Showing posts with label cooperatives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cooperatives. Show all posts

Friday, 20 November 2015

Category:Post-Corporate

 

 
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At the P2P Foundation, we see the institutional emergence of a commons economy through the following three social forms:
  • at the heart of value creations are productive communities of contributors, paid or unpaid, that create shared resources i.e. commons
  • around these shared resources, new forms of entrepreneurial coalitions form, that created added value for the market to create livelihoods for the commoners, which can take the form of Open Cooperatives, Platform Cooperatives
This wiki section focuses mostly on the new entrepreneurial coalitions and the productive communities (sometimes called neo-tribes) with whom they are connected.
Key concepts related to this are Phyles and Neo-Venetianist Networks, concepts developed by Las Indias. A fictional treatment can be found in the Diamond Age, a science fiction book by Neal Stephenson. The 'poor man's' equivalent may be found in the description of transmigrant networks in: "Etrangers de passage. Poor to poor, peer to peer d’Alain Tarrius Editions de l’Aube.
Among our favourites for the moment are:



Associated organisations in this space are:


Documentation on post-corporate practices

What the world and humanity, and all those beings that are affected by our activities require is a mode of production, and relations of production, that are “free, fair and sustainable” at the same time. Post-corporate entities and the productive communities they are based on are pioneering new 'generative' practices, that co-create value with the commons, rather than 'extractive' practices that enclose the commons or capture value from the commons.


1. Open Business Models based on shared knowledge

Closed business models are based on artificial scarcity. Though knowledge is a non- or anti-rival good that gains in use value the more it is shared, and though it can be shared easily and at very low marginal cost when it is in digital form, many extractive firms still use artificial scarcity to extract rents from the creation or use of digitized knowledge. Through legal repression or technological sabotage, naturally shareable goods are made artificially scarce, so that extra profits can be generated. This is particularly galling in the context of life-saving or planet-regenerating technological knowledge. The first commandment is therefore the ethical commandment of sharing what can be shared, and only creating market value from resources that are scarce and create added value on top or along these commons. Open business models are market strategies that are based on the recognition of natural abundance and the refusal to generate income and profits by making them artificially scarce.
Wiki section at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Business_Models


2. Open Cooperativism

Many new more ethical and generative forms are being created, that have a higher level of harmony with the contributory commons. The key here is to choose post-corporate forms that are able to generate livelihoods for the contributing commoners.
Open cooperatives in particular would be cooperatives that share the following characteristics:
1) they are mission-oriented and have a social goal that is related to the creation of shared resources
2) they are multi-stakeholder governed, and include all those that are affected by or contributing to the particular activity
3) they constitutionally, in their own rules, commit to co-create commons with the productive communities
I often add the fourth condition that they should be global in organisational scope in order to create counter-power to extractive multinational corporations.
Cooperatives are one of the potential forms that commons-friendly market entities could take. We see the emergence of more open forms such as neo-tribes (think of the workings of the Ouishare community), or more tightly organized neo-builds, such as Enspiral.org, Las Indias or the Ethos Foundation. Yet more open is the network form chose by the Sensorica open scientific hardware community, which wants to more tightly couple contributions with generated income, by allowing all micro-tasked contributions in the reward system, through open value or contributory accounting (more below).
Wiki section at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Open_Company_Formats


3. Open Value Accounting or Contributory Accounting

Peer production is based on distributed tasks, freely contributed by a open community-driven collaborative infrastructure. The tradition of salaries based on fixed job description may not be the most appropriate way to reward those that contribute to such processes. Hence the emergence of open value accounting or contributory accounting. As practiced already by Sensorica, this means that any contributor may add contributions, log them according to project number, and after peer evaluation is assigned 'karma points'. When income is generated, it flows into these weighted contributions, so that every contributor is fairly rewarded. Contributory accounting, or other similar solutions, are important to avoid that only a few contributors more closely related to the market, capture the value that has been co-created by a much larger community. Open book accounting insure that the (re)distribution of value is transparent for all contributors.

Wiki section at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:P2P_Accounting


4. Benefit-Sharing through CopyFair Licenses

The copyleft licenses allow anyone to re-use the necessary knowledge commons on the condition that changes and improvements are added to that same commons. This is a great advance, but should not be abstracted from the need for fairness. When moving to physical production which involves finding resources for buildings, raw materials and payments to contributors, the unfettered commercial exploitation of such commons favours extractive models. Thus the need to maintain the knowledge sharing, but to ask reciprocity for the commercial exploitation of the commons, so that there is a level playing field for the ethical economic entities that do internalize social and environmental costs. This is achieved through copyfair licenses which, while allowing full sharing of the knowledge, ask for reciprocity in exchange for the right of commercialization.

