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A Journal of Catholic News and Views

3 Nov 2002

A final defense of Distributism

[Editor's Note: I would like to take this time to thank all those who contributed to this lively informal debate on the topic of Catholicism and economics, including Mr. Sharpe, Mr. Clark, Br. Bugnolo and Dr. Woods. To wrap up this current discussion and in response to numerous reader requests to hear from the Distributist side once more, Mr. Sharpe has been asked to provide a final rebuttal.]

A word of thanks to Mr. Miller of Seattle Catholic for the opportunity to respond to Mr. Clark's response to my response, etc., etc. I will attempt in what follows to summarize the results of our exchange, and point out where I think points which I made have been either conceded, missed, or misunderstood. Begging the reader's forgiveness, I will also touch briefly on several new arguments which were raised against the Distributist position, both by Mr. Clark and by Dr. Woods, who contributed to the debate after it was in progress. Those new points include the following: 1) numerous theologians have supported capitalism, 2) capitalism has reduced the gap between rich and poor and thus does not promote inequality, 3) Distributism would be productive of "big government," and, finally, 4) it is illegitimate to expect the free market or the science of economics to take morality into account, as both are fundamentally neutral. In what follows I also assume that readers are familiar, at least in general, with the articles that have been written by Dr. Woods and Mr. Clark in connection with this discussion.¹

Concessions

To my mind, the following points were ignored and, therefore, conceded:

(1) Belloc's definition of capitalism. It was dismissed as "simplistic" by Mr. Clark, but we saw how it was also the definition of Pope Pius XI, who was probably not a simpleton. Speaking of the definition of capitalism, I also conceded to Mr. Clark that in modern terms the notion of "capitalism" does indeed imply a regime of free competition, as he suggested. This was and is central to my critique of capitalism. More on that later.

(2) Distributism a new theory. I maintained that Distributism was a new and awkward word for a very old theory, a theory of widely distributed ownership not only of material wealth in general, but of productive wealth specifically. I said, in fact, that "...the ideal, at which great statesmen from Solon of Athens to Leo XIII and Pius XI have aimed, is a State made up principally of flourishing and self-contained communities of small proprietors, and especially of small farmers or peasants." This too was not refuted. Mr. Clark only said, essentially, that capitalism didn't come from Protestantism; he provided no evidence to suggest that Belloc was wrong, however, in noting that the concentration of wealth characteristic of capitalist society resulted, at least in England, from a few unique events triggered by the Reformation — events which he details in his tidy Essay on the Restoration of Property. Those events were made possible, furthermore, by the breakdown of laws and structures which preserved the "Distributist" nature of society up to that point. More on Mr. Clark's other comments in this regard later. Suffice it to say that my contention that a society of many small owners, rather than a few big ones, has always been the ideal of great statesmen and sane thinkers, was never refuted.

(3) Radical equality and Socialism. Belloc maintained that the gross inequality of modern society, which has owners pitted against an essentially non-owning class, is too much to bear; in so stating he simply follows the Popes. (We'll see more of this in our brief look at the so-called "capitalism-creates-inequality" myth.) I pointed out in my original article, however, that Belloc admitted in several places of his Essay that inequality is natural in society and should be respected; his was not a scheme of radical leveling but one of defending the small owner. I also made it perfectly clear that Belloc opposed socialism as vigorously as he opposed capitalism. Furthermore, I looked in detail at the phrase — taken out of context by Mr. Clark — in which Belloc says that the state should own certain forms of property before those forms are left to the ownership of a few wealthy men; I demonstrated that such a statement was not only miles away from an advocacy of Socialism, but was rather completely consistent with the words of the Pontiff who had condemned socialism so vigorously!²

Just to be perfectly clear, I will reiterate: at no point and in no phrase of any of Belloc's writing does he demand radical, Socialist equality; at no point and in no phrase does he object to the fundamentally Catholic notion that society will always consist of varying degrees of inequality; at no point and in no phrase does he advocate the application of taxation to redistribute personal wealth to those who have less; at no point and in no phrase does he argue for repressively high, "tyrannical" taxation (to use Clark's word) — in fact he devotes an entire chapter of Restoration of Property (VI) to opposing high taxation. In so doing he is perfectly in agreement with the actual words (though perhaps not with Clark's unsupportable interpretation) of Navarette's statement, which Clark quoted: "The origin of poverty is high taxes. In continual fear of tax collectors, (farmers) prefer to abandon their land, so they can avoid their vexations." This is exactly what Belloc said!

