The strange rebirth of Distributism

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When E. F. Schumacher wanted to explain his approach to economics in his ground-breaking book Small is Beautiful in 1973, he dubbed the relevant chapter ‘Chestertonian eonomics’.

G. K. Chesterton died in 1936 but, even in 1973, he was better known – and his name better recognized – than it is now. His Father Brown detective stories are hardly read, his great crusade for small-scale institutions is largely forgotten.

Distributism was the political programme he developed with Hilaire Belloc in the 1920s, based on the idea that both capitalism and socialism end in slavery. The solution, they suggested, was a distribution of land to people and a massive break up of big corporate, and big government structures; radical localism plus radical anti-trust.

Their programme borrowed heavily from Catholic Social Doctrine, which in turn was set out in the 1880s by Cardinal Manning, who borrowed it from John Ruskin – the man we sometimes call the grandfather of new economics.

The Distributist League began in 1926 with a colourful campaign against monopolistic London bus companies. It petered out by the 1950s, having become deeply conservative, narrowly Roman Catholic, and built up a dubious record of sympathy for Mussolini and Franco – though they always recognized Hitler and Stalin for the monsters they were.

Radical political movements – from the Populists to Social Credit – tend to peter out in intolerance, so that is not necessarily any condemnation of their original ideas. On the other hand, you only have to read Chesterton’s book An Outline of Sanity, to realize that he believed the battle for humane economics was all but lost. Look for positive solutions are there are precious few.

Two generations later, and thanks to organizations like nef – and thanks of course to Schumacher’s espousal of Chestertonian economics – we do know a great deal more what to do.

The problems Chesterton identified are also that much more obvious, with the monopolistic energy companies and our dysfunctional banks - not to mention the looming disaster referred to yesterday by Mervyn King.

So it was a pleasant surprise to find that the Distributists are around again. They have a powerful American website and there they were leafleting the demonstrators currently occupying Wall Street with positive proposals about what should happen now.  

The leaflet explains that "some of you are Distributists but don't yet know it". Including 'rights of the unborn' alongside community-supported agriculture and local currencies might put some people off, but perhaps this is the logical extension of the rights of unborn generations. Either way, I'm glad they are back.