Here’s an article excerpted from my new monograph, Beyond Distributism, which in turn develops some of the ideas in my The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy.
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/8729/beyond-distributism/
Beyond Distributism
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Tom,
we need to get your articles into the CNS affiliated newspapers. Too many articles that talk about economics, or charity, or related topics seems to come from either the distributionist view, have a very Keynesian flavor, or appear to be channeling Marx. You have been doing good work on these topics, what is needed is a larger audience. Catholics as a whole are being done a disservice by the editorial boards who do not include articles critical of mainstream thought on Catholic social teaching.
Thanks, Stanley. If only there were a way to do that.
Looks like an interesting book, will have to buy a copy. I used to be a fan of distributism a few years ago so this is of particular interest to me.
“Distributism, made popular by early twentieth-century British Catholics Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton, is a variant of corporatism, a system of political economy born in the wake of the French Revolution that sought the resurrection of various corporate bodies, such as the guilds, that the revolution had suppressed. Corporatists sought to manage economic competition, which they viewed as destructive and destabilizing, by grouping occupations into self-regulating trade associations and granting the central state a supervisory and coordinating role over business and labor.”
That’s a straw man. While the second sentence is accurate, the first isn’t.
Distributism, in itself, only seeks a distribution of the resources currently tied up by state-aided artificial corporations to individuals and small naturally occurring groups like families – it is against corporatism. To that is often added – but not as a necessary and intrinsic part – larger groupings analogous to mediaeval guilds, to achieve larger scale organisation. However, that does not mean corporatism with a centralising and regulating state imposing them but if anything the opposite, merely allowing them as emergent behaviour on top of the essential bottom up distributist philosophy. Many distributists, unfortunately, allow the state a role in reaching distributism without realising that the state would capture them and make them corporatist – but there is no intrinsic corporatism in the sense quoted within distributism.
The rest of the article continues onwards on the back of such misconceptions.
My monograph is filled with quotations from non-obscure distributists backing up everything I say about them in their own words.
TW, that’s rather the point of the caveat I gave: “Many distributists, unfortunately, allow the state a role in reaching distributism without realising that the state would capture them and make them corporatist“. But that’s not the essential part of distributism, any more than the people Kevin Carson condemns as “Vulgar Libertarians” have noticed that state support and corporatism have got inside their defences. Each sort has added stuff, and it’s hardly surprising that these additions would get mistaken for the essence, the thing that makes it what it is.
Or would you rather I gave details showing where your characterisations of real mediaeval conditions don’t actually fit? That’s the same sort of over broad generalisation.
What does “essential” distributism have to offer that libertarianism does not? All I’ve encountered from Distributists, such as John Medaille and his friends at Distributist Review, is poor economic thinking. At least libertarianism has a fairly solid anarcho-capitalist school whereas anarcho-distributism is a non-entity.
While the term “anarcho-distributism” does not occur, things of that sort are well covered by Mutualism.
I’m not religious but have certain sympathies for distributism. To sum it up:
Socialism: the state owns your home.
Free market: whoever built a house, on a land he purchased or homesteaded etc. owns it. It might be a big housing corporation or anything or anyone.
Distributionism: YOU own your home.
Distributionism has many problems. What if you don’t want to own your home, but rent it? What if the big housing corporation can build it quite cheaply (economies of scale), thus the rent is low and you like it this way? Should anyone intervent in it? Well, not.
But OTOH theoretical natural rights are one thing and people’s subjective sentiments are another thing. People often _feel_ to have a right to things that they don’t have any objective right to (f.e. to a job they held for 25 years). When a lot of homes are owned by a big corporation, people often _feel_ that it’s a kind of power over them and if it has to be something big, then it should be the state because they have democratic control over it. Thus, those people become socialists. If you take away the homes from the corporation and give them to the tenants, it can be unjust, yes, it’s not right from a natural rights, property rights point of view. Basically, it’s theft, I admit it. Nevertheless, when the danger of socialism becomes too big, this can be the only thing that can prevent it. Basically, sometimes the only way to prevent big theft (socialism) is to allow many small ones (distributionism).
In the free market, if you buy a home, YOU own it.
“Basically, sometimes the only way to prevent big theft (socialism) is to allow many small ones (distributionism).”
Countless economists and special interests argue in such a way.
“The market economy is good but …
we have to prevent financial collapse by bailing out these banks”
we have to prevent the hollowing out of our manufacturing base through tariffs”
we have to protect our farmers through subsidies”
we have to prevent government regulation through lobbying”
we have to prevent socialism through distributionism”
It’s this kind of arbitrary non-principle based thinking that ruins the economy.
Miklos Hollender, you are confusing distributism and forcible redistribution. Certainly, some self described distributists would have no problem with using forcible redistribution to get to distributism, but it doesn’t actually need to “take away the homes from the corporation and give them to the tenants”. All it needs is for ordinary forms of human expression to be allowed and not give assistance to the other stuff. After all, British housing got built by (mutual) building societies, which demutualised into limited companies when the avenues opened up. It was never the corporations doing those things! Stop rewarding them and they will divest and fade away, paying off their indirect owners with the proceeds of unforced divesting. No theft needed – unless you are in a hurry.
Non-obscure distributists are also fond of condemning Hudge and Grudge (big government and big business), and the alliance between them–pretty much the definition of corporatism. While some distributists are corporatists–and Francoists, Carlists, absolute monarchists or ultra-montanists–others are radical decentralists. None of these things, as PML points out, is essential to distributism.
Then what is essential? Would you tell those distributists who believe in “Catholic Social Teaching” that the various encyclicals they use to support their position are non-essential? Considering the relationship of Chesterton and Belloc’s ideas in Catholic thought, it seems unlikely.
Where is this radical decentralist distributist scholarship?
KC, I think you mean Hudge and Gudge partnering in Chesterton’s What’s Wrong With The World. Hudge is the idealist willing to boost the state, Gudge is the big business type (they are also mentioned here and there in earlier chapters).
And I find Chesterton’s view of the proper relation of guilds and state in this throwaway line: “They do not attempt to protect workmen against the injustice of the State as the mediaeval guilds did“.
To my reading of Chesterton the ONLY thing to be distributed is the means of production, i.e. land, natural resources, machinery, etc. Human’s are tool wielding animals and their nessesary tools need to be distributed to P M Lawrences’ ” small naturally occurring groups like families.”
Distributism cares not about Miklos Hollender’s home, or that there might be a chicken in every pot. Give a human being the tools and he will build his own home and get his own chicken.
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