[Nettime-bold] Loka Alert: E.F. SCHUMACHER: A RETROSPECT

[geert lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

From: <Loka@Loka.org>
Subject: E.F. SCHUMACHER: A RETROSPECT (Loka Alert 8:6)


Loka Alert 8:6
November 1, 2001

                  E.F. Schumacher: A Retrospect and 
                 Reflection After September 11, 2001
                          By Bruce Piasecki
  
   When E.F.Schumacher visited the Cornell University (Ithaca, NY) 
campus in the late l970s, he made a strange request. He wanted to 
speak at Sage Chapel, the old red stone brick sanctuary, not far from 
the equally odd and submerged Cornell campus bookstore. Sage at the 
time was seldom frequented by students, let alone the future business 
leaders that needed to hear his words. I protested mildly, as the 
precocious undergraduate who first invited this past chair of the 
British Coal Board during World War II to campus, but he prevailed. 
To my surprise, the Chapel was full, and the master was at his prime. 
I left that cool Fall night feeling changed. Everything Schumacher 
said, from his critique of centralized power systems, to his love of 
the poor, sounded right to me. Little did I know how right.
 
   The next week I wrote my first published book review, a 
glorification of _Small Is Beautiful_.  I still appreciate the power 
and grace of his mind, and the lasting value and good sense of this 
classic text in appropriate technology, world affairs, and the logic 
and need for properly scaled organizations and programs. I picked up 
_Small Is Beautiful_ again after the horrific terrorist attacks of 
September 11, and found both solace and insight in those pages now 
first shared in l973.
 
   Across time, E.F.Schumacher has influenced directly the likes of 
Amory Lovins, whose l979 classic on decoupling energy consumption and 
GNP, can now be seen as the first child of consequence following 
Schumacher. I can see the fingerprints of Schumacher, for instance, 
in the new book by my friend and colleague Peter Asmus, whose 
_Reaping the Wind_ (Island Press, 2001) verifies why wind turbines 
are a small but powerful instance of distributed power now available 
at the right price in the right locations across the globe. It is 
hard, in short, to visit the public affairs or environmental ethics 
sections of most bookstores without seeing this large shadow of 
Schumacher on the shelf of both doers and thinkers.
 
   What follows itemizes how the work of E.F.Schumacher has shaped 
the last three decades. As I was asked to write this with reference 
to how Schumacher influences my own books and consulting practice, 
please forgive the occasional notation on how this master in word and 
deed also redirected and focused my topics of concern. Just as 
another late 20th Century creative force Federico Fellini showed me 
how a corporate meeting can have the feel of a circus in its 
recurrent mixture of dramatic technique, precision, and 
improvisation, _Small Is Beautiful_ in particular, and the works and 
arguments of E.F. Schumacher in general, have helped me choose my 
battles and arguments. He set the table, upon which many of us still 
feast.
 
TELLING THE TRUTH
 
   Schumacher had that rare gift of telling the truth. Note the 
astonishing lack of high or distracting rhetoric in these now classic 
claims:
 
1. "The future cannot be forecast, but it can be explored" (page 226, 
in the chapter exploding the myths of economic predictability 
called "A Machine to Foretell the Future?")
 
2. "To talk about the future is useful only if it leads to action 
now." (page l9, in his still stunning critique of modern 
manufacturing called "The Problem of Production")
 
3. "The technology of mass production is inherently violent, 
ecologically damaging, self-defeating in terms of non-renewable 
resources, and stultifying for the human person. The technology of 
production by the masses, making use of the best knowledge and 
experience, is conductive to decentralization, compatible with the 
laws of ecology, gentle in its use of scare resources, and designed 
to serve the human person instead of making him the servant of 
machines. I have named it intermediate technology to signify that it 
is vastly superior to the primitive technology of bygone ages but at 
the same time much simpler, cheaper, and freer than the super 
technology of the rich." (page l45, from the now classic 
chapter "Technology with a Human Face")
 
