← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Walter Yannis
Thread ID: 12726 | Posts: 68 | Started: 2004-03-13
2004-03-13 07:03 | User Profile
Here's a nice [URL=http://www.theuniversityconcourse.com/V,5,1-28-2000/Storck.htm]Introduction to Distributism [/URL] by the estimable Thomas Storck of the most orthodox [URL=http://www.newoxfordreview.org/]New Oxford Review[/URL] for your reading pleasure.
Walter
What is Distributism?
by Thomas Storck
Much of the history of the Western world since the middle of the nineteenth century has been the history of the clash of competing economic systems. Ever since the Communist Manifesto of 1848, when it was claimed that a "specter is haunting Europe," a specter indeed has been haunting not only Europe, but the whole world. This is the specter not just of communism, but of rival economic and social systems which many times since then have convulsed mankind. But in the minds of many this rivalry of economic systems has come to an end: communism and socialism have both been defeated, and therefore only capitalism is left to reign triumphantly throughout the entire world. However, this is not the case. In a neglected passage of the encyclical Centesimus Annus, John Paul II points out that mankind's choices are not restricted to capitalism and the now discredited socialism. "We have seen that it is unacceptable to say that the defeat of so-called `Real Socialism' leaves capitalism as the only model of economic organization" (no. 35). If this is the case, then it behooves Catholics to take a look at distributism, an economic system championed by many of the best minds in the Church in the first part of the twentieth century, men such as G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Fr. Vincent McNabb and many others. Let us see exactly what distributism is and why many Catholics see it as more akin to Catholic thought than capitalism.
In the first place, we would do well to make a few definitions of the chief terms we will be using, and especially of capitalism. Too often this word is left undefined, and each person gives it some sort of connotation in his mind, good or bad, depending on his own beliefs, but never clearly defined. Now first, what is capitalism not? Capitalism is not private ownership of property, even of productive property, for such ownership has existed in most of the world at most times, and capitalism is generally held to have come into existence only toward the end of the Middle Ages in Europe. Perhaps the best way to proceed is to take our definition from a very weighty source, and then we will see how that definition does indeed fit the facts of history. We will turn, then, to the encyclical of Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno (1931), in which capitalism is defined or characterized as "that economic system in which were provided by different people the capital and labor jointly needed for production" (no. 100). In other words, under capitalism normally people work for someone else. Someone, the capitalist, pays others, the workers, to work for him, and receives the profits of this enterprise, that is, whatever is left over after he has paid for his labor, his raw materials, his overhead, any debt he owes, etc.
Now is there anything wrong with capitalism, with the separation of ownership and work? In itself there is nothing unjust about my owning a factory or a farm and employing others to work for me, as long as I pay them a just and living wage. But nonetheless, the capitalistic system is dangerous and unwise, its fruits have been harmful for mankind, and the supreme pontiffs have often called for changes which would, in effect, eliminate capitalism, or at least reduce its scope and power.
Let me explain and justify the assertions I have just made. And in order to do so, I must first make a brief detour to talk about the purpose of economic activity. Why has God given to men the possibility and need for producing and using economic goods? The answer to this is obvious: we need these goods and services in order to live a human life. Thus economic activity produces goods and services for the sake of serving all of mankind, and any economic arrangements must be judged by how well they fulfill that purpose.
Now when ownership and work are separated there necessarily exists a class of men, capitalists, who are one step removed from the production process itself. Stockholders, for example, typically do not care about what the company they are formal owners of actually makes or does, but only whether its stock price is rising or how large a dividend it pays. In fact, on the stock exchange, shares change hands thousands of times a day, that is, different individuals or entities, such as pension funds, are part owners of companies for a few minutes or hours or days, and then the stock is sold to someone else and they become owners of some new entity. Thus this class of capitalists naturally comes to see the economic system as a mechanism by which money, stocks, bonds, futures, and other surrogates for real wealth, can be manipulated in order to enrich themselves, instead of serving society by producing needed goods and services. As a result, men have made fortunes by hostile takeovers, mergers, shutting down factories, etc., in other words, by taking advantage of private property rights, not in order to engage in productive economic activity, but to enrich themselves regardless of its effect on consumers or workers.
The popes have indeed justified the ownership of private property, but if we examine how and why they have done so, we will see that the logic of their position is far from the logic of capitalism. Let us look, for example, at a famous passage from the encyclical of Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (1891).
Men always work harder and more readily when they work on that which is their own; nay, they learn to love the very soil which yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of the good things for themselves and those that are dear to them. (no. 35) But what happens under capitalism? Do men learn to love the very stock certificates which yield cold cash, in response to the labor of someone else's hands? The justification of private property that the popes have made is always tied, at least as an ideal, to ownership and work being joined. Thus Leo XIII: "The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many people as possible to become owners" (Rerum Novarum, no. 35), and this teaching is repeated by Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno (nos. 59-62, 65), by John XXIII in Mater et Magistra (nos. 85-89, 91-93, 111-115), and by John Paul II in Laborem Exercens (no. 14). If "as many people as possible...become owners," then that fatal separation of ownership and work will be, if not removed, at least its extent and influence will be lessened. It will no longer be the hallmark of our economic system, even if it still exists to some extent.
And this brings us directly to distributism. For distributism is nothing more than an economic system in which private property is well distributed, in which "as many people as possible" are in fact owners. Probably the most complete statement of distributism can be found in Hilaire Belloc's book, The Restoration of Property (1936). Note the title, The Restoration of Property. For the distributists argued that under capitalism property, certainly productive property, was the preserve of the rich, and that this gave them an influence and power in society far beyond what they had any right to. Yes, the formal right to private property exists for all under capitalism, but in practice it is restricted to the rich.
A further feature of distributism that follows from this, is that in a distributist economy, the amassing of property will have limits placed on it. Before one objects that this sounds like socialism, he would do well to remember Chesterton's remark (in What's Wrong With the World, chap. 6), that the institution of private property no more means the right to unlimited property than the institution of marriage means the right to unlimited wives!
In the Middle Ages those quintessential Catholic institutions, the craft guilds, very often limited the amount of property each owner/worker could have (for example, by limiting the number of his employees), precisely in the interest of preventing anyone from expanding his own workshop so much that he was likely to drive others out of business. For if private property has a purpose and end, as Aristotle and St. Thomas would insist, it surely is to allow a man to make a decent living for himself and his family by serving society. But one living, not two or three. If my business supports myself and my family, then what right do I have to expand that business so as to deprive others of the means of supporting themselves and their families? For the medievals saw those in the same line of work, not as rivals or competitors, but as brothers, brothers engaged in the very important work of providing the public with a needed good or service. And as brothers they joined together into guilds, engaged priests to pray for their dead, supported their widows and orphans with insurance funds, and generally looked after one another. Who would not admit that this conception of economic activity is more akin to the Catholic faith than the dog eat dog ethic of capitalism?
I realize that much of what I say here must sound strange to many readers. Most Americans are acquainted only with capitalism and socialism. But a little knowledge of Catholic economic history and of traditional Catholic economic thought will be enough to convince any fair minded reader that there is an entire world out there of genuine Catholic thought on this subject nearly unknown in the United States. And if the current "science" of economics contradicts this thought, then ask yourself, what authority does that "science" have? It arose from the deistic philosophy of the so-called Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, and it is curious that some Catholics, while condemning (rightly) the philosophy of that unfortunate century, warmly embrace its economic theories, not realizing that those economic theories arise from the same poisoned well as Voltaire and the Encyclopedists. But it is not too late to remake our thinking after the very pattern of Jesus Christ and his Church--if we are willing to banish from our lives the idols that are worshipped in our own country and embark on the fascinating journey of discovering Catholic economic thinking. n
Thomas Storck is the author of Foundations of a Catholic Political Order and The Catholic Milieu. He is a contributing editor of New Oxford Review and a member of the editorial board of The Chesterton Review.
2004-03-13 11:11 | User Profile
I think that the main problem with capitalism is the separation of management and control of property via routine use of the corporate organizational form. Private property is defined as a UNITY of ownership and management/control and material liability for debts, and clearly the corporate organizational form destroys that UNITY by separating tangible assets and placing them under the management of hired help. The corporte form severs ownership from management/control and liability and thereby destroys the unity that is the institution of private property.
IMHO, our first task is to re-institute private property, first and foremost by eliminating the use of the corporate form, at least from routine usage. I think that there could be a role for chartered enterprises with limited liability and hired management where the activity is by its nature so large that it cannot be done on a small scale for practicl purposes; e.g. electrical power generation or railroads - but even then I'm sceptical and would like to be convinced that the corporate form could be eliminated even in those instances.
Anyway, the first step to re-instituting private property should be to end - or at least strictly to limit - the use of the corporate organizational form.
The second step, IMHO, should be to limit the amount any one person could inherit to a substantial figure - say, $10 million, while retaining the incentives to create wealth. This would serve to end concentrations of wealth in the great families like Kennedy, Rockefeller, Walton, Mars and Pritzker, to name but a few, while avoiding a disincentive for very creative business minds (like, say, Bill Gates or Henry Ford) to work their butts off creating things for the good of mankind (my mind is open on all of this, by the way, so please don't flame me).
In this regard, I think that the wide use of trusts in estate planning - which again separate ownership from management and personal liability - should be reviewed and allowed only when protecting the rights of minors and the mentally incompentent.
If we could do those two things - eliminate or at least greatly limit our use of the corporate form and limit inheritance to a generous by not monopolistic level - we'd be well on our way to restoring private property. And once we do that we'll have laid the foundations to a restoration of marriage and nationalism, for why does a man or woman work except for their family? And what are nations but very extended families? And what are national boundaries but a fence around the joint property of this extended family enterprise?
Here are some key lines from the great encyclical Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII, 1891 that is the wellspring of Distributism:
[QUOTE]"If working people can be encouraged to look forward to obtaining a share in the land, the consequence will be that the gulf between vast wealth and sheer poverty will be bridged over, and the respective classes will be brought nearer to one another."
A further consequence will result in the greater abundance of the fruits of the earth."
"Men always work harder and more readily when they work on that which belongs to them, nay, they learn to love the very soil that yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of good things for themselves and those that are dear to them."
"That such a spirit of willing labor would add to the produce of the earth and to the wealth of the community is self-evident."
"And a third advantage would spring from this: [B]men would cling to the country in which they were born; for no one would exchange his country for a foreign land if his own afforded him the means of living a decent and happy life. . ." /B [/QUOTE]
One final thought: I read somewhere recently a good line to the effect that "all virtual realities have their roots in hell." Like video games and television and runaway fantasies, capitalism - with its extremely abstracted rights combined with greatly diminished liability - is a sort of economic virtural reality. The stockmarket is clearly a virtual thing, with a publicly traded company's "owners" changing hands several times each trading day. Capitalism's evils stem from this disconnect from concrete reality. Its connection to the real economy is often tenuous at best, and since reality is REAL, the virtual economy runs up against reality once in a while with much pain and suffering.
Of course, there's no way that will happen without something approaching a revolution, but we can create these things ourselves and wait for capitalism to collapse back down to this other, real economy.
Neither left nor right, but the Third Position.
Walter
2004-03-13 19:53 | User Profile
Is there any real difference between the doctrine of Distributism and the doctrine of Corporatism, since both are Catholic social doctrines?
2004-03-14 21:10 | User Profile
:nerd: I see several problems with this 'distributism' and the article justifying it.
I'd say it is far more correct to say that Socialism has triumped over Capitalism. Our 'citizens' are either gubmint dependents or working for the gubmints for what percentage of the year? A third, half, more??? And Corporate Welfare is worse than 'poor relief'! And, if y'all want to know who owns the Land, just try NOT paying land taxes ( gubmint rent ) and see just how long before y'all are on the street barred from said property...
Death taxes already punish those who are succesful--it is simple THEFT to take anothers property, even at death. And, if everyone had just enough to work and feed his own household, don't y'all think within a week many would be working for somebody else for any number of reasons, from personal ambition to sloth to the vagaries of weather?
As for the Papist justifications--the idea that the Medieval Guilds held anything more than a tiny fraction of the Land or even Wealth is absurd--the Nobility held title, and increasingly the Roman Church became the single largest holder of Property, far beyond what was nescassary to feed the clerical establishment. Nobles held thier Land in Fief, and rendered military service to the Realm thru their Lords, and this aristocratic order both defended Christendom from without, and even counter-attacked as well, and served more often than not as a check on cntralized absolutism...
As for the stock-market, I agree, but I look on it as legalized gambling and would do away with it under that aegis.
The system that seems to have done the most good for the most people was the free landowner--small and large, free of gubmint interference, that was had in the several States prior to the the War of Yankee aggression...
2004-03-14 22:51 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Here's a nice Introduction to Distributism by the estimable Thomas Storck of the most orthodox New Oxford Review for your reading pleasure. [/QUOTE]
I would hardly apply the term "orthodox" to NOR, but their ads are great.
Clearly distributist principles will only function in a Catholic society. We can talk about the problems of the welfare state, but it isn't going anywhere unless an institution is restored that can otherwise educate, nurse, care for the poor, regulate, etc. When the Church was rejected, the state just filled the vacuum created thereby.
As for Utopian Capitalists, please see LewRockwell.com. I'll stick to the real world much as I hate it.
One last thing for Confederate, here is a link to an article discussing the compatibility of the Catholic Faith and the philosophy of the Old South. It's from some years back:
[url]http://www.catholicism.org/pages/oldsouth.htm[/url]
Regards,
2004-03-15 00:35 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]
In the Middle Ages those quintessential Catholic institutions, the craft guilds, very often limited the amount of property each owner/worker could have (for example, by limiting the number of his employees), precisely in the interest of preventing anyone from expanding his own workshop so much that he was likely to drive others out of business. For if private property has a purpose and end, as Aristotle and St. Thomas would insist, it surely is to allow a man to make a decent living for himself and his family by serving society. But one living, not two or three. If my business supports myself and my family, then what right do I have to expand that business so as to deprive others of the means of supporting themselves and their families? For the medievals saw those in the same line of work, not as rivals or competitors, but as brothers, brothers engaged in the very important work of providing the public with a needed good or service. And as brothers they joined together into guilds, engaged priests to pray for their dead, supported their widows and orphans with insurance funds, and generally looked after one another. Who would not admit that this conception of economic activity is more akin to the Catholic faith than the dog eat dog ethic of capitalism? [/QUOTE]
Sure it is, WY, yet I see a couple of problems here that are not so much social or moral/religious, but economical in the strict sense. One example: What he overlooks is the often-time importance of scale. One cannot efficiently operate a family railroad or a family steelworks (or a family microsoft corp). Some businesses have to be large to be feasible at all.
The sad thing is the guilds went under for a reason: They were not suited to mass production, and without mass production => no industrialization. Chesterton, much as I admire him, didnôt quite realize how dependent the Britain of his day already was on industrial mass production, not to talk of the West of our time.
2004-03-15 12:11 | User Profile
[Paleoleftist][QUOTE]What he overlooks is the often-time importance of scale. One cannot efficiently operate a family railroad or a family steelworks (or a family microsoft corp). Some businesses have to be large to be feasible at all.[/QUOTE]
I agree with that. I suspect that there are some enterprises that are simply too large to be handled using sole proprietorships and general partnerships. For example, electrical power generation and delivery, railroads, and the like.
The point is, however, that the use of the corporate form should be only in such exceptional cases. Heck, you can [URL=http://www.delawareintercorp.com/]incorporate in Delaware online [/URL] for a few hundred bucks. That's an abuse, IMHO. Corporations shouldn't be routinely used in this way. The vast majority of enterprises should be sole proprietorships, general partnerships, and production cooperatives like the Mandragon enterprises as these organizational forms keep in tact the UNITY of ownership, management and material liability for debts that the corporate organizaitonal form destroys. I wouldn't even allow on a routine basis limited liability partnerships, inasmuch as we need to restore liability for torts at all levels, and this defeats that goal in terms of the limited partner. I guess a limited partnership involving a few partners could be tolerated, but I need to think about that some more.
Anyway, the general countours of the policy seem clear enough.
[QUOTE]The sad thing is the guilds went under for a reason: They were not suited to mass production, and without mass production => no industrialization. Chesterton, much as I admire him, didnôt quite realize how dependent the Britain of his day already was on industrial mass production, not to talk of the West of our time.[/QUOTE]
I disagree somewhat.
