Most of us have lived in a capitalist society for our entire lives, as did most of our parents. To envision life in a pre-capitalist society is foreign to our senses and experience. To wish for a post-capitalist society is beyond our comprehension.
Because it is all we know, we are apprehensive of something different. We believe our economic system today gives us some sort of freedom. We can have all kinds of things, the latest things. There is also something unique but somewhat of a fantasy in our present economic system: we are all hoping in one way or another to win the lottery, whether it be the actual lottery, or a breakout business idea: our ship (wealth) will come in. Unfortunately it won’t happen for most of us.
We need to take a step back, to look at our present economy from an objective point of view. We may see that it is so much nonsense. Is not our debt and our mortgages forms of slavery? Don’t all our things place hooks into our very heart, tearing it down when it should be looking up? Our corporate employers expect loyalty, but give none in return; their only loyalty is to shareholders. They have forgotten that the business of business should be ordered to the interests of the workers.
The very small businessman is so engulfed by red tape and regulations that his only choices are to either give up or give in; the latter being to become big to take advantage of economy of scale in place of quality and craftsmanship; that is, to place the attainment of wealth above all else.
We are both physical and spiritual beings, but capitalism for both the consumer and the worker takes away their spiritual in pursuit of the physical.
Amintore Fanfani, in his classic work, Catholicism, Protestantism and Capitalism tells us something of the pre-capitalist man. The pre-capitalist man would never sell something below cost to increase sales in order to capture a market for the purpose of achieving wealth. In turn, he wouldn’t sell things for more than cost (labor, including his own, plus materials and overhead) to make a ‘profit”. The pre-capitalist man works and sells to satisfy his and his family’s needs, not to acquire wealth. The pre-capitalist would not sell on Sunday to acquire wealth. The pre-capitalist understood he was more than just a physical being.
The state is no longer in the service of man but in the service of commerce. Even on social issues we find the state coming down on the side of more profits for big business. Everything comes down to demographics. Take the recent push for acceptance of homosexual marriage for example. True, some may really believe that this is a human rights issue, but imagine you can follow the money. Homosexuals tend to have more disposable income than many other groups. This is a market to be appeased for the sake of profit.
The major political parties in the United States have no desire to change the economic system status quo. They have been bought and paid for.
Education in this country is about power and money in many ways. The move for more central control is about educating man to fit into and to accept our economic system without question and to train useful workers for corporations. Independent thinkers are lucky indeed if they can avoid the brainwashing of our secondary and college education system whose purpose is to assimilate everyone to the norm as defined by the oligarchs. Socialism is not the solution to capitalism.
Socialism is the logical conclusion of capitalism. The state gets so big in service of commerce that it can no longer support itself without taking over all commerce.
Both capitalism and socialism treat man as a physical tool to be used until no longer needed. Both eventually strip his spirit.
It is late in the game for this country. Financial and moral collapse are on the horizon.
There have been third ways proposed. They are unpopular because they take away the “lottery” most of us will never win. The third ways may take away unbridled wealth and consumerism (and consumer debt), but they have the opportunity to restore our freedom and our spirit.
If all workers owned property, and the workers were the owners of the means of production instead of being the tools of production, both our physical needs and spiritual needs would be restored in freedom. Proper order in economy would be restored: that is economy directed towards the betterment of man and families, not toward the betterment of a few privileged.
How many times have we been told that the US is the richest nation on earth? No question we are: the United States, with 4.5% of the world’s population and 6% of the world’s land area owns 27% of the world’s wealth. To illustrate our wealth: we own 140,000,000 cars, 219,000,000 TVs, countless refrigerators, computers, etc. Clearly this shows a distribution of consumer goods but demonstrates nothing on equitable distribution of wealth within the United States.
What we should ask is: what is the distribution in the US of productive goods? That is, what is the distribution of ownership in land, in buildings and equipment, in farms, factories, mines, in commercial enterprises, and in machinery?
The more equitable distribution of productive goods is what a distributist system is all about.
For many years the top 1% and the top 10% have been growing while the middle class is shrinking; the productive goods are held by a smaller and smaller percentage of the population.
We have also heard about “the makers and the takers”, but this notion is deceptive. While government entitlements continue to increase for the growing lower classes, we can’t forget that the system is also weighted to favor commerce and not the individual. There is no question that the privileged are takers also-they get their lower tax rates for investment income and laws which favor their corporations, which in turn increase their compensation and profits. Those in power retain their power with free handouts to both the rich and the poor. Because of the bias towards the owners of productive goods, more and more of those in the middle are slipping financially.
The system is unfair. Government handouts insult the dignity of man, at both ends of the spectrum. This is the problem which needs to be fixed. Unfortunately our politically parties are tied to their seats of power: entitlements to the rich and entitlements to (increasingly) everyone else.
Distributism offers a solution to endless entitlements. Productive goods are put into the hands of the greatest possible number of individuals. Guilds will regulate competition and standards governing trades and types of businesses-not the government. The principle of subsidiarity would govern the role of the state in society.
Others can articulate better than I on what Distributism is and how it can work. See for example the writings of Thomas Storck, John Médaille, and Richard Aleman to name a few. For foundational documents, read the social encyclicals of the Catholic popes, especially Popes Leo XII (Rerum Novarum), Pius XI (Quadragesimo Anno), and John Paul II (Centesimus Annus), and the writings of G.K. Chesterton and Hillare Belloc.
There is no heaven on earth. No system is perfect. If we are truly striving for an economic system that is fair to the most people, which meets both their physical and spiritual needs, and which is sustainable for generation after generation, we must look towards a third way.
Oremus pro invicem!
