A little backstory. A few years ago, we were asked to prepare an explanation of what we mean by “the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism.” Even though we are an interfaith group, the request came from an official at the Vatican (not the pope or anyone you know). We wrote the explanation based on universal principles of natural law applicable to all “natural” faiths and philosophies (mostly based on or compatible with Aristotelian philosophy).
It was so good, we turned it into a short book, Economic Personalism. Without much (or any) fanfare, we made it available to the public, positioning it as a text to counter the prevalent socialist-capitalist ideologies and which integrates the reality of natural law and Louis O. Kelso’s “economics of reality” — binary economics.
Given the sad shape of Academia and the virtual enslavement to Keynesian economics (which might reasonably be called “the economics of illusion and wishful thinking” or even — a nod to Dr. Richard Feynman — “cargo cult economics”) throughout the world, it did not prove very popular. Of course, admittedly, we didn’t push very hard, either, but were focused on other projects.
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| Someone looking for the shirt he lost in Ukraine |
Along came the Russian “Special Military Operation” (a.k.a. “invasion”) and the issue of funding the war effort to say nothing of the cost of rebuilding the country after the devastation of the invas . . . er, SMO. It changed a lot of people’s perception of the rightness of government or private sector elite (or the combination in the Servile State) control of money, credit, capital, and the lives, liberties, and property of ordinary people. It didn’t present too many alternatives (or any at all, for that matter), but it did create a lot of dissatisfaction with the current system. This was on top of the whole mess left by COVID. We decided it was time to make another effort.
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| Pope of Personalism |
This created a slight difficulty. Although written by an interfaith group, Economic Personalism is from a “Catholic” (actually “catholic” would be more accurate) natural law perspective, so to reassure people that we are not contradicting any official teaching of the Catholic Church — natural law, teachings, that is, not its religious teachings, which are the exclusive business of the Catholic Church — we decided to seek official certification to that effect, called an “imprimatur” (which we recently obtained).
An imprimatur, although it pertains to both faith and morals, actually reassures non-Catholics and even non-Christians that the “moral philosophy” of economic personalism is sound. You might not accept a single one of the religious teachings of the Catholic Church, but the moral authority of the Catholic Church is (within limits) respected by many people, regardless of faith or philosophy.
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| G.K. Chesterton |
As part of the process of obtaining an imprimatur, we sought the support and advice of a number of people, Catholic and even non-Christian. All were very supportive, even complimentary, but we got one question from a “distributist,” the socio-economic theory promoted by G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. As the commentator said,
I have downloaded the book and am looking at it. From what I have read, it seems to be based on the economic doctrine of the Church as presented by Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI, and on Distributism as described by Chesterton and Belloc. I am surprised you don’t mention E.F. Schumacher, another more modern defender of Distributism (a term you don’t use).
As we responded, originally, we had material relating to distributism, but it was suggested we remove it as the book was intended to explain economic personalism, and mentioning other systems might get complex and add unnecessary pages. There is also the difficulty that some followers of Chesterton are trying to change the term, suggesting “Localism,” which has spread a great deal of confusion.
Plus, as you probably know, asking two “Chestertonians” for a definition of distributism often gets you four or five definitions; they can’t be satisfied with Chesterton’s straightforward “policy of small ownership with a preference for family-owned farms and businesses” (which is compatible with economic personalism). We’ve even come across people who insist what they mean by capitalism or socialism is what Chesterton meant by Distributism.
We do cover distributism and its relationship to economic personalism in other books, such as The Greater Reset (2022), co-authored by Michael D. Greaney and Dawn Brohawn, although even there the editor asked us to take out most of it (“too long”). We are currently finishing the draft of a book covering distributism in some depth and why in our opinion it didn’t become public policy.
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| E.F. Schumacher |
As for Schumacher, we’re cautious about him. He was the protégé of John Maynard Keynes, whose economic theories are, in our opinion, responsible for many of the problems in today’s global economy. Schumacher was a member of the Fabian Society, the “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing”, the inner circle, in fact, and a member of the post-World War II British government that one member of the Fabian Society said, “It looks like a great Fabian school!”
Evelyn Waugh was extremely negative about the Fabians, describing the post-World War II British government as “The Occupation.” He described it in fictional form in his darkly humorous novella, Love Among the Ruins, which was probably inspired by Waugh’s admiration of Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson’s satiric apocalyptic novel Lord of the World. Also, in his book A Guide for the Perplexed, Schumacher claimed truth changes at different levels of consciousness, which as Aristotelians we cannot accept.
So, why not distributism? Well, for one, we’re not entirely sure what distributism is . . .
#30#
