What is Money

‘An intimate dialogue with Joseph Beuys, arguably the most important and radical artist of the late twentieth century, which takes us into the deeper motivations and understandings underlying ‘social sculpture’ and his expanded conception of art.’
– Shelley Sacks, Artist and Director of the Social Sculpture Research Unit, Oxford Brookes University
Joseph Beuys’s work continues to influence and inspire practitioners and thinkers all over the world, in areas from organizational learning, direct democracy and new money forms to new art pedagogies and ecological art practices. Here, in dialogue with Volker Harlan – a close colleague, whose own work also revolves around understandings of substance and sacrament that are central to Beuys – the deeper motivations and insights underlying ‘social sculpture’, Beuys’s expanded conception of art, are illuminated. His profound reflections, complemented with insightful essays by Volker Harlan, give a sense of the interconnectedness between all life forms, and the foundations of a path towards an ecologically sustainable future.

n the diagram ‘Art = Capital’, one sees the money circuit in a broader context. Under this title, Beuys has drawn an arrow from art to economy and below another arrow which runs counter to the first, representing mutual dependence. Above this, he clarifies by writing ‘Art – Shaping – Creativity = Work’. This explains Beuys’s concept of work. Work originates in people’s creative potential. It becomes active in enterprises which transform nature into a consumable product.

euys’s concept of money can be clearly understood, in outline, through his blackboard sketches. What strikes one most forcefully in these drawings is his depiction of the circulation of money, above which is written ‘Check this again after five years!’
The blackboard is divided by a horizontal line into the production side (‘Prod. Seite’) and the consumption side (‘Rons.’). This in itself signals an important polarity. On the production side, Beuys has written ‘Capital = skills’. People’s skills form the capital of a national economy. As such, economic activity is restricted only by the limitations in people’s skills. Money, when issued for useful production, can be created in an unrestricted manner. This process of creating money currently takes place in the central banks of all modern societies. Money issued for productive purposes by the independent initiative of central banks flows into business enterprises. From there, it is distributed to workers as income. At the bottom of the page Beuys remarks ‘Separation of work and income.’ By this he means that the distribution of income is a fundamental process of rights and should by no means be dealt with as an economic process. Products can be assessed according to economic viewpoints. Work, however, belongs to the rights area, which invokes human dignity. The circuit is interrupted by a clearly marked threshold (Schwelle) (top/centre). This threshold indicates the market (capital M). Here the goods produced meet the consumer and money is exchanged. The consumer uses and eliminates the goods, or in other words they disappear from the economic circuit. The money used as payment flows back to the entrepreneur but it has lost all connection with the value of the goods. Beuys, therefore, writes ‘Money in reflux without value connection’ (top left). Yet, today, this ‘value-less’ money is often used to represent claims to ownership of the means of production, sunk into land ownership, etc. Beuys makes it clear that this money has an accounting consequence but no real relationship with value

opefully in the future, a sufficiently large number of people will have understood these new insights and will want to work toward positive social change. Only then can our social relationships undergo healing. We cannot strive to produce Utopian social conditions, but we can eliminate the host of disorders in our society so as to allow the social organism to develop in a healthy way in accordance with its true nature. All individuals who work to bring this into effect are partners, are co-shapers working to create a social sculpture.

Every person has a right to income to enable him to live with dignity. Only when conditions ensuring a humane existence are taken care of, can a person make his/her skills available to his/her fellow human beings.

he second false concept, therefore, is profit as a driving force of the economy. Just because an entrepreneur creates business surplus does give him/her the right to dictate its use. Making profit should not be the only aim of an enterprise. We need to replace the material incentive with an incentive that derives from an interest in serving humanity – meeting the needs of other human beings. This requires insight into the general context of social conditions around the world, encompassing every human being on earth.
The third false concept which likewise still stems from a barter economy is the concept of wage labour. The most important social conflicts and problems of industrialized society are linked to this. Karl Marx’s assertion that labour should not be allowed to become a product arose from this idea of wage labour. This violates the dignity of modern human beings. In actuality, giving an income to the worker

The first is private property in the production sphere; the second is profit as a driving force of the economy and the third is the concept of paid labour. These concepts are all derived from barter relationships originating in the Middle Ages, and completely absurd in a modern industrial society of skills and entrepreneurship – which calls for fraternity and association in economic life, along with reform of land, labour and capital.
It must be said, not from the point of view of any social reform ideology, but from a view of the real world and its inherent, essential lawfulness, that each of the three fundamental concepts, in so far as they work within the production domain of the entrepreneur, impedes the free shaping of a social organism to such an extent as to almost render it impossible.*
Like land and property, a business’s means of production are not consumable. In actuality, they should not be represented by money at any point; they should never be bought or sold.

Freedom is the basis of this sphere: ‘self-determination of every activity through recognition of what is needed.’†
The economic sphere is the area of social initiatives. A producer creates goods or services and then a group of consumers judge the value of this provision. Rudolf Steiner refers to these relationships as associations. People work together to create economic values, which are always directed toward the needs of other human beings.

responsible for making sure that all the generated money that has been brought into circulation eventually flows back – within a specified time frame – to the lending institution, the central bank. In this way money will eventually have come full circle.
These few observations show how, in the modern economy, money has metamorphosed into a mere document of rights. Wherever money acquires the character of a commodity or merchandise, it inevitably obstructs or even destroys social relationships:
We need only recall the fact that money, by becoming a real object in economic transactions, deludes men as to its true nature and by producing this imaginary effect at the same time exerts tyranny over them.

he entrepreneur will then direct people to engage in appropriate aspects of production based on their specialized skills and work agreements. Wilhelm Schmundt made the following remarks in connection with the management of business start-up capital:
This concerns a task of social shaping of the highest order. It asks the question: How do people find meaningful work within the production domain which corresponds to their initiatives and skills, so that both human and ecological needs are met to the greatest possible extent?*