In many ways, contemporary American society is the closest approach to Distributist ideals that has been achieved since the late Middle Ages. This is not widely appreciated, since even the few people who have heard of Distributism are generally mistaken about its ideals and aims.

The central tenant of Distributism is that the capital — materials, land, machinery, etc — necessary to production of goods and services should be owned by those who are performing the labor to produce those services. For instance: a carpenter should own his tools and workshop; a farmer should be a freeholder who owns his own tractor, rather than a renter.

“Three acres and a cow” is the slogan people typically associate with Chesterton and the Distributist-Agrarian movement of the 1920s, an association that is probably in large part responsible for the misappreciation of what Distributism is. There is no necessary link between Distributism as an Economic idea and any Agrarian / Back to the Land movement. Keeping in mind the central tenant of Distributism as stated above, we can see that the 3 acres + cow formula is somewhat misleading: this is perhaps the most basic apportionment of capital necessary in the simplest and most agrarian society to achieve the Distributist ideal, but the slogan is not so easily related to our modern Economic situation.

Hilaire Belloc, the best known theorist of Distributism, certainly did not make the mistake of claiming that a Distributist society could only be achieved in an Agrarian economy. And while I am no expert on this, I have read his classic book, the Servile State, wherein he lays out the background for why he thinks Distributism is the necessary endpoint for a free society, and that anything else leads to a form of servitude. His basic point is this. Responsibility and ownership are intrinsically linked. Economic man works best for his own interests. If we want a economy of responsible men, then we must make a society of owners, rather than dependents.

This is not to say that societies cannot be stable without distributed ownership. Rather, the opposite is true: nothing is more fragile than a distributed-ownership, free society, where every man is responsible for himself and his own family. The natural state of sinful men is servitude for the many with a small elite who are the decision makers. This need not be in its Roman and early Medieval form, with serfs and slaves: in fact, Belloc would argue, I am quite sure, that modern European Socialist society is precisely a soft form of mass servitude. Mark Steyn’s analyses of the pathologies of contemporary European society in fact are precisely the ones predicted by Belloc in the Servile State: that men would cease to feel responsible for themselves if they are not allowed to be their own men, economically. Belloc argued quite strongly — and convincingly, in my view — that there were a few critical early steps that established the social mind-set which has subsequently allowed mass servitude and subordination to recur. The first is diagnostic — evidence that a society is on its way to servitude. It is best illustrated by an example, drawn from Belloc: Two men are working in a well. One is holding the rope ladder; the other is holding onto the ladder. If the man holding the ladder should allow it to fall, who is economically responsible for the man who is hurt? The answer in a responsible society is the man holding the ladder. The answA er in a servant society is the man who either owns or employs both of the working men. And this, says Belloc, is a radical leap: a man behaves in a fundamentally different way when he is not personally responsible for the consequences of his own actions.

A second step is a policy: should the government establish a minimum wage? The Distributist says no. Again, the issue at hand is responsibility: is the state or are individuals responsible for guaranteeing a livelihood for the same individuals? It’s hard today for many to imagine the government not being comprehensively involved in economic matters such as this, and certainly the details of governmental economic policy must be more subtle than the principles laid out by Distributists. But the fact of the matter is that, in many ways, contemporary Economics has caught up to Belloc in this any other matters. Virtually no career employees in the United States works for the minimum wage — leading many to question the utility of maintaining such a standard at all.

This brings me around to my opening, and probably rather controversial, claim that contemporary American society, considered economically, is in some ways approximating the Distributist ideal. Certainly, many immediate caveats could be added, but I think its still basically true. The question is: can we maintain it, or does the US become more like Europe? In the direction of the maintenance and furtherance of personal responsibility are such ideas as the so-called Ownership society promoted by President Bush and others; also, the lively and still quite strong American belief that, in the words of Calvin Coolidge, “the business of America is business.” Right now, about half of all Americans own corporate stock, largely through retirement accounts and mutual funds. Major US employers — Wal-mart being the most notable example that I know of — provide their employees stock in the company for which they work, precisely because of the incentives that ownership offers that Belloc and the Distributists identified. The improvement of technology and widespread economic prosperity, coupled to the change of modern economies from industrial to service-based, has made the minimum capital necessary for being self-supporting more easily within reach than it has perhaps ever been. If these trends are encouraged, then the sort of economic self-reliance trumpeted by Distributists could be realized.

A well ordered society, of course, is more than an economic society, and the abundance of prosperity enjoyed in America today leads to all manner and sorts of perverse side effects. But let us not forget that there is wheat in with the chaff, nor fail to realize that it’s easier to coax a crooked plant to grow up straight than it is to plant a new one entirely. Economically free, relatively prosperous, responsible men are precisely those who can support large families and can be shaped by the Faith to restore a well-ordered society with — of course — the constant help and grace of God.