The Hound of Distributism

by Richard Aleman (Editor)

In a world obsessed with growth and globalization, Distributism is a political economy championing the sustainability of decentralized, local economies with the aim of ensuring the widest ownership of the means of production. The solution to our present socio-economic malaise is an economy as if people and God mattered.

The Hound of Distributism is a collection of essays written by leading distributist authors from around the world. Given our present social and economic crisis, this timely and rich volume challenges the sterility of our present by recovering the value of the socio-economic theory of Distributism.

Genres: Economics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Catholic, Christianity, Politics, Social Justice

128 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 15, 2012

Reviews

[Jason Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I could give this book five stars, because the message it carries is desperately needed. However, as a collection of essays, it is less-than-perfectly edited, shall we say. The first two essays, in particular, are the least well written of all, and cause the book to start with a whimper rather than a bang.

Several of the essays, though, are quite good, and make the book definitely worthwhile.

It is unlikely that anyone deciding to purchase a book of this title would be completely unaware of Distributism--the early 20th century economic philosophy popularized most, perhaps, by Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton, as well as Leo XIII's papal encyclical Rerum Novarum. The distributists argued that capitalism and socialism were merely two sides of the same economic coin: the former resulting in the concentration of the means of production (capital) in the hands of the capitalistic few, and the latter resulting in the concentration of the means of production in the hands of the unitary state. The distributists argue for the widespread distribution of the means of production to the many--a truly democratic and humane approach.

The essays Chesterton as Economist (Russell Sparkes), Small is Beautiful Versus Big is Best (Joseph Pearce), Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, & Distributism (Mark and Louise Zwick), and The Guild Idea, The Guild Possibility (Chesterton) are among the best.

This book does not stand alone, but whets the reader's appetite for more. Interested readers should consider:

- The Outline of Sanity, Chesterton
- What's Wrong with the World, Chesterton
- The Servile State, Belloc
- The Restoration of Property, Belloc
- Toward a Truly Free Market, Medaille
- Beyond Capitalism & Socialism, Lanz
- Small is Beautiful, Schumacher

[Jonathan Lackey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection of essays that serve as a fantastic intro to the usually misunderstood concept of distributism.

Some of the essays were better written than others.

Looking forward to integrating these concepts into my life.

[Logan Streondj · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you can get past the first and last article's pro-life bias then it's a good overview of Distributism and what it has accomplished over the last century or so. I particularly like how it included an article on permaculture. Personally my understanding is that if anything Distributism is pro-choice as it disperses the means of production, and thus gives people the ability the means to live life in the way they want to.
Someone attempting to force their values on others is starting to get into a socialist mindset.
Other articles talk about "three acres and a cow" co operatives, "small is beautiful" as well as usury and federation or separation of concerns is a Distributist society.

[Joseph R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the early twentieth century, Catholic thinkers G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc advocated for social and political reform guided by Christian principles. They called it "Distributism" and based it on the Catholic idea of subsidiarity. Subsidiarity, in its most basic form, has social or community problems dealt with at the lowest level of society that can solve the problem. A local doctor can and does deal with a variety of common maladies, there's no need to go to a larger institution to get basic care or prescription medicines. Such a system results in better and more personal care for people without a lot of bureaucracy, delay, and waste. In fact, if government agencies are not involved in the solution, so much the better. Locally-run food banks are better than federally-run food stamps.

The other Distributist principle is identifying the basic unit of society. In Capitalism, the basic social unit is the individual, whose needs are paramount and whose prosperity is the focus of the system. Wealth and property can be concentrated in the hands of a few individuals if they are the most clever, hard working, or organized. In Socialism, the State is the basic social unit. Wealth and property are owned and managed by the central government for the benefit of citizens who are expected to contribute as they are able. For Distributists, the basic unit of society is the family. An individual cannot constitute a social unit and the state is not a necessary institution. Families can exist more or less independently, though groups of families create greater economic potential by allowing groups to focus on individual goods or services that they produce. The first society people experience is the family, a very formative and influential time that cultivates attitudes for life.

A great deal of admiration is held for the guilds of medieval Europe. Professionals would band together to help each other by providing resources and common standards and expectations, creating fine craftsmanship in medicine, arts, construction, etc. Decentralized authority and ownership is the ideal of Distributism. Also, the workers own their own tools and have care of their own products, giving those workers personal dignity and proper self-assurance. Such an ideal (owning the tools of labor) can be found today in co-operatives and in employee ownership through stock incentives. Remnants still remain and can be revived in modern society.

