Who earns how much and how?

We may look at this question, which comes up so frequently in daily life, on a much larger scale: How can a material structure pursue a gainful activity? What factors are essential for its success?

Nowadays two questions are to the fore: will Europe be able to compete with the American economic system? Will a global economic system become necessary? It seems erroneous to compare such matters with the question of how bacteria and grasshoppers succeed in increasing their power. But if you consider energy production as primary and  essential, then we are definitely dealing with the same phenomenon ­ only at different levels of integration.

Following practical considerations, which I will come back to later, I distinguish four groups of energons: plants, animals, human professional entities and business organisations. For the first two groups I shall use the classification which is common in biology. The terms "professional entities" and "business organisations" require further explanation.

"Professional entity" does not refer a human being per se. We do not intend to compare the genetic human body to animal and plant bodies - as has been customary in biology up to now. A human professional entity is rather the overall structure which is necessary for following a type of gainful activity (Illustration 1a.)

The professional entity of a shoemaker not only consists of a human body, but also of clothes and tools, and of premises where the work is done, of a work bench, of chairs, tables, shelves, possibly of assistants, of a bank account and of several other things. This overall structure did not grow together like the organism of an animal or a plant, it is an artificial extension of the human body. It comes about by means of additional units – "artificial organs" as I call them – that a human being enhances his capacities and becomes able to produce excellent results.

There is another characteristic that belongs to this entity, and this does not stem from its genetic formula: it is the ability to use all these units in an effective way. From a biological point of view it may be said that a human being, by learning and practising during his apprenticeship, builds up specific norms of action and reaction in his brain. What these "behaviour patterns" individually look like we do not yet know. There is no doubt, however, – and electrical cerebral stimulation has definitely given evidence of this – that these are concrete material structures. They can be imagined as some kind of electrical circuit, as a multitude of connections between sensory and motor ganglion cells. On the motor level there are primarily nervous impulses which are linked and which correspondingly lead to coordinated movements of the muscles. The production of a shoe – see our example – requires very specific movements of hand and body, and the shoemaker does not have the innate capacity to direct these movements. He has to learn and to "refine" them. Apart from other things he has to acquire the "knowledge" which is necessary for buying the raw material and for selling the product. So he needs further co-ordination formulas as well as information which is stored as "experiences" which are used to modify and improve individual actions. All these tiny units are stored in the brain of the shoemaker, but they are added in the same way as the tools and the chairs are. They too have to be regarded as something that enhances the genetic structure at a functional level. They are also essential elements of the professional entity¹.

Some professions require a large amount of equipment – just think of a dentist. In other professions – e.g. a coconut picker in Polynesia – the genetic body coincides almost entirely with the professional entity, as is the case with a courier, a singer or a pickpocket.

In the economic sector professional activities which are not permitted in society are usually excluded. In the context of the energon theory, however, they have to be taken into account like the authorised professions. The thief, the safe-cracker, the blackmailer, all are also energons, all are also professional entities². Moral judgements and legal regulations only make a difference in so far as they change the risk which is involved in the activity.

How little the professional entity and the genetic body have in common follows from the fact that one and the same person in the course of his life is able to follow two or more professions. He then develops several professional entities - one after the other. It is also possible that a person follows several professions at the same time. In that case this person is the centre of two or more professional entities, which he directs alternately (see Illustration 1b.).

The multifarious professional entities which were created by human beings in the course of history are surely not less diverse than the bodies of animals and plants. Through our senses we perceive them in an entirely different way - particularly because their parts have not strongly grown together - but if we consider energy production to be a central function, then it is they whoare the evolutionary development of "living things". It is not the naked human body which continues the evolution of energy producing "plants" and "animals", but the professional structures created by human beings in which we ultimately just function as entities who build up these structures and who direct them.

a) a professional entity. B = the totality of all entities which are necessary for specific work. H = the human being as a control centre. E = the energy output for this work. e’ = the gained energy.

b) a person as the centre of two professional entities (B1 and B2). x = the artificial organs serving the two professional activities.

c) A person who apart from a professional entity has also built up a luxury entity. y = artificial organs which serve both the professional activity and the attainment of conveniences. l-r = energy output for the purpose of attaining conveniences(pleasure?). (The interaction: the enhancement of professional efficiency through recoveryrecuperation, thus convenience(pleasure?), is not taken into account here.)
 

