Distributism and its adherents

[RB2]

Question here for the discerning and those of you who consider yourselves conservative Catholics.
.
We all know that what the church teaches on social justice is proper and right, however the people who inhabit the ‘social justice crowd’ or adherents are predominantly the politically left and/or progressives who have hijacked the meaning and implementations of these things within social justice.

I am reading the distributistreview.com website, just perousing a bit, and I find that what some of these people are writing contains a flawed view of encyclicals and such on economics and takes a harsh view on capitalism as if capitalism by its very nature and all of its examples is unrestrained and abusive. Its seems these people are leftist progressives.

Question: Like the ‘social justice’ crowd, who is inhabiting these ‘distributist’ circle of thinking/thinkers?

a) progressives liberals
b) clear right thinking catholics
c)barefoot oddballs who walk around staring at their feet.
d) ex commie/socialist misfits
e) you tell me.

I’m trying to get a grasp of what I’m reading over there apart from the very simple clear idea of distributism which I can read about on Wikipedia.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

Hopefully “b”, though probably with a few "c"s and maybe a few closet "d"s who are not real distributists at all. “A” is too hard to define, especially since Belloc and Chesterton wrote during a time when the word “liberal” had a different common meaning.

I don’t go all the way to calling myself a distributist if only because I don’t believe I know enough about the subject, but I have strong leanings in that direction.

 

[St_Francis]

I consider myself a beginning distributist.

What happened was that I gradually became more disturbed by certain aspects of US conservatism–it seemed like they saw specific problems with US liberalism which I saw, and I was able to accept their solutions for a while, but… my reservations grew.

I too was initially put off of Distributism because the main proponent I saw (way back when) seemed to be somewhat to the left, but also offering impractical solutions. What was actually going on there was that I wasn’t seeing a full picture, but also, I was coming at it from the wrong angle–I mean, I myself was in the wrong place.

What really accelerated my concerns, doubts, and increased possibility for understanding distributism was re-reading Rerum Novarum and *grasping *a certain point Pope Leo was making: that all should work together on an enterprise rather than the division between “management” and “labor” proposed by the Communists. Probably I was better able to grasp this point because I had actually worked for a family business owned by Catholics and seen how they operated.

And it’s interesting, now I see distributist comments all over the place I was reading a fictional book about a businessman in Victorian England: …he had always held that a country’s prosperity depended on a friendly alliance between master and man. It maddened him to see a properous merchant, known to work his hands like field slaves, contribute a large sum of money towards the cause of Temperance, or a new church, or some other short cut to Paradise, when they were ready to see their foundries close, or their ships left unladen, before they could be talked into paying their furnacemen or dockers an extra penny on the hour.

And elsewhere on this forum is a thread about Melinda Gates using the fortune of the Gates Foundation to get abc to Africa… while there are complaints about the situations (pay, living, working) of the people who make the products for the company from which the Gates derive their income.

And to be honest, once I started thinking from that different point, I couldn’t go back. Possibly what you are seeing is the writing of people who came to distributism from the Left, while I came to distributism from the Right.

I don’t know if all this will help you, but I hope it does!

 

[brgregmack]

I, too, have come to Distributism from the right. I got curious about it last year, and started with Hilaire Belloc’s Economics for Helen. I’m currently reading The Servile State. He has gotten me to see both Capitalism and Socialism (Collectivism) in a whole new light. I now see the fundamental flaws and instability of Capitalism and all of it’s other flaws and injustices that remain and have caused the situation we now find ourselves in. I can now see that the increasing government regulations only lock them in and make it worse.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I, too, have come to Distributism from the right. I got curious about it last year, and started with Hilaire Belloc’s Economics for Helen. I’m currently reading The Servile State. He has gotten me to see both Capitalism and Socialism (Collectivism) in a whole new light. I now see the fundamental flaws and instability of Capitalism and all of it’s other flaws and injustices that remain and have caused the situation we now find ourselves in. I can now see that the increasing government regulations only lock them in and make it worse.

