Buddhist Economics | The MIT Press Reader
Ernst Fritz Schumacher (1911–1977) published the following version of his essay “Buddhist Economics” in the British magazine Resurgence in 1968. The magazine specialized in decentralization, deurbanization, libertarian technology, and alternative lifestyles. Schumacher discussed the issue of labor, which was fundamental to the psychic equilibrium of the individual and essential to a sense of satisfaction and social integration. In short, Schumacher deconstructed the whole capitalist economy so as to focus on individual well-being rather than on a system of financial exchange.
Born in Germany, Schumacher came to England in 1930 as a Rhodes Scholar to read economics at New College, Oxford. Schumacher was also an expert on farming, active in the Soil Association, which promoted organic farming and challenged the orthodoxy of chemical-based agriculture. He became an economic adviser to the British Control Commission in Germany (1946–1950), and then had a long career in the National Coal Board in Britain. The turning point came in 1955, when he was sent as economic development adviser to the government of Burma. He was supposed to introduce there the Western model of economic growth, but he discovered that the Burmese did not need economic development along Western lines, as they themselves had an indigenous economic system well suited to their conditions, culture, and climate.
Schumacher’s collection of essays, written in the 1950s and 1960s and published in 1973 under the title “Small Is Beautiful: Economics as If People Mattered,” became part of the shared consciousness of the 1970s. The “Buddhist Economics” essay was rewritten for this publication. Opposing small to big was a recurrent theme of the catalog. In simple terms, Schumacher provided convincing arguments for replacing industrial production with hand labor. In fact, Schumacher’s argument was extremely radical, substituting the emphasis on consumption with a value-based ideology, founded on satisfaction in production. —Caroline Maniaque-Benton
