Why Small is Beautiful: The Size Interpretation of History

E.F. Schumacher Lectures #9

by Leopold Kohr, Hildegarde Hannum (Editor)

The collection of lectures and publications from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics represents some of the foremost voices on a new economics.​

"The answer to all questions underlying all our problems today is the size factor—not unemployment, not warfare, not juvenile delinquency, not business fluctuation, not Black Mondays, Black Fridays, or Black Tuesdays." According to Leopold Kohr we must reduce the huge size of modern nations in order to reduce their negative consequences. Using anecdotes and analogies Kohr shows why small is beautiful. Just as the small size of a harbor will diminish the power of great swells arriving from the open ocean, so can small communities lessen the impact of our global society's ocean-sized operations. This is the "harbor philosophy"; its application, says Kohr, is "the only prospect that will enable human society to survive."

13 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 3, 2015

About the author

Leopold Kohr was an economist, jurist and political scientist known both for his opposition to the "cult of bigness" in social organization and as one of those who inspired the Small Is Beautiful movement. For almost twenty years, he was Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the University of Puerto Rico. He described himself as a "philosophical anarchist." His most influential work was The Breakdown of Nations. In 1983, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "for his early inspiration of the movement for a human scale."