What the particular energons do with the surplus which results from their gainful activity will be discussed only marginally in this book. Animals and plants – I will come back to this later in more detail - hardly have any option other than to convert the result of their gaining activity into growth and reproduction. This changed when the professional entities arose. In their case the return can also flow into growth or into reproduction - it can however also be used for entirely different purposes by the control system called "human being" who may surround himself with further units which merely serve for his convenience or pleasure, e.g. a painting by Rembrandt, a game of chess or a sailing boat. In addition to the professional entity a human being also creates – if he wants to and if he can afford it – a "luxury entity" (see illustration 1c).

The term luxury evokes negative associations and is also misleading, but I cannot think of a better term. Contemporary usage may refer to a "cultural entity", but since we also speak of agri-"culture", a purely a gainful activity, this term is not accurate. By "luxury entity" I understand therefore all additional entities which do not directly serve gainful effort. Everything a human being produces in order to enhance his pleasures and the quality of his life is included in this term³.

True, it is not always possible to draw a clear boundary between a professional entity and luxury entity. A businessman’s Mercedes is partly a professional tool, partly a means of pleasure, and apart from that serves to show that he is credit-worthy. Apart from that there is some repercussion of the luxury activity on the gainful activity: a convenience facilitates recuperation and relaxation, and can increase professional efficiency. Nevertheless the distinction can be balanced up and is also not foreign to any economist. In the legal system, especially in considering taxation, this distinction is common, and there it not insignificant at all. In daily life we realise the difference when a working person encounters hard times. Then we can see how bit by bit he gets rid of his luxury entity - and what finally remains, apart from the obligations he has for example towards his wife and his family, is the professional entity, limited to the essentials.

This way – if we consider gainful activity to be a central function - we come to a rather different way of looking at human beings and their such activity. Even the working man’s wife - if she is not working herself – is then seen in a different light. Her source of income is her husband, who supports her. Eventually, her orientation towards this man, his particular nature and his wishes, is her professional entity⁴.

And finally there are people – at least in the non-communist countries - who live without performing any gainful activity, who live for instance on an inheritance or on social welfare. In this case we see this germ cell called human being without any professional entity. It lives on foreign return, on the capital of an acquired surplus. This means that there exists no professional entity whose centre is not a human being, but there certainly are human beings with a very small professional entity or even without one⁵.
 
 

Besides plants, animals and professional entities there is a fourth large group of energons and I call this one "working organisations". Another possible denomination might be the term "working communities".

Working organisations are no more than extensions of the individual human being. In their structure, which has a level of integration higher by one or more stages, professional entities develop to become functional replaceable units.

The large American industrial companies, whose structure Galbraith has described so vividly, show this very clearly⁶. Unlike the classical private company founded by an entrepreneur where there is still an individual at the top, these giants are already utterly supra-individual entities with their own laws. They are not really controlled any more by the stockholders, who used profits to provide the required capital. The "technological structure" – i.e. managers, technologists and foremen – renews itself by its own authority. Just as happens in multicell organisms where a single cell merely plays a functional role, also in the typical working organisations (in the "mature" company, as Galbraith calls it) the single professional entity – and therefore the individual – is not more than a replaceable originator of the required work. If he dies, someone else will take his place. Even when someone in the upper echelon of the working system dies, the activity of these large companies is not essentially affected⁷.

