Sure there is a third way and it lies right beneath our noses, if a bit covered in the cant of our current politics. The Framers set down a framework of law and organization that was intended to promote the prosperity of the individual by keeping government out of the way of the citizen. The big government, near-monarchists of the age, the Federalists would be aghast at the corruptions of their work.

As Garet Garrett so ably put it in his 1953 book, “The Peoples Pottage”, there has been a “revolution within the form” and the Republic of the Framers is no more. Lincoln and FDR are just two of the Presidents who added there own contributions to the cause and this current President, a kind of Napoleon-for-Idiots enjoys the efforts of all. While the Monarchists among us may find some solace in this victory over the Republic, they shouldn’t because this government makes monarchy look timid.

What we have here is a Frankenstein of Socialism, defacto Monarchism without benefit of breeding, and crypto totalitarianism with all the charms of a vigilante group ready to burn a cross near you. It is a velvet tyranny mind you, the peasants are liberally entertained and cosseted but make no mistake, we have about as much in common with the Republic of the Founders as the Iraq War has with “spreading democracy”.

Forrest, I think that you meant “Nobody in *his right mind* . . .” or, perhaps “No *people* in the right minds . . .”. I’d said that you require a refresher course in subject-verb agreement, but your pro-capitalist, anti-Catholic rants reveal that you require instruction broader than a basic grammar course.

Or have you forgotten that the corporation can dominate society and inhibit liberty just as efficiently as can big government, big labor, big media, and big culture?

Race is nothing but extended family.  Any real conservative will recognize the importance of this.

John, you’re on to something here—at least at a voluntary level.  Distributism is no more pie-in-the-sky than smug “anarcho-capitalism.”

Given that whites today have very little racial consciousness, and that all other races are extremely racially conscious (look at La Raza), it is sad when one obsessively attacks whites and Western Civilization.

Race doesn’t exist!  Race doesn’t exist! *twitch* Purge the browns!  Purge the browns!  *twitch* *twitch*

“As I’ve written before, in a friendly critique of Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Cons, it really is possible to square the circle here. How about this: Those of us who understand the importance of economic independence, the virtues of independent farms and mom and pop businesses (and here comes the radical step) should patronize them. And convince our friends to join us. And boycott everything else.”

I agree, but good luck trying to convince our Catholic libertarian friends of that.  I had an extended public debate with Tom Woods (whom I truly regard as a friend; I’ve known him for over ten years) well over a year before his book came out, and the Catholic libertarians, to a man, denied that there is anything of value in independent farms and mom and pop businesses.  They made it very clear that they sure as hell weren’t going to patronize them.

Part of my argument at the time (which parallels yours) is that what you propose above is actually more libertarian.  But too many (all?) Catholic libertarians regard “Catholic” as a mere adjective, and “libertarian” as the noun that represents their core.  One wrote in private correspondence to me that I was right--that he really regards all of Catholic social teaching, going back to the apostolic age, as wrong, because it contradicts Austrian economics.

Add Kunstler’s new novel, A World Made By Hand to the literature of Distributism. If only we could arrive there without the pain and anquish that will accompany the collapse of industrial society.

Dear Scott,
How depressing to hear that. It sounds like some people are not so much committed to freedom as they are doctrinally committed to a cult of Misean praxeology. I hope it serves them well at the “awesome judgment seat of Christ.” (Liturgy of St. John Chrysostem.)

The rap against distributism is that it is a quaint doctrine with no economic foundation; the rap against agrarianism is that it is a nostalgic “back to the farm” movement. But agrarianism, properly understood, is not about returning to the farm, but about restoring the proper relationship between town and countryside. And distributism, far from being “un-economic,” adds what has been missing from economic theory since at least the 19th century, namely distributive justice, without which no economic theory can be complete.

Indeed, in the many cases where distributism is actually put to the test, it is wildly successful. Examples include the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, with its 50 year history, $20B in sales, and its 80,000 worker-owners. Or the cooperative economy of Emilia-Romagna, where 40% of GDP comes from cooperatives. Or the “Land to the Tiller” program of Taiwan that catapulted that island from grinding poverty to industrial powerhouse in only one generation. To this, one can add ESOPs, micro-finance, and many other examples.

