Schumacher likewise warns that a society that views nature purely through the lens of exploitation ruins “any chance of long-term survival ” (1993: 91).īy contrast, he argues that societies should aim “towards the threefold ideal of health, beauty, and permanence” (ibid: 92), which can be taken as an allusion to sustainability. Accepting Polanyi’s thesis, it can be argued that the commodification of land and labour is a dangerous lie, allowing the status of both to be reduced to resources for indiscriminate exploitation (2001: 76). Schumacher attacks the economistic “criterion of success (which) is simply the total quantity of goods produced during a given period of time” (1993: 41), and posits that this represents a privileging of the products of labour over land and labourers themselves. Schumacher’ s analysis here can b e strengthened with reference to Karl Polanyi’s fictitious commodity concept, which asserts that labour and land cannot be commodified because they are not produced for sale (2001: 75). Below, ongoing deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest. Above, Automated Straddles at the Brisbane Patrick Terminal. The election of the Bolsonaro administration in Brazil last year provided an excellent case in point when it promised to stop treating the Amazon rainforest as an “unproductive latifúndio ” (Woodward 2019), the latter term referring to a large portion of unfarmed land, and open up the region for logging and other extractive activities. When applied to natural resources, the results of this sort of economic calculus can be even more devastating.
Worse still, a thing may be destructive but still be considered completely acceptable if it yields economical results (ibid: 27).Īn example of this can be taken from 2015, when the large-scale automation of the Patrick container terminal at Port Botany saw a large number of stevedores laid off under the rationale that the machines replacing them were more fuel efficient and eliminated the risk of injury (Saulwick 2015). Under this ideological framework, Schumacher believes that any impediment to growth is considered shameful. Economics are taught in such a fashion as to by-pass the poor, a situation exacerbated by automation and the lessening of human participation in production (ibid). Schumacher problematises the measurement of wealth according to markers such as Gross National Product, noting that it cannot take into account “the substance of man” (ibid: 8) and grows “irrespective of what has grown and who, if anyone, has benefited” (ibid: 33).He in fact regards a system that organises “work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying or nerve-wracking” as “little short of criminal” (ibid: 39). As such, a worldview that supports greed as a vehicle for growth, as Keynes proposes, can only lead to disaster (ibid: 17). Where, he asks, “’is the rich society that says: ‘Halt! We have enough?’” (ibid:13). Assailing John Maynard Keynes’ suggestion that ethical considerations can be temporarily laid aside in favour of economic growth, Schumacher argues that economic growth has no discernible limit. This drive, he insists, guarantees only mankind’s self-destruction (ibid: 131).
Schumacher’s primary thrust is against what he considers “an almost universal idolatry of gigantism” (1993: 49), the process by which the systematic exploitation of human and natural resources is undertaken by “gigantic groups motivated by greed, envy, and the lust for power” (ibid: 22-23). It situates them in the context of the author’s own experience as a researcher in an Indonesian community that can definitely be said to be putting these ideas into practice. This review examines these ideas, specifically their critique of the economy and articulation of how economics should be conceptualised and practiced. Since then, the ideas expressed in this book have maintained and increased in their relevancy. Ernst Schumacher observed this ongoing crisis and came to this conclusion, prompting him to author Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered in 1973. As problems associated with inequality and environmental degradation mount, it becomes increasingly apparent that these assumptions are flawed. The way our society is governed is largely determined by the assumptions of economists.
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