Distributism manages to somehow take hold in America, so what happens? What does America now look like? How will the economy progress?
I’d go into detail about what Distributism is but I’m on mobile and so can only link an image.
WI Distributist America?
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Distributism manages to somehow take hold in America, so what happens? What does America now look like? How will the economy progress?
I’d go into detail about what Distributism is but I’m on mobile and so can only link an image.
That'd be a cool idea, but Distributism's origins might be a little too Catholic for the United States - that said, it could take hold in Ireland (after all, Distributism's British homeland is right next door) and become somewhat of a regional phenomenon in New England, once enough Irish migrate there, kind of like a sewer socialism of the East Coast (Distributism being what happens when devout Catholics end up re-inventing market socialism and mutualism).
I tend to agree with Neoteros - Distributism is a very catholic economic concept and that is probably what kills it in the United States. But in other, more catholic countries it could take place. Ireland would be a good call since it's economy up until recently was more rural and thus more akin to the type of economy Chesterton wanted.
Depending on when it becomes introduced, it could probably lose some of its Catholic flavor if it links up with Social Gospel and secular Progressive movements and groups. That way, it would seem less "foreign" for Americans, although basing its acceptance in New England around Irish migration isn't going to work - not once you get a critical mass that are invested with maintaining the status quo. What could possibly happen - if we want to avoid the Sentinelle affair completely - is having it as part of a cross-border movement in both French Canada (as a way of trying to stem mass Francophone membership in the AFL's Canadian affiliates, linked with the antecedents to the CCF, and similar trade unions) and New England (as a way to further Americanize the French-Canadian population already in existence by presenting it in a much more palpable "package"), linked towards a wider movement towards some form of corporatism (as there were growing loud voices in the US for something like it, based on WW1 experience, as well as the growth in Europe of pillarized groups and movements - led by the Catholic Church).
IOTL Distributism is quite strongly associated with Catholicism, but I don't think it necessarily has to be. There's no reason a Protestant economist can't come up with more or less the same set of ideas.
True, and it's also possible that any Distributist party in the United States would downplay its Catholic roots - there's no shortage of devoutly Protestant figures in the United States that could end up being favourable to it. And maybe, the presence of an economically progressive, but still Christianity-adjacent political movement in the US could prevent or at least lessen the shift to the far right the country's most devout voters had - in the US, the Distributists might end up being stereotyped as Dolly Parton/Mr. Rogers types, devout and wholesome in equal measure.
Don’t think it would work though as a Catholic and reader of Chesterton it’d be cool. Maybe it might work better in Spain or Latin America. Even the UK might have more of a chance, especially among Anglo-Catholics who’d be more comfortable with it and might make it more creditable.
Economic stagnation and a lower standard of living, if you mean that "three acres and a cow" nonsense. How would such a system efficiently mechanize? And the large number of redundant mom-and-pop establishments would drive up costs to the consumer for any given product compared to the existing system of big stores. And distributists in general tend to be hostile to new technologies--look at their "appropriate technology" buzzword from the 1960s and 1970s. And then there's Schumacher's opposition to technology transfer to third world nations--squandering potential American soft power. And leaving a vacuum for one particular state to exploit...
It's certainly a novel approach to Soviet victory in the Cold War. I think, eventually, you'd see ever more decentralization of economic policy in the US as individual states return to liberal economics. Not like a distributist state that claims to endorse "subsidiarity" can stop them without hypocrisy.
It's certainly a novel approach to Soviet victory in the Cold War. I think, eventually, you'd see ever more decentralization of economic policy in the US as individual states return to liberal economics. Not like a distributist state that claims to endorse "subsidiarity" can stop them without hypocrisy.
I may actually like who I vote for if it happened 😞
But why must there be mechanization?
Also, redundant mom-and-pop stores would drive up some costs. But most of the stores/businesses are not competitive. They don't have big markets so they only complete with a handful of other stores in the local area. Also, most of the people don't need to rely on stores for day-to-day goods. They produce them themselves.
Its effects on the Cold War , if it isn't butterflied away by the POD would be very interesting.
But why must there be mechanization?
Also, redundant mom-and-pop stores would drive up some costs. But most of the stores/businesses are not competitive. They don't have big markets so they only complete with a handful of other stores in the local area. Also, most of the people don't need to rely on stores for day-to-day goods. They produce them themselves.