In the case of a private company owned by an entrepreneur it is debatable whether it can still be defined as an extreme extension of a professional entity or if it already belongs to the group of the working organisations. Experience shows that a larger company does not go to the wall when the entrepreneur dies. If the shoemaker continues to expand his workshop and finally turns it into an industrial company for shoe manufacture, then, at a certain point of time, this blurred dividing-line will be crossed. The bigger the company becomes, the more the owner himself becomes a replaceable element in this system and the more the surrounding working structure imposes its will on him. The difference from the professional entity is its super-individuality. Even if it is not possible to draw a clear line I consider it appropriate and justified to make this conceptual distinction.

When several companies merge to form a combine or a cartel, the development of working organisations with an even higher level of integration is possible. The state again has precedence over the professional entities, companies, combines and cartels.

The entire development of the energons typically happens in a hierarchical way. The first main structure which they achieved was the cell, on the next level it was the multicell organism. In these two areas we can speak of plants or animals, depending on the type of activity. The human being – emerging from the animal kingdom – then extended his genetic body and developed professional entities by means of additional units. They already represent the next level of integration. Working organisations are composed of professional entities. The highest stage of development in these working structure levels culminates in the "modern state" or in a "confederation of states"⁸.
 
 

At all times there were thinkers who recognised the state as a real organism. Plato defined the state as "a large human being", Aristoteles named it "a living creature that has a soul". The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes considered fear to be the starting point for the building of the human state and called the state "an omnivorous monster". Fichte called it "the organic manifestation of God". Schelling explained that the state was not a means to certain ends but the "construction of the absolute organism".

Further advocates of the "organic" approach within political science were the philosophers G. Fechner and W. Wundt, as well as its most brilliant advocate, the jurist Otto von Gierke. The Swedish historian and theorist Rudolf Kjellen added an additional form of life to those of plants, animals and human beings: the state⁹. He called the state a "real personality with a life of its own", an organism in the biological sense. Such ideas lead to several rather superficial, anthropo-morphistic comparisons – in particular by J. Bluntschli, who even considered the state to be male (unlike the church, which he thinks is "female"). Richard Thoma spoke of an "organological ghost doctrine".

Another biologist, no less a figure than Oskar Hertwig, dared to enter the tricky ground of general political science¹⁰. He took up Ernst Kopp, who in his book "Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik" called the state an "organism reproducing the human body". According to him, the state is a " form of organism higher than human beings". The analogies which Hertwig shows were better backed up than those of the mostly mystically oriented organologists. But he did not receive very much attention.

From the point of view of the energon theory the state is – this will later be explained in more detail – a rather complicated hermaphrodite, on the one hand a human organ, on the other hand an independent energon. Following the classification outlined above, there are states which can be considered as extremely expanded professional entities of individual persons, and also others which can be classified as supra-individual objects and therefore belong to the group of working organisations.

But not only in the political field were there scientists who advocated the idea that organisations created by human beings were comparable with animal and plant bodies. Philosophers as well as naturalists repeatedly came up with the idea that organised phenomena very likely share a certain principle.
 
 

Immanuel Kant was the first to express the idea of an "archetype" of all animals and plants. He wrote that a "natural history" still to be written would teach us about the "varieties" of the creatures of the "archetype"¹¹. Kant considered it possible that "all species descend from one single genus".

Albrecht Dürer believed in a secret law of construction which he tried to "wring out" from nature. He considered the diversity of forms to be based on an adaptation (a "reversal") of a basic form, of a "canon" the existence of which expresses itself in the similarity of all creatures.

The same idea became the theme of Goethe’s efforts in the area of natural science. He searched for the "primordial plant" and for the "primordial animal"; he did not assume a common ancestor, however, but rather a common basic structure as the origin of the diversity of plants and the higher order of animals. He tried to describe these archetypes: "wo nicht den Sinnen, doch dem Geiste nach" (not according to the senses, but according to the spirit).

On the basis of this point of view, looking at the hidden common features, Goethe succeeded in discovering two important things. In the area of botany he discovered the metamorphosis of the leaf: formations like thorns and tendrils, but also stamen and pistils are transformed plant leaves¹². In zoology he discovered the human intermaxillary bone, which until then had only been detected in monkeys and other higher vertebrates, and it was considered strange that man did not have this bone. Goethe searched more precisely - and eventually found the bone¹³.

