What is Distributivism?

For a while now, I've been tinkering with taking a different route when it comes to economics. For my entire life, I've been a capitalist...not really ever questioning it. I toyed with socialism in theory as an undergrad, but didn't like collectivism...it always breeds the antithesis of individuality and the many will be ruled by the few, and the few will let the many know what's best for them.

There are excesses to capitalism, it seems. It is an approach where wealth seems to justify itself...wealth begets wealth, and you acquire more of it so more may be built. The one with more wealth will trump the one with little...how does the small man compete with the wealthy man? The many will largely become servants of the few. The value of a man's work is not so much determined by his abilities, his needs, or his family's...it is typically a cold, calculated determination by a man seeking to pay as little as possible for another man's labor that will contribute to the miser's well-being. Don't get me wrong, there are many business owners who will pay a man based on that man's need...I actually know many like this. This is not the outworking of capitalism, rather, it is the outworking of Christian faith.

Most capitalists, especially of the Austrian variety, will say this isn't necessarily true. Capitalism breeds competition when unencumbered by government intervention...and I agree that government intervention is a huge problem. How do we overcome the problem of cheaper labor in countries that do not allow individual freedoms? Global companies finance the well-being of countries that shackle the liberty of men...yet we talk about freedom and the individual...but our wealthy corporations don't really value individual liberty, they value cheap labor. That must be the case since capitalism is a cold, impersonal system where the "quantifiable" atheistic impulse is seated on the throne while the individual is shackled with no place of appeal...how do you argue with a formula? Impersonal mathematics, the logician's savior for rationality, is a most irrational way of dealing with men.

Both of these systems seem to accomplish the same ends by different means...the flattening of the many under the thumb of the few.

I may not have completely bought into distributivism, but it's critique of capitalism is quite thought-provoking. It is not socialism, and it is not communism...distributivism is about "distributing" the means of production...that is, there should not be powerful concentrations of the means of production into the hands of the few. To my mind, this should be the bed-fellow American individual liberty. If we believe the concentration of political power breeds evil, why would that not be the case economically? For Americans, the situation is doubly troubling as the means of production are not the only items with concentration into the hands of the few...the same few also have politicians in their pockets. The masses of the little man must not only compete with a leviathan of wealth, he also has skyscraping obstacles that have been placed in front of him by legislation devised by those sitting on top.

Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death. -Hilaire Belloc