An Eco-Bible (Time Magazine)
SCHUMACHER, E.F.
Small is beautiful. A Study of Economics as if People mattered. London, Blond & Briggs, 1973.
8vo, pp. 288; a very good, crisp copy in the original publisher’s black cloth, gilt lettering to spine, preserving the original grey and blue printed dust jacket with photographic portrait of the author to the rear, price unclipped; minute closed tear to upper edge of jacket; ownership inscription to the front free endpaper.
First edition of this collection of essays saluted as an ‘eco-bible’ by Time Magazine.
Schumacher argues the unsustainability of modern economy in the first chapter, where he points out that natural resources should be treated as capital, since they are not renewable, rather than as expendable income. Later essays advance a new theory of Large Scale Organisation, and the final one is an appeal to socialists, who ‘should insist on using the nationalised industries not simply to out-capitalise the capitalists – an attempt in which they may or may not succeed – but to evolve a more democratic and dignified system of industrial administration, a more humane employment of machinery, and a more intelligent utilization of the fruits of human ingenuity and effort. If they can do this, they have the future in their hands. If they cannot, they have nothing to offer that is worthy of the sweat of free-born men’ (part 4, c 3). In 1995 the Times Literary Supplement cited Small Is Beautiful among the 100 most influential books published since the Second World War.