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Distributism is hardly leftism. It’s founded on the principle of subsidiarity, that it’s evil to assign to a higher level of hierarchy what a lower level of hierarch is capable of. In other words, it supports not only states’ rights in the face of the federal government, but county rights in the face of the state, village rights in the face of the county, and family rights in the face of the village.

Distributism is the economic side of that model. As corporations become massive, they invariably restrict competition, and seek to manipulate government to prevent competition. Distributism seeks ways to keep the marketplace free, so that conglomerates don’t get to write the rules in ways which that favor “synerigism,” “supply line dominance” (the lethality of which for an economy was demonstrated by the Japanese earthquake), regulation, and exclusive contracts.

An artifically imposed distributism might have effects that might please liberals, such as defeating Walmart in favor of local grocers. But an organic distributism (which is necessary as not to violate the underlying principle of subsidiarity) would see Walmart diversify into niche subsidiaries, while local grocers get the leg up with microdistribution, farmer’s markets, etc.

There’s some natural limits to distibutism in bricks-and-mortar companies; a smallish manufacturing plant is going to develop the expertise and scale to efficiently produce automobiles. But, surprisingly, new markets tend to start out better distributed: remember Mom & Pop video stores were the norm before Blockbuster? And that they were cheaper than blockbuster? The problem is Americans mistook 500 spaces with one video as indicating a better selection than all copies of one video being in a single stack... because we naturally believe bigger is better. Well, the internet is the ultimate is distributism.

Correction: distibutism has found a very unlikely foothold: banking. Microloans are revolutionizing the third world, and reversing poverty.

“”Distributism is hardly leftism””

Spot on! So is the rest of your post.

One can see by reading the late Belloc and others that unbounded usury is the real evil force that has driven the west closer socialism and lack of ownership, this has aided greed and corrupt power more than anything else.

by Hilaire Belloc

As long as Usury was forbidden by the moral law and its immorality admitted, even though it took place widely, it took place under protest. It was always checked by the public disrepute in which it was held and by the fact that unless it were disguised, the interest could not be recovered by law. Disguises were indeed often used, as for instance, the promise to repay on a certain date a certain sum of money as having been lent, when as a fact a small sum had been lent. But though such subterfuges were continual, the evil could not spread until the taking of interest upon money alone became an admitted practice of which no man was ashamed, which no one thought evil, which was taken for granted.

By the third generation great central banks had arisen, notably in Amsterdam and London. Shortly afterwards, during the 18th century, men had everywhere begun to think (later in Catholic nations than in Protestant, but everywhere at last) as though interest on money were part of the nature of things: as though money had indeed, merely as money, a right to breed. The false doctrine was bound to lead to a deadlock at last, and in our own time that deadlock has been reached. The recovery of the vast usurious loans is impossible. Recourse has had to be made to repudiation on all sides, and the whole system is breaking down.

But remember that the worst of its effects is not its own self-destruction, but the way in which it has gathered into a few centers the power of controlling lives of the community and particularly of the proletariat, whose employment, and therefore existence, depends upon the great advance of credit by the holders of financial power. For all our great enterprises today are possible only through the favor of the lenders of money or credit.

We may sum up then and say that the unrestricted admittance of Usury as a normal economic function about a lifetime after the Reformation advanced the destruction of economic freedom, the swallowing up of the small man by the greater man, and the ultimate production of a large destitute Proletariat in the following fashions:

1. By the eating up of small property by Usury, falling as it did habitually upon men already embarrassed, and achieving their ruin;

2. By transferring real wealth in goods and land to those who directly used their mere money power, often enormous and impersonal, through mortgage and foreclosure.

Hilaire Belloc was correct and we are seeing it unfold before our eyes!