E. F. Schumacher

From open-encyclopedia.com - the free encyclopedia.

Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher (1911-1977) was an internationally influential economic thinker with a professional background as a statistician and economist in Britain. He served as Chief advisor to the British Coal Board for two decades. His ideas became well-known in much of the English-speaking world during the 1970s. According to London's Times Literary Supplement of October 6, 1995, Small Is Beautiful ranks among the 100 most influential books published since World War II. Schumacher's basic development theories have been summed up in the catch-phrases: Intermediate Size, and Intermediate Technology.

Life

E.F. Schumacher was born in Bonn, Germany in 1911. His father was a professor of political economy. The younger Schumacher studied in Bonn and Berlin, then afterwards in England as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford in the 1930's, and later at Columbia University in New York City, becoming a professional economist.

Schumacher moved back to England before the Second World War, as he had no intention of living under Nazism. For a period during the War, he was interned on an isolated English farm as an "enemy alien." In these years, Schumacher first captured the famous economist Maynard Keynes's attention through a paper, "Multilateral Clearing," which he had written between sessions working in the fields of the internment camp. Keynes recognized the young German’s understanding and abilities, and the great economist got Schumacher released from internment. Schumacher was able to help the British government with its economic and fináncial mobilization during the War, and Keynes brought him again into the halls of Oxford University.

When Schumacher’s paper was published in the spring of 1943 in Economica, it caused some embarrassment to Keynes who, instead of arranging for its separate publication, had used the essay almost verbatim in his famous "Plan for an International Clearing Union" which the British Government issued as a White Paper a few weeks later.

After the War, Schumacher worked as an economic advisor to the British Control Commission charged with rebuilding the German economy. From 1950 to 1970 he was Chief Economic Advisor to the British Coal Board, one of the world's largest organizations, with 800,000 employees. This career feather was later frequently cited by writers and others introducing Schumacher or his ideas. It is generally felt Schumacher’s farsighted planning aided Britain's Post-War economic recovery. Schumacher predicted the rise of OPEC and the problems of nuclear power. It is said he had been predicting the likelihood of something like the 1973 Arab oil crisis since the late 1950s.

In 1955 Schumacher traveled to Burma as an economic consultant. While there, he developed the set of principles he called "Buddhist economics," based on the belief that an individual needed good work for proper human development. He also proclaimed that "production from local resources for local needs is the most rational way of economic life." Schumacher's experience led him to become a pioneer of what is now called appropriate technology: user-friendly and ecologically suitable technology applicable to the scale of the community. He founded the Intermediate Technology Development Group in 1966. Schumacher’s personal evolution amounted to a drift away from Maynard Keynes’s ideas.

Schumacher became chief editorial writer on economics for London’s The Times. He served as adviser to the India Planning Commission, as well as to the governments of Zambia and Burma - an experience that led to his fascinating essay on "Buddhist Economics."

The publication of his book Small is Beautiful, a collection of essays, brought his ideas to a ready, wider audience. Schumacher became a hero to many in the environmental movement and community movement.

Dr. Schumacher died of a heart attack on 6 September 1977 in Switzerland. The Schumacher College in Totnes, Devon was named after him.

Selected bibliography

• Small is Beautiful: a Study of Economics as if People Mattered (1973, ISBN 0061317780); a 25th anniversary edition was published (ISBN 0881791695)
• A Guide for the Perplexed (1977, ISBN 022401496X; still in paperback, ISBN 0060906111)
• This I Believe and Other Essays (1977; reissued, ISBN 1870098668)
• Good Work (1979, ISBN 0060138572)

External links

• Intermediate Technology Development Group website
• The E.F. Schumacher Society in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, which houses his personal library and archives.
• About E. F. Schumacher

de:Ernst Friedrich Schumacher