In making these points I was and am trying to further illustrate the general vision behind Belloc's scheme in Restoration of Property. He desired no redistribution of wealth á la Marx; but he did advocate a defense of the small owner.

The burden of proof thus lies with Mr. Clark to demonstrate that Belloc advocated socialism. The only reply from Mr. Clark on this point was to insinuate that Belloc thought that the wage contract was fundamentally unjust — because Belloc referred to the "exploitation" of wage earners. But Belloc clearly respected the justice of the wage contract.³ For Mr. Clark to prove that Belloc advocated socialism — which was his original contention — we need more concrete, factual evidence from him than the assertion that "Belloc's terminology was eerily similar to that of Marx." Such a statement, in light of what I have demonstrated, is hardly a scholarly demonstration of Belloc's socialist sympathies.

(4) The Means of Production. I spent a section of my article explaining that Belloc specifically — and Distributists in general — has no objection to an entrepreneur being paid more for his efforts than that of the assembly line wage-earner. The Distributist objection to the capitalist scheme has to do with wages only tangentially, and is rooted more in how capital ownership is currently distributed among the members of society. Because of this current distribution, relatively few own the means of production, and the rest are compelled by the very structure of the thing to work for those few in exchange for a wage. This essential point — the very foundation of the Distributist premise — was and is never, ever refuted. Regardless of how both rich and poor have microwave ovens and TVs, and how an entrepreneur is entitled to be compensated more than a shoe repair man — provided he is truly providing a useful service to the community with his large, complicated, capital-intensive venture, the fact is that wage-earners cannot have the dignity, freedom, and independence of capital owners because they own no productive wealth with which they can themselves produce wealth for consumption. Pius XI called such a state "hand-to-mouth uncertainty," ⁴ and Pius XII called it "economic dependence and slavery which is irreconcilable with [a man's] rights as a person." ⁵ That's the beginning and the end of the point.

(5) Free competition. Another point which I made was that free or unrestricted competition cannot be the final, regulating factor in economic life. I also suggested that regulation and defense of private property from the destructive effects of unrestricted competition was not to regulate private property out of existence, but to defend it and protect it.⁶ The first point was made clearly time and again by Pope Leo XIII, Pope Pius XI, and Pope Pius XII, and the latter was affirmed with unparalleled explicitness by Pope Pius XI. Neither aspect of that observation was ever refuted by Mr. Clark either. He suggests that the government should stay out of regulating economic life, lest it become an "all-powerful leviathan," but that is hardly a response to a clear declaration by several Popes that "the right ordering of economic life cannot be left to a free competition of forces. For from this source, as from a poisoned spring, have originated and spread all the errors of individualist economic teaching" ⁷ (emphasis mine) We'll look quickly later on at the myth of "big government." Let it be reaffirmed here, that the Church has solemnly condemned unrestricted competition, and there is no refuting that.

(6) Profit. Mr. Clark chose not to address the profit aspect of my previous article. Another conceded point, evidently. The essence of my position was that profit is only licit from the Catholic standpoint as a means to an end — namely, the procuring of necessary goods for one's self and one's family, and that a desire for gain which is not circumscribed by that very specific intention is immoral and illicit, and thus also illegitimate as a principle of social order. This issue was only addressed in a related fashion by Dr. Woods, and I'll respond to those points very briefly below.

(7) The Social Doctrine of the Church. Another conceded point was my original contention that the fundamental tenet of the Social Doctrine of the Church is the idea that society should be an aid to virtue, not a hindrance. I maintained that a society which legally and publicly recognizes an unlimited "profit motive" — one unconcerned with how the amassing of productive wealth adversely affects the rest of society — is a society fundamentally disordered and inconsistent with Catholic teaching. I would argue that this is plainly and simply true, and therefore impossible to refute. Which may explain the absence of a refutation.

Rebuttals

In several instances, Mr. Clark offered rebuttals to my original points. Dr. Woods additionally offered his responses to some of the observations that I made, in the pieces which he contributed to this debate. I would ask the reader to consider the following in response:

(1) The greatest minds of the Church. Mr. Clark claimed to be able to cite "fifteen references [to] pre-medieval and medieval Catholic economists," and complained that I quoted "exactly one Catholic prior to Rerum Novarum." He further lamented that I relied "almost exclusively on Hilaire Belloc, Chesterton, and some of the papal encyclicals."