The authors of the various essays admit that a Distributivist system will not be perfect but claim it will be much better than either Socialism or Capitalism. Some essays are more persuasive than others especially as they are applied to specific situations like banking, farming, and education. The implementation is tricky since it requires a larger cultural shift in attitudes towards wealth and responsibility. This book winds up being a call for that shift.

Recommended--this provides a good overview of Distributism and a fine effort to pull it into contemporary society.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointingly broad and disorganized, this collection of previously published essays does not hang together very well. All essays argue for distributism, but otherwise have little in common. Some are quite excellent, others are a bit weak. I think I will be better served going to the source material from Chesterton and Belloc and working my way from there.

[Justin Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not Roman Catholic so I don’t agree with every single jot and tittle contained in the book. But, I wish that many of the church bodies that aren’t Roman Catholic could come around to some of these ideas, especially given the hostile environment in which Christianity as a whole finds itself in.

Thought provoking and challenging material on economics and family, well worth the read.

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good intro to distributist thought.

[Ken Madsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Hound of Distributism is a collection of essays from prominent writers on the topic. Distributism is, in the words of Hillaire Belloc, "A state of society in which the families composing it are , in a determining number, owners of the land and the means of production as well as themselves the agents of production (that is, the people who by their human energy produce wealth with the means of production)." It's based on a number of ideas put forth by G.K. Chesterton in "The Outline of Sanity" and "What's wrong with the World" as well as Pope Leo XIII 1891 Encyclical Rerum Novarum.

In Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII states "that workingmen have been surrendered, all isolated and helpless, to the hard-heartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition... A small number of rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke a little better that that of slavery itself." This is nothing more than the concept of being a wage slave. Since 1891, we have witnessed the effects of unbridled capitalism - a larger portion of the wealth is in the hands of fewer and fewer people, firing at will, lack of moral responsibility by large Fortune 500 corporations.

Distributism proposes an alternative to capitalism and socialism. The concepts are based on subsidiarity - the more local the decision, the better - and the family as the core unit of society. By providing families with the ability to control their production and thereby, their economic destiny, society in general will be in a better position to provide for the common good. An example where this is working today is the American Medical Association. By limiting the number of doctors through training - medical schools - graduating doctors are assured of a good living. Doctors don't compete against one another and most of their business is through referral. Guilds of the medieval age are another example. It would require a sociological change in buying habits where consumers would purchase from local businesses in an effort to promote the local economy. I lived in Europe and this type of consumer buying is more typical. I lived in Belgium and every Wednesday was the market day - local farmers and producers would come to the town square to sell their goods and services. It was a thriving marketplace and the local producers benefitted immensely. In addition, the town had the local bakers, butchers, grocers and tradesman. The difficulty in the United States is that our buying habits are geared toward affordable prices, allowing large corporations to provide inferior products at low prices. The low wages provided by these corporations do not help the local citizenry. But, "thinking local" can happen in the United States with great impact. One example would be to leverage our skilled craftsman in developing products where other foreign companies can't compete. An example is Shinola watches in Detroit. The founder decided to manufacture watches and bicycles by leveraging the unemployed skilled labor from the auto industry. The neigborhood in Detroit where Shinola is located has flourished with small businesses coming into the area (when I was there, two microbreweries with restaurants had opened along with a number of other businesses) rejuvenating the local housing market. And the beer is better than Budweiser.

In conclusion, this is book is packed with discussions on alternatives to unbridled capitalism and a return to the well-being of the family. It can be achieved and as Chesterton once said “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”

[Josh · Rating 2 out of 5]

To the contributors of this book and those convinced by the claims found within, I propose further reflection on Chesterton's words (quoted in the book), "Now a man may quite reasonably disapprove of this system...He may say quite truly that it has evils of its own. He may say quite tenably that in his view those evils outweigh the good." I say this because the general tone presented is the choice between holy distributism or the twin evils of capitalism and socialism.

