If it can be said that man collectively shrinks back more and more from the Truth, it can also be said that on all sides the Truth is closing in more and more upon man. It might almost be said that, in order to receive a touch of It, which in the past required a lifetime of effort, all that is asked of him now is not to shrink back. And yet how difficult that is!
— Martin Lings, Ancient Beliefs and Modern Superstition (1964), quoted by Schumacher at the outset of the Epilogue.
Humans have tried hard since the 1970s to live more peacefully with non-human nature. They have utterly failed with accelerating habitat and species destruction. From the point of view of non-human nature, this is the Dis-Information Age: the information contained in genes of species is being lost faster than ever and cannot be replaced. No available information from politicians or philosophers seems to be very effective in helping maintain the planet’s genetic library. We are content to engineer remaining DNA between already living species. This century will be known for its Species Holocaust.
— Peter Warshall, conservationist and author of The Next Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools (1976), in the 25th anniversary edition (1999).
One of the crucial tasks of the new century will be to so shape our economic system so that environmental and social safeguards are built into its design. Advocacy for better working conditions and non-polluting methods of production will certainly play a part in this reshaping, but theoretical knowledge by itself will not necessarily stimulate a change in our consumer habits. Rather, we need to be able to picture the manufacturing processes so clearly that we are compelled to demand secure conditions for the workers, and to restore the waters poisoned by toxic waste…
— Susan Witt, Co-founder of the Schumacher Center, in the 25th anniversary edition (1999).
This is Schumacher’s attempt to sum up his message in the book. It is just a few pages long. But it also allows me to sum up my feelings about the book too…
What the Epilogue says…
“We shrink back from the truth if we believe that the destructive forces of the modern world can be ‘brought under control’ simply by mobilizing more resources – of wealth, education, and research – to fight pollution, to preserve wildlife, to discover new sources of energy, and to arrive at more effective agreements on peaceful co-existence.”
So says Schumacher at the start of his summary. Then he goes into a little more detail…
“It is of little use trying to suppress terrorism if the production of deadly devices continues to be deemed a legitimate employment of man’s creative powers. Nor can the fight against pollution be successful if the patterns of production and consumption continue to be of a scale, a complexity, and a degree of violence which, as is becoming more and more apparent, do not fit into the laws of the universe, to which man is just as much subject as the rest of creation.”
Pollution must be brought under control and mankind’s population and consumption of resources must be steered towards a permanent and sustainable equilibrium, he says – then he quotes an official UK government report (1972) called Pollution: Nuisance or Nemesis?:
“‘Unless this is done, sooner or later – and some believe that there is little time left – the downfall of civilization will not be a matter of science fiction. It will be the experience of our children and grandchildren.’ ”
The report, commissioned by the then brand new Department of the Environment, urges people to buy time so that they can “revise their values and to change their political objectives.”
In the final pages of the book, Schumacher goes back to eternal values:
“Out of the whole Christian tradition, there is perhaps no body of teaching which is more relevant and appropriate to the modem predicament than the marvelously subtle and realistic doctrines of the Four Cardinal Virtues – prudentia, justitia, fortitudo, and temperantia.”
He quotes Josef Pieper, the German catholic writer and philosopher, explaining that Prudentia is not well-served by its current translation: “On the basis of this magnanimous kind of prudence can we achieve justice, fortitude and temperantia, which means knowing when enough is enough.”
The objective is a kind of ‘clear-eyed objectivity’, and here Schumacher suddenly falls back on his old love, Buddhism:
“This clear-eyed objectivity, however, cannot be achieved and prudence cannot be perfected except by an attitude of ‘silent contemplation’ of reality, during which the egocentric interests of man are at least temporarily silenced.”
Then he takes a final swipe at the relativity of the current generation:
“Justice relates to truth, fortitude to goodness, and temperantia to beauty; while prudence, in a sense, comprises all three. The type of realism which behaves as if the good, the true, and the beautiful were too vague and subjective to be adopted as the highest aims of social or individual life, or were the automatic spin-off of the successful pursuit of wealth and power, has been aptly called ‘crackpot-realism’.”
Then the final rhetorical flourish about what we need to do about it:
“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.”
