Dr. E. F. Schumacher: Author of the Book Small is Beautiful

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

PLOWBOY: Well, I can't argue with you on that point either. What about the expensiveness of modern life as opposed to the inexpensiveness you would rather see?

SCHUMACHER: The giantism and complexity we have just discussed are closely accompanied by a sharply escalating need for capital. You could live quite well in many primitive societies with no money at all and you can still live a pleasant—even a fulfilling—life in some underdeveloped societies, such as I found in Burma, with very little money. But everything in our modern society has a price tag on it and, if you want to get along at all, you'd better be in command of some capital.

This is especially obvious if you want to go into any kind of production . . . if you want to set up a job for yourself. With rare exceptions, only people who are already rich and powerful can create a job in our society. All others are excluded. All others must try to find a job that has been created by the rich.

The effect is, as has been said, that capital employs labor instead of the other way 'round. And this, of course, makes a mockery of the lip service we pay to the ideas of "self-help" and "self-reliance".

If we are really serious about restoring human dignity to our society, we must turn this situation around. We must develop a technology that is labor- instead of capital-intensive. We must make it possible for the "have-nots"—those with only labor to sell—to create their own employment. We must make it possible for the non-rich to admit themselves to the dinner table.

PLOWBOY: And what about violence versus non-violence?

SCHUMACHER: The technology of the modern world is utterly steeped in a violence of the most appalling magnitude. And this violence is just as apparent in what we call "peace" as it is in war.

There is absolutely no limit to the violence that modern man will permit himself in the name of "peaceful economic progress". We are cheerfully prepared to explode nuclear devices underground in order to release a bit of natural gas. We constantly stand ready to curse the earth with the most diabolic and horrifying poisons merely to rid it of anything we choose to consider a weed or pest. For the sake of immediate profits, we increasingly treat even our friends in the plant and animal kingdom—our livestock and food crops—with a callousness and degradation that defies description. We rip the earth apart, turn it upside down, and ruin it for all time with ever-bigger machines for the sake of the same immediate, and fleeting, profits. We increasingly brutalize and debase even ourselves—eliminate the joy from our work, turn ourselves into mere machine tenders, and surround ourselves with ugliness, intolerable noise, and fear of the future—all in the name of "progress".

I do not pretend that we can realize perfect non-violence in this imperfect world. But I do say that it does make a difference in which direction we strive. I say that we should strive towards non-violence rather than violence. Towards an harmonious cooperation with nature rather than a warfare against nature. Towards the noiseless, low-energy, elegant, and economical solutions of nature rather than the noisy, high-energy, brutal, wasteful, and clumsy solutions of our present-day sciences.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print