Distributism in Action

As John Médaille from The Distributist Review pointed out recently, various new endeavors are in preparation for the coming year.

We hinted in the past about a future conference. Now we are working in earnest to secure a site and date for the event. This will be a full day conference with eight speakers who have generously offered their time and support. Please return to our site for updates as developments unfold.

A Grassroots Movement Rising…Again

The original Distributist League initially met at the Devereux pub and spawned 24 like-minded branches across Great Britain within a single year.* These in turn hosted lectures and conferences, and coordinated with complimentary organizations such as Fr. McQuillan’s Catholic Land Association.

In recent years, many have made efforts to re-introduce Distributism and, as a result, discussions surrounding the topic have been increasing on the world-wide-web. These consequences are not negligible. Book publishers, online and print journals, lectures, universities, and television programs have either touched on the topic or have dedicated themselves to it.

Short-term Goals

We would like to notify our readers of the following proposed objectives we will meet:

1. The establishment of a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization to educate society about and in support of Distributism. This apostolate will engage in the dissemination of educational materials, semi-annual lecture series, and conferences.

2. A chronicle in print is in development with the intent of discussing solutions to our current global dilemmas. Conceptually the magazine will concentrate on both the practical application of Distributism, as well as analysis of various movements conformes with Distributist thought. This journal will include some of the writers featured on our online archive and debates with capitalists and socialists will also be welcome.

3. Fund-raising will play a supporting role towards keeping our costs down for events and all materials. All profits will be used toward our described efforts.

You Can Have an Impact

Send us an email and let us know whether you would like to be contacted with updates and information about said events. We will not release your information to any third parties and you will not have to provide your name if you desire not to do so. Just send us an email that you wish to subscribe and please provide us with your country of residence, city and state/province. This will assist us when preparing future events.

Ultimately we would like to lecture across the globe, so please support this effort by being a part of the mailing list

Establishing a database will allow us to quantify the existing support for these ventures, and inform our readers when and where they will take place.

Please contact us at:

societyfordistributism@gmail.com **

Country of residence:
City:
State/Province:

Sending us your information will be invaluable in our efforts to coordinate these goals

Servire Deo Regnare Est!

Richard Aleman
The ChesterBelloc Mandate

*According to John Michael Thorn’s book, An Unexplored Chapter in Recent English History, these branches were founded between 1926 and 1927.
**Upon the establishment of a non-profit, we will notify our subscribers of our new email address.

"Island Hopping" to Distributism

by Athanasius

In the Second World War, the United States employed a tactic known in our history books as "Island hopping", to defeat the Japanese. Instead of merely throwing all of our military might indiscriminately, we took key Islands in order to create a path straight to the Japanese mainland.

Whenever large tasks are undertaken correctly, they are taken in this manner, by prioritizing and making gains step by step, even if the gains added up do not equal the over all objective, they may in fact lead to it.

Today however, the way men engage in accomplishing tasks suggests that they don't understand this philosophy. Likewise they look at step by step strategies as cumbersome rather than throwing weight at the problem. It would be as if they were to look down on General MacArthur and chide him for making his troops fight to the death with the Japanese over a mile wide strip of island.

The greatest example of that today is in the political process here in the United States. When men try to take on the institutionalized 2-party juggernaut of "Republicrat" and "Democan", they usually aim for the mainland without securing the island path by running presidential candidates who have no recognition and whose message is rarely heard.

"Island hopping" a third party into existence takes time and patience, perhaps as much as ten years to run candidates at a local level before acquiring state and later national recognition, by which one could compete with the big parties. At present any 3rd party candidate running for president will be boxed out every time because of the lack of support and recognition, like a military strike for the main target that goes astray for lack of support and back up.

This is also true when we consider Distributism. There can be no question of walking out with a referendum to establish a distributist society, nor of laws enacted to establish Distributism without the edifice of support first. Thus like MacArthur, we must identify a) The goal and b) the steps to get there.

A. The Distributist society is one in which private productive property is widespread but limited so that the availability of property will always be present.

