It goes without saying that E. F. Schumacher has had a major impact on my life, personal and professional.
I discovered Schumacher and “Small is Beautiful” in 1979. To be precise: on August 11, 1979. I had written the date I purchased the book on the first page. At that time I was an undergraduate studying economics at the University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
When I saw the book in the window of a second-hand book shop, I was, very much intrigued by the title and also the sub-title Economics as if people mattered which caught my imagination. Thus, I bought the book and began to read it immediately. I could not put it down and finished it in a few days.
For sure I didn't understand every word, indeed I suspect I was lost at times, but it thrilled me. Here was a new way of looking at many questions in my head about economics and the economy, an approach that I felt in my enthusiasm was so absolutely right that it couldn't possibly be opposed. I was instantly converted to a new way of looking at my personal life as well as the socio-political and economic concepts. I suspect I became a `small is beautiful' man!
“In the name of profit and technological progress, Schumacher argued, modern economic policies had created rampant inefficiency, environmental degradation and dehumanising labour conditions. Ever bigger machines, entailing ever bigger concentrations of economic power and exerting ever greater violence against the environment, do not represent progress: they are a denial of wisdom. Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful," he wrote.
Read the full article:
Small is Beautiful:
The Wisdom of E.F. Schumacher
16 August 1911-4 September 1977
"Perhaps we cannot raise the winds. But each of us can put up the sail, so that when the wind comes we can catch it." - E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful
Kamran Mofid
(Written in appreciation of E.F. Schumacher and in celebration of his centenary)
Small is Beautiful: The Wisdom of E.F. Schumacher
Also see:
Alistair McGowan praises green economist E F Schumacher
BBC News 8 November 2013
"Alistair McGowan headed to the allotments to explain why his favourite thinker is the green economist E F Schumacher, who is best known for his 1973 book Small Is Beautiful.
The impressionist, actor, and environmentalist said the German's book was still relevant 40 years on: "People thought he was ahead of his time then, but actually we are still catching up with theories now."
Watch the video: Alistair McGowan praises green economist E F Schumacher Close