Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered

by Ernst F. Schumacher

yardage.

'education for leisure'

'transfer of technology',

One of the main reasons why it is bad and why it can still survive in spite of its badness, is this erroneous view that the 'problem of production' has been solved.

egregious

Modern man does not experience himself as a part of nature but as an outside force destined to dominate and conquer it.

The illusion of unlimited power, nourished by astonishing scientific and technological achievements, has produced the concurrent illusion of having solved the problem of production.

A businessman would not consider a firm to have solved its problems of production and to have achieved viability if he saw that it was rapidly consuming its capital.

One reason for overlooking this vital fact is that we are estranged from reality and inclined to treat as valueless everything that we have not made ourselves.

trebled;

bland

aspersions?

squander

prominence.

fad,

avail.

envisaged

queasy

devise

ail.

suffices

forlornly,

Why ask for virtues, which man may never acquire, when scientific rationality and technical competence are all that is needed?

hindrance,

sagely

legatees.

An attitude to life which seeks fulfilment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth - in short, materialism - does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited.

We find, therefore, that the idea of unlimited economic growth, more and more until everybody is saturated with wealth, needs to be seriously questioned on at least two counts: the availability of basic resources and, alternatively or additionally, the capacity of the environment to cope with the degree of interference implied.

Keynes, in the essay from which I have quoted already, advised us that the time was not yet for a 'return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue - that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable'.

If human vices: such as greed and envy are systematically cultivated, the inevitable result is nothing less than a collapse of intelligence. A man driven by greed or envy loses the power of seeing things as they really are, of seeing things in their roundness and wholeness, and his very successes become failures. If whole societies become infected by these vices, they may indeed achieve astonishing things but they become increasingly incapable of solving the most elementary problems of everyday existence. The Gross National Product may rise rapidly: as measured by statisticians but not as experienced by actual people, who find themselves oppressed by increasing frustration, alienation, insecurity, and so forth. After a while. even the Gross National Product refuses to rise any further, not because of scientific or technological failure, but because of a creeping paralysis of non-co-operation, as expressed in various types of escapism on the part, not only of the oppressed and exploited, but even of highly privileged groups.

I suggest that the foundations of peace cannot be laid by universal prosperity, in the modem sense. because such prosperity, if attainable at all. is attainable only by cultivating such drives of human nature as greed and envy, which destroy intelligence, happiness, serenity, and thereby the peacefulness of man.

The exclusion of wisdom from economics, science. and technology was something which we could perhaps get away with for a little while. as long as we were relatively unsuccessful; but now that we have become very successful. the problem of spiritual and moral truth moves into the central position.

the central concept of wisdom is permanence.

Gandhi said, that 'Earth provides enough to satisfy~ every man's need, but not for every man's greed'.

'what were luxuries for our fathers have become necessities for us',

The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom. It is also the antithesis of freedom and peace, Every increase of needs tends to increase one's dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control, and therefore increases existential fear. Only by a reduction of needs can one promote a ...

Scientific or technological 'solutions' which poison the environment or degrade the social structure and man himself are of no benefit, no matter how brilliantly conceived or how great their superficial attraction.

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.

Small-scale operations. no matter how numerous, are always less likely to be harmful to the natural environment than large-scale ones, simply because their individual force is small in relation to the recuperative forces of nature.

ample

decreed

'War is a judgment,' said Dorothy I,. Sayers, 'that overtakes societies when they have been living upon ideas that conflict too violently with the laws governing the universe., Never think that wars are irrational catastrophes: they happen when wrong ways of thinking and living bring about intolerable situations.

abate

moronic

These are the real causes of war, and it is chimerical to try to lay the foundations of peace without removing them first. It is doubly chimerical to build peace on economic foundations which, in turn, rest on the systematic cultivation of greed and envy, the very forces which drive men into conflict.

resisting the temptation of letting our luxuries become needs;

scrutinising our needs to see if they cannot be simplified and reduced.

appalling

inasmuch

vouchsafe