Distributism

Distributism is a third-way, free market economic system whose classic version is culturally a center-right ideology, inhabiting a moderate position in the Authoritarian Left quadrant of the Political Compass.

He is based on the Catholic social teachings, particularly the encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII and, to a lesser extent, Pius XI, and was developed into a more concrete ideology by Catholics in the 20th century, primarily Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton.

History

Beginnings

It all started back in 1891 with publication of Pope Leo XIII's papal encyclical, Rerum novarum. The piece discusses the conditions of the contemporary working class and supported the rights of labor to form unions, reaffirmed the right to private property, and criticized both the problems of socialism as it rose to prominence and the problems of unrestricted capitalism which were all too well known in his time. His Holiness set up the bedrock foundations of distributism, but English writer G. K. Chesterton and Anglo-French politician and philosopher Hilaire Belloc, after drawing together the disparate experiences of the various cooperatives and friendly societies in Northern England, Ireland, and Northern Europe, turned distributism into a more coherent and concrete ideology, with works ranging from basic economics through the distributist lens (Economics for Helen) to what makes property special (An Essay on the Restoration of Property) to the importance of decentralization in governmental institutions and productive property (The Servile State) to just summaries of the concepts alone (Outline of Sanity).

The Mondragón Corporation

In 1941, a young Catholic priest named José María Arizmendiarrieta settled in Mondragón, a Basque town with a population of 7,000 that had not yet recovered from the consequences of the Spanish Civil War. Fr. José saw to the solution to these problems lay in the pages of Rerum novarum and other distributist authors. In 1955, he selected five young people to set up the first company of the co-operative and industrial beginning of the Mondragón Corporation. The corporation has grown to an organization that employs over 100,000 people in Spain, has extensive international holdings.

Beliefs

Distributism can be defined by four major tenets, which all distributists agree are necessarily distributist:

Widespread ownership of property: Workers should be owners and businesses should be comprised of worker co-operatives, family businesses, or ESOP-based traditional businesses whenever possible and that people should own both their own personal private property as well as maintain some kind of ownership of private productive property whenever possible.
- The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself. - Hilaire Belloc

Anti-Trust Legislation: Large businesses must be broken up into smaller, more local businesses whenever possible.
- The problem with Capitalism is not that there are too many but too few. - G.K. Chesterton
The Principle of the Subsidiarity: The government should never intervene in cases where a lower level of government (down to, and including, the individual, who governs himself) would be able to fix the issue. In short, if problem cannot be solved by level X, it goes to be solved by level (X + 1) and so on. This is also called "stratification of the federal government" or sometimes just "decentralization".
- Civil society exists for the common good, and hence is concerned with the interests of all in general, albeit with individual interests also in their due place and degree. It is therefore called a public society, because by its agency, as St. Thomas of Aquinas says, “Men establish relations in common with one another in the setting up of a commonwealth.” - Pope Leo XIII

The Indivisible Unit: The smallest social unit is the family, not the individual as in capitalism and socialism. This means that laws must be considered with the full thought of the familial consequences as well as that laws must provide for family units rather than individuals because distributism recognizes that an individual is a part of the larger collective of his family and that what happens to him affects the family.
- Hence we have the family, the “society” of a man’s house — a society very small, one must admit, but none the less a true society, and one older than any State. Consequently, it has rights and duties peculiar to itself which are quite independent of the State. - Pope Leo XIII

Personality and Behavior

Distributism is often portrayed as a devout Catholic. He may be seen wearing a rosary or calling the Pope based. However, it's not necessary to be a Catholic, or even a Christian, to follow Distributism, it's just a call back to its origins/roots in Catholic doctrine and the works of Catholics who helped to define the movement. While he's not prone to violence, he does get rather mad when someone calls him a "Catholic socialist." Distributism is best friends with Agrarianism, Longism, Georgism, and Mutualism who are often in comics with each other, especially calling out the false dichotomy of capitalism vs socialism. He is often seen trying to find common ground with other ideologies, often successfully (subsidiarity with libertarians, co-ops with market socialists, etc.). Distributism ~~likes~~ LOVES the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

How To Draw

Drawing Distributism is rather complicated, its flag is based on a design posted on Reddit by a now deleted account:

Draw a ball
Draw a line in orange (#FC8922) vertically on the leftmost third and fill it in.
Fill in the rest of the ball with orange-yellow (#FCC52B)
Draw a dog in grey (#B0B4BC) carrying a torch (#898E95) with the flames stretching leftwards in deep red (#9D1D25). This can be as detailed or as vague as you want; we can't all be Van Gogh.
Add the eyes, and you're done!

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Relationships

Friends

Agrarianism - My neighbor in all things
Longism - EVERY MAN A KING AND NO ONE WEARS A CROWN
Paternalistic Conservatism - Finally, someone who gets it!
Market Socialism - Read different books, but came to nearly the same conclusion.
Mutualism - Love u buddy, but get a government (and find Jesus too).
Libertarian Market Socialism - Same as the previous guy
Anarcho-Monarchism - This video and anything JRR Tolkien ever wrote on politics

Frenemies

Catholic Socialism - Not much against the guy, BUT I'M NOT A CATHOLIC SOCIALIST! ~~Your ideas are pretty based, though, ngl.~~
Reactionary Socialism - Grandpa needs to chill, even if he has some good ideas.
Social Democracy - Has the right ideas about combining markets and re-distributive policies to create a more humane economy, but his centralized execution tends to the symptoms rather than the cause.
Libertarianism - Has good ideas about decentralization, but his economic ideas lead to exploitation and derangement.
Social Libertarianism - Cultural left? ECH!
Strasserism - Wants widespread private ownership and likes guilds but is too radically right-wing. Still better than National Socialism though.