While I'm no expert, I think that the guilds lost because the capitalist cultural meme won the day. That meme holds that there are no moral considerations in business decisions, and that the commonweal is protected by the "invisible hand" (that thought was formalized later, of course, but I think it was implicit in the writings of some Catholic writers even before the Reformation).
The guilds were designed to protect people for monopolistic tendencies inherent in big business and large concentrations of wealth in a few hands. State power always tends to monopoly, and always seeks to monopolize the economy under it. They were finally crushed by the advent of the great chartered trading companies that were summoned into existence by the great empires that emerged after the Reformation. The rise of the great empires killed the guilds, I think. Of course, I'm as much a student of these things as any here, and my mind is wide open on the subject. You may wish to check out "[URL=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0971489475/qid=1079340309/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-2722336-6256808?v=glance&s=books]Capitalism, Protestantism, Catholicism[/URL]" by Amintore Fanfani for a more general treatment of this and related issues.
I think that we need to challenge this capitalist meme. Economic activity must be ordered to the needs of man, and not men reduced to cogs in the capitalist machine.
But leaving that cultural argument aside, I think that routine use of the corporation doesn't make good economic sense.
The corporatate organizational form - which splits ownership from management and management from liability - is justified on a number of grounds, but especially that it (1) increases efficiency through organizational complexity (including the scale production you mention), and (2) encourages investment by limiting liability for individual investors. Both of these have social costs, of course, and the argument is that the benefits outweigh the social costs. So, it's as usual a cost-benefit analysis.
On the cost side, it seems to me that, even assuming that these benefits are as great as asserted, one cannot reasonably survey the devastation capitalism wreaked on our traditional culture and values - indeed the war it continues to wage against our traditions and our most sacred institutions - and conclude that inexpensive DVD players make the whole thing worth it. The costs are staggering, and to tell the truth none of us can really imagine how great the loss was because we were born after much damage had already been done, but we've seen enough to know that the damage wreaked by capitalism is horrible nearly beyond imagining.
On the benefits side, I think that they are not as great as they're made out to be. Increased corporate efficiency is questionable given the fact that most jobs grown comes from small businesses. Come to think of it, small business are well known for being more efficient - they tend to use resources very frugally. I've worked most of my adult life in big corporations, and I can tell you that the waste can be staggering. Look at Enron. Look at the dotcom bubble. Also, I think that the obscene salaries earned by the top management (Eisner made $600 million in one year) shows that any additional benefit gained through increased efficiency (if indeed there is any) is channeled to the guys at the top and makes a handful of filthy rich corporate insiders separated from the folks who actually produce the wealth by an insuperable economic chasm.
As to the corporate form encouraging investment via limited liability, I have to admit that might well be the case, but I think that the argument is overblown given the broad availability of liability insurance. In terms of the Chicago School, there's an important economic argument to SPREAD risk, I agree. My torts professor in law school was an economist and a devotee of Judge Posner's jurisprudence, and he convinced me that spreading the risk as broadly as possible and not allowing it to localize where it can leave a gaping hole at a strategic place is smart economics, and rightly undergirds our thinking about tort law. Liability insurance is a GOOD THING, for a number of reasons that I can't go into here, but mainly because it spreads damages throughout the economy and limits holes being blown at strategic spots in the system.
But spreading risk and limiting liability are two different things, even though they may have the same effect of encouraging investment. Indeed, spreading risk is a counterpoint to the other principle of this Chicago school of economics theory - that is to INTERNALIZE COSTS. But limiting liability via routine use of the corporate form doesn't internalize costs, quite the opposite: it helps to EXTERNALIZE costs from the investors at the expense of society. Forcing people to do business as sole proprietors and general partners would simply encourage them to purchase liability insurance, spreading the risk, but forcing them also to intermalize costs associated with those risks. It would increase incentives to invest in safety equipment and safety training, by the threat of higher premiums for the careless. Hey, maybe we could make the purchase of basic liabiltiy insurance a requirement for engaging in certain types of buisnesses, for instance food service, but that's just a thought for further discussion.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that maybe it made sense to offer routine limited liability back before the insurance industry had developed into the ubiquitous thing it is now, but I question whether it makes sense now. The social costs for limited liability are very high, and it defeats the whole notion of spreading risk.
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that Distributism makes good economic sense, but I'll leave it to the economists here to explicate this interesting subject further.
Walter
2004-03-16 06:23 | User Profile
[Buster][QUOTE]I would hardly apply the term "orthodox" to NOR, but their ads are great.[/QUOTE]
What do you find unorthodox about New Oxford Review? They seem zealously - even at times stridently - orthodox to me.
[QUOTE]Clearly distributist principles will only function in a Catholic society. We can talk about the problems of the welfare state, but it isn't going anywhere unless an institution is restored that can otherwise educate, nurse, care for the poor, regulate, etc. When the Church was rejected, the state just filled the vacuum created thereby. [/QUOTE]
Well, maybe not "Catholic" but certainly "religious" and "moral." Adam Smith wrote that civil society is possible only where the people respect private property, are generally sober and law abiding by choice. We see then that capitalism with its sustained and devastating attack on the public morals undermines civil society in a very direct way. As you point out, there's an interplay between society and the state; when society is strong, relations organize themselves organically and there is diminished need for a strong state, and when society is weak, then the state must step in to impose an artificial order. But this of course is the point of the entire exercise - those groups who want a strong state must first weaken society, and this is of course the entire program of the Frankfurt School. As pointed out in the "Fatal Embrace" Jews feel more comfortable when states are powerful and societies are weak, and so they instituted a program to weaken society through corrupting public morals creating the very vacuum you mention for the state (which they would control through the banks and infiltration of the boards of large corporations) to fill.
I agree that our bedrock social institutions have been destroyed by Gramsci and is ilk. They got us good, man. Our job is to salvage what little is left and to create new institutions that will have taken the vaccine against the Culture of Critique. We must create our own strong society that can assume power when the current state collapses. It's a gigantic task that will stretch over generations, but there's so much that we can do.
We all can and should strive for the following:
First, get married. Even as the state's marriage licenses are rendered increasingly meaningless, view marriage as the sacrament it is and get married, have kids, and bring them up in the Faith. The many Christian homeschoolers with large families point the way. We need to follow their example.
Second, get a career or start a business that will allow you a certain level of economic independence. In short, stop being a wage slave. Do whatever you must but do that. The Jews have a saying something like "skin carcasses in the street if you must, but have your own business." Exactly. Or at least do what I did where I have a professional credential that's mobile. Get the eduction/training you need to be mobile and not dependent on a single employer for all your livlihood.
Third, and maybe this is the main thing, quit drinnking, smoking, drugging, womanizing, and get some exercise. In short, if anything makes you stumble, get rid of it without regret. If you need help in doing any of those things, free help is available in a myriad of 12-step and other self-help programs. Sober up. I mean completely.
Fourth, by hook or by crook get a piece of land with a little house and garden plot, and prepare this as a retreat for when the sh*t hits the fan. Live there if you wish. But get it ready for you and your family. The Crunch could happen anytime.
Fifth, learn to use a shotgun.
[QUOTE]As for Utopian Capitalists, please see LewRockwell.com. I'll stick to the real world much as I hate it.[/QUOTE]
I know about LewRockwell. The libertarians are wrong fundamentally. They believe that only individuals exist, and that society is merely a collection of individuals entering into contractual relationships. As I've discussed previously here on OD, this is utterly and demonstrably wrong as a matter of empirical fact, and since their entire system is based upon this basic, erroneous assumption that society is not an ORGANISM as it in fact is, the entire thing fails.
Living in the real world means sizing it up as it really is. Tribes really are organisms, and men do not exist solely as individuals. All of our thinking must be based on these facts of nature.
Thus, distributism, inasmuch as it is based on a better understanding of the individual and society, is a much better approximation of reality than either capitalism or socialism, which are based on denials of these same truths.
[QUOTE]One last thing for Confederate, here is a link to an article discussing the compatibility of the Catholic Faith and the philosophy of the Old South. It's from some years back:
[url]http://www.catholicism.org/pages/oldsouth.htm[/url][/QUOTE]
I'll check out the link. I think it's pushing it pretty far to say that Jefferson was a capitalist. Same for Jackson. Both men feared the federal banking system, both hated the concentration of capital in too few hands.
Jefferson's vision of a republic of free farmers is basically the same as that advanced by Chesterton and Belloc, and indeed the Catholic Popes in the late 19t century.
By the way, there was a similar movement in Russia called the "zemstvo." I don't remember much about it, but it was about the same idea. It viewed Russian society as an organism, it sought to spread land ownership to a cooperative level, and so forth.
I haven't read the Southern Agrarians, but I suspect it's pretty close. If you haven't done so yet, please be sure to check out the [URL=http://www.iisd.org/50comm/commdb/list/c13.htm]Mandragon[/URL] enterprises of Spain, which is a very flexible approach to this problem that allows these principles to be applied to nearly any enterprise, and not only small farming.
Walter
2004-03-16 18:06 | User Profile
W:
I'll consider all your recommendations. A few assorted thoughts.
I'm not familiar with "Fatal Embrace." I'll Google it.
I guess distributist principles are in place today in Ireland, Spain, Rhineland Germany and a few other pockets.
There was a really horrible article last year in the Latin Mass criticiziing distributism and Belloc by some Limbaughvian clown named Clark.
You might also check out the Acton Institute for a relatively sympathetic Catholic perspective on capitalism.
I don't forsee any moral revival except through the Church, though there are some healthy forms of Protestantism at least in the South. Read that Potter article though. It'll give you hope.
It's been a while since I've read NOR. As I recall, they were largely mainline Protestants who folded themselves into the Church. Aren't they still comfortable in the Novus Ordo, however? I guess I consider anyone associated with today's hierarchy as compromised somewhat.
Always remember the philosopher who once described the Catholic Church thusly: ââ¬Åthe most formidable combination that ever was formed against the ââ¬Â¦liberty, reason and happiness of mankind.ââ¬Â ââ¬â Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, bk. 5, Ch.1, part 3, art.3.
Regards,
B
2004-03-17 06:14 | User Profile
Buster: [QUOTE]I'm not familiar with "Fatal Embrace." I'll Google it.[/QUOTE]
[URL=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0226296660/qid=1079503262/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-6515377-1187204?v=glance&s=books]The Fatal Embrace - Jews and the State[/URL]
[QUOTE]I guess distributist principles are in place today in Ireland, Spain, Rhineland Germany and a few other pockets. [/QUOTE]
Ireland's Constitution is filled with distributist ideas that are routinely ignored by the courts. I suspect it's the same in Spain and Portugal. Huge EU subsidies can be very corrupting.
[QUOTE]There was a really horrible article last year in the Latin Mass criticiziing distributism and Belloc by some Limbaughvian clown named Clark. You might also check out the Acton Institute for a relatively sympathetic Catholic perspective on capitalism.[/QUOTE]
Please post a link. Michael Novak's [URL=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0819178233/qid=1079503533/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/002-6515377-1187204?v=glance&s=books]Spirit of Democratic Capitalism[/URL] is a pean to his bosses at his neo-conservative think tank (American Enterprise Institute ).
I'm aware of the Acton institute. Keep in mind that Lord Acton was one of the great British apologists for the genocide of the Irish in 1847, laying the full blame for the famine at the feet of the Irish peasants who had been robbed of their food by the British imperialists. Their choice of his name for their institution speaks volumes.
[QUOTE]I don't forsee any moral revival except through the Church, though there are some healthy forms of Protestantism at least in the South. Read that Potter article though. It'll give you hope. [/QUOTE]
Please post a link to the Potter article. I agree that our chances are pretty slim. Whenever I talk to these things to my fellow corporate whores they just FREAK OUT. I mean, really, socialism is considered basically okay in corporate circles. At least big social programs in an otherwise capitalism context, which proves that there isn't much difference between the two.
I think that Chesterton's definition of Capitalism wasn't quite right - he focused on the separation of capital from the workers, but I suggest to focus instead on the separation of owners-stockholders from management. That's really the sine qua non of capitalism in its modern form - the separation of management from ownership and the limitation of liability for debts/torts/crimes.
Same for socialism really.
The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the root cause of many of our problems arises from the acceptance of the corporate organizaitonal form (and trusts and other similar devices) that destroy that bundle of rights we call "private property" through their unbundling.
[QUOTE]It's been a while since I've read NOR. As I recall, they were largely mainline Protestants who folded themselves into the Church. Aren't they still comfortable in the Novus Ordo, however? I guess I consider anyone associated with today's hierarchy as compromised somewhat. [/QUOTE]
That's right, they were I think High Church Anglicans. They accept Vatican II. They're pretty much where I am, although I must admit I have problems with Vatican II.
Walter
2004-03-17 16:28 | User Profile
I couldn't find the Clark article, but a rebuttal to it by your very own Mr. Storck is at [url]www.tcrnews2.com/distributism.html[/url].
The Potter article is the url I posted previously.
2004-03-18 06:47 | User Profile
Thanks for that link, Buster, I post the article below with a few of my own comments.
I'll edit from time to time and add comments here as time allows.
I hope to hear your comments.
Walter
THE JUSTICE OF DISTRIBUTISM : A REPLY TO JOHN CLARK By Thomas Storck
The basic assumption of bourgeois civilization was that the best interests of the world, the state and the community could be served by allowing each individual to work out his economic destiny as he saw fit. This is known as the principle of laissez faire. As far as possible individual life is unregulated by the state, whose function is purely negative, like that of a policeman. The less the state does, the better. It was not long until the evil of this principle manifested itself. If every individual is to be allowed to work out his economic destiny as he see fit, it will not be long until wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few and the vast majority are reduced, as Hilaire Belloc showed, to a slave state - Fulton J. Sheen.
In the spring 2002 issue of The Latin Mass, Mr. John Clark published an article called "Distributism as Economic Theory." I believe that his arguments and conclusions are not consonant with either the teaching of the Church or the thought of Hilaire Belloc, and I offer this article to clarify what the Church says on this matter, as well as to do justice to the memory of a great Catholic, Hilaire Belloc.
Mr. Clark rightly begins by defining his key term, "Capitalism." Clark's definition of capitalism runs thus: "Capitalism is an economic system in which private property is seen as a morally defensible right. Corollaries to this right include the right to free competition in the marketplace and the right to trade both domestically and internationally. Furthermore, the profit motive is seen by capitalism as morally defensible, and therefore there should be no legal limit as to the amount of money that one can legally earn" (p. 30).
Clark contrasts this with Belloc's own definition of capitalism as "a state of society in which a minority control the means of production, leaving the mass of citizens dispossessed."[ii] Although I think Clark's definition is erroneous, Belloc's definition also suffers from the problem that it describes the nearly inevitable effects of capitalism rather than the distinguishing note of the system. For a better definition, then, I will turn to the 1931 encyclical of Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno. In section 100, the Pope refers to "that economic system in which were provided by different people the capital and labor jointly needed for production."[iii] In other words, the distinguishing mark of capitalism is that some men own the means of production and hire other men to work for them. These latter are the "mass of citizens" that Belloc claims do not share in the ownership of the means of production.
[I][I suggest for further discussion that Pope Pius XI's definition doesn't fully capture what capitalism is, and offer this definition in its place: "Capitalism is that system that is characterized by the large scale separation of ownership of assets from their management and control by means of the broad use of the corporate organizational form, trusts, and other similar legal structures that facilitate the separtion of management of assets from their ownership and limit liability for debts, torts, and crimes." That is, I suggest that the reduction of people to relying exclusively on wages for labor for their livlihood is an EFFECT of the destruction of that UNITY of ownership/managemet/control/repsonsibility that is PRIVATE PROPERTY. Iwould be interested in hearing your comments. - Walter)[/I]
Let us examine the deductions which Clark makes from his definiton of capitalism. "Capitalism is an economic system in which private property is seen as a morally defensible right." As we saw above, this is not the distinguishing mark of capitalism, but it nonetheless makes a correct point: private property is a morally defensible right. But what Clark claims follows from this is false: "Corollaries to this right include the right to free competition in the marketplace and the right to trade both domestically and internationally." Though we are accustomed to regarding free use of private property as inherent in our right to it, this is not the case. In the Catholic Middle Ages private property was upheld, but not the right of free competition. As we will see, traditional papal teaching on property by no means upholds the notion that one can do whatever one likes with one's property.