Firstly, Clark's references to the "fifteen theologians" are — begging forgiveness for the terms — completely useless and irrelevant. He lists 15 names; he doesn't quote from any of them. The reader will forgive me if I do not take Mr. Clark's word for it that all 15 theologians were proto-capitalists.⁸ If he's so familiar with their work (albeit through an obviously liberal lens), why not quote them, at length, so that we too can learn that the Scholastic philosophers supported a massive concentration of productive property into a relatively few hands (a phenomena which, it should be remembered, Mr. Clark did not deny), perpetuated by a regime of unlimited economic competition? I defy anyone (!) to produce a single citation from any Catholic philosopher (who is not an admitted liberal like Bastiat) which says that a concentration of wealth such as we see today, created and/or encouraged by totally free competition, is a desirable state of affairs. No such quote is possible.

An additional fact to bear in mind is that the Church, in most cases throughout Her history, has reacted to historical circumstances and issued condemnations of social or theological trends after those trends took a wrong turn. St. Albert the Great's defense of private property is hardly an apologia for a concentration of wealth. How can we expect to hear fierce denunciations of economic rationalism/liberalism from clerics who lived before the problem had manifested itself socially or philosophically? When I said that the great minds of the Church would not have sanctioned Mr. Clark's praise of capitalism, I meant those minds who considered capitalism in retrospect, from a point in history after capitalism had developed. It is not a coincidence in my mind that those theologians who examined capitalism from a modern perspective were almost all of one mind in condemning it. For readers interested in this aspect of the question, they are encouraged to consult the writings of Fr. Heinrich Pesch, Fr. Oswald von Nell-Breuning, Fr. Bernard Dempsey, Fr. John Ryan, Dr. Amintore Fanfani, Dr. George O'Brien, Dr. Charles Devas, Fr. Matteo Liberatore, Fr. Denis Fahey, Fr. Edward Cahill, Mgr. Emile Guerry, and the numerous other Social Catholics who wrestled with the problem of the modern economy. Such a list should be enough to refute the implication that I, in a "misleading" and "unscholarly" fashion, meant to portray only Chesterton (whom I didn't mention once!) and Belloc as the Church's greatest minds on the economic question.

It is worth mentioning that the one theologian from whom I did quote in my previous article is, according to Holy Mother Church, our chief guide in matters economic. That one was St. Thomas Aquinas, who, as Pius XI taught, "is...the perfect theologian, [who] gives infallible rules and precepts of life not only for individuals, but also for civil and domestic society which is the object also of moral science, both economic and political." ⁹ (emphasis mine)

Finally, I will here point out that Mr. Clark grudgingly admitted that I quoted from "some of the papal encyclicals," as if to base myself on such sources were to condemn myself to the unscholarly oblivion of ignorance and naiveté. This is an argument about what Catholics should think about the economic order, and quoting the major encyclicals on economic problems isn't sufficient!?! Clark asserts that Pope Leo XIII "was no anti-capitalist." While Leo along with all the other popes, theologians, and Belloc (as we have noted) didn't impugn the legitimacy of a contract between a wage earner and an owner of capital, he and his successors most certainly condemned an economic order based upon unrestricted competition and rationalist principles! And the notion of unlimited competition is — according to Mr. Clark — a prime element of modern capitalism...an element condemned in most vigorous terms by Pius XI, in spite of Clark's contention that the social encyclicals intended "simply to state that employers should treat their employees as beings created by God." If such were the case, what are we to make of Pius XI's teaching that public authority can justly regulate what owners do or do not do with their property (49), that free competition must be controlled by the state or other legitimate authority (110), that wealth is immensely concentrated as a result of free competition (105, 107)...and on and on and on? To dismiss the teaching of Pius XI as applying merely to how employers are supposed to treat their employees is to grossly misrepresent the pontiff's teaching.

A final note on the encyclicals. Mr. Clark maintains that "Pope John Paul II is really the first modern Pontiff to delve into capitalism proper, and analyze it on its own merits." My interpretation of his meaning is that he is the first Pope worth quoting since he admitted the merits of capitalism, because his predecessors analyzed it in detail (Quadragesimo Anno is over 20,000 words long!) and found it wanting. Insofar as the statements of Pius XI and others which I have quoted refer to principle and not contingent facts,¹⁰ I am certain that all Catholics will continue to admit their binding force. I further trust we are all agreed that the Holy Father did not intend to contradict his predecessors.

(2) The history of capitalism. Mr. Clark maintains that Belloc's thesis must be rejected, insofar as Prof. de Roover has suggested that "Modern capitalism based on private ownership has its roots in Italy during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance." A couple of points in reply:

First, the thesis is not merely Belloc's. It is Weber's, Fanfani's, O'Brien's, and Fahey's. Space doesn't permit me to quote from them extensively, but I would be happy to provide more information as and when requested.

Second, the "Bellocian thesis" is not that the historical phenomena of division of labor, stock speculation, capital-intensive production and trade, and banking were created overnight after Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg cathedral. In England, at least, it is simply a fact that the concentrations of wealth which made "big business" possible resulted from, among other things, the confiscation of Church lands and the implementation of the Statute of Frauds passed after Henry VIII's break with Rome.

Additionally, as Mr. Clark said very clearly in his first article, capitalism implies the right to private property and free competition. One without the other would cease to be capitalism. So even in France, Italy, and other places where pre-Reformation concentrations of capital existed for the carrying out of large, capital-intensive operations, without the mentality of "unrestricted competition" which is today part of the essence of the "free market," capitalism as we know it would not have existed. This is a point which Clark's source, Prof. de Roover, seems unwilling to grapple with in most of his writings. It took a change in mentality to foster capitalism as we know it, and that change of mentality was furthered by an emancipation of morals from the authority of Rome: i.e., Protestantism.

(3) Capitalism doesn't create inequality. I will ask for the reader's indulgence if I respond with slightly more than, "Yes, it does."

This is primarily Dr. Woods' contention, that the "capitalism-creates-inequality myth" is simply an "ignorant canard." He emphasizes the point in two different ways: first, by reminding us that the destitute were employed by the factories, and so they would otherwise have perished, were it not for the labor-creating factories; second, by reminding us that both rich and poor classes today have TVs, microwaves, radios, access to air travel, etc., etc.

To this first point I simply respond by saying that the massive and rapid growth of the factory system wouldn't have been possible without the destruction of some aspects of the Distributist society which existed beforehand. If the factories are to be thanked for providing employment for the hungry masses, the question which comes to mind is: "Where did all the hungry masses come from in the first place?" It is a stunt of circular reasoning to suggest that they failed on their land or at their trade and so had to be employed by the factories to survive, because 1) they lost their land in the first place as a result of events that Belloc mentioned (and that we have noted briefly above), and 2) their home-grown trade would have been made ineffective or impossible in raw competition with a capital-intensive, assembly-line method of production which could turn out hundreds of times the amount of goods, at far cheaper costs — which is the very problem which Distributism seeks to remedy! In essence, the balance of the small, predominantly cottage economy was upset by the triumph of the factory system on a large scale, combined with a liberal, "no-holds-barred" economic philosophy, and the combined result was the wholesale transformation of land-owning peasants into employees.

It should, finally, be born in mind that the question of wealth distribution is not a question of who has the most toys, but rather a question of who possesses productive wealth, which can be worked to generate the wealth to live on. It is this kind of wealth which is mal-distributed, and this kind of mal-distribution thereof which Distributism, with the Popes, seeks to remedy. Neither Leo XIII, nor Pius XI, nor Pius XII lamented the "sad lack of modern conveniences among poorer families, the scarcity of TV- and microwave-owning families who lord their gadgets over the poor, along with the gross inequality in health standards." Pius XI called the non-owning workers the "proletariat" — propertyless. The non-owning workers (like most all of us) possess no productive property of their own to make their labor productive of wealth absent someone else's capital, thus producing the precarious state of "economic dependence" (Pius XII's phrase) and "hand-to-mouth uncertainty" (Pius XI's). That such a state still exists today should be obvious from current headlines, which almost daily announce a new round of layoffs in the thousands from corporations both large and small.

Pius XI even concedes — in anticipation of Dr. Woods' objection — that "the status of non-owning workers is to be carefully distinguished from pauperism," and that "the workers can no longer be considered universally overwhelmed with misery and lacking the necessities of life." ¹¹ But he nevertheless maintains "that the immense multitude of the non-owning workers on the one hand and the enormous riches of certain very wealthy men on the other establish an unanswerable argument that the riches which are so abundantly produced in our age of 'industrialism,' as it is called, are not rightly distributed and equitably made available to the various classes of the people" ¹² (emphasis mine), and that this inequality is a "fruit that the unlimited freedom of struggle among competitors has of its own nature produced" ¹³ (emphasis mine). So much for the "ignorant canard."

(4) Profit. Dr. Woods took the lead in rebutting this point, as well, with what I assume was somewhat of a justification of "the profit motive" in suggesting that "profit signals...make for peaceful social cooperation and the most efficient use of scarce resources." Elsewhere he asserts that "the morally acceptable desire for profit leads to spontaneous social cooperation."

