Communism and libertarianism have failed- distributism is our hope for the future

[Almanac]

Interesting Almanac. That's a new term on me. Is there a significant difference between the principles of distributism and those of social democracy?

Distributism in principle opposes the welfare state as it fosters a state of servitude.

But it is more an economic philosophy than a political ideology.

[Cael]

Ditributism is complete nonsense, because it still means a huge struggle with the current ruling class. i.e. the owners of the means of production - and all you manage to do is set up new private owners to take their place. Yes, there will be more private owners - as after Devs Land Commission drives of the 1930s and 40s - but private landed property will soon revert to type, as it already had by the 1980s. There are now only 44,000 full time farmers in the 26 counties.

[Retrolives]

I'm highly open to Distributivism because it says positive things about private property and entrepreneurship, but it seems to be completely lost when it comes to the business cycle (more appropriately known as the government cycle). This is the crucial element that is completely missing in all schools that exist outside of the Austrian School.

Catholic priests for centuries in the Middle Ages called fractional reserve banking and currency debasement of a central bank a sin since they are based on fraud and theft respectively, but then all the modern guys like Chesterton seemed to never encounter any of this literature and could therefore only take their analysis so far.....

Also, libertarianism is really an Austrian School phenomenon, and Friedman was a central banking statist from the Chicago School, and within the Austrian School Hayek won the Nobel Prize for a reason, as in he rejected natural law, wrote confusing and convoluted sentences that could be interpreted in many ways, and believed in a central government to control large parts of our lives. He, for example considered nagging between a husband and wife coercion which needed government intervention. LOL. The Austrians who the mainstreamers hate are the Natural Law ones, centred around Murray Rothbard. These are important differences.

[TradCat]

It probably looks too left to the right and too right to the left. But the vast majority in the middle only want something that works.

·To break up, prudently, the great, politically-favored banks
·To sharply restrict the revolving door between regulated banks and corporations and the regulatory agencies.

Just let them go to the wall and stop propping them up

;
·To focus mortgage lending on small, locally controlled savings banks (such as the pre-1981 American “Savings and Loans”) and Credit Unions;

Once the big banks are gone that will happen anyway.

·To replace welfare benefits with opportunities for property ownership and the creation of “children’s trusts.”

How would this work. A person who loses their job needs an income. If he is for example a carpenter he is out of work because there is not enough work for carpenters. How do you address that lack of demand?

·To limit direct and indirect mortgage subsidies – including tax benefits – to only one residence per family (disallowing them on “second” or vacation homes and investment properties);

Why not just abolish them all. We know they drive up prices.

To move toward a modest, uniform protective tariff;

Which would be the same everywhere? On everything? A trade tax in effect. Why is trade a bad thing? All those co-ops will need to trade. Why make it harder for them?

·To fill the prisons with white-collar criminals who have violated the public trust through fraud;

Nothing wrong with that. I assume we're going to kill off the scumbags who are in there at the moment to free up the spaces.

To redirect farm subsidies ($20 Billion annually in the USA) away from vast agri-businesses toward the encouragement of small, general purpose farms (with the quid pro quo that families receiving assistance would open their properties to visiting school children, and so on)

Why not just abolish the subsidies altogether and make food cheaper for everyone?

·To loosen zoning laws and other restrictive covenants so as to allow greater use of family homes as places of work and production for market (e.g., telecommuting, professional offices)

All for it.

To make credit available, at favored rates, to new family businesses and other micro-enterprises.

I could live with that

·To impose a progressive corporate income tax on retail giants

That would drive up prices. I don't know if people remember how bad the shops were before the supermarkets.

To improve the highway system

More a US thing.

To focus tax relief on families with dependent children

A bachelor tax perhaps? I think so. Those who don't have children are expecting ours to pay the taxes to fund their state pensions. Let's make them pay.

[SevenStars]

Not systemically. Marx, with his ideology of hate, is responsible for that.

Yes systematically. The preachers who led the masses in medavial and early modern revolts had a clear world view which often saw the lords and the wealthy as actually demonic and called outright for their extermination on occasion. There is very little if any "hatred" or fire in Marx compared to earlier Communists like Blanqui or Babeuf.

