In
the early part of the 20th century, there rose a movement of social
thinkers, historians and agrarians, some Catholic, some not, to
propagate an alternative to capitalism, as well as to socialism. This
solution has had several names, but is now generally called
Distributism. This movement had at its center proponents such as the
great Catholic converts G.K. Chesterton, and Hilaire Belloc.
To
these reformers in the early 1900’s, Capitalism was an atheistic force
depriving men of productive property and of true stability, forcing
them to work for a wage as if they were a commodity, whether they wanted
to or not. Socialism, a system which many of the first Distributists
such as Belloc, Chesterton or others had left, was seen as a worse than
the problem, shifting ownership from the elite class of wealthy to the
state in a tyrannous way. Thus, they sought a third way, which became
known as Distributivism, or Distributism.
The name
itself tends to be somewhat misleading; it was taken by Hilaire Belloc
from Pope Leo XIII’s great encyclical Rerum Novarum, speaking of
“...that justice which is called distributive”1 . The
concept behind Distributism is to put certain restraints on the wealthy
class in the economic order so as to level the economic playing field
and giving the weaker unit a chance to survive, thus protecting the
rights of ownership of the common man. It refers to a society that is
characterized, or “marked” by the character of widespread ownership. It
does not imply a “re-distribution” any more than settling a territory
implies forced re-settlement.
This is the economic
system which felt its way into existence in the building of a united
Christendom, and as Belloc points out in several books2, was
destroyed by the Protestant Reformation, wittingly or unwittingly, in
the seizure of Monastic and Collegiate property as well as the
suppression of guilds which were inherently Catholic. In England in
particular, this led to the enfeebling of the monarchy by the creation
of a new class of millionaires who were middle class or low ranking
nobles and squires who grew fat on the loot of Church land.
Thus,
looking at the manifold economic dangers and the cruelty of business
prevalent at the beginning of last century (and indeed prevalent today
in other parts of the world), the group of social reformers behind the
third way sought to predicate a solution to the problem of labor and
ownership, which is an attempt to meet what the Church has advocated in
her social teaching. This is an important point which will be stressed
later, Distributism can not be equated with Church teaching, because as
a movement it has much diverse thought and application. It is something
which could be achieved without membership in the Church theoretically.
One might ask why is this relevant today? Who cares
what some Englishmen thought in the 20th century, we are in 2008! There
are two reasons. The first is that the economic situation of our day,
exhausted by easy credit and a lack of real ownership of anything, is
headed for an apparent economic meltdown. A solution to this crisis
must be found, and socialism, condemned not only by the Church but by
historical experience, is a failure and can not lead to increased
justice in society.
Secondly,
there has risen in recent years, a growing number of Catholics in the
United States who have rejected magisterial teaching on economics and
social order, in favor of “neo-conservatism” in economics (free market
capitalism) and in the social order (interventionist policy). This is
not terribly surprising given that in the fight against abortion
Catholics have made an uneasy alliance with Protestants and embraced an
“American” point of view, which is out of harmony with Catholic social
teaching on the constitution of states, as well as economic justice.
Thus what was 100 years ago condemned as “liberalism” is now embraced
as “conservatism”.
The problem is that the Church
has consistently condemned the ideas behind Free Market Capitalism,
defined loosely as the idea that government should not be involved in
market regulation, and that the “market” will work according to certain
principles for the benefit of everyone involved. In reality, it
produces the same thing everywhere it is tried: an elite class of
owners and a mass of dispossessed laborers who own nothing and must
work for a wage. Though liberal capitalists will try and decry that
definition, it is the reality in every Capitalist country, whereas
formerly the majority of men owned the means of their own production.
The
Church’s magisterial teaching on this subject truly begins with Pope
Leo XIII in 1891. However, an important teaching came long before this
on one of the principle evils of Capitalism, namely usury, which today
we simply call by the non-pejorative term “interest”. In the encyclical
letter “Vix pervenit”, Pope Benedict XIV taught the following:
Show
your people with persuasive words that the sin and vice of usury is
most emphatically condemned in the Sacred Scriptures; that it assumes
various forms and appearances in order that the faithful, restored to
liberty and grace by the blood of Christ, may again be driven headlong
into ruin. Therefore, if they desire to invest their money, let them
exercise diligent care lest they be snatched by cupidity, the source of
all evil; to this end, let them be guided by those who excel in
doctrine and the glory of virtue.3
Nearly
one hundred and fifty years later, when the problem of labor had
affected nearly every country in Europe through revolution and the
spread of liberalism by Napoleon’s troops, the massive indebtedness of
society became clear and the Church had to act. While condemning
Socialism, Leo XIII condemned the features of Capitalism we have
already talked about, particularly the idea that the government ought
not to be involved:
The
richer population have many ways of protecting themselves, and stand
less in need of help from the State; those who are badly off have no
resources of their own to fall back upon, and must chiefly rely upon
the assistance of the State. And it is for this reason that
wage-earners, who are, undoubtedly, among the weak and necessitous
should be specially cared for and protected by the commonwealth.4
Furthermore,
some may argue that the government ought not be involved because the
wage earner makes a free contract with the employer, and it is between
them. However, Pope Leo rejects this line of thought as well:
There
is a dictate of nature more imperious and more ancient than any bargain
between man and man, that the remuneration must be enough to support
the wage-earner in reasonable and frugal comfort. If through necessity
or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an
employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.5 (My emphasis)
Ultimately,
for Pope Leo XIII the end of economic activity, even if man engages in
a wage contract, ought to be property, and that will be the solution to
the problem of Capital and Labor.