I have serious qualms with both of those statements. That our system produces "peaceful" social cooperation is only true insofar as most of us aren't murdering one another to buy sugar and flour. But it is to contradict the prevailing spirit which demands that a business continuously increase its "market share" (at who's expense, we wonder...?) or go under. How many small business have to shut their doors because of the big ones before we abandon the "peaceful social cooperation myth"? Doubtless Dr. Woods would consider the evacuation of a small farm in the face of agri-business a "signal from the consumer" that high broccoli prices will no longer be tolerated, but has it occurred to him that the low prices wouldn't be a factor if the regime of unlimited competition weren't the prevailing economic doctrine? What if everybody more or less sold broccoli at the same price, and the question turned on not who could undercut the competition, but simply "how much broccoli do we need?"

Finally, to say that the "desire for profit" is "morally acceptable" is to frame the question with certain definite assumptions which do not factor in modern economic life. That wage-earners bring home a pay check to meet basic needs — and thus are behaving morally in so doing — is a stark fact of life. That CEO's bring home a salary several hundred times that of the average worker has little to do with need, and everything to do with avarice. So too for the industry that insists upon expanding — for "market share," "dividends," or pure "profit" — to the detriment of the small holders of property who otherwise would have maintained themselves in reasonable comfort while working on their own productive property. It is only a system of pure liberalism that would suggest that such avarice should be ignored by the "free market" as solely a personal religious or moral issue, in which economics has no role to play. Such would be pure rationalism applied to political and economic life, of the kind denounced by Leo XIII and all the recent Pius's. Pius XI referred, in fact, to the salutary role that the state could play in redressing such grievous imbalances in his encyclical — believe it or not! — against communism:

...the wealthy classes must be induced to assume those burdens without which human society cannot be saved nor they themselves remain secure. However, measures taken by the State with this end in view ought to be of such a nature that they will really affect those who actually possess more than their share of capital resources, and who continue to accumulate them to the grievous detriment of others.¹⁴ (emphasis mine)

New Issues

Several new issues were raised both by Mr. Clark and Dr. Woods in their responses to the Distributist position, and I will tackle those now, as briefly as I can.

(1) Moral neutrality of economics; economics a value-free science. Clark's contribution to this theme was to compare capitalism to an automobile, implying that it is a neutral tool to be used for good or evil. Dr. Woods elsewhere suggested that the problem of greed is "a matter of moral philosophy rather than economics;" and he further explained that economics is a "value-free" science which doesn't tell people how much money they can make or how to employ their wealth.

I answer that: All of these statements imply that the creation of wealth for use by man is simply a matter of technique, science, and practical knowledge — as if wealth could be created by this or that system interchangeably and inconsequentially, as if it were simply a choice in woodcarving between this or that knife, this or that file.

The fact is, however, that an economic order is not a lifeless piece of matter, to be manipulated according to forces of nature governing that inanimate matter. It is a scheme whereby living, animated creatures produce the wealth necessary for life on earth, to further their practice of virtue and thereby (God willing) attain heaven. Thus there can be no "limitless" wealth creation because the end of wealth creation is subordinate to the end of man, which is God. Wherever limitless wealth creation runs up against moral concerns — like the right of a "competitor" to possess his productive property in peace, the right of labor to a fair share of the fruits of production, the right of labor to be treated as something essential to life and dignity, rather than as a commodity — then the moral concerns must triumph, and economic concerns take a subordinate place. Anything else is simply not Catholic.

Such a conclusion is not pie-in-the-sky dreaming, or naïve wishful thinking. It is Catholic science, backed up by a scholarly tradition much longer than that of rationalist and liberal economic "science." ¹⁵ For a truly Catholic economic understanding maintains that the art of acquiring wealth (money-making) or producing wealth (this could be any number of arts: manufacture, agriculture, etc.), is limited by the science of using wealth (Political Economy); the science of using wealth is subordinate to political science which looks after the common good of the nation as a whole; and the science which looks after the nation is itself a moral science.¹⁶ "The best usage of the present time," says the Catholic Encyclopedia, "is to make political economy an ethical science, that is, to make it include a discussion of what ought to be in the economic world as well as what is. This has all along been the practice of Catholic writers. Some of them even go so far as to make political economy a branch of ethics and not an independent science." ¹⁷ Elsewhere the Encyclopedia emphasizes the point:

