E.F. Schumacher on Buddhist Economics...
Earlier today, I read that you are doing GSB this term. Thought that some of you might it find it worthwhile to ponder over E.F. Schumacher's thoughts on economics. Maybe, you could raise it with your prof, and post his thoughts on Schumacher's ideas. Anyways, here goes...
Let us take some fundamentals and see what they look like when viewed by a modern economist and a Buddhist Economist.
There is universal agreement that a fundamental source of wealth is human labour. Now, the modern economist has been brought up to consider "labour" or work as little more than a necessary evil. From the point of view of the employer, it is in any case simply an item of cost, to be reduced to a minimum if it cannot be eliminated altogether, say, by automation.
From the point of view of the workman, it is a "disutility"; to work is to make a sacrifice of one's leisure and comfort, and wages are a kind of compensation for the sacrifice. Hence the ideal from the point of view of the employer is to have output without employees, and the ideal from the point of view of the employee is to have income without employment.
The consequences of these attitudes both in theory and in practice, are of course, far-reaching. If the ideal with regard to work is to get rid of it, every method that "reduces the workload" is a good thing. The most potent method, short of automation, is the so-called "division of labour" and the classical example is the pin factory eulogised in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Here it is not a matter of ordinary specialisation which mankind has practised from time immemorial, but of dividing up every complete process of production into minute parts, so that the final product can be produced with great speed without anyone having had to contribute more than a totally insignificant, and, in most cases, unskilled movement of his limbs.
The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give a man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties, to enable him to overcome his egocentredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organize work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, stultifying, or nerve-racking for a worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure.
From the Buddhist's point of view, there are therefore two types of mechanisation which must be clearly distinguished: one that enhances a man's skill and power and one that turns the work of man over to a mechanical slave, leaving man in a position of having to serve the slave. How to tell the one from the other?
To be continued...
By Arun Anantharaman |
2 comments
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2 Comments:
Hi!
I am that GSB prof referred to in loving terms throughout this blog. I was asked to comment on the article on Buddhist economics.
First, I would argue that the employer and the employee are not necessarily adversaries. Both can benefit from greater productivity, the key to increased corporate profitability and share price appreciation "and" higher wages. The employer and the employee might argue about how the increased value created from greater productivity is divided between them, but they should both strive for more productivity. This is why industrialization is so desired and required in the developing world. Greater capital usage, greater use of technolgy and greater job specialization leads to bigger profits "and" higher wages. The size of the pie grows tremendously. Labor intensive farmers make $2,000 per year, industrialized factory and office workers make $30,000 to $100,000 per year.
Workers sometimes don't see that if productivity doubles such that one can do the work of two, this does not mean that the second employee is condemned to a life of unemployment. While suffering in the short run from his or her job loss, hopefully he or she will find new and productive work, or start his or her own business, and create products that the world would otherwise not have seen.
Similarly, individual business owners, especially those in financial difficulty, might not see the value added of allowing businesses to go bankrupt, but it is this unfettered creative destruction that is one of the primary growth engines of capitalism. The bankrupt company's managers, workers and capital can all be effectively redeployed into other businesses and other more promising industries.
As to the quality of life from the worker's perspective, it is important that he or she have some means of influencing policy, either through denying his or her services in the labor market, the union movement or as a participating member in a democratic society. If we are all going to spend 60 hours a week at work it is important that we not be forced to be used like interchangeable parts in an assembly line, but rather demand that some efficiencies be sacrificed so that the work environment is conducive to humans. I believe that this type of environment will also turn out to be good business practice as people do their best work and theirmost creative thinking when they are happy.
Nothing wrong with introducing ethics and Buddhism to the work place, just be careful you don't have to compete with slave labor from a dictatorial and repressive China!
John
Professor Talbott,
Thanks a lot for your comments. Here are my follow-up two cents, well, actually a bit more than that. :-) But it is an issue I feel strongly about, and I am not sure a shorter response would have been adequate for your comments. So please bear with me.
