Note: This manifesto with the section below was handed out on Friday February 24 2023 during a peace demonstration in front of the Russian Trade Representation on Amsterdam Museum Square and was presented on the following 53th weekly Monday evening demonstration organized by the local Amsterdam initiative "Stop de Oorlog" (Stop the War). On February 25, the same day that a hundred thousand people took part in a peace demonstration in Berlin to support a policy of active neutrality in this conflict, the British historian and anthroposophist Terry Boardman published his UK Column "Ukrainian policy in the Donbass: Is it fair
to call it genocide?". His thoroughly researched essay of some 26 pages with maps, figures and witness reports by experts examines, as can be read at the beginning, "the above question first by considering the
concept of genocide and then the actions of the Ukrainian Government in
relation to the Donbass and Crimea: 'anti-terror' operations, shelling
of civilians, use of torture, propaganda, linguistic, educational and
religious rights, water supplies, etc. It will conclude that it is
indeed fair, or proper, to call Ukrainian policy, from 2014 to today,
‘genocide’ in terms of the United Nations Genocide Convention’s
definition of the concept."
This account is brought here not to excuse or justify in any way the war crimes as reportedly perpetrated by the Russian forces, let this be absolutely clear, but to expose the little-known atrocities perpetrated by the Ukrainian forces that served Putin as a pretext for the military invasion of Ukraine. In my manifesto and my publication "Rudolf Steiner's Memoranda - Powers to the People", mentioned below, I have argued that this violent suppression and murder of the Russian-speaking minorities in the East of Ukraine led the Russian president to implement his so-called Putin Doctrine and that this was a dire consequence of the unfortunate fact that Rudolf Steiner's Memoranda to end World War I on the basis of a just peace agreement were not heeded.
Next to structural causes for the outbreak of war, famine, and other man-made disasters in the last century, there are of course also other more occult ones that Rudolf Steiner mentions in his Memoranda, which I have attempted to identify in their current form in my publication and which can also be found in greater detail and scope in the website of Terry Boardman.
One more word here about the title of this blog, which is appearing simultaneously with its Dutch counterpart: The term World Peace Order is inspired by the book "Vom Völkerrecht zur Weltfriedensordnung - Die Problemgeschichte der Völkerrechtswissenschaft" ("From International Law to a World Peace Order - The Difficult History of International Law Theory", not translated) by the jurist and christian hermetist Valentin Tomberg (1900-1973).
Subsequent posts will elaborate on this term as well on the term social organics that constitute the basis for the main title of this blog "Powers to the People". This is a variation on a slogan which John Lennon turned into one of his songs, with which I demonstrated in Canada and the US in the sixties and seventies against the war in Vietnam and with which I am now, some 50 years later armed with the knowledge I have since gained, attempting to bring new life into the international peace movement that has until now not given the issues here addressed the attention they deserve. Immanent criticism, questions and original articles are welcome.
Here is the manifesto:
Social organics, or the idea of the threefold nature of the social organism, is a new universal principle of civilization that Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), the founder of anthroposophy, addressed to the German and Austro-Hungarian governments as early as 1917 in the preliminary form of two Memoranda for a just end to World War I. This war began, as is well known, as a border conflict between the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian empire and Serbia, which got completely out of hand due to the interference of the superpowers Russia, England, Germany and France, among others, and sowed death and destruction on the earth among mankind. The current, bloody border conflict between Russia and the Ukraine, like many ongoing border conflicts in the world, has essentially the same cause, i.e., the disregard and suppression by a centralized state of the rights and cultural autonomy of minorities who live outside their motherland or have none at all, think of the Kurds or Basques.
Austrian-born Rudolf Steiner's "egg of Columbus" was the idea of the threefold nature of the social organism, or in other words the extension of the separation of powers, the Trias Politica to the Trias Organica, i.e., freedom in the cultural-spiritual life, equality in the field of rights and politics and brother- and sisterhood in economic life, through which the ideals of the French Revolution could finally be realized. His idea was unfortunately not adopted at the peace negotiations between Germany and Russia at Brest-Litovsk in 1918 nor between the belligerents at Versailles in 1919, Instead, the so-called 14 points of U.S. President Wilson were adopted in Versailles as the basis for the peace negotiations with as their core point the so-called right of self-determination of all peoples, of which Rudolf Steiner had already warned against in his Memoranda that this abstract idea of national instead of human liberation would not bring peace but only lead to more discontent, war and bloodshed in places and countries, such as then in the Balkans and now in the Ukraine where, after all, peoples live interchangeably and where it is thus impossible to draw a political boundary line, without creating minorities.
Unfortunately, it is to be feared that as long as this new spiritual principle of civilization is rejected, the present materialistic world order with its irrevocable consequences of War of All against All, Nothingness and Suicide will continue to plague humanity on Earth.
Austrian-born Rudolf Steiner's "egg of Columbus" was the idea of the threefold nature of the social organism, or in other words the extension of the separation of powers, the Trias Politica to the Trias Organica, i.e., freedom in the cultural-spiritual life, equality in the field of rights and politics and brother- and sisterhood in economic life, through which the ideals of the French Revolution could finally be realized. His idea was unfortunately not adopted at the peace negotiations between Germany and Russia at Brest-Litovsk in 1918 nor between the belligerents at Versailles in 1919, Instead, the so-called 14 points of U.S. President Wilson were adopted in Versailles as the basis for the peace negotiations with as their core point the so-called right of self-determination of all peoples, of which Rudolf Steiner had already warned against in his Memoranda that this abstract idea of national instead of human liberation would not bring peace but only lead to more discontent, war and bloodshed in places and countries, such as then in the Balkans and now in the Ukraine where, after all, peoples live interchangeably and where it is thus impossible to draw a political boundary line, without creating minorities.
Unfortunately, it is to be feared that as long as this new spiritual principle of civilization is rejected, the present materialistic world order with its irrevocable consequences of War of All against All, Nothingness and Suicide will continue to plague humanity on Earth.
This manifesto is a publication of the Willehalm Institute for Social Organics in Amsterdam, publisher of, among others, "Rudolf Steiner's Memoranda - Powers to the People", in which the further stages of development of social organics are described: in 1919 with Rudolf Steiner's book "The Threefold Social Order", in 1922 with his Course on World Economy and in 1923/24 with the social-organic establishment of the Anthroposophical Society as a charter of humanity with links to supportive writings, such as “The Just Price - World Economy as Social Organics” and “To Create or Administrate – Social Organics/ A New Principle of Civilization” by the German philosopher Herbert Witzenmann (1905-1988).
Contact: Dir. Robert J. Kelder,willehalm@gmail.com