   You can see Schumacher's redemptive imagination at work in the 
phrase "designed to serve the human person", but you can also sense, 
even in these short excerpts, the bold simplicity and strong 
authenticity of his work. The entire book, all 271 pages of it, feel 
to me like the conversations I have with my wife and best friends on 
the way down from a long luxurious Adirondack high peaks hike. After 
all the huffing and puffing that gets us up the mountain, when the 
limbs are warm and exercised, a bold plainness embraces our speech. 
Certainly any good book is rehearsed and refined, more like a fine 
speech by former U.S. President Abe Lincoln than a out in the woods 
talk, but the grandness in the style and vision of Schumacher is its 
experienced plainness. Let's look a little closer at this disarming 
honesty.
 
   During the late l980s, after finishing two books on hazardous 
waste management in Europe and the United States, I decided that I 
was writing in black and white, books that were too technical and 
legalistic. In reviewing _Small is Beautiful_, among others, I 
decided, with the help of a new literary agent, to try my hand in 
color.  Most of us know that trying to write about social and 
ecological problems in color is counterintuitive. It is not easy, at 
least for me, to transcend the inherently legal and technical 
densities of the subject matter, from alternatives to the land 
disposal of chlorinated hydrocarbons to the competing computer models 
now defining our best options regarding CO2 and other greenhouse gas 
magnifiers like SF6. 
 
   At the time, I was also reading a great deal of the Scottish 
writer Lord Macaulay, a frequent contributor of literary essays to 
the _Edinburgh Review_ in the l820s to the l840s. As I combed thru 
Macaulay's forty pages on Machiavelli or his one hundred and twenty 
four pages on the short amazing life of Lord Byron, I was reminded of 
how segmented my thinking had become regarding social problems. I was 
falling prey to the common modern conceptual allergy. If I couldn't 
count it, I couldn't comment on it. Macauley's grand and colorful 
style helped me reconsider my bearings, but it was a bit too much. In 
fact, when I brought home the passages that I loved the most to my 
wife, an editor and publisher, she noted how crazed they were, and 
often compared them, rather accurately, to those crazed conversations 
we sometimes have when stuck with a stranger on a long night train 
ride.  Nonetheless, Macauley had touched a nerve, so I decided to 
calibrate his style next to Schumacher's' plainer style. It was night 
and day. In contrast to both Macauley and Schumacher, most 
professional writing appears stultifying. But a hybrid of Macauley's 
exuberance and Schumacher's level headedness seemed intriguing. I 
decided to give it a try.
 
   By l990, I had published thru Simon and Schuster my book with the 
journalist Peter Asmus, _In Search of Environmental Excellence: 
Moving Beyond Blame_. It was not written in the language of experts, 
and selling in paperback for less than ten dollars, it got wide 
circulation for a book of its kind, winning a book of the year by the 
Nature Society of England, and being selected by several quality 
paperback book editions and collections. Once again, embedding my 
thoughts in the realm of E.F. Schumacher had helped. Gregg 
Easterbrook, then the Environment Editor of _Newsweek_ magazine, 
listed the title in his colossal _Moment on Earth_ in its general 
bibliography section, in the neighborhood of some twenty-two other 
general environmental writers last century that included Aldo 
Leopold, Rachel Carson, Schumacher himself, and their direct 
descendents. 
 
   Why do I mention this? We don't have many decades to forge our 
compositional style. Schumacher, in his plain but argumentative 
style, helped me settle on the manner of communication that worked 
for me. More importantly, it also helped me discern one of the best 
ways to engage the many clients, affiliates, and stakeholders in my 
consulting firm's basic practice. If you can tell the truth, some 
will listen.
 
