Social threefolding is a social theory which originated in the early 20th century from the work of Rudolf Steiner. Of central importance is a distinction made between three spheres of society – the political, economic, and cultural. The conviction here is that when economy, culture, and polity are relatively independent of one another, they check, balance, and correct one another and thus lead to greater social health and progress. This should not be confused with laissez-faire economics, however. Steiner was concerned rather that businesses should not be able to buy favorable laws and regulations, and that governments should regulate the economy and protections for workers impartially and not be corrupted by participating in business. “A sphere of life calls forth interests arising only within that sphere. Out of the economic sphere one can develop only economic interests. If one is called out of this sphere to produce legal judgements as well, then these will merely be economic interests in disguise.”. Social threefolding aims to foster: equality and democracy in political life, freedom in cultural life (art, science, religion, education, the media), and uncoerced cooperation in a freely contractual economic life. In 1917, during the First World War, Steiner first proposed what he often called the "threefoldment of the social organism." Then in 1919, during the German Revolution following the end of the war, Steiner was asked by several colleagues to lead and did lead a public campaign for threefold social ideas. In 1922, he gave a series of lectures on economics from the threefoldment perspective. Steiner suggested the cooperative independence of these three societal realms could be achieved both through relatively gradual, small-scale changes in individual enterprises, as well as by relatively rapid medium- and large-scale changes in whole economic regions or even in whole societies. Steiner insisted that large-scale changes could only be implemented if accepted by the will of the majority in society, i.e., democratically. Steiner rejected all ideology, characterizing it as a restriction and imposition on what lives in people. Instead, Steiner sought to create conditions whereby people themselves could act creatively within the economy (through what he called associations, as well as through what today is sometimes called steward-owned business and stakeholder capitalism), within politics (through more participatory forms of direct democracy), and within culture (through the autonomy of teachers and other cultural workers). “All ideal programs are to be dismissed, all prescriptions are to be