Is Distributism utopian?

[David_Castlen]

St Francis;8558813:

The Catholic Church forbids Communism modeled after the Old Russian Government. It does not forbid communal living modeled after the monasteries.

Communism ROCKS!!! We always practice it in our very own Catholic Church and faith by communing with the SAINTS whether they’d be in heaven, earth, purgatory. And most of all we take the VERY HOLY COMMUNION, which is the body and blood, soul and divinity of the LORD, JESUS CHRIST, himself. OUR VERY OWN CATHOLIC FAITH PRACTICES COMMUNISM. THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE MODELED AFTER IT!

Communism maybe good for you. So be it. But Communism does not ROCK; not when it is forced on me. When you communist come to my door and force me to give you all my possessiion you have violated at least three commandments. Our Catholic Church does not force people into a form of government especially communism - a sin.

 

[Cho]

Private ownership? :dts::dts::dts: God created everything. He owns everything. We do not own any thing. Even our body is not ours. It is his. To privatize and to control his creations is very very selfish and sinful. Everything must be shared and given!!! You have to give everything that you have for others. And others must do the same. Our problem in our current system is that everyone privatizes which gives birth to selfishness, clamouring and competing creatures wanting everything for themselves.

MATTHEW 25:35-40

35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘TRULY I TELL YOU, WHATEVER YOU DID FOR ONE OF THE LEAST OF THESE BROTHERS AND SISITERS OF MINE, YOU DID FOR ME.’:hammering::hammering::hammering:

How interesting. So you own NOTHING??? You are at the library on a computer?? You live under a bridge or in a homelss shelter. You have no clothing??

 

[Cho]

Cho;8558500:

The word communism is not a bad word.

[French communisme, from commun, common, from Old French, from Latin commnis; see commune2.

com·mune 1 (k-myn)
intr.v. com·muned, com·mun·ing, com·munes

1. To be in a state of intimate, heightened sensitivity and receptivity, as with one’s surroundings: hikers communing with nature.
2. To receive the Eucharist.

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production.

Communism
A theoretical economic system characterized by the [COLOR=“Red”]collective

ownership of property and by the organization of labor for the common advantage of all members.

A system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single, often authoritarian party holds power, claiming to make progress toward a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people.

Communism with a little change and with theism will work just fine!!! Nothing to be afraid of. God will guide us no matter what form of government we are heading into. We survived Capitalism, why can’t we survive Socialism/Communism? Do not be afraid. Trust in Jesus Christ. He will always be with us. Amen. Love it and embrace it, don’t push it away. Remember the rebelling angels who push God away? God still love them and want to embrace them but they push and reject him

Communism, the political system of state ownership of all property is not a viable economic system. There is no market to set prices. ignorant bureaucrats do not know how to allocate resources or produce what is needed when and where it is needed like the free market can. It requires the elimination of the indivdiual "for the greater good’ and enslaves people to the political class. Communism and other forms of state worship are responsible for the bloodiest massacres of the 20th century, hundreds of millions. Yes, communism is a VERY dirty word.

 

[Cho]

I don’t use the term “Rich” because I am not talking about the rich. I am talking about concentration of capital and land. You can become rich in a purely distributist system. Doing so just requires work . I honestly think you are accepting nonsensical descriptions of your beloved social philosophy and that of the enemy.

You are free to believe what you wish. I have been trying to understand and so far there seems to be no uniform agreements among distributionists. Someone else has posted that the rich would be reduced and the poor elevated…no rich, no poor. It is you who are making no sense.

Capitalism is all things free and good. It is laissez faire whenever you talk to someone who doesn’t agree and you need to have a strong front, and then it is some sort of bureaucratized socialism when you talk to your friends and family.

Are you making up your own definitions? Capitalism is private ownership of property, it is not a noun, things. It is a state of ownership. Its definition does not depend on who you talk to!?!!

Socialism is that wicked system that encompasses all things that have to do with government “power”. It encompasses every non-free capitalist system except the archaic past.

Socialism is STATE/government class ownership/control of property rather than private individual ownership.

