Alternative, Human-based Peripheral Capitalist Industries

To provide the whole of India with handlooms was a stroke of genius in the peaceful fight against the British. All business is not big business, and Industry does not have necessarily to be heavy to promote development or to modernize a nation. Rethinking our relationship to the earth entails rethinking the style of our work. The aim in this regard is not so much "mass" production as it is "sufficient and necessary" or "appropriate" production. Small peripheral industries of appropriate scale and design that rely on labor intensive inputs can successfully compete with automated machinery and assembly lines. Labor can also be sufficiently paid for their products if the exploitative factor of the owner and the middleman are reduced systematically, if not removed entirely. State managed industry does not efficiently produce, but labor unions have taught us that companies in which employees have a vested interest, a voice and a part to play in its management, do as well as or better than the conventionally styled capitalist industries.