I am doing some personal research on the economic theory of Distributism.

I know what it is and I have read many proponents of this theory who point to Belloc and Chesterton as a foundation for their theory.

However, I am really interested to know if there is a fundamental basis for distributism rooted in Catholicism, especially considering that Belloc and Chesterton were both writers and not theologians or even economists.

Please do not tell me that the Church condemned Capitalism.  I have read Rerum Novarum and I do not see where Pope Leo XIII condemned capitalism as a form of economy.  Rather, I see where he outlines the responsibilities an employer has to his employees.

Nor do I see anything in Catholic teaching that forbids one from working and as a result acquiring wealth.  I do see where we are warned not to be attached to material possessions, but that those who have more money have a responsibility to care for those less fortunate.

Obviosly, the Church has condemned socialism as intrinsically evil.  But I am looking for some direction regarding distributism.

Please do not try to suggest that a distributist society is how communities once were.  I know, historically, this is false.

I am hearing more and more about this from traditional Catholics and I am just wondering if this is not some utopian world view in reaction to the atrocious American capitalist society we have today which has made slaves of all people except the incredibly wealthy.

Herewith some insightful reading:

http://mtm.ufsc.br/~mcarvalho/DISTRIBUTISM.pdf


God bless!

I've said it before and will say it again. Distributism is a desirable condition, it is not a system. It is the arrangement of capital, it is not a method of trade. It is a quality that a society could have, not a process a society would use.  It cannot be condemned or supported by the Church because it isn't a behavior.  

God bless,
JoeZ

P.S. Distributism promises Utopia but doesn't say how to get there.

Quote from: JoeZ

P.S. Distributism promises Utopia but doesn't say how to get there.

Does that statement match the facts ?  I would not consider myself a distributist, necessarily, but I have read a bit about it and I don't see how one can justify the claim that distributes promises a utopia.

Distributism does have some prescriptions, namely the regulation by the political power of the economy such that large industrial operations are made quite difficult, with local industrial operations and sound finance (non-usurious, i.e., the opposite of the current banking system of central banks, which is essentially government-sponsored systemic usury) being given the favour and advantage of the laws.  The goal, as has been said, is to put the means of production into the hands of as many heads of families as possible, though most distributists are less discriminatory even than that.

I agree that that is not a system that has ever been widely practiced historically.  Before the Commercial and Industrial revolutions, the majority of economic activity was agricultural.  The place where small-scale industry occurred was in finished goods and luxury products or else in cottage industries.  Workingmens' unions or corporations were state-chartered craftsmen's monopolies that were applied locally to towns.  Otherwise, all economic activity was in land or service or in professional skills, the military, etc.  But the latter were never at the scale of today, and very few worked in factories as a percentage of the general populace.  Exchange existed but was typically restricted heavily by tariffs, licences, etc., in order to protect social stability and the social hierarchy.

Distributism aims to create some kind of republic, as far as I can tell, of guilds and farmers.  That doesn't seem like a utopia to me.  It's not what I favour, since I believe in social hierarchy and the distrbutists tend to imagine some kind of society without it, but it doesn't seem impossible.

This is a really interesting analysis.  Thanks for your sharing these observations.

Herewith some insightful reading:

http://mtm.ufsc.br/~mcarvalho/DISTRIBUTISM.pdf


God bless!

I actually read some of this and was already aware of a long debate between John Clark and others in regards to the moral implications of distributism.  This paper seems to be a culmination of those discussions.

Right away, though, I found some inconsistencies with this article.  

Firstly, I am leery of any Encyclical written on this matter post 1950.  One referenced was written by JPII in 1991.  The other two by Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius XI I have read.

Right away the author gives a definition of capitalism that is flawed.  In fact, it is a definition not of capitalism itself but of a corruption of capitalism.  

Also, as I stated before, Hillaire Belloc is not the Catholic Church.  This author seems to suggest that Belloc's opinion on this matter are part of the Magisterium.  

I also believe this author is attempting to read into Popes Leo and Pius words what neither intended.  He does so by applying JPII's analysis and opinion on this matter, of which are often twisted and confusing.

Ultimately, this paper does little convincing me that distributism, by definition, is founded in Catholic teaching.


