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(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
It is a vision that many have argued reflects the economic insights found in the papal social encyclicals, and, for that reason, has been highly praised over the years by Catholic intellectuals – those who take the Church’s social teachings seriously, at any rate. But there is a curious disconnect in this phenomenon: Many of these Catholic intellectuals are also proponents of free-market economic theory, “movement” conservatives. They proceed as if distributism reinforces their laissez-fair capitalist views.
One can see why they would think that. Chesterton and Belloc were opposed to socialism. They wanted to make privately owned businesses as widespread as possible, seeking, in Belloc’s words, “a society in which property is well distributed and so large a proportion of the families in the State severally OWN and therefore control the means of production as to determine the general tone of society.”
But it is not that simple. In the Spring 2002 issue of The Latin Mass, John Clark, the President and CEO of a financial group in Virginia, shows us why. He goes so far as to argue that “distributism is actually inconsistent with the traditional teaching of the Church.” Clark focuses on an element of distributism that is frequently overlooked. He illustrates that Belloc’s method of keeping property ownership widespread was to employ a severely progressive tax system to make it impossible for a business to expand beyond a certain level. Clark summarizes Belloc’s views: “If individuals approached financial levels beyond those viewed by the state as reasonable, they would be taxed so they were no longer wealthy. In the eyes of Belloc, property would eventually be ‘more fairly’ distributed.” Clark quotes Belloc: “To control two such (stores) may involve but a small tax, to control three a larger one in proportion; and so on, with the curve rising steeply until the ownership of, say, a dozen in the territory over which the Government has power becomes economically impossible.” (Restoration of Property, p. 69.)
We must face the facts: Distributism cannot be made to work without a vast increase in state power. In Belloc’s scheme, the central government will determine how much is “enough” for an individual or a business to own, and then tax any accumulation of wealth beyond that level at a punitive rate. That is how business ownership will be kept widespread. State power is the lash, the redistributor of wealth.
This is where Clark feels that Belloc moves into opposition to the Church’s teaching on private property rights: “Distributism places such definitive limits on private property that private ownership actually ceases to exist. Under distributism, it is not my decision to whom I can sell or rent my land; it is a decision of the state. Under distributism, if a merchant with three stores wished to purchase or rent my land, the state would intercede and prevent this transaction, and every transaction like it. The laws of distributism do not allow me to make private decisions about my property, and when this right ceases to exist, I no longer possess private property.”
Thus, says Clark, the “traditional teaching of the Church is trampled upon by distributism, and in the final analysis private property ceases to exist, as ownership and use essentially become that of the state.” “Distributism violates the fundamental right of private property as traditionally taught by the Church from the time of St. Augustine to the present day.” Further, says Clark, “The distributist state removes the profit motive by placing limits on the amount of wealth that one can earn,” thereby killing the profit motive that leads to economic growth and the generation of jobs.
Clark buttresses his case by quoting extensively from medieval theologians such as St. Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Francisco Suarez and St. Bernardino of Siena on the nature of private property rights.
Is Clark right? To a certain extent, yes. I don’t think it can be denied that Belloc’s call for an increase in state power to bring about his “fairer” distribution of property would lead to a central government with a level of authority likely to be abused. It is a great mistake to make our decisions about the proper level of state power by assuming that the government to which we grant power will be to our liking. To make the point, imagine Bill Clinton and his cabinet sitting around a table making decisions about how much wealth the rest of us should be entitled to hold.
This is the fatal flaw in distributism. It is why I hold that it is better to view Chesterbellocian economic theory as poetry rather than prose. Their vision of small communities of neighbors, producing the goods and services they require for a modestly prosperous existence, has great appeal. It is the practical application of their scheme that presents problems, specifically the mammoth nanny-state required to prevent the Henry Fords and Bill Gates of the world from exercising their entrepreneurial drive. It is worth empowering the Clintonistas to hold our entrepreneurs in check?
I forgot where I heard the line, but it stuck with me: “Chesterton and Belloc extol a world of small businessmen running owner-operated shops. The only problem is that in the real world, every small businessman is looking to expand.” It is an important point to keep in mine. In many ways, the distributist state would be as contrary to human nature as a Marxsian socialist state.
That said, I suggest that Clark goes overboard in his criticism of Belloc. It is no coincidence that the Catholic theologians Clark quotes are from the Middle Ages, and that the papal encyclicals, from those of Leo XIII to those of John Paul II, are more favorably disposed to state intervention in the economy, even if not to the degree called for by Belloc. It is why the encyclicals speak out against a rigid “economic individualism” that would deny the state any role in regulating private business in pursuit of social justice.
I make no claim to being able to augur how St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine would write about private property rights if they were alive today. But it must be said: The private businesses they wrote about were nothing like the transnational corporations of the modern world. Their world of small craftsmen in medieval villages, employing a few apprentices and journeymen, has little in common with our world of corporations with the power to inflict great damage on the commonweal through their greed and dishonesty.
When Thomas Aquinas wrote, “It is a good thing that each one shall enlarge his possessions more, applying himself to them more carefully as being his own” he wasn’t talking about the practices of Enron, WorldCom and the other corporations caught up in the accounting crimes of the past few months. And I sense that he would not recoil from granting the government a counterbalancing power to regulate these massive concentrations of modern corporate power to make them socially responsible.
The social encyclicals have it right. Belloc and Chesterton were willing to assign the central state more authority than would be prudent to effect their distributist goals, but their goals were lofty. The more limited degree of state regulation of the economy called for in the social encyclicals seeks those goals without running the risk of creating a socialist state in the name of distributism.