Inflation and Social Justice

Now online for the first time:
📈 "INFLATION AND SOCIAL JUSTICE"
by E.F. Schumacher (1975)

This thought-provoking analysis of inflation and its representation in both economics and general parlance still bears relevance in our present day. https://t.co/yPEkyc244n pic.twitter.com/0K1or3eCmU

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) December 22, 2021

David Bollier Interviews David Cayley

"He belongs to a school of political ecology in which I would give E.F. Schumacher a very proud place..."

- David Cayley in conversation with @DavidBollier on the legacy of thinker Ivan Illich. (Listen via the link below or the usual podcast platforms)https://t.co/TaPxoBUC6F

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) December 7, 2021

What Notion of Degrowth?

Both clearly articulating the differences between Green Growth and Degrowth as well as outlining the positive effects Degrowth would have on the environment and individuals' quality of life, this article brilliantly sums up that small is beautiful.https://t.co/GMm8RKz2Qm

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) July 29, 2021

The 25th Anniversary of the First Decentralist Conference

Today marks the final day of the 25th Anniversary of the First Decentralist Conference.

Check out the Decentralist Reader on our website!https://t.co/sjCfw90yqM

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) June 30, 2021

If We Adhered to Scale, We Wouldn't Have a Gynocentric Social Order

We here at the Schumacher Center always love when E. F. Schumacher's Small is Big gets referenced in larger news outlets. This short article by Richard Lord describes one CEO's experience reading that book.https://t.co/afUvAXWgSI

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) June 28, 2021

Could Small Still Be Beautiful?

In 1973, E.F. Schumacher inspired a generation to think differently with #SmallisBeautiful.

Now, at a time when the bigness and violence of the economic system have reached unprecedented levels, could small still be beautiful? We, for one, think: yes!https://t.co/7PhEmRx9fX

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) January 7, 2021

Small Is Beautiful

"Go back to the human scale: human needs and human relationships, and from that springs the ethical response of #stewardship to the environment."

From the archives: "Small is beautiful – an economic idea that has sadly been forgotten"https://t.co/F7TINWcELD

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) November 24, 2020

Related:

In the third episode of the #SchumacherConversations podcast, @GarAlperovitz and John McKnight discuss the centrality of appropriate scale in building a new economy and reflect on the ideal balance between bottom-up and top-down mechanisms.

Listen here:https://t.co/f3Mh1JT2qT

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) November 23, 2020

Schumacher on Scale

"All this, I believe, hangs together – smallness, simplicity, and non-violence, all related to the #humanscale, all related to the humanisation of human work, all conducive to the re-integration of the human being into the productive process..."

~E.F. Schumacher

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) November 18, 2020

Simplicity

“Any intelligent fool can invent further complications, but it takes a genius to retain, or recapture, #simplicity.”

-E.F. Schumacher

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) October 30, 2020

Schumacher on Wisdom

"#Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful" ~E.F. Schumacherhttps://t.co/PTu9IjxSER

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) October 21, 2020

Small is Beautiful

"Sages and wise people through history have preached the importance of simplicity, or simple living, and appreciating that, as E.F. Schumacher put it, ‘small is beautiful’."

It's as true now as it was in 1973: #SmallisBeautiful@openDemocracy https://t.co/GPzt17zqjO

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) August 12, 2020

Fr. Schall References EF Schumacher

Will the Poor Really Always Be With Us? by Rev. James V. Schall, S.J.

Though does he understand Schumacher's critique of the contemporary understanding of "growth" and development?

A New Book from Jeff Taylor

Politics on a Human Scale: Historiography by Jeff Taylor

Politics on a Human Scale: The American Tradition of Decentralism (go to the above link for a discount code) - Google Books
Politics on a Human Scale

Related:
And a review by Lee Trepanier of The Primacy of Persons in Politics (John von Heyking and Thomas Heilke, Editors)

Schumacher Center for a New Economics: The Relevance of E. F. Schumacher in the 21st Century by John Fullerton

If you examine Schumacher’s personal library, which is carefully stewarded at the E. F. Schumacher Society in the Berkshires, you will find that most of the texts are not about economics. Instead, they include the great philosophical and spiritual texts from all traditions. Schumacher’s gift and genius was to derive economic principles and ideas from these teachings, to have the courage to speak the truth, despite knowing it often flew in the face of conventional economic thinking, and to make the truth accessible with his clear and witty prose. What emerges is certainly not the final word on the economics of permanence. Some of his thinking is outdated, or simply missed the mark. But as a foundation to build upon, it is invaluable. The reason his ideas about economics ring true is because they are built upon these wisdom traditions. The contradictions of modern economics are gone.

