Distributism and the Restoration of Freedom

Mr Pearce, a scholar of Distributism and the Chesterbelloc, reviews a new book defending the idea of economic independence through Distributism

From The Imaginative-Conservative

By Joseph Pearce

Alexander Salter’s “The Political Economy of Distributism” is a much-needed scholarly work on the ideas of distributism, as presented in the writings of Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton. Written in such a way that it will pass muster in the ivory towers of academe, it is also accessible for any reader interested in politics and economics, or indeed the minds and ideas of messieurs Belloc and Chesterton.

last week’s essay, “Demonizing Distributism by Association”, I defended Alexander Salter, the author of The Political Economy of Distributism, from an ad hominem attack upon him in National Review. This week, having recently received a review copy of his book, I intend to defend him and his book, and the creed of distributism, based upon the solid scholarship that he presents.

Subtitled Property, Liberty and the Common Good, Dr. Salter’s book is a much-needed scholarly work on the ideas of distributism, as presented in the writings of Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton. Written in such a way that it will pass muster in the ivory towers of academe, it is also accessible for any reader interested in politics and economics, or indeed the minds and ideas of messieurs Belloc and Chesterton.

Dr. Salter’s approach is commendably systematic. Setting the scene in his introductory chapter, in which he lays out the economic landscape and distributism’s place within it, he then offers a necessary foundational chapter on the role of Catholic Social Teaching, especially as expressed in Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical, Rerum Novarum. Issued in 1891, this groundbreaking magisterial document laid the philosophical foundations of the Catholic Church’s response to the economic and political challenges of the modern age. At the heart of such teaching are the twin pillars of subsidiarity and solidarity. The former is the principle of what would now be called localism, the empowerment of families and small communities against the political and economic encroachment of centralizing power; the latter is the principle of making politics and economics subject to the common good.

The central tenets of Leo XIII’s encyclical would be reiterated and reaffirmed by later popes, most especially Pius XI and St. John Paul II, who issued their own encyclicals to mark the fortieth and hundredth anniversaries of Rerum Novarum.  Significantly, Dr. Salter does not engage with these documents per se but with their crystallized confirmation as Catholic doctrine in the authoritative Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Having laid these foundations and having affirmed that Belloc and Chesterton were influenced by Leo XIII’s teaching, Dr. Salter then critiques the key and seminal distributist works of both writers, offering a separate chapter on each of the following: The Servile State and An Essay on the Restoration of Property by Belloc, and What’s Wrong with the World and The Outline of Sanity by Chesterton. In each of his critiques, Dr. Salter, a trained economist, distinguishes between the science of economics and the art of political economy in his appraisal of the merits of Belloc’s and Chesterton’s distributist ideas. Although he finds both writers, and especially Chesterton, deficient and defective in their grasp of aspects of the science of economics, he vindicates the value of their analyses in terms of the art of political economy. In layman’s terms, Dr. Salter affirms the relevance of, and, with reservations, his agreement with, the distributist perspective.

Following the four chapters dealing with the four classic distributist texts, Dr. Salter offers a chapter on “Distributism and Contemporary Political Economy” which focuses on the enduring and perennial relevance of distributism as a thought-provoking and practical remedy to the ills of contemporary society. The chapter begins with a section summarizing “what we’ve learned from Belloc and Chesterton”. Space precludes much engagement with the text of Dr. Salter’s summary of the importance of the “Chesterbelloc” to the contemporary political and economic situation but the following marks the parameters of his argument:

Both men were devout Catholics and self-consciously promoted the lessons of the great social encyclicals. Belloc and Chesterton are trying to move from the status quo to a society that respects the dignity of the human person, the universal destination of goods, the rights and duties of labor and capital, and the subsidiary rights of local communities within a balanced polity. Unless we keep this in mind, we run the risk of criticizing them on intellectual margins that are irrelevant to their purpose.

In spite of Dr. Salter’s linking of Belloc’s and Chesterton’s advocacy of distributism to their devout Catholic faith, it would be woefully wrong to think or to suggest that distributism is a political and economic creed peculiar to Catholicism. Dr. Salter is not a Catholic himself, as he makes clear from the outset, but an Eastern Orthodox Christian; more to the point, and more importantly, the great economist to whom Dr. Salter defers as a formidable defender of distributism, Wilhelm Röpke, was a lifelong Lutheran.

The inclusion of two chapters on Röpke’s economic thought was a great and most pleasant surprise. Röpke, one of the greatest and most important economists of the twentieth century, was a defender of distributism, an admirer of Belloc and Chesterton, with whom he shared a kinship of spirit and a congruence of perspective. This being so, Dr. Salter’s inspired calling of Röpke as a powerful and indomitable witness for the defence of distributism adds considerable gravitas to his case and to that of Belloc and Chesterton. As Dr. Salter writes:

It would be incredibly helpful to have an example of a scholar who took both the humanistic concerns of distributists and the social scientific rigor of economists and combined them. As it turns out, we have such an example. The next two chapters explore the thought of Wilhelm Röpke, who, while not a Catholic, extensively studied Catholic social thought and used its teachings in his political-economic writings…. With Röpke as our exemplar, we can see how to put Belloc’s and Chesterton’s ideas to work.

Afew words on Wilhelm Röpkwho deserves to be much better known and much more widely read by those seeking genuine economic alternatives to globalism and the relentless centralization of economic and political power. A refugee from Nazi Germany, who finally settled in Switzerland, Röpke was one of the chief architects of what became known as the “economic miracle” of German growth and reconstruction following World War Two. Best-known, probably, for his authorship of A Humane Economy, his genius was brought to life for me in my reading of an obscure text, a translation of the deliberations of the Walter Lippmann Colloquium, a gathering of eminent economists in Paris in the summer of 1938, as the world teetered on the brink of a second World War. No fewer than twenty-six internationally respected economists, from eight countries, discussed the crisis facing economics in the wake of the rise of communism and fascism. Those in attendance included Friedrich von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises but it was Röpke who stole the show in terms of his grasp of the economic problems facing the world and their solution.

Were I to make one minor but significant criticism of Dr. Salter’s book, it would be the absence of any mention of E.F. Schumacher, whose Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered became an international bestseller in the 1970s. In terms of its cultural and economic impact, Schumacher’s book was nothing less than a phenomenon, so much so that the phrase “small is beautiful” became a buzz word, a war cry and a call to action for those seeking the resurrection of small business and small government in an age of manic merger and gigantism. Dr. Salter even employs the phrase himself, without acknowledging its source:

Chesterton excoriates both big business and big government- in his mind, flip sides of the same coin – and praises middling enterprises, which are the constitutional bedrock of a free state. He develops and applies this “small is beautiful” philosophy to several topics, such as landownership, technology, and foreign policy.

Apart from the significant sin of omission represented by Schumacher’s absence, I might also register disappointment that the important economic and political thought of the great Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was also conspicuous by its absence. Solzhenitsyn’s two seminal works, Russia in Collapse and Rebuilding Russia, exhibit the same essential approach to the economic and political crisis of modernity as do the works of Belloc, Chesterton and Röpke on which Dr. Salter focuses. Such “sins” are certainly venial, however, and detract only in a very minor way from this excellent defence of distributism.

I could conclude with a whole list of other things to like and admire about this wonderful book but I’m going to end instead with a categorical statement of what this book is not. It is absolutely not “academic” in either sense of the word. It is not merely for those with doctorates in economics or for those pursuing their doctorates in the “dismal science”, nor is it irrelevant to the “real world” in which we find ourselves. This book is for everyone who is concerned about the state of the world and for everyone who is concerned enough to want to be pointed in the direction of solutions.