Posted on 10/18/2011 8:36:07 PM PDT by MeNeFrego
NEW YORK — Can an Anglican theologian from Britain revive an 80-year-old Catholic social justice theory and provide a solution to America’s economic woes and political polarization?
Philosopher and political thinker Phillip Blond thinks so, and he’s giving it everything he’s got.
Blond, who has been a counselor to British Prime Minister David Cameron, just wrapped up a two-week U.S. tour to pitch his retooled version of “distributism,” a theory that argues that both capitalism and government are out of control.
In that sense, the thinking goes, both Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party are right...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Not sure about Belloc... I think Chesterton included some form of taxation on contracts, aiming to minimize supply-chain dominance. But it was part of his 9-9-9 plan. ;^)
Essentially, distributism distinguishes itself by its distribution of property (not to be confused with redistribution of wealth). While socialism allows no individuals to own productive property (it all being under state, community, or workers' control), distributism itself seeks to ensure that most people will become owners of productive property. As Belloc stated, 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."[4] 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, etc.[5]
It implies, by it's very nature, that the state has the power to seize property and give it to those it believes are deserving.
If not the state, who would have the power of coercion necessary to bring about such utopia?
What person could not see that as a threat to individual liberty?
Distributism is an interesting concept that I have some trouble wrapping my head around.
I’d like to see a knowledgeable person give a comparison between free markets or capitalism and distributism.
>> It implies, by it’s very nature, that the state has the power to seize property and give it to those it believes are deserving. <<
Absolutely not! You just PRESUME that direct action by the state is the ONLY way to get anything done; you’ve falled into the trap of the liberals. “Seeks to ensure that most...” means nothing similar to “enlists the state to forcibly require that most...”
Rather, distributists recommend a series of policies which would reach this goal, the majority of which involve RETRACTING state influence in the economy, allowing entropy to bring the means of production to the greater number of people.
That is not to say that no distributists have ever proposed new government action to accomplish this. For one, most distributists imagine a very vigorous collection of laws against restraint of trade, such as, for instance, establishing exclusive dealerships. As mentioned above, Belloc proposed prohibiting usury. But there is no seizure of wealth scheme, because distributism is the economic application of subsidiarity, and the entire purpose of subsidiarity is to ensure that there is no entity powerful enough to redistribute wealth by fiat.
Think what you like or go read the histories of both the Anthracite region and the Steel Centers from Pittsburgh over to the Mon Valley. There were all sorts of proposals flying around and an awful lot of them were intended to be an alternative to having workers become unionized due to the fear of unions common at the time.
A great many groups proposed all sorts of schemes that thought were morally superior and some companies were already doing almost exactly what proponents of distributism believed in with no one at all forcing them to do a thing. That's not some form of statism no matter what the “pure theory” was in England or among the eggheads. The issue was, I thought, what Catholic social thinkers of the day, in this country, were proposing, not what some group or another considered to be the pure form of the idea.
Other than the usual socialists calling themselves anything but socialist and some anarchists advocating the destruction of all forms of both corporations and government, no one was proposing any coercion to force distributism on society. How something advocates thought would be adopted because of the obvious moral improvment they felt would result becomes worker, state, community, or some other form of collective control, I don't know. Whatever it “implies” in theory, what was proposed and even considered in some places was nothing like what you're saying nor was it like the “pure” theory you refer to.
Part of the problem is that in the 1920s, there were grave economic crises which American industrialists were only beginning to discover solutions for (Ford, etc.); they were trying to imagine ways to bring about distribution of wealth. 90 years later, different proposals might be better for bringing that about. For one, people have greater access to capital, but zoning laws and regulations prevent people from being able to build a home, except at an enormous multiple of the actual cost. Here in Virginia, you can’t get your “5 acres and a mule,” because zoning requires you to get 15. Let alone, a reasonable sized suburban dwelling (1/4 acre) for those who aren’t in agricultural work.
Then, without the power of the state, how do distributionists achieve their goals? Even the above stated and limited goals? Just WHO applies subsidiarity upon the economic and political order?
It's 100% voluntary? They would ask that the collective owners of corporations surrender their ownership interest voluntarily so that families could own those means of production?
Or, perhaps they would ask that "natural monopolies" surrender growth and efficiencies so that grandma can pay $275/month for a phone that only calls those other phones produced by the cottage industry phone company that services only Puyallup, WA?
What I am saying is that their goals cannot be achieved, in real terms, without the coercive power of the state. Short of that coercive power it's nothing more than the bleating of an utopian. As soon as implementation is attempted it requires the power of the state.
