Distributism for the 21st Century

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by Richard Aleman.

After more than a century, attempts to apply Capitalism and Socialism have met with the same disastrous outcome. A select group possesses everything while the majority is either bound to stale and declining wages, or worse, they slide from poverty to destitution. One model achieves this by appealing to individualism, while the other to collectivism. Yet for all their superficial differences, Capitalism and Socialism have much in common. Both bar the laborer, who produces the goods of society, from the means of production. Both discount the role of justice, restrict true freedom, and consolidate power. Both take for granted the materialism of man to the exclusion of his eternal soul.

Due to growing discontentment with these systems, people are turning to alternatives in the hopes of solving our financial dilemmas. A rising popular philosophy involves nurturing individual initiative and social responsibility, while using the resources of the local marketplace to challenge our current shift towards globalization. It steers town and country in the direction of the small shop instead of the multinational business, invests in local farming, and small-scale technology. Most importantly, it evaluates economic practices by how well they serve the family, subordinating material development to their spiritual growth, because production is made for man, not the other way around.

The name of this movement is Distributism.

In the early twentieth-century, Christian writers G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, influenced by the first Catholic social encyclical Rerum Novarum (On the Condition of Workers, issued in 1891), created a social and economic theory they coined Distributism in an attempt to put this groundbreaking text to work. Writing in response to the social injustices suffered by working families—due to the upheaval of the Industrial Revolution—Pope Leo XIII published this document addressing the conditions related to work and capital.

A living wage, the Roman Pontiff declared, is necessary so that employees might support their families and practice thrift. Income is for the ownership of the supreme stabilizing instrument for the family: the foundation of property.

“If working people can be encouraged to look forward to obtaining a share in the land, the consequence will be that the gulf between vast wealth and sheer poverty will be bridged over, and the respective classes will be brought nearer to one another.” (Rerum Novarum §47)

Capitalism and Socialism view income as property. Proponents of these ideals debate money’s distribution, theoretically for the benefit of the masses. However, to the casual observer the results are always redundantly in favor of the few rich. Rather than embrace money as a producer of wealth, Distributists regard property (productive property) as a genuine generator of wealth, because it serves and sustains the community materially (food, clothing, and shelter), and cultivates the soul through the means of work. Property means liberty for the household from the jaws of financial volatility as, from the perspective of the worker, land transcends market values due to its indispensability for the family.

A further benefit to a property-owning proletariat is the bridging between ownership and work. Thus, the Distributist supports self-owned small business, guild restoration, as well as worker-owned cooperatives, so rather than looking after someone else’s property, man may look after his own. Chesterton, in the pages of his newspaper G.K.’s Weekly, often made his case by repeating a scriptural analogy from the Gospel.

“…the hireling flieth, because he is a hireling: and he hath no care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd; and I know mine, and mine know me.” (The Gospel According to St. John 10:13-14)

If an ownership society is the preferred method towards economic equilibrium, it follows that Distributists, taking their cue from Rerum Novarum, support the widest distribution of property as key to the establishment of a self-supporting community.

Joined by Catholics, Anglicans, and other Christians in Britain, leaders of the Distributist scheme founded “The Distributist League,” in support of the restoration of land ownership for the people. The League encouraged individual initiatives, grassroots organizing, and the creation of associations in order to challenge Big Business and Big Government. Distributists were decentralists who abhorred the concentration of power, as central planning and monopolist control ran counter to the principle of subisidiarity, i.e. power at the smallest level. In a Distributive society the role of central government would be narrow, strictly addressing those challenges outside the scope of locality.

In order to change the political system in their favor, the Distributists understood the need to reach out to the “man on the street,” so that through persuasion the commoner could transform the system from the bottom-up. An educated citizenry meant potential for political change, after all, if citizens understood why society should shift course, they would be vigilant of future attempts to consolidate power. Through the subsidizing of small business, tax restructuring, and legal assistance for the family, the political landscape would encourage small ownership and eliminate the parasite of monopoly.

At its height, the Distributist movement had 24 branches of the Distributist League, land associations and agricultural training programs across Britain, and a working artisan guild in Ditchling, Sussex known as the Guild of St. Joseph and St. Dominic. Unfortunately, by the Second World War, the movement lost traction across the British Isle. But Distributism didn’t end there. Soon innovators popped up across the globe reexamining the role of economic and social affairs in the Distributist tradition. In America, Dorothy Day founded the Catholic Worker Movement. In Spain, Father José María Arizmendiarrieta created the successful Mondragón Cooperative. German economist E.F. Schumacher published, Small is Beautiful to the worldwide praise. And in Australia, B.A. Santamaria led the Distributist charge. These are but a few examples of the global mark left by Distributism.

Given our present financial uncertainties, we must evaluate if our “on again, off again” relationship with Capitalism and Socialism has been instrumental in furthering our spiritual needs. Distributism puts forward a solution against these materialist dichotomies by presenting a practical, workable, “third way” alternative invested in the family through property ownership, small business, and worker cooperatives. The time is ripe for a Distributist renaissance.

Richard Aleman is Executive Director for the nonprofit The Society for Distributism. Richard is also co-editor of the online weblog, The Distributist Review, and is currently editing a distributist anthology of G.K. Chesterton’s newspaper G.K.’s Weekly.