Distributism

Distributism is a movement promoting the benefits of widely distributing the means of economic production.

The Distributist tradition originates in Roman Catholic Social Teaching - especially the Papal Encyclical Rerum Novarum published in 1891 - and was subsequently developed by writers such as G.K.Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc.

The Classical Distributism of the above authors promotes a society where productive resources or capital are widely distributed so that the majority of economic production is carried out by owner-operated small businesses or by small-scale co-operatives.

Here we are less concerned to argue the case that small businesses should replace big businesses everywhere, but rather its focus is on promoting the case that there should be a healthy sector of small-scale economic production as a counterbalance to the sector of large businesses often operating transnationally.

In practice this means that we support the alternative economy of small and independent local businesses and promote this on the grounds that this gives shoppers and workers a greater choice of goods or places to work that is at risk of disappearing if the large corporations gain total dominance over the economy.

We share with earlier Distributist and Catholic Social Teaching a concern for human values and justify our economic ideas for its beneficial impact on human life in general.

This distinguishes Distributists from other movements focussing more on the environmental benefits of local economic production.

Also while we share many of the values and concerns of Catholic Social Teaching we are not a Catholic or Christian movement.

April 2016 (updated June)