DISENTANGLING THE ECONOMY, GOVERNMENT AND CULTURE.
[Discussion needs edition for duplication and discursiveness.]
“In 1957 Justice Felix Frankfurter…, concurring with a majority of the Supreme Court, set forth what he described as the four essential freedoms of a university: to decide who will teach, what they should teach, how they will teach, and who should be admitted to study.”…”The inroads made on Justice Frankfurter’s four university freedoms portend further government regulation of academic institutions. This prospect bodes ill for the quality of higher education.” Derek Bok, Harvard Magazine, March-April, 2024 and “Attacking the Elites: What Critics Get Wrong — and Right — About America’s Leading Universities” (Yale University Press; 2024).
Disentangle corruption of objectives
Economic, governmental and cultural institutions have incommensurate material, relational and spiritual objectives, and under our current system problems arise when for example corporations (in the economic sphere) or churches (in the cultural sphere) have direct influence in government, or when government meddles in economic or cultural activities. Businesses produce goods and services and are expert at creating material profit, while cultural initiatives are expert at promoting such spiritual qualities as learning and education, artistic expression, scientific knowledge, religious reverence, and so forth. When an economic or cultural interest lobbies government with offers of one kind or another, it diverts resources and focus from its principle interests, and to the extent its efforts are successful and more than merely informative, it distorts government’s representation of the voting citizenry that elected it. If we can free the endeavors in each realm from direct interference by interests in another realm, then all institutions involved would become more productive. Campaign finance reform would be a prime example of this type of structural improvement. Religion has its place in advising the conduct of economic and governmental affairs with respect to issues of morality, but when religious lobbies are able to exert economic or political influence to achieve their ends they cross the line separating church and state.
The problem is wider and more general than just corporate and religious influence in government. Conversely, government meddles inappropriately in economic and cultural affairs and economic and cultural interests meddle in each other’s affairs, in all cases using resources inefficiently and hampering the targeted endeavors in carrying out their intended functions. For example, corporate scientific research (e.g. in pharmaceutical and tobacco industries) has been plagued and tainted by biased methodology and selective release of results. Government under the recent Bush administration suppressed scientific efforts and findings threatening to corporate profits (e.g. with respect to the environment and global warming). University science is often influenced by its dependence on corporate and governmental sponsorship, including military funding. Ideally, university research, and basic science generally, would be funded in such a way as to leave it absolutely free.
For the most part government has no business financing institutions in the cultural sphere, and these should raise their funds directly from the public. However, basic science might justify government’s funding as a transfer payment to future generations insofar as it produces long run benefits with little immediate financial payoff to attract private sector investors. Taxpayer funding of some cultural activities might build community and smooth the functioning of government to justify the expense. And government funded education can raise the level of public debate and improve the functioning of democratic decision making, justifying taxpayer support. In all cases management would be kept free of political influence, perhaps by giving undirected grants to universities or other cultural institutions for them to decide how best to use.
It is no coincidence that “Liberte, Egalite, et Fraternite” was the rally cry of the French Revolution at around the birth time of the industrial age. These values encapsulated idealistic yearnings at the time, and as mentioned earlier, philosophers still consider these values as central to political ideals. Rudolf Steiner, an early 20th Century speculative and idealist philosopher, saw freedom, equality and brotherhood as naturally abiding separately in the three spheres of social life, with equality as the value around which justice in the political/rights sphere is organized, freedom that which inspires and leads the cultural sphere, and brotherhood that which ideally arises in the economic sphere out of the cooperation inherent in work.[1] Cultural freedoms, i.e. freedom of thought, expression and belief, are essential to the healthy flourishing of the arts, science, education and religion, and so freedom naturally resides in the cultural sphere. Equality, finessing how defined, is a requirement for mutually acceptable rights and obligations in interpersonal relations and therefore underlies justice and democratic governance. And brotherhood arises in the cooperative group effort of bringing products and services to market in the economics sphere, a project few, if any, do alone. While competition may define the outward strategy of private enterprise, day to day efforts are cooperative and synergistic. Leading corporations are already diametrically reorienting workplace environments to engender brotherhood instead of alienation. Freedom, equality and brotherhood are omnipresent, but each domain of human activity naturally harbors one of these three values as its central organizing principle. The separate localization and centering of values in the three spheres of society parallels the common view that in human beings thought is centered in the head, feelings in the heart, and will in the gut, a simplistic belief but with intuitive appeal and an ancient history.
In many cultures, adolescence is marked by important initiation ceremonies ushering in adulthood, when selfish childish behaviors are to be left behind and cooperative responsible behaviors reflecting group consciousness come to be expected. At some point, typically during adolescence, human beings learn to distinguish among thoughts, feelings, and actions, e.g. learn not to act thoughtlessly out of feelings, confuse feelings with thoughts, etc. It is not that thoughts, feelings and willful activity can not inform, inspire and guide each other, but rather that in maturity, each function is separately cognized and has a certain autonomy. Similarly, a central restructuring task for society in its information age adolescence, is to separate the management of its three spheres of activity – economics, rights/governance, and culture – granting each an essential autonomy.[2] Campaign finance reform, when finally done thoroughly, will be pivotal.
[1] Rudolf Steiner, Toward Social Renewal,
[2] The separation of direction and authority across economic, political and cultural spheres would be similar to how we already have a separation of powers between legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, whereby laws are written, implemented and evaluated. It is not so much that the three spheres of social life provide checks and balances, although they do, as that their separate purposes pull in different directions, requiring a clear interplay and balancing from the three dimensions.