Pope Pius XI specifically says that man has a right, given by God, to own property, improve his station in life, and acquire wealth to make his life less burdensome on earth and leave something for his descendants.  

He also says there is nothing contrary to Catholicism regarding a property owner hiring a worker to do a job.

So I am just not seeing this distributist society where we all have a little plot of land and a small business to meet our needs and sell things in a cooperative manner.

In fact, Pope Pius XI warns against the idea of collectivism in general.

I am especially bothered by this statement from the distributists:

So we see that the capitalistic notion of profit is entirely out of
consonance with the Catholic faith
 
This quote bothers me as well because it is misleading:

as Our Lord and the Church have repeatedly
warned us, money is dangerous, and the desire for it equally so

The Scripture says that covetousness is the root of all equal and than many men have lost their faith trying to get rich.  Money, itself is not dangerous.

If one does not make a profit, how can one increase his wealth, which is not something contrary to Catholic teaching?

It seems to me what Pope Pius XI is really criticizing is the corporation and the banking system, not capitalism.  

It is obvious that not only is wealth concentrated in our times but an immense power and despotic economic dictatorship is consolidated in the hands of a few, who often are not owners but only the trustees and managing directors of invested funds which they administer according to their own arbitrary will and pleasure.

 This dictatorship is being most forcibly exercised by those who, since they hold the money and completely control it, control credit also and rule the lending of money. Hence they regulate the flow, so to speak, of the life-blood whereby the entire economic system lives, and have so firmly in their grasp the soul, as it were, of economic life that no one can breathe against their will.

I didn't finish reading the paper, primarily because I believe the foundation of his argument is flawed.  If you begin with a flawed argument, it is impossible to draw a sound conclusion.

Sorry, but his paper doesn't convince me.   In fact, it actually leads me to believe that the distributists are just as guilty of distorting Catholicism as are the Socialists and the Capitalists.

Quote from: JoeZ

I've said it before and will say it again. Distributism is a desirable condition, it is not a system. It is the arrangement of capital, it is not a method of trade. It is a quality that a society could have, not a process a society would use.  It cannot be condemned or supported by the Church because it isn't a behavior.  

God bless,
JoeZ

P.S. Distributism promises Utopia but doesn't say how to get there.

We know that Socialism is contrary to Catholicism.

Fundamentally, capitalism as a form of economy is not contrary to Catholic morality.

How does one define capitalism ?  If we mean exchange of property for a just price or the exchange of promises or a detriment in a just contract, of course that is not contrary to the moral law.  But that's not really what capitalism is, since that has always been practiced since the exclusion from the Garden.  Capitalism, as a unique system, seems to be the state-sponsorship of a usurious banking system with a view towards as few restrictions on exchange and on the size of business ventures as is possible, even permitting licentiousness and immoral goods to be sold.  Furthermore, capitalism seems to rest on the policy belief that competition as such is a good thing, that the destruction of pre-existing community standards through innovation is, within limits, per se a good thing.  

Capitalists often try to equate exchange with capitalism, but if one actually looks at the economic history of the past several centuries, one can see that there was exchange long before Adam Smith and the other classical economists were even born.  Before Enlightenment economics, the world was not socialist.

So is distributism, in principle, contrary to Catholicism?

No, I don't think it is, at least not in a direct or explicit way.  I would say that it is a bit misguided, however, and shortsighted.  Socialism is contrary to the natural law because it denies the right of a man to own property and to buy and sell it as he pleases (within the limits of justice, of course).  Distributism, however, does not explicitly deny any right that can be found in the natural law, as far as I can tell.  Indeed, it tries to expand property ownership to as many people as possible.

If anything, distributism might be opposed to Catholic morality only insofar as it tries to maximise individual property ownership and the cultivation of a sense of national citizenship, a goal which certainly seems to carry the bouquet of a certain Enlightenment vintage.  In fact, society functions better and profits more when there are, as it were, less chefs seasoning the stew.  Usury is one tool by which a lot of money for business ventures can be raised quickly, such that the economy becomes more fluid.  In the process, though, the moral order of society is subject to the dictates of the profit-motive and the licence given to greed at the expense of tradition and custom.  Besides, usury is unsustainable and is contrary to the natural law, anyway.