Wiki section at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Licensing

5. Commonfare solidarity practices

As one of the strong results of financial and neo-liberal globalization, the power of nation-states has gradually weakened, and there is now a strong and integrated effort to unwind the solidarity mechanisms that were embedded in the welfare state models. As long as we do not have the power to reverse this slide, it is imperative that we reconstruct solidarity mechanisms of distributed scope, a practice which we could call 'commonfare'. Examples such as the Broodfonds (NL), Friendsurance (Germany) and the health sharing ministries (U.S.), or cooperative entities such Coopaname in France, show us the new forms of distributed solidarity that can be developed to deal with the risks of life and work.
Wiki section at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:P2P_Solidarity


6. Sustainable Manufacturing through an Open Source Circular Economy

Open productive communities insure maximum participation through modularity and granularity. Because they operate in a context of shared and abundant resources, the practice of planned obsolescence, which is not a bug but a feature for profit-maximizing corporations, is alien to them. Ethical entrepreneurial entities will therefore use these open and sustainable designs and produce sustainable good and services.
Wiki section at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Design


7. Mutual coordination of production through Open Supply Chains and Open Book Accounting

What decision-making is for planning, and pricing is for the market, mutual coordination is for the commons!
We will never achieve a sustainable 'circular economy', in which the output of one production process is used as an input for another, with closed value chains and where every cooperation has to be painfully negotiated in the conditions of lack of transparency. But entrepreneurial coalitions who are already co-dependent on a collaborative commons can create eco-systems of collaboration through open supply chains, in which the production processes become transparent, and through which every participant can adapt his behaviour based on the knowledge available in the network. There is no need for over-production when the production realities of the network become common knowledge.
Wiki section at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Mutual_Coordination


8. Cosmo-Localization: what is light is global, what is heavy is local

“What is light is global, and what is heavy is local”: this is the new principle animating commons-based peer production in which knowledge is globally shared, but production can take place on demand and based on real needs, through a network of distributed coworking and microfactories. Certain studies have shown that up to two-thirds of matter and energy does not go to production, but to transport, which is clearly unsustainable. A return to relocalized production is a since qua non for the transition towards sustainable production.
Wiki section via http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Sustainable_Manufacturing


9. Mutualization of physical infrastructures

Platform cooperatives, data cooperatives and fairshares forms of distributed ownership can be used to co-own our infrastructures of production.
The misnamed 'sharing economy' from AirBnB and Uber nevertheless shows the potential of matching idle resources. Co-working, skillsharing, ridesharing are examples of the many ways in which we can re-use and share resources to dramatically augment the thermo-dynamic efficiencies of our consumption.
In the right context of co-ownership and co-governance, a real sharing economy can achieve dramatic advances in reduced resource use. Our means of production, inclusive machines, can be mutualized and self-owned by all those that create value.

Wiki section at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Sharing

10. Mutualization of generative capital

Generative forms of capital cannot rely on a extractive money supply that is based on compound interest that is due to extractive banks. We have to abolish the 38% financial tax that is owed on all goods and services and transform our monetary system, and substantively augment the use of mutual credit systems.
Wiki section at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Peerfunding

Key Resources

Key Players

In France

CEDRIC : Collaborative Ecosystem Development and Roadmap Innovating for the Commons
Participants:
  1. Association Ekopratik
  2. Association Open Atlas
  3. Chez Nous [1]
  4. Dialoguea [2]
  5. Living Coop
  6. Multi Bao [3]
  7. Nacelle 0.2 [4]
  8. Organisation Pixel humain [5] video
  9. P2P Foundation France with Julien Cantoni
  10. Projet Communecter [6] video
  11. Unissons
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Thursday, 10 April 2014

Gar Alperovitz




From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Blogger Reference Link http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics

Gar Alperovitz
BornMay 5, 1936 (age 77)
Alma materB.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.A. University of California, Berkeley
Ph.D. University of Cambridge
OccupationLionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at theUniversity of Maryland, College Park
Notable work(s)2008 Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance
2003 "Making a Place for Community: Local Democracy in a Global Era" (with Thad Williamson and David Imbroscio)
1984 Rebuilding America(with Staughton Lynd)
Website
garalperovitz.com
Gar Alperovitz (born May 5, 1936) is Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, College Park Department of Government and Politics. He is a former Fellow of King's College, Cambridge; a founding Fellow of Harvard’s Institute of Politics; a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies; and a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution. Alperovitz also served as a Legislative Director in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and as a Special Assistant in the Department of State. Alperovitz is a founding principal of the Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland, and a member of the board of directors for the New Economics Institute.[1][2]

Work[edit]

Alperovitz is a political economist and historian whose articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The Nation, and The Atlantic among other publications. Alperovitz has been profiled by The New York Times, the Associated Press, People, UPI, and Mother Jones, and has been a guest on numerous network TV and cable news programs, including Meet the Press, Larry King Live, The Charlie Rose Show,Crossfire, and The O'Reilly Factor.
Alperovitz is the author of critically acclaimed books on the atomic bomb and atomic diplomacy and was named "Distinguished Finalist" for the Lionel Gelber Prize for The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth, (Knopf, 1995). His research interests include:[3]
  • community-based political-economic development, and in particular new institutions of community wealth ownership;
  • political-economic theory, including system-wide political-economic design particularly as related to normative issues of equality, democracy, liberty, community and ecological sustainability;
  • local, state and national policy approaches to community stability in the era of globalization;
  • the history and future of nuclear weapons; arms control and disarmament strategies, including work on the conditions of peace and related long-term political economic structural change.
Alperovitz's articles include "Another World is Possible", published in Mother Jones; "A Top Ten List of Bold New Ideas", published in The Nation; and "You Say You Want a Revolution?" in WorldWatch.

America Beyond Capitalism[edit]

Overview[edit]

This book is subtitled "Reclaiming our wealth, our liberty, and our democracy". A recurring theme throughout this book is that for democracy to work on a large scale, people need to gain experience with it on a small scale. He recommends cooperatives in part because they give people experience with democracy on a relatively small scale. This in turn provides experience and a depth of understanding of how to work with others that can be translated into more effective political action at larger levels, like state and national politics.

Excerpts[edit]

'[T]he seemingly radical idea of the workers and community owning and running a giant steel mill was hardly radical at all at the grass-roots level. Indeed, the vast majority of the community, the local congressional delegation, both senators, and the conservative governor of Ohio, James Rhodes, supported it.' (p. v)
'Way back when–in my early days in Wisconsin–Senator Joseph McCarthy of our state dominated politics, both nationally and locally. “They shot anything that moved politically,” people used to say. Fear dominated every suggestion that progressive ideas might be put forward. Anyone who thought otherwise was obviously foolish. But of course, what came next was the 1960s.'(p. vii)

Criticisms[edit]

Alperovitz's writings criticizing the decision by U.S. President Harry S Truman to use the atomic bomb against Japan have been characterized as revisionist by several historians, including Robert James Maddox, Professor Emeritus of History at the Pennsylvania State University. Maddox has criticized Alperovitz for "his unscholarly use of ellipsis" and other misrepresentation of sources. Maddox also accuses Alperovitz of cherry-picking his sources, ignoring those that undermine his thesis.[4]

Books[edit]

  • Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965). Other editions: German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, British
  • Cold War Essays, with an Introduction by Christopher Lasch (New York: Doubleday, 1970)
  • Strategy and Program, with S. Lynd (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973)
  • Rebuilding America, with J. Faux (New York: Pantheon, 1984)
  • American Economic Policy, ed. with R. Skurski (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984)
  • The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995). Other editions: German, Japanese, Korean, British
  • The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb (New York: Vintage Books, 1996). British edition (Harper Collins).
  • Making a Place for Community, with D. Imbroscio and T. Williamson (New York: Routledge, 2002)
  • America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy (John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0471667307, October 2004)
  • Building Wealth: The New Asset-Based Approach to Solving Social and Economic Problems (Washington, D.C.: The Aspen Institute, April 2005) (Democracy Collaborative Report, under the direction of Gar Alperovitz)
  • Unjust Deserts: How The Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back, with Lew Daly (New York: New Press, 2008)
  • What Then Must We Do?: Straight Talk about the Next American Revolution (Chelsea Green, 2013)

References[edit]