The Distributists, alas, did not pay much attention to formal economic theory, even though they were holding the key. My own investigations lead me to believe that Distributism provides superior tools for the analysis and understanding of economic relationships, and without the key provided by distributism, there can be no complete description of any economy.

all other races are extremely racially conscious (look at La Raza)

Which is funny (as in odd) because many La Raza members do not share the same race.

On distributism, it seems many of our undocumented brethren actually practice a form of it (by necessity) that has worked out relatively well for many of them.

@ John Medaille

John Zmirak describes voluntary ways to promote distributist projects on a small-scale.  How would we implement it as a policy?  Since Leviathan will never go for it, is there a way to pull this off at the loca/state/regional level?

You are correct; Leviathan will not go for it. However, Leviathan is sick, and it may be a sickness unto death. The current crises is more serious than even most serious people realize. The system is highly unstable.

The real danger is that Leviathan will revert to an open fascism in an attempt to hold on to power. This is what happened in Argentina, Chile, Russian, and many other places. I am convinced that the current power grab by Cheney/Bush/McCain has little or nothing to do with the so-called “war on terror” and everything to do with positioning themselves to suppress internal dissent.

For the time being, we should support economic freedom, individual rights, balanced budgets (even with higher taxes), sound money, etc. But more importantly, we should be building alternative structures capable of withstanding the coming onslaught.

And buy yourself a little gold or silver; normally, that’s bad advice, but with Helicopter Ben Bernanke working hard to trash the currency, its a good idea at this particular moment.

Two good thoughts from yesterday’s posts on this topic:

1)Zmirak facilely ignores the generative role of religion in the slaughterhouse of Europe. Instead he ascribes its culmination last century to secular forces, particularly the ever-lurking racism at the heart of every nonCatholic European. Today religion once more is bringing violence to the Continent, forcing the luckless peasants again into the awaiting arms of the racist tribalists (who don’t include the Catholic tribalists, who are really enlightened nontribalists just wanting everyone to get long).

2. Prosium’s thoughts on the nonconservative nature of today’s conservatives, particularly those who are in the thrall of ideology (e.g., Catholicism) and insert that ideology, if not always overtly, into everything political. Most self-proclaimed conservatives are simply facilitators of the decline, i.e., moderate liberals. Like his Pope, and his crunchy cons (the emphasis on the cons), Zmirak is a committed multiculturalist who has a transparent disdain for the common volk of the West and their ethnic traditions.

At last: Some Real Conservatism on this website!  And it has prompted some intelligent writebacks (except, of course, from the Braunen.  I thank Mr. Z.  And libertarians ought rejoice in Mr. Z’s non-coersive approach to Distributionism.  What’s missing in our social order is real face-to-face debate, and debates that are really debates and not joint press conferences.  Neil Postman observed that real debate was a common place event in the 19th C, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates were just an example of common practice. So I would welcome a debate between Thomas Woods ( The Church and the Market, pp. 161-205) and Mr. Z.  Some ad oculos observations from my own shopping:

1. Barnes and Nobles and Borders offers me a lot more variety and better service to a special interest niche (say, the polyphony of Josquin) than the Mom and Pop bookstores, and often at less cost.

2. Distributionism, Austrian School libertarianism, Whig central statist banks, the Fascist version of Corporatism, and Communism/Socialism/Syndicatism were one and all pre-Internet, and thus pre-Global Market systems.  They were ideologies for the Industrial Age, when consumers consumed material things more than information (I follow Sakaiya here).  The aforementioned economic ideologies also worked in the world of the Industrial Age’s class structure, and thus class struggles; Distributionism was clearly an appeal to the Petty Bourgeoisie, as Agrarianism is to the yeoman farmer.  Our class structure is quite different today.  But we are no longer living in the Industrial Age.  Might not Amazon.com and its like put out of business both Mom and Pop Bookstore and Borders?  Heck, If I can download the entire book from the publisher, who needs middlemen at all?  Once again: the New Venetian Age is upon us, and our economics and class theory best get up to date.