According to Belloc not every man needs to own his own property, but only a sufficient number to mark the society with a character of ownership. As Chesterton said, if a man chooses not to own, that's his own business, but the opportunity that is not present today for the rest of society will be. Another way to put it, is that we are going to create more Capitalists than the elite over at Wall Street. Laws are in force to keep the large unit from destroying the small, or the small from becoming too large, and in this fashion protecting ownership by the many.

B. The steps to get there are suggested best and most orderly in Hilaire Belloc's book An Essay on the Restoration of Property. Yet these are by no means the only ways to do it, nor is it some be all and end all. Belloc proposed a process by which a restoration might take place in England in his day. He wrote specifically of England because "If it can be done in England, it could be done anywhere." The beautiful thing about Distributism is that it is not limited to what the founders believed or thought, but is eminently adaptable. Thus it is not called Chester-Bellocism, because while their ideas serve as a strong foundation, they are not a fixed and stagnated list of proposals. Even within Distributism, there were disagreements. Arthur Penty believed in government price setting (for most of his life) while Chesterton and Belloc thought it was a rotten idea.

The first step, without which Distributism could never flourish, is to create the desire in men for ownership. If men do not want to own there is little chance of re-establishing ownership. There are many ways in which this could be done, certainly apologetics and spreading more information about Distributism is a start. Before I read Chesterton and Belloc's works I scarcely would have aspired to owning my livelihood. However even that would not be sufficient to sway most men who have now become accustomed to living as proletarians. The first step is to make ownership a thing possible for men to consider it is to remove the blatant bias in our laws and financial system for large entities. We do not have to favor small units necessarily, just make it so a small business could succeed.

Here I mean in the way of government taxes, fees, and endless rounds of paperwork and tax forms, which are easily dealt with by large units with their legions of law firms, and their large bank book, but not by the small business which must pay the same fees as with a smaller budget. Let us say if the government was to remove all inspection fees (but not the inspections!) on small businesses which made less than $60,000 a year (that figure after of course expenses such as salaries and taxes, accounting of losses, etc.); or minimizing the taxes on such businesses. My own Father was self employed for many years, and made somewhere near that amount, but then had to pay half of it to the government between state and federal taxes and fees, even absurd things like "use" taxes for his equipment. When one thinks of 50 cents of every dollar he makes going to Washington, it is little wonder he must think twice about a business. For larger operations, not only does 15 cents of every dollar go for Social Security, but 7 1/2 cents of every dollar he pays his employees must go to the government, while they pay the other 7 1/2 cents.

Perhaps the biggest corruption and scandal of the 20th century is the government thievery we otherwise call "Social Security" which became a big blank check that increasingly demands more and pays less, and now can scarcely meet its obligations. A reform in this obscene and ridiculous theft by the government under the guise of retirement care which allowed small businesses to keep that 15 cents of each dollar would be a huge boon to ownership. This is even before we have considered the points of Belloc's essay.

The next step after the desire for ownership has been established is to make it more possible to own property, and that is by actively penalizing the purchase of small institutions by larger ones, penalize mergers, and leave no or a tiny fee for small entities acquiring property from larger ones. The large institution can always shoulder the cost, but the small one cannot, thus you remove that penalty. Thus if a man wants to own a mechanic shop, (and following the earlier suggested, the $60,000 which he must make before he can begin to make $1 of profit to pay for groceries and bills has dwindled to something more reasonable at this time, like $10,000) and a large national chain such as Jiffy Lube (known for its poor service) comes in and buys his shop, they receive a large tax for doing so, something like 60 or 70% of the sale. If a man on the other hand wanted to buy a failing Jiffy Lube (again known for its shoddy service as many thousands can attest who have paid for new air filters several times and yet have the same one!) and make it into a small mechanic business, he has no tax on the sale, or perhaps 5%, and receives fees proportionally smaller for inspection. This process can be applied to the small grocer, the self employed contractor, co-owned or employee owned stores, etc. And particularly small agriculture. Instead of subsidizing farmers, which hurts them in the long run and hurts farmers around the world at present, we should be removing taxes and fees on agricultural output which is under a certain amount and raise on those of an amount to constitute agribusiness.