Ethics is distinguished from the other natural sciences which deal with moral conduct of man, as jurisprudence and pedagogy, in this, that the latter do not ascend to first principles, but borrow their fundamental notions from ethics, and are therefore subordinate to it. To investigate what constitutes good or bad, just or unjust, what is virtue, law, conscience, duty, etc., what obligations are common to all men, does not lie within the scope of jurisprudence or pedagogy, but of ethics; and yet these principles must be presupposed by the former, must serve them as a ground-work and guide; hence they are subordinated to ethics. The same is true of political economy. The latter is indeed immediately concerned with man's social activity inasmuch as it treats of the production, distribution and consumption of material commodities, but this activity is not independent of ethics; industrial life must develop in accordance with the moral law and must be dominated by justice, equity, and love. Political economy was wholly wrong in trying to emancipate itself from the requirements of ethics.¹⁸

Readers who are interested in further defense of this subject are asked to see Appendix II.

(2) A note on "Big government." All this talk of "government regulation" makes modern opponents of Distributism nervous that Big Brother (he's really our Uncle) will exercise a sweeping and oppressive amount of authority to make sure that the rich don't get too rich. This fear is in one sense well-founded, insofar as modern "liberal" governments have a long and robust track record of useless (and usually nefarious) encroachments on the just liberties of their citizens. It should be borne in mind, however, even as we concede this fear, that the massive coercive power of the modern state is itself a violation of the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity, and so the State that the Pontiffs imagine is the whole body of small and intermediate bodies which make up the whole fabric of the civil authority. Thus the Distributist question, in practice, becomes one of "what can we accomplish today, in present circumstances, to live economically, as well as morally, like Catholics." Such is a separate question from the theory, which we have been debating in these pages.

On the other hand this fear is completely unfounded and polemically irrelevant. To argue against the use of a thing from its abuse is a very sophistical procedure, to use the phrase of the Thomist, Fr. Matteo Liberatore. Pius XI and the Distributists aren't arguing for oppression, they're arguing for the defense of the weak from the oppression of the economically strong. Critiquing an implementation of Distributism — or Catholic economics generally — which includes the "power to the state" part but leaves out the question of what exactly the state will be empowered to do, is not to criticize Distributism at all, but rather to defeat a straw man with the hopes that the unsuspecting will dismiss the real man along with him. Finally, if Pius XI's idea of the State justly regulating economic life gives Catholics the uncomfortable sense that their "rights" are being violated and their "freedom" is being curtailed, then it is not the Pope who has to adjust his view of what the state can and cannot do; it is Catholics who must recalibrate their notion of "rights" and "freedom" to correspond with the Teaching of the Church.

It is worth noting at this juncture that we can't have our cake and eat it too, nor can any of my opponents. Dr. Woods suggests that Distributism is a bad idea today because "theologians from 800 years ago couldn't have imagined the evil of the modern state." I would humbly submit to the reader that they couldn't have imagined the evil of modern capitalism either, and thus the citations from 13th century Thomists and 15th century Jesuits are wholly irrelevant as a vindication of modern capitalism.

(3) Emigration. Mr. Clark says that high tax will drive out the entrepreneur: "the state would progressively tax the ablest entrepreneurs to the point where they can no longer increase their profits and wealth." Two very simple answers:

1) The state will not tax entrepreneurial skill; the state will tax an amassing of wealth which begins to eliminate the ability of others to own productive property.

2) If said entrepreneurs are unhappy because their profits and wealth are limited, I bid them good riddance. Mr. Clark makes the point for me: "If your principle is that capitalists are greedy men, who care about nothing except profits, why would they stay in a country that limits the amount of money they can make? The ablest entrepreneurs will move somewhere else, leaving those who have never run businesses with the job of running businesses." I will simply reply to the final sentence with the remark I made in my earlier article. It is a strange thing that our pre-capitalist ancestors were capable of pulling off such feats of grandeur like constructing cathedrals when they were faced with the oppressive, anti-competitive restrictions of the Guild System, which allegedly wrecks all entrepreneurial spirit. Could it be that "social cooperation" results more from socially sanctioned and encouraged cooperation than from "survival-of-the-fittest" economics?

(4) Trade. Mr. Clark suggests that international trade will be impossible in a Distributist society.

I reply: That's not true. It will occur where necessary, because the purpose of trade is not to allow a foreign country to destabilize prices and the entire economic order by importing cheap goods produced by cheaper labor, where those goods are already produced by the home country; the purpose is to supply what is naturally lacking to that country. In other words, the Thomistic justification for international trade is not for Chinese shoemakers to put American shoemakers out of business, but, according to Clark's own citation, to supply a need where a country cannot supply the same need on its own.