Distributism suffers, I think, from being overly democratic and populist.  I think that is why some of its prescriptions can often sound naive.  It also eschews any language of conquest, glory, victory, defeat in preference to terms and concepts like community, organic, cooperative, steward, etc.  There's a certain reactionary imbalance to it, and it can come off as sounding socialist.  The old way of doing economics was best, I think, but of course economics are always changing as political situations and resources change.  

The true Catholic politics and economics, I think, is the vision of the Empire, with its cities, towns, guilds, great estates, peasants, common lands, great enterprises, humble market stalls, local industries and far-flung merchants'  leagues -- and all of that variety being regulated for the common good of mankind (with respect to social stability and good customs), united under the complementary hegemony of the imperator-princeps and the Supreme Pontiff.  That was the vision of Charlemagne and it was also the inspiration for the actions of Saint Louis and the great Popes.  It was cast aside during the escalating power struggles between kings that have defined our past thousand years, but it remains the one way to true peace in the world, which might perhaps be kept for a few hundred years once achieved.

PereJoseph provides in his post something I have rarely ever seen, but am most grateful to read: a genuinely Catholic critique of Distributism (from a specifically Monarchical point of view).

I think your criticisms bring to light what Distributism essentially is - a proposal for an economic system in which the modern post-enlightenment democracy can be made as conducive as possible to a flourishing of public and private Catholic morality by safeguarding against the violations of the Natural Law engendered by materialistic systems like modern Capitalism and Socialism (the latter being the pus, we might say, that forms in the body of the State infected by pathological Capitalism).

Which brings me specifically to this point you make:

Distributism suffers, I think, from being overly democratic and populist.  I think that is why some of its prescriptions can often sound naive.  It also eschews any language of conquest, glory, victory, defeat in preference to terms and concepts like community, organic, cooperative, steward, etc.  There's a certain reactionary imbalance to it, and it can come off as sounding socialist.  The old way of doing economics was best, I think, but of course economics are always changing as political situations and resources change.  

These tendencies of language and attitude are, I think, the result of a deliberate effort on the part of Chesterton and Belloc and the other early Distributists to distance themselves from the militaristic language of the Communist revolutionaries of their day. The desire to acheive that distance is, of course, understandable; though it may have had the unfortunate effect of saddling the movement with the rather weak-seeming, overly democratic lexicon and attitudes to which you refer.

But, speaking as a Catholic who boosters for Distributism and prays daily for the coming of the Great Catholic Monarch, I like to think of distributism not as an end unto itself, but as a means to the end of a Catholic Restoration and counterrevolution. The Marxists see Socialism as a "Transitional" system that leads naturally to Communism. Conversely, I see Distributism as a "transitional" system that could lead to a restoration of the Traditional Catholic State. It certainly beats throwing one's arms up in despair and accepting the current system of state-sponsored usury as some kind of invincible, inevitable force of nature (as many comfortably bourgeois Catholics tend to do, if they're not actively praising it), and, barring any future (and extremely unlikely) armed, militaristic Catholic Counterrevolution, I see it as the best, most workable option (apart from prayer and penance, of course) for Catholics living in this unhappy age of the post-enlightenment secular democracy.

The true Catholic economics is this:

Acts 4:32-35

"And the multitude of believers had but one heart and one soul: neither did any one say that aught of the things which he possessed, was his own; but all things were common unto them.  And with great power did the apostles give testimony of the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord; and great grace was in them all.  For neither was there any one needy among them. For as many as were owners of lands or houses, sold them, and brought the price of the things they sold,  And laid it down before the feet of the apostles. And distribution was made to every one, according as he had need."


In the coming era of peace, this will be more the way of life, because such a system is only possible when a community lives at a high spiritual level. (communism is the ape of this).


Distributism is a worthy effort to move closer to this ideal.
I would ask Pere Joseph if he would please explain his statements as follows:


1) "If anything, distributism might be opposed to Catholic morality only insofar as it tries to maximise individual property ownership and the cultivation of a sense of national citizenship, a goal which certainly seems to carry the bouquet of a certain Enlightenment vintage.In fact, society functions better and profits more when there are, as it were, less chefs seasoning the stew."


2) (Distributism) ..also eschews any language of conquest, glory, victory, defeat in preference to terms and concepts like community, organic, cooperative, steward, etc.


Thanks.