Clark next turns explicitly to the question of property rights. He says, "Although distributism claims to be the champion of private property, it is actually antithetical to it" (p. 31). Clark tries to substantiate this claim by focusing on the legal method that Belloc suggested in The Restoration of Property ought to be used to bring about the existence of a distributist society. In brief, Belloc's suggested method of achieving more widely distributed property was to institute a system of highly graduated taxation so that those who owned concentrations of property, for example, a chain of stores, would sell off their excess property.
"There must be a differential tax on chain-shops, that is, on the system whereby one man or corporation controls a great number of different shops of the same kind. To control two such may involve but a small tax, to control three a larger one in proportion; and so on, with the curve rising steeply until the ownership of, say, a dozen in the territory over which the government has power becomes economically impossible."[iv] Now, is there anything morally wrong with such a scheme? Let us consider the various charges which Clark brings against it. First of all, he quotes various Renaissance Catholic theologians on the evils of unjust taxation and on what he calls "state redistribution" of property. Unjust taxation is, of course, ipso facto unjust. But the question here is whether Belloc's plan is unjust or not. To quote writers who inveigh against unjust taxation without first establishing whether Belloc's proposed taxation is unjust, is to be guilty of what in logic is called a petitio principii, that is, begging the question.
Nor does his quote from Pedro de Navarra help - "Taxes can be tyrannical ...if one is taxed more heavily than others..." (p. 32.) - for this writer was doubtless talking about two persons in the same circumstances being taxed at different rates.[v] More importantly, we must note that the context of all the quotes from these Renaissance theologians was their objections against the absolute monarchies of the time instituting excessive taxation for the support of the king and his court. But in fact, the very aim of Belloc's taxation was that no one would ever have to pay the tax at all! The entire aim of the taxation scheme to institute distributism was that people would not accumulate property in such amounts that they would have to pay the highly progressive taxes that accompanied the ownership of large amounts of certain kinds of property. The denunications of the theologians that Clark instances are simply beside the point.[vi]
Moreover, Belloc himself was against high taxation: "High taxation is incompatible with the general institution of property. The one kills the other. Where property is well distributed resistance to big taxation is so fierce and efficacious that big taxation breaks down."[vii]
This difference in attitude toward taxation flows from the different ways property is regarded in a distributist and in a capitalist society. In the former, property and all external goods are considered necessary precisely because they are necessary for the welfare and support of the family. It is the decent support of the family that is sought, not the maximization of income. Thus property will be so intimately connected with a man and his family, that he will have a fiercely protective attitude toward it and resist high taxation.[viii] But under capitalism, property is viewed simply as something with a money value, which is to be sold if a good price comes along. And although capitalists no doubt dislike paying taxes also, if one is thinking solely of money values, it often makes good business sense simply to write off high taxes as necessary costs of doing business.[ix]
Next let us consider Clark's charge of government "redistribution" of property. "`Redistribution of the means of production' is an economic fallacy" (p. 32) Clark avers. But distributism, as sketched by Belloc, has absolutely nothing to do with government acquiring, distributing or redistributing any property at all. Private owners, aware of the coming institution of a distributist system of taxation, would be free to sell off their property to any other private owner they chose. The government would not be involved in such transactions at all. One may support or oppose such a system, but to call it "redistribution" by the government makes no sense at all.
In order to evaluate the justice or injustice of Belloc's proposals, we must next look at Clark's statements about property rights and the question of property ownership.
Clark quotes from Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on the Politics of Aristotle: "It is a good thing that each one shall enlarge his possessions more, applying himself to them more carefully as being his own" (p. 33). Thomas is here summarizing and expanding upon Aristotle's refutation of Plato's argument for the community of goods, i.e., for ownership of all property in common, such as Plato advocated in his Republic. The full sentence as translated from the Latin says, "Another good is that each one will multiply his possession more, applying himself to it more carefully since it is his own."[x] Thomas, following Aristotle, is simply pointing out that, generally, one will take more care of his own property than of common property. However, one cannot deduce from this any notion that the unlimited enlargement of a man's possessions is good either for himself or for society. Elsewhere Aquinas makes this clear. In the same Commentary he writes, "Political economy, however, which is concerned with the using of money for a definite purpose, does not seek unlimited wealth, but wealth such as shall help towards its purpose, and this purpose is the good estate of the home."[xi] And in the Summa Theologiae, he says, "...the appetite of natural riches is not infinite, because according to a set measure they satisfy nature; but the appetite of artificial riches is infinite, because it serves inordinate concupiscence ...."[xii] Moreover, such quotations could be multiplied from Catholic theologians. For example, although Clark claims that St. Antoninus "viewed the profit motive as both moral and financially essential" (p. 33), in fact that saint wrote: "If any merchant exercises his art, not for some honest end, as the government of the family, the profit of the country or other like one, but principally out of great greed, he gains an infamous profit."[xiii]
What does this have to do with Belloc's distributism? Simply that, if the purpose of riches is the support of a man and his family, then no one has any right to more than is necessary for the decent support of his family. If we ask ourselves why God has created man so that he must engage in the activity of producing external goods, the answer is obvious: economic activity is meant to serve the more important aspects of life, our spiritual, family, social, intellectual and cultural lives; it is not an end in itself. Therefore it is not necessarily a tyrannical act if our political arrangements determine our use of property so that we seek the amount of worldy riches necessary for a decent human life, but not more. As St. Thomas pointed out further in his De Regno, the aim of men living together in society is not riches but virtue.[xiv] And he pointedly says, "If abundance of riches were the ultimate end, an economist would be ruler of the people."[xv]
But what of man's natural right to private property? Would not such a notion of the state conflict with it? Mr. Clark derives his notion of private property from Tony Honore, professor of law at Oxford University (p. 31), who is not a Catholic theologian. But Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Quadragesimo Anno thought otherwise. He rejects both "individualism" and "collectivism" but clearly states that ownership has a "twofold aspect...which is individual or social accordingly as it regards individuals or concerns the common good." Therefore, "Provided that the natural and divine law be observed, the public authority, in view of the common good, may specify more accurately what is licit and what is illicit for property owners in the use of their possessions."[xvi] We do not have a right to do whatever we may please with our property. Thus distributism does not violate "the fundamental right of private property as traditionally taught by the Church" as Clark charges (p. 31). Rather it attempts to establish man's right to private property on a firm foundation, private property as the necessary means of support for the individual and his family.
Clark quotes St. Thomas' De Regno on the matter of distribution of income to the effect that "an architect who plans a building is...paid a higher wage than is the builder who does the manual labor under his direction" (p. 32).[xvii] No one disputes this. Belloc is not arguing for equality of property or equality of incomes. But the Catholic tradition by no means sanctions just any distribution of income. Pius XI, for example, in the encyclical already quoted, makes this remark about Catholics at the close of the nineteenth century and their opinions on the need for social reform: "Such also was the opinion of many Catholics, priests and laymen, who with admirable charity had long devoted themselves to relieving the undeserved misery of the laboring classes, and who could not persuade themselves that so vast and unfair a distinction in the distribution of temporal goods was really in harmony with the designs of an all-wise Creator."[xviii]
No distributist desires equality of income or property. However, consider these figures on "the ratio of the pay a CEO makes versus that earned by a factory worker. In the late 1960s, it was 25 to 1 and as recently as 1980 it was 42 to 1. By 1999 it had risen to a whopping 419 to 1."[xix] One may perhaps be allowed the opinion that a 25 to 1 ratio was quite sufficient to safeguard the incentives that entrepreneurs apparently require.
The philosophy of property that capitalism contains and promotes is not the philosopohy of property that traditional Catholicism promotes. [I][I repeat that the the DEFINITION of the term "private property" differs. The definition used by the Distributists and I think the Popes really includes tangible goods and maybe beyond that contract rights, but I don't think it includes much beyond that, certainly not the sort of financial instruments traded on the NASDAQ or the Chicago Board of Trade. The problem is that the law allows the routine splitting of ownership/control/management/liability altogether too routinely, which creates a sort of virtual economy in the form of computerized stock markets and the like. It seems to me that we must confront this conflation of the "real" economy of tangible assets and contract rights from this "virtual" economy based on wholly derivative rights. Whereas the former really exists, the latter really doesn't. The conflation of these two really is the cause of much misunderstanding and mischief, IMHO. In fact, the latter destroys the former buy allowing what is commonly understood as the institute of "private property" to be defined out of existence. I think that both Storcke and Clark are missing this point. - Walter] [/I]
Property as the support for a man and his family, yes; but not the unlimited acquisition of property, so that a society is kept in turmoil by economic dislocations, plant closings, and so that individuals themselves are corrupted by what Holy Scripture calls the "root of all evils" (I Timothy 6:10). Traditional Catholics, when they consider economic questions ought to consult the encyclicals and other writings of the Popes, especially Leo XIII, Pius XI and Pius XII, and the works of St. Thomas. There they will find a rich teaching on the proper place of material wealth, and it will not be a teaching consonant with capitalism, whose founders and theorists were eighteenth century Deists openly in revolt against the traditional Christian conception of society.[xx]
(c)Thomas Storck 2003, All Rights Reserved. Thomas Storck is the author of The Catholic Milieu (1987), Foundations of a Catholic Political Order (1998), Christendom and the West (2000) and of numerous articles and reviews on Catholic culture and social teaching. He is a member of the editorial board of The Chesterton Review and a contributing editor of New Oxford Review and holds an M.A. from St. John's College, Santa Fe.
*. Communism and the Conscience of the West (Indianapolis : Bobbs-Merrill, c. 1948) pp. 16-17.
[ii]. Quoted by Clark on page 30, but taken from Hilaire Belloc, The Restoration of Property (New York : Sheed & Ward, 1946) p. 19.
[iii]. The original Latin speaks of the economic system "qua generatim ad commune rei oeconomicae exercitium ab aliis res, ab aliis opera praestaretur." Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. 23, no. 6, June 1931, pp. 209-210. All citations from Quadragesimo Anno are taken from the Paulist translation as published in Seven Great Encyclicals and elsewhere.
[iv]. The Restoration of Property, p. 69.
[v]. Clark takes his quote from Alejandro Chafuen's book, Christians for Freedom : Late-Scholastic Economics (San Francisco : Ignatius, c. 1986). This source does not shed any further light on the context of the quote, but it is surely absurd to suggest that de Navarra believed that it was unjust for a rich man to be taxed more heavily than a pauper.
[vi]. Moreover, Clark presumes that these Renaissance theologians have some specially weighty authority in theology. But this is not the case. In comparison with papal teaching or with the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, these Renaissance theologians have no more authority than any other group of theologians. In no way can their opinions be equated with what Clark calls "the traditional teaching of the Church" (p. 30).
[vii]. The Restoration of Property, p. 119.
[viii]. Pope John Paul II, in Centesimus Annus, speaks of the purpose of private property as "one's personal development and the development of one's family" (no. 6).
[ix]. I should point out here that no one in a distributist society would be forced to become an owner of productive property. Doubtless some would remain in the position of employee. But the employer/employee relationship would no longer be the usual economic mode of society. The characteristic mark of a distributist society would be widespread ownership of productive property, even if not everyone chose to own such property.[x]. "Aluid bonum est quod unusquisque magis multiplicabit possessionem suam insistens ei sollicitius tamquam propriae." Commentary on the Politics, book 2, lectio 4.
[xi]. Quoted in Bede Jarrett, Social Theories of the Middle Ages (Westminster, Md. : Newman Book Shop, 1942) p. 155.
[xii]. Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 2, a. 1 ad 3 [xiii].
Quoted in Joaquin Azpiazu, The Corporative State (St. Louis : Herder, 1951) p. 145.
[xiv]. "It seems moreover to be the purpose of the multitude joined together to live according to virtue.... the good life moreover is according to virtue; the virtuous life therefore is the purpose of the human community." In the original, "Videtur autem finis esse multitudinis congregatae vivere secundum virtutem.... bona autem vita est secundum virtutem; virtuosa igitur vita est congregationis humanae finis." De Regno, I, 14. (This work is also known as De Regimine Principum.)
[xv]. "Si autem ultimus finis esset divitiarum affuentia, oeconomus rex quidam multitudinis esset." Ibid. Consider also these words of John Paul II in his encyclical Centesimus Annus, in which he describes the mainly U.S. attempt in the years after World War II to defeat communism by trumpeting the material benefits of our economy. "Another kind of response, practical in nature, is represented by the affluent society or the consumer society. It seeks to defeat Marxism on the level of pure materialism by showing how a free-market society can achieve a greater satisfaction of material human needs than Communism, while equally excluding spiritual values. In reality, while on the one hand it is true that this social model shows the failure of Marxism to contribute to a humane and better society, on the other hand, insofar as it denies an autonomous existence and value to morality, law, culture and religion, it agrees with Marxism, in the sense that it totally reduces man to the sphere of economics and the satisfaction of material needs" (no. 19).
[xvi]. Quadragesimo Anno, sections 45, 46 and 49.
[xvii]. This is in De Regno, I, 9.
[xviii]. Quadragesimo Anno, section 5. Emphasis mine.
[xix]. Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, "Markets and Morals," The Washington Times, Sunday July 21, 2002, p. B8.
[xx]For a good account of this, by someone who favors the new capitalist order, see Ralph Lerner, "Commerce and Character : the Anglo-American as New-Model Man" in Michael Novak, ed., Liberation South, Liberation North (Washington : American Enterprise Institute, c. 1981) pp. 24-49.
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2004-03-18 18:40 | User Profile
As it happens, I actually wrote to TLM about Mr. Clark's article back in 2002. I don't share Mr. Storck's expertise, but this was my letter, which was never published.
Editor:
I was appalled by John Clarkââ¬â¢s caricature of Hilaire Bellocââ¬â¢s economic ideas and especially by his suggestion that they were un-Catholic. On the contrary, while Clark accuses Belloc of ignoring the ââ¬Åmind of the Church,ââ¬Â it is Clark who in fact completely ignored the series of great social encyclicals produced during Bellocââ¬â¢s own lifetime, particularly those of Leo XIII and Pius XI. This omission is hardly surprising. Mr. Clarkââ¬â¢s paean to capitalism suggests a mind guided more by recusant Protestant Rush Limbaugh than by [I]Rerum Novarum[/I]. Belloc, meanwhile (who by the way was not a convert), was writing in close harmony with much contemporaneous Church teaching. Before Mr. Clark impugns anyone elseââ¬â¢s Catholicism, he would do well to remember the philosopher who once described the Catholic Church as, ââ¬Åthe most formidable combination that ever was formed against the ââ¬Â¦liberty, reason and happiness of mankind.ââ¬Â ââ¬â Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, bk. 5, Ch.1, part 3, art.3.
Let me begin with Clarkââ¬â¢s definition of capitalism as a system in which private property is recognized as a natural moral right. Of course that is true, though Catholicism has also regarded private property as a natural right at least since the seventh and tenth Commandments. Believing in private property doesnââ¬â¢t make one a capitalist anymore than believing in one God makes one a Christian. Nor does rejecting capitalism necessitate rejecting private property.
There are many facets to capitalism--private property, freedom of choice, the price mechanism, the profit motive, etc. But the one that concerned Belloc most was that under capitalism provision of labor and provision of capital were becoming largely distinct roles, as opposed to the laborer and owner being one person [see [I]Quadragesimo Anno[/I]]. In capitalism, a laborer often no longer worked on what was his. He worked on what belonged to others, and was in turn paid a wage. The phenomenon of owning the fruits of oneââ¬â¢s labor was less and less commonplace, depriving large numbers of people of the satisfaction, dignity and security of ownership, particularly of land.
In addition, capitalists made the opposite error of socialists. Instead of relying on extreme collectivism, as did the socialists, capitalism espoused an atomistic individualism, leading to widespread isolation, dispossession and alienation. In addition, the very dynamism of capitalism destroys as much as it creates. Capitalism has little or no regard for culture, place, family, piety, environment, leisure, sanctification, tradition, and certainly not salvation. It promotes consumption, secularism, competition, globalism, free trade, feminism, usury, mobility, and multiculturalism, all of which serve the interests of capitalists but not necessarily society at large. The capitalist economy does not serve man; man serves it. Hence the Church's criticism, and Belloc's.
Capitalism lastly shared with socialism the idea of pure materialism, i.e., of economic activity as an end in itself, without reference to Nature, Natureââ¬â¢s God or His purposes. It measured its success in raw, amoral, secular economic terms such as maximizing levels of productivity, income, profit and efficiency. These are fine so far as they go, but they alone do not measure the broader quality of life.