Many excellent results will follow from this; and, first of all, property will certainly become more equitably divided. For,
the result of civil change and revolution has been to divide cities
into two classes separated by a wide chasm. On the one side there is
the party which holds power because it holds wealth; which
has in its grasp the whole of labor and trade; which manipulates for
its own benefit and its own purposes all the sources of supply, and which is not without influence even in the administration of the commonwealth. On
the other side there is the needy and powerless multitude, sick and
sore in spirit and ever ready for disturbance. 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.6 (My emphasis)
Pope
Pius XI, evaluating Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical and expanding upon it 40
years later, makes a complete condemnation of the Free Market:
Just as the unity of human society cannot be founded on an opposition of classes, so also the right ordering of economic life cannot be left to a free competition of forces. For from this source, as from a poisoned spring, have originated and spread all the errors of individualist economic teaching.
Destroying through forgetfulness or ignorance the social and moral
character of economic life, it held that economic life must be
considered and treated as altogether free from and independent of
public authority, because in the market, i.e., in the free struggle
of competitors, it would have a principle of self direction which
governs it much more perfectly than would the intervention of any
created intellect. But free competition, while justified and certainly
useful provided it is kept within certain limits, clearly cannot direct
economic life -- a truth which the outcome of the application in
practice of the tenets of this evil individualistic spirit has more
than sufficiently demonstrated.7
One
could not have a more clear condemnation of Free Market Capitalism from
the magisterial authority. For all the quotes I could produce from
Quadragesimo Anno to this effect, some may remain incredulous. We have
had an Ecumenical Council, a new Catechism and new Popes since then,
not to mention 77 years of economic life. Surely these are outmoded,
no?
Fortunately,
for all the problems in the Church since Vatican II, the magisterium
has not turned a blind eye to the problem of economics. Pope John Paul
II, being able to appreciate Capitalism in all of its forms both before
and after the fall of Communism, taught in his encyclical Centessimus
Annus:
It
is the task of the State to provide for the defence and preservation of
common goods such as the natural and human environments, which cannot
be safeguarded simply by market forces. Just as in the time of
primitive capitalism the State had the duty of defending the basic
rights of workers, so now, with the new capitalism, the State and all
of society have the duty of defending those collective goods which,
among others, constitute the essential framework for the legitimate
pursuit of personal goals on the part of each individual.8
And again:
It
is right to speak of a struggle against an economic system, if [that
system] is understood as a method of upholding the absolute
predominance of capital, the possession of the means of production and
of the land, in contrast to the free and personal nature of human work.
In the struggle against such a system, what is being proposed as an
alternative is not the socialist system, which in fact turns out to be
State capitalism, but rather a society of free work, of enterprise and
of participation. Such a society is not directed against the market, but demands that the market be appropriately controlled by the forces of society and by the State, so as to guarantee that the basic needs of the whole of society are satisfied. 9 (My emphasis)
In
no way has the Church changed her teaching, she continues to advocate a
third way from Capitalism and Socialism, even in the midst of our
supposed “progress”. Thus, Distributism, attempting to meet the call of
the living magisterium for a third way, provides a model. It does not
declare itself to be the only model, but it does declare it is an
alternative based on the Church’s principles, to both atheistic
socialism and atheistic capitalism.
Lastly,
one might again be tempted to dismiss Distributism on the grounds that
the Church has not right to teach on science. This objection is to
confuse what economics is entirely. Economics is not a science the same
way physics is a science, and it never could be. At best, it can be
described as a social science, since it deals with human actions and
motivations in the creation, investment and dispersion of capital and
labor. It is dependent on what human beings will do, and unlike
gravity, human beings do not perform the same thing in the same
situation. Pope Pius XI, with his keen understanding of these
arguments, dismissed the objection in his great encyclical:
Even though economics and moral science employs each its own principles in its own sphere, it
is, nevertheless, an error to say that the economic and moral orders
are so distinct from and alien to each other that the former depends in
no way on the latter. Certainly
the laws of economics, as they are termed, being based on the very
nature of material things and on the capacities of the human body and
mind, determine the limits of what productive human effort cannot, and
of what it can attain in the economic field and by what means. Yet
it is reason itself that clearly shows, on the basis of the individual
and social nature of things and of men, the purpose which God ordained
for all economic life.10 (My Emphasis)
The
Church has indeed pointed the way, it is for us to expound the
particulars and heed her example by putting them into practice, so as
to establish economic justice in society. Terms like “social justice”,
“common good”, “economic justice” and the like are terms we as
conservatives have grown to severely dislike because they are used by
liberals. However, as the ancient dictum goes, abusus non prohibet usum11;
to faithfully turn to what the Church has asked us, we need to make our
worldview entirely Catholic rather than embracing socialism or
liberalism because that is the view of a given political party.
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Notes:
1)Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, no. 33, 15 May 1891
2)In his works Crisis of Civilization; Europe and the Faith; and How
the Reformation Happened, one could almost say Belloc wrote the same
book three different ways, all describing how the Protestant
Reformation, in destroying the unity of European civilization, broke
the traditional protections for workers which were in existence, and
replaced them with the Capitalistic spirit of Calvin.
3)Pope Benedict XIV, Vix Pervenit, no. 7, 1 Novemebr 1745
4)Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, no. 29
5)Ibid, no 45
6)Ibid, no 47
7)Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, no. 88, 15 May 1931
8)Pope John Paul II, Centessimus Annus, no. 40, 1 May 1991
9)Ibid, no. 35
10)Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, no. 42
11)The abuse does not prohibit the use