I think my definitions are much more concise. I just flatly disagree with your trying to paint distributism as this great socialist controlled network.

Perhaps your version of Distributism does not legislate, regulate or “encourage” economic behavior. If that is the case then I’m not seeing that it merits any different name than market anarchy.

You people are acting like hacks.

You are welcome to your opinion.

You really think there is no way that government can work to limit the size and reach of economic interests without becoming socialism?

??!! All formsof statism are in some degree socialism (state assertion of ownership/control of property). How can they not be??

And besides, distributists are just working against the nonsensical laissez faire principals you are all implicitly defending. I am honestly done arguing the evil communist vs. the righteous anarcho-capitalist, debate. It is just not conducive to real thought.
I do appreciate the dialog, however.

LOL! No offense but your thought process is incoherent and illogical. You obviously are clueless about the nature of the state, accept aggression, theft, on the part of the state as inevitable and righteous. Just keep on thinking you can harness a righteous state class of pols to do whatever it is you want done in your Distributist utopia.

 

[Cho]

As all things of this nature, it isn’t a binary system. While any kind or amount of government will partake, to some degree, of the nature of slavery, that amount can be normalized into a value somewhere between 0 and 1. What the ideal amount of slavery is can be fairly easily described, and has been, but I suspect we can all agree that the value should be less than 1.

The ideal amount of slavery?? You ARE joking aren’t you? I would say ZERO. Which is why statism is immoral.

You seem to believe that anything greater than zero is the equivalent of 1. I would respectfully disagree, as in any scenario, two or more individuals will interact and have both shared benefits and risks (to say it correctly, the risks and benefits will be corporate, thus requiring some kind of corporate governance).

???Nonsense. Two or more individuals can contract for mutual benefit. They can contract for private arbitration in case of disputes. They can carry insurance to cover damages in case of nonperformance. Those who do not carry insurance run the risk of not being able to trade. No state parasites needed.

I would agree that the inevitable result of any amount of government/corporate governance is that it will evolve towards a slavery value of 1, but that is why we must remain vigilant and be constantly prepared to cut and trim when the bush of government grows outside its topiary boundary.

I have to say, this is a unique perspective. “Slavery value of 1”??? Too bad for the “1”, huh? Oh well, the end justifies the means so it’s A-OK to have such a righteous state.

Or to paraphrase a great man “Government is a necessary evil.”

The operative word is MAN, and apt to be wrong as are all men. Especially when they begin dabbling in people pushing.

 

[je333]

je333;8560249:

Communism maybe good for you. So be it. But Communism does not ROCK; not when it is forced on me. When you communist come to my door and force me to give you all my possessiion you have violated at least three commandments. Our Catholic Church does not force people into a form of government especially communism - a sin.

This is not the type of communism im talking about.

 

[je333]

je333;8560249:

Communism maybe good for you. So be it. But Communism does not ROCK; not when it is forced on me. When you communist come to my door and force me to give you all my possessiion you have violated at least three commandments. Our Catholic Church does not force people into a form of government especially communism - a sin.

this is not the type of communism im talking about.

 

[je333]

je333;8558527:

Communism, the political system of state ownership of all property is not a viable economic system. There is no market to set prices. ignorant bureaucrats do not know how to allocate resources or produce what is needed when and where it is needed like the free market can. It requires the elimination of the indivdiual "for the greater good’ and enslaves people to the political class. Communism and other forms of state worship are responsible for the bloodiest massacres of the 20th century, hundreds of millions. Yes, communism is a VERY dirty word.

coming from a capitalist mentality, yes, indeed it would be a dirty word.

 

[je333]

How interesting. So you own NOTHING??? You are at the library on a computer?? You live under a bridge or in a homelss shelter. You have no clothing??

if you don’t believe in jesus christ, then you probably wouldn’t know the meaning.

