On September 2, 2013, Mark Shea writes about What is Distributism?
“Distributism is the wild idea that property, power, and wealth should not be concentrated in the hands of a few tyrants running the State, nor in the hands of a few oligarchs running a corporation, but should instead be owned by all human beings, who have a natural right to private property, work and the fruit of the labors supplying their needs and the needs of their families. It is hostile to both communism (the concentration of wealth, power and property in the hands of the State) and capitalism (the concentration of wealth, power and property in the hands of a few oligarchs). It is in favor of the ordinary person being able to use his gifts and talent to create goods and exploit resources for human flourishing. It favors private property, freedom, and human dignity that puts the person before Mammon. It prefers the small over the ginormous, the local over the multinational corporation, the family over the economic machine.”
To read more on Catholic economic theory and traditional Catholic economic thought see “Long Lost” Book by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Republished
Arlington, Virginia, Monday, September 2, 2013. In 1940, on the eve of the United States’ entry into World War II, the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979) published Freedom Under God. The all-volunteer, interfaith Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ) has republished a new, annotated version of this neglected classic under its “Economic Justice Media” imprint, complete with an in-depth foreword written especially for this edition, as well as a bibliography and index not included in the first edition.
While Freedom Under God addresses the loss of true freedom throughout the world, Sheen’s special concern was freedom of religion. This is under increasing attack today. Individual life as well as marriage and the family are also in grave danger as the State continues to expand its power to fill the vacuum left by the growing powerlessness of ordinary people.
Then-Monsignor Sheen traced the rise of totalitarian State power in the first half of the 20th century to the fact that fewer and fewer people in America and throughout the world owned capital — what Sheen called “creative wealth.” As Sheen argued, only widespread private property in capital has the capacity to restore the material foundation of true freedom.
In conformity with the precepts of the natural law on which Sheen relied to develop his thought, CESJ adds that genuine economic reform must also comply with the three interdependent principles of Economic Justice: Participative Justice, Distributive Justice, and Harmonic Justice. Lawyer-economist Louis O. Kelso and Aristotelian philosopher Mortimer J. Adler first described these principles in Chapter 5 of their bestselling The Capitalist Manifesto (1958).
Sheen’s warnings fell on deaf ears. Thanks to the acceptance of Keynesian economics, the wage-welfare system within a State-controlled, inflationary, debt-ridden economy has become the dominant model for economic development throughout the world.
The world needs the wisdom of Fulton Sheen now more than ever. The republication of Freedom Under God helps introduce the work of this pivotal thinker to a new generation of readers and students.
Fulton J. Sheen’s Freedom Under God, ISBN 978-0-944997-11-6, cover price $20.00, will soon be available on-line from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and by special order from selected other bookstores. Quantity discounts are available for schools, religious institutions, and civic groups.
http://distributistreview.com/mag/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/What-is-Distributism.pdf
