny
fundies here who insist that Jesus was a circus magician. With
stones we make hard currency, coins, and with money we buy food.
The temptation is this simple: "Go buy some food."
Christ's response to this
is even more intriguing: This is the one temptation he just cannot
refute entirely. Everybody must eat to exist, and food is purchased
for money. So Christ answers: "Man does not live by bread
alone, but by every word from the mouth of God."
Thus the real temptation involved
here is to lead Christ and mankind to the illusion that physical
nutrition is the only thing necessary for our existence - which
is the basic assumption behind materialism and blind hedonism.
But as we van see, Christ must admit the World Prince - or Satan
if you like - dominance over the economy. It is crystal clear
in his answer.
I will only add one more consideration
here in order to show that the challenge we're up against today
is not only formidable but extremely complicated. Orthodox Christians
view Satan, or the World Prince, as some evil creature that one
should flee from. But for an anthroposophist, this is the very
being who has given man his intellect, and without whom we would
have no science and no technology. It is our task to capture
the intellect from Ahriman (which he is characteristically called)
without falling into his illusory trap.
This was, perhaps, too much
to come dragging along with for the sole purpose of explaining
why I disagree with the libertarians, but it's very difficult
to simplify the complicated.