Further thoughts on E.F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful
How to win in '26 and '28
December 5, 2024
Further thoughts on E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful, and thank you for following me down this rabbit hole. I think it was my post-election exasperation with the status quo that led me to return to this book. I remember it being transformational when I read it in college and was thinking a lot about social justice and global conflict. Then life took over, and kids, and mortgages, etc., and the book’s message got lost among life’s exigencies. In the intervening years - no surprise - global political and economic conditions have only gotten exponentially worse.
I guess it’s not surprising that Schumacher was advocating such “radical” thinking at a time when the industrialized world was caught up in a violent struggle over methods of distributing wealth. The world’s two superpowers, the United States and the U.S.S.R., were battling for the supremacy of their economic systems - capitalism vs. communism. He was advocating for neither. He was advocating for a sustainable future, one in which human-scaled economic thinking would rein in the excesses of large scale political and economic systems and create the possibility of eliminating conflict over resources and of peace among societies.
The book’s practical utility today to me is to provide an important reference point and philosophical foundation for how I think the Democratic Party can move to a place that resonates with working people across the country. It has helped to ground me again in the reasons I became a Democrat in the first place and to strengthen my resolve to move the Party to places I regard as centrist, humane, sustainable, essential to the survival of the species and the planet.
So, what is the “big think” platform that will win the popular vote in 2026 and 2028? It can’t be anything like Schumacher’s ideal view of the world. But I suggest assessing new policy proposals through his lens for a minute before letting them out into the world. Schumacher’s point of view is a valuable reference point. Biden’s IRA and other legislative achievements, for example, were actually Schumacher-esque. They focused on producing positive economic results at the local level while moving our economy away from extractive industries and toward renewable energy sources and reduced pollution. In an era of tortured political thinking, this common sense approach was brilliant. Thank you, Joe.
Biden has not gotten enough credit from the “legacy media” – I don’t know what else to call them anymore - for those legislative achievements. They were big, but they were complicated and pretty technical and, like most big things, they take a while to hit the ground. Biden should get credit not just for the substance of the acts, but also for having the guts to do big and important things whose impacts won’t be felt politically in the near term.
I suggest that we not run away from the Biden years, but that we embrace the great work his administration accomplished and sell it big time. It’s easy to sell. It’s kitchen table-ready. It’s well-paying new jobs in growth industries that make the world safer for our children and their children. It uses Federal dollars to leverage massive private investment. It improves, hardens and future-proofs our infrastructure. It is not soft; it’s good old fashioned, hard-headed common sense. Thank you, Joe. It’s a bright and clear view of the future contrasted with dark and dirty world being sold by the fossil fuel industries who own the Republican Party. It’s a world where conflict with and reliance on other nations is reduced, not heightened. It’s not E.F. Schumacher’s Garden of Eden, but it’s headed to a pragmatic, industrialized version of it.
Lastly, I also find it interesting and wonderful to note – and this observation would not have occurred to me prior to the rise of Trump and the MAGA movement - that we live in a country where “radical” ideas like those in Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful can be taught at public universities. May it ever be thus.
I agree. Periodically, advances in technology change the world - tools, the printing press, the steam engine . . . . television and computers are two more. As a good friend of mine recently wrote in his new song, "the world's on fire, people just play with their phones". Heads up, stay alert, soldier on. Thank you.
William, can't argue with you on anything you've said about Biden's programs. But they are a tad away from immediate implemention. And that, I think, is one major drawback given the current state of everyone's desire for immediate results. Our, and the world's, culture has changed from an ability to evaluate anything longer-term. I think this desire for immediacy and spectacular packaging has so changed world culture that any idea demanding more than instantaneous understanding and results is doomed to failure.
Before I came to understand the importance of this cultural shift, I would often ponder, 'why are the American people not voting in their own self-interest? Why don't they understand that Biden's programs will indeed bring them the stability and economic uplifting that they constantly say they want -- kitchen table issues, for shorthand?' At some point between the 60's/70's and now, we as a culture have experienced a desire to be constantly entertained and mentally occupied. Ideas such as Schumacher's require reflection and ever-expanding regard.
But Trump is no ordinary politician and his performative delivery style is very much in line with a cult figure. I recall seeing an interviewer asking a MAGA rally attender why they liked Trump. The reply: 'he's fun.' Can you imagine anyone saying that after hearing Eisenhower, for example, or even the charismatic Kennedy? I fear this cult worship, and the superficiality and immediacy that comes in its wake, has changed us all.
Lastly, I submit one observation: when you are in a waiting room, like a hospital for example, or even just walking down a busy street, how many people are head-down glued to their media feeds? In my experience, almost all. No thought that perhaps something in their surroundings might be of interest to observe and then think about. Then, there's the educational issue...