3. I’m old enough to remember A&P;grocery stores, which I think were the last nationwide grocery chain.  Almost all USA grocery stores today are regional chains, and the rest are Mom and Pop.  Isn’t this enough?  What is more, shop at Mom and Pop Green Grocer or Butcher in Rome, Mr. Z, and you’ll find they’re a lot more expensive.  I think the economists call this “volume”.  Without endorsing or opposing Distributionism, I would pose this dilemma: Is the conflict therefore between the family as independent and empowered economic unit and the same family’s wallet?

4. Downsizing is already taking place; the mega-corporation is being replaced by small firms. So “Nathan P Origer’s” objections to Forrest, however true than may have been, are anachronistic and thus moot.  Would that the Mega-State also go the way of all flesh!

5. The key point of the Austrian School is not being addressed here. All other economic ideologies, by and large, including Distributionism, are production/supply theories.  But Menger taught that demand drives the market, not supply, and Böhm-Bawerk demonstrated that all production theories of interest don’t work, whereas the time-preference theory does.  Or to put Austrian economics in four words: THE CUSTOMER IS KING, not the producer/wholesaler/retailer. Now I don’t know if this teaching is true.  But it needs to be addressed.

With respect to Erhard, a buddy of Röpke, and Adenauer, Forrest is talking sense!

Mustard offers a textbook example of the Bandwagon Fallacy.

Wow John Médaille posts.

Forrest,

Dr. Francis wrote:

It is well beyond high time that someone wrote a book that offers a serious exposition of distributism as a critique of modern global capitalism and its political and cultural analogues as well as a practical plan for moving toward a distributist order.

This shouldn’t be dismissed so readily.

One title of a VDare article of Francis’s is entitled: “Corporations Have No Souls: Or Loyalties, Either” and another “Outsourcing—The Economic Equivalent Of Ethnic Cleansing.” (I’ve got them book marketed...)

There are only TWO ways:

State control of Land, Labor, and Capital

OR

State control of Land.

Land, the only factor of production given to us (created) by God rightfully belongs to the agent(s) of His Authority, the Church and the State.

Now, the formation of the State is something we can discuss; eg what are the legitimate forms of States, what governments are legitimate, etc.  I maintain that the only legitimate form of government, in America, at least, is one based upon the “clan”, the “tribe”, the “extended family”.  If the redistribution of God’s Commonwealth requires some heads to be cracked, then so be it.  Hopefully we’ll all come to a peaceful agreement, but, given the history of Mankind, I doubt it.

What does all this mean?  It means that in typically suburban, non-extended family America, they get their half-acre lot - since they have no real ties outside of their “nuclear family”, they have no real claim on any historical holdings; unless, of course, they are willing to homestead and defend some unused (Forest Service property, etc.) Land.  Of course, our suburban family will have to learn to organize in order to keep his roads paved and his water running, but I’m sure they will figure it out.

We don’t need Big Government to redistribute Land, but it will take some Blood, Sweat, and Tears.  Nobody said it would be easy.

Perhaps the end of cheap oil and the presently evolving systemic economic crisis will give us Distributism by default. If it cannot go on forever, it won’t.

When I think of distributism, I think of limits on acquisition… I don’t think of economic equality by any means. Some might make a million a year, some 20 thousand, but none should make a billion a year…

---

When a man’s greed opposes the best interests of the state too strongly; as they seem to in the case of today’s investors, big corporations, and usurers; it is just that said greed be curtailed.

It is well beyond high time that someone wrote a book that offers a serious exposition of distributism as a critique of modern global capitalism and its political and cultural analogues as well as a practical plan for moving toward a distributist order.