Ultimately, the next step must deal with Usery, which the Catholic Church has always and everywhere condemned. Hilaire Belloc gives an excellent description of Usery, it is money charged for money, rather than money charged for a productive loan. If a bank loans money, and demands a payment of so much extra of the loan regardless of the use and production from that money, this is what the Church has always condemned. Yet, if money should be given, even by a bank, and a percentage of the profits earned (plus the money back) are demanded, then the Church has nothing to say because one is entitled to the profits his money earned, just as the one who borrows the money is entitled to the profits he earned with the money.

Yet Usery is the source of the power of modern banking institutions, and it is the agent that maintains capital in the hands of but a few. It allows capital to be hoarded by a bunch of investment firms in New York and Geneva, when the community is starving for the substance to even make ends meet. The substantial credit card debt of the majority of our nation should be sufficient to attest to that, and the frankly criminal FICO system which is used as a pretext of denying even jobs to men who have made even a few mistakes. In some places you can not even rent an apartment if you have a "credit score below so much".

This power has to be positively broken in order for ownership to be achieved. The best way is to outlaw usery and limit the amount demanded on loans to the positive profit from it. Whether or not this can even be done in our modern plutocracies which we misname "democracy" is something which remains to be seen. The chief power in our system is in the hands of banks. I personally would not be surprised to discover that all of our elections were rigged by the same, but that is positive conspiracy theory for which I have no evidence. I am not even sure if it is true, it is only a thought.

Next, unrestrained competition needs to be reigned in. This is what Pope Pius XI tells us in Quadragesimo Anno, is the "poison spring from which all evils flow." A larger unit should not have the power to ruin the smaller one by taking losses the small man can never take with the aim of ruining his livelihood and taking the market share at the expense of the small man's family. The truth is, we are not free to do with our property what we please. Thus the state, in the form of the local authority (we'll get to local power over central power next) needs to set laws curbing unjust competition.

Local currencies help local communities establish a local economy, and as such allow local reckoning for goods and abilities to pay through barter or through other means, and keep the power over currency away from banks. Thus they go along way toward curbing unjust competition by giving a local standard for which companies must operate. To do this in our country the Federal Reserve Act must be repealed, and the Federal Reserve must be completely destroyed. It is a corrupt institution which holds more power over our country than all three branches of Government combined.

Lastly, if all of this can be done, the focus has to be on a local, rather than national or heaven forbid "global" economy. Global trade should only be carried out for goods which can not be produced locally. For local economies we need local power restored and centralized authority minimized. This is because a community has the most control over its local authorities and the least control over its central authorities. If a mayor wants to use emminent domain to steal your house and give it to the rich, some protest of 10,000 men is sufficient to detour him, since ignoring the protest would be the end of his political life. Yet, when the Supreme Court says that the government can steal your house and give it to the rich, what can you do?

Thus for local communities you need local bodies, such as can train, take on apprentices, make loans for property out of the overall group possessions, etc. Co-ownership of large machinery and factories for example would be a positive good in that direction, overseen by local authorities. A community will be more outraged and take more action over someone losing his property to unjust competition than a central authority which is more or less accountable to no one. Yet all of this hinges on people wanting the property. As I have mentioned before in my writings, Distributism can not be established by a minority over a majority like Capitalism or Communism, it must be something which comes from society itself as it did at the end of the Roman Empire in the West.

All of these of course are ways that it could be done, not ways that it must be done. Distributism is capable of adapting to new needs and new ideas, it remains the same in as much as it makes its aim for widespread ownership of property.

Darwin to the Left, Darwin to the Right

By Gen Ferrer

Distributists argued amongst themselves about...distributism. Their opinions varied. Because of this fact, today there still abound suspicions in many circles, particularly by conservative and progressive elements in the Church who do not understand distributist thought due to prejudice. Appropriation of values by historically recent economical thinking has deflated what were once timeless qualities.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton himself published a response to former socialist turned distributist Arthur Penty in his famous newspaper. Penty was a terrific writer in regards to the guilds, however failing to shed all of his prior ideological baggage, once accused Chesterton of Laissez-faire capitalism. Chesterton responded amusingly:

Laissez-faire was in theory a proposal to let anybody do what he liked. But it was in practice a proposal to let anybody do what he could. And the proposal was never even proposed, until it was perfectly plain that the rich were the only people who could do anything.