Note that while critiquing capitalism, Belloc also warned of the rise of the modern totalitarian welfare state, or as he titled his book, the ââ¬ÅServile State.ââ¬Â He observed that during his lifetime capitalism was giving birth to such a State, with endless armies of lawyers, technicians, therapists, and bureaucrats, choking the life out of the body politic. (His prophecy has of course now come to pass.) He pointed out that the great, misunderstood anomaly of capitalism was that rather than being an [I]alternative[/I] to the welfare state, capitalism was actually the driving force behind it. The volatile nature of capitalism would make such a state inevitable. Therefore, raw capitalism would actually be merely a stage through which we would pass on the road to our ultimate authoritarian disaster. Our real choice, Belloc said, was not between capitalism and socialism, neither of which could work in pure form. Our choice was between some form of secular, bureaucratized welfarism on the one hand (as we have today), and the theistic alternative which he termed ââ¬Ådistributism.ââ¬Â
Distributism, was really an ethical response to this situation as much as an economic one. Belloc did not dispute the importance of the price mechanism, or the profit motive (as long as profit isnââ¬â¢t the only motive), nor did he condemn disparity of wealth among individuals. Rather, he emphasized the virtues of self-sufficiency, independence and security for the common man, less vulnerability to the vagaries of employers or the business cycle, and less dependency on a tenuous paycheck. His vision was a society in which the great bulk of working men could organize and cooperate, as opposed to only compete, so as to have the ability to own a home, support a wife and an ample family, and live decently in reasonable thrift unencumbered by excessive debt or uncertainty. (How many young working men today have that ability?) He called for the ââ¬Årestorationââ¬Â of property to the average man, such that property ownership could be wide and deep, not exceptional and debt-laden. In essence, Belloc sought what the conservative economist Wilhelm Roepke would later in the century call a ââ¬ÅHumane Economy.ââ¬Â
Echoing Pope Leo XIIIââ¬â¢s warning against the great ââ¬Åforces of organized capital,ââ¬Â Belloc recognized that economic power just like political power tended to concentrate, and that just as in politics methods must be employed to control or counter-balance that tendency. Capitalism encouraged corporations of investors, but resisted cooperation of workers. Therefore, distributist reform would initially be about redistribution of [I]power[/I] (not redistribution of income as the socialists wanted). Power would shift away from Unions, Corporations and the Super-State, downward toward guilds, private collectives, and other fraternal ââ¬Åintermediate institutionsââ¬Â to provide not only opportunity but also the safeguards and protections necessary for the average man. Belloc believed that by empowering those at the bottom of the economic pyramid, many of capitalismââ¬â¢s ill effects could be alleviated or totally avoided.
Contrast Bellocââ¬â¢s vision with our current system. Young people today euphemistically proclaim themselves ââ¬Åhomeownersââ¬Â as they enslave themselves to banks for 30 years for the privilege of owning shelter, and then only for the modern ramshackle cracker boxes we call homes. This will most likely require two incomes (and fewer than two children) so stay-at-home moms become a luxury of the affluent. We see constantly greater disparities between the income of the laboring and the executive classes, while a belligerent military, a bloated civil service and other government programs and subsidies support or absorb our surplus labor force. All the while our bankruptcy courts continue humming along steadily as crippling debt and taxation become part of the normal fabric of everyday life.
Finally there is the issue of land and farming. Today as we know, family farms are rapidly becoming extinct--replaced by modern ââ¬Åagribusiness.ââ¬Â Belloc believed in family farms not only as a source of political and economic power and independence, but also because farmers tended to be sturdy people of strong character (ââ¬Åcloseness to the land is closeness to God,ââ¬Â as the Benedictines say). Belloc looked upon farmers as a sort of leaven raising the moral standards of society as a whole, and he sought the preservation of what Europeans called ââ¬Åpeasantââ¬Â farming, or what Jeffersonians would call ââ¬Åyeomanââ¬Â farms.
It may be true that a widespread restoration of Catholicism is a pre-condition for the realistic application of many distributist principles, but Belloc should be credited for confronting the issues of his day more squarely (and prophetically) than most of his contemporaries, or our present-day utopian capitalists. His predictions of the future bear striking resemblance to many of todayââ¬â¢s disheartening facts of life.
2004-03-19 06:32 | User Profile
Brilliant, Buster. Thanks.
I think that deserves its own thread.
Walter
2004-06-12 14:47 | User Profile
Here are a [URL=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0002740907/qid=1087050015/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-3733358-3233414?v=glance&s=books]couple of books [/URL] that you may find interesting.
In my opinion, the biggest issue we face now is the false choice between capitalism and socialism that is foisted upon us by our Marxist media.
But our own Inner Party know damned well that for them the difference between Socialism and Capitalism would involve little more than a change of title on their business cards.
Jesus said that what God has joined together no man may put asunder. Both Capitalism and its flip-side Socialism are morally repugnant because they tear to pieces the web of relations that form the very fabric of society. Both put asunder:
The list could go on.
We must accept that the organizational form and scale of economic activity are primary factors in policy.
Small is beautiful. The Distributist vision is that the great majority of people will own their own buisnesses. Small business encourages the thrifty use of resources while maintaining the unity of labor with its implements, ownership with its management, and restoring the discipline of full material liability for debts and torts. And perhaps most importantly, it allows a level of personal dignity and independence, ends our servile relationship to the disproportionately Kosher managerial elite, and creates opportunities for our own.
And there need be no loss of efficiency or complexity - Distributism allows for enormous complexity and diversity in the economy.
You know, I read somewhere (it was in one of Ygg's "classics", I think) that American Jews in the early part of the 20th century achieved an astonishing rate of 80% self-employment. If I recall correctly, there is a Yiddish saying that one should be willing to "skin carcasses in the streets" so long as it is one's own business. We must move toward that.
We as a people have to lose the "employee mentality." When we own our own businesses, we gain freedom because we are no longer dependent on a single source of income, and we create employment and business opportunities for our own people.
Walter
2004-06-12 16:27 | User Profile
under capitalism normally people work for someone else... Men always work harder and more readily when they work on that which is their own... For distributism is nothing more than an economic system in which private property is well distributed[/QUOTE]
Under Capitalism, anyone who wants to work for themselves can. Under Distributism, will people have the government pointing a gun to their heads telling them that they have to run their own business, whether they want to (or are able to) or not?
It sounds like to me that Distributism is just a new guise for the slavery known as Socialism.
2004-06-12 17:06 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Happy Hacker]Under Capitalism, anyone who wants to work for themselves can. Under Distributism, will people have the government pointing a gun to their heads telling them that they have to run their own business, whether they want to (or are able to) or not?
It sounds like to me that Distributism is just a new guise for the slavery known as Socialism.[/QUOTE]
I don't know why you'd say that. There's absolutely nothing wrong with having a job, for Heaven's sake. I've had a few myself!
No, as Rerum Novarum makes clear, human labour is the source of all our economic considerations. Human labour must be at the heart of any system we implement. While providing a man employment at a wage sufficient to support a family is a GOOD THING that qualifies the employer for special respect and praise, helping the employee achieve ownership of the means of his own labour is and even BETTER THING.
The problem is systemic - we need to design things so that human labour will be at the center of things, and that means that where possible the opportunity of all to acquire some property and the means of their own livliehood must be facilitated and encouraged as a matter of policy. That of course in no way implies that men should be coerced to start a business (if indeed such were possible).
We need to shed the "employee mentality" and start thinking like entrepreneurs, at least most of us should do so.
Please read [URL=http://forums.originaldissent.com/showthread.php?t=14149]Rerum Novarum [/URL] - the condemnation of Socialism and unnecessary state interference could not be clearer:
[QUOTE] 7. To cure this evil, the [B]Socialists,[/B] exciting the envy of the poor toward the rich, contend that it is necessary to do away with private possession of goods and in its place to make the goods of individuals common to all, and that the men who preside over a municipality or who direct the entire State should act as administrators of these goods. They hold that, by such a transfer of private goods from private individuals to the community, they can cure the present evil through dividing wealth and benefits equally among the citizens.
But [B]their program [/B] is so unsuited for terminating the conflict that it actually injures the workers themselves. Moreover, it is [B]highly unjust[/B], because it violates the rights of lawful owners, perverts the function of the State, and throws governments into utter confusion.
Clearly the essential reason why those who engage in any gainful occupation undertake labor, and at the same time the end to which workers immediately look, is to procure property for themselves and to retain it by individual right as theirs and as their very own. When the worker places his energy and his labor at the disposal of another, he does so for the purpose of getting the means necessary for livelihood. He seeks in return for the work done, accordingly, a true and full right not only to demand his wage but to dispose of it as he sees fit. Therefore, if he saves something by restricting expenditures and invests his savings in a piece of land in order to keep the fruit of his thrift more safe, a holding of this kind is certainly nothing else than his wage under a different form; and on this account land which the worker thus buys is necessarily under his full control as much as the wage which he earned by his labor. But, as is obvious, it is clearly in this that the ownership of movable and immovable goods consists. Therefore, inasmuch as the[B] Socialists seek to transfer the goods of private persons to the community [/B] at large, they make the lot of all wage earners worse, because in abolishing the freedom to dispose of wages they take away from them by this very act the hope and the opportunity of increasing their property and of securing advantages for themselves.
To desire, therefore, that the civil power should enter arbitrarily into the privacy of homes is a great and pernicious error. If a family perchance is in such extreme difficulty and is so completely without plans that it is entirely unable to help itself, it is right that the distress by remedied by public aid, for each individual family is a part of the community. Similarly, if anywhere there is a grave violation of mutual rights within the family walls, public authority shall restore to each his right; for this is not usurping the rights of citizens, but protecting and confirming them with just and due care. Those in charge of public affairs, however, must stop here; nature does not permit them to go beyond these limits. Paternal authority is such that it can be neither abolished nor absorbed by the State, because it has the same origin in common with that of man's own life. "Children are a part of their father," and, as it were, a kind of extension of the father's person; and, strictly speaking, not through themselves, but through the medium of the family society in which they are begotten, they enter into the participate in civil society. And for the very reason that children "are by nature part of their father...before they have the use of free will, they are kept under the care of their parents." [3] Inasmuch as the [B]Socialists, therefore, disregard care by parents [/B] and in its place introduce care by the State, they act against natural justice and dissolve the structure of the home.
And apart from the injustice involved, it is only too evident what turmoil and disorder would obtain among all classes; and what a harsh and odious enslavement of citizens would result! The door would be open to mutual envy, detraction, and dissension. If incentives to ingenuity and skill in individual persons were to be abolished, the very fountains of wealth would necessarily dry up; [B]and the equality conjured up by the Socialist imagination [/B] would, in reality, be nothing but uniform wretchedness and meanness for one and all, without distinction.
From all these conversations, [B]it is perceived that the fundamental principle of Socialism which would make all possessions public property is to be [U][I]utterly rejected [/I] [/U] [/B] because it injures the very ones whom it seeks to help, contravenes the natural rights of individual persons, and throws the functions of the State and public peace into confusion. Let it be regarded, therefore, as established that in seeking help for the masses this principle before all is to be considered as basic, namely, that private ownership must be preserved inviolate. With this understood, we shall explain whence the desired remedy is to be sought.
Therefore, let it be laid down in the first place that a condition of human existence must be borne with, namely, that in civil society the lowest cannot be made equal to the highest. [B]Socialists, of course, agitate the contrary, but all struggling against nature is vain[/B]. There are truly very great and very many natural differences among men. Neither the talents, nor the skill, nor the health, nor the capacities of all are the same, and unequal fortune follows of itself upon necessary inequality in respect to these endowments. And clearly this condition of things is adapted to benefit both individuals and the community; for to carry on its affairs community life requires varied aptitudes and diverse services, and to perform these diverse services men are impelled most by differences in individual property holdings.[/QUOTE]
2004-06-12 20:38 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Socialism is much broader movement than proponents of distributism normally allow. Distributists want to paint socialists as communists--to make distributists look less radical. In fact, many socialists advocate very similar positions to those that distributists do.
From the Encyclopaedia Britannica entry for 'socialism':
'system of social organization in which property and the distribution of income are subject to social control rather than individual determination or market forces. '[/QUOTE]
Socialism is generally understood to mean that system in which the state owns most of the means of production - at least the major items.
This is most emphatically NOT the Distributist program. As you read in Rerum Novarum, the Church rejects the state approach as it destroys private property. But since private property is at heart the product of human labour, an assault of private property is really an assault on the dignity of the human person. Thus Socialism's inhuman face.
Distributism is all about reinstituting private property that Socialism seeks to destroy via outright nationalization and tranfer of control of most material goods to a vast state bureaucracy, and that Capitalism seeks to destroy by means of transferring vast swaths of it to a non-owning managerial elite and putting in its place virtural-reality structures like the stock and bond markets.
As you read in Rerum Novarum, the state is to provide bedrock state protection of property rights.
[QUOTE]Notice that nothing is said about common ownership of all the means of production. That is the communist position, which only hard-core socialists share.[/QUOTE]
You're making a false distinction between Socialism and Communism. Both terms are integral parts of Marxist theory, but as you know Socialism was for Marx the intermediary step between Capitalism and Communism. The notion was that during the Socialist period the means of production will belong to the state, and then after all class distinctions have been abolished there will be no need for the state and the state will wither away. The idea is nuts, of course, but that's the difference between Socialism and Communism. They're different historical stages, in terms of Marxist theory.
[QUOTE]Distributists share the socialist dream of subjecting currently held property to social controls, so as to achieve a new scheme of ownership. This intervention must be ongoing, as otherwise market forces will drive the economy back to the inequalities they and socialists find un-acceptable.[/QUOTE]
Quite to the contrary. As Rerum Novarum makes clear, we're all about private property. All rights currently instituted must be respected.
As I've said here many times, the big problem in my estimation is the corporate organizational form. But corporations are merely creatures of the state, and as you admit are not an essential part of that which you term capitalism (I'd call it the "free market" there, but why quibble?). We need only require all corporations to reorganize and general partnerships. We can grant a significant amount of time - say ten years - to make the arrangements. This will remove the distortions to the natural functioning of the free market caused by artificial limitations on liability, and help to return vast swaths of wealth to the status of private property.
[QUOTE]Distributists are certainly better than socialists, in that they aim to preserve much of the 'organic' structure of society, and thus have a fundementally conservative strain. They also favor various forms of social hierarchy.
However, distributism shares with socialism a program for the economy that would be vastly destructive, and which would feed the leviathan of the state. An new elite would inevitably twist state power to its own purposes. [/QUOTE]
Again, I don't know why you'd say that. Capitalism is the thing that got us into this mess. Capitalism - with its reliance on "virtual reality" institutions like the stock market and usury - is the thing that feeds Leviathan. As it is right now, our nation is run by a tiny managerial elite that rules over the Fortune 1,000. These are the men and women who truly make the decisions. There are only a few thousand of them. They're very disproportionately Jewish. They generally hate us, and want to reduce us to cubicle serfs.
[QUOTE]Far better to simply advocate return to true monarchy, if one wishes to pursue non-capitalist social reforms![/QUOTE]
Distributists generally agree with Belloc that human freedom can only be found in monarchy that is answerable to an elite. Belloc would have included the American Republic with its elected President in that class. So, I certainly advocate the re-institution of the American Republic with a powerful Presidency answerable to a class of educated and morally upright white males. That class used to be represented by the Senate. Capitalism played a role like no other in taking it away from us.
[QUOTE]PS I know someone else who claimed labor must be at the heart of economic considerations--Karl Marx, whose labor theory of value has been widely debunked.[/QUOTE]
As was pointed out by Bertrand Russel and others, Marxist theory in its broad strokes stol the plot line from Christianity. Dialectic = God. Capitalism = Original Sin. Marx = Jesus. Socialism = Church. Communism = Second Coming.
In a similar way, Marx appropriated the profoundly Christian notion that we are commanded by God Himself to work - to provide for ourselves and our families by the "sweat of our brows" as God told Adam. Work is the product of our VOCATIONS - a notion that doesn't get much play now, ever since Capitalism decreed that we're all fungible cogs in the same machine.
But as C.S. Lewis pointed out so eloquently, evil can only twist the good, it can never truly create anyting of its own. So it's no surprise, then, that Marx would steal that line from Christianity as well.