A famous academic dispute in Paris (in 1830) was about the question as to whether there really are "hidden common features". Geoffrey St.-Hilaire claimed that there was a unified plan which dominated the entire animal kingdom ("unité de composition organique"). Cuvier, who came out of this dispute as the winner, rejected this.

Almost 10 years later the German naturalists Schleiden and Schwann established the cell theory, and another 20 years later Charles Darwin got the theory of evolution generally accepted. In 1809 – the year in which Darwin was born - Jean Baptiste Lamarck had already presented it in his book¹⁴, which did not receive a lot of attention. However, Darwin, who had gathered an impressive amount of evidence, aroused a great deal of attention and approval.

With these two theories the hidden common features which had been searched for by Kant, Goethe, Geoffrey St.-Hilaire and others seemed to have been discovered. The cell theory alone meant a huge degree of standardisation. Nowadays the cell theory is taught in every school, but not many are fully aware of its consequences: All plants and animals are built up from the same basic unit, i.e. the "cell". In water these cells live as independent organisms - the unicellular organisms. They reproduce by cell division. The "multicellular organisms" who are bigger by far – all larger plants and animals including human beings – also come from a single cell, from the "germ cell". The germ cell is also subject to cell division, but the resulting secondary cells are not. Instead, more and more large cell clumps are formed - and in these work organisation takes place. In some of the resulting larger "organisms" the cells develop leaf tissue, in others they develop muscles, bone tissue, etc. This way, animal and plant organs are always built up by the same fundamental unit. Therefore, however different as higher animals and plants may be in their outer appearance – a bee, a fir-tree, a porcupine , they are all built up from one and the same fundamental unit, the "cell".

The theory of evolution of Lamarck and Darwin explained this astounding common feature by assuming a natural affinity. The origin of all plants and animals - including the human being – can be found in unicellular organisms. They are all branches of the same enormous phylogenetic tree of life. Nowadays it is thought that the beginning of this process was two and a half or three billion years ago.

Subsequent generations of researchers were able to substantiate both theories by using improved tools and methods. No counter-evidence was produced. Today we have no reason for serious doubt that this process called "evolution" really took place.

A third hidden common feature was discovered. In all plants and animals the hereditary recipe ("genome") hidden in the cells is built up on one and the same principle. The electron microscope has even made it accessible for the human eye. They are extraordinarily long, thread-like nucleic acid molecules, on which the individual development orders are lined up like letters. Our current knowledge about the order and the structure of human hereditary factors does not come from our research on human germ cells. We owe it to research done first by Gregor Mendel on peas, then by T.H Morgan with dew-flies and later by other researchers done mainly on bacteria and viruses. We have to realise what this means: Even between a human being and minute bacteria there is still such a close affinity that we can infer the inner structure of human germ cells from the one of the bacteria!

Therefore it is perfectly clear that nowadays in the field of biology – and in the field of natural sciences in general – the question of the "hidden common feature" is considered as outdated and answered long ago. In this sense Werner Heisenberg, a Nobel prizewinner, commented that one could, in the spirit of Goethe, consider nucleic acid as a "primal living creature" – " because it is a basic structure for the whole biological field." Heisenberg compares the elementary particles the atoms consist of with the "regular bodies" from Plato’s "Timaios", and he continues: "They are the prototypes, the ideas of matter. Nucleic acid is the idea of the living creature. These prototypes define entire further development of events ..."¹⁵

The biologist W. Zündorf expressed this point of view even stronger in his writings on the evolution research. "Die von Goethe intuitiv erschaute und dichterisch gestaltete Einheit in allem Wechsel und in aller Mannigfaltigkeit der Formen enthüllt sich dem modernen Forscher als das dem Lebendigen zugrundeligende Erbgut. Jede lebende Gestalt dankt ihm ihr Dasein, ihre Formfülle liegt in seiner Wandlungsfähigkeit begründet."¹⁶