With all due respect, here is what I think....
The worship of productivity comes at a cost. I gather, that in your opinion, this cost is equivalent to “collateral damage”, something that just has to be borne and shrugged away, if it cannot be temporarily eased by welfare handouts, which in any case, come with their own associated costs. In Schumacher’s opinion (I would think), and certainly, in mine, that cost is no mere collateral damage; it is the consequence of a philosophically flawed process that puts growth ahead of stability, unchecked technological growth over dignity of labour.
In Small is Beautiful, Schumacher makes a point about the distinction between a machine and a tool. To quote, “The craftsman himself, says Ananda Coomaraswamy, “can always, if allowed to, draw the delicate distinction between the machine and the tool. The carpet loom is a tool, a contrivance for holding warp threads at a stretch to be woven around them by the craftsman’s fingers; but the power loom is a machine, and its significance as a destroyer of culture lies in the fact that it does the essentially human part of the work.”The blind worship of productivity eliminates the distinction between the tool and the machine. What is the role of a worker at McDonalds? Isn’t he a minder of machines, where exactly is the essentially human part of the work? Maybe, someone would say Customer Service. I wouldn’t even try to respond to that, IMHO, that is a façade, a neat cover-up for a generation that has been trained on “positive thinking”, which is not really the same thing as “thoughtfulness”. Forget McDonalds. What is the role of a worker in many of the software factories or call centres in India? There are the few interesting jobs, but by far, many of them find their real satisfaction outside work. Or for that matter, what is the need for GM foods, the long-term implications of which are unknown, when there is enough food available for all, and much of it wasted?
My point is that the real issue is a deeper one. It is a spiritual question, a philosophical question that hard-nosed economics cannot possibly answer.
The vast majority cannot continuously keep pace with a world that changes too fast for its own good, a world where the value of money falls faster than it ever has, where a distinction is not drawn between “value and price”. This majority, if left to their own means, would possibly prefer a simpler, cleaner lifestyle, but they are not allowed to, for it is the nature of the modern economic system that because it has enshrined productivity as God, anybody who wishes to adopt a different lifestyle, a lifestyle that does not accord undue importance to productivity, is left behind, kicked out of the system, or made bankrupt.
Productivity has its place, and to a limited degree is important, but in a world where “laissez faire” competition is the God, productivity assumes far too much importance. There is no real reason for anyone to purchase a commodity product X, sold and marketed by an American company in India, manufactured by a machine in China, minded by “slave labour” (and in a spiritual sense, they would be slaves even if the Chinese were democratic). I think what we need instead are self-sufficient, local economies, wherever possible, even if it comes at the cost of "slower growth".
Further, the modern economic structure has crowned “man as consumer” over “man as producer”. More is better, and that’s that. This, ironically, is so much in opposition to the philosophies of all the greatest spiritual thinkers and religions the world has seen, (all of which believe that elimination of wants should be the highest ideal to be aimed for), that it is no surprise that we have never been more violent on the environment, and it is not too surprising also that fundamentalism is on the rise everywhere.
You say, “Nothing wrong with introducing ethics and Buddhism to the work place, just be careful you don't have to compete with slave labour from a dictatorial and repressive China!”
I would contend that the very reason we are in such a “competitive state” is that for far too long we have not bothered about introducing ethics and Buddhism to the workplace. And we have gone so far down the road of enshrining the wrong Gods, that, only a very serious long-term crisis will possibly help us recover a saner perspective.
Here is what Keynes himself had to say many decades ago “For at least another hundred years, we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair, for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.” Once people were rich, he reasoned, they would “once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful”. Keynes was remarkably perceptive, but unfortunately, I don’t think it has quite panned out the way he imagined it would. The new economic system is such that instability is so ingrained that never will we be able to reach the stable levels required for people to prefer the “good to the useful”.
I look forward to your thoughts.
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