Ernst Friedrich (Fritz) Schumacher, economist-philosopher was an unlikely pioneer of the Green movement[1], his book Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if people mattered sets out his critique of Western economics, published during the energy crisis of 1973 and emergence of globalization, and is cited as one of the 100 most influential books since the second world war by the TLS. Schumacher’s book influenced a developing consciousness of environmental awareness and interest in sustainability. Schumacher’s insistence that the earth’s resources are finite and thereby should not be assumed as conditions to create capital. His concept of Buddhist Economics and appropriate scale of technology underpin this project. “Buddhist economics must be very different from the economics of modern materialism, since the Buddhist sees the essence of civilisation not in a multiplication of wants but in the purification of human character.”[2]
Born in Bonn in 1911, his father was the first professor of economics at Berlin university. Schumacher formed an academic career in Germany, Britain and the US as assistant lecturer in banking and international finance at Columbia ages 23 but “he always believed one should strive for practical outcomes to philosophy and economic theory which would benefit people in society.”[3]
“He saw the need to provide his colleagues and audience with philosophical maps and guidelines which related to reality.”[4]
“In the process, his life was one of constant questioning, including challenging most of the basic assumptions on which Western economic and academic theory has been based. What are the ‘laws’ that govern the ‘science of economics’? What is the true value of money? What is the relationship between time and money? What is the real worth of work? And of development? These were everyday questions which interested him most as an economist.”[5]
Schumacher fled Hitler’s Germany in 1937 with his wife and son and came to London where he was granted British citizenship, but was briefly interned and then hidden away by his family as a farm laborer in Northamptonshire. With the support of John Maynard Keynes worked for the government at the Oxord Insitute of Statistics, working on ideas of debt relief and international debt clearing schemes. After the war he was appointed to the Coal Board in 1950 and became Head of the Soil Association.
“He had experienced poverty, social injustice and alienation first-hand, and felt that with his uniquely varied and practical background he had something useful to contribute. As an economist he was derided by his peers for pointing out the fallacy of continuous growth I a finite world dependent on limited fossil fuel resources, but at the same time he became a champion of the poor, the marginalized and those who felt misgivings over the shallowness of contemporary values. This made him a cult figure of the hippie movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with over 5000 students attending some of the lectures he gave in California on his last visit to the United States in 1977.” [6]
Schumacher criticized the way that conventional economists measure the standard of living by the amount of consumption, assuming that those that consume more are better off and in order to live well we must consume at least as much if not more than our neighbor, encouraging a keeping up with the joneses as a measure of a person’s success. Modern society is consumer-driven. ‘We are not people, still less people with souls. We are consumers, mere economic functionaries, serving economic growth.’[7]
“Today, we suffer from an almost universal idolatry of giantism. It is therefore necessary to insist on the virtues of smallness – where this applies.”[8]
Macrophilia the cult of bigness is “the prevailing trend in economic thinking for almost 200 years. It is rooted in the theory of economies of scale which, alongside the hidden hand of market forces and the dogma of economic growth, is a cornerstone of conventional economics.“[9]
“Macrophilia fails to allow for the small fry of economic life and thus excludes a substantial proportion of the population from its economic caluclations and planning.”[10]
“Schumacher wrote of a ‘crisis in the reactions of human nature to our economic way of life which worships giantism and threatens to submerge the human person.’ In other words, size matters, but not in the way that the economists imagine. It matters not because big is best but because small is beautiful. ‘After all,’ Schumacher continued, ‘people are small in size and can confidently cope only with people-sized problems. Giantism in oganisation as in technology may occasionally give them a feeling of elation, but it makes them unhappy. All modern literature is full of this unhappiness, and so is modern art.’ “[11]
“What is it that we really require from the scientists and technologists? I should answer: We need methods and equipment which are
- cheap enough so that they are accessible to virtually everyone;
- suitable for small-scale application and
- compatible with man’s need for creativity
Out of these three characteristics is born
non-violence and a relationship of man to nature which guarantees permanence.
If only one of these things is neglected, things are bound to go wrong.”[12]
[1] Diana Schumacher p9 ‘Small is Beautiful in the 21st Century: The Legacy of E. F. Schumacher,’ Green Books, 2011: UK
[2] E. F. Schumacher p46 in ‘Small is Beautiful: A study of economics as if people mattered’ published by Abacus, 1983 edition: UK
[3] Diana Schumacher p9 ‘Small is Beautiful in the 21st Century: The Legacy of E. F. Schumacher,’ Green Books, 2011: UK
[4] Ibid, p9
[5] Ibid, p10
[6] p11 Diana Schumacher p9 ‘Small is Beautiful in the 21st Century: The Legacy of E. F. Schumacher,’ Green Books, 2011: UK
[7] Joseph Pearce, p66 in ‘Small is Still Beautiful’ Schumacher quoted in Pearce, 2001, HarperCollins: UK
[8] E. F. Schumacher, pg 54 in ‘Small is Beautiful’, Abacus, 1983 edition: UK
[9] Joseph Pearce, p77 Small is Still Beautiful’, 2001, HarperCollins: UK
[10] Ibid p79
[11] E. F. Schumacher quoted in Pearce, p80 Ibid
[12] E. F. Schumacher p27 in ‘Small is Beautiful’ Abacus edition, 1983: UK
Torquil Norman’s home-based research centre & container vehicles pre Bluebird