I will try to show that these opinions are only half right and that a further, maybe even the most important common feature has remained undiscovered until today. The genotype – the "hereditary recipe", as I call it – certainly was an important prerequisite for development towards a higher level. But the effectiveness of the hereditary recipes cannot explain the spatial and temporal structures which organisms have attained in the course of evolution. Rather, it was the necessity to have an active energy balance that almost stipulated how these spatial and temporal structures had to be. The energon theory takes up where Goethe’s way of thinking, and that of several of his contemporaries, came to an end. This way of thinking claimed that the process of life inevitably develops according to a common basic concept. It also claimed that all living creatures – in order to be able to exist and continue to develop – have to follow, as it were, the same rules, and that the very same rules are also authoritative for the spatial-temporal structure of professional entities which are formed by human beings¹⁷.

This hidden fundamental framework is – as the reader will see – unsightly and imposes a view which is utterly different from our usual categories of thinking. As Goethe said, this hidden common feature can only be described "not according to the senses, but according to the spirit". But the energon theory goes a lot beyond this as it includes not only animals and plants in its comparative way of looking at things, but also working structures created by human beings. To use Goethe’s terminology - not only for the "primal organism", but also for the "primal professional entity".
 
 

The question about the hidden common feature also came up in economics and in sociology.

In 1912 and in 1923 the Russian national economist A. Bogdanov published two volumes on "general organisation theory", and in 1919 three lectures by the sociologist J. Plerge appeared in Germany on the same subject. Further writings onsimilar questions came from the national economists R. Erdmann and W. Brand, the philosopher O. Feyerabend, the constructor K. Wieser, the ontologist F.Schmidt, the writers F. Eulenberg and H. Domizlaff, the economy expert K.Stefanic-Allmayer and others¹⁸.

All these authors looked – from very different starting points – for the actual "nature of organisation". I briefly want to point out a serious mistake which most of the authors made.

In their reflections about the nature of organisations they also included atoms, molecules, crystals and planetary systems. It is true that these structures without doubt are "organised". But there is an essential difference in comparison to organisms and to the working structures created by human beings: here it is a matter of balance, not of energy-producing systems. The energon concept draws a clear line here. No atom, no molecule, no crystal and no planetary system is such that it can enhance its free energy resources. This is the big gap which separates inorganic structures from organic ones¹⁹.

To my knowledge there were only two authors who also took the energy balance as a starting point for of their reflections: The French sociologist Ernest Solvay tried – but only on a theoretical level – to devise fundamental mathematical formulas for the structures of the human way of building up a community. The second was the founder of physical chemistry, the Nobel prizewinner Wilhelm Ostwald, who in 1909 wrote a book on "The Energetic Principles of Cultural Sciences". In this book he addressed himself to sociologists, but he did not get any attention whatsoever. A researcher whom I know mentioned the book. I owe this knowledge to the circumstance that Prof. Dr. Broda of the Institute of Physical Chemistry in Vienna was so kind to take a critical look at the draught of this book, and he drew my attention to Ostwald. Ostwald gave me some ideas in particular about energy. His thoughts were not revolutionary, but on many points we came up with the same conclusions²⁰.

If our brain considers the professional entities and organisations created by human beings as utterly different from plants and animals, it is because of the "elements" these structures consist of – and because of the way in which the human brain has classified these elements until now in its index of concepts. In order to see the common feature, we first have drastically to change the organisation in this index.
 
 

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Continue to "Vehicles of effect"
 
 

Comments:

