People do matter, as we have observed from Adam Smith to Amartya Sen. But real people are too often invisible to academic economists, and especially to economic ideologues, most notably Milton Friedman and Arthur Laffer. They have been particularly invisible to predatory corporations and to development authorities in both donor and recipient nations. But that has been slowly changing.
We need a nobler economics that is not afraid to discuss spirit and conscience, moral purpose and the meaning of life, an economics that aims to educate and elevate people, not merely to measure their low-grade behavior. Here it is.
E. F. Schumacher's economics is not part of the dominant style. On the contrary, his deliberate intention is to subvert "economic science" by calling its every assumption into question, right down to its psychological and metaphysical foundations.
Theodore Roszak’s Introduction
Intermediate and appropriate technologies are part of what Schumacher gave us when he called the the assumptions of technological imperialism into question. This Hippo Roller replaces carrying buckets of water on womens’ heads, providing much more water with much less effort.
‘Hippo Roller’ gadget providing access to clean water
The Book
We don’t have room for the whole argument about the failures of forcing First-World economics and technology onto Third-World societies, and calling it a success when multinational corporations get richer, and the poor get poorer. I am going to take it as given that Schumacher is right in his analysis,
The real task may be formulated in four propositions:
First, that workplaces have to be created in the areas where the people are living now, and not primarily in metropolitan areas into which they tend to migrate.
Second, that these workplaces must be, on average, cheap enough so that they can be created in large numbers without this calling for an unattainable level of capital formation and imports.
Third, that the production methods employed must be relatively simple, so that the demands for high skills are minimised, not only in the production process itself but also in matters of organisation, raw material supply, financing, marketing, and so forth.
Fourth, that production should be mainly from local materials and mainly for local use.
and focus on some of the results of this way of thinking, especially what he called Intermediate Technology.
Part I THE MODERN WORLD
- The Problem of Production
- Peace and Permanence
- The Role of Economics
- Buddhist Economics [Right Livelihood]
- A Question of Size
Part II RESOURCES
- The Greatest Resource -- Education
- The Proper Use of Land
- Resources for Industry
- Nuclear Energy -- Salvation or Damnation?
- Technology with a Human Face
Part III THE THIRD WORLD
- Development
- Social and Economic Problems Calling for the Development of Intermediate Technology
- Two Million Villages
- The Problem of Unemployment in India
Part IV ORGANISATION AND OWNERSHIP
- A Machine to Foretell the Future?
- Towards a Theory of Large-Scale Organisation
- Socialism
- Ownership
- New Patterns of Ownership
Epilogue
More Intermediate Technology
Again we do not have room for all of what we want to discuss, so I am giving you only a lightning round.
Wikipedia List of appropriate technology applications
- Small lathes, sometimes known as The Industrial Revolution in a Box
- Microfinance placing single cell phones and batteries in villages, and now solar panels, so that farmers and local industry can contact suppliers and buyers
- The e-Choupal project placing single computers in villages so that farmers can access world commodity prices
- Open-source appropriate technology
- The Sarvodaya Shramadana model of integrated development
- Egg carton manufacturing suitable for small producer groups [I have seen a pre-YouTube documentary on this, but I cannot currently locate it]
- One Laptop Per Child, educational computers with Free Software tools in 100 languages
Further Reading
- Internet Archive Wayback Machine, E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, 1973
- E. F. Schumacher, A Guide for the Perplexed, 1977
- “Buddhist Economics”, E. F. Schumacher, 1968, included in Small is Beautiful
- Schumacher Briefing No. 17, Small is Beautiful in the 21st Century, the Legacy of E. F. Schumacher, by Diana Schumacher, 2011
- The Transcendent Unity of Religions, by Fritjof Schuon
- Tools for Progress, The Intermediate Technology Development Group, 1965
- Practical Action, the current form of ITDG
- Understanding Climate Change Adaptation, Practical Action, 2009
- MIT Course Notes (PDF): Appropriate & Intermediate Technology
- R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
- Whole Earth Catalog
- A Sand County Almanac
- The Sarvodaya Movement: Gandhian Approach to Peace and Non Violence, by S. Narayanasamy. New Delhi, Mittal Publications, 2003.
Schumacher's work belongs to that subterranean tradition of organic and decentralist economics whose major spokesmen include Prince Kropotkin, Gustav Landauer, Tolstoy, William Morris, Gandhi, Lewis Mumford, and, most recently, Alex Comfort, Paul Goodman, and Murray Bookchin.
Videos
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