Oh sure, there have been and will continue to be those who volunteer themselves to such goals...great. Nobody objects to that.
But anyone who values individual liberty will not support the implementation of such goals coercively by any entity.
>> It’s 100% voluntary? They would ask that the collective owners of corporations surrender their ownership interest voluntarily so that families could own those means of production? <<
NO No No No No no NO! My God, you think like a socialist. The free market, that Invisible Hand tied behind our back, would do it. There’s no reason on earth why a company in Arkansas can sell produce grown in New Jersey to customers in New Jersey more cheaply than a company in New Jersey can. The Arkansas company gets involved because it can guarantee a huge market to the grower, but it does that at the cost to the grower of having to sign an exclusive relationship.
There’s no growth and efficiency in Microsoft destroying innovation for fifteen years until Google finally comes up with an end-run around operating system dependence. There’s no growth and efficiency in Nintendo patenting a screen-scrolling algorithm invented by Atari, and then putting Atari out of business.
Now, no-one promises all huge corporations would disintegrate into small companies. A mom and pop operation probably can’t build the same quality aircraft that Boeing can. But we can at least remove the artificial economic forces through which Big Capital and Big Government squash entrepreneurship and private ownership. (For starters, one thing that Belloc and Chesteron didn’t dwell on, but I will simply putting an end to laws prohibit subdivision of land.)
No-one owns their land; they rent it from the bank at exorbitant rates, and must seek approval for their Masters in the government before they can do anything with that land. That’s a crisis.
>> What I am saying is that their goals cannot be achieved, in real terms, without the coercive power of the state. Short of that coercive power it’s nothing more than the bleating of an utopian. As soon as implementation is attempted it requires the power of the state. <<
That is nothing more than an uninformed assertion. Prove that any one of the specific recommendations of distribution would fail to help the distribution of the means of production. Naturally, before you can do that, you need to read up on those recommendations and the theories behind them; your posts demonstrate you haven’t. So quit making untrue assertions based on your own prejudices, and start contributing to solutions.
What specific regulations or laws would you implement or eliminate that would achieve the distributionist goals?
The reason a company in Arkansas can sell produce grown in NJ cheaper is that the company in Arkansas has done the work to build the business relationships and contracts with the buyers in NJ.
How would you un-do that?
From your descriptions, distributism doesn’t sound all that different from free markets/capitalism. It just sounds like capitalism with a few regulations.
That sounds similar to how we (at least used to) have free markets but with anti-trust laws.
Aw, shut up, you’re just a troll, aren’t you. I already explained to you multiple times.
Catholic social teaching is as old as Catholicism; the Scriptures themselves teach the basics of economic justice. Our Lord reminds us that the laborer is due a just wage for his work,1 for example; the Didache tells us that greed is wickedness,2 and that “advocates for the rich” shall be condemned.3 Christian thinkers from St. Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas and beyond have dedicated themselves to political and economic thinking in light of the Catholic faith.4 However, formalized economic teaching from the Magisterium is a relatively recent thing; its pioneering document was that of the great Pope Blessed Leo XIII, Rerum novarum.
Rerum novarum has been received less than enthusiastically by modern economic thinkers; some, even Catholics, argue that it was based on ignorance5 or even that it has since been changed.6 Nevertheless, the correct attitude of the Catholic toward this great encyclical was enunciated early on by Pope St. Pius X, in his own encyclical Singulari quadam:
Therefore, in the first place, we proclaim that the duty of all Catholics is… to hold firmly and to confess fearlessly the principles of Christian truth, handed down by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, especially those which Our most wise predecessor explained in the encyclical letter Rerum novarum.7
This is binding teaching, to which the Catholic owes faithful acceptance. Rerum novarum, and its daughter encyclicals from later popes, is the blueprint for Catholic economic thought, the schematic to which all our bricks and mortar must conform.
