What is Distributism?

The very basics, compiled from Wiki copypasta:

Distributism is an economic ideology asserting that the world's productive assets should be widely owned rather than concentrated. It was developed in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries based upon the principles of Catholic social teaching. It views both capitalism and socialism as equally flawed and exploitative, and it favors economic mechanisms such as small-scale cooperatives and family businesses, and large-scale anti-trust regulations.

Under such a system, most people would be able to earn a living without having to rely on the use of the property of others to do so. Examples of people earning a living in this way would be farmers who own their own land and related machinery, carpenters and plumbers who own their own tools, etc. The "cooperative" approach advances beyond this perspective to recognise that such property and equipment may be "co-owned" by local communities larger than a family, e.g., partners in a business.

According to Hilaire Belloc, the distributive state (the state which has implemented distributism) contains "an agglomeration of families of varying wealth, but by far the greater number of 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, and so on. Distributism allows for society to have public goods such as parks and transit systems.

Distributism promotes a society of artisans and culture. This is influenced by an emphasis on small business, promotion of local culture, and favoring of small production over capitalistic mass production. A society of artisans promotes the distributist ideal of the unification of capital, ownership, and production rather than what distributism sees as an alienation of man from work.

This does not, however, suggest that distributism necessarily favors a technological regression to a pre-Industrial Revolution lifestyle, but a more local ownership of factories and other industrial centers. Products such as food and clothing would be preferably returned to local producers and artisans instead of being mass-produced overseas.

In essence, it's a decentralized free-enterprise system. And it's based on a Natural Law ethos, with the Catholic interpretation being:

In Rerum novarum, Leo XIII states that people are likely to work harder and with greater commitment if they themselves possess the land on which they labour, which in turn will benefit them and their families, as workers will be able to provide for themselves and their household. He puts forward the idea that when men have the opportunity to possess property and work on it, they will "learn to love the very soil which yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of the good things for themselves and those that are dear to them". He states also that owning property is not only beneficial for a person and their family, but is in fact a right, due to God having "...given the earth for the use and enjoyment of the whole human race".

Similar views are presented by G. K. Chesterton in his 1910 book What’s Wrong with the World. Chesterton believes that whilst God has limitless capabilities, man has limited abilities in terms of creation. As such, man therefore is entitled to own property and to treat it as he sees fit. He states "Property is merely the art of the democracy. It means that every man should have something that he can shape in his own image, as he is shaped in the image of heaven. But because he is not God, but only a graven image of God, his self-expression must deal with limits; properly with limits that are strict and even small." Chesterton summed up his distributist views in the phrase "Three acres and a cow".

In the future, I'll will be outlining my own version of distributism based on my own "Traditonal Gnosis" spiritual beliefs. As I'm not a Catholic (nor Christian in general) and thus I don't believe in Catholic dogma and theology, I cannot in good faith fully endorse the Catholic ethical justifications for this system; for example, I don't believe humans have a "God-given right" to use, abuse and trash the planet; nor I I support any appeals to democratic rhetoric which might suggest that every man is equally capable (and thus justified) of practicing responsible land stewardship. However, despite these objections, my general understanding of the spiritual underpinnings of distributism is largely in agreement with the Catholic teachings.

To wrap this up, I'll briefly outline the other features of distributism which I'll probably go over in more detail whenever I get around to doing so:

• Return to a Guild System


• Economic Focus on Family and Community


• Banking/Lending without Usury


• Anti-trust legislation


• Social Credit

Finally, the family focused aspect is central to the main ethos of this system. However I have a slightly different concept of the family; one that deviates a bit from the rigid nuclear family definition; this would include communities, religious congregations and civic fraternities. Atomized nuclear families constitute the stepping stone to atomized individuals.

Distributim is Voluntary and Local

Distributim is a way of life, not some daydreaming visionary's a top-down grand scheme of how everyone else should live. It's a commitment to living local and within your means; a devotion to family and community; and a wholesale rejection of soulless consumerism and its twin, social atomization. Distributism is first and foremost about the home.

Here's how G.K. Chesterton envisioned this system:

The problem in the modern world is that the exceptions get all the attention. The generalizations get none. The exceptions have become the rule. It is now an exception for a woman to raise her own children. But [G.K.] Chesterton’s distributist ideal not only called for mothers to stay at home, it called for fathers to stay at home as well. The home-based business, the idea of self-sufficiency would not only make for stronger, healthier families, but a stronger, healthier society. If everything in a society is based on nurturing and strengthening and protecting the family, that society will survive centuries of storms. A home-based society is naturally and necessarily a local and de-centralized society. If the government is local, if the economy is local, then the culture is also local. What we call culture right now is neither local nor is it culture. It is an amorphous society based on the freeway off-ramp and tall glowing signs that all say the same thing. Convenience is our culture. We all convene at the convenience store, where we get our gas and our munchies and our magazine and we are careful not to look anyone in the eye, not even the Pakistani clerk who waves our credit card across the laser beam. This is a revealing snapshot of our fragmented society: passive, restless, shutter-eyed, lonely, not at home.

Though Chesterton would argue that a distributist society would be most fully realized if it were based on a Catholic worldview, he would not insist upon that basis as essential for achieving such a society. In fact, he would argue that such a society is more congenial to the different religions than any other societal plan. Freedom of religion, as it now supposedly exists under a huge centralized government, actually needs to be “enforced” by that government. The result, as we have seen, is that religion has actually been stifled where the government watchdog is there to “guarantee” the freedom. But local-based governments (supported by local-based economies) are more conducive to religious freedom because people of the same religion would naturally gravitate together. The main reason that people of the same religion tend to scatter in our society and that people of different religions tend to mix uncomfortably is that our society is not based on the home. It is based on the opportunities outside the home. The better jobs are always elsewhere. It is not their religion that makes people chose a place to live; it is their job. It is convenience. It is not philosophy.

Here the religious or spiritual community serves as the cultural glue for the people in a given locality who aspire to live the distributist ideal. A government-run program or plan is totally unnecessary for this to work. The only involvement with government would be the occasional necessity for the community to lobby local and municipal governments to ease up on any red tape or other cumbersome regulations which may hamper family and community-building and sustenance. Economics would be merely a matter of community members pooling resources and expertise together in order to accomplish common goals in a more efficient and socially-harmonious manner.

Distributism is an opt-in system. People who have no interest in anything related to distributism will of course always be free to have nothing to do with distributism; as long as we are blessed with a free society, people will be able to live their own lives in whatever lawful manner they see fit. In many ways distributism fulfills the libertarian ideal of independent, decentralized communities deciding their own fate and resisting coercion from distant, centralized and impersonal bureaucratic government authorities. The only real difference is that distributism avoids promoting the values of atomized individualism and treating people as soulless economic units. Again, distributist economics is mostly just a function of family and community maintenance; it's never an end unto itself.

A distributist economic network can easily be established in any typical urban, suburban or rural area. All it requires is a group of like-minded friends and acquaintances establishing a semi-formal trade network. A closed-access craigslist type of web page or app for swapping goods and skills would easily suffice as a beginner endeavor. Actually, these efforts already exist in many cities and towns across the US, but of course the way they are identified and publicized will vary according to differing ethical and ideological goals.