It wouldn't really be a Distributist America so much as a U.S. that follows the midwestern prairie populist progressive reformers of the Great Depression era-
I doubt that Distributism really had any presence in the U.S. at the time. It wasn't just Catholic, it was Anglo-Catholic. Maybe if Belloc and Chesterton both relocated to North America for an extended amount of time and became influential there, establishing a local tradition.
oh no gif meme
lmao Bookman, fashie brainlords can't help but to create dorky names
I forgot that Dorothy Day did advance Distributism, and she is actually American! I'll let someone who is more knowledgeable about her life and experience try to extrapolate how she might've popularized the ideology more.
Washington Commonwealth Builder (newspaper) Seattle: 1934-1937
depts.washington.edu
I doubt that Distributism really had any presence in the U.S. at the time. It wasn't just Catholic, it was Anglo-Catholic. Maybe if Belloc and Chesterton both relocated to North America for an extended amount of time and became influential there, establishing a local tradition.
oh no gif meme
lmao Bookman, fashie brainlords can't help but to create dorky names
I forgot that Dorothy Day did advance Distributism, and she is actually American! I'll let someone who is more knowledgeable about her life and experience try to extrapolate how she might've popularized the ideology more.
The Prairies in Canada also had a strong cooperative progressive movement in the 30’s. Having been involved in or dealt with a number of the survivors and decedents of the cooperatives formed at the time, I can say that they do have their issues. Cooperatives often struggle to think corporately. Meaning they often struggle to form and keep consensus in a group of independent operators. When there is an outside threat for them to deal with, like the Depression, or a competing conglomerate, they can get by. But prolonged prosperity or hardship can often cause problems.
They usually end up going one of two ways. Either they fracture into groups of smaller cooperatives and individual operators, or they erode the direct control of the members, allowing those at the top more leeway to respond directly, becoming more like a corporation or a large union.
Smaller cooperatives with only a few businesses are easier to maintain (at least for a generation) but do not benefit to the same extent from economies of scale.
They usually end up going one of two ways. Either they fracture into groups of smaller cooperatives and individual operators, or they erode the direct control of the members, allowing those at the top more leeway to respond directly, becoming more like a corporation or a large union.
Smaller cooperatives with only a few businesses are easier to maintain (at least for a generation) but do not benefit to the same extent from economies of scale.
America has had a Distributist strain since its inception in the 1770s. Jeffersonian political economy was a secularized Distributism, or more accurately, Distributism was Christianized Jeffersonianism, since we can't put the cart before the horse. The idea of widespread ownership of productive assets, agrarianism, and later cooperativism has a deep and embedded history in Jeffersonian political thought and has at least somewhat animated most ideological descendants of the Democratic-Republicans, from the Farmers' Alliance and Populist Party to the more moderate, non-Marxist wings of the Knights of Labor who envisioned a land of smallholders and workers cooperatives. So, in this sense, Distributism is already American as apple pie. It's simply not called Distributism though perhaps a more successful smallholder-labor alliance could co-opt the term to differentiate themselves from traditional socialists.
In essence, yes, though a better PoD would probably be avoiding the collapse of the Populist Party and having it emerge as a smallholder-laborist party going into the 1910s. Equally, have the pro-cooperative and pro-small farmer stance of the Knights of Labor win out over the anti-cooperative stance of the AFL and anti-farmer stance of the IWW.
By the time of the Great Depression, perhaps the Populists can sweep the presidency and institute Distributist-by-another-name reforms or be the winning faction of some multi-sided civil war at some point, if you wanted to make it spicy.
In essence, yes, though a better PoD would probably be avoiding the collapse of the Populist Party and having it emerge as a smallholder-laborist party going into the 1910s. Equally, have the pro-cooperative and pro-small farmer stance of the Knights of Labor win out over the anti-cooperative stance of the AFL and anti-farmer stance of the IWW.
By the time of the Great Depression, perhaps the Populists can sweep the presidency and institute Distributist-by-another-name reforms or be the winning faction of some multi-sided civil war at some point, if you wanted to make it spicy.
Perhaps if the Democrats collapse, as in my parts of the collaborative Lichtenstein Alaska timeline, Republicans teaming with populists in 1896 in some States to ensure McKinley's win can cause a new Political order to start developing.