But let me ask you - if human labour isn't to be at the center of our economic policy, in your opinion upon what should our economic policy be based?
Regards,
Walter
2004-06-12 21:27 | User Profile
[QUOTE=darkstar]This intervention must be ongoing, as otherwise market forces will drive the economy back to the inequalities they and socialists find un-acceptable. [/QUOTE]
The Market, if completely unrestrained, will totally control society. This is incompatible with any political, cultural or religious values.
If such values are taken as a given, that is: something that it is not allowable to change, then the Unrestrained Market is a practical impossibility. Itôs a dream, and not even a beautiful one.
2004-06-12 21:38 | User Profile
[QUOTE=darkstar]An new elite would inevitably twist state power to its own purposes.[/QUOTE]
Of course--that happens in any state, any system. That's the way life is. This is why the trick is to make sure that your group is the one that constitutes that elite, and that power is used toward ends you endorse. Not a hard concept to grasp.
2004-06-12 23:09 | User Profile
[QUOTE]The other trick is to decentralize political power so that the individual can maintain liberty.[/QUOTE]
That's right, which is exactly what Catholic social doctrine advocates. The principle is "Subsidiarity" and Distributism seeks to arrange things such that decisions will be made on the lowest possible level of competence.
[QUOTE]In the West, only the market will balance centralization of power in the hands of the capable--and thus the white--against the goal of dispersing power widely enough so that race-traitors cannot enforce their will on the rest of us. [/QUOTE]
I don't know why you'd say that. Ahkenazi Jews have on average significantly higher IQ than other whites, and so one would think that the market would yield on average basically what we have now, with Jews vastly overrepresented in the managerial elite.
Which leads us to the conclusion that the "other trick", as you say, is to make sure that the economy is based around nation states. That's where the Catholic principle of "nationalism" comes in. We must view the economy in terms of individuals working to care for their families, with their families extending in concentric circles outward to communities and nations.
See the thread under Distributism on Mondragon Cooperatives. This is small and medium size business that, taken in the aggregate, is HUGE business. It works, I think we have to give it that. Distributism helps build families and communites, and tie individuals to both through the institution of private property.
By the way, you should also read "Rerum Novarum" - you'll see that nobody's talking about nationalizing anybody's property, or otherwise trying to take something that isn't rightfully theirs.
Walter
2004-06-12 23:10 | User Profile
Garbage, that's all you spew here. You offer no reasons to believe your crude, intellectually-stunted 'analysis.'
[QUOTE=Paleoleftist]The Market, if completely unrestrained, will totally control society. This is incompatible with any political, cultural or religious values.
QUOTE]
2004-06-13 00:02 | User Profile
[QUOTE=darkstar]The other trick is to decentralize political power so that the individual can maintain liberty.
In the West, only the market will balance centralization of power in the hands of the capable--and thus the white--against the goal of dispersing power widely enough so that race-traitors cannot enforce their will on the rest of us.[/QUOTE]
Didnôt the market allow the Zionists to buy up the media?
2004-06-13 00:11 | User Profile
PaleoconAvatar
Great Post, you are most Right! [QUOTE]Originally Posted by darkstar An new elite would inevitably twist state power to its own purposes.
PaleoconAvatar: Of course--that happens in any state, any system. That's the way life is. This is why the trick is to make sure that your group is the one that constitutes that elite, and that power is used toward ends you endorse. Not a hard concept to grasp. [/QUOTE]
Paleoleftist,
Yes the "market" did let the marxist take over!
2004-06-13 00:38 | User Profile
[QUOTE=darkstar]The other trick is to decentralize political power so that the individual can maintain liberty.
Sure...this worked so well the first time around with the Constitution, didn't it?
In the West, only the market will balance centralization of power in the hands of the capable--and thus the white--against the goal of dispersing power widely enough so that race-traitors cannot enforce their will on the rest of us.[/QUOTE]
Hasn't the market greatly furthered the goals of race-treason already? There's Jew Redstone's MTV, for example, along with many other mind-bending media outlets.
2004-06-13 00:41 | User Profile
Did 'the market' let millions of leftist, anti-Nordic Jews into this country?
Did 'the market' turn us into tax slaves forced to support a leftist education system? Do you truly believe neo-Marxist Jewish dominance in the media would continue if we ended public education?
Have you ever noticed that SPLC will attack any group that attempt to provide security services beyond sad 'rent-a-cops'? They of course too fear a market-based approach to security. Why do you think that is? Why do they always use government courts to achieve their goals, not market-based arbitration? It is because movement toward the free market in this country empowers whites, and disempowers the parasite political class the SPLC serves.
[QUOTE=Paleoleftist]Didnôt the market allow the Zionists to buy up the media?[/QUOTE]
2004-06-13 00:43 | User Profile
[QUOTE=darkstar]Did 'the market' let millions of leftist, anti-Nordic Jews into this country?
Did 'the market' turn us into tax slaves forced to support a leftist education system? Do you truly believe neo-Marxist Jewish dominance in the media would continue if we ended public education?
Have you ever noticed that SPLC will attack any group that attempt to provide security services beyond sad 'rent-a-cops'? They of course too fear a market-based approach to security. Why do you think that is? Why do they always use government courts to achieve their goals, not market-based arbitration? It is because movement toward the free market in this country empowers whites, and disempowers the parasite political class the SPLC serves.[/QUOTE]
A disciple of H. Hoppe?
2004-06-13 02:46 | User Profile
I do not endorse Hoppe's approach to security, no. I think the government can play a central role in providing security.
My points are simpler: leftist control is not the result of market forces, but of the government coercion that has grown in this country since the 30's, and which shows itself in such places as 1) massive taxpayer-supported spending on the leftist, underperforming education establishment, 2) total deviation from the 2nd Amendment principle that decentralized ownership and trade of military goods is to be a check on Federal power.
2004-06-13 03:17 | User Profile
There are two basic ways for the government to deal with the market. The government can control it, or the government can leave it alone (while still doing government things, like assuring consent in all activities).
The neocons have given a very bad name to capitalism. They yell "capitalism" and "Free Market" while doing everything they can to undermine the Free Market. Liberals aren't any better.
The problem with America now is that the government is trying to manipulate it (i.e. socialism). Bush hardly hides that he supports massive 3rd-world immigration to give businesses cheap labor (thus driving down wages), while us native taxpayers provide government subsidies to these immigrants to they can turn their low pay into a living wage.
There are no monopolies or oligopolies in a Free Market. These things are created by government policy.
For example, if software functions could not be patented, we'd have a bunch viable operating systems to choose from our computers, instead of just one (Microsoft), and several of them would be clearly better than the best we have to use now.
2004-06-13 10:11 | User Profile
Darstar: Tex turned on the "moderator" function for me on this Distributism niche, and I fear that I just accidentally deleted one of your posts. I had several windows open, and I'm completely fuddled. Please forgive my butterfingers if I did delete your post, it certainly wasn't intentional, and I highly value your intelligent comments.
Here's the post that I somehow muffed - I guess I thought I was "quoting" you when in fact I was "editing." Again, sorry. [QUOTE] [QUOTE]Socialism is much broader movement than proponents of distributism normally allow. Distributists want to paint socialists as communists--to make distributists look less radical. In fact, many socialists advocate very similar positions to those that distributists do.
From the Encyclopaedia Britannica entry for 'socialism':
'system of social organization in which property and the distribution of income are subject to social control rather than individual determination or market forces. '[/QUOTE]
Socialism is generally understood to mean that system in which the state owns most of the means of production - at least the major items.
This is most emphatically NOT the Distributist program. As you read in Rerum Novarum, the Church rejects the state approach as it destroys private property. But since private property is at heart the product of human labour, an assault of private property is really an assault on the dignity of the human person. Thus Socialism's inhuman face.
Distributism is all about reinstituting private property that Socialism seeks to destroy via outright nationalization and tranfer of control of most material goods to a vast state bureaucracy, and that Capitalism seeks to destroy by means of transferring vast swaths of it to a non-owning managerial elite and putting in its place virtural-reality structures like the stock and bond markets.
As you read in Rerum Novarum, the state is to provide bedrock state protection of property rights.
[QUOTE]Notice that nothing is said about common ownership of all the means of production. That is the communist position, which only hard-core socialists share.[/QUOTE]
You're making a false distinction between Socialism and Communism. Both terms are integral parts of Marxist theory, but as you know Socialism was for Marx the intermediary step between Capitalism and Communism. The notion was that during the Socialist period the means of production will belong to the state, and then after all class distinctions have been abolished there will be no need for the state and the state will wither away. The idea is nuts, of course, but that's the difference between Socialism and Communism. They're different historical stages, in terms of Marxist theory.
[QUOTE]Distributists share the socialist dream of subjecting currently held property to social controls, so as to achieve a new scheme of ownership. This intervention must be ongoing, as otherwise market forces will drive the economy back to the inequalities they and socialists find un-acceptable.[/QUOTE]
Quite to the contrary. As Rerum Novarum makes clear, we're all about private property. All rights currently instituted must be respected.
As I've said here many times, the big problem in my estimation is the corporate organizational form. But corporations are merely creatures of the state, and as you admit are not an essential part of that which you term capitalism (I'd call it the "free market" there, but why quibble?). We need only require all corporations to reorganize and general partnerships. We can grant a significant amount of time - say ten years - to make the arrangements. This will remove the distortions to the natural functioning of the free market caused by artificial limitations on liability, and help to return vast swaths of wealth to the status of private property.
[QUOTE]Distributists are certainly better than socialists, in that they aim to preserve much of the 'organic' structure of society, and thus have a fundementally conservative strain. They also favor various forms of social hierarchy.
However, distributism shares with socialism a program for the economy that would be vastly destructive, and which would feed the leviathan of the state. An new elite would inevitably twist state power to its own purposes. [/QUOTE]
Again, I don't know why you'd say that. Capitalism is the thing that got us into this mess. Capitalism - with its reliance on "virtual reality" institutions like the stock market and usury - is the thing that feeds Leviathan. As it is right now, our nation is run by a tiny managerial elite that rules over the Fortune 1,000. These are the men and women who truly make the decisions. There are only a few thousand of them. They're very disproportionately Jewish. They generally hate us, and want to reduce us to cubicle serfs.
[QUOTE]Far better to simply advocate return to true monarchy, if one wishes to pursue non-capitalist social reforms![/QUOTE]
Distributists generally agree with Belloc that human freedom can only be found in monarchy that is answerable to an elite. Belloc would have included the American Republic with its elected President in that class. So, I certainly advocate the re-institution of the American Republic with a powerful Presidency answerable to a class of educated and morally upright white males. That class used to be represented by the Senate. Capitalism played a role like no other in taking it away from us.
[QUOTE]PS I know someone else who claimed labor must be at the heart of economic considerations--Karl Marx, whose labor theory of value has been widely debunked.[/QUOTE]
As was pointed out by Bertrand Russel and others, Marxist theory in its broad strokes stol the plot line from Christianity. Dialectic = God. Capitalism = Original Sin. Marx = Jesus. Socialism = Church. Communism = Second Coming.
In a similar way, Marx appropriated the profoundly Christian notion that we are commanded by God Himself to work - to provide for ourselves and our families by the "sweat of our brows" as God told Adam. Work is the product of our VOCATIONS - a notion that doesn't get much play now, ever since Capitalism decreed that we're all fungible cogs in the same machine.
But as C.S. Lewis pointed out so eloquently, evil can only twist the good, it can never truly create anyting of its own. So it's no surprise, then, that Marx would steal that line from Christianity as well.
But let me ask you - if human labour isn't to be at the center of our economic policy, in your opinion upon what should our economic policy be based?
Regards,
Walter[/QUOTE]
2004-06-13 11:13 | User Profile
Everybody:
Tex turned on the moderator function for me, and I totally spazzed a couple of times hitting the "edit" instead of "quote" button and not noticing it until too late.
I asked Tex to turn that function off, as I'm too absent-minded to be trusted with it.
I accidentally deleted/edited posts from Darkstar and maybe others, and I truly regret that.
Believe me, it was an accident.
This is a great discussion, please don't let my technical incompentence deter you from continuing it.
Thanks,
Walter
2004-06-13 18:32 | User Profile
Walter, don't worry about the deletions -- the posts were hardly fit for posterity, anyway.
As to your new posts below:
--You can baldly assert that distributism does not violate property rights, but it clearly does, since it involves coercive movement from centralized ownership of capital to non-centralized ownership. How does this movement happen, except by some individuals' property being seized, and given to others?
--Re some other points, here is a quotation from the Communist Mannifesto:
'This [petit-bourgeoise--DS] Sschool of socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labor; the concentration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.
In it positive aims, however, this form of socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.
Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal relations in agriculture.'
In other words, distributism. Distributism would be classified by Marx as petit-bourgeoise socialism.
This is a good reason to call distributism 'socialism-lite,' esp. given its other features. Note that I have never in fact called 'distributism' 'socialism.' I have merely intimated that it shares certain common features with certain types of social--of which there are many.
For example: I am not familiar with this feature of Marxism, that one labels the post-revolution, but pre-utopian stage of social change to be 'socialist.' In the Mannifesto, at least, there is no mention of this. The highest form of socialism Marx terms deficient, because it is not revolutionary. This is the most prevalent was of distinguishing communism from socialism. Communists advocate violent revolution, while socialists advocate gradual reform within a democratic setting. Perhaps this distinction arises in Leninism?
Marx aside, 'socialism' has a lot of meanings. Traditionally, socialist have indeed advocated collective ownership. But socialism has changed over the years, and now allow for 'market socialism.'
2004-06-14 08:04 | User Profile
[QUOTE][darkstar]Walter, don't worry about the deletions -- the posts were hardly fit for posterity, anyway.[/QUOTE]
Thanks for your understanding. Tex turned off that function for me, so hopefully that won't happen again.
[QUOTE]As to your new posts below:
--You can baldly assert that distributism does not violate property rights, but it clearly does, since it involves coercive movement from centralized ownership of capital to non-centralized ownership. How does this movement happen, except by some individuals' property being seized, and given to others? [/QUOTE]
We have already agreed on another thread that the corporate organizational form is not an essential aspect of "capitalism" as you term it, or of the "free market" as I would prefer.
As we've seen, the corporate form, with its artificial limitation of liability vis a vis society at large and (in the case of publicly traded companies) its nearly absolute severance of ownership with management/control of assets, is wholly a creature of the state. It was imposed on society's free market under in the hopes of encouraging the accumulation of large capital pools and the taking of risks, at the terrible social cost of allowing corporations to externalize the the costs of risks onto society at large.
Since the state dreamed up and imposed the corporation on society, surely it is within its rights to amend its own laws to disallow the use of this baleful legal fiction. After all, the state is only amending its own statutes, and so long as a sufficient time is allowed for the transition, I see no cause for any claim of a "regulatory taking" under the Constitution.
After all, changes in basic statutes happen not infrequently. There is no violence in requiring publicly traded corporations to reorganize into general partnerships, especially when a generous transition period is allowed. The real state violence is found in the current incorporation statutes, which again allow anybody for a few hundred dollars to place vast amounts of property beyond the legitmate reach of creditors. The real state violence is in allowing the management of nearly unimaginable amounts of wealth to be separated from its owners and handed over to corporate bureacrats like Disney's Eisner who then exercise nearly vast power power over what we read and watch.
That's state violence, Darkstar. That's state intervention in the free market.
My proposal is to end that state violence through a simple change in the incorporation statutes, that would require all publicly traded corporations (at least) to reorganize. The state is within its rights to amend its laws in this way, and the policy reasons for the change are to end state violence, and not to inflict it.
[QUOTE]--Re some other points, here is a quotation from the Communist Mannifesto: In other words, distributism. Distributism would be classified by Marx as petit-bourgeoise socialism.[/QUOTE]
Well quoth, and your point is well taken.
I think we're getting bogged down in definitions. I'm defining both "capitalism" and "socialism" as they are commonly understood today. Capitalism is commonly understood to be what America is now - with "virtural reality" systems like the fiat monetary system, the stock and bond markets, consumer-driven debt, ubiquitous advertising. I'm using the word "socialism" to mean what the Soviet Union was. There were varying shades of grey, with France being commonly termed "capitalist" and Sweden offerred referred to as "socialist" but that fact merely underscores the poverty of these terms in their current usage.