SCHUMACHER'S INSIGHT REGARDING PUBLIC PARTICIPATION
 
   Schumacher can also help one become a more competent teacher. 
During the l990s, I taught graduate business seminars at Rensselaer 
Polytechnic Institute's (RPI) Lally School of Management and 
Technology. Being America's first engineering school, RPI tended to 
attract technology-gifted individuals, still does. I chose in the 
early l990s to teach them _Small Is Beautiful_ in one of the core-
required seminars. While I must admit, in retrospect, that many of 
the purer gear heads often slipped two or three speeds, downshifting 
into disdain on such chapters at "Buddhist Economics" (Part I, 
chapter 4) or "The Problem of Unemployment in India" (Part II, 
chapter 4). Nonetheless, some took a solid liking to the following 
passage:
 
   "The structure of the organization can then be symbolized by a man 
holding a large number of balloons in his hand. Each of the balloons 
has its own buoyancy and lift, and the man himself does not lord it 
over the balloons, but stands beneath them, yet holding all the 
strings firmly in his hand. Every balloon is not only an 
administrative but also an entrepreneurial unit."
 
   Students of business read this passage, and it caffinates them. 
They already have inherited a sense of the monolithic organization, 
which Schumacher colorfully characterizes as a "Christmas tree, with 
a star at the top and lots of nuts and other useful things 
underneath." Even the recalcitrant RPI engineer was moved, if only 
momentarily, by Schumacher's application of this insight to his work 
at the British National Coal Board, one of the largest commercial 
organizations in Europe at the time. 
 
   Here Schumacher notes how they found it possible to set up "quasi-
firms" under various names for its opencast mining, its brickworks, 
and its coal products..."Special, relatively self-contained 
organizational forms have evolved for its road transport activities, 
estates, and retail business, not to mention various enterprises 
falling under the head of diversification."
 
   Today, even after the recent dot.com disasters, it makes sense to 
think thru this distinction in our own organizations and lives. The 
man or woman holding balloons is in desperate need. The problem I 
found with many U.S. business school graduates is their narrowness. 
They have trouble empathizing with the needs and logic of their 
direct reports, and often can't see the value of inputs from their 
customers or stakeholders. Gifted in diagnostics, they are like 
doctors unable to articulate their prognosis, unwilling to schedule 
the cure. Schumacher, and others writing in the great humanistic 
tradition like Macauley, Max DePres or Donald Phillips (whose 
_Lincoln on Leadership_ I give to any leader I meet willing to take 
the time) know better. It is all about people not just numbers, no 
matter how alluring and telling.
 
   In fact, Schumacher chose to end _Small is Beautiful_ with this 
forceful warning: "Everywhere people ask: 'What can I actually do?' 
The answer is as simple as it is disconcerting: We can, each of us, 
work to put our own inner house in order. The guidance we need for 
this work cannot be found in science and technology, the value of 
which utterly depends on the ends they serve; but is can still be 
found in the traditional wisdom of mankind." The traditional wisdom 
of mankind, something I know you can get at the "Great Books" 
curriculum at a few fine U.S. schools like Columbia University, but 
not many other places. I guess it pays to just buy the books yourself.
 
   Schumacher's insight centers on how a trust in people, their 
needs, can allow the refinement of complex management systems, not 
vice versa. He would get a kick out of the billions of dollars now 
invested in forecasting and customer relations software, in the 
absence of basic eye-to-eye relationships. I once met a brilliant New 
York based advertising executive who summed it up for me: he said 
every business resides in relational marketing, not in machines. In 
the end, E.F. Schumacher taught many of us that if we trust in public 
participation, it will prove the most reliable means to make the 
world more intelligible. 
 
CITIZEN SCIENCE AND TODAY'S MORE DANGEROUS WORLD
 
   Of course, there are many other places the readers of the Loka 
Institute can go to get this advice. But Schumacher was a 
particularly intelligent provocateur, a conceptual conversationalist 
par excellence.  Watch, for example, how he pricks his readers into 
attentiveness in this opening to his chapter called "Resources for 
Industry" (Part II, Chapter III):
 
   "The most striking thing about modern industry is that it requires 
so much and accomplishes so little. Modern industry seems to be 
inefficient to a degree that surpasses one's ordinary powers of 
imagination. Its inefficiency therefore remains unnoticed." (page 
ll0).
 
