Yesterday I drew on the Niall Ferguson’s latest history of the 20th century to show how two vaunted alternatives to liberal capitalism—socialism (the fetish of class) and tribalism (the fetish of race)—all but drowned the Eurasian land mass in innocent blood. Each ideological movement presented itself as a source of renewed community to modern, “mass” men alienated from traditional folkways, cut off from extended family, and bereft of any hope of economic self-sufficiency. Who needs cousins when you have your fellow Communists? Why yawn through old-fashioned ceremonies in church, when the S.A. offers a much more exciting torchlit procession? Almost as important, these pseudo-communities of class or race promised economic security in exchange for a “freedom” which the poor had little reason to cherish. In the tumult and turmoil of a market economy, men producing crops or goods for a distant employer who catered to foreign markets were constantly subjected to the worst kind of shocks that threatened their livelihood and families. If a civil war in India caused cotton prices to fall, ten thousand Englishmen might find themselves out of work. Since few of them had ever earned enough to heap up savings, they might well be turned into paupers, through no fault of their own. (Somehow, their employers never seemed to starve.) Surely such a system must be the fruit of an evil conspiracy—the work of organized exploiters, either in cloth-coats or caftans. The parasitical enemies of the people (the class or the tribe) must be expropriated, their property socialized or Aryanized, and the well-being of the “community” ensured. Given the shock inflation and mass unemployment that pauperized millions, such radicalism seemed only requisite to the occasion; for orthodox economists, backed by big business, to counsel calm and patience to desperate masses seemed the height of callousness. Whatever the actual truth of their assertions—and Mises certainly understood the Great Depression better than Keynes, much less the cranks who rose to power in Moscow or Berlin—there was no political constituency for sanity in the wake of World War I and the Great Depression. It’s shocking, but shouldn’t be surprising, that The New Republic called for “An American Mussolini.”
In Roosevelt we found one—albeit a much more intelligent, sober and prudent man, whose worst efforts to overreach the Constitution were promptly rebuked by our sturdy political culture. In the end, Roosevelt’s aspiration to control and coordinate every wage and price in America was whittled down to size, and the U.S. marched during World War II and after into a mild form of social democracy—collectivism on the installment plan. (John Lukacs, in a pointless provocation, insists that Europe was conquered by “national socialism”—which is etymologically correct.) We didn’t buy that model home offered by the Myrdals, but we took out a mortgage on it. After the war, we poured our treasure into Western Europe, and helped rebuke the postwar Communist parties and Soviet armies, ensuring that Germany, Italy, and France would also adopt similar systems. Nowhere was it proposed that these nations return to an orthodox free-market system—whose advocates numbered literally in the dozens (namely, the members of the Montpelerin Society.)
Was there another way? Can a “Third Way” be traced between individualism and collectivism, or is such a hope misguided? Strict libertarians dismiss the term itself as nothing but a fig leaf for the advancement of economic coercion and the empowerment of the State. And if that were the outcome, we should certainly oppose it. Wilhelm Röpke, one of the first to use the term “Third Way” to describe his position, warned eloquently throughout his works (especially The Social Crisis of Our Time and The Moral Foundations of Civil Society) that socialism and its weak sister the welfare state were “cures” for modern insecurity and alienation which quickly proved worse than the disease. In his later works, such as A Humane Economy, he waxed bitter over how the “social market” economy he helped launch in post-war Germany was sliding every year closer into the embrace of the welfare state.
But need things have turned out that way? And must we accept that they will go on marching in that direction—with every budget claiming a higher portion of the citizens’ wealth, the future mortgaged to debt, massive corporations “partnering” with government to ensure their future profits, and U.S. industries fleeing overseas to escape the crippling costs of operation—or importing cheaper, compliant workers (whose kids will quickly benefit from our welfare state, and at age 18 vote to expand it)? If so, there’s not much point in staying in the U.S., I’m afraid. One can find this sort of thing in France or Italy, where at least they have baroque architecture. If America doesn’t stand for a stark suspicion of tyranny and confiscation, then it stands for nothing at all.
