Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Distributism Is the Future (That Few People Want)
Distributism Is the Future (That Few People Want)
Apr 26, 2025 12:40 AM

Over the years, many of us here at Acton have been engaged in long-running(and mostly congenial) feud with distributists.

Family squabbles can often be the most heated, and that is true of this rivalry between the Christianchampions of distributism and the Christian champions of free markets here at the Acton Institute. We fight among ourselves because we have an awful lot mon.

For example, we share the afocus on encouraging subsidiarity, self-sufficiency, and entrepreneurship. We also share arespect for rule of law, private property, and the essential nature of the family. The key difference — at least as viewed from this side of the feud —can be summed up in one word: distributism is mostly unrealistic.

That’s a long-standing critique, but it’s also one that may bechanging. Not that distributistsare necessarily ing more realistic (I don’t know that they are) but merely that some of the most forward-thinking of the neo-distributists (the neo-neo-distributists?) are adopting a more realistic form of unrealistic aspirations.

To see what I mean, consider the old school neo-distributist model for how the system could work in the real world: the Mondragon Corporation. The only example these type of neo-distributists ever give — and good grief, they refer to it ad nauseam – is the Mondragon Corporation, a Spanish worker cooperative federation. The problem with using the Mondragon Corporation as a model of distributism is that it does not fit the basic definition of a distributist firm.

For starters, it’s hard to see how such as pany fits the ideal of “localism.” Mondragon has over 70,000 employees in panies and annual revenues of more than 13 billion. The idea that individual workers are “owners” is a myth that even their employees don’t consider real. A third of pany’s employees are not even members of the collective. And surveys have shown that relatively few workers in Mondragon firms consider themselves to be “owners” of pany. Most seem to agree withone worker who said, “I am the owner of my job. The only property I have is my job.” If the only “property” you own is your job, then you do not own property. You don’t even own your job as much as your job ownsyou.

Multi-billion dollar globalist collectives owned by two-thirds of the employees is not a practical modelfor changing America’s economic system. What is needed is more small-scale practical changes — andany of the more realistic of the neo-distributists have begun to recognize this reality. In a recent debate sponsored by Acton, distributist Joseph Pearce said,

[I]n practical terms, every policy or every practice that leads to a reuniting of man with the land and capital on which he depends for his sustenance is a step in the right direction. Every policy or practice that puts him more at the mercy of those who control the land and the capital on which he depends, and therefore who controls his labor also, is a step in the wrong direction. Practical politics is about moving in the right direction, however slowly.

Over the past few years there has been two economic shifts toward practices that reunite “man with the land and capital on which he depends for his sustenance.” They are the “gig economy” and the“sharing economy.”

Gene Callahan recognizes this shift in a smart essay in The American Conservative titled “Distributism is the Future.” After explaining the basic theory and history of distributism, Callahan says, “Let us examine some existing instances of economic activities that are more or less distributist in character.”

His first example (of course) is Mondragon (it might now be a requirement for distributist to mention pany in every essay), though Callahan points out some of the many reasons it might not be the best model. His second example — open-source software projects — is interesting, but as he admits, suffers from the fact that most of the “workers” don’t actually make any money.

His third example is the most intriguing of all:

munications revolution has made distributism more feasible in other ways as well. What is called the “sharing economy” has been a hot subject in the news, and in city councils, panies like Airbnb and Uber have cut into the business of traditional hotels and taxi services, respectively. panies can be characterized, to some extent, as distributist enterprises.

Airbnb, by allowing homeowners to treat their property as small hotels, turns ordinary homes into capital goods, something of which Chesterton and Belloc would have approved. Uber does the same with people’s automobiles.

I can picture the Wendell Berry-type distributists spewing their locally-grown coffee all over puter screens after reading Uber and Airbnb are models of distributism. But I think Callahan is mostly correct. The sharing economy is likely to be the most realistic form of distributism we will see in our lifetimes.

And that’s bad news for distributism.

G.K. Chesterton, one of the founding fathers of distributism, quipped that, “The problem with capitalism is not too many capitalists, but not enough capitalists.” If that is a problem for capitalism, it is the fatal blow to distributism. The single biggest reason why distributism has not yet, nor ever will, e a mainstream “third way” is because relatively few people want to rely on their own private property to provide their e. Few people have the capacity, much less the willingness, to be self-sufficient capitalists in the mode that true distributism requires.

Yesterday, the Boston Globe Magazine ran an article with a headline that summarizes the problem: “The gig economy ing. You probably won’t like it.”

According to a 2014 missioned by the Freelancers Union, 53 million Americans are independent workers, about 34 percent of the total workforce. A study from Intuit predicts that by 2020, 40 percent of US workers will fall into this category.

While there is considerable disagreement over this projection, what is clear is that “more and more jobs are being moved to independent contractor status,” says Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University. Pfeffer cites a recent paper that found that “the percentage of workers engaged in alternative work arrangements rose from 10.1 percent in February 2005 to 15.8 percent in late 2015.” This rise accounts for over 9 million people — more than all of the net employment growth in the US economy over that decade.

I’m one of those 9 million. For the past five years, I’ve been an independent laborer who works from home. All of the products and services I provide (blog posts, editing, etc.) are produced with material goods that I own (a laptop, etc.). I’ve been living the distributist dream.I can also attest that this distributist ideal is is hard. Very, very hard.

