Decentralism File

Welcome to the Decentralism File!

This digital collection offers over 100 selections of decentralist thought from many different historic eras, authors, and countries. Together, these pieces exhibit the depth and breadth of decentralist thinking across the political, social and economic spheres of human organization, and across time.

As a whole, the curation demonstrates intellectual engagement with the problems of centralized authority and control— namely, problems related to human freedom and effective problem solving.

Foreword

 by John McClaughry

Background

In 1973, the Anglo-German economist E.F. Schumacher popularized the idea of “decentralism” in his seminal book Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. Following his untimely death, organization of a Schumacher society in the UK followed in 1978, and a US counterpart in 1980. The aim of both was to sponsor a series of lectures by thinkers and writers whose work related to Schumacher’s theme. The US society was the work of Robert Swann, Susan Witt, David Ehrenfeld, Kirkpatrick Sale, Ian Baldwin and myself. At the time, I was operating a one-man think tank called the Institute for Liberty and Community from my log cabin in northeastern Vermont.

The history of the E.F. Schumacher Society (renamed the Schumacher Center for a New Economics in 2012) has been recorded elsewhere. Robert Swann and Susan Witt established the Society’s “campus” on community land trust property in South Egremont, Massachusetts.

Suffice it to say that over its forty three years the Society has faithfully sponsored the annual Schumacher Lecture Series, hosted numerous conferences featuring interesting and notable speakers, issued many publications, stimulated the successful Berkshares local currency program, and created an unique repository Library.

From the mid- Seventies, I had discovered in my reading numerous works that I thought fell under the broad title of “decentralism”. I noted the titles, put together summaries on cards, and carelessly tossed articles into file boxes to be dealt with later on.

By the early 2020s, “later on” had become long overdue. Spurred by Susan Witt and Kirkpatrick Sale (whose 1980 work Human Scale remains the best one-volume introduction to the subject), and with a career as a think tank president, speechwriter and sometime state senator behind me, I finally came to grips with the task of making what had become a voluminous but disorganized body of work available to thinkers and scholars. The excellent Schumacher Center Library, with a skilled staff and modern technology, happily provides technical support and a haven for the product.

Scope & Purpose

For over 25 centuries, the idea of a peaceful human-scale, ecologically respectful society has persisted in the face of a long train of conquerors, monarchs, god-kings, despots, war lords, and other authoritarians committed to the consolidation of many or all of the functions of human communities under their centralized management and control. Unfortunately, much of this history has been written about the centralizers, while the more humane voices of the decentralists have been ignored or lost.

The purpose of the Decentralism File is to bring to the modern reader a selection from the writings of advocates in the decentralist tradition, beginning in Lao-Tzu’s China of 550 BC, and continuing through a wide range of cultures and eras into the present day.

The expected appeal of this work is to the people who are developing a consciousness of and desire for a decentralist model for creating a good, peaceful, secure and just society.

Decentralism tends to finds support among :

• classical liberals and libertarians seeking to protect liberty from overgrown and coercive government; 
• conservatives concerned about the preservation of the traditional values and benefits of established communities; 
• progressives alarmed at the domination of large centralized institutions seeking to transfer of power away from large corporations and toward more grassroots and community initiatives;
• friends of self-reliance, mutual aid, small business,  cooperatives, homesteading, and distributism; 
• nonviolent anarchists; 
• communitarians; 
• partisans of national self-determination movements;
• and many others.

Using the File

The File presents a large number of relatively brief selections –  an heuristic guide, rather than an encyclopedia. Selections have been chosen to illustrate a wide range of approaches, issues, subject matters and—within the limits of availability in English—world cultures. Each selection includes a brief explanatory introduction about the author and his or her career and circumstances. The references will guide the interested reader to the original works of those authors (many of which may be found in the Schumacher Center's Library collection).

My working definition in this Decentralism File is this: “Decentralism” describes a mindset or belief system that favors reversing the centralization of power from institutions or systems grown too big, too oppressive, too costly, too unresponsive, too environmentally dangerous, and too inefficient for the creation and preservation of a good, peaceful, secure, sustainable and just society. At the core of decentralism is the principle of maximizing, so far as possible, the sense of belonging and efficacy among a population: the feeling that “what I do, in cooperation with others, can make a positive difference”, whether in governance, economic activity, human welfare, technology, environmental protection, or spiritual renewal.

There are many topics that at least partially intersect with decentralism, and find favor with decentralists.  In an attempt to keep this File manageable, the editors consciously, and perhaps arbitrarily, excluded a number of such topics, many of which have their own traditions, history and literature. Among these are:

• Secession (from a higher to a lower level of centralization)
• Anarchism
• Distributism
• Libertarianism
• Community generally
• Environmentalism
• Populism
• Anti-authoritarianism
• Anti-Globalism 
• Appropriate technology techniques
• Attacks on centralized institutions, corporations, etc. unless the merits of and contrasts with decentralization are discussed 
• Abstract spiritual, philosophical or religious issues as such
• Selections not available in English
• Entire works, as opposed to illustrative and heuristic selections

The File is intended to grow over the years, under the management of the Schumacher Center. As of October, 2023, it begins with the first 115 edited selections from my lifetime collection. There is (always) more to be added, and new authors and items for selection are appearing all the time.

I am enormously indebted to Susan Witt, who has invaluably led the Schumacher Center since its inception 53 years ago, and my friend on the Left Kirkpatrick Sale, the learned and articulate counterbalance to my 18th Century Jeffersonian republicanism.

- John McClaughry
Institute for Liberty and Community
Kirby, Vermont October  2023

Project Contributors

 (Affiliations listed for identification only)