   Amory Lovins echoes this "illusion of certainty" argument in his 
now famous preamble to _Soft Energy Paths_. I have heard the same 
echo in my mind several times, as I march in to make a presentation 
before a Board or Management Council of one of my clients or 
affiliates. In fact, my firm's focus on emerging trends in energy, 
materials, and the environment can be thought to have its enabling 
mantra found in the author under review.
 
   Readers of _Loka Alert_ know far more than I ever will about the 
importance of citizen science. When citizens ask the right questions 
(about siting, about complex technologies, about how the police might 
use their new onstar satellite systems embedded in their cars), 
higher efficiencies and more sound social policies are bound to 
prevail. Call this optimistic, but it is a belief based in a kind of 
conceptual empiricism I see at the base of Schumacher's work. To test 
the legitimacy of these claims, let's look at the issue of energy 
security.
 
   Since September 11, many U.S. government experts and corporate 
strategists have begun to reassess their respective beachfronts from 
the point of view of security. This is an especially important issue 
when it comes to energy: how we make it, how we might best distribute 
it, and what the real needs of business are at a time when power 
outages can add up to millions of dollars in lost profit.
   
   While U.S. dependency on imported oil from the Middle East is the 
obvious vulnerability linked to the terrorist strikes, our 
information intensive economy is also highly dependent upon a 
reliable supply of electricity. The rolling blackouts that have hit 
California attached some real dollar signs to the cost of unreliable 
power supplies. Silicon Valley firms lost $100 million in one day in 
June of 2000 when the power went out. All told, businesses in the 
U.S. lost $80 billion per/year due to power outages, according to the 
Electric Power Research Institute.
 
   Whether it is Toyota or GM competing in auto-making, or Intel and 
its archrivals competing over the shape of future chips, modern 
manufacturing increasingly requires higher and higher degrees of 
reliability.
 
   Over 8 percent of current U.S. consumption of electricity is 
directly linked to the entire wired state of play necessary to make 
better cars, better homes, or better appliances. In each of these 
cases, a steady stream of highly reliable electrons is required. 
Whereas electricity represented only 25% of total energy needs in the 
mid-70s, it will represent 50% of total U.S. energy by 2020, when my 
daughter enters her teens.
 
   What would E.F. Schumacher say about this current predicament, and 
outline as our search for solutions?
 
   The terrorist attacks, and corresponding increases in U.S. 
security costs at nuclear power plants, natural gas pipelines and 
long distance transmission lines, amplify the shortcomings of the old 
transmission and distribution grid. I am sure Schumacher would say 
this boldly. A perfect strike at one of these targets could result in 
crippling outages that could last for days.
 
   Since September 11, some key U.S. decision makers are taking a 
fresh look at our energy infrastructure needs. There are some real 
business opportunities merging in the realm of clean and distributed 
electricity technologies, especially for the nimbler small businesses 
that abound. Wind turbines, solar photovoltaics, fuel cells and 
highly efficient micro-turbines are being incorporated into the 
corporate strategies of firms as diverse as Walgreen's, Fetzer 
Winery, First National Bank of Omaha, Neutrogena, Johnson and 
Johnson, Bently Mills and Arden Realty. In fact, our _Corporate 
Strategy Today_ quarterly tracks these developments. These companies 
are walking in the shadow of E.F. Schumacher, some knowingly, some by 
good fortune.
 
   After September 11, we need as a nation and as a larger community 
of intellectuals to revisit the question of scale, first articulated 
by Schumacher since World War II. This is the most annoying feature 
of Schumacher's perennial success as a writer. He creates mental 
mosquito bites, like Socrates, that cause cognitive itch. If we 
rebuilt the World Trade Center should it remain 110 stories high? 
When we ready the new Pentagon, should it all be so centralized? When 
we modernize our electricity grid, as now hotly debated in the U.S. 
Senate versions of President Bush's Energy Bill, should we do it at 
the exclusion of the small business innovator stretching for energy 
independence thru distributed power?
 