This has to be one of the most irritating books I've read. On almost every other page you find the same tiresome beating of straw men, hollow assertions, misappropriated platitudes, confused misnomers, gross naivety and pains to avoid concrete proposals for the political philosophy they allege to be advancing that kept me on the verge of giving up on the book. This book is not so much about distributism as what distributists don't like.

Not all of the essays build on this foundation, but those that avoid this offer nothing unique to the philosophy. For example, why do you have to be a distributist to be against usury, favor backyard forest gardens and object to our crumbling banking and education systems?

Chesterton is quoted as saying, "They say it is Utopian, and they are right. They say it is idealistic, and they are right. They say it is quixotic, and they are right. It deserves every name that will indication how completely they have driven justice out of the world." I'm not sure how everyone but the distributists have driven justice from the world, but for a group of men to continually assert that capitalism and socialism inherently produce and promote an insatiable greed which can't help but bring vast usurpation of property from masses, it's very strange to propose distributism as the remedy for this problem. Just how does the distributist philosophy plan to eliminate vice? The reader is supposed to assume, like the turn of a radio dial, the switch to distributism will tune out greed? Where will the enlightened leaders come from -- those that won't misdistribute or undistribute? Where will the lobbyists and cronies go and why will they be ineffective? Where is the citizenry to enact this program and maintain it?

The best I can gather, distributism purports to be (perhaps unintentionally) some kind of Catholic fascism. If so, history provides ample reason, even with the scarce choice of few unhappy alternatives, to prudentially reject such a system. However, if distributists are not advocating for state control, then what we have is a form of cultural criticism -- and this is where the real and only strength of the book comes from. If this is limit of the distributist platform and they only wish to say political systems are not enough, fine. If not, I'm *dis*couraged.

[Jason Jewell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book combines classic and recent essays from more than a dozen distributist authors in an effort to showcase the value of an intellectual tradition that critiques both socialism and modern capitalism's concentration of wealth in relatively few hands.

This collection was headed for a two-star review around page 100, but the last group of essays raised it to three stars. I really wanted to like this book. I have a serious academic interest in the subject matter and am sympathetic to Distributism's normative vision of widely dispersed property ownership in society. However, I was disappointed by the hyperbole and series of straw men in many of the essays in the first two-thirds of the book. Several of the authors did not seem to have a firm grasp of the economic phenomena about which they write with such confidence. Fortunately, the thoughtfulness of the commentary improves in the last sixty pages or so as the focus turns toward case studies of specific sectors of culture that could benefit from distributist insights. I came away from the book with some useful ideas for further research.

[Giovanni Del Piero · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very excellent collection of essays on the ideology of Distributism. People tend to believe that capitalism or socialism are the only options to choose from in our political system. This book highlights Distributism’s rich tradition from the writings of GK Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc, among others, and its use by various nations and communities from the Middle Ages to the present day. I do not sympathize with all of its elements, but I think Distributism is a fascinating belief system and can offer some common sense principles to America’s chaotic political and economic landscape. It’s a relatively quick and fascinating read and I’d highly recommend.

[Paolo Merolla · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of essays, most of them already released, on Distributism, the economical theory / social philosophy, which G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc helped to propose. In many targets, it corresponds to what we call today Subsidiarity. Very sad the standard intellectual is not interested on studying it. It happens because it reflects in large parts the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church, very unpopular, so scholars will be attacked and won't do money....
The author does an awesome explanation of each essay: fundamental, especially for young people (in my opinion from age 16 on).

[Jonmarc Grodi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent introduction to Distributism from a number of it's fine proponents. Distributism refers to the political and economic theory promoted most notably by G.K. Chesterton. It emphasizes wide ownership through the Catholic social principles of Subsidiarity and Solidarity.

Comprised of a variety of articles addressing different aspects of Distributist thought, this book reads quickly and enjoyably. I would highly recommend this book!

[Lukasz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting collection of essays about a lesser known political belief of distributism. Whole book presents an interesting case for the distributism, however a few essays are almost too basic, most are very intriguing (especially eg. Phillipe Blond one). A good introduction to the concept of distributism. The whole book is backed up by Christian (mainly Catholic) philosophy and ideas of Hilaire Belloc and Gilbert Chesterton.

[Jen Finke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but just not in my wheelhouse. Clear, but difficult for someone who has no background in economics. It makes me want to read Rerum Novarum and Sapientiae Christianae.