The response to our notice of the untimely death of David Boyle demonstrates how much he was held in quiet esteem by those who knew him.
We are fortunate to be able to continue with the chapter-by-chapter reading of David’s study guide, “Small is Beautiful Revisited…50 Years On“. In it he revisits Schumacher’s 1973 landmark text in light of our own time. (Each chapter guide is available on our site in addition to a full downloadable PDF.)
In Chapter 17, Schumacher addresses the ideology and legacy of socialism. As David explains, “this chapter – perhaps more than any of the others – belongs in the mid-1970s, when the nationalized industries of Europe, and the consensus in politics was beginning to break down.” Considering the nationalization of industry into public ownership, Schumacher encourages those who espouse collectivist ideals to think undogmatically about ownership, and that evolving greater democratic accountability and attentiveness to human-scale within industry can lead to greater social and ecological harmony and unfetter human dignity.
ACCESS THE GUIDE
Excerpt from the Guide to Chapter 17
“Both theoretical considerations and practical experience have led me to the conclusion that socialism is of interest solely for its non-economic values and the possibility it creates for the overcoming of the religion of economics. A society ruled primarily by the idolatry of enrichissez-vous, which celebrates millionaires as its culture heroes, can gain nothing from socialization that could not also be gained without it…”
— E. F. Schumacher, opening lines of Ch. 17
“It is now abundantly demonstrated that neither the capitalist nor the state socialist economies can create viable conditions for the people of the world, nor have they been able to help developing countries to determine their own destinies. Capitalism is able to create an abundance of goods and services, but only by undermining future resources, creating increasing pollution, widening the gap between rich and poor, and unhealthily concentrating wealth and power in fewer hands… Endeavors through regulatory forces or wider shareholding in ever-larger corporations are largely ineffective.”— Godric Bader, Scott Bader Commonwealth, in the 25th anniversary edition (1999).
This chapter is one of those that were written especially for this book. At first sight, it seems a little out of place – why is he critiquing socialism rather than any other of the prevailing ideologies, after all?
But the answer becomes clear as the chapter goes along…
What the Chapter Says…
“Many socialists in so-called advanced societies, who are themselves – whether they know it or not – devotees of the religion of economics, are today wondering whether nationalization is not really beside the point,” says Schumacher, introducing the problem as he sees it.
“If the purpose of nationalization is primarily to achieve faster economic growth, higher efficiency, better planning, and so forth, there is bound to be disappointment. The idea of conducting the entire economy on the basis of private greed, as Marx well recognized, has shown an extraordinary power to transform the world.”
What Happened Next…
“Yet, it seems,” said Schumacher, “large-scale organization is here to stay. Therefore it is all the more necessary to think about it and to theorize about it. The stronger the current, the greater the need for skilful navigation. The fundamental task is to achieve smallness within large organizations.”
“Once a large organization has come into being, it normally goes through alternating phases of centralizing and decentralizing, like swings of a pendulum. Whenever one encounters such opposites, each of them with persuasive arguments in its favour, it is worth looking into the depth of the problem for something more than compromise, more than a half-and-half solution. Maybe what we really need is not either/or but the-one-and-the-other-at-the-
same-time.”
But, in fact, Schumacher is just as critical of the private capitalist sector:
“The strength of the idea of private enterprise lies in its terrifying simplicity. It suggests that the totality of life can be reduced to one aspect – profits. The businessman, as a private individual, may still be interested in other aspects of life – perhaps even in goodness, truth and beauty – but as a businessman he concerns himself only with profits.”
Everything seems to be crystal clear once you have reduced reality to only one of its thousand aspects:
“Let no one befog the issue by asking whether a particular action is conducive to the wealth and well-being of society, whether it leads to moral, aesthetic, or cultural enrichment. Simply find out whether it pays: simply investigate whether there is an alternative that pays better. If there is, choose the alternative … It is no accident that successful businessmen are often astonishingly primitive; they live in a world made primitive by this process of reduction. They fit into this simplified version of the world and are satisfied with it.”
There are two ideologies – two attitudes to enterprise, he says:
- Private enterprise, characterized “by a strict limitation of outlook to ‘profitability’ and nothing else.” This tends towards “the destruction of the dignity of man”.
- The ‘idealistic’ conception of public enterprise, based on “the need for a comprehensive and broad humanity in the conduct of economic affairs.” This tends towards what he calls “a chaotic kind of inefficiency”.
Schumacher says that we have to understand that both sides are valid and have important points to make:
“There is therefore really no strong case for public ownership if the objectives to be pursued by nationalized industry are to be just as narrow, just as limited as those of capitalist production: profitability and nothing else. Herein lies the real danger to nationalization in Britain at the present time, not in any imagined inefficiency.”
The problem lies not either in “the original socialist inspiration nor any actual failure in the conduct of the nationalized industry,” says Schumacher. It lies in a “lack of vision on the part of the socialists themselves… They will not recover, and nationalization will not fulfil its function, unless they recover their vision.”
This, finally, is Schumacher’s complaint about socialism:
“What is at stake is not economics but culture: not the standard of living but the quality of life. Economics and the standard of living can just as well be looked after by a capitalist system, moderated by a bit of planning and re-distributive taxation. But culture and, generally, the quality of life, can now only be debased by such a system.”
So what should the political left do?
“Socialists should insist on using the nationalized industries not simply to out-capitalize the capitalists – an attempt in which they may or may not succeed — but to evolve a more democratic and dignified system of industrial administration, a more humane employment of machinery, and a more intelligent utilization of the fruits of human ingenuity and effort. If they can do that, they have the future in their hands. If they cannot, they have nothing to offer that is worthy of the sweat of free-born men.”
CONTINUE TO ‘WHAT HAPPENED NEXT’?
In “What Happened Next?” David Boyle reviews the historical trajectory of nationalization and privatization of utilities from the perspective of the United Kingdom. Both sides of the political aisle, David maintains, must “begin to understand Schumacher’s message – that the ownership doesn’t matter nearly as much as the scale.”
To explore more deeply the themes put forward in Small Is Beautiful, visit our new Decentralism File: featuring 120+ heuristic selections of decentralist thought spanning 2,500 years.
In Community,
Staff of the Schumacher Center