 

[je333]

Because I am not a communist and I don’t believe that my neighbor should be forced to work for my benefit. That is slavery. It is aggression and robbing another of the fruits of his labor and it is wrong, whether done for fat cats or for “the poor”…".lol". How sad that you have fallen so far from Gods teaching that you embrace communism.

and in ur current capitalistic mental state, you are not forced to work??? perhaps you inherited a lot of money??? where is it that all the wealth of this country came from that you so take granted for??? did it come from stealing resources from other (poor) nations??? from slavery??? from war???

 

[St_Francis]

David Castlen;8560741:

This is not the type of communism im talking about.

What do you thnk about the situation to which the word communism refers in normal discourse: people forced to work in return for a pittance of a pay of which they have to almost to buy a small amount of food and rent a meagre space. And if you do anything that the authorities are suspicious of, you can be killed, but first they’ll often tortue you. In the countryside, you could grow food all summer long and have so much taken from you that you and yoir family die of starvation, as millions did in Ukraine.

If you show any signs of belief in God, you can lose your job and be totally unhirable, along with being tortured and martyred. You cannot even teach your children the rudiments of yoir Faith.

You like that? You think it’s what God wants?

Because THAT is communism.

Now, evil people would love for non-communists to think of communism as neutral, and good would be even better. So they appalud when people start saying things like what you are saying, protraying the self-sacrifice and self-renunciation of the men and women who choose to dedicate their lives to God, which despite any superficial outward similarities is the total antithesis of what communists advocate.

So yes, we should all lives holy Catholic lives according to our state of life. We are not all priveleged to be called to the priesthood or religious life; some of us are called to raise a new generation of Catholics, some are called to make enough money to help the needy.

You are enthusiastic about people living holy lives, that is great. We can use all the encouragement we can get. But please be careful in which direction you encourage them.

 

[St_Francis]

This is not the type of communism im talking about.

What do you thnk about the situation to which the word communism refers in normal discourse: people forced to work in return for a pittance of a pay of which they have to almost to buy a small amount of food and rent a meagre space. And if you do anything that the authorities are suspicious of, you can be killed, but first they’ll often tortue you. In the countryside, you could grow food all summer long and have so much taken from you that you and yoir family die of starvation, as millions did in Ukraine.

If you show any signs of belief in God, you can lose your job and be totally unhirable, along with being tortured and martyred. You cannot even teach your children the rudiments of yoir Faith.

You like that? You think it’s what God wants?

Because THAT is communism. Just because you call something else by the same name does not make them the same.

Now, evil people would love for non-communists to think of communism as neutral, and good would be even better. So they appalud when people start saying things like what you are saying, protraying the self-sacrifice and self-renunciation of the men and women who choose to dedicate their lives to God, which despite any superficial outward similarities is the total antithesis of what communists advocate.

So yes, we should all lives holy Catholic lives according to our state of life. We are not all priveleged to be called to the priesthood or religious life; some of us are called to raise a new generation of Catholics, some are called to make enough money to help the needy.

You are enthusiastic about people living holy lives, that is great. We can use all the encouragement we can get. But please be careful in which direction you encourage them.

 

[meme1961]

I know why I thought you were neo-classical now. You take a neo-classical approach when it comes to even the slightest involvement of the government in something that is presented as distributist, but at the same time you admit flat out that capitalism without any government oversight doesn’t work.

I’m not sure, but you do seem to be engaging in a form of false equivalence here.

The use of the power of the state to prevent a corporation, union, or individual from using unjust tactics to amass power or material possessions is not the same thing at all as using the power of the state from preventing a free people from building, concentrating or collecting a massive amount of power or material possessions.

The difference is not in the amount of power or possessions, but how acquired.

Distributism is an abstract idea.

That really isn’t the problem. The problem is not one of abstraction, but of translating that abstraction into policy (of a plan for implementation).

You are distributist to the level you believe a free market should be sustained through regulation of monopolistic practices in business

Insufficient, but true. I’m a capitalist in as much as I believe that the states power over the market should be limited to that necessary to enforce that the rights of all the individual players are protected equally, without consideration as to class, amount of existing power or wealth, sex, religion, etc.

