Chesterton and Distributism

Extract

Chesterton never gave a systematic account of what he meant by Distributism anywhere in his writing, but the outline of this sociopolitical philosophy is clear to anyone who is familiar with his work and that of the circle of writers to which he belonged. As the name implies, Distributism meant first of all that property should be distributed in the widest possible way. Belloc stated the case for this policy in The Servile State, which he published in 1912 and which became the text-book of the movement. He argued that Socialism and State Capitalism were helping to create the same kind of society in which power would be concentrated in the hands of a small ruling-class and security would be given to a permanent proletariat whose econonomic position would be fixed by law. The only alternative to the ‘slave’ state was the Distributist state of small peasant ownership and workers’ guilds. The nearest approximation to this simple society was found in medieval times. Consequently Distributists must be prepared to repudiate modern industrialism in its present form and work for a return to the past. The way in which this theory was interpreted among Belloc’s followers is best illustrated by a quotation from a Distributist manifesto published twenty-five years later:

Distributists agree with Socialists in their condemnation of the present system of society, but they think the evil is far more deeply rooted than socialists suppose . . . Distributists propose to go back to fundamentals, and to rebuild society from its basis in agriculture, instead of accepting the industrial system and changing the ownership, which is all that Socialists propose. Apart from their conviction that industrialism is essentially unstable and cannot last, Distributists refuse to accept it as a foundation upon which to build, because they believe that large scale industry may be as great a tyranny under public as under private ownership.