I don’t have employee benefits (I pay for health insurance out of my own pocket) or take vacations (my last vacation was in 2008) and I have to pay all of my own payroll taxes (if you work for someone else take what your payroll taxes and double them — that’s what I pay). I also work many more hours than would a person who has a nine-to-five corporate job.

And yet . . . I wouldn’t change a thing. For me, this type of situation is the best option available. But it’s not for everyone. Indeed, it’s not for most people.

Most workers want security. They want limited responsibility. They want to sell their labor on the open market and collect a paycheck. They don’t want the extra layer of having bine their labor with some tangible “capital goods” in order to make a living. They want to work for someone else, have someone else give them pay and benefits, and leave the worries to someone else.

Like the distributists, I wish the world were full of entrepreneurs who were more willing and able to make a living solely through their own capital and labor. Unfortunately, we don’t live in such a world. And if this is the vision distributist’s vision for the future, it’s a vision of a future that most people don’t want.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Reagan, Whittaker Chambers, and the Threat to Freedom
Over at the Liberty Law Blog, there is an excellent post titled “Ronald Reagan, Whittaker Chambers, and the Dialogue of Liberty” by Alan Snyder. Snyder delves into the influence Chambers had on Reagan and how their worldviews differed as well. Many conservatives and scholars felt Chambers’ prediction that the West was on the losing side of history in the battle against Marxism collapsed after the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union. For many, the ideas of Chambers...
How to Love Liberty More Than a Libertarian Economist
I have a deep and abiding love for liberty—which is why I find myself so often in disagreement with libertarians. Libertarians love liberty too, of course, but they tend to love liberty a bit differently. I love liberty in an earthy, elemental way. I love liberty because I need it—like I need air and food—for human flourishing. In contrast, the libertarians I’ve encountered tend to love liberty primarily as an abstraction. Indeed, the most ideologically consistent libertarians I know seem...
How to Steal a Bike in New York City
Edmund Burke didn’t really say it, but it still rings true: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. In a test of this maxim, filmmaker Casey Neistat tries to steal his own bike in several locations around New York City and finds that most people do nothing about it—even when it’s done right in front of a police station. I recently spent a couple of days conducting a bike theft experiment, which...
Integral Human Development
The Journal of Markets & Morality is planning a theme issue for the Spring of 2013: “Integral Human Development,” i.e. the synthesis of human freedom and responsibility necessary for the material and spiritual enrichment of human life. According to Pope Benedict XVI, Integral human development presupposes the responsible freedom of the individual and of peoples: no structure can guarantee this development over and above human responsibility. (Caritas in Veritate 17) There is a delicate balance between the material and the...
Constitutional Cases and the Four Cardinal Virtues
Should virtue be a consideration in judicial decisionmaking? Indiana Law Professor R. George Wright makes an intriguing argument for why the four cardinal virtues could be useful in interpreting constitutional cases: Judges typically decide constitutional cases by referring to one or more legal precedents, rules, tests, principles, doctrines, or policies. This Article mends supplementing this standard approach with fully legitimate and appropriate attention to what many cultures have long recognized as the four basic cardinal virtues of practical wisdom or...
Is Work a Curse?
Is work a curse, a result of mankind’s fall from grace? Not according to the Book of Genesis. As Hugh Whelchel, Executive Director of the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics, explains, what Adam was called to do in the garden is what we are still called to do in our work today: Humanity was created by God to cultivate and keep God’s creation, which included developing it and protecting it. You see, we were created to be stewards of...
Lord Acton and the Power of the Historian
Looking through my back stacks of periodicals the other day I ran across a review in Books & Culture by David Bebbington, “Macaulay in the Dock,” of a recent biography of Thomas Babington Macaulay. The essay takes its point of departure in Lord Acton’s characterization of Macaulay as “one of the greatest of all writers and masters, although I think him utterly base, contemptible and odious.” As Bebbington writes, “Acton, a towering intellectual of the later 19th century, was at...
Let’s Change Hearts and Minds (and Laws, Too)
Few clichés are so widespread within the evangelical subculture, says Matthew Lee Anderson, as the notion that our witness must be one of “changing hearts and minds.” In careful hands, the idea is at best ambiguous. At worst it reinforces the sort of interior-oriented individualism that allows for and perpetuates a blissful naivete about how institutions and structures shape our dispositions and thoughts. In less than careful hands, the phrase drives a wedge between law and culture by attempting to...
Italy’s Tax Man Takes Aim at the Vatican
Kishore Jayabalan, the Acton Institute’s Rome office director, was interviewed by the Zenit news agency in an article titled, “Is Taxing the Church a Real Solution for Italy?” In the article, Jayabalan discusses the history of the Italian state and its imposition of property taxes on the Roman Catholic Church’s land holdings, residences and non-profit businesses. Sometimes in the past, particularly under Napoleonic rule and before the Lateran Pacts, the institution of property tax was often a subject of state...
Obamacare’s Religious Rubes
The White House has a plan to mobilize prayer vigils in front of the Supreme Court in defense of Obamacare. It was reported that the administration met with leaders at non-profit organizations and religious officials who support the new health care law. The court takes up the constitutional test of the health care mandate in a couple of weeks. The mandate has now been challenged in 26 states. Cue the same stale big government religious prophets who confuse statism and...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved