Talk:Distributism
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The social theory > social security section seems to have some POV about distributism. 128.113.137.111 01:21, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
"Most people would want to continue earning it in the usual way, but those not so working would be expected by their local community to be doing a sufficient share of other necessary or worthwhile work: child-rearing, education, artistic creation, appropriate recreation etc., or voluntary work in the community or natural environment. Business would no longer be for monetary profit, but to create real benefits for the community."
How would you measure a "sufficient share"? Measuring hours doesn't seem to work as people can slack off in eight hours or do a lot. Money seems to be the traditional "value" of time and effort, so what other method is there to measure someone's community service or family service?
OK, being an armchair revolutionary has appealed to me in my youth and I believe men have been enjoined to have visions and dream dreams. But, it seems to me, that is the easy and the fun part; now with this topic we come to the hard part.
Is it right? Is it necessary? How can it possibly be brought to fruition?
First things first.
Could an advocate or defender of Distributism please attempt to justify or even explain their assumption that the ownership of the means of production should automatically or naturally reside with the producer. What makes it automatically wrong, unjust, unfair or unloving that others have something to say about what is done with and on, what is produced and what profits are generated from a parcel of land.
There is certainly not enough arable land to go around - 6 billion people would (conservatively) make about one billion people requiring land to use to produce food, clothing and building materials and raw materials for other less essential manufacture like spices or medications. Who decides who has the right to be the primary producer? How is the land allocated?
Rocky ---
Although a society of all sustenance farmers who own their land would be distributism, thats just one example. The main essence of distributism is everyone being their own boss, owning their own means of production. This means fully owning it, not just owning shares in a corporation. This is primarily for moral and quality of life reasons, not because it would cause GDP to grow faster or that it would advance the state of technology faster. In distributism the law and guilds would prevent people from trying to control more and more land or destroy other businesses. Distributism would work with barter or the moral law of just price, which in and of itself it is never permissible to charge anything for more then its worth.
The ownership of the means of production allows freedom. In the Catholic morality of Belloc, this wasn't necessarily good in and of itself, and wage labor could be good especially if both employer and employee were good catholics. But the problem is that this makes the employee dependant on the employer, which can heavily effect the areas of morality and religion. If the employer demands things like working on sunday, this can cause problems.
The view of Catholics like Belloc is that division of labor should not occour if the resulting job is sub-human or robotic, even though that overall it makes GDP and technology advance more slowly. Catholics had no desire for a techno-utopia, it was supremely more important that everyone could be in a wholesome and holy environment as possible. In fact, a techno-uptopia would be a very bad environment for catholics as it would tempt them to believe they didn't need god.
Finally, most of this could be done at the grassroutes level, by organizing communities like the Amish. But certain things like a property tax are antithetical to the system however and would need to be challenged federally.
The software developer making his living with his own computer may still have to rent his home or buy it with a loan. I think d'ism involves sufficient independence so that we don't need to rent or buy our home, but we just own it and the land around it. D'ism abolishes various unproductive professions such as investment-banker, manager, landlord, civil servant and professional politician. It also significantly diminishes the number of people involved in real estate trading, the law (as in lawyers), mercantilism and so-called service industries. There would be no agencies for advertising or public relations, let alone market-research. There would be generally less transport because there would be no wage-slaves and, because people owned a stake in their country, there would be less restless tourism and, ideally, no economic migration.
Another point: some d'ists make the mistake of thinking that the movement is to do with setting up communes. It's actually about the transformation of whole societies.
www.danon.co.uk
I agree that distributism does not have to be just agrarian, but the western lean towards rugged individualism tends to bring this to mind. Yes, one vision would be for families to be as close to self-sufficient as possible, but there is still a HIGH degree of cooperation.
One recent update to the distrbutist vision is the free flow of knowledge and training that can come from the Internet combined with the ever decreasing cost of highly capable fabrication facilities. MIT’s efforts towards developing the fab lab are one example. With open source software, open source CAD/CAM designs, and free training, this brings huge new possibilities to the individual and/or community level. For less than $100,000 dollars, a community can put together a facility that can build (given enough time and materials) almost any consumer product.