Ahem, may I (im)modestly suggest my own book on that subject, The Vocation of Business: Social Justice in the Marketplace. I wrote the book when I was asked to teach a course on Catholic Social Teaching to business students at the University of Dallas. I found that there was no suitable textbook on CST aimed precisely at business students.

I do attempt both the critique you suggest and the solution. I also attempt to document the impressive success of the social teachings when they are implemented. The pontiffs were speaking as moral authorities, but they turned out to be shrewd economists as well, without actually attempting to be so.

You may view the book at http://tinyurl.com/2pxdug

I slavishly devote my time to throwing whatever diatribe I can at big government, thinking perhaps that with smaller government, the mutually aggrandizing quality of the current
Big Government -Big Business crypto-syndicate will be hobbled and a more inspired individual within a civil society unleashed.

However, one wonders if the citizen’s social evolution has not now precluded any ameliorative effects from a reduction of the Bureaucracy. We do seem to be going the way of Europe (which is a howler when one considers the flesh-eating disease of our military budget) and a very large segment of the populace appears to be either unimpressed by the arguments against the current paradigm or , in fact, hostile to any substantial change.... besides the endless talk of change..... because they have come to enjoy the nanny state. It is safe, predictable and an evil they already know. Sad for them, the government is doing its level best to self-implode.

Our social construct is thoroughly confused. Patriarchal militancy has resulted in the vast consumption of War Statism and indiscriminate exploitation while the ongoing feminization of the culture has led to the stultifying gridlock of Empathy and it’s P.C. output. Meanwhile, the severe depletion of historically normative family life has resulted in the family abdicating it’s stewardship role in favor of the various and sundry entertainments of the popular culture on the one hand or the deadeningly monotonous and homogenizing influences of large institutions on the other. One wonders, if a prudent change is even remotely possible.....aside from the kinds of precipitous changes disaster generate ....a kind of change often filled by the efficiencies of the strong man.

A traditional definition of higher intelligence is a being that can simultaneously hold two conflicting thoughts without vapor-locking. As a species, we still retain this ability but the demise of authentically deliberative government would seem to indicate that we no longer feel the use of our intelligence to be fully required. In this context, reason would appear to be quite beside the point.

Systems , such as Distributism require an underlying social construct that is stable, educated in a full array of forms of intelligence , reasoned and truly egalitarian. Though we reek of a kind of popular feminist empathy against a vast backdrop of violence and patriarchal militancy, this current society would appear to be about as egalitarian as your average toddler. Organized religion has not appeared to make any inroads in this vein with much of arena religion in the U.S. surrendering completely to the kind of aspirational consumerism that infects modern secular American Society.

Funny enough, I see a kind of innate sympathy for many of the precepts of Distributism in my private interrelations all the time and so it would appear that a congruence of enlightened self-interest and egalitarianism are not quite so dead as latin.

Being an amateur apostate, I had never heard of this Distributism and will enjoy learning about it while I loosen the choke on my shotgun from government alone to include the social construct as well. Thanks for the article

Dirk says However, one wonders if the citizen’s social evolution has not now precluded any ameliorative effects from a reduction of the Bureaucracy.

A shrewd observation. Belloc says essentially the same think in The Restoration of Property, namely, that we cannot restore property until we first restore the sentiment for property. That is, the sentiment for freedom, independence, family, and a just social order, all of which are founded on property.

When I look at my “business” students, must of them don’t want to go into business at all, but into something called “management.” This is a sentiment not for the independence of business, but for bureaucracy.

It comes down to the Austrian Cult versus Catholicism.

Ludwig von Mises versus Augustine.

As a follower of the Austrian Cult said to me the other day after Mass: the government shouldn’t be involved in setting religious holidays.

He honestly believed the government had no God-given right to make December 25th a mandatory holiday.  His Catholic Faith may be nothing more than a “badge of honor”.