Unfortunately, this technique — of quoting someone and then completely and misleadingly reinterpreting it — is typical of Mr. Clark's style. He suggests that trade is in and of itself worthwhile and justifiable, and thus he laments that Distributism would allegedly make trade impossible. But the citations he produces all say that trade supplies a need which the city cannot supply on its own. Most erroneous is Clark's statement — allegedly a conclusion from St. Thomas: "The perfect city is one that engages in trade." But St. Thomas didn't say that. He said that the city will make use of trade where necessary, but that the ideal city will tend towards self-sufficiency, to the exclusion of trade altogether. I quote here the entire passage to illustrate the degree to which St. Thomas is misrepresented:

The more dignified a thing is the more self-sufficient it is, since whatever needs another's help is by that fact proven to be deficient. Now the city which is supplied by the surrounding country with all its vital needs is more self-sufficient than another which must obtain those supplies by trade. A city therefore which has an abundance of food from its own territory is more dignified than one which is provisioned through trade.¹⁹

Furthermore, St. Thomas has harsh words for a society in which most if not all of the citizens are mixed up in commerce, as all of us are. His description of such a society is eminently applicable to our time:

If the citizens themselves devote their life to matters of trade, the way will be opened to many vices. Since the foremost tendency of tradesmen is to make money, greed is awakened in the hearts of the citizens through the pursuit of trade. The result is that everything in the city will become venal; good faith will be destroyed and the way opened to all kinds of trickery; each one will work only for his own profit, despising the public good; the cultivation of virtue will fail since honor, virtue's reward, will be bestowed upon the rich. Thus, in such a city, civic life will necessarily be corrupted.²⁰

A final comment on trade. Clark's example illustrates the inherent wisdom of Distributism. He suggests that trade will be impossible in the event that certain goods are manufactured at home and the foreign commodity threatens to undercut them in terms of price. Indeed so. For the Distributist perspective maintains that the integrity of the national economy, and the livelihood of individual men and women which results from their practice of a trade or craft, is more important that the capitalist's need to "expand his market" or "increase his market share." There can be no question that these two mentalities are one hundred percent at odds, and that the Distributist thinks of men and nations whereas capitalism thinks only of money.

A concluding note on the Social Vision of the Church

At the risk of repeating myself, I beg leave to remind readers that Distributism does not — as Mr. Clark suggests — intend to represent itself as a sine qua non of a moral society. It does however claim to be an economic system which is consistent with the demands of morality and the Social Doctrine of the Church. Insofar as my comments on the Social Doctrine of the Church were ignored by those attempting to refute the Distributist position, I offer in closing an expanded recapitulation of where the Distributists are coming from in terms of that Doctrine.

Distributism is broadly thought of, by its advocates, as an implementation of the Social Doctrine of the Church. It is so because it is a program that is consistent with the natural law and, because, in the final analysis, it will help man along the path to Heaven rather than throw him off it.

The essence of the Social Doctrine is that society is a means to an end. The temporal common good — the moral and material goods of this life — which it is society's duty to protect and foster, serves ultimately another end: the Eternal Salvation of men.²¹ As a result, every law, every custom, every ordinance of the earthly community is salutary insofar as it makes man's journey to Heaven easier, and is disordered whenever it makes that journey more difficult.

St. Thomas made this point explicitly clear in his instruction to the King of Cyprus: "it pertains to the king's office to promote the good life of the multitude in such a way as to make it suitable for the attainment of heavenly happiness, that is to say, he should command those things which lead to the happiness of Heaven, and as far as possible, forbid the contrary." ²² He says in his treatise on law in the Summa that "The purpose of human law is to lead men to virtue, not suddenly, but gradually." ²³ He concedes, of course that the law cannot forbid all vices, nor command all virtues, but this is a far cry from saying that the law is indifferent to virtue and vice, and seeks only to "preserve the peace" so that man can do what he pleases, as both new and old liberals tell us.

It was very correctly, if unintentionally, said by Dr. Woods recently that the essential point is the relationship between the law and morals. Someone had written to him "to point out what Distributists and other critics of the market consistently fail to acknowledge (sic): 'No one claims that anyone can, morally speaking, do simply whatever he wants with his property; the question is over exactly which uses are immoral uses, and which of these immoral uses ought also to be illegal ones.'" The point is, rather, one which Distributists, with the Popes, consistently bear in mind; the difference is that the Distributists offer a Catholic answer to the question, rather than a liberal one.