Actually, much of it was based on Christianity, Catholic Social Teaching in particular.

Schumacher on Land

Schumacher Center for a New Economics: THINK ABOUT LAND
By Dr. E. F. Schumacher
A talk originally published by The Catholic Housing Aid Society

Look to the Land

This book by Lord Northbourne has been republished by Angelico Press.

Google Books
Profile at Organic (Ltd)
Of the Land & the Spirit: The Essential Lord Northbourne

Joseph Pearce on E.F. Schumacher

Small is Beautiful and Faithful: The Vision of E. F. Schumacher by Joseph Pearce

E F Schumacher: On the Edge of the Forest

Some EF Schumacher Lectures 2012 - Bob Massie and Lawrence Lessig on "The Role of the Internet in the New Economy"

The Localization Reader

MIT Press

A review by by Aidan McKeown (EB)

a blog by one of the authors; his faculty page - Rethink & Relocalize - Raymond De Young - high-quality and low - EcoShock post and mp3

It's Hot In Here interview (mp3)

The Gift Economy

John Médaille:

The first market in which we operate is the gift economy of family and the community. We are first called into being by the ready-made community of the family, and from this community we receive a variety of gifts. Our being, to be sure, but also the gift of our name, our family, our language, our first moral perceptions, our first experiences of love and belonging, and so forth. This economy of grace (gifts) is the primary economy, and all other economic and social activity must be judged from the standpoint of how will it serves the family. Without this check, there is really no way to know whether the economy “works” in any concrete sense. A fully monetized economy erodes the gift economy of the family upon which the whole social order depends. Beyond this family economy, there are economies of community service, economies of political activity (in which votes are the medium of exchange), religious economies, and so forth. All of these depend on the economy of production and exchange (note both terms), and hence are checked by that economy, even as they provide checks for the exchange and production economies.

Mr. Médaille does not talk about the gift of the environment (or natural resources), but Pope Benedict XVI does in Caritas in Veritate (CNA Article). This can be combined with an understanding of the primary, secondary, and tertiary economies as outlined by John Michael Greer, building upon the work of EF Schumacher. The primary economy is indeed a gift of God, but we should also understand our family and other people as gifts from God as well, whom we should aid in seeking perfection. (The gift of non-rational creation is instrumental to the perfection of humanity.) As mutually dependent animals, we rely first of all upon communication in order to bring about perfection upon others. In a real community, in which people share bonds, culture, and history, they are given to one another and can come to recognize this - there is very little "choice" in the matter. This is in contrast to our megapoleis which have more the form of voluntary associations or "intentional communities" if anything at all.

Hence the great flaw of this aspect of the encyclical (and of Médaille's work)?* The attempt at an economic solution or a political solution without a proper understanding of the science politics, in particular what community is and its necessary conditions, and thus the true nature of the problem with which we are faced. One can use law to regulate the actions of individuals, but if the common good is rather ephemeral, to what can it be ordered except relative tranquility? One ends up upholding the liberal order and transactional justice despite one's rejection of it, because  when we are dealing with the modern nation-state (which is just too large) or megapoleis, there is very little basis for talking about social justice or solidarity or civic friendship to a group of strangers who have very few ties to one another. A band-aid solution which will not work in the long run because the loss or destruction of community will continue to erode even commutative justice?

If the form is not proportioned to the matter, the matter will not receive it.

If one wants to promote solidarity and social justice, one must first rebuild community. (Paradoxical? Not quite.)

*wrt JM: another problem being the ideal of autarky with respect to goods necessary for the perfection of the polity.

Related:
Mr. Greer's The Wealth of Nature