I’m in opposition to Distributism because it does not limit the power of the state. Quite the contrary, it requires the state to help create it. Moreover, it does not limit itself to protecting rights, it goes ahead and dictates outcomes.

and you work for the proliferation of property among the people of a state. That’s all it is.

This last statement is incorrect. I don’t work for, or against, the “proliferation of property among the people of a state.” This proliferation you speak of is not my, or any one else business. I am just as supportive of a Catholic religious to own almost nothing, as I am of a fortune 50 company to own what it does, so long as both states are arrived at by an exercise of free will that has been hindered only to the extent necessary to prevent one from abusing the rights of another.

Not neo-classical. I’m a proponent of liberty and freedom. Libertarian would be a much better label, though if we want to get specific, I’d say “Conservative Libertarian”, or “Classical Liberal” might be a better label

I recommend you at least listen to Belloc’s makes the historical case for distributism. I have the audio book available on my youtube page:
youtube.com/watch?v=firDHyWtD6E&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

I will, if you and at least one other Distributist can agree that this video is authoritative.

There is a reason I look for both the Impimatur and Nihil Obstat when reading Catholic web pages.

 

[meme1961]

Private courts are an option, contracted for by agreeing parties.

As you just stated it, no they are not an option. Who will enforce the “contracted” part of the “contracted for by agreeing parties” part of the above if one of the parties doesn’t like the result?

It’s already going on as arbitration agreed to by credit card users for dispute resolution.

Sure. You just proved my point. Such arbitration is a contract that is, at the end of the day, enforced by a government court, not a private one.

Crooked judges won’t get business. Anti-monopoly statutes are unnecessary.

If sufficient amounts of protection is supplied by other legislation, then I could probably agree with that.

In a free market innovators and competitors would eat away at large companies.

Historically, not true. This doesn’t mean that the necessary protections couldn’t be supplied by other forms of legislation (I’ve proposed a few myself), but your assertion is simply not sustainable when checked against history.

There are reasons why your assertion is not true, and they are covered in most third year economic texts I’ve perused, but to give you the bullet: commodity monopolies do need to be regulated by the state in how they acquire control over a majority of that commodity.

Software and digitally encoded information is radically different, so much so that the current legislative framework is badly broken.

If Ron Paul does not get elected it won’t be for the reasons you cite. He has much less “baggage” than any other politician in the US.

I could be wrong, of course. But your assertion simply isn’t factually true. He has spoken enough, and written enough, to have a huge amount of paper trail, and that paper trail contains some fairly nutty stuff that will be an issue in the general election.

His track record is impeccable, his principles unnassailable

Ah. I get it. You are a fan.

…at least if you are a Constitutionalist or a free market economist.

Even there his positions are assailable. There, in fact, is where some of his nuttiness lives. Don’t get me wrong, he makes good points, and in part I could support some of his goals, depending on actual policy prescriptions, but the man himself simply carries to much baggage to be elected President.

Not that he shouldn’t try, of course, if for no other reason than to make the candidates who do stand a chance respond to his positions.

Refusing to publicize his many straw poll wins while raving about zero economically illiterate candidates like Cain is simply election tampering.

No, it’s not! :tsktsk:

While I appreciate zeal, I have no qualms about calling you on this kind of thing. To call expressing an opinion “Election Tampering” is a lie, and a malicious one at that. A good Christian does not engage in such, and with love and respect, I’m going to reprove you here.

You may not like the opinions expressed about your candidate. You may believe them to be inaccurate. But expressing such opinions are not election tampering.

, manipulating the public who have been trained to respond like dogs to the marginalizing of those who deviate from the Establishment memes…like the idiocy that gold is “dangerous” and that the economy must be “run” by planners.

Elections are often won by those who manage to capture the hearts of the polity, not necessarily by those who make a convincing argument that sustains the most reasonable policy prescriptions. There is a reason that the US was designed to be a constitutional republic, not a pure democracy (this exact issue is discussed in the Federalist Papers, if you are interested).

But to use terms like “manipulating” is again to succumb to your zeal. The dominant mass media outlets are undoubtedly left leaning, but even if they were firmly and always in the Obama camp, with 100% pro Obama coverage, 100% of the time, a charge of “manipulation” is untrue and unjust.

