Ever hear of "distributism"?
The term comes from some eccentric British writers of the 19th Century, Hillaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton, and is used to describe a "third way" of social and economic order between capitalism and socialism.
Belloc and Chesterton developed distributism under the umbrella of Catholic social doctrine, but many similar ideas have coalesced in other contexts. Movements like local food and local currency initiatives, put forth often by liberal environmental and human rights activists (Bill McKibbens'
Deep Economy is an example), are perfectly in line with the distributist philosophy. Thomas Jefferson arguably had a distributist vision of an agrarian United States (quickly foiled by Hamilton and the Federalists).
But what is it? I first heard the word six or more years ago and it's taken awhile to find any really good synopses, despite reading several weblogs dedicated to the idea. Wikipedia isn't particularly helpful. And heaven forbid you want to read about peoples' proposals to actually
bring about distributism!
Anyway, today I ran across
a pretty good basic summary of distributism. It still glosses over plenty, but it puts the basic enterprise into perspective.
I have a feeling there are at least a few of you out there who might be interested in this basic idea of distributism: The equal division of property between people, for the purpose of encouraging individual ownership of small enterprises and returning the connection between ownership, work, and product. It ain't socialism, and it ain't capitalism. I'd be curious to hear the impressions, questions, or challenges of anyone who feels like reading through the short-ish presentation I linked to.
Personally, I find it exhilarating and frustrating at the same time. It's really quite radical, and thus, seemingly a political impossibility. At the same time, there are so many economic knots, especially in the current economic situation, that it theoretically untangles--the tendency for firms to grow "too big to fail," the increasing dependence on financial instruments of greater and greater abstraction. Every day I actually see more and more distributist-spirited ideas gaining purchase. But the fact is, capitalism is still a behemoth of an idea.
Anyway, thoughts welcome. Perhaps you can help me shake out my own feelings.