EF Schumacher

6 Key excerpts on "EF Schumacher"

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  50 Economics Classics

  Your shortcut to the most important ideas on capitalism, finance, and the global economy

  • Tom Butler Bowdon(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Nicholas Brealey Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Small Is Beautiful foreshadowed the rise of ethical consumers who loudly protest when cheap clothing is the result of sweatshop conditions in Bangladesh, or when the low price of smartphones is only achieved through paying subsistence wages to Chinese workers. His ideas that human justice and environmental health go hand-in-hand, and that simplicity in economics means a less violent world, remain powerful.

  E. F. Schumacher

  Ernst Friedrich “Fritz” Schumacher was born in Bonn in 1911. His father was a political economy professor. After studies in Bonn and Berlin, in 1930 he won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, and then took a further degree in economics at Columbia University in New York.

  Schumacher returned to Germany and married but, horrified by the rise of Nazism, moved to England. As a German national he was interred at Prees Heath camp on the England–Wales border, but after a few months was allowed to return to his farm in rural Northamptonshire. A 1943 paper he had written for

  Economica

  on international clearing mechanisms brought him to the attention of John Maynard Keynes, and he also found a mentor in Lord Beveridge, architect of Britain’s welfare state. In 1945 he became a British citizen and for four years worked for Britain’s Control Commission charged with reconstructing post-war Germany. In 1950 he began a twenty-year career with Britain’s Coal Board. In the mid-1950s he spent several months in Burma, where he developed his concept of Buddhist economics. He also worked as a development adviser in India and Zambia.

  Schumacher died in 1977. His other key book is A Guide for the Perplexed (1977) a philosophical critique of materialism

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  Small is Beautiful in the 21st Century

  The legacy of E.F. Schumacher

  • Diana Schumacher(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Green Books

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 1

  Who was E. F. Schumacher?

  “Knowledge that does not help people to overcome their problems and to lead to a better and happier life is no use.” – Dr A.T. Ariyaratne

  Ernst Friederich (Fritz) Schumacher, the economist-philosopher, was an unlikely pioneer of the Green Movement. He was born in Bonn in 1911, studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and returned to England before the Second World War to avoid living under Nazism. He died prematurely on a lecture visit to Caux, Switzerland, in September 1977.

  Coming from a distinguished intellectual background (his father was the first Professor of Economics at Berlin University), Schumacher himself experienced a short but meteoric academic career in Germany, England and America, becoming assistant lecturer in banking and international finance at Columbia University at the age of 23. However, he always believed that one should strive for practical outcomes to philosophy and economic theory which would benefit people and society. In both his outer and his inner life he was a searcher for truth and dedicated to peace and non-violence. Unlike so many of his contemporary academics, however, he wanted to see these ideals translated into practical actions and right livelihoods.

  He saw the need to provide his colleagues and audiences with philosophical ‘maps’ and guidelines which related to reality. In the process, his life was one of constant questioning, including challenging most of the basic assumptions on which Western economic and academic theory have 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 the everyday questions which interested him most as an economist. Gradually he saw the need to expand the vision of contemporary economists to put human wellbeing at the centre of economic decision-making and everything within the context of environmental sustainability.

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  Key Thinkers on Development

  • David Simon(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Undoubtedly a key landmark in his personal development was the three months he spent in Burma in 1955, as a UN-funded Economic Adviser, on secondment from the NCB. He became fascinated with the Buddhist approach to economics, which makes a distinction between “renewable” and “non-renewable” resources. Here too there was a link with his longstanding interest in employment. In a chapter on “Buddhist Economics” in Small is Beautiful (1974: 47) he comments: The very start of Buddhist economic planning would be a planning for full employment … While the materialist is mainly interested in goods, the Buddhist is mainly interested in liberation … The keynote of Buddhist economics, therefore, is simplicity and non-violence … From an economist’s point of view, the marvel of the Buddhist way of life is the utter rationality of its pattern – amazingly small means leading to extraordinarily satisfactory results. Schumacher was also fascinated with the views of Gandhi, who believed that, “the poor of the world cannot be helped by mass production, only by production by the masses” (p. 128). The visits to Burma and India also fired his interest in technology. In relation to the latter, Schumacher believed that, “the biggest single collective decision that any country in the position of India has to take is the choice of technology” (1974: 175). Rather than unquestioningly transferring technology from rich to poor countries, he argued that what was particularly needed was intermediate technology, that was both superior to outdated and primitive technology and also simpler, cheaper and freer than the technology of the rich. He was sceptical about sophisticated technology, and in particular of its dubious role in alleviating poverty: “Can we develop a technology which really helps us to solve our problems – a technology with a human face?” (p. 123)

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  Fifty Key Thinkers on the Environment

