As others have noted, today is the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, instituted by Pope Pius XII in part to serve as a counterpoint to that high holiday of socialism, May Day (celebrations of which evidently still persist, albeit in marginal and mildly annoying form). For some related reading, a recent article at the Distributist Review offers a brief exposition of an interesting economic counter-movement, the “Catholic rural life” campaign, which had marginal success in the United States and United Kingdom in the 1920s and 30s. Its goal was essentially the construction of a family-centric economy, and it was wary of the welfare state (then still being constructed) though not averse to cooperation with it:
They viewed agrarian life as partial to virtuous living and frugality. It was vocational as the time spent working the land developed their affection and admiration for God’s creation, because, according to G.K. Chesterton, “nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.” Fond of good stewardship, Distributists found joy in smallholdings and small communities: the picking of common fruits, making butter and cheese, brewing beer and sharing these gifts with neighbors. Like the Ligutti homesteads, Distributists also conjured a scheme to encourage the local production and consumption of agricultural produce and to bring families “back-to-the-land.”
This movement’s chief theoretician in America was Fr. Domenico Ligutti; in the UK, that role fell to Fr. Vincent McNabb. Both sought to turn the Catholic desire for a “third way” into a practical program. It didn’t succeed, exactly (and whether a voluntary “down to the countryside” initiative can ever really succeed in a society which has become industrialized and hyper-connected is certainly a matter for debate), and there’s no denying that some of the issues the movement raised (poor working conditions in factories, the importance of unionization) have subsided (or at least been relocated out of the West via globalization) in the ensuing decades.
But many of the other concerns distributism addressed were quite prophetic (take, for example, the central place accorded to families, and concerns about absentee fathers), or indeed perhaps too ahead of their time (the importance of sustainable agriculture and local connections to the land, now so in vogue). And while I’m not sure I agree with the Distributist Review‘s contention that this tradition “[remains] as vibrant as ever,” it’s foolish to bet against its continued relevance or even resurgence in a world where much of political and economic life is emphatically not conducted as if people–or God–matter.
May 1st, 2012 | 1:48 pm
Distributism is, of course, just as vibrant and full of promise as ever, among the fringe naifs who think it actually a viable economic SYSTEM.
For while an option for a simpler and perhaps more self-reliant lifestyle close to the earth can be a reasonable thing for one person or a small group to attempt, the human race has far exceeded the numbers which could conceivably be sustained by a “system” such as Distributism.
The famous original advocates of it, Chesterton and Belloc, were already too late around the turn of the 20th Century. The population of their native Britain had already outrun the resources which could have fed it by a Distributist approach.
If we fall back to, say, a billion people in the world (vs 7), it might work. Any serious takers?
May 2nd, 2012 | 8:46 am
Disagree completely Joe. We have the space to feed tens of billions
1 million pounds of food, 10,000 fish, and 500 yards of compost on three acres
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV9CCxdkOng
Sensible integration of food production and suburban living. Davis California
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSsCvpDbMW8
Quarter acre permaculture food forest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9fhCEzWS04
Natural Building Blog: work 14 extra years just for shelter?
http://naturalbuildingblog.com/2012/03/17/it-cant-possibly-be-worth-it/
Life Without Usury:
“In the middle of the 19th Century, Oxford Professor of Political History, Thorold Rogers wrote of that era: “At that time a labourer could provide all the necessities for his family for a year by working fourteen weeks.” The other thirty-eight weeks were his to do as he pleased”
http://studimonetari.org/articoli/lifewithoutusury.html
Current businesses that follow distributist principles and often superior functioning . . .etc
Leisure the Basis of Culture – Josef Pieper. We’d be much more productive/recreative and healthy society under a just political economy like distributism. And Alasdair MacIntyre’s prescription re: the building of communities within which the moral life can be renewed as essential now mean we ought to be seriously heading in the distributist direction.
We’re already After Liberalism, so we’re after liberal capitalism too.
May 2nd, 2012 | 1:45 pm
More efficient ways of growing food–a blessing of the free market, and not the result of any distributist system.
To restore communities in which the moral life can be restored–faith in the true God, and following his will can only do that. Immorality is not the result of an economic system; it’s in the human heart. We have only to look at how the seven deadly sins, for example, identified centuries or millenia prior to modern economic systems, applied in their day and continue to apply.
The idea that a “labourer” of the mid-19th Century could earn the annual needs of his family in 14 weeks–absolutely bogus, contrary to any true history of any place in that time frame.
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