Rerum novarum was unpopular in some circles because it identified deeply rooted flaws in all the currently popular economic systems, particularly those called capitalism and socialism. Against socialism, for example, Leo XIII unequivocally defended private property8; against capitalism, however, he insisted that the state had the right and duty to limit the use of private property.9 Against socialism, he defended the legitimacy of the wage contract10; against capitalism, he insisted that wages must be just, and that the justice of a wage is not dependent merely upon the going market rate.11 He affirmed that the rights of individuals must be respected12; but he also held that the government should make a special effort to protect wage-earners against the richer classes.13 The great pope also defended many other practices condemned by capitalists, including the use of state authority to resolve labor disputes14; the mandating by legal authority of Sunday rest15; the injustice of unrestrained competition16; and the injustice of wage contracts, even if freely agreed to by the worker, which do not allow “proper rest for soul and body”17 or which are insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner.”18
Pope Leo identified four primary problems with the prevailing economic situation: the lack of workingmen’s guilds; unrestrained competition; usury; and the concentration of property into few hands.19 All of these problems, though, really point to the last; the lack of a reasonable alternative to the guilds, the unrestrained competition of our so-called free market, and the usurious practices of our business all result in the overconcentration of productive property into the hands of a few, wealthy capitalists. This remains the defining characteristic of our current system.
At first, this assertion seems counterintuitive. As one prominent Distributist has pointed out, “when we waltz into our local Wal-mart,” it appears that there is “a rich variety of products provided by a vast number of firms, a situation which affords entrepreneurs many opportunities to enter the market and workers many places to sell their labor.”20 But while our economy appears to be diverse in this way, in reality the producers’ club is quite rarified. Almost all beers, for example, are produced in factories owned by only two companies, Anheuser-Busch InBev, which holds 50% of the American market,21 and SABMiller, which owns a tad less than 30%.22 This takes up offerings like all the various Bud brands, Coors, Miller, Molson, Beck’s, Labatt’s, Busch, Bass, Stella Artois, and more (not to mention some Mexican beers owned by Grupo Modelo, of which 50% is owned by InBev). This is only one example, and not even the most egregious. Optical products|eyeglass and sunglass frames particularly|are almost all owned by Luxottica. You may buy some Ray-Bans, Chanels, or Oakley’s; but they are all owned by Luxottica. Lenscrafters? Luxottica. Sunglass Hut? Luxottica. Pearle Vision? Luxottica. And so it goes. The media–even on the Internet–are owned and run primarily by only eight companies: Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, News Corporation, NBC Universal, Viacom, Time Warner, and Disney.23 A whopping 93.5% of server processor microchips are made by Intel; another 6.5% are made by AMD.24 The list goes on and on.
And such market concentration is a definite problem, as the Pope himself pointed out. Indeed, the fact that “the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few” is a problem so severe that it has laid “upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.”25 Nor is this mere hyperbole; as the great Catholic historian Hilaire Belloc observed, wealth is necessary to human existence, and “[t]herefore, to control the production of wealth is to control human life itself.”26 Capitalist society’s tendency toward the ever-increasing concentration of the means of producing wealth, then, is also a tendency toward the control of life by the owning few, exercised on the non-owning many. This limits the economic, and therefore political, significance of the bulk of the population while giving the few owners of productive property a great deal of power over the state.
The great pope ended his encyclical with an appeal to Catholics throughout the world:
We have now laid before you… the means whereby this most arduous question must be solved. Every one should put his hand to the work which falls to his share… Those who rule the commonwealths should avail themselves of the laws and institutions of the country; masters and wealthy owners must be mindful of their duty; the working class, whose interests are at stake, should make every lawful and proper effort.27
And Catholics responded, attempting to imbue their societies, so corrupted by the revolution, with the principles of a Catholic social order. They devised systems which would apply those principles toward definite goals in particular societies. One such system acquired the name “Distributism.”
Distributism attempts to resolve these problems by recourse to an ancient principle of social interaction, distributive justice, the concept from which Distributism takes its name. Justice in general is, of course, “the greatest of virtues, and ‘neither evening nor morning star’ is so wonderful.”28 More specifically, distributive justice is that virtue “according to which a ruler or steward gives to each one according to his own worth.”29 The importance Distributism places on distributive justice is supported by Leo XIII himself, who taught that maintaining distributive justice toward all classes of society is “the first and chief” of a ruler’s duties.30
Distributism applies the principle of distributive justice to property, particularly to productive property. Pope Leo taught us that “[t]he law… should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners,”31 noting that “[m]any excellent results will follow from this; and, first of all, property will certainly become more equitably divided.”32 It is clear, further, that Pope Leo is speaking here of the distribution of productive property, not property simply, for he continues by arguing that this policy would greatly increase production, and the only type of property he specifically mentions is land, the epitome of the productive asset.33
The just distribution of productive property defines Distributism; indeed, one of its founding lights, Hilaire Belloc, defined what he called “the distributive state” in just those terms.34 While in a socialist society none are owners, and in a capitalist society only a few are owners, in a Distributist society most are owners of productive property. This is the defining characteristic of Distributism: the widescale distribution of productive property throughout society, such that ownership of it is the norm, rather than the exception. Such distribution is the best way of ensuring that the economic rights of man are respected; that men can pursue their livelihoods with the greatest possible independence; and that society can exist as a single harmonious whole, without the vicissitudes of class hatreds and constant economic unrest which plague all of our current systems.