I’d take a little different approach to the problems distributism attempts to address. 
I’ve long been fascinated with the cultural and economic differences between modern free labor and the older systems of bonded labor (e.g., serfdom and slavery).  There is no finer system for the hardworking and capable than free labor, and modern capitalism shows that.  But a large number of the less capable suffer, and when we have to imprison them or feed them, we all suffer.  Slavery and serfdom, on the other hand, take care of these least capable and provide for them.  The tragedy was that this system trapped the most capable (except for the church).  I think this explains the remarkable stability of pre-modern Europe.  It wasn’t until this system was supplanted that the major upheavals started.

The other problem is cultural; our societies, and the older systems of mutual rights and obligations are no more, particularly noblesse oblige.  When we were one people, with a common culture and ancestry, the elites felt they had a moral duty to look out for their less fortunate cousins.  Today this whole idea is gone.

The answer?  The first thing we need to do is to dispense with the abomination known as egalitarianism and look at our problems with clear eyes.  We need a two-tier society where the least capable, and those incapable of living without constant guidance, can receive that guidance.  And the rest of us should be on our own and have the corresponding rights and obligations.  I also think that if we try and put the pieces of our broken culture back together, and dispense with socialism, that these problems will ameliorate through noblesse oblige, or what the evolutionists call altruism.

“As a follower of the Austrian Cult said to me the other day after Mass: the government shouldn’t be involved in setting religious holidays.

He honestly believed the government had no God-given right to make December 25th a mandatory holiday.  His Catholic Faith may be nothing more than a “badge of honor”. “

Utter nonsense for you to suggest that.  Did God give rights to government? Or did he give them to man?

Maybe my Catholic faith is just a ‘badge of honor’ as well?  Unlike some, it was the faith I was born into.

<<Did God give rights to government?>>

Yes.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02137c.htm

Of course, this is in complete contradiction to Enlightenment inspired Revolution.

Capitalism is not liberal nor is it conservative nor is it religious.

You should learn to stop thinking of it as just money.

We already have distributism today in the form of the secularized welfare state.  We can’t do better?

Remember that the great cities of Western Civilization (Athens, Florence) would be modest towns today. 
We don’t need modern megalopolises.  They are capitalist perversions.

John, about a point you made, that Mises had better
sense than Keynes as to the Great Depression, he was
also incredibly wrongheaded in his knowledge of human nature.

Basically his idea was to counsel patience to people who were
facing poverty and starvation, that somehow things would right
themselves (the same advice free market advocates gave the Irish
during the famine). This kind of advice, specially when given by
those who are comfortable and well fed has little or no chance of
being listened to.  Keynes and worse cranks were seen as *doing*
something, and trying to solve a problem. That’s why they were
followed. If like Roosevelt, they kept tinkering until they found
the right thing to do, well, at least people *were* patient and did
not take up to the streets to hang *enemies of the people* from the
lamposts.

Failure to undestand that a) there is an emergency and that b) in
an emergency prompt action counts more than correct action is too
much the characteristic of Mises’s disciples - actually it is a
too common failing of academic types who are sheltered from day-to-day
reality.

Adriana, I agree completely. It was humanly impossible to face the ruin which subjected countless families (such as my parents’) to actual malnutrition with a pile of cozy bromides. Roosevelt did something--even if it was counterproductive.  A Distributist solution would certainly have worked better, in my opinion. Anyone who knows much about Portugal, please chime in on Salazar’s policies, if you would. He tried the hardest (apart from the martyred Dollfuss) to implement Church social teaching.

Ah, too bad that Roosevelt had not been exposed to
Distributist ideas. As it was, he did his best with
what he had. And he kept the worst from happening,
which is no small thing. (I recall someone commenting
on de Valera’s Ireland that it was a “dreary Eden”,
but that no one realized how much it cost to keep it
there insted of sliding into catastrophe).

Sadly I do not know much about Portugal. I know a bit
more about Spain, and falangists social ideas. And Spain
is a good place to ponder one paradox, that actually
decreasing the worst effects of poverty might temporarily
increase it. Mainly that cutting down on child mortality
(and the regime of Franco cut it down noticiably, even in
the post-war penury), means that more children grow up to
become adults in poverty, and thus there are more people.
Also, by allowing a spartan diet that kept people alive,
they kept the memory in them of how much hungry they were.
People who die of hunger do not recall it nor mention it to the
grandchildren they did not have the chance to have.

