Oldal 107 [107]
What can I hope for (from politics)? 1105
in the capitalist economic competition ever since from favouring a better
solution from a creative, healthy, environmentally friendly, safe or any
other perspective. It shepherds them towards the use of technologies
that replace man rather than lighten his work, with no regard to social
consequences, moral considerations or anything else. According to Ernst
Schumacher, this will remain thus as long as the logic of the economic
system compels the participants to increase production. He recommends
the opposite, the decrease of production, in the interest of work done
with greater care and an increase in quality and jobs. “As Gandhi said,
the poor of the world cannot be helped by mass production, only by
production by the masses. The system of mass production, based on
sophisticated, highly capital-intensive, high energy input dependent,
and human labour-saving technology, presupposes that you are already
rich, for a great deal of capital investment is needed to establish one
single workplace. ‘The system of production by the masses mobilises the
priceless resources which are possessed by all human beings, their clever
brains and skilful hands, and supports them with first-class tools. 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 of modern knowledge and experience,
is conducive to decentralisation, compatible with the laws of ecology,
gentle in its use of scarce resources, and designed to serve the human
person instead of making him the servant of machines."
4. (free the power of imagination!) People can find many worthy
reasons for protecting their natural and built environment and
demanding fair treatment for their fellow beings or a healthier way of
life for themselves. The distinguishing feature of the ecological
worldview is that its adherents do all this out of a comprehensive
conviction they have formed of the good life. They recognise the
connection between the self-contained operation of the technological¬
economic system broken loose from any social interests or control and
the destruction of the fundamental resources needed for life, between
joyless waste and the destitution of millions, between the collapse of
local cultures and the population explosion, between security of life and
the spread of violence and between joyless work and the amassing of
material goods. Honestly, these connections are quite obvious. The chief
9 Ernst F. Schumacher: Small is Beautiful: a Study of Economics as if People Mattered,
p.106. Harper&Row, New York, 1975.