Distributism

While brushing up on early nineteenth-century Europe today (it's the class I TA for, so I hope the brushing up goes quickly), I read about Distributism for the first time.

Distributism is the idea that an "ism" exists somewhere on the spectrum between socialism and capitalism. The founders of the concept, two Catholic British thinkers named G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc (Belloc is also part French, for full disclosure), believed that too much capitalism concentrated wealth in the hands of a few. Not many people who have witnessed the past few decades of world history can argue that huge capitalist systems tend to make only a handful of people very wealthy.

Chesterton and Belloc believed that if everyone had access to property-- be it land, tools, or otherwise-- each individual would care for his or her property more diligently than if it belonged to someone else.

A great example is land; if someone owns their own farm and the family works the farm themselves, they will probably have higher crop yields than if migrant workers are underpaid to pick someone else's crop (environmentally, this idea of providing ownership to install responsibility foreshadows Garrett Hardin's 1968 "Tragedy of the Commons").

If a farmer owned just a few hectares, if a writer owned her own computer and printer, if a barber owned his own shop, if a teacher owned her own classroom, then perhaps they would take greater pride in their tools and in the product that came from them. The government wouldn't own everything as in socialism, which would (ideally) prevent corruption. Likewise, a few corperations wouldn't own everything, and ultra-wealthy capitalists wouldn't dominate the world's goings-on; there would be too many empowered stakeholders participating in politics and economics.

It's a philosophy of how society can function in the middle of the poltical spectrum, and one I would certainly like to learn more about.

For now, lest you think I want to do away with government, I'll leave you with this reminder that while ownership can be a partial solution, it's certainly not the be-all-end-all (courtesy The Distributist Review):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QDv4sYwjO0&