There are other outlets for information, and a voter chooses for themselves what they believe, and how they vote. To claim otherwise is to imply that you support a form of government that is, at the very least, granted the power to control what people say as an indirect way of controlling what they think. I trust you don’t support such a system?

 

[meme1961]

Cho;8558500:

The word communism is not a bad word.

Yes, it is. While you post dictionary definitions of communism that are compatible with Catholicism (one can fairly describe certain religious communities as communes), you seem to be unwilling to admit that the common usage admits of only one definition.

May I suggest that in the future that you use qualifiers? I have a friend who approves of “Christian Communism”, but he never, never uses just the word “communism” because it is, all by itself, a bad word.

Evil, in point of fact. Communism is responsible for one quarter of a billion deaths in the 20th century, as well as the religious persecution of Catholics across nearly one fifth of the world.

 

[frankpearson]

Socialism is STATE/government class ownership/control of property rather than private individual ownership.

Oh, it doesn’t encompass distributism then. Distributism is the private ownership/control of land and capital exclusively, not government ownership/control. I guess that clears that up.

And to those asking questions about distributists’ consistency. It is a system, while extant all over the world and preceding capitalism, that has not had a political presence since at least the secular revolution “enlightenment”. We are working on that.

 

[sedonaman]

I just found this thread and don’t know if my point has been made, but here goes. It seems that there is a misunderstanding of what distributism is. This topic was covered in EWTN’s G.K. Chesterton: Apostle of Common Sense. As I recall, under distributism, wealth * is more distributed rather than more concentrated. This does not mean that the government confiscates from the wealthy and doles it out to the poor. Much like home ownership is “distributed” widely, other forms of property [e.g., stocks, bonds] would be also. In this way, wealth would serve the people rather than the people serving wealth.

Ironically, this would have been accomplished if workers were allowed to invest their social security contributions [and their employer’s contributions] into private accounts that they control rather than the government. Twelve percent compounded over a working life amounts to a lot even if invested in a modest savings account. When the worker retires, he could draw on it at the same rate social security pays and never exhaust the principle. Or he could draw it out at some other rate.

I’ve heard all the usual arguments against this, so save your breath. A lot of people complain about large corporations and the “rich” controlling so much wealth, but few complain about the government controlling so much. Also, once stock ownership of large corporations is in the hands of a lot of people, that ownership will be serving the many rather than the few.*

 

[frankpearson]

I will, if you and at least one other Distributist can agree that this video is authoritative.

There is a reason I look for both the Impimatur and Nihil Obstat when reading Catholic web pages.

I’ve got three favorites on the video, if that counts as agreement.

 

[meme1961]

This is backwards. Bondage is intensified when wealth and power are allowed to concentrate into fewer hands.

You conflate two things here, which is why you make this mistake:

exaaactly. because our democracy has been stolen from the majority thanks to concentration of economic power.

Firstly, if by “we” you mean the US, then we were never supposed to be a democracy. We were constituted as a constitutional republic. The Constitution itself guarantees to each state a republican form of government (go check it out!).

One of the duties of a constitutional republic is to apply the law universally, paying no attention to wealth. The intent is precisely to prevent this conflation of wealth and power. Thus if our “democracy has been stolen” by a concentration of economic power, then you either don’t understand a democracy (by the logic of wealth, the wealthy will ALWAYS be a minority, and thus have very little power!) or you don’t agree that we have a democracy.

If you believe private ownership of property distinguishes free people from slaves, then why would you think its ok for excess portions of property to be hoarded by the few, thus turning the majority into slaves?

“Excess?”, “hoarded?”

The fallacy in your argument lies in your premises, and in part in the way you misstate the case. It is not the ownership of private property that distinguishes a free people from slaves, it is in the right to privately own property. One can still be free absent ownership (ask a Catholic religious or Priest who has taken a vow of poverty).

But “excess” and “hoard” presumes that someone has the overarching authority to both to define these terms, then enforce limitations on them. Down that path lies a form of Fascism.