⁰ All quotations are no original translations but were translated by the translator of this text.
¹ The American sociologist and philosopher Marshall McLuhan also speaks of “extensions” of the human body, particularly in the context of the senses and the locomotive organs (“Die magischen Kanäle”, Düsseldorf 1968; “Das Medium ist Massage”, Frankfurt 1969). Since his trains of thought – which have been rejected as much as acclaimed – cannot be explained in a few words, they will be discussed in detail in Appendix III.
² W. Sombart presents a similar definition: “According to my definition work can also be  the activity performed by the thief to commit a burglary even though this is (socially) harmful.” (“Der moderne Kapitalismus”, Munich 1921, p. 7).
³ An inclination to luxury - in the sense of an expenditure which does not promote gainful activity –exists in the world of animals as well, in their body structure as much well as in their behaviour. In the individual balance however these expenses always remain within a moderate range. Only in human beings does the inclination to luxury become a distinctive feature. Later it will be explained that the thus increased expenditure for luxury is a debit item only from the working individual’s point of view, whereas for his whole life it is a decisive promoting factor.
⁴ “Professional” is misleading here because it could be associated with prostitution. What is really meant however - without any value judgement – is energy production.
⁵ Also, pensioners and retired people seem to have no professional entity. This, however, is not the case. In the course of their lives they have worked and so they have achieved a legal right – eventually this becomes the structure which maintains them: it becomes their gainful means. As long as they gain a return from this source they have a professional entity.
⁶ John K. Galbraith, “Die moderne Industriegesellschaft”, München 1968.
⁷ In business management the terms “business” and “enterprise” are not always used synonymously. According to Niklisch, a business is the actual production entity and can also consist of an individual person; an enterprise, however, is a superordinate legal structure. Gutenberg uses the two terms almost synonymously. As this corresponds to current usage, I do so also.
⁸ The terms “professional entity” and “working organisation” are implicit in the term “legal person”. Otto von Gierke wondered what “reality” gives rise to this legal phenomenon; to these legally acknowledged “characteristics to which it ascribes personality".  With regard to human “associations”, he says: “In order to understand and appreciate that part of law which presents itself as ordering the life of associations, one has to try to find out what it actually is that becomes part of this law and and receives its order from it.” (“Das Wesen der menschlichen Verbände”, Rektoratsrede, Leipzig 1902).
⁹ Rudolf Kjellén, “Der Staat als Lebensform”, Berlin 1924, p. 117 and 228.
¹⁰ Oskar Hertwig, “Die Lehre vom Organismus und ihre Beziehung zur Sozialwissenschaft”, Berlin 1899, und “Der Staat als Organismus”, Jena 1922.
¹¹ “Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen”, in L. Voss: “Immanuel Kants Schriften zur physischen Geographie”, Leipzig 1839, p. 321f)
¹² “Die Metamorphosen der Pflanzen”, Jena 1790.
¹³ “Über den Zwischenkiefer des Menschen und der Tiere”, Stuttgart 1820.
¹⁴ “Philosophie Zoologique”, Paris 1809.
¹⁵ “Der Teil und das Ganze, München 1969, p. 325f.
¹⁶ “Idealistische Morphologie und Phylogenetik”, in G.Heberer: “Die Evolution der Organismen”, Jena 1943.
¹⁷ In biology the capacity of a living creature to survive in the struggle for life is called its value for selection. Here we try to achieve a more accurate view of this value, which corresponds with the competitive capacity in economics.
¹⁸ see references. - The books of Schnutenhaus and Kosial, experts on business management, do not really belong to the “general organisation theory”, because they almost exclusively deal with business management.
¹⁹ In spite of this different research topic  K. Stefanic-Allmayer achieved some results which correspond with the ones presented in this book. Bogdanov’s extensive efforts however failed because he generalised too much. “Völlige Unorganisiertheit”, he wrote, “ist ein sinnloser Begriff, im Grunde genommen, dasselbe wie völliges Nichtsein.” Therefore he tried to find common categories for almost everything ... a procedure which was liable to lead to the discovery of extremely superficial parallels.
²⁰ In one of his last writings Konrad Lorenz defines living creatures as energy and information producing systems which are characterised by a double control circuit one leads to the production of energy, the other to the production of information. (“Innate Bases of Learning”, in: K.H. Pibram, “On the Biology of Learning”, New York 1969.) This point of view is close to the one taken in this book. But he considers, as is also usual in the cybernetic field, that information production is primordial. The energon theory takes the point of view that this is only a necessary tool, and therefore secondary.