As we conclude
this brief series examining “The ABC’s of Catholic Economics,” it becomes
evident why Chesterton was so adamant that, while the principles of science,
politics, and religion must be compatible with each other and consistent with
reality, they cannot be combined or mixed without disaster.
All truth is true,
but that doesn’t mean that, e.g., the
truth that 2 + 2 = 4 is the same truth as mixing yellow and blue gives you
green. There is no contradiction between
the two truths, and each is equally true . . . but they aren’t the same truth,
and the fact that 2 + 2 = 4 does not disprove the fact that mixing yellow and
blue gives you green. Neither does it
mean that 2 + 2 = green, or mixing yellow and blue gives you four.
Yet people who
insist on mixing science and religion often end up making statements and
drawing conclusions that are equally nonsensical — which is why Chesterton
reminded people that you can’t prove the truths or science by those of
religion, or vice versa, and the only
sure guarantee against making this fundamental mistake is to keep first
principles firmly in mind at all times.
So to reiterate
and conclude our discussion of “The ABC’s of Catholic Economics” we restate the
definition of distributism and the first principle of Catholic social doctrine:
Distributism: a loose theory of socio-economics based on the natural law assumption
that it is better to be an owner than not to own, with a preference for small,
family owned farms and artisan businesses and enterprises. When enterprises must be large, workers
should own the company through equity shares, presumably that carry the vote
and pay dividends.
First Principle of Catholic Social Doctrine:
Everything in human society, including any program of social betterment, must
be subject to the precepts of the natural law.
* * *
Keeping in mind
that definition and that principle, we can conclude our commentary and answer
the question whether distributism is a parody of Christianity:
R is for Rerum
Novarum, the encyclical issued on May 15, 1891 by Pope Leo XIII. Rerum
sought to address the shocking injustices of modernity by condemning usury,
finance capitalism, and socialism. Rerum emphasized the dignity of labor
and the rights and responsibilities of workers.
Commentary:
No. As explained
above, Rerum Novarum addressed the
problems created by liberalism and socialism, specifically the “new things” of
New Christianity and Neo-Catholicism that subordinate all things, including the
natural law, to whatever goal is sought (usually the betterment of human
society; “the end justifies the means”).
The response to all of these is widespread capital ownership as the
primary means of empowering ordinary people to resist the intrusion of the
State.
S is for Sheen, Fulton, the man known to so many as
“America’s Bishop.” Archbishop Sheen inspired many to convert to the Catholic
faith, and provided decades of books and lectures on the evils of atheism,
socialism, and usury.
Commentary:
No. While what is said is true, it gives the
wrong impression of Sheen’s work and primary focus throughout his career: taking
Collective Man out of the spotlight and putting God back at the center. This was the point of his first two books, God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy
(1925) and Religion Without God
(1928) and provided a constant theme in all his work. By subordinating everything, including the
natural law, to the demand for social betterment, liberals and socialists have
turned the order of things on its head.
Collective Man, not God, is at the center.
T is for
Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel (J.R.R.
Tolkien), the famed author of The Lord of the Rings and The
Hobbit. Although Tolkien never understood his works to be allegories of the
Gospels, nevertheless his close friendship with C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton,
and other Distributist authors inspired Tolkien’s vision of the ideal
Distributist community: the Shire.
Commentary:
This is
opinion. No comment.
U is for Unity, a key teaching of the Church. For there to
be peace, there must exist a state of harmony and shared purpose between clans,
classes, and communities. The family (the clan) is the first and most important
of these, then the economic groups (the classes), and then the political
organization (the communities).
Commentary:
No. This appears to be a distorted version of
solidarity, the internalization of the principles that define a group as that
particular group. Solidarity is a
characteristic of groups per se. As such, it may be virtuous, or it may
not. Nazis and street gangs, for
example, have a high degree of solidarity.
As stated here, there is no distinction between voluntary unity and
enforced unity. If unity is taken as a
virtue or principle in and of itself, then the temptation is to enforce it
coercively, for anyone who does not appear to be going along with the group is,
ipso facto, a criminal, a dissenter,
or a social deviant. This justifies
shunning, deportation, imprisonment, or even — taken to the extreme — death
camps to rid society of undesirables, i.e.,
anyone who does not go along with the program.
This is precisely what happened in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, when
the laws were made deliberately vague in order to give judges wide discretion
in cases involving anti-social behavior or attitudes contrary to the interests
of the State. Msgr. John A. Ryan
advocated rounding up the unemployed and incarcerating them in work camps.
V is for Violence, condemned by the Church
and the Distributists under all but the most exacting circumstances (Just War).
Violence is endemic to the State, especially the modern total war State, which
is, in part, why many of the Distributists preferred monarchy or anarchy as the
best form of government.
Commentary:
 |
| Ralph Barton Perry |
No. This is the a posteriori logical fallacy.