[QUOTE]For example: I am not familiar with this feature of Marxism, that one labels the post-revolution, but pre-utopian stage of social change to be 'socialist.' In the Mannifesto, at least, there is no mention of this. The highest form of socialism Marx terms deficient, because it is not revolutionary. This is the most prevalent was of distinguishing communism from socialism. Communists advocate violent revolution, while socialists advocate gradual reform within a democratic setting. Perhaps this distinction arises in Leninism?[/QUOTE]
I don't think that it started with Leninism - it was a Marxian notion. Marx believed in stages of history - slavery to feudalism to capitalism to socialism to communism. But that was a common notion, Adam Smith believed in a version of this "stages of history" concept, as did most others. The 19th century believed that everybody and everything was headed up and up. Anyway, Lenin wrote the acknowledged classic on the transition from Socialism to Communism in his [URL=http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/]"State and Revolution." [/URL] It's a great thing, a fine example of fanatic mind at work. Lenin considered it his most important work, and he dropped everything he was doing during a time of great revolutionary turmoil (written in 1917!) to write it.
[QUOTE]Marx aside, 'socialism' has a lot of meanings. Traditionally, socialist have indeed advocated collective ownership. But socialism has changed over the years, and now allow for 'market socialism.'[/QUOTE]
I agree. It's like the word "fascism" that is now in the popular parlance a synonym of "Nazism." But of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Nazism had little in common with the ideology of the Italian revolutionaries. Francisco Franco I guess would also be included in that number.
So, we may be the victims of competing definitions.
I think that we agree that private property and the free market are the main things. I think that we disagree about the practical implications of those two principles. So, let me ask you directly:
Why do you not consider the artificial limiting of liability vis a vis society at large an undue state intervention in the free market?
Do you understand my argument that the corporate form allows investors to externalize the cost of risks of investing onto society?
Regards,
Walter
Post Scripts:
[QUOTE]The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay, more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If, by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests; they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat. [/QUOTE]
That's an enemy's take on Distributism, IMHO. The small shop owner in Middle America who's been put under by a corporate serf master like Wal-Mart knows full well who the enemy is. That shopowner is indeed a dangerous reactionary to our Marxist-Corporate elites. He is the man to whom we must make our appeal.
"Private Property" is understood widely to mean a "bundle of rights".
You wrote above (which I inadvertantly "nuked") that:
[QUOTE]PS I know someone else who claimed labor must be at the heart of economic considerations--Karl Marx, whose labor theory of value has been widely debunked. [/QUOTE]
But I know of someone else who had exactly the same position: [URL=http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/quotes.htm]Adam Smith[/URL]:
[QUOTE]The property which every man has in his own labour; [B]as it is the original foundation of all other property, [/B] so it is the most sacred and inviolable┘ To hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbour is a plain violation of this most sacred property. The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter X, Part II[/QUOTE]
The fact that human labour is the fountainhead of value is simply a fact of nature. How could it be otherwise?
The Bible makes this clear in Genesis, when God tells Adam that he must work to earn a living.
Thus, both Scripture and the Natural Law support the Catholic view that human labour must be placed squarely at the center of our economic policy.
W.
2004-06-14 13:32 | User Profile
[QUOTE=darkstar]The other trick is to decentralize political power so that the individual can maintain liberty.
This is true. Distributism recognizes that it is beneficial to decentralize economic power, as well.
[QUOTE=darkstar]You can baldly assert that distributism does not violate property rights, but it clearly does, since it involves coercive movement from centralized ownership of capital to non-centralized ownership. How does this movement happen, except by some individuals' property being seized, and given to others?
Firstly, this could be done by tax and other policies that always favor the smaller concern. If it became more and more expensive for WalMart to open up more and more stores, then they would probably stop doing so. Secondly, the steps taken to maintain a system are not the same steps required to create it in the first place. Knowing some of the tactics both Microsoft and Walmart, for example, have engaged in to acquire their current levels of "property", I would not be totally broken up if they were to lose some of it. Basically, these entities have grown to their present size because of coercive movement from decentralized ownership of capital to centralized ownership, so it would be fair play for them to be shrunken by 'coercive movement from centralized ownership of capital to non-centralized ownership.'
[QUOTE=darkstar] --Re some other points, here is a quotation from the Communist Mannifesto:
Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal relations in agriculture.'
In other words, distributism. Distributism would be classified by Marx as petit-bourgeoise socialism.
Distributism, or something very like it, has already existed in Europe during the Middle Ages. To say that, because this traditional system was defined centuries later by a radical thinker as a sub-species of his desired economic system, that it is therefore radical and revolutionary, strikes me as ill-considered.
[QUOTE=darkstar]This is a good reason to call distributism 'socialism-lite,' esp. given its other features. Note that I have never in fact called 'distributism' 'socialism.' I have merely intimated that it shares certain common features with certain types of social--of which there are many.[/QUOTE] Socialism is common ownership of property, usually by the state. In Distributism, property is as widely distributed to as many individual owners as possible. These are not the same.
2004-06-14 20:51 | User Profile
I agree that corporate liability law should be changed to allows suits against corporate shareholders. But this doesn't get us to Distributism. Distributism involves seisure of property from wealthy capitalists, and thus a violation of their property rights.
Of course labor lies at the origin of all external property. That is something different than claiming that all increases in value come from labor (Marx's view).
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]... As we've seen, the corporate form, with its artificial limitation of liability vis a vis society at large and (in the case of publicly traded companies) its nearly absolute severance of ownership with management/control of assets, is wholly a creature of the state. It was imposed on society's free market under in the hopes of encouraging the accumulation of large capital pools and the taking of risks, at the terrible social cost of allowing corporations to externalize the the costs of risks onto society at large.
Since the state dreamed up and imposed the corporation on society, surely it is within its rights to amend its own laws to disallow the use of this baleful legal fiction. After all, the state is only amending its own statutes, and so long as a sufficient time is allowed for the transition, I see no cause for any claim of a "regulatory taking" under the Constitution.
After all, changes in basic statutes happen not infrequently. There is no violence in requiring publicly traded corporations to reorganize into general partnerships, especially when a generous transition period is allowed. The real state violence is found in the current incorporation statutes, which again allow anybody for a few hundred dollars to place vast amounts of property beyond the legitmate reach of creditors. The real state violence is in allowing the management of nearly unimaginable amounts of wealth to be separated from its owners and handed over to corporate bureacrats like Disney's Eisner who then exercise nearly vast power power over what we read and watch.
That's state violence, Darkstar. That's state intervention in the free market.
My proposal is to end that state violence through a simple change in the incorporation statutes, that would require all publicly traded corporations (at least) to reorganize. The state is within its rights to amend its laws in this way, and the policy reasons for the change are to end state violence, and not to inflict it.
Well quoth, and your point is well taken.
I think we're getting bogged down in definitions. I'm defining both "capitalism" and "socialism" as they are commonly understood today. Capitalism is commonly understood to be what America is now - with "virtural reality" systems like the fiat monetary system, the stock and bond markets, consumer-driven debt, ubiquitous advertising. I'm using the word "socialism" to mean what the Soviet Union was. There were varying shades of grey, with France being commonly termed "capitalist" and Sweden offerred referred to as "socialist" but that fact merely underscores the poverty of these terms in their current usage.
I don't think that it started with Leninism - it was a Marxian notion. Marx believed in stages of history - slavery to feudalism to capitalism to socialism to communism. But that was a common notion, Adam Smith believed in a version of this "stages of history" concept, as did most others. The 19th century believed that everybody and everything was headed up and up. Anyway, Lenin wrote the acknowledged classic on the transition from Socialism to Communism in his [URL=http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/]"State and Revolution." [/URL] It's a great thing, a fine example of fanatic mind at work. Lenin considered it his most important work, and he dropped everything he was doing during a time of great revolutionary turmoil (written in 1917!) to write it.
I agree. It's like the word "fascism" that is now in the popular parlance a synonym of "Nazism." But of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Nazism had little in common with the ideology of the Italian revolutionaries. Francisco Franco I guess would also be included in that number.
So, we may be the victims of competing definitions.
I think that we agree that private property and the free market are the main things. I think that we disagree about the practical implications of those two principles. So, let me ask you directly:
Why do you not consider the artificial limiting of liability vis a vis society at large an undue state intervention in the free market?
Do you understand my argument that the corporate form allows investors to externalize the cost of risks of investing onto society?
Regards,
Walter
Post Scripts:
That's an enemy's take on Distributism, IMHO. The small shop owner in Middle America who's been put under by a corporate serf master like Wal-Mart knows full well who the enemy is. That shopowner is indeed a dangerous reactionary to our Marxist-Corporate elites. He is the man to whom we must make our appeal.
"Private Property" is understood widely to mean a "bundle of rights".
You wrote above (which I inadvertantly "nuked") that:
But I know of someone else who had exactly the same position: [URL=http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/quotes.htm]Adam Smith[/URL]:
The fact that human labour is the fountainhead of value is simply a fact of nature. How could it be otherwise?
The Bible makes this clear in Genesis, when God tells Adam that he must work to earn a living.
Thus, both Scripture and the Natural Law support the Catholic view that human labour must be placed squarely at the center of our economic policy.
W.[/QUOTE]
2004-06-25 20:26 | User Profile
I didn't realize until now that distributism had been given its own thread. Well done, OD.
2004-06-25 23:23 | User Profile
The bottom line is that capital must be decentralized. Otherwise, the result is crude plutocracy.
2004-06-26 00:20 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Valley Forge]The bottom line is that capital must be decentralized. Otherwise, the result is crude plutocracy.[/QUOTE]
I have yet to see an explanation for how distributionists plan to distribute the property and how to prevent the property from being re-concentrated.
If you took all the money of everyone in the US and distributed it equally, in about 10 years, most of the money would be where it is now.
2004-06-26 00:53 | User Profile
I think Happy Hacker is being a little optimistic. If professionals and investors see that the state simply redistributes all the wealth whenever things get too 'concentrated,' they would move into other lines of works. Such as being government goons, Archbishops, that sort of thing. Economic growth would be abysmal--or rather, there wouldn't be any for sometime, and then it would be abysmal.
As to the property now in the hands of our 'working class' friends: they would quickly trade it for larger televions, tastier pork-rinds, bigger trucks, fancier cell-phones, etc. As these goods are consumed, their value disappears. Thus most of 'the money' that was redistributed would be gone ten years into our Distributist future.
2004-06-26 07:37 | User Profile
[QUOTE]1. I agree that corporate liability law should be changed to allows suits against corporate shareholders. But this doesn't get us to Distributism. Distributism involves seisure of property from wealthy capitalists, and thus a violation of their property rights.[/QUOTE]
It isn't correct to say that "Distributism involves the seizure of property."
Rerum Novarum - perhaps Distributism's founding document - is crystal clear on that point. Property rights are sacred, seizure and re-distribution is wrong and will cause far greater evils than it will cure.
[QUOTE]7. To cure this evil, the Socialists, exciting the envy of the poor toward the rich, contend that it is necessary to do away with private possession of goods and in its place to make the goods of individuals common to all, and that the men who preside over a municipality or who direct the entire State should act as administrators of these goods. They hold that, by such a transfer of private goods from private individuals to the community, they can cure the present evil through dividing wealth and benefits equally among the citizens.
But their program is so unsuited for terminating the conflict that it actually injures the workers themselves. Moreover, it is highly unjust, because it violates the rights of lawful owners, perverts the function of the State, and throws governments into utter confusion.
[snip] Therefore, inasmuch as the Socialists seek to transfer the goods of private persons to the community at large, they make the lot of all wage earners worse, because in abolishing the freedom to dispose of wages they take away from them by this very act the hope and the opportunity of increasing their property and of securing advantages for themselves.
But, what is of more vital concern, they propose a remedy openly in conflict with justice, inasmuch as nature confers on man the right to possess things privately as his own.
For this reason it also follows that private possessions are clearly in accord with nature. The earth indeed produces in great abundance the things to preserve and, especially, to perfect life, but of itself it could not produce them without human cultivation and care. Moreover, since man expends his mental energy and his bodily strength in procuring the goods of nature, by this very act he appropriates that part of physical nature to himself which he has cultivated. On it he leaves impressed, as it were, a kind of image of his person, so that it must be altogether just that he should possess that part as his very own and that no one in any way should be permitted to violate his right.
From all these conversations, [B]it is perceived that the fundamental principle of Socialism which would make all possessions public property is to be utterly rejected because it [/B] injures the very ones whom it seeks to help, contravenes the natural rights of individual persons, and throws the functions of the State and public peace into confusion. Let it be regarded, therefore, as established that in seeking help for the masses this principle before all is to be considered as basic, namely, that private ownership must be preserved inviolate. With this understood, we shall explain whence the desired remedy is to be sought.
[B]26. Therefore, let it be laid down in the first place that a condition of human existence must be borne with, namely, that in civil society the lowest cannot be made equal to the highest. [/B] Socialists, of course, agitate the contrary, but all struggling against nature is vain. There are truly very great and very many natural differences among men. Neither the talents, nor the skill, nor the health, nor the capacities of all are the same, and unequal fortune follows of itself upon necessary inequality in respect to these endowments. And clearly this condition of things is adapted to benefit both individuals and the community; for to carry on its affairs community life requires varied aptitudes and diverse services, and to perform these diverse services men are impelled most by differences in individual property holdings. [/QUOTE]
You also say that you "agree that corporate liability law should be changed to allows suits against corporate shareholders." Allowing suits against shareholders would end limited liability, and so we would appear to agree that allowing (at least the routine use) of limited liability is a terrible distortion of the free market and works an injustice on society as a whole.
It would thus appear that we agree on a great deal.
Let's forget the word "Distributism" for a while, as it seems to be a distraction. In truth, the entire program that I and others who call themselves Distributists comes down to some very concrete suggestions for changes in the current system:
[U]End the routine use of limited liability companies[/U]. This would entail the end of publicly traded stock and the NASDAQ. We seem to agree on that.
[U]End the purely fiat money system[/U]. This would entail terminating the Federal Reserve system and returning to Congress its Constitutional right (and duty) to manage the nation's money. This would also entail a return to the gold standard, or I think better implementing a "basket of commodities" standard for the value of money. This isn't a radical proposal, and I'd be interested in your thoughts on that. I suspect we're not so far apart on that either. After all, what could be a greater distortion of the free market than a state-sanctioned institution like the Fed artificially setting interest rates? I fail to see how anybody who believes in the free market could justify such invasive intervention in the market mechanism.
[U]End advertising as we know it[/U]. The argument here boils down to not allowing the routine overreaching on unsuspecting consumers that is the life blood of 5th Avenue. I've seen with my own eyes how media campaigns are carefully planned. They're based on reams of data collected by professional agencies like Nielsen that psychologists analyze to determine the consumer's vulnerabilities. Then they divide the market into segments based on "needs states" - including children and people with emotional problems. This is the worst sort of hucksterism dressed up in Armani suits. Big media advertising has done more to destroy social capital than perhaps any other aspect of our current system. While "commercial speech" certainly is within the First Amendment, it was always and rightly considered subject to far greater regulation than political or religious speech. Communicating the availability of goods and services, their cost and quality (including considerable latitude for puffery) is a basic human right, but the line is crossed when we base our entire consumerist system on what amounts to overreaching and fraud. In concrete terms, I and I think most Distributists would remove all advertising from broadcast media, and remove all sexual content from print and other media.
[U]End usury[/U]. There is a separate thread on this, so I won't go into it here. Suffice it to say that usury - lending money at interest - creates far too many opportunities for parasitic behaviour, and it must be replaced with financing systems that are proved to work, such as the Mondragon banking system and Islamic banking.
[U]End the income tax[/U]. The income tax is bad, bad policy for a number of reasons, perhaps the most important being that it (a) discourages work and encourages conspicuous consumption by subsidizing the latter by taxing the former, and (b) extending the reach of the intrusive state into all transactions no matter how trivial, with all the harm to civil liberties that implies. The policy is to replace the income tax with other taxes that fall less heavily on work and more on vice (excise taxes), consumption (especially conspicuous consumption), pollution, and transfers of large estates. Actually, this proposal is not much different than some of the proposols coming out of libertarian circles such as the Cato Institute, and I suspect that you would find some of these proposals reasonable.
That's the economic part of the program in a nutshell, call it what you will.