Anything that cuts down on mortality increases poverty…

John Médaille,

of course I’ve read your book. It’s excellent.

I’ll comment on it some at your blog shortly.

The part you quoted from me above was actually written by the late Dr. Sam Francis. I believe he wrote that before you published your book.

While you and Francis would likely disagree on several things, he did see distributism as a potential remedy to the managerial state. I think this is very much the future of the right, as well as environmental concerns which as you know fit in well with that.

This is a great article. It promotes something that we can accomplish on our own. There’s no need to appeal to the Feds to come to our aid. We don’t need a giant organization. We do it on our own on a personal basis. I patronize my small Georgia town, local mechants, and farms. My hard earned money stays in my commuity, not carted off to some mega corporation in NYC. Not only do these corporations not need the money, but they are the power behind the throne, so to speak, responsible for outsourcing, open borders, and most of the forces dissolving our identity. Why patronize them? Real culture develops at the local level. Therefore, I made a conscious decision to patronize it. (I also threw out the TV 25 years ago.)

“On the other hand, this development gave birth to the suburb.”

And . . . ?

Many downtowns certainly are thriving, and not just minor ones like Nashua, NH; but that may be in large part because downtowns have copied the suburban mall aesthetic, while malls themselves are modeling themselves after old downtowns.

The market has already caught up to people’s concerns--real and ideological--about the mass-produced, cookie-cutter alienation of post-war suburbs. Suburb and city are becoming more alike.

I fail to see how directing the state to scrutinize the size of every productive enterprise in the land, to insure that no one enterprise becomes too large, will result in less bureaucracy</i> and less domination by the state.

You would need a bureaucracy at least an order of magnitude greater than our current tax and regulatory state to make that possible.

You’d also have to come to terms with the fact that your state would be forced, in the course of applying these laws, to arrest, incarcerate, and expropriate people who broke them - which means that you would be applying the horrors of our current pentitentiary slave state to people who produce too many goods or who provide too many services.  I don’t really think you can have a just society if you spend part of your time [for example] sending people to prison for selling too many books.  Or selling too much medicine.  Or growing too much corn.  That’s just me, though, I guess.

Buster says We already have distributism today in the form of the secularized welfare state.  We can’t do better?

That is to confuse “distributism” with Keynesian redistribution. Keynes is necessary in any society that cannot properly balance supply and demand. Keynesianism has been adopted by every regime, whether of the right or the left, because it seemed to tame the vicious business cycle, to make recessions less numerous and less deep. After all, between 1853 and 1953, the economy was in recession or depression fully 40% of the time; since then, it has been in recession less than 15% of the time.

So it was not (as some conservatives would have it) a conspiracy of the left that imposed Keynesian policies, but a consensus of the left and right aimed at their own self-preservation. However, I do believe that the Keynesian technique has run its course, and is no longer sustainable.

What comes next?

Brian says, You would need a bureaucracy at least an order of magnitude greater than our current tax and regulatory state to make that possible.

I agree a bureaucracy must be equal (at least) in size and complexity to the thing regulated; this is the problem with most “fair tax” or “flat tax” proposals. However, regulating size would seem to be fairly simple. Indeed, I think it could be accomplished by a simple Georgist land tax, but that is perhaps a discussion for another place and time.

Frank, thank you for the comment on my book. Yes, I know Dr. Francis and his excellent writings for Chronicles.

The 19th century economist Henry George offered a real Third Way: free enterprise combined with a single tax on the value of land, and the abolition of other taxes.  Instead of giving everyone a small plot of land, we should apply the rental values of land to public purposes, including paying a citizen’s dividend to everyone, if we don’t appropriate the money to other purposes.  Try Googling on Henry George.