  1. Jump up^ "Directors". New Economics Institute. Retrieved 2013-02-07.
  2. Jump up^ "Staff". Community-Wealth.org. Retrieved 2013-10-15.
  3. Jump up^ See his university webpage at http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/alperovitz/
  4. Jump up^ Maddox, Robert James, ed. 2007. Hiroshima In History: The Myths of Revisionism. ISBN 978-0-8262-1732-5

External links[edit]

Authority control

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Wednesday, 20 February 2013

Distributism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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"Distributivism" redirects here. For the algebraic concept, see distributivity.
Part of the Politics series on
Toryism
The Royal Oak in which Charles II hid to escape capture by the Roundheads is a prominent symbol of Toryism

Distributism (also known as distributionism[1] or distributivism[2]) is an economic philosophy that developed in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century, based upon the principles of Catholic social teaching, especially the teachings of Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Rerum Novarum and Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno.[3]
According to distributists, property ownership is a fundamental right[4] and the means of production should be spread as widely as possible among the general populace, rather than being centralized under the control of the state (state socialism) or by accomplished individuals (laissez-faire capitalism). Distributism therefore advocates a society marked by widespread property ownership[5] and, according to co-operative economist Race Mathews, maintains that such a system is key to bringing about a just social order.[6]
Distributism has often been described in opposition to both socialism and capitalism,[7][8] which distributists see as equally flawed and exploitive.[9] Thomas Storck argues that "both socialism and capitalism are products of the European Enlightenment and are thus modernizing and anti-traditional forces. In contrast, distributism seeks to subordinate economic activity to human life as a whole, to our spiritual life, our intellectual life, our family life".[10]
Some have seen it more as an aspiration, which has been successfully realised in the short term by commitment to the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity (these being built into financially independent local cooperatives and small family businesses), though proponents also cite such periods as the Middle Ages as examples of the historical long-term viability of distributism.[11] Particularly influential in the development of distributist theory were Catholic authors G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc,[9] two of distributism's earliest and strongest proponents.[12][13]

Contents

Background

The mid-to-late 19th century witnessed the growth of political Catholicism across Europe.[14] According to historian Michael A. Riff, a common feature of these movements was opposition not only to secularism, but also to both capitalism and socialism.[13] In 1891 Pope Leo XIII promulgated Rerum Novarum, in which he addressed the "misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class" and spoke of how "a small number of very rich men" had been able to "lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.".[15] Affirmed in the encyclical was the right of all men to own property,[16] the necessity of a system that allowed "as many as possible of the people to become owners",[17] the duty of employers to provide safe working conditions[18] and sufficient wages,[19] and the right of workers to unionise.[17] Common and government property ownership was expressly dismissed as a means of helping the poor.[20][21]
Around the start of the 20th century, G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc drew together the disparate experiences of the various cooperatives and friendly societies in Northern England, Ireland and Northern Europe into a coherent political ideology which specifically advocated widespread private ownership of housing and control of industry through owner-operated small businesses and worker-controlled cooperatives. In the United States in the 1930s, distributism was treated in numerous essays by Chesterton, Belloc and others in The American Review, published and edited by Seward Collins. Pivotal among Belloc's and Chesterton's other works regarding distributism include The Servile State,[22] and Outline of Sanity.[23]
Although a majority of distributism's later supporters were not Catholics and many were in fact former radical socialists who had become disillusioned with socialism; distributist thought was adopted by the Catholic Worker Movement, conjoining it with the thought of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin concerning localized and independent communities. It also influenced the thought behind the Antigonish Movement, which implemented cooperatives and other measures to aid the poor in the Canadian Maritimes. Its practical implementation in the form of local cooperatives has recently been documented by Race Mathews in his 1999 book Jobs of Our Own: Building a Stakeholder Society.