What the peasant has is exactly what the Individualist never has and the Socialist never has; common sense. That is, he has a sense of proportion - and disproportion. He knows where to draw the line; instead of loosening all law at one end of the argument, or forbidding all liberty at the other.

(G.K.'s Weekly August 21, 1926)

It is true Chesterton was attempting to make a valid point. Man is real, not mechanical. He is neither a chaotic beast, nor a member of egalitarian fiction. Distributists, a product of these truths, will differ in certain applications but their goals will be the same:

Two writers like Mr. Kenrick and Colonel Acland might differ very much; but they agree that property ought to be distributed and one might think one method and one another. But it is nonsense for me to tell the Socialist that my way of scattering property is a more practical way of concentrating property. It is nonsense for him to tell me that I ought to accept the abolition of ownership as the only really practical establishment of ownership. In other words, the word "practical" is meaningless between us.

(G.K.'s Weekly June 13, 1929)

Distributists believed in the family as the matrix of society. Ownership is meant to serve man in his daily life so he may in turn dedicate his life to family, community and above all, salvation. They rejected the progressives for their abolishing private property. These instituted regulations only serve the State. Likewise, the conservatives accepted progressive policies looking the other way at property accumulation by the wealthy (to the detriment of the peasantry) and continue to eye the State as an obstacle to this objective. What the current economic models offer is not as different as we may suspect. While they reject each other’s methods, they employ the same intrinsic materialist portrait of mankind. For the socialist, man is simply an animal without rights to anymore quality or quantity as another. If man is an animal, capitalists retort, we must fight to survive leaving only the weakest animals to their own devices through natural selection. Beyond moral criticism, we must bow to the irresistible and neutral mechanism just as natural as the laws of physics. In either case, the ends justify the means. Man is reduced from the dignity of God's creation to a pile of genetic uncertainty.

The soul of man, as our Church teaches, is not only worth saving but necessitates salvation.

Yet it is not rash by any means to say that the whole scheme of social economic life is now such as to put in the way of vast numbers of mankind most serious obstacles which prevent them from caring for the one thing necessary; namely, their eternal salvation

(Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno)

People differ in capacity, skill, health, strength; and unequal fortune is a necessary result of unequal condition. Such inequality is far from being disadvantageous either to individuals or to the community.

(Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum)

These words from Pope Leo XIII display his understanding both of the true nature of man, as well as man’s real contribution to society. Man is unique, man will live in variable environments, and individual success will not harm the community at large but rather would prove a benefit. A synthesis between individualism, the social nature of property and business must exist.

Finally, Pius XI certainly understood the pitfalls of what we today call "rugged individualism" or the usurping of individual property to the absorption of the State through socialism. His words, as authoritative as they were prophetic, describe the proper order of man and his relation to society versus the Darwinian cloud on the left and right.

For, as one is wrecked upon, or comes close to, what is known as "individualism" by denying or minimizing the social and public character of the right of property, so by rejecting or minimizing the private and individual character of this same right, one inevitably runs into "collectivism" or at least closely approaches its tenets.

Distributism: More than Just the Farm

By Athanasius

I often find that many people identify Distributism exclusively with going back to the land, rather than a fully Catholic system of Economics that embraces industry as well.

Back to the Land is laudable, and it is overall a good thing. However, it is not for everyone and it is something which is not identical with Distributism. In fact, if I might make a criticism of the Back to the Land movement, there seems to be too much scorn of technology. Technology is neutral and can either be used for good or evil. Too much technology, particularly when it is frivolous is certainly a bad thing and bad to an ordered life. A computer which serves purposes in union with man's end however can be a positive thing, even on a farm. This is what I find admirable about the Amish, they do not reject technology for the sake of being anti-tech, they reject technology that takes away from the simplicity of their lives and the value of their work.

Nevertheless, Distributism makes use of similar ideologies. The emphasis on property being one of them. However, unlike the back to the land ideal, it is not limited to the farm or to traditional trades.

