Sunday Night Journal — August 1, 2010
I’ve been intending to post something about this since the
new Distributist
Review site was unveiled a
few weeks ago, and having trouble making time for it, so I think I’ll
devote my Sunday writing hours to it.
The old Distributist Review site
was a Blogspot blog, and was fine within those limits, but the new
one is a great improvement. I’m a Facebook friend of Richard Aleman,
who appears last on the new site’s staff list, but seems to
have been the guy who did most of the actual construction work. He
and whoever else is responsible deserve much praise for having put
together a truly first-class site, with the sort of look and features
that people expect from a professional site, including video
(“Distributist TV”—try to get your head around that.)
Indeed, the new site is almost
overwhelming, because there’s so much there, and so much being
continually added. I only check in on Facebook for a short time every
day or two, and when I do I usually see multiple notices from Richard
Aleman about new TDR postings.
I admit I have not read a great deal of the material. It’s not
that I don’t think it’s worthwhile; part of the reason is
the sheer quantity, and part of it is that these socio-political
concerns have not been uppermost in my mind in recent years. When
they are, it’s mostly in regard to current situations and
controversies rather than principles. I think I’ve said most,
if not all, of what I have to say on the principles in a few essays
and book reviews, such as this
one.
The principles of distributism are most
often enunciated in a Catholic context, but the fundamentals seem to
me to be pure common sense: the idea that it’s better for most
people to have a small amount of property and power than for a few
people to have a lot of both (as they tend to go together). It goes
hand-in-hand with the principle of subsidiarity, the idea that
decisions should generally be made as close as possible to the point
where they have the most effect and where the most knowledge of the
situation normally exists. Subsidiarity is another term heard most often in
Catholic writing and supported by Catholic theology, but not
dependent on it. One could argue for either idea without reference to
any religious doctrine at all, on the basis of pure earthly common
sense. Everyone knows, more or less instinctively, that most people
most of the time will take better care of something they own than of
something which belongs to someone else. Everyone knows that
ownership of productive property fosters responsibility
and citizenship.
But it’s not an accident that
talk of distributism and subsidiarity is most often encountered in
Catholic circles. Not only are the fundamental principles found in
Catholic social teaching (though not necessarily under those names),
but the great popularizers of distritbutist ideas have mostly been
Catholic, notably of course Chesterton and Belloc.
The USA is in its foundations a
Protestant country, and yet there is a great deal in distributism
which seems particularly resonant with American ideas (if not current
American practice). Jefferson seems to have envisioned a nation of
which the backbone would be small landowners and merchants, and even
today there is no more reliable way to get public sympathy for an
economic program than by promising that it will move us toward that
ideal. So why is distributism not more widely accepted? Especially,
why is it not more widely accepted, and not only accepted but
propounded, by orthodox Catholics?
Part of the answer must be a reluctance
or inability to think outside the categories of capitalism and
socialism. Orthodox Catholics tend to be politically conservative and
pro-capitalist, and to reject as socialism any substantial challenge
to our usual American conceptions of free enterprise. This in turn
is, I suppose, an effect of our culture war, in which each side feels
that it must reject the other’s views in toto.
Another part of the problem is that
distributists tend, like any marginalized political faction, to do
their part to remain marginalized. They (we) can come across as
cranks, exhibiting the unattractive and unproductive tendency of
those who without power and influence to sit on the sidelines and
sneer at those who have it, or the fastidiousness of those who hold
themselves above participation in practical politics but not above
sneering at those who do participate.
And Catholic traditionalists sometimes
rely heavily on appeals to papal authority, starting with Rerum
novarum, to make the case for distributism, with a sort of
the-pope-said-it-that-settles-it attitude which in my opinion goes a
step too far, and, more importantly, neglects the practical case,
which is extremely strong and likely to be more persuasive in a
matter where the question of what works to produce a just and
healthy prosperity is critical.
The new Distributist Review
appears to be avoiding these pitfalls. The editor, John Médaille, seems
to have had substantial business experience, which ought to give
the magazine a good grounding in our actual contemporary situation.
I hope it will be widely read.
Light On Dark Water 
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