As Allan Carlson writes in his fascinating Third Ways, there were alternative movements throughout the 20th century, and some of them deserve our continued attention. Distributism, which I mentioned briefly before, is particularly important since it draws on the deepest insights of genuine conservatives from Edmund Burke to the Agrarians, as well as the highly perceptive critiques presented by Catholic social teaching from Leo XIII through Pius XI. It’s refreshing to note that those modern popes (unlike too many contemporary bishops) did not call for a potent bureaucracy to ameliorate social problems; instead, they urged the empowerment of individuals, especially fathers of families, that they might find their own answers to life’s challenges. This solution, and not dependency on the machinery of the State, the popes saw as suited to human dignity. Because of its theological underpinnings, Distributism resists the analytical, value-neutral social science practiced by the eminent Ludwig von Mises, insisting on a wider vision of man that is willing to make objective moral statements, and rank human activities according to some scale other than subjective satisfaction, mutual consent, and freedom of contract.
More importantly, the Distributists considered that the growing support in their time for radical tyranny stemmed from the economic helplessness experienced by the average “proleterianized” worker, or dispossessed farmer, who had no access to any means of production save the labor of his hands, and hence no source of security for himself and his family. While the socialists, fascists, and welfarists proposed to rectify this insecurity by making the State the guarantor of every individual’s well-being, the Distributists (here agreeing with libertarians) saw this as a deadly step toward bureaucratic domination of society. Instead, the head of a family must be given the means to guarantee his own family’s security. Insofar as State power would be used to bring this about, it would be acting against itself—empowering citizens so that they would not ever need to empower the State. This would help the modern state (to steal a phrase) “wither away.” Or so it was hoped.
Explained with brutal brevity, Distributists such as Chesterton and Belloc favored action by the State on the economy—though much less radical steps than those enacted by Franklin Roosevelt, not to mention the draconian measures socialists and fascists advocated. As Carlson explains, Distributist laws, had they been enacted, would have reduced concentrations of real estate and farms, diminished the competitiveness of chain stores and centralized industries, and encouraged the growth and flourishing of small farms, artisan workers, small businesses, and mom and pop shops. Distributists favored the confiscation of some land—most of which, in England, had been accumulated with the connivance of the State, or outright stolen from the Church, so it was already “tainted” from a property-rights perspective—and its division into small plots which could be worked by willing farmers. They also supported tax laws that favored small businesses over large, and strict laws forbidding mergers and “monopolies.” In postwar Europe, Röpke pressed for several such measures, but with no success. In their absence, the welfare state indeed grew up, as he’d predicted; as the family further fractured, the birth rate plummeted. Now the Continent itself is being colonized. Whether Distributist measures would have prevented this decline is hard to determine, since they have so infrequently been attempted. (One exception, Carlson notes, is the U.S. federal government’s promotion of home-ownership after World War II, which helped millions of Americans become home-owners. On the other hand, this development gave birth to the suburb.)
Libertarians such as Tom Woods have offered cogent critiques of the ethics and possible outcomes of a government-sponsored Distributist agenda, and knives have been drawn between the paleo-libertarians and neo-distributists. But I don’t think the quarrel between them need be so bitter. 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. 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. That’s how the thriving organic food industry came into existence, and the home-schooling movement, too. Each happened by private initiative, without the heavy (corrupting) hand of the State ever getting in the way. There are now thousands of independent farms that would have otherwise closed down, and thriving downtowns (like Nashua, New Hampshire, where I’m happy to say I shop), supported by consumers who think it’s important that they exist. And thanks to home-schooling, millions of kids who can actually read.
Of course, the most radical among the Distributists will complain at this point: “That’s not enough. That’s merely a drop in the bucket. Only a serious initiative by the government could turn the situation around….” To which I would say: Even if you’re right—what is the current likelihood of that? Why not take all the energy and talent you might use trying to organize a mass movement favoring compulsory Distributism… and channel into persuading people to practice it? You’re much likely to succeed, and will gain avoid the likely hazard of increasing the power of the modern, “servile” State.
Which was, I thought, the problem you were trying to solve in the first place….
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The Usual Suspects