The skeletal model of economics before the Protestant Reformation is often used to help explain Distributism, and consequently makes examples of land and traditional trades, though hat is not the whole story.

Hillaire Belloc in his book "An Essay on the Restoration of Property" for example, makes many notes on how to implement Distributist economics into modern facets of life (modern as the early 1900's when the book was written), utilizing modern inventions. Nevertheless, some Agrarian knowhow is important, since people could cut their grocery bills down a bit by growing certain types of crops right in their backyard, which generally yield enough to feed several families rather than just one.

However, just as medieval economies consisted of more than just farmers, but tradesmen who crafted the tools, built the houses and Churches and merchants, retailers of their time, who sold and traded goods, so the modern society has tradesmen of a different sort, grocers and computer experts, repairmen and those who perform real and legitimate services which are in need. The idea that a man is to be entirely self-sufficient is specifically disavowed by Distributism. It speaks too much of a utopian fantasy to be Distributist, which acknowledges that man is imperfect, and is no less viable for the fact unlike a system like communism. In fact, Belloc wrote:

The family is ideally free when it fully controls all the means necessary for the production of such wealth as it should consume for normal living. But such an ideal is inhuman and therefore, not to be fixedly attained, because man is a social animal. It is not impossible of achievement for a short time, and has been briefly achieved whenever a lonely settler has fixed himself with his family and his stores in an isolated spot. But such complete economic freedom for each family cannot be permanent, because the family increases and divides into further numerous families, forming a larger community. Moreover, even were the isolated free family to endure, it would fall below the requirements of human nature, its isolation stunting and degrading it. For men cannot fulfill themselves save through a diversity of interests and ideas. Multiplicity is essential to life and man to be truly human must be social. (Essay, pg. 26)

Thus the Back to the Land, which as I said before is noble in many of its aims, can not universally satisfy the needs of human nature, because not all men are farmers. Not all men persist in a traditional trade. The needs and desires of man are numerous, and his interests rather diversified.

Now in a Distributist society, as there will necessarily exist farmers, there will also exist tradesmen, there will exist also those in service based jobs, and there will be those in government jobs who get decent salaries, such as the military and those bureaucrats whose work is ordered toward the common good (as opposed to the manifold bureaucracies of today which tend toward the rich and powerful instead of the common good, such as the FDA which foists upon us numerous harmful drugs while trying to regulate natural foods because the growing market for it is threatening multi-million dollar pharmaceutical companies). It is not the case that everyone should start living like medievals, although truthfully, with the exception of the absence of indoor plumbing, I doubt I would mind.

All that Distributism really means, is that the majority of people rather than the minority are economically free and own their means of production. As Chesterton said, the problem with Capitalism is that it produces too few Capitalists. This is where Libertarians and Distributists part ways. Both groups are opposed to excessive government, big government, high taxes, property taxes, minimum wage, American interventionism abroad (and as such any country's interventionism), government fees and excessive taxes and paperwork and the right of man to private property. When it comes down to it however, we disagree with Libertarians as far as the nature of government comes in, the common good, the subordination of the laws of supply and demand to the laws of morality, and what the worker is entitled to. For example, when it comes to something like the intrinsic evil of pornography, a libertarian would say well, it is unfortunate because it is immoral, but nevertheless demand is there, and as such the supply is made available, so therefore there is nothing the government can do about it. The Distributist will say, if there is a demand, that is because of moral corruption among the people, and therefore the supply needs to be suppressed and destroyed so that the demand can be contained until public morality is restored and education about the evils of pornography can be disseminated. Why? Because pornography is intrinsically evil, and destroys all those it comes in contact with, from abusing women to abusing its audience, as well as destroying the family, the basic social unit of society. This is to say, the state has a right to censorship, as I have spoken of before. Another example of this would be with abortion. Catholic libertarians necessarily will acknowledge that abortion is evil, and many like Dr. Thomas Woods rightly join the ranks of the pro-life movement in calling for the overturning of abortion law in this country. However, if we take core libertarian principles, someone like Dr. Woods is in quite a bind, since there is a demand for abortion, to the tune of 1.3 million per year, and there are doctors who rake in quite a profit who are willing to perform it, therefore according to Libertarian principles the state should not get involved. How many who rightly despise abortion could accept such a position?

