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Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered
Oxford economist E. F. Schumacher provides an enlightening study of our economic system and its purpose, challenging the current state of excessive consumption in our society. Offering a crucial message for the modern world struggling to balance economic growth with the human costs of globalisation, Small Is Beautiful puts forward the revolutionary yet viable case for building our economies around the needs of communities, not corporations.
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Published September 16, 1993
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November 10, 2023
A PROPOSAL TO REJECT SOME TYPES OF TECHNOLOGY, FOR A MORE SPIRITUAL APPROACH
Author E.F. Schumacher wrote in the first chapter of this 1973 book, ‘One of the most fateful errors of our age is the belief that ‘the problem of production’ has been solved… this belief… is held by virtually all the experts, the captains of industry, the economic managers in the governments of the world, the academic and not-so-academic economists, not to mention economic journalists. They may disagree on many things but they all agree that the problem of production has been solved; that mankind has at last come of age. For the rich countries, they say, the most important task is now ‘education for leisure’ and, for the poor countries, the ‘transfer of technology’ … No doubt ‘the system’ is in many ways bad and must be changed. One of the main reasons why … it can still survive in spite of its badness, is this erroneous view that ‘the problem of production’ has been solved… The arising of this error, so egregious and so firmly rooted, is closely connected with the philosophical, not to say religious, changes during the last three or four centuries in … WESTERN man’s attitude to nature… we have indeed labored to make of the capital which today helps us to produce---a large fund of scientific, technological …knowledge… but all this is but a small part of the total capital we are using. Far lager is the capital provided by nature and not by man… This larger part is being used up at an alarming rate, and that is why it is an absurd and suicidal error to … act on the belief, that the problem of production has been solved.” (Pg. 13-15)
“Let us take a closer look at this ‘natural capital.’ First of all… there are the fossil fuels… If we treated them as capital items, we should be concerned with conservation… And we do not… but the exact contrary… we are not in the least concerned with conservation; we are maximizing, instead of minimizing, the current rates of use… People ask:” Can it be done? And the answer comes back: It must be done and therefore it shall be done… If we squander our fossil fuels, we threaten civilization; but if we squander the capital represented by living nature around us, we threaten life itself… we do well to ask why it is that all these terms---pollution, environment, ecology, etc.---have so SUDDENLY come into prominence… The explanation is not difficult to find… quite recently… there has been a unique quantitative jump in industrial production… The changes of the last twenty-five years… have produced an entirely new situation… And this has come so suddenly that we hardly noticed the fact that we were very rapidly using up certain kind of irreplaceable capital asset, namely the TOLERANCE MARGINS which benign nature always provides.”(Pg. 15-19)
“Is it not evident that our current methods of production are already eating into the very substance of industrial man?... The substance of man cannot be measured by Gross National Product… Statistics never prove anything… And what is my case? Simply that our most important task is to get off our present collision course…we must thoroughly understand the problem and begin to see the possibility of evolving a new life-style, with new methods of production and new patterns of consumption: a life-style designed for permanence.”(Pg. 2
He asks, “But what is wisdom? Where can it be found? Here we come to the crux of the matter: it can be read about in numerous publications but it can be FOUND only inside oneself. To be able to find it, one has first to liberate oneself from such masters as greed and envy. The stillness following liberation---even if only momentary---produces the insights of wisdom which are obtainable in no other way.” (Pg. 38)
He notes, “It is clear, therefore, that Buddhist economics must be very different from the economics of modern materialism, since the Buddhist sees the essence of civilization not in a multiplication of wants but in the purification of human character. Character, at the same time, is formed primarily by a man’s work.” (Pg. 55)
He observes, “All history… points to the fact that it is man, not nature, who provides the primary resource: that the key factor of all economic development comes out of the mind of man. Suddenly, there is an outburst of daring, initiative, invention, constructive activity… in many fields all at once. No one may be able to say where it came from in the first place; but we can see how it maintains and even strengthens itself: through various kinds of schools, in other words, through education. In a very real sense, therefore we can say that education is the most vital of all resources.” (Pg. 79)
He suggests, “One might even ask: what is the point of insisting on clean air, if the air id laden with radioactive particles?... Even an economist might well ask: what is the point of economic progress, a so-called higher standard of living, when the earth, the only earth we have, is being contaminated by substances which may cause malformations in our children and grandchildren?... Can we deal with matters of such a basic character… simply on the basis of a short-term probability calculation?” (Pg. 140-141)
He clarifies, “Let me … add a few words about future scientific research… What need the most careful consideration… is the DIRECTION of scientific research. We cannot leave this to the scientists alone… the direction should be towards non-violence rather than violence; towards a harmonious cooperation with nature rather than a warfare against nature; towards the noiseless, low-energy, elegant, and economical solutions normally applied in nature rather than the noisy, high-energy, brutal, wasteful, and clumsy solutions of our present-day sciences.” (Pg. 142-143)
