ZENIT: Most people believe that the battle for the soul of capitalism is between the followers of Keynes and the followers of Hayek. But you believe both theories lead to what Hilaire Belloc called the "servile state." Why is that? What are they and their followers missing?
Medaille: Capitalism and socialism are really not opposed realities; one is just the continuation of the other, and distributism is the opposite of both: it is the free market.
Capitalism tends to concentrate property in the hands of a few, thereby choking off the market, and socialism continues this by concentrating ownership in the hands of the state. In practice both systems end up with control of the most important resources of the nation in the hands of a few bureaucrats -- über-managers who claim to represent the interests of the nominal owners, be they the shareholders or the general public, but who actually control these resources for their own benefit.
Further, in concentrating economic power, they also concentrate political power, and the large corporations are able to obtain vast privileges and subsidies for themselves, as we saw in the recent meltdown. Thus, between the gargantuan state and the gargantuan corporation, the individual is reduced to a situation of servility.
What both capitalism and socialism are missing is the willingness to admit that power follows property. Both systems claim to create freedom by concentrating capital, but because this also concentrates power, what is left for the mass of men is powerlessness.
Distributism, on the other hand, seeks to build an ownership society of free men and women, conscious of their rights and with the means to defend them against the centralizing tendencies of both the state and the corporate collectives.
ZENIT: What is distributism? Isn't it just redistributionism, or splitting the difference between capitalism and socialism? How could such a philosophy, which relies on a certain amount of government intervention, create a truly "free" market?
Medaille: Actually, it is not so much a question of what the government should do as what it should stop doing.
In truth, the accumulation of property usually depends on government power; the higher the piles of capital, the thicker the walls of government necessary to protect them.
There are, of course, positive things that government can do, with tax policy, for example, or simply by enforcing its own laws against monopoly and oligopoly. And there are cases where the title to land or other resources is questionable to begin with.
But in general, a distributive society requires a smaller government with powers properly distributed throughout all levels of society.
In contrast to a system of concentrated economic and political power, distributist systems rely on a variety of forms of small ownership to distribute economic power: proprietors for property that can be easily used and managed by a single person or a family, cooperatives for larger enterprises, local public ownership for resources like water or sewer systems, employee stock ownership systems, when that is appropriate, and so forth.
In this way, both economic and political power is distributed throughout all levels of society. There are really only two choices when it comes to property and power: concentration or distribution.
The former leads to servility, and the latter to liberty.
Toward a Truly Free Market: A Distributist Perspective on the Role of Government, Taxes, Health Care, Deficits, and More
No comments:
Post a Comment