A squirrel obsessively gathers way more acorns than he needs, thus leaving not enough for the others who didn’t match his ambition (because if it wasn’t for his greed, everyone could have collected enough with ease).

Is that not theft?

No, it is not theft.

If said squirrel broke into another squirrels cache and took those acorns, and if that cache and the way in which that cache were created were a proper use of and result of natural rights, then you’d have a situation where theft is occurring.

I take no stand, however, on the natural or god given rights of squirrels!

Squirrels are now desperate for any and every acorn they can find, and he can now choose his favorite squirrels and compel them to do his bidding, controlling all Squirrelville matters. Is that compulsion to do his bidding at the risk of scarcity not a form of de facto slavery?

No, it is not.

It is highly motivating, but the difference between freely choosing to enter into a relationship with another, whether economic or otherwise, is not the same as being forced into such a relationship.

But at the end of the day, in pragmatic terms, it is highly motivating, and thus we have such things as labor unions, welfare states and socialism.

It is in balancing these things in the real world that politics becomes a very messy and difficult business.

If the rest of the squirrels decide to use the only leverage they have left (numbers) to surround him and demand he keep only that which he needs, giving up only that which he doesn’t…are you saying they’re the real thieves?

Too much of the context is missing, here. Rights, legal framework and status of enforcement are necessary to answer your question. Let me demonstrate the fallacy of your scenario: By this argument, are you proposing that theft by the majority is right and good?

But if we suppose that the squirrel acted legally in his acquisition, then yeah, the mob is engaging in theft (which is basically what happened in a number of communist revolutions, except that the “squirrels” didn’t just steal, they then murdered the owner).

Minorities using their control over the state (due to their control over the resources) to force their will on majority is then also aggression by the same exact definition.

Which is why the US is supposed to be a Constitutional Republic. Both the injustice of taking material wealth into account and the injustice of taking political power into account when judging is prevented in a constitutional republic.

This is what happens when capitalism is left unchecked as well. This is why distributists see communism and capitalism leading to the same fundamental situation for society. Force is force, whether by aggression or by managed scarcity inflicted by the hoarders (who would maintain their control via threat of aggression anyway).

No, force is not force as your context would have it. Legal force used justly is NOT the same thing as force used to create or protect injustice. The Church has a doctrine on just war precisely because not all force is force.

 

[meme1961]

I just saw your response to my post. I don’t think anything I said was propagandistic, particularly. I’m not trying to engage in corporation-bashing, and I’m not sure how you got that impression from my post, nor do I see how my participation in this thread (which I started incidentally) has been dishonest in any way. Can you flesh out some of these accusations?

Fair enough. Let’s use what you wrote in the rest of you reply:

My position on corporations is that they exist to serve a purpose and there’s nothing “evil” about them in an intrinsic sense but at the same time, I don’t see why Christians in particular should regard them as deserving of our love and immune from any criticism. Once corporations stop serving human needs I don’t see much use for them at all. I took the poster I was responding to to be saying the opposite, which is that humans exist to serve the needs of corporations, which is a very perverse idea.

If you believe that anybody in this conversation regards corporations “as deserving of our love and immune from any criticism” then we have the basis for the misunderstanding. No one has stated such, and to claim otherwise is a form of propaganda (to be more precise, you are overstating your opponents case to the point of changing their meaning).

In reading this conversation from start to current date, nobody ever said that corporations are “deserving of our love and immune from any criticism”, but what has been claimed is that they serve a necessary purpose, should not be treated unfairly, arbitrarily have their rights violated, or demonized.

But to respond to your response: If a corporation stops serving a human need, I don’t see a need for it, either. Which is why such a corporation usually goes bankrupt (buggy whip manufacturing, anyone?) or changes its business dramatically . . . so that it can serve a new or different human need.

That is why corporations exist: to serve human needs (and desires, of course). That doesn’t need to be enforced, and it is an emergent property of the free market that unnecessary businesses go away. This process is referred to as “creative destruction” in the text books, and was something that another poster was adamantly opposed to (see the discussion about Walmart).