Schumacher : Driving Towards Real Solutions

Dear Reader,

Forgive me! By referring to "Schumacher" and "Driving" in the title of this article you must have thought I was referring to Michael, the racing car master! No; instead I was referring to Ernst (E F) Schumacher who was a master in quite a different field and who came to fame in the 1970s with his book Small Is Beautiful (1973).

I read this seminal book in 1975, just at a time when I was taking his subject matter seriously. The following year I heard him give an inspiring talk at Euston, London. In 1977 he died. Thus his life span (1911-1977) made him a contemporary of my father (1910-1976). The two had certain but odd similarities and, therefore, Schumacher has a special significance for me in that way, apart from the sense of his philosophy and map for man's survival.

Bio:

Schumacher was born in Bonn, Germany in 1911. His father was a professor of political economy. The younger Schumacher studied in Bonn and Berlin, then from 1930 in England as a Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford and later at Columbia University in New York City, earning a diploma in economics. He then worked in business, farming and journalism.

Schumacher moved back to England before World War II as he had no intention of living under Nazism. For a period during the War, he was interned on an isolated English farm as an "enemy alien." In these years, Schumacher captured the attention of the famed economist John Maynard Keynes with a paper entitled "Multilateral Clearing" that he had written between sessions working in the fields of the internment camp. Keynes recognised the young German's understanding and abilities and was able to have Schumacher released from internment.

Schumacher helped the British government mobilise economically and financially during World War II, and Keynes found a position for him at Oxford University.

After the War, Schumacher worked as an economic advisor to, and later Chief Statistician for, the Allied Commission|British Control Commission which was charged with rebuilding the German economy From 1950 to 1970 he was Chief Economic Adviser to the National Coal Board, one of the world's largest organizations, with 800,000 employees. 

The main influences of the Small Is Beautiful (1973) book:

In 1955 Schumacher travelled to Burma as an economic consultant. While there, he developed the set of principles he called "Buddhist economics", based on the belief that individuals needed good work for proper human development. He also proclaimed that "production from local resources for local needs is the most rational way of economic life.".

He travelled throughout many Third World countries, encouraging local governments to create self-reliant economies. Schumacher's experience led him to become a pioneer of what is now called appropriate technology: user-friendly and ecologically suitable technology applicable to the scale of the community.

His theories of development have been summed up for many in catch phrases like "intermediate size," and "intermediate technology." Amongst other activties, in 1970 he became the president of the Soil Association.

Thus, Small Is Beautiful  was a book about job satisfaction as well as the proper scaling of business institutions and encouraged employee involvement in their employers' business.

For Schumacher there were three main culprits that had all been corrosive agents in a world which had lost sight of individual responsibility and a world bound to the parameters of realism and science. These were Freud, Marx and Einstein. 

Freud had made perception subjective through his teaching that perception was subject to the complex interplay of the ego and the id, literally rendering it self-centred. This led inevitably to a change of attitude in human relations where self-fulfilment took precedence over the needs of others. Marx, by seeking a scapegoat in the bourgeoisie, had replaced personal responsibility with a hatred for others. His fault lay in his blaming others for problems with society. 

Einstein had supposedly undermined belief in absolutes with his insistence on the relativity of everything. The application of 'relativity' in all other fields including morality, led (through others, not Einstein) to the rejection of moral codes and responsibility. Einstein, however, had a deep spiritual truth of his own that differed from how others applied his purely scientific theories.

In his third and last book, A Guide For The Perplexed (1977), Schumacher finished a deep but inspiring philosophical exploration into 'Four Fields of Knowledge' (involving human thought and attitudes) by saying (my highlights):

More and more people are beginning to realise that 'the modern experiment' has failed. It received its early impetus by what I have called the Cartesian revolution, which, with implacable logic, separated man from those Higher Levels that alone can maintain his humanity. Man closed the gates of Heaven against himself and tried, with immense energy and ingenuity, to confine himself to the Earth. He is now discovering that the Earth is but a transitory state, so that a refusal to reach for Heaven means an involuntary descent into Hell.