It is difficult to talk about Distributism because a) It was never a fully-developed economic theory by its early proponents, b) was hijacked by the “Catholic Worker Movement” people and other communal types, in name only, and c) Times and conditions changed, so that family farms, for instance, were no longer a good remedy for certain social problems.

But, it was certainly based on the papal 'Social Encyclicals", particularly Rerum Novarum, which condemned both socialism and totally unfettered capitalism. But both of those also changed, capitalism more than socialism. The encyclicals emphasized the family as the fundamental base of a proper society, and emphasized the philosophical (and religious) independence of the family. It was posited that ready access to productive, inheritable assets would be a key feature of that.

Distributism (a word the popes never actually used) also emphasized “subsidiarity”, meaning that those who could not help themselves in an economic sense should be aided by the most proximate source capable of meeting th need. The most proximate source might be family. It might be neighbors, a parish, a municipality, a state or a national government. But always, the source chosen should be the most proximate.

There is a personal level to it as well. An individual who is capable of gaining assets for himself and his family, has an obligation to use those assets to aid in the material, personal and spiritual welfare of those “up the chain” from him. Family first, parish next, and so on.

Distributism is contrary to consumerism. That’s not to say one should consume nothing,but that one should resist the blandishments of a consumer-oriented society in favor of acquiring productive family assets. It is also contrary to the corporatist pressures that both socialism and capitalism, each in its own way, present.

“Capitalism” is, in effect, a blank slate. It’s simply what people tend to do if free to do it. Obviously, there need to be curbs on that, because it can turn into a “corporatist” arrangement, in which government and business combine to milk the majority of people and to impose their own ideologies on them. While lots of people praise capitalism, almost none really promote it in a totally unregulated state, but with perhaps less power than it has when either it dominates government, government dominates it, or the two combine in a sort of conspiratorial “crony capitalism”.

 

[manualman]

Distributism’s worst aspect is its name. Most people won’t read the first page since they’ve rejected what they think the cover is about.

Needs a new name. Initiativism? Subsidiaritism? Leonomics??

 

[brgregmack]

Distributism’s worst aspect is its name. Most people won’t read the first page since they’ve rejected what they think the cover is about.

Needs a new name. Initiativism? Subsidiaritism? Leonomics??

I agree. How about sanity-nomics

 

[Swiss_Guy]

Question here for the discerning and those of you who consider yourselves conservative Catholics.
.
We all know that what the church teaches on social justice is proper and right, however the people who inhabit the ‘social justice crowd’ or adherents are predominantly the politically left and/or progressives who have hijacked the meaning and implementations of these things within social justice.

I am reading the distributistreview.com website, just perousing a bit, and I find that what some of these people are writing contains a flawed view of encyclicals and such on economics and takes a harsh view on capitalism as if capitalism by its very nature and all of its examples is unrestrained and abusive. Its seems these people are leftist progressives.

Question: Like the ‘social justice’ crowd, who is inhabiting these ‘distributist’ circle of thinking/thinkers?

a) progressives liberals
b) clear right thinking catholics
c)barefoot oddballs who walk around staring at their feet.
d) ex commie/socialist misfits
e) you tell me.

I’m trying to get a grasp of what I’m reading over there apart from the very simple clear idea of distributism which I can read about on Wikipedia.

I don’t know about them, but distributism as an idea is based off of Christian Democracy, which has influenced many European countries that have a strong sense of subsidiarity. I think Distributism is a more English version of Christian Democracy based off of Wikipedia.

 

[St_Francis]

I don’t know about them, but distributism as an idea is based off of Christian Democracy, which has influenced many European countries that have a strong sense of subsidiarity. I think Distributism is a more English version of Christian Democracy based off of Wikipedia.

You put this in a funny way–I had to laugh

 

[Swiss_Guy]

You put this in a funny way–I had to laugh

Ha. Just saw that.