You just can't make your case in a cogent fashion.
When you bother to read the article, let alone the books written on it, I’ll waste my time on you. In the meanwhile, you stupid little troll, you’ll notice I’ve posted more threads, and posts than you, and I’ll wager I’ve had 100 times your readership than you on my threads.
Didn't we ban calling folks stupid on this site?
See below post from dangus.
"When you bother to read the article, let alone the books written on it, I’ll waste my time on you. In the meanwhile, you stupid little troll, you’ll notice I’ve posted more threads, and posts than you, and I’ll wager I’ve had 100 times your readership than you on my threads."
10 Signs You May Be a Distributist
Kenneth Spence on Monday, October 10, 2011
The presence of one group at the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests might be surprising: the Distributist Review has produced this flyer for distribution at the protests. They don’t seem to have asked themselves whether G.K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc would have gone down to protest with the unwashed masses (the answer, of course, is never in a million years) but contemporary “neodistributists” are a more inclusive set. They go far beyond the metaphysical and aesthetic principles of Chesterton and Belloc’s economics. Since that flyer’s a little hard to read, we’ve put together a list to help you identify your inner distributist: herewith, Ten Signs You May Be a Distributist:
1. You can’t wait for the Revolution: As we’ve explained before, the changes distributists want amount to revolution. That puts them squarely in line with the rest of the OWS camp, whose communications head told NPR, “My political goal is to overthrow the government.” Fortunately, the revolution will be prosecuted in accord with Catholic Social Teaching. (What’s a little property-snatching among friends?) If this idea excites you, you may be a distributist!
2. You just want to grow heirloom tomatoes in a co-op: Or maybe your grandfather’s strain of prized carrot. Either way, if think the Catholic Social Teaching mandates this kind of lifestyle, you may be a distributist!
3. You abominate the seedless watermelon: The seedless watermelon is an unnatural monstrosity, you say? If you oppose genetic engineering on principle and begrudge the one billion lives saved by the Green Revolution, you may be a distributist!
4. You find yourself supporting environmentalist policies, but for different reasons: If you find yourself always on the side of radical environmentalists, but as with the seedless watermelon, different principles lead you to their extreme positions — well, puzzle no longer. You may be a distributist!
5. You think you live in a polis: If you’d like to impose virtue on 307 million people the same way you would on 75,000; if you think that what worked on a co-op level in Spain can be scaled up 60,000 percent without distortion; and if you insist on economic self-sufficiency — in short, if you’re more attached to the form of the polis than Aristotle himself was, then you may be a distributist!
6. You find yourself asking “What would Frodo do?”: Distributists often take The Shire of J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings as a model society (mostly those who consider a return to the polis too fantastical). If you’re convicted that eating two breakfasts a day is more in line with Catholic Social Teaching, you may be a distributist!
7. You really miss guilds: If you’ve mythologized the quaint, confraternal aspects of medieval guilds, and don’t mind overlooking how controlling they were; if you love the idea of long apprenticeships and don’t mind sweeping grants of patent and absolute trade secrecy, you may be a distributist!
8. You dislike intellectual property: If you view Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution as a tool for enriching the plutocracy (except of course when monopolies are given to guilds) and identify more with the Swedish-internet-pirate school of thought, you may be a distributist!
9. You bleed your patients with leeches: If you long for the simpler, more local health care system of the Middle Ages, when your barber performed appendectomies and your doctor’s first instinct in case of illness was to send for leeches, then you may just be a distributist!
10. You brew your own beer: Coors is the beer of Republicans, O’Doul’s is probably the beer of the Tea Party, and the unwashed hipsters at OWS all drink Pabst Blue Ribbon, but if you brew your own beer, you may be a distributist! (No word on what Chesterton thought of bathtub gin.)
For the record, I brew my own beer and believe distributists are enemies of individual liberty.
Yes, and for all who wonder: distributists would empower "the ruler or steward" the power to take your stuff and give it to somebody else in order to achieve justice, as determined by said ruler or steward.
Commies, each and every one.
Do you believe abortion is a good thing to limit population of poor people?
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