SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

Economics as If People Mattered

E. F. SCHUMACHER

1973

London: Blond & Briggs

Contents

THE MODERN WORLD

Resources

The Third World

Organisation and Ownership

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Few can contemplate without a sense of exhilaration the splendid achievements of practical energy and technical skill, which, from the latter part of the seventeenth century, were transforming the face of material civilisation, and of which England was the daring, if not too scrupulous, pioneer. if however, economic ambitions are good servants, they are bad masters.

The most obvious facts are most easily forgotten. Both the existing

economic order and too many of the projects advanced for reconstructing

it break down through their neglect of the truism that, since even quite

common men have souls, no increase in material wealth will compensate

them for arrangements which insult their self-respect and impair their

freedom. A reasonable estimate of economic organisation must allow for

the fact that, unless industry is to be paralysed by recurrent revolts on

the part of outraged human nature, it must satisfy criteria which are not

purely economic.

R. H. Tawney Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

By and large, our present problem is one of attitudes and

implements. We are remodelling the Alhambra with a steam-shovel, and

are proud of our yardage. We shall hardly relinquish the shovel, which

after all has many good points, but we are in need of gentler and more

objective criteria for its successful use.

Aldo Leopold A Sand County Almanac