Also, keep in mind that distributism is more about the value and dignity of the person/worker/family than it is about the economy versus the capitalism and socialism focus on the production and distribution of goods. It is about creating a society of cooperative artisans who form a local community that meets the needs of all the local citizens. It would be hard if not impossible to become billionaire rich in a distributist society. Prices would be higher, but so would the quality of products and the purchasing power of the workers. By definition, the wealth stays at the worker level since everything is done with small business.
It is my opinion that you have to step back and look at the moral and philosophical elements of the dignity of man, the place work places in that dignity, and the concept of a family wage. Since much of the support for distributism comes from the Catholic Church, the writings from the Catholic Church on these matters are a good starting point – Rerum Novarum, Quadragesimo Anno, Mater et Magistra, Centesimus Annus, and Laborum Exercens.
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[edit] Give this article some substance
More headings should be created for this article. I propose to create a "history of distributism" heading and another heading for the actual nuts and bolts "theory of distributism". More headings could be created such as "practical distributism", "distributism and politics-geopoltics", and "Influence" ie. Antigonish movement ect. Also the heading of the comprehensive ideological ground of influences that gave rise to distributist thought should be analyzed, maybe the "origin of the idea" ect. I am just throwing these out there. I will definitely soon add some more headings to maybe just to inspire through simple controversy others to work at fleshing out this important article in wikipedia that has been neglected.
Yahoo Distributist Group????!!! Where are you guys and gals?
CLAVIO August 1, 2005
[edit] In Response to Myself
I just added quite an army of headings with starters ect., which i will continue to expand on. So don't just delete a heading in which you feel there is only one sentence underneath it, and that is your only reason. Hopefully this will spur more interest in the article, rather than to simply attract someone who likes to "delete things". I want people to "add their own ideas" that pop into their head no matter what. The article must be improved upon and not merely pruned. I am also thinking about creating two more headings one being a heading near the end called "Controversy-Criticism" in which we look at the controversy that distributism creates among Catholics who don't agree with it, the founders of distributism (ie. the recent TIA reaction to Eric Gill), or certain controversial groups around the world that happen to also claim they advocate distributism.
CLAVIO August 1, 2005
The second paragraph is a critique, which does not belong, at least in such a prominent position, in an encyclopedia-article. I take issue with that paragraph's claim that distributism "has been successfully realised in the short term by commitment to the principles of subsidarity and solidarity (these being built into financially independent local (sic) co-operatives)." Distributism has, in fact, been successfully neutralised by some of its natural followers' being sidetracked into (actually capitalist) co-ops and hippy communes. As its name implies, distributism is about the equable sharing of the means of production, not a quaint, sentimental, eco-friendly agrarianism. Distributism isn't about subsistence-farming but about making individuals and families as independent as possible in terms of providing for themselves. While it's true that ownership of land is important in such a system, the central tenet is that the world's productive wealth must be parcelled out fairly. That is distributism's political priority. It's true that that will enrage many vested interests, but this doesn't invalidate the theory. Further, if distributism were properly explained, most people would want it.
[edit] War Section
I made some slight edits to the passage on the Catholic Worker Movement. Partially to try and remove POV, but also because it read strange to me initially.Zerobot 03:18, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] POV
The Social Security section reads like propagandha. And why is there a picture of a farm at the top?
Agree with the writer above. The second paragraph uses too much of the language of appraisal. Encyclopedia articles describe; they don't evaluate. An article on the planet Mars would tell us about what it was like, not sneer at how cold it was or how thin the atmosphere. danon uk
The second paragraph on the social security section as of 15 Oct 2006 looks like a rebuttal to the distributist view on social security. The above observation about Mars is apt, so I deleted that offending paragraph. chamblee, USA 15 OCT 06.
[edit] nationalism
The section on controversy manages masterfully to muddy the waters and cast aspersions left, right and centre. Distributism cannot be fascist or corporatist, otherwise it isn't distributist. The fact that some non-distributists claim to be distributists is of minimal encyclopedic interest and belongs in the entry on original sin. It is at best a distraction and at worst a slur masquerading as encyclopedism. The only controversy which belongs in this section is the discussion between the other systems and distributism. danon uk