Meanwhile, I attended a conference on Georgist/Catholic dialogue at the University of Scranton last summer; this is something I posted on my blog (http://ndrosen.livejournal.com) a few months later:

Remember that I went to a conference on Georgist/Catholic dialogue back in July? There’s some more I’d like to say about Distributism.

Distributism, associated with the names of G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Dorothy Day, and Peter Maurin, can be viewed as a Third Way, an alternative to both socialism and capitalism, at least in their usual forms. So can Georgism, but the two are not the same (Fourth Way, anyone?).

Distributists support private property, but want it widely distributed: small farms, co-operatives, crafts, decentralization, small businesses. Not all Catholics are Distributists, but several people at the conference had a more-or-less Distributist outlook, or had gotten involved through Catholic Worker communities.

My general view is that I sympathize with their goals to some extent, but not entirely, and I defnitely oppose measures to redistribute property without any justification other than to make society more nearly resemble a Distributist’s opinion of what it should be.

Since I couldn’t find the Distributist pamphlet distributed at the July conference online, I’ll turn to the Wikipedia article on Distributism, which seems balanced:

“As Hilaire Belloc stated, the distributive state (that is, the state which has implemented distributism) contains ‘an agglomeration of families of varying wealth, but by far the greater number owners of the means of production.’ This broader distribution does not extend to all property, but only to productive property; that is, that property which produces wealth, namely, the things needed for man to survive. It includes land, tools, etc.”

Henry George largely answered Distributism, IMHO, before Belloc and Chesterton formulated it. First, there is a key distinction between tools and land. If people lack tools and want them, let them buy tools from those who make tools (buy, not take—Catholics should be familiar with the principle, “Thou shalt not steal"). Land, well, land is a different matter.

A practical problem is that some tools, like the capital equipment for wafer fabs and nuclear power reactors, cannot be divided among many small businesses for craft production. Unless we truly want to return to the Middle Ages, with all that that implies—beginning with the dying off of a majority of the Earth’s current population—there seems no alternative to having some parts of the economy operate as large organizations of one sort or another.

Even supposing Distributism to be possible, there are moral and practical problems. If the government were to distribute the assets of billionaires and megacorporations among millions of small proprietors, there would be the question of who should get how much, and since there is, so far as I can see, no principle of justice that would tell us the answer, there would in practice be an unseemly scramble to bribe legislators and civil servants, or to squat on the better distributions, and hold them by main force.

Assets could not be distributed equally because they come in unequal lumps. The minimum size for one kind of workshop is larger than for another kind, and different shops, farms, etc., are unequally large and properous.

A further problem is that distributing productive assets to some poor folks would not help others. If Joe the janitor’s assistant is made the proprietor of his own modest but adequate workshop, it is not clear how Jake the janitor’s other assistant is helped—you did notice in the Belloc quote that not everyone would be made owners of the means of production. Changing the economic situation so that there would be more demand for Jake’s labor, he could earn higher wages, and pay lower taxes as well, would seem much more beneficial to him.

Henry George critiqued this, with particular reference to schemes for distributing land (Progress and Poverty, Book VI, Chapter 1) long before Chesterton started the Distributist Association. George wrote that distribution of land “will not reduce rent, and therefore cannot increase wages. It may make the comfortable classes larger, but will not improve the condition of those in the lowest class.” There’s more, and it’s worth reading, but enough for now. After all, it isn’t as if Distributism were widely advocated these days.

(Sorry about that last sentence, gentlemen.)

Forrest, the Wirtschaftswunder engineered by Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard in postwar Germany was inspired by Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum, which also is the main inspiration for Distributism.

Get a grip.

Nicholas, I did see some of the work from the conference you mention, and I thought there was an awful lot of “missing the point” on both sides. Georgism and distributism are complimentary theories. George was right that distributism, in and of itself, will not change the speculative rent line. Distributism is correct in that well-distributed property changes the wage negotiation.

I do not believe you can have a Georgist state without well-distributed property. This, in fact, has been the actual experience of Georgist states, (Taiwan, Hong Kong--under the British, Singapore, Korea, etc.) Once rental values become the basis of taxation, the process becomes politicized and all sorts of schemes are put in place to hide the real values. Hence they all resort to some formula which fails to capture the land values.