Position within the political spectrum


William Cobbett's social views influenced Chesterton.
The position of distributists when compared to other political philosophies is somewhat paradoxical and complicated (see Triangulation). Strongly entrenched in an organic but very English Catholicism, advocating culturally traditionalist and agrarian values, directly challenging the precepts of Whig history — Belloc was nonetheless an MP for the Liberal Party and Chesterton once stated "As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals."[24] This liberalism is different from most modern forms, taking influence from William Cobbett and John Ruskin, who combined elements of radicalism, challenging the establishment position, but from a perspective of renovation, not revolution; seeing themselves as trying to restore the traditional liberties of England and her people which had been taken away from them, amongst other things, since the Industrial Revolution.
While converging with certain elements of traditional Toryism, especially an appreciation of the Middle Ages and organic society, there were several points of significant contention. While many Tories were strongly opposed to reform, the distributists in certain cases saw this not as conserving a legitimate traditional concept of England, but in many cases, entrenching harmful errors and innovations. Belloc was quite explicit in his opposition to Protestantism as a concept and schism from the Catholic Church in general, considering the division of Christendom in the 16th century, as one of the most harmful events in the history of Europe. Elements of Toryism on the other hand were quite intransigent when it came to the Church of England as the established church, some even spurning their original legitimist ultra-royalist principles in regards to James II to uphold it.
Much of Dorothy L. Sayers' writings on social and economic matters has affinity with distributism, although she nowhere identifies herself as a distributist. She may have been influenced by them, or have come to similar conclusions on her own; as an Anglican, the reasonings she gave are rooted in the theologies of Creation and Incarnation, and thus are slightly different from the Catholic Chesterton and Belloc.

Economic theory

Private property


Self-portrait of G. K. Chesterton based on the distributist slogan "Three acres and a cow".
Under such a system, most people would be able to earn a living without having to rely on the use of the property of others to do so. Examples of people earning a living in this way would be farmers who own their own land and related machinery, plumbers who own their own tools, software developers who own their own computer[citation needed], etc. The "cooperative" approach advances beyond this perspective to recognise that such property and equipment may be "co-owned" by local communities larger than a family, e.g., partners in a business.
In Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII states that people are likely to work harder and with greater commitment if they themselves possess the land on which they labour, which in turn will benefit them and their families as workers will be able to provide for themselves and their household. He puts forward the idea that when men have the opportunity to possess property and work on it, they will “learn to love the very soil which yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of the good things for themselves and those that are dear to them.” [25] He states also that owning property is not only beneficial for a person and their family, but is in fact a right, due to God having “...given the earth for the use and enjoyment of the whole human race”.[26]
Similar views are presented by G.K. Chesterton in his 1910 book What’s Wrong with the World. Chesterton believes that whilst God has limitless capabilities, man has limited abilities in terms of creation. As such, man therefore is entitled to own property and to treat it as he sees fit. He states “Property is merely the art of the democracy. It means that every man should have something that he can shape in his own image, as he is shaped in the image of heaven. But because he is not God, but only a graven image of God, his self-expression must deal with limits; properly with limits that are strict and even small.”[27] Chesterton summed up his distributist views in the phrase "Three acres and a cow".
According to Belloc, the distributive state (the state which has implemented distributism) contains "an agglomeration of families of varying wealth, but by far the greater number of owners of the means of production."[28] This broader distribution does not extend to all property, but only to productive property; that is, that property which produces wealth, namely, the things needed for man to survive. It includes land, tools, and so on.[29]

Guild system

The kind of economic order envisaged by the early distributist thinkers would involve the return to some sort of guild system. The present existence of labor unions does not constitute a realization of this facet of distributist economic order, as labour unions are organized along class lines to promote class interests and frequently class struggle, whereas guilds are mixed class syndicates composed of both employers and employees cooperating for mutual benefit, thereby promoting class collaboration.

Banks

Distributism favors the dissolution of the current private bank system, or more specifically its profit-making basis in charging interest. Dorothy Day, for example, suggested abolishing legal enforcement of interest-rate contracts (usury). It would not entail nationalization but could involve government involvement of some sort. Distributists look favorably on credit unions as a preferable alternative to banks.

Anti-trust legislation

Distributism appears to have one of its greatest influences in anti-trust legislation in America and Europe designed to break up monopolies and excessive concentration of market power in one or only a few companies, trusts, interests, or cartels. Embodying the philosophy explained by Chesterton, above, that too much capitalism means too few capitalists, not too many, America's extensive system of anti-trust legislation seeks to prevent the concentration of market power in a given industry into too-few hands. Requiring that no company gain too great a share of any market is an example of how distributism has found its way into US government policy. The assumption behind this legislation is the idea that having economic activity decentralized among many different industry participants is better for the economy than having one or a few large players in an industry. (Note that anti-trust regulation does take into account cases when only large companies are viable because of the nature of an industry, but favors many participants over few, whenever possible.)