Clearly, this is a throughly conservative program, and obviously there is no room in it for the course grabbing of property that you for some reason perceive. Indeed, the key to the project is to REINSTITUE private property, an institution that our current system (call it what you will) badly damaged through its vulgar interventions in the free market mechanism, especially by allowing limited liability and the creation of a wholly imaginary monetary system.
Walter
2004-06-26 16:53 | User Profile
'It isn't correct to say that "Distributism involves the seizure of property."
Rerum Novarum - perhaps Distributism's founding document - is crystal clear on that point. Property rights are sacred, seizure and re-distribution is wrong and will cause far greater evils than it will cure.'
The quote you give from Rerum Novarum doesn't mention 'seizure or re-distribution.' What the document says is that it is wrong fom property to be taken from individuals and held collectively. But distributists are interested in redistributing property from some individuals to others individuals.
2004-06-26 17:21 | User Profile
[QUOTE=darkstar]'It isn't correct to say that "Distributism involves the seizure of property."
Rerum Novarum - perhaps Distributism's founding document - is crystal clear on that point. Property rights are sacred, seizure and re-distribution is wrong and will cause far greater evils than it will cure.'
The quote you give from Rerum Novarum doesn't mention 'seizure or re-distribution.' What the document says is that it is wrong fom property to be taken from individuals and held collectively. But distributists are interested in redistributing property from some individuals to others individuals.[/QUOTE]
No, that isn't right, either. Why do you say that?
Rerum Novarum makes clear the inviolbility of property rights.
No seizures of property, that's right out. Again, we Distributists are the ones who hope to shore up the institution of private property that's been so terribly damaged by the current system.
Please address the program points in turn. We've already agreed, or so it would seem, on the problem of limited liability companies. What about the other points?
You'll note that no "seizure of property" is suggested above.
Walter
2004-06-26 17:31 | User Profile
Darkstar:
To repeat what I said way back in this thread, private property comes straight from the seventh and tenth commandments.
Also, as Belloc said, distributism if far more about reallocating [I]power[/I] as opposed to property.
2004-06-27 00:03 | User Profile
If you want to define distributism as 'reform of corporate law' I am happy to support it. However, now you are simply confabulating concerning the nature of distributism.
2004-06-27 03:11 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]1. [U]End the routine use of limited liability companies[/U]. This would entail the end of publicly traded stock and the NASDAQ. We seem to agree on that.
Many stockholders are merely investers with no control in how the company operates. It's wrong to hold someone liable for something they have essentually no control over. They already risk losing their whole investment.
In a big company, ending invester protection from liability would have no impact. There's nothing I can imagine a big company doing that would cause damages greater than the value of the resources of the company. Even if there is such an example, it would have to be criminal conduct of a few individuals or operating conduct that the government new about, so even still, there's no reason to hold investers liable.
Besides, whether I'm right or wrong, it's not going to happen.
- [U]End the purely fiat money system[/U].
I'm not sure there's enough gold to prop up a gold standard given the size of the economy and the money supply. Otherwise, the fiat monehy system should go. Currently, there's no practical difference between you printing bills in your basement and the government printing bills. Fiat money allows the goverment to rob us by devaluing the money we're holding and by pushing us into higher tax brackets.
Besides, whether I'm right or wrong, it's not going to happen.
- [U]End advertising as we know it[/U].
I don't see how this is possible without violating the First Amendment and the invaluable principle of Free Speech. I believe that one of the most destructive things Americans do is buy, buy, buy. They work 50 weeks per year just to buy a bunch of things they really don't benefit from. Advertising is a partial cause of this, but banning advertising is not the cure.
Besides, whether I'm right or wrong, it's not going to happen.
- [U]End usury[/U].
If there wasn't interest then no one could get a loan to buy a home. Interest is a moral necessity in an inflationary economy where people repay loans with dollars worth less than the dollars the were given in the first place. Interest is also fair to pay people for Oppertunity Cost (I can do something productive with my money if I don't loan it to you) and the risk of default.
Besides, whether I'm right or wrong, it's not going to happen.
- [U]End the income tax[/U].
The income tax is nearly flat between the middle-class vs. the rich, most other taxes are very regressive (the rich pay much smaller percentages, those with children pay a higher percentage than those without children). Any replacement tax should be carefully planned not to soak those least able to pay it. Tariffs are a good (less evil) tax.
Besides, whether I'm right or wrong, it's not going to happen.
You should start with School Choice if you want any change to happen in America.
2004-06-27 03:48 | User Profile
Corporate rule is really no different than Marxist rule. So if necessary, the redistribution will be accomplished through the coercive power of the state.
In many ways, the distributvists don't go far enough in defending private property. The concept of private propety is not meaningful unless people own the means of production required for their own survival. Otherwise, people are just de facto indentured servants.
This is one reason I support stronger reforms in the ecomonic realm than the distributivists propose.
For one thing, I now believe that entire banking system should be Nationalized with all banks and financial institutions placed under State rather than private control.
The other reform that I think is necessary is not just the abolition of usury in all its forms, but also the abolition under pain of death to all forms of financial speculation for profit without work.
[QUOTE=Happy Hacker]I have yet to see an explanation for how distributionists plan to distribute the property and how to prevent the property from being re-concentrated.
If you took all the money of everyone in the US and distributed it equally, in about 10 years, most of the money would be where it is now.[/QUOTE]
2004-06-27 03:56 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Happy Hacker]Many stockholders are merely investers with no control in how the company operates. It's wrong to hold someone liable for something they have essentually no control over. They already risk losing their whole investment.
The solution is to put an end to financial speculation for profit.
If the investor wants to make money, he should have to work and produce -- like the common man.
In a big company, ending invester protection from liability would have no impact. There's nothing I can imagine a big company doing that would cause damages greater than the value of the resources of the company. Even if there is such an example, it would have to be criminal conduct of a few individuals or operating conduct that the government new about, so even still, there's no reason to hold investers liable.
Sure there is; they're the ostensible owners. Of course they should be held responsible.
Besides, whether I'm right or wrong, it's not going to happen.
This sounds like a justification for the status quo.
I don't see how this is possible without violating the First Amendment and the invaluable principle of Free Speech. I believe that one of the most destructive things Americans do is buy, buy, buy. They work 50 weeks per year just to buy a bunch of things they really don't benefit from. Advertising is a partial cause of this, but banning advertising is not the cure.
A lot of advertising could be banned on the grounds that it is fradulent.
Free speech doesn't give people a right to defraud other people.
If there wasn't interest then no one could get a loan to buy a home. Interest is a moral necessity in an inflationary economy where people repay loans with dollars worth less than the dollars the were given in the first place. Interest is also fair to pay people for Oppertunity Cost (I can do something productive with my money if I don't loan it to you) and the risk of default.
The solution to this is to abolish fiat money and institute reforms that make the "inflationary economy" a thing of the past.
Too many evils flow from exploitative debt usury -- it has to go
You should start with School Choice if you want any change to happen in America.[/QUOTE]
Supporting school choice is a good idea for a number of reasons; however, many more radical reforms and changes will be necssary if we want to see significant change in America -- and this includes a radical rethinking of how we have approach economic policy in this country.
2004-06-27 04:21 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Valley Forge]Corporate rule is really no different than Marxist rule. So if necessary, the redistribution will be accomplished through the coercive power of the state.
In many ways, the distributvists don't go far enough in defending private property. The concept of private propety is not meaningful unless people own the means of production required for their own survival. Otherwise, people are just de facto indentured servants.
This is one reason I support stronger reforms in the ecomonic realm than the distributivists propose.
For one thing, I now believe that entire banking system should be Nationalized with all banks and financial institutions placed under State rather than private control.
The other reform that I think is necessary is not just the abolition of usury in all its forms, but also the abolition under pain of death to all forms of financial speculation for profit without work.[/QUOTE]
Man, you're strict!
I think we agree on where we need to go, but read carefully Rerum Novarum. It exudes a spirit of reason and balance.
The abrupt - indeed revolutionary - changes you advocate could well cause greater problems than they cure.
The main thing that we need to do is to get out the "meme" of Rerum Novarum.
That is that all wealth derives ultimately from human labour, that human labour is directed toward caring for self and family, that private property is therefore intimately related to the freedom and dignity of the human person and is therefore inviolable, and that since property and labour are so closely intertwined then the policy should be that men should own the implements of their own work.
This is a simple and beautiful idea, and it's incredibly powerful. We need simply to "get it out." The rest will follow IMHO.
Walter
2004-06-27 04:50 | User Profile
[QUOTE][Happy Hacker]Many stockholders are merely investers with no control in how the company operates. It's wrong to hold someone liable for something they have essentually no control over. They already risk losing their whole investment. [/QUOTE]
That's exactly the point. The institution is private property is a UNITY of ownership, management/control, and liability for debts. The corporate organizational form "unbundles" these aspects of property and thereby destroys the UNITY and the institution itself.
Stockholders don't have "property" in a share of stock in this classical sense - stock is virtual property, it's not the thing itself.
Since private property is a GOOD THING instituted by Nature and Nature's God, and since all virtual realities have their roots in Hell, our job is to restore private property by ending (at least the routine) use of the corporate organizational form.
No seizure of property is required to accomplish this. I suggest a simple change in the law banning limited liability entities (with perhaps a few rare exceptions, my mind is open on that point), and requiring that existing companies be allowed a significant period to reorganize themselves into general partnerships, sole proprietorshiops or production cooperatives. Nothing has to happen overnight. Give them ten years to accomplish it, that's plenty of time to navigate the problems, and to ensure all stockholders have a chance to get a fair cash-out of their stock.
[QUOTE]Besides, whether I'm right or wrong, it's not going to happen.[/QUOTE]
I agree that it won't happen, at least until there is some major crash of the "virtual" economy that we've come to call "Capitalism" (rightly or wrongly so called).
But here's the main point: if we do get Yggrasil's "millenial collapse", then the world will be looking for alternatives. If we do get the collapse, then most of the other arguments about fairness go away, and people will be thinking more about how to save themselves from the immediate crisis.
No collapse, no reform. Ergo, worse is better.
[QUOTE]I'm not sure there's enough gold to prop up a gold standard given the size of the economy and the money supply. Otherwise, the fiat monehy system should go. Currently, there's no practical difference between you printing bills in your basement and the government printing bills. Fiat money allows the goverment to rob us by devaluing the money we're holding and by pushing us into higher tax brackets.[/QUOTE]
Ditto. Look into the "basket of commodities" idea. This was seriously floated during the Reagan administration. I think it's better than the gold standard, which ties us to the gold supply. And, after all, gold is just another commodity, freely traded, freely mined. It makes sense to base the value of the currency on average prices of commodities we produce, as this has a direct relationship to our total economic performance. As we work and increase wealth, so to the money supply would increase.
[QUOTE]Besides, whether I'm right or wrong, it's not going to happen.[/QUOTE]
If we get Ygg's "Crunch", then it will happen without us.
I[QUOTE] don't see how this is possible without violating the First Amendment and the invaluable principle of Free Speech. I believe that one of the most destructive things Americans do is buy, buy, buy. They work 50 weeks per year just to buy a bunch of things they really don't benefit from. Advertising is a partial cause of this, but banning advertising is not the cure.
Besides, whether I'm right or wrong, it's not going to happen.[/QUOTE]
I recall these cases from law school. The truth is that "free speech" in the First Amendment is at heart political and religious speech, and it was always understood that limitations of speech outside that ultra-protected core could rightly be imposed. And even then, political and religious speech can be subject to "time, place and manner" restrictions - such as not allowing demonstrations to be held on a busy highway. But the content of political/relgious speech is protected by the highest levels of judicial scrutiny, such that any restriction is basically DOA.
So-called "commercial speech" is subject to what is called "intermediate scrutiny" - it's subject to even greater time-place-manner restrictions, and the state can impose increased regulation on its content.
Commercial speech is a basic human right to the extent that it is connected with making a living. Since one must let the world know of goods and services for sale, then commercial speech that relates directly to the availability, price, quantity, and quality (including "puffery") of same enjoys all the protections of the First Amendment.
But modern advertising isn't about that at all. It's all about molding peoples thoughts and feelings. It's all about manipulating people by repeated appeals to their non-rational faculties. This is at least over-reaching, and constitutes for the most part outright fraud. No sane society should allow that. Fifth Avenue must be slapped down, and hard.
My proposal is to remove all advertising from broadcast media, where it does the most harm. It's a nice bright line rule that would be easier to enforce (but of course there would still be grey areas). In print media, I would allow most anything as far as content, but I would require that blatant appeals to the sex instinct and pitches at children be vastly toned down.
Again, absent a collapse, none of this will happen.
[QUOTE]If there wasn't interest then no one could get a loan to buy a home. Interest is a moral necessity in an inflationary economy where people repay loans with dollars worth less than the dollars the were given in the first place. Interest is also fair to pay people for Oppertunity Cost (I can do something productive with my money if I don't loan it to you) and the risk of default.[/QUOTE]
Read the "Islamic Banking" thread. Interest-free financing exists, and it works.
[QUOTE]The income tax is nearly flat between the middle-class vs. the rich, most other taxes are very regressive (the rich pay much smaller percentages, those with children pay a higher percentage than those without children). Any replacement tax should be carefully planned not to soak those least able to pay it. Tariffs are a good (less evil) tax.[/QUOTE]
Ditto.
[QUOTE]Besides, whether I'm right or wrong, it's not going to happen.[/QUOTE]
If we get a collapse of the current "virtual system" there will be no stopping it.
[QUOTE]You should start with School Choice if you want any change to happen in America.[/QUOTE]
I'm all for school choice, and indeed I'm for encouraging homeschooling, as nothing builds social capital like schooling kids at home. That's all good Distributist stuff, by the way. Distributism is a "whole cloth" approach to human society and the human person, and the economic program is just one component of it.
It's just that I'm concentrating on the economic part of it here, since it's almost completely ignored by those who should be shouting it from the rooftops, especially our own beloved, lavender Roman Catholic clergy.
Walter
2004-06-27 13:49 | User Profile
Here are some words of wisdom from [URL=http://home.ddc.net/ygg/ms/ms-02.htm]Yggdrasil[/URL] on the subject of advertising with which I whole-heartedly concur.
I've seen this with my own eyes. It's ugly, and it has to stop.
Walter
[QUOTE]To my brothers and sisters in the movement seeking to understand the world I can say only this:
The United States is entering a time of flux and danger. The minority elites defending integrationism are becoming more desperate and more dangerous.
Understand the following:
In culture and public policy debates, what is left unsaid is almost always more important than what is stated.
In public policy debates within a multi-racial empire, the truly important messages cannot be spoken without risk of provoking conflict. These messages are communicated in a complex "code." You must develop your own "code-speak" antenna and indeed learn to speak in your own "code."
When used by alienated minority elites, words will almost always mean the opposite of the dictionary definition. In a multiracial empire words are used as often to confuse and mislead as to enlighten.
The only purpose of commercial print or broadcast media is to induce an irrational purchase based on status or "brand" familiarity rather than on price or quality. The advertising of commercial print or broadcast media exploits status insecurities, sexual insecurities, and encourages unplanned impulsive decisions.
Commercial print and broadcast media will always encourage alternative life styles like homosexuality in which the consumer spends all of his income on impulse purchases for himself. The media dislike consumers who must make price-conscious purchase decisions for family dependents. Families reduce the effectiveness of advertising. Hedonistic lifestyles increase it and will always be encouraged.
Traditional religions are always anti-materialist and tend to enforce the virtue of deferred gratification. Thus, traditional religions reduce the effectiveness of advertising messages. Commercial print and broadcast media will always be hostile to traditional religions or any other cultural artifact that lessens the effect of its product, advertising.
Because of the inherent economic bias against the effects of traditional religions and cultures, the print and broadcast media will always become a haven for members of minority elites, who are comfortable carrying out the veiled attack, not only for economic reasons, but for reasons of racial and religious aggression as well.
Schools, governments and public institutions have come to view "tolerance" and "diversity" as weapons with which to control the majority, narrow its options, and extract additional tax dollars. Discount their propaganda accordingly.
Part of becoming a strong culture, with a will to survive, is learning to understand the hidden agendas and having the will to unmask them in public.
By unmasking the agendas, you weaken your enemies.[/QUOTE]
2005-05-22 05:39 | User Profile
Here's a [URL=http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1407855/posts]Freeper Thread[/URL] on this article.