INDIA, SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, AND LOYAL READERS WORLDWIDE
 
   At age forty-six, I have now lived with Schumacher's vision since 
I was that Cornell University undergraduate when the book came out, 
thirsty for redirection and even guidance. I still ask myself some 
mornings: Why did he choose to speak at Sage Chapel? Why did he place 
so much emphasis on the end use of energy? Why did he constantly 
question if we were efficient enough? In fact, why did he believe we 
have some much trouble asking the question "What Is Enough?" in the 
vast paradise of consumer delight? I also ask at the end of some 
brutal days as a consultant: "In retrospect, has he become more like 
a perfect fossil, glittering in its translucent amber, but actually 
mostly historic debris?"
 
   The answer resides in use. The greatest pleasure for writers of 
non-fiction may be that their books not only be read, but also used, 
used by corporate decision-makers and technical innovators, used by 
citizens and scientists, employed and engaged by other intellectuals.
 
   As I travel around, when I spot _Small Is Beautiful_ on a shelf, I 
ask to hold it. It is often a used copy, with marginalia, and 
earmarked. This is the final honor to an author.
 
   In our more dangerous world, in a time when data is transferred in 
seconds but often left uninterpreted or even unopened, and when the 
pace of professional life itself is nothing short of turbulent, the 
long, low-frequency of E.F. Schumacher's message remains heard.
 
   Think in closing about how elephants herd. Lately scientists have 
begun to discern that in Africa at sunset elephants capitalize on 
heat inversions. The nasal vibration emitted to alert other herds to 
keep their distance, especially during droughts, now travels up to 
six miles rather than the usual one hour doable without the 
inversions to bounce the frequency. This is an important toll-free 
message when each herd these days consumes several square miles of 
food in places where food is scare. It is during this time of day, 
when there can be 20 degrees F of difference between the coolness at 
the knees of a giraffe and the temperature hovering in the inversion 
at their Dr. Suess like heads, that these elephant families choose to 
speak to their neighbors.
 
   This small curious detail, just one among billions in the gloria 
known as our natural world, might bring--even in a time after the 
lost of so many lives--a smile to Schumacher's normally stern face.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
 
Lord Macaulay, _Literary Essays_ (Oxford Edition, l9l3)
 
E. F. Schumacher, _Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People 
Mattered_, (Harper and Row, l973)
 
Bruce Piasecki, with Peter Asmus, _In Search of Environmental 
Excellence: Moving Beyond Blame_ (Simon and Schuster, l990)
 
Martin W. Lewis, _Green Delusions: An Environmentalist Critique of 
Radical Environmentalism_ (Duke University Press, l992)
 
Gregg Easterbrook, A Moment on Earth (Harper and Row, l995)
 
Bruce Piasecki, _Corporate Environmental Strategy: the Avalanche of 
Change Since Bhopal_ (John Wiley and Sons, l995)
 
Bruce Piasecki, Frank Mendelson, Kevin Fletcher, _Environmental 
Management and Business Strategy: Leadership Skills for the 21st 
Century_ (John Wiley and Sons, l999)
 
Peter Asmus, _Reaping the Wind_ (Island Press, 2001)

---

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 
Bruce Piasecki (bruce@ahcgroup.com) is the Founder and President of 
the American Hazard Control Group Inc (www.ahcgroup.com), a 
management consulting firm specializing in energy, materials and the 
environment since l98l. Many of the Senior Associates of the AHCGroup 
are published experts or attorneys or retired executives from major 
manufacturing firms. Our clients have included Toyota North America, 
Con Edison, PPL, Constellation Energy Group, and a set of 33 
multinationals that have used our programs and emerging issues 
workshops to benchmark their innovations and management systems 
across the last ten years. Dr. Piasecki was the founding Director of 
RPI's Environmental Management and Policy Masters program in the 
Lally School of Management and Technology, and the author of six 
books on energy and environmental strategy.



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