Social theory

Human family

Distributism sees the family of two parents and their child or children as the central and primary social unit of human ordering and the principal unit of a functioning distributist society and civilization. This unit is also the basis of a multi-generational extended family, which is embedded in socially as well as genetically inter-related communities, nations, etc., and ultimately in the whole human family past, present and future. The economic system of a society should therefore be focused primarily on the flourishing of the family unit, but not in isolation: at the appropriate level of family context, as is intended in the principle of subsidiarity. Distributism reflects this doctrine most evidently by promoting the family, rather than the individual, as the basic type of owner; that is, distributism seeks to ensure that most families, rather than most individuals, will be owners of productive property. The family is, then, vitally important to the very core of distributist thought.

Subsidiarity

Main article: Subsidiarity
Distributism puts great emphasis on the principle of subsidiarity. This principle holds that no larger unit (whether social, economic, or political) should perform a function which can be performed by a smaller unit. Pope Pius XI, in Quadragesimo Anno, provided the classical statement of the principle: "Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do."[30] Thus, any activity of production (which distributism holds to be the most important part of any economy) ought to be performed by the smallest possible unit. This helps support distributism's argument that smaller units, families if possible, ought to be in control of the means of production, rather than the large units typical of modern economies.
Pope Pius XI further stated, again in Quadragesimo Anno, "every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them."[29] To prevent large private organizations from thus dominating the body politic, distributism applies this principle of subsidiarity to economic as well as to social and political action.
The essence of subsidiarity is concisely inherent in the Chinese maxim 'Give someone a fish and you feed him for a day; teach the person to fish and you feed him for a lifetime'.

Social security

Distributism favors the elimination of social security on the basis that it further alienates man by making him more dependent on the Servile State. Distributists such as Dorothy Day did not favor social security when it was introduced by the United States government. This rejection of this new program was due to the direct influence of the ideas of Hilaire Belloc over American distributists.

Society of artisans

Distributism promotes a society of artisans and culture. This is influenced by an emphasis on small business, promotion of local culture, and favoring of small production over capitalistic mass production. A society of artisans promotes the distributist ideal of the unification of capital, ownership, and production rather than what distributism sees as an alienation of man from work.
This does not, however, suggest that distributism favors a technological regression to a pre-Industrial Revolution lifestyle, but a more local ownership of factories and other industrial centers. Products such as food and clothing would be preferably returned to local producers and artisans instead of being mass produced overseas.

Geopolitical theory

Political order

Distributism does not favor one political order over another (political accidentalism). While some distributists, such as Dorothy Day, have been anarchists, it should be remembered that most Chestertonian distributists are opposed to the mere concept of anarchism. Chesterton thought that Distributism would benefit from the discipline that theoretical analysis imposes, and that distributism is best seen as a widely encompassing concept inside of which any number of interpretations and perspectives can fit. This concept should fit in a political system broadly characterized by widespread ownership of productive property.[31]

Political parties

Distributism does not attach itself to one national political party or another in any part of the world, but it has influenced Christian Democratic parties in Continental Europe and the Democratic Labor Party in Australia.

War

Distributists usually use Just War Theory in determining whether a war should be fought or not. Historical positions of distributist thinkers provides insight into a distributist position on war. Both Belloc and Chesterton opposed British imperialism in general, as well as specifically opposing the Second Boer War, but supported British involvement in World War I.
On the other hand, prominent distributists such as Dorothy Day and those involved in the Catholic Worker movement were/are strict pacifists even to the point of condemning involvement in the Second World War at much personal cost.

Influence

E. F. Schumacher

Distributism is known to have had an influence on the economist E. F. Schumacher, a convert to Catholicism.

Mondragon Corporation

The Mondragon Corporation based out of the Basque Country in the region of Spain and France, was founded by a Catholic priest, Father José María Arizmendiarrieta, who seems to have been influenced by the same Catholic social and economic teachings that inspired Belloc, Chesterton, McNabb and the other founders of distributism.

The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic

Distributist ideas were put into practice by The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, a group of artists and craftsmen who established a community in Ditchling, Sussex, England, in 1920, with the motto 'Men rich in virtue studying beautifulness living in peace in their houses'. The Guild sought to recreate an idealised medieval lifestyle in the manner of the Arts and Crafts Movement; it survived almost 70 years, until 1989.