It may conceivably be possible to live without churches, but it is not possible to live without religion, that is without systematic work to keep in contact with and develop towards Higher Levels than those of 'ordinary life', with all its pleasure and pain, sensation and gratification, refinement or crudity - whatever it may be. The modern experiment to live without religion has failed, and once we have understood this, [then] we know what our 'post-modern' tasks really are.

Significantly, a large number of young people (of varying ages!) are looking in the right direction. They feel it in their bones that the ever more successful solution of convergent problems is of no help at all - it may even be a hindrance - in learning how to cope, to grapple with, the divergent problems that are the stuff of real life.

This was written in 1977, let us remember: 45 years ago. What followed this book and his death was 'The Winter of Discontent' (of 1978/79) and the reactionary election of Margaret Thatcher into government, bringing forth (in partnership with a similar trend in the USA) a right-wing reaction that, for the next 40 years plus, took people away from the spiritual reflection of the kind Schumacher referred to and which he thought was taking over at the time of his writing.

The educational and work environments have travelled so much further away from reality in the last 45 years but are being forced to ask questions. Today's Climate Change (and much else) has brought us back to a very similar position to that which Schumacher saw in 1977. 

Schumacher seemed to infer that we cannot (nor should not) attempt to escape from the permanent truths that surround us in favour of transitory pleasures - which only end in tears, and more tears the more we try to evade those truths in favour of transient pastimes and thinking.

He continued, in his summing up:

The art of living is always to make a good thing out of a bad thing. Only if we know that we have actually descended into infernal regions where nothing awaits us 'but the cold death of society and the extinguishing of all civilised relations', can we summon the courage and imagination needed for a 'turning around', a metanoia.

This then leads to seeing the world in a new light, namely as a place where the things modern man continuously talks about and always fails to accomplish can actually be done. The generosity of the Earth allows us to feed all mankind; we know enough about ecology to keep the Earth a healthy place; there is enough room on the Earth, and there are enough materials so that everybody can have adequate shelter; we are quite competent enough to produce sufficient supplies of necessities so that no one need live in misery.

Above all, we shall then see that the economic problem is a convergent problem that has been solved already: we know how to provide enough, and do not require any violent, inhuman, aggressive technologies to do so. There is no economic problem and, in a sense, there never has been.

But there is a moral problem, and moral problems are not convergent, capable of being solved so that future generations can live without effort; no, they are divergent problems, which have to be understood and transcended.

Can we rely on it that a 'turning around' will be accomplished by enough people quickly enough to save the modern world? This question is often asked, but whatever answer is given to it will mislead. The answer 'Yes' would lead to complacency; the answer 'No' to despair. It is desirable to leave these perplexities behind us and get down to work.

Thus, E F Schumacher asserted that it is the task of philosophy to provide a map of life and knowledge which exhibits the most important features of life in their proper prominence. Without the qualitative concepts of “higher” and “lower” it is impossible to even think of guidelines for living that lead beyond individual or collective utilitarianism and selfishness.

The questions: How am I to conduct my life? What is the nature of art and nature? What is the meaning of religion? are restored to daylight on Schumacher's map of life by his maxim 'if in doubt show it prominently'. Science is therefore restored to its home territory - its own place - and its growing imperialism over the fields is reserved.

More particularly, Schumacher correctly predicted how the rich and the largest institutions would (unfairly) control events and... 

... the world’s cheap and simple fuels could easily become dear and scarce long before the poor countries had acquired the wealth, education, industrial sophistication, and power of capital accumulation needed for the application of alternative fuels on any significant scale.

Our task – and the task of all education – is to understand the present world, the world in which we live and make our choices. An ounce of practice is generally worth more than a ton of theory.

Schumacher was a real prophet of our times, and one which academics have returned to - particularly in the last two decades and for clear reasons. The Schumacher Institute has successfully developed his main themes.

Influenced by Eastern thought late in his career, he was a most interesting - and underestimated - man.

Thank you for reading this.