He says of nuclear power, “No degree of prosperity could justify the accumulation of large amounts of highly toxic substances which nobody knows how to make ‘safe’ and which remain an incalculable danger to the whole of creation for history and even geological ages. To do such a thing is a transgression against life itself, a transgression infinitely more serious than any crime ever perpetuated by man. The idea that a civilization could sustain itself on the basis of such a transgression is an ethical, spiritual, and metaphysical monstrosity. It means conducting the economic affairs of man as if people really did not matter at all.” (Pg. 145)
He asserts, “The technology of MASS PRODUCTION is inherently violent…ecologically damaging….and stultifying to the human person. The technology of PRODUCTION BY THE MASSES, making the best use of modern knowledge and experience, is conducive to decentralization, compatible with the laws of ecology, gentle in its use of scarce resources, and designed to serve the human person instead of making him they servant of machines. I have named it ‘intermediate technology’ to signify that it is vastly superior to the primitive technology of bygone ages but at the same time much simpler, cheaper, and freer than the super-technology of the rich.” (Pg. 154)
He continues, “I have no doubt that it is possible to give a new direction to technological development, a direction that shall lead it back to the real needs of man, and that also means: to the ACTUAL SIZE of man. Man is small, and, therefore, small is beautiful. To go for gigantism is to go for self-destruction. And what is the cost of a reorientation? We might remind ourselves that to calculate the cost of survival is perverse. No doubt, a price has to be paid for anything worth while: to redirect technology so that it serves man instead of destroying hum requires primarily an effort of the imagination and an abandonment of fear.” (Pg. 159)
He clarifies, “If I hold a rather negative opinion about the usefulness of ‘automation’ in matters of economic forecasting and the like, I do not underestimate the value of electronic computers and similar apparatus for other tasks, like solving mathematical problems or programming production runs. These latter tasks belong to the exact sciences or their applications. Their subject matter is non-human, or perhaps I should say, sub-human. Their very exactitude is a sign of the absence of human freedom, the absence of choice, responsibility and dignity. As soon as human freedom enters, we are in an entirely different world where there is great danger in any proliferation of mechanical devices. The tendencies which attempt to obliterate the distinction should be resisted with the utmost determination… I thus come to the cheerful conclusion that life, including economic life, is still worth living because it is sufficiently unpredictable to be interesting. (Pg. 239-240)
He concludes, “Everywhere people ask: What can I actually DO?’ The answer is as simple as it is disconcerting: we can, each of us, work to put our own inner house in order. The guidance we need for this work cannot be found in science or technology, the value of which utterly depends on the ends they serve; but it can still be found in the traditional wisdom of mankind.” (Pg. 297)
Schumacher’s book might be thought of as ‘out of date’ by some; but in a world facing fears about Artificial Intelligence, Genetic Engineering, and similar topics, he might be viewed by others as being a PROPHET.
Author E.F. Schumacher wrote in the first chapter of this 1973 book, ‘One of the most fateful errors of our age is the belief that ‘the problem of production’ has been solved… this belief… is held by virtually all the experts, the captains of industry, the economic managers in the governments of the world, the academic and not-so-academic economists, not to mention economic journalists. They may disagree on many things but they all agree that the problem of production has been solved; that mankind has at last come of age. For the rich countries, they say, the most important task is now ‘education for leisure’ and, for the poor countries, the ‘transfer of technology’ … No doubt ‘the system’ is in many ways bad and must be changed. One of the main reasons why … it can still survive in spite of its badness, is this erroneous view that ‘the problem of production’ has been solved… The arising of this error, so egregious and so firmly rooted, is closely connected with the philosophical, not to say religious, changes during the last three or four centuries in … WESTERN man’s attitude to nature… we have indeed labored to make of the capital which today helps us to produce---a large fund of scientific, technological …knowledge… but all this is but a small part of the total capital we are using. Far lager is the capital provided by nature and not by man… This larger part is being used up at an alarming rate, and that is why it is an absurd and suicidal error to … act on the belief, that the problem of production has been solved.” (Pg. 13-15)
“Let us take a closer look at this ‘natural capital.’ First of all… there are the fossil fuels… If we treated them as capital items, we should be concerned with conservation… And we do not… but the exact contrary… we are not in the least concerned with conservation; we are maximizing, instead of minimizing, the current rates of use… People ask:” Can it be done? And the answer comes back: It must be done and therefore it shall be done… If we squander our fossil fuels, we threaten civilization; but if we squander the capital represented by living nature around us, we threaten life itself… we do well to ask why it is that all these terms---pollution, environment, ecology, etc.---have so SUDDENLY come into prominence… The explanation is not difficult to find… quite recently… there has been a unique quantitative jump in industrial production… The changes of the last twenty-five years… have produced an entirely new situation… And this has come so suddenly that we hardly noticed the fact that we were very rapidly using up certain kind of irreplaceable capital asset, namely the TOLERANCE MARGINS which benign nature always provides.”(Pg. 15-19)