2005-05-22 06:04 | User Profile
Walter Yannis,
From the tread. All too true.
[QUOTE]To: okie01
I think you will find that capitalism and socialism have been the biggest forces for egalitarian hell the world has ever seen. Marx believed in the destruction of the nation state, so do global capitalists (anything that get's in the way of their greed must die). The two systems merely have different ways of achieving the same hideous goal.
38 posted on 05/21/2005 4:33:35 PM PDT by Lutonian [/QUOTE]
2005-05-22 07:46 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Faust]Walter Yannis,
From the tread. All too true.[/QUOTE]
Yes, there were some interesting comments, though.
Mostly it was typical Freeper knee-jerk blather about Adam Smith, as if the good Doctor Smith would have anything good to say about fiat money, the income tax, asset seizure laws, and the mass destruction of private property through the routine use of the corporate organizational form.
Perhaps somebody here with Freep account could post a link there back to the OD Distributism forum?
Or perhaps better via Freemail.
2005-05-23 02:15 | User Profile
I just love the way Lazzez Faire capitalists turn any economic argument into an either/or situation. If you modify in any way "tooth and claw" Capitalism then you are a nasty and dirty Red Communist scum ready to reinstate the Gulag. A Distributivist system would redistribute weath not by expropriation but by regulation and tax codes that aim for smallness and local control.
I don't see how any white nationalist or Paleo-Con can defend pure Lazzez-faire. Repulsive characters like George Soros and those six Jews that stole the entire assets of the nation of Russia in the 90's would still be free to reduce man to an unit of economic production and consumption.
A good Distributivist system would still retain aspects of the profit motive in our economic system, but the profit motive would not be the sole value like it is in a Capitalist society.
2005-05-23 04:14 | User Profile
[QUOTE=CornCod]I just love the way Lazzez Faire capitalists turn any economic argument into an either/or situation. If you modify in any way "tooth and claw" Capitalism then you are a nasty and dirty Red Communist scum ready to reinstate the Gulag. A Distributivist system would redistribute weath not by expropriation but by regulation and tax codes that aim for smallness and local control.
I don't see how any white nationalist or Paleo-Con can defend pure Lazzez-faire. Repulsive characters like George Soros and those six Jews that stole the entire assets of the nation of Russia in the 90's would still be free to reduce man to an unit of economic production and consumption.
A good Distributivist system would still retain aspects of the profit motive in our economic system, but the profit motive would not be the sole value like it is in a Capitalist society.[/QUOTE] It's spelled laissez-faire.
2005-05-23 06:26 | User Profile
[QUOTE=CornCod]I just love the way Lazzez Faire capitalists turn any economic argument into an either/or situation. If you modify in any way "tooth and claw" Capitalism then you are a nasty and dirty Red Communist scum ready to reinstate the Gulag. A Distributivist system would redistribute weath not by expropriation but by regulation and tax codes that aim for smallness and local control.
I don't see how any white nationalist or Paleo-Con can defend pure Lazzez-faire. Repulsive characters like George Soros and those six Jews that stole the entire assets of the nation of Russia in the 90's would still be free to reduce man to an unit of economic production and consumption.
A good Distributivist system would still retain aspects of the profit motive in our economic system, but the profit motive would not be the sole value like it is in a Capitalist society.[/QUOTE]
Freepers, Dittoheads and their ilk were long ago fitted out with mental blinders by corporate advertisers, and so what you're seeing there is a Pavlovian mental response to shut out anything that challenges the collective power of the corporate CEOs and their political cronies. Orwell called it "doublethink," and "crimestop."
One Freeper just wrote "Adam Smith?" as the entirety of his response; but anybody who's read Adam Smith understand that he was close to what we now call Distributist positions.
So, in order to reach the Freepers, Dittoheads and other maggots of cyberspace, we have to avoid their doublethink response.
I think that part of that is to avoid the use of the word "distributism" altogether. Instead, start out by saying you're an avid fan of Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson. You can even quote Justice Brandeis, a Jew who had some great things to say about corporations (posted on this sub-forum).
Say that you believe fanatically in the free market, and want to work to remove all gross governmental interventions in the free market mechanism. Point out to them that as the Chicago School of economics - which includes their hero Uncle Milty Friedman (and the great Jewish legal thinker Justice Posner) point out again and again that the state's only legitimate role is to force economic actors to INTERNALIZE THEIR COSTS.
That's the buzzword. Everybody has to bear their own costs. Then point out to them that Jefferson and Smith both believed that the free market and civil society can only take place in the context of a sober and religious people. In modern parlance, where people don't externalize their own social costs onto others.
Once you've laid that groundwork, declare yourself a true capitalist who only wants to rid the free market of worst distortions imposed by the state:
Routine use of the corporate organizational form. The stated purpose of the corporation is to limit liability for potential risks and thereby encourage investments. But this is in the teeth of the free market, since risks have real costs, and the governmnet stepping in As Charlie Munger of Bershire Hathaway (another capitalist icon the maggots of cyberspace should like) pointed out recently (also posted in this sub-forum under Munger Goes Mental) the England of Adam Smith didn't allow joint stock companies with their limited liability to function. In the early 18th century they suffered the South Sea Bubble (see Mackey's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds and some of the things Yggdrasil wrote about that) and they just didn't allow the routine use of corporations. You could do business as a sole proprietor or in a general partnership, but you had to act in the open and assume liailbity for your debts. In Chicago School parlance, you couldn't externalize your costs of risk on societ at large. And England's economy grew and grew and grew, so none of that is necessary. Brandeis (he flies under the Freepers' doublethink response because he's a famous Yid) talked about how recent all of this was in his day but how everybody just took the use of the corporation for granted. Anyway, we need to free the market mechanism by forcing economic actors to internalize their own costs of risk by stopping the state from ARTIFICALLY limiting liability.
Fiat Money. Time doesn't allow me to go into this in detail, but it's clear enough. Fiat money is purely imaginary and it allows the state to cheat, cheat and cheat some more. The Federal Reserve System and the debt slavery we find ourselves in is based upon the lie of fiat money, backed by nothing except the promise to pay in the future.
Manipulative advertising. Everybody has a God-given right to pursue their own happiness, which includes a livlihood. Everybody has the right to buy and sell without asking the state's permission, and that entails the right to make others aware of your goods and services. But anything beyond the type, quality, price and other basic terms of the goods and service on sale is dangerous, for example Calvin Klien's kiddie port jeans ad of 10 years ago, because such ads do not appeal to the mind and reasoned transactions based on reason, but rather on the emotions (and the basest emotions) aimed at playing on people's weakness to induce impulse sales. Compulsive consumerism is the result. In economic terms, advertisers are using our social capital as one of Garret Hardin's commons, privatizing the commonweal and externalizing the social costs of doing business. This is a tough one for cyberspace maggots with their drooling Pavlovian response to get, so I think the best way to pitch this idea is in terms of Christian morality.
Usury. I don't have time now to go into this, but basicially the argument is the same. Usury encourages passive investing and the externalization of social costs. Islamic banking seems to have the answer, as does the very Catholic Mondragon model, also discussed on this sub-forum.
I gotta go. I sure wish I could spark a broad discussion of these issues. This sub-forum has had very few takers.
Walter
2005-05-23 08:29 | User Profile
We have flirted with "distributism" throughout the history of our nation, but it was most likely called "Populism".
Some of the most recent advocates of Populism were Pat Buchanan, and George Wallace.
Some info: [url]http://history.smsu.edu/wrmiller/Populism/Texts/populism.htm[/url]
Book , "Profiles In Populism": [url]http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=336201024[/url]
2005-05-23 09:07 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis] I gotta go. I sure wish I could spark a broad discussion of these issues. This sub-forum has had very few takers.
Walter[/QUOTE]Well, it doesn't count for much at this point in time (until I graduate from college and initiate a new movement or party to destroy marxism and modernism!), but your intelligent and sensitive elucidation of the distributist vision has been very enlightening to me. Percipient individuals are rare, especially nowadays in our age of Brave New World nihilism. One quality individual is worth a hundred mindwashed sheep.
It does seem, however, that your effortful and expert presentation of Traditional economics should be highlighted in a more prominent manner somehow, so as not to fall into oblivion.
2005-05-23 09:14 | User Profile
Let's not forget that some of our kinsmen in other formerly white nations were, until very recently, aware of our enemies schemes:
[url]http://www.thelawparty.com/FavoriteQuotes.htm[/url]
"Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the nations laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation. Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of parliament and of democracy is idle and futile."William Lyon Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada, 1935
Versus this:
Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws. Mayer Amschel Rothschild
[url]http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/mayeramsch170274.html[/url]
2005-05-23 09:32 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Esoterist]Well, it doesn't count for much at this point in time (until I graduate from college and initiate a new movement or party to destroy marxism and modernism!), but your intelligent and sensitive elucidation of the distributist vision has been very enlightening to me. Percipient individuals are rare, especially nowadays in our age of Brave New World nihilism. One quality individual is worth a hundred mindwashed sheep.
It does seem, however, that your effortful and expert presentation of Traditional economics should be highlighted in a more prominent manner somehow, so as not to fall into oblivion.[/QUOTE] Thank you for your kind words.
I wanted to add that what I described above really appeals to Freepers and Dittoheads because you can easily make distributism sound "conservative" by emphasizing its free market core.
Conversely, you can present it to DemonRats and other assorted neo-Marxists with a lefty feel, by emphasizing its anti-corporate aspects.
Distributism is simply the system that recognizes man qua man and asks how best to harness man's nature to the plough of our common fields.
The answer is zealous protection of private property rights combined with full civil liability for all debts (which excludes corporations) and full internalization of all economic costs, including social costs which we frankly admit, with the state playing the umpire's role.
The tax and legal system should br rearranged to further those ends.
And that's basically it in a nutshell.
2005-05-23 09:43 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Blond Knight]We have flirted with "distributism" throughout the history of our nation, but it was most likely called "Populism".
Some of the most recent advocates of Populism were Pat Buchanan, and George Wallace.
Some info: [url]http://history.smsu.edu/wrmiller/Populism/Texts/populism.htm[/url]
Book , "Profiles In Populism": [url]http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=336201024[/url][/QUOTE]
Good point.
Many of our presidents in the first half of our nation's history (including Lincoln) worried about corporations and the terrible political power their large concentrations of financial capital afford them.
But that all changed in the Gilded Age, with the so-called "race to the bottom" as states vied with each other to create the most management and passive-investor friendly (and socially unfriendly) corporate legal regimes imaginable.
As you may know, little Delaware won that race hands down, much to the detriment of American society.
As Justice Brandies famously pointed out back in the early 1930s, after a single generation Americans simply couldn't imagine doing business without the corporate form readiliy available.
Pope John Paul II asked all Christians to look at the "structures of sin" that make living a good and sinless life difficult. I am convinced that the routine use of the corporate organizational form is one of those "structures of sin" that we must challenge.
2005-05-23 15:01 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis] I wanted to add that what I described above really appeals to Freepers and Dittoheads because you can easily make distributism sound "conservative" by emphasizing its free market core. I would quibble here and say that what you are doing is appealing to the Freepers by making Distributism sound 'capitalist'. Distributism is truly conservative, so no rhetorical prestidigitation is necessary to make it sound so. Unfortunately, 'conservatism' has morphed into meaning 'industrial capitalism' in our modern era.
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis] Conversely, you can present it to DemonRats and other assorted neo-Marxists with a lefty feel, by emphasizing its anti-corporate aspects. Very true. I have actually found lefties to be more receptive to Distributism than Dittohead types.
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]Distributism is simply the system that recognizes man qua man and asks how best to harness man's nature to the plough of our common fields. Well said. I believe either Chesterton or Penty said something to the effect that Distributism represents the natural, healthy state of an organic human society, and that it was taken for granted and not, therefore, defined. It was only after it was crushed by various well-defined post-Enlightenment 'isms' that its defenders were forced to delineate the nature of what they were defending.
In Distributism, economic power is held by the maker of a good. In capitalism, economic power is held by the seller of the good, which is rarely the same individual as the producer. Therefore, Distributism rewards quality production, while capitalism rewards quality salesmanship, which leads inexorably to a materialist, consumerist culture.
Walter, have you read I'll Take My Stand, the manifesto of the Southern Agrarians written in the 1930s? It is invaluable source material, in my opinion. Also, you may wish to check out The Corporation, a documentary made in 2003 which takes on the corporate organizational form. It starts with the legal premise that the corporation is a person, and then examines the logical results of that. The most interesting aspect is that they demonstrate that if the corporation really is a person, that it exhibits all the traits of clinical psychosis. It is definitely made from a left-wing perspective, but it is still an enjoyable film.
2005-05-23 16:47 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Quantrill]I Walter, have you read I'll Take My Stand, the manifesto of the Southern Agrarians written in the 1930s? It is invaluable source material, in my opinion. Also, you may wish to check out The Corporation, a documentary made in 2003 which takes on the corporate organizational form. It starts with the legal premise that the corporation is a person, and then examines the logical results of that. The most interesting aspect is that they demonstrate that if the corporation really is a person, that it exhibits all the traits of clinical psychosis. It is definitely made from a left-wing perspective, but it is still an enjoyable film.[/QUOTE]
Great points, Q.
And thanks for the recommendations, I'll check them out.
2005-09-25 18:18 | User Profile
For anyone interested in the thought of the likes of Wilhelm Roepke:
[url]http://theagrarianfoundation.com/Articles.html[/url]
2005-09-25 20:21 | User Profile
I know about LewRockwell. The libertarians are wrong fundamentally. They believe that only individuals exist, and that society is merely a collection of individuals entering into contractual relationships.
That's not exactly right. I wrote for LRC for years before being banned for making rude comments about racial and ethnic groups.
There are two kinds of libertarians: the leftwing, anarchist homosexual ones (and there are a lot of them). Those are the ones you are talking about. They're basically the reason so many people refer to libertarians as "loserdopertarians" or libertines.
Then there are the right-wing ones (like me) who understand the tribal nature of mankind and how we invariably form ourselves into groups.
Now that I think about it, there's a third group, too: the ones who think the only purpose of libertarianism is to legalize pot. They're the ones who when asked about Murray Rothbard or von Mises, answer, "Who?"
2005-09-26 07:18 | User Profile
[QUOTE=YertleTurtle]Now that I think about it, there's a third group, too: the ones who think the only purpose of libertarianism is to legalize pot.[/QUOTE] :thumbsup:
2005-09-26 22:31 | User Profile
[QUOTE]In Distributism, economic power is held by the maker of a good. In capitalism, economic power is held by the seller of the good, which is rarely the same individual as the producer. Therefore, Distributism rewards quality production, while capitalism rewards quality salesmanship, which leads inexorably to a materialist, consumerist culture.[/QUOTE]Well said, Quantrill.
2005-09-27 16:43 | User Profile
has anyone ever seen this frightful website? [url]http://intinc.org/[/url]
I came across it in an ad entitled "Calling All Jews" while thuming through a copy of the Libertarian mag "Liberty." (you know, just for the fun of it).
Sorry for going off topic a bit, but I think the website itself contains some outright radical counterpoints.
This is a great thread by the way ... and has led me to ask one question in regard to the Distributionist tenet of eliminating the corporate form:
if investors will stand liable on two fronts (risk of loss of investment and outside liability), won't necessary capital for R&D be diverted to societies who still regard the corporate form? In effect, the investor class (already globalized, itself) will become mobile, leaving ours to be by-passed in the area of medical sciences and the like. This is not defeatist thought, just passive concern.
Another question: how can the Distributist reconcile the advocacy of a rigid estate tax on one front and the near elimination of the income tax on another. I stongly agree with the idea of income tax reform, in regard to individuals and corporations. If providing for my family is the goal, why should it, the goal, end at my death?
Another thought: It seems to me that the crux of the call for "capitalism reform" centers on the amoral, nihlistic nature of "capitalim."
Can anyone explain how Distributism solves this problem (lowest-common-denominator mentality), which is inherent in the population, on account of the system. [Thus, I agree with (Happy Hacker?) that school choice (and home school, Walter) is a great, even necessary beginning point for a re-education.]
I understand that banning adverstising would make a difference as well. Yet, doesn't Distributism simply function to eliminate a big brother (whether public or private) while not solving the issue of moral reform? The family is an imporant aspect of that reform, but in today's society the family is still free to carry on as one would in your Distributionist society, correct?