Big Society

The Big Society was the flagship policy idea of the 2010 UK Conservative Party general election manifesto. Some Distributists claim that the rhetorical marketing of this policy was influenced by aphorisms of the Distributist ideology and promotes Distributism.[32] It now forms part of the legislative programme of the Conservative – Liberal Democrat Coalition Agreement.[33] The stated aim is "to create a climate that empowers local people and communities, building a big society that will 'take power away from politicians and give it to people'.".[34]

Early distributists

Contemporary distributists

Key texts

  • Race Matthews 1999 "Jobs of Our Own" Pluto Press (Australia) and Comerford and Miller (UK) joint publishers

See also

References

  1. ^ Coulter, Michael (2007). Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science and Social Policy. Scarecrow Press. p. 85. ISBN 978-0-8108-5906-7
  2. ^ McConkey, Dale; Lawler, Peter (2003). Faith, Morality, and Civil Society. Lexington Books. p. 50. ISBN 978-0-7391-0483-5
  3. ^ Allitt, Patrick (2000). Catholic Converts: British and American Intellectuals Turn to Rome. Cornell University Press. p. 206. ISBN 978-0-8014-8663-0
  4. ^ Shiach, Morag (2004). Modernism, Labour and Selfhood in British Literature and Culture, 1890-1930. Cambridge University Press. p. 224. ISBN 978-0-521-83459-9
  5. ^ Zwick, Mark and Louise (2004). The Catholic Worker Movement: Intellectual and Spiritual Origins . Paulist Press. p. 156. ISBN 978-0-8091-4315-3
  6. ^ Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2006). A Postcapitalist Politics. University of Minnesota Press. p. 224. ISBN 978-0-8166-4804-7.
  7. ^ Boyle, David; Simms, Andrew (2009). The New Economics. Routledge. p. 20. ISBN 978-1-84407-675-8
  8. ^ Novak, Michael; Younkins, Edward W. (2001). Three in One: Essays on Democratic Capitalism, 1976-2000. Rowman and Littlefield. p. 152. ISBN 978-0-7425-1171-2
  9. ^ a b Prentiss, Craig R. (2008). Debating God's Economy: Social Justice in America on the Eve of Vatican II. Penn State University Press. p. 77. ISBN 978-0-271-03341-9
  10. ^ Storck, Thomas. "Capitalism and Distributism: two systems at war," in Beyond Capitalism & Socialism. Tobias J. Lanz, ed. IHS Press, 2008. p. 75
  11. ^ Hilaire Belloc, "The Servile Institution Dissolved," The Servile State, (1913; reprint, Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1977), 71-83.
  12. ^ Fitzgerald, Ross et al. (2003). The Pope's Battalions: Santamaria, Catholicism and the Labor Split. University of Queensland Press. p. 21. ISBN 978-0-7022-3389-0
  13. ^ a b Riff, Michael A. (1990). Dictionary of Modern Political Ideologies. Manchester University Press. p. 35. ISBN 978-0-7190-3289-9
  14. ^ Adams, Ian (1993). Political Ideology Today. Manchester University Press. p. 59-60. ISBN 978-0-7190-3347-6
  15. ^ Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 3.
  16. ^ Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 6.
  17. ^ a b Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 49.
  18. ^ Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 42.
  19. ^ Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 45.
  20. ^ Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 4.
  21. ^ Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 15.
  22. ^ Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State, The Liberty Fund, originally published 1913.
  23. ^ G. K. Chesterton, The Outline of Sanity, IHS Press, 2002, originally published 1927.
  24. ^ Chesterton, G. K. (2008). Orthodoxy. BiblioBazaar. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-554-33475-2.
  25. ^ Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum : 47, 1891
  26. ^ Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum: 8, 1891.
  27. ^ Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, What’s Wrong with the World (1920), p. 59.
  28. ^ Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State, 1913.
  29. ^ a b Id.
  30. ^ Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 1931.
  31. ^ G. K. Chesterton, The Outline of Sanity(Norfolk, Va.: IHS Press, 2001), p. 90
  32. ^ A Potential Step in the Right Direction 21st July 2010
  33. ^ Cameron and Clegg set out 'big society' policy ideas BBC News 18-May-2010
  34. ^ Government launches “Big Society” programme 10 Downing Street website 18-May-2010
  35. ^ "Articles on Distributism - 2" by Dorothy Day. The Catholic Worker, July–August 1948, 1, 2, 6
  36. ^ http://distributistreview.com/mag/author/dale-ahlquist/
  37. ^ http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2009/07/a-distributist-view-of-the-global-economic-crisis-a-report/
  38. ^ http://distributistreview.com/mag/author/john-mdaille/
  39. ^ http://distributist.blogspot.com/2007/01/distributism-without-cow.html
  40. ^ http://distributistreview.com/mag/author/thomas-storck/

Further reading

External links

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