On the other hand, well-divided property can only be maintained by a land value tax, to the exclusion of all (or nearly all) other taxes. Without this, ownership will simply re-aggregate, and you will be back where you started.

The enmity between Georgism and Distributism works to the detriment of both and the implementation of neither.

Forrest seems to have read a pamphlet somewhere on the German economic recovery. As I have written a book on the subject, let me answer him: The German economic recovery happened because the Christian Democrats allied with the Free Democrats to enact a political coup against the Occupation authorities--combining the new, solid currency they were issuing with Allied approval with a bold, unapproved measure: the decontrol of most prices. This freed up the productive power of a people already conditioned to hard work, and the “miracle” happened. Ropke was key to making and defending that decision.  However, he warned that disaster would come from the governing coalition’s refusal to break up monopolies, its decision NOT to encourage small business and farming but INSTEAD to win over “social justice” voters (the BULK of German voters back then, in all parties) by representing labor unions on corporate boards, and its choice to set up a welfare state instead of promoting self-reliance. He warned that it would result in a sclerotic, bureaucratic economy and a political order that encouraged creeping socialism and the breakup of the family and traditional communities. He was right on all counts-- as perhaps the Islamic majority in Germany in 50 years will realize.

I like your article, John, so let me pass over the good parts and pick out a part I disagree with.

How about this: Those of us who understand the importance of economic independence, the virtues of independent farms and mom and pop businesses (and here comes the radical step) should patronize them. And convince our friends to join us. And boycott everything else. We should spend the extra money to shop downtown instead of driving to the mall, buy vegetables at farmers’ markets, and fund all this by eschewing our least important luxuries.

By the same token, I could propose that if one believes the defense budget too small, one should mail $ 100 to the Army.

I do not believe in my Army proposition, of course, but my question to you is this: what is the relevant difference between my proposition and yours?  From where I sit, the difference looks pretty narrow.

John Médaille’s book on “Social Justice in the Marketplace” carries a list price of NINETY-FIVE DOLLARS. HAHAHA!

Distributism is bleeding-heart white guilt for conservative burnouts. And anything involving Dorothy Day is leftist, kids. She was Social Gospel with a rosary.

Are you guys going to say that Old Rubberlegs and the New Deal are justified because it contained the parasitic forces of capitalism? Allan Carlson claims this.

@ Ramus John Médaille’s book on “Social Justice in the Marketplace” carries a list price of NINETY-FIVE DOLLARS. HAHAHA!

That’s the hard-cover. The paperback is $31 at Amazon.

@ Ramus Distributism is bleeding-heart white guilt for conservative burnouts. And anything involving Dorothy Day is leftist, kids. She was Social Gospel with a rosary.

I am less worried about “left” and “right” and more worried about “true” and “false.” Left and right deal with ideology; true and false with verities. One who thinks in terms of ideology doesn’t think at all; he outsources his thought to the pundits. This is perhaps more efficient; however, one can get neck sprain while following the changes in the party lines.

Recall that the old term for “capitalism” was “liberalism”; capitalism was the Marxist term for the liberals. And if one want to find some good, old-fashioned, Wilsonian, liberal internationalism, one will have to seek it out among the neo-conservatives. On the other hand, if one wants to find cruchy, “grow-your-own-vegetables” conservatism, one could do worse than, say, “Mother Jones News.”

As for Dorothy Day being a leftist, well, I have never been tempted to confuse her with Hillary Clinton. And as far as the “social gospel with a rosary” goes, the same description would fit Leo XIII, Pius XI, John Paul II, and, I’m pretty sure, Benedict XVI.

Dear Mr. Harrison,
The difference is simple: The army is inherently the province of the State, and a means of violent coercion, like the police.

The economy, one would like to think, is not by its nature either one.

Forrest:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t Adenauer and Ehrhard disicples of Roepke?  Isn’t
Germany an example of distributism in action?