  • Joy A. Palmer, David E. Cooper, David Cooper(Authors)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  He realized that the Western pursuit of unlimited economic growth on a gigantic scale is neither desirable nor practicable for the rest of the world. If anything, the West itself needs to learn the simplicity, spirituality and good sense of other cultures which are not yet in the grip of technological imperatives. ‘In the excitement of the unfolding of his scientific and technological powers, modern man has built a system of production that ravishes nature, and a type of society that mutilates man.’ 3 The turning point came in 1955 when he was sent as Economic Development Advisor to the government of Burma. He was supposed to introduce the Western model of economic growth in order to raise the living standards of the Burmese people. But he discovered that the Burmese needed no economic development along Western lines, as they themselves had an indigenous economic system well suited to their conditions, culture and climate. As a result of his encounter with this profound and practical Buddhist civilization, he wrote his well-known essay, ‘Buddhist Economics’ (1966). Schumacher was perhaps the only Western economist to dare to put these two words, Buddhism and economics, together. The essay was printed and reprinted in numerous journals and anthologies. Recalling his time in Burma he told me that the Burmese needed little advice from him. In fact Western economists could learn a thing or two from the Burmese. They had a perfectly good economic system, which supported a highly developed religion and culture and produced not only enough rice for their own people but also a surplus for the markets of India. He further commented that when he had published his findings under the title of ‘Buddhist Economics’, a number of his economist colleagues had asked, ‘Mr Schumacher, what does economics have to do with Buddhism?’ His answer was simply that ‘Economics without Buddhism is like sex without love’

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  Encyclopedia of Modern Political Thought (set)

  • Gregory Claeys(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • CQ Press

    (Publisher)

  Schumacher’s time at the National Coal Board would be intellectually fruitful. He became familiar with the works of G. I. Gurdjieff (1877–1949) and P. D. Ouspensky (1878–1947) and the search for spiritual evolution as well as the work of the British psychiatrist Maurice Nicoll (1884–1953), who attempted to reconcile the teachings of these thinkers’ path for human development with Christianity. At this time, Schumacher deepened his knowledge of Buddhism through his acquaintance with Edward Conze (1904–79), an Anglo-German Buddhist and scholar. This spiritual education contributed to his embrace of a decentralized approach to economics when he visited Burma as economic adviser to the Burmese government in 1954. His paper emerging from this experience, “Economics in a Buddhist Country” (1955), echoing the economic position held by Mahatma Gandhi, argued for an economy that was built on renewable resources and was sufficient to meet human needs while avoiding materialism. The common core that animated Gandhi’s and a Buddhist approach to economic problems is that labor and the appropriate approach to it is an essential aspect of human spiritual evolution, and not merely effort that is to be avoided as a bad, as it was treated in Western economic theory. This spiritual approach to economics inspired Schumacher’s conception of intermediate technology, a technology that was affordable, sustainable, and within the control of humans, as a tactical approach to economic development. In 1966, Schumacher founded the Intermediate Technology Development Group, a nongovernmental organization, to promote this humane and practical approach to technology.

  After making a strong argument for an economy centered on Buddhist or other traditional values, Schumacher intensified his own study of the Western Christian heritage with particular attention on Thomism and neo-Thomist thinkers such as Etienne Gilson (1884–1978) and Jacques Maritain (1882–1973). Many would see a strong Catholic influence, particularly from Distributists like Hillaire Belloc (1870–1954) and G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936), on Schumacher’s thought, although he did not formally join the Catholic Church until 1971.

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  Key Thinkers on the Environment

  • Joy A. Palmer Cooper, David E. Cooper, Joy A. Palmer Cooper, David E. Cooper(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  3

  The turning point came in 1955 when he was sent as Economic Development Advisor to the government of Burma. He was supposed to introduce the Western model of economic growth in order to raise the living standards of the Burmese people. But he discovered that the Burmese needed no economic development along Western lines, as they themselves had an indigenous economic system well suited to their conditions, culture and climate. As a result of his encounter with this profound and practical Buddhist civilization, he wrote his well-known essay, ‘Buddhist Economics’ (1966). Schumacher was perhaps the only Western economist to dare to put these two words, Buddhism and economics, together. The essay was printed and reprinted in numerous journals and anthologies.

  Recalling his time in Burma he told me that the Burmese needed little advice from him. In fact, Western economists could learn a thing or two from the Burmese. They had a perfectly good economic system, which supported a highly developed religion and culture and produced not only enough rice for their own people but also a surplus for the markets of India. He further commented that when he had published his findings under the title of ‘Buddhist Economics’, a number of his economist colleagues had asked, ‘Mr Schumacher, what does economics have to do with Buddhism?’ His answer was simply that ‘Economics without Buddhism is like sex without love.’ Economics without spiritual values can only give temporary and physical gratification; it cannot provide lasting fulfilment. Buddhist economics includes service to fellow human beings and compassion for all life as well as making a profit and working efficiently. We need both economics and spirituality and we need them simultaneously.

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