Conclusions: What happened next?
It is true that Schumacher probably believed we would have heeded his warnings by now – or faced the consequences – and would even now be hurtling into a new kind of spiritual conciousness.
The fact that we are clearly not, though, isn’t necessarily a source of despair. There is something implacable about Small is Beautiful which implies that he will be heard in the end. And this time, in such a way that mainstream economics and politics can no longer ignore him.
The other thins that has happened since his death is that – on both sides of the Atlantic – there has been a great deal of practical thinking about what an economics ‘as if people mattered’ might look like.
As a result, there is now a body of practical knowledge, and projects that it is possible to point to, to demonstrate that heterodox economics – as the economists call it – is possible and that it works.
There remains a problem though. Because economists tend to want to systematize and to measure things, to pin them down by plotting them on graphs. The apparent precision, for example, of environmental economics – which is about pricing the environment into the economy.
There remains a tradition that goes the other way, forcing the economy to work with – rather than against the environment. Schumacher is thus the patron saint of a continuing tradition of anti-economics, along with people like John Ruskin and the Distributists.
Although Schumacher may not have won the argument – in fact, precious few people are actually taking part in it – there never was a time of such excitement below the radar of the modern world, as organizations like the New Economics Foundation in London and the Schumacher Center for the New Economics in western Massachusetts – and also now so many others – develop their ideas.
It is possible to be quite optimistic – as Godric Bader was (at least at the start) in the 25th anniversary edition (Hartley & Marks, 1999):
“Consciences are being stirred across the world. Ethics are being taught in business schools. Market economics, currency speculation, soil vitality, air pollution, the destruction of historic social cultures and marginalization of human relationships are all under intense discussion in the media and elsewhere… The continuing violence to the human condition and its environment is being challenged, but often the answer is to apply further violence as a restraint. Possibly even more insidious is the violence that results from the pressure for more intensive growth via capitalism and the many forms of privatization. The real fact of economic life is that the world’s resources (notably fossil fuels, minerals and the land, dependent on sun, rain, wind) are the seedbed of the future, and must be husbanded, recycled, and replaced as one conserves capital, not expended as income.”
Or you can be intensely practical, as Susan Witt was in the same book:
“By intentionally narrowing our choices of consumer goods to those locally made, local currencies allow us to know more fully the story of items purchased, stories that include the human beings that made them and the minerals, rivers, plants, and animals that gave of their substance to form them. Such stories, formed from real life experience, work in the imagination to foster responsible consumer choices and re-establish a commitment to the community. In this sense, local currencies become a tool not only for economic development but for cultural renewal… The multi-layered nature of local currencies has captivated and energized an informal network of practitioners who are issuing scrip in their own communities. When these activists get together, there is no mistaking the positive dynamic at work. The movement has all the energy, idealism, and mobility of young adulthood – still experimenting to find the right form, not afraid to take risks, able to alter direction as needed, and determined to change the economic system to reflect deeply held social and environmental values.”
Clearly, Susan was primarily describing local currencies – and she got the whole global movement together in one room in Bard College in New York state in 2004.
Experimental new kinds of money – by which I don’t mean bitcoin – tend to rise and fall counter-cyclically. So if we are heading for the economic doldrums, as it seems likely that we are, then the mainstream world will be knocking at Susan’s door and others who have kept he Schumacher flag flying over the years.
Re-reading Small is Beautiful again from cover to cover myself, after nearly 50 years, it came as quite a shock – for the following reasons:
- I was fascinated both how relevant and up-to-date it feels.
- Also how religious his focus is – and how Roman Catholic. We tend to think of Schumacher as a Buddhist, but he was also – by the time Small is Beautiful appeared – showing all the enthusiasm for traditional wisdom of the recently converted.
- Except at the end when he focuses on Scott Bader, how very broad he is, how very light on specifics about exactly what needs to be done – it isn’t that kind of book. He wanted to underpin his economic revolution with a change of attitude and a change of heart.
Questions for discussion…
- Why has so it taken mainstream media, politics and economics so long to take Schumacher’s critique seriously?
- Is Schumacher of the political left or right or neither? Or something else entirely?
- How might his ideas win? How can we make them a reality in our own lives?
