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

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Perhaps it was because of this ability to forecast the future so accurately, or maybe it was first a matter of fortunate timing. Whatever, E.F: Schumacher's book of collected essays, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, was published in 1973. . . within weeks of the oil embargo. And thanks in part to that joltingly firsthand and painfully personal example of the frailties of our "bigger has to be better" way of life, Schumacher's following mushroomed throughout the developed world.

E.F. Schumacher now spends much ofhis time traveling around the planet as the itinerant prophet of what he is convinced is the inevitable dawning of a new human-scale society. One man who recently talked to him says:

"The man twinkles and has a winning way with the language as he speaks his fluent British English with a pronounced German accent. He is manifestly a happy person. He enjoys his life. He's cheered by his thoughts. He is confident in his being. He projects an optimism in the face of the most discouraging facts. His grandfatherly shock of white hair contrasts in an interesting way with his eyes, which sparkle brightly with the idealism of a newly minted teenager. Perhaps these are the reasons the man beguiles so many different audiences in such widely scattered parts of the world. "

The following interview is a composite of a 1974 talk that Bruce Williamson had with "Fritz" Schumacher on the west coast, another discussion that Roger Albright recently conducted with the man on the east coast, and a great deal of supplemental information supplied to MOTHER by Schumacher's devoted followers in England, California, and other parts of the world.

PLOWBOY: Dr. Schumacher, you've been one of the "fair-haired boys" of the economics profession for as long as you've worked in it. John Maynard Keynes, father of today's prevailing school of economic thought, championed one of the first papers you wrote. And you've held responsible positions in the field throughout your career.

But the whole economics profession, from top to bottom, is positively steeped in the understanding that "bigger is always better". Whatever possessed you, then, to begin saying that "small can be beautiful"?

SCHUMACHER: I did not deliberately set out to develop this idea. No. Any economic ideas I've had have come from my larger search for meaning in life.

My father was a professor of economics and I had what was basically a rationalist-scientific upbringing. But that education didn't answer the questions that I, as a human being, struggled with: "Why are we here? What is the meaning of it all? Am I just an accidental collection of atoms," as Bertrand Russell used to say, "or do I have a specific purpose?"

I wanted to know these things so I spent many years studying the whole of what is called "philosophy". But neither my rationalistscientific upbringing nor my study of philosophy gave me the answers I wanted. Nor did my experiments with psychical research.

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