From this point we come to why the government has the right to step in to correct certain intrinsic evils that tend to act against the common good. This is a principle which both Pope Leo XIII and Pius XI affirmed in their respective encyclicals, Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno. If you acknowledge it is right and just for the government to outlaw abortion, to destroy pornography, to end the deplorable, demonic and absolutely inhumane evil of child pornography and child rape, you necessarily acknowledge that the government is to be involved in public morality and the common good. The question is what else constitutes the common good?

Distributists contend, that it is towards the common good to make sure every man is "able" to be economically free, that is to be able to own his own means of production. One of the ways to do that is to make sure that competition is done at an equal level, and that one receives remuneration in proportion to the profit he helps create.

Now competition at an equal level is an important concept to understand. There is nothing wrong with competition in and of itself. It is when competition is done at such an unequal level that a small business owner doesn't stand a chance, that something is wrong. If a man runs his own business, and another competes with him, and both possess the same means and the same capital, there is nothing unequal, and if one makes more money than the other, oh well according to a Distributist scheme. If one man is a better salesman than another, he just has talents superior than the other and perhaps the latter needs to find another line of work. If there are two bakeries in town, one prefers the baking of one rather than the other, or such things as that.
However, if the former is operating with an unfair competition, namely he consolidates a large number of shops, or hires people at an unjust wage in another country to flood the market with cheap goods, then that is something which Distributists consider an unequal competition. That is why we speak of the breaking up of monopoly. There are software developers who can not develop their product because they can not compete with the billions of dollars at Microsoft's disposal. Suppose that were equalized, by breaking up the power inherent in monopoly, you would see an increase in innovation rather than a decrease.

As concerns remuneration according to the wealth one helps create, what is meant is that the employee is entitled morally to that which he helps create. Basically, in a just society, if a man helps create $10,000 of profit in a week, he is entitled to a portion of that profit, rather than just a wage. As such it is possible to run grocery stores, and large entities so long as the employees are paid according to that wealth. Off the top of my head I can think of Trader Joe's grocery stores. The employees there, who perform all functions from cashiering, to ordering and stocking are paid somewhere around $40,000 a year, depending on their job and how much profit they create. The stores are small, but have more or less what you need. Since Trader Joe's doesn't have debt because it only builds new stores when it has the money, it can afford to pay employees according to the wealth they create. That is more Distributist friendly. Something like Starbucks or Walmart, has millions of dollars worth of debt, and operates hoping that eventually profit wise they will catch up to their debt. In the mean time employees gain merely a wage, which lacks any relation to the wealth they help create. (Although it has to be admitted, Starbucks at least produces a quality product)

What is critical and essential in Distributism, is not that it is about the farm as much as it is about the family. Capitalism focuses on the individual, while Distributism focuses specifically on the family and man as a social unit. The proof of this is in the following: if today men everywhere were to be more frugal, spend less, conserve electricity, build savings for a rainy day, invest in and own property, spend more time at home with his family instead of working as many hours as he could, and lived a more frugal lifestyle, the American economy would collapse. Again, if people lived a life more in accord with Christian economics and frugality, the economy would collapse. No one would be buying useless junk! How horrible! However, in a Distributist society, if people stopped buying frivolously, lived frugally, and paid for those services which they required, all would be fine, since the survival of the economy is more attuned to the needs of family, local economic growth rather than global and therefore society, instead of feeding the narcissistic wants of the individual, such a collapse is scarcely imaginable since it does not depend on spending but upon the building up of the family. The Distributist perspective is in line with the teachings of seven consecutive Popes, pre and post-Vatican II, from Pope Leo XIII to John Paul II. An application of them into American life today does not involve a rejection of technology, or forcing everyone to adopt farm life, but rather of conforming economics to moral necessity and the strengthening of the family, rather than giving it free reign to service the individual, the banker, or the corporate executive who rewards himself for bankrupting the company with stock options and retirement islands.