A Buddhist Economics?

Schumacher proposes the development of a ‘Buddhist economics’ as the proper frame for debate about the future of industrial societies.

The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be … threefold: to give 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…. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying or nerve-racking for the 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 job of work and the bliss of leisure. From the Buddhist point of view, there are therefore two types of mechanisation which must be clearly distinguished: one which 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. (Schumacher,

Small is Beautiful

, pp. 46–7)