“Is it not evident that our current methods of production are already eating into the very substance of industrial man?... The substance of man cannot be measured by Gross National Product… Statistics never prove anything… And what is my case? Simply that our most important task is to get off our present collision course…we must thoroughly understand the problem and begin to see the possibility of evolving a new life-style, with new methods of production and new patterns of consumption: a life-style designed for permanence.”(Pg. 2
He asks, “But what is wisdom? Where can it be found? Here we come to the crux of the matter: it can be read about in numerous publications but it can be FOUND only inside oneself. To be able to find it, one has first to liberate oneself from such masters as greed and envy. The stillness following liberation---even if only momentary---produces the insights of wisdom which are obtainable in no other way.” (Pg. 38)
He notes, “It is clear, therefore, that Buddhist economics must be very different from the economics of modern materialism, since the Buddhist sees the essence of civilization not in a multiplication of wants but in the purification of human character. Character, at the same time, is formed primarily by a man’s work.” (Pg. 55)
He observes, “All history… points to the fact that it is man, not nature, who provides the primary resource: that the key factor of all economic development comes out of the mind of man. Suddenly, there is an outburst of daring, initiative, invention, constructive activity… in many fields all at once. No one may be able to say where it came from in the first place; but we can see how it maintains and even strengthens itself: through various kinds of schools, in other words, through education. In a very real sense, therefore we can say that education is the most vital of all resources.” (Pg. 79)
He suggests, “One might even ask: what is the point of insisting on clean air, if the air id laden with radioactive particles?... Even an economist might well ask: what is the point of economic progress, a so-called higher standard of living, when the earth, the only earth we have, is being contaminated by substances which may cause malformations in our children and grandchildren?... Can we deal with matters of such a basic character… simply on the basis of a short-term probability calculation?” (Pg. 140-141)
He clarifies, “Let me … add a few words about future scientific research… What need the most careful consideration… is the DIRECTION of scientific research. We cannot leave this to the scientists alone… the direction should be towards non-violence rather than violence; towards a harmonious cooperation with nature rather than a warfare against nature; towards the noiseless, low-energy, elegant, and economical solutions normally applied in nature rather than the noisy, high-energy, brutal, wasteful, and clumsy solutions of our present-day sciences.” (Pg. 142-143)
He says of nuclear power, “No degree of prosperity could justify the accumulation of large amounts of highly toxic substances which nobody knows how to make ‘safe’ and which remain an incalculable danger to the whole of creation for history and even geological ages. To do such a thing is a transgression against life itself, a transgression infinitely more serious than any crime ever perpetuated by man. The idea that a civilization could sustain itself on the basis of such a transgression is an ethical, spiritual, and metaphysical monstrosity. It means conducting the economic affairs of man as if people really did not matter at all.” (Pg. 145)
He asserts, “The technology of MASS PRODUCTION is inherently violent…ecologically damaging….and stultifying to the human person. The technology of PRODUCTION BY THE MASSES, making the best use of modern knowledge and experience, is conducive to decentralization, compatible with the laws of ecology, gentle in its use of scarce resources, and designed to serve the human person instead of making him they servant of machines. I have named it ‘intermediate technology’ to signify that it is vastly superior to the primitive technology of bygone ages but at the same time much simpler, cheaper, and freer than the super-technology of the rich.” (Pg. 154)
He continues, “I have no doubt that it is possible to give a new direction to technological development, a direction that shall lead it back to the real needs of man, and that also means: to the ACTUAL SIZE of man. Man is small, and, therefore, small is beautiful. To go for gigantism is to go for self-destruction. And what is the cost of a reorientation? We might remind ourselves that to calculate the cost of survival is perverse. No doubt, a price has to be paid for anything worth while: to redirect technology so that it serves man instead of destroying hum requires primarily an effort of the imagination and an abandonment of fear.” (Pg. 159)
He clarifies, “If I hold a rather negative opinion about the usefulness of ‘automation’ in matters of economic forecasting and the like, I do not underestimate the value of electronic computers and similar apparatus for other tasks, like solving mathematical problems or programming production runs. These latter tasks belong to the exact sciences or their applications. Their subject matter is non-human, or perhaps I should say, sub-human. Their very exactitude is a sign of the absence of human freedom, the absence of choice, responsibility and dignity. As soon as human freedom enters, we are in an entirely different world where there is great danger in any proliferation of mechanical devices. The tendencies which attempt to obliterate the distinction should be resisted with the utmost determination… I thus come to the cheerful conclusion that life, including economic life, is still worth living because it is sufficiently unpredictable to be interesting. (Pg. 239-240)
He concludes, “Everywhere people ask: What can I actually DO?’ The answer is as simple as it is disconcerting: we can, each of us, work to put our own inner house in order. The guidance we need for this work cannot be found in science or technology, the value of which utterly depends on the ends they serve; but it can still be found in the traditional wisdom of mankind.” (Pg. 297)
Schumacher’s book might be thought of as ‘out of date’ by some; but in a world facing fears about Artificial Intelligence, Genetic Engineering, and similar topics, he might be viewed by others as being a PROPHET.
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