The statement, “Violence is endemic to the State, especially the modern
total war State,” is presented as an empirical fact, and empirical facts cannot
be known by reason alone; they are practical, not speculative, knowledge. As an additional problem, the claim that
violence is endemic to the State is opinion, not knowledge, and therefore non-factual. The claim boils down to an assertion of a
“non-factual fact,” what Ralph Barton Perry called a “hypothetical fact.” Someone may deeply and sincerely believe that
the State is inherently violent, but it is not proved. This invalidates the argument even if the
claim were not already a logical fallacy.
Finally, while it is permissible to prefer monarchy (although how or why
monarchy, a system of State governance, is somehow separated from other forms
of the State is not clear), at least as long as the monarchy — the term means
“rule of one” — respects human dignity, to call anarchy a “form of government”
is absurd. Anarchy, which the Catholic
Church condemns, is not a form of government, but an absence of government.
W is for Worker, Catholic, the movement and
newspaper founded on Distributist principles by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in
1933.
Commentary:
 |
| Peter Maurin |
No. If we accept that distributism is compatible
with Catholic social doctrine, the first and foremost distributist principle is
that all things, including programs of social betterment, must be subject to
the natural law. The first and foremost
principle of the Catholic Worker movement is that all things, including the
natural law, must be subject to the demand for social betterment.
X is for Xavier, Francis. Although known more as a gifted missionary,
Saint Francis Xavier was also a brilliant organizer of fledgling Christian
communities, and a missionary who understood the importance of local clergy and
leaders providing for both the physical and spiritual needs of their flock.
Commentary:
This looks like
something thrown in just to have the letter X represented. In light of the fact that K and L were left
out, perhaps X should have been omitted as well.
Y is for Young Men’s Institute, an example of the kind of
fraternal benefit organizations that were once common amongst Catholic
communities. Distributism views such organizations as key to community
stability and family security.
Commentary:
See the comment
for the letter X, above.
Z is
for Zita’s Home for Friendless Women, a shelter for women rejected by society.
Mother Zita (Emily O’Keefe, an Irish immigrant to New York) founded the home
and insisted that a Sister sleep by the door so that women seeking shelter
could be admitted at any hour of the day or night. The last of their nuns
and some former residents now live in St. Zita's Villa, a home for elderly
women, in Monsey, N.Y.
Commentary:
See the comment
for the letter X, above.
* * *
 |
| Chesterton, Baring, and Belloc |
Having gone
through “The ABCs of Catholic Economics,” it becomes evident that the popular
impression of distributism presented in the article has very little, if
anything, to do with what Chesterton and Belloc were saying, or that the
Catholic Church teaches. Private
property, ownership, sovereignty of the human person under God — these key
principles and concepts are completely ignored in what appeared to be an effort
to make science, even a social science, conform to, instead of being guided by,
supernatural instead of natural principles.
That being the
case, the only possible response to the question, “Is Distributism a Parody of
Christianity?” is “yes and no.”
Frankly,
Chesterton’s and Belloc’s system was not, in fact, a system at all, but a vague
vision. Chesterton avoided giving any
specifics, and contented himself with describing the benefits of a society
characterized by small ownership. Belloc
attempted to present a game plan, but it was based on incorrect assumptions —
most notably the “slavery of savings” — that precluded his effort from being
anything other than a frustrating exercise.
Economics, like
nature, abhors a vacuum. Inevitably,
since neither Chesterton nor Belloc were able to give any specifics that had a
chance of working, people filled in the blanks for themselves — and what they
filled in the blanks with was, in many cases, Fabian socialism . . . which did
have a program and that had already demonstrated it was politically
feasible. It is an almost an accident of
history that the program into which many distributists have slid so easily is
precisely the program distributism was designed and intended to counter. Yet to this day few distributists are aware
that some of the people they believe to be fellow distributists, such as R.H.
Tawney and E.F. Schumacher, were members of the Fabian Society.
 |
Ironically,
twenty-two years after Chesterton’s death, and a short time after that of
Belloc, Louis O. Kelso and Mortimer J. Adler published The
Capitalist Manifesto (1958) and The New Capitalists
(1961) presenting a financially and politically feasible program of expanded
capital ownership. When the proposal was
partly adopted in 1973 with the passage of the initial enabling legislation for
the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) as the first step in “the Expanded
Ownership Revolution,” it immediately proved its worth by turning millions of
workers in thousands of companies into part owners without the use of the
workers’ savings or reductions in pay or benefits.
What CESJ today
calls “the Just Third Way” was, in fact, partly an answer to the problem of
distributism — explicitly so. In his
Preface to The Capitalist Manifesto,
Adler specifically mentioned Belloc as someone who had raised the issue of lack
of capital ownership. Why not mention
Chesterton? Because Chesterton never got
into how to bring about distributism, just how nice it would be. Belloc did address the “how” — inadequately —
and Kelso and Alder presented him with a completed answer in The New Capitalists, which showed how to
use the commercial and central banking system to finance expanded capital
ownership without redistribution.
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