I suppose that Donso Cortes and Joseph De Maistre had an idealolgy of love?

http://www.amazon.com/Pursuit-Millen.../dp/0195004566

[Hazlitt]

[FONT=Verdana][SIZE=2]Communism has been tried and tested and found severely wanting. But so has libertarianism:[/SIZE][/FONT]

And he may even say, as many of his and Mises’s supporters do, that Reagan and Thatcher and Pinochet and 100 others “didn’t do it right.”

What the heck are you talking about? To say that Reagan and Thatcher were libertarians is simply not a credible statement. Nonsense.

Both Marx and Mises...delivered states of enormous power, expense, and tyranny.

Again, the premise of your whole thread is completely, historically, factually false. A "Mises" state, where? When?

Both Marx and Mises run up against the Law of Unintended Consequences.

It would be interesting where exactly you saw the implementation of any model endorsed by Mises... you've yet to show that.

...Since consequences are potentially infinite and intentions necessarily finite, this law is always operative.

Let me guess, distributism is immune from this law?

[FONT=Verdana]There is another way: distributism[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]Distributive justice is distributism's key principle.[/FONT]

Almanac this is nonsense, it's redistribution just under a different name or at less frequent intervals, this is Socialism pure and simple. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig!

[FONT=Verdana]There are many examples of the successful application of distributist theory in cooperative systems such as:[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]"...[the] Mondragón Cooperative Corporation (MCC). Recently, the workers in the Fagor Appliance Factory in Mondragón, Spain, received an 8% cut in pay.[/FONT][/FONT] [FONT=Verdana]This is not unusual in such hard economic times. What is unusual is that the workers voted themselves this pay cut. They could do this because the workers are also the owners of the firm.[/FONT][FONT=Verdana]"

And in a free society people can organise the ownership structures of their organisation however they see fit....

[FONT=Verdana]Distributism is our best hope for the future.[/FONT]

Why? How!?

All you've given us is nice words with no pragmatic or detailed analysis of how such a society would operate. All that's been said is "society" would decide how "best" to distribute property based on "societies" criteria at the time of their own choosing. Anyone who doesn't think this is just a variation of Socialism is a fool.

[SevenStars]

Almanac this is nonsense, it's redistribution just under a different name or at less frequent intervals, this is Socialism pure and simple. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig!
.

Good point. Who is going to do this re-dristribution? And as Cael pointed out what is going to stop these small family businesses growing into large companies by taking over other firms or naturally growing?

Distributism is reactionary dream that no one with any real social power would be interested in seeing realised.

[SevenStars]

Perhaps you would prefer the alternative to distributism. Because this is where we're heading if the middle classes disappear.

And just how does the disappearance of the middle class effect the proletariat?

[Fr. Hank Tree]

it's redistribution just under a different name or at less frequent intervals, this is Socialism pure and simple. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig!

Are you saying redistributivism (or whatever the word is) necessarily equals socialism?

[farnaby]

[FONT=Verdana]The grow your own movement together with the increased interest in self-sufficiency, subsidiarity, sustainability, local production, and local currencies all seem to fit very well into the distributist model.[/FONT]

Despite seeing the attractiveness of distributism I have two big issues with it.

First, to make all of the above universal principles of economic life would have the effect of removing economies of scale and division of labour that have enabled massive advances in technology and consumption globally, and I consider it impossible that local production could hope to emulate the productive power of the current economic system. Consider the creation and widespread use of mobile phone technology - how could that have come about through distributism? Under distributism our standards of living would drop, measured as they are currently by consumption and income. Some may argue this is not a bad thing against the benefits of distributism (and environmentalism) - but the distributist literature I have encountered does not readily admit we would be living with less.

Secondly, distributism's emphasis on producing your own stuff reminds me too much of a leisured urban class romanticising rural life. From my armchair I can imagine the dignity, security and simple pleasure of producing my own e.g. food, furniture etc. But I can also imagine the hard graft needed to persevere in that lifestyle and the hardship of doing without much we currently have, including our current creature comforts, e.g. the China-made computer I type this on... I wonder how many would really prefer the distributist lifestyle to what we currently have.