As we have seen, Pius XI referred specifically to Leo XIII's teaching on the state and economic life as "boldly breaking through the confines imposed by Liberalism" ²⁴ (emphasis mine). His own teaching was the same. Acknowledging the true human inclination towards evil as stemming from Original Sin, he nevertheless affirmed that the "unquenchable thirst for riches and temporal goods, which has at all times impelled men to break God's laws and trample upon the rights of their neighbors...on account of the present system of economic life, is laying far more numerous snares for human frailty" ²⁵ (emphasis mine). That system could have been reformed, he says, by "strict and watchful moral restraint enforced vigorously by governmental authority," ²⁶ but it was not, and it has left us with a "whole scheme of social and economic life [which] is now such as to put in the way of vast numbers of mankind most serious obstacles which prevent them from caring for the one thing necessary." As such, that system must either be condemned, or the Social Doctrine denied.

This point is often lost on the opponents of Distributism, who insist that economic life is neutral and that the creation, distribution, consumption, and exchange of wealth is simply a technical process, which is affected by morality only insofar as the individuals who interact with that process choose to allow moral considerations to enter into their thoughts and actions. Such a mindset, whether the root of an erroneous conception of economic science, an infatuation with Austrian economics,²⁷ or a general absorption of the prevailing liberalism which has always, unfortunately, been part of American life, is fundamentally false. It is an expression of that "body of economic teaching far removed from the true moral law" which developed from "the principles of rationalism" and which, contrary to every Catholic sense of the purpose of law, civil life, and the social order, gave "completely free rein...to human passions." ²⁸

The alternative is a conception of temporal life which recognizes the role of law and society in restraining human passions, to the extent possible and appropriate, and guiding human life, such that the whole social fabric becomes a help to salvation.

In light of this most important of all truths of Catholic Social Doctrine, it should be easy to see that Distributism is consistent with the Catholic economic vision insofar as it subordinates economic life to the ultimate purpose of man's life. It does not curtail the right of a man to own and use his private property; its entire program is designed to safeguard and defend that right, and to ensure that most if not all in society are able to benefit from it, in a matter befitting their dignity and independence as man, and not merely as potential employees. But defending private property assumes that there is something to defend it against: which is the notion that private property is an end in itself, to be amassed and multiplied and owned without limit.

"The art of amassing wealth," said St. Thomas, "which is solely concerned with money, is infinite." ²⁹ Where that art is pursued for its own sake, where it is governed by a "profit motive" which possesses no built-in limit but is rather an end unto itself, it leads simply and directly to yet further desire for wealth: "Hence he that desires riches, may desire to be rich, not up to a certain limit, but to be simply as rich as possible." ³⁰ The incarnation of that mentality is the modern economic system which not only encourages (by its philosophy) the unlimited acquisition of wealth, but sanctions (by its practice) an expanding field of ownership by a few at the expense of widespread and distributed ownership by many. It is this scheme of things that Distributism opposes, and for which it offers a remedy.

I have often remarked that modern society, cut off as it is from the Moral Law, is simply an example of institutionalized Original Sin. It does not reflect the Truth, but is rather more often than not an incarnation of error and sin. An interesting illustration of this is found in the hypothetical exchange of Article 1, Question 77, of the second part of the second part of St. Thomas's Summa. In attempting to defend the "buy low, sell high" mentality in all circumstances, without restriction, the Objector says that what is common to all men would seem to be natural, and thus cannot be sinful. He continues, attempting to cite St. Augustine in his defense: "Augustine relates that the saying of a certain jester was accepted by all, 'You wish to buy for a song and to sell at a premium.'" St. Thomas's reply is illustrative, and reveals the essential flaw with our entire economic outlook. The Angelic Doctor further quotes St. Augustine: "'this jester, either by looking into himself or by his experience of others, thought that all men are inclined to wish to buy for a song and sell at a premium. But since in reality this is wicked, it is in every man's power to acquire that justice whereby he may resist and overcome this inclination.'" "Hence it is evident," St. Thomas concludes, "that this common desire is not from nature but from vice, wherefore it is common to many who walk along the broad road of sin." Institutionalizing this desire to buy for a song and sell at a premium is the glory of modern capitalism. Replacing this regime with one that encourages virtue, not merely internally but also by the very fabric of society, is the aim of the Distributists and all Social Catholics, who hope both for the Restoration of Property to the non-owning masses, and the restoration of true economic science, subordinate to the real needs of man and to the just decrees of God.