A new party system would rise where the democrats are on unable to be more than a regional party - Tilden's failures followed by the Depression under Hill coupled with Tammany Hall Would mean that people in Tammany hall, by the 1910, would realize that the new distributest group is where to go. The progressives and populous would Form the more liberal party with distributist leanings, trying to Coopt any remaining democrats by claiming to be the rightful Air is to Jefferson and Jackson, showing how Jeffersonian democracy really was in some ways tied to it.
As some have said above it might take a while, at 1st it might be more a battle between the conservative and progressive wings of the Republican party, but it would slowly Develop until by 1912 there might be a true true 3 way race thrown into the House of Representatives with the distributist populists having some sway over who wins, causing them to adopt some of the distributist policies.
A new party system would rise where the democrats are on unable to be more than a regional party - Tilden's failures followed by the Depression under Hill coupled with Tammany Hall Would mean that people in Tammany hall, by the 1910, would realize that the new distributest group is where to go. The progressives and populous would Form the more liberal party with distributist leanings, trying to Coopt any remaining democrats by claiming to be the rightful Air is to Jefferson and Jackson, showing how Jeffersonian democracy really was in some ways tied to it.
As some have said above it might take a while, at 1st it might be more a battle between the conservative and progressive wings of the Republican party, but it would slowly Develop until by 1912 there might be a true true 3 way race thrown into the House of Representatives with the distributist populists having some sway over who wins, causing them to adopt some of the distributist policies.
Was there ever any link between Distributism and Social Credit? The social credit idea has always seemed to me like "corporatism for Protestants" (no offence to any protestants who might be reading)?
A coalition of the two sides might run Dist-ist candidates in Boston and SoCredders in New England - how would that sound?
A coalition of the two sides might run Dist-ist candidates in Boston and SoCredders in New England - how would that sound?
In Canada, Social Credit originally rose to power in 1930s Alberta, under evangelical protestant leadership, and soon migrated over to Quebec, where it took on a heavily Catholic flavour.
Not sure if the Quebec creditiste were ever linked to Distributism, but I've never seen any mention of that, and I'm fairly well-read in the history of Social Credit. But the two movements essentially offered the same appeal: a Christian-based theory of economic interventionism, for conservatives who supported capitalism, but thought it was doing an imperfect job of spreading around its benefits.
AFAICT, officially no. Socred was it's own brand of weirdness that in a predominantly 2-party system (as much of New England outside of the independents were in those days) it wouldn't work. In reality, Socred - if it wanted to - could probably have a better time piggybacking off of the Technocracy movement and the more anti-Semitic elements floating around interwar America, sad to say. Even then, a more organized distributist network would have an easier time coopting both parties or at least providing a mainstream alternative to the status quo if it helps integrate more people into American society.
Distributism is interesting 🤔 the compass actually inspired the design of one I made for an ideology in one of my TLs.
Distributism was pehaps too Catholic an ideology to really catch on in Protestatn-majority America. True, in some respects, the southern Agrarians were close to the Distributists (incidentally, at least one of the leading Agrarians, Allen Tate, became a Catholic) but although the Agrarians did have some northern supporters like Herbert Agar (a literary friend of Chesterton) on the whole they were too regional to make much of an impact on national politics.
The closest thing to a manifesto by "dencentralists" (as they sometimes called themselves, objecting to both state socialism and corporate capitalism) was published in 1936:
"They did not use the word “conservative” very often, preferring to call themselves “decentralists” or “agrarians.” Eclectic in background, they were columnists, poets, historians, literary figures, economists, theologians, and civic advocates. In 1936, Herbert Agar, a prominent author, foreign correspondent, and columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal and Alan Tate, poet and social commentator, brought a selection of their writings together in a now nearly forgotten book: Who Owns America? A New Declaration of Independence." https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/08/who-owns-america-new-herbert-agar-ralph-nader.html (The book can be borrowed online at https://archive.org/details/whoownsamericane00agar/page/n7/mode/2up)
What probably destroyed Distriburism in the US was the Cold War. Catholic conservatives and their Protestant fellow travelers were just too worried about Communism to devote much energy to the critque of corporate capitalism any more. https://books.google.com/books?id=T1yOAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT367 (And some of the southern agriarians saw racial integration as something as bad as--indeed indistinguishable from--Communism, and were willing to make common cause with southern industrialists to combat it as Donald Davidson--a contributor to *Who Owns America?*--did in the 1950s. https://books.google.com/books?id=hWBUDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA252) The end of the Cold War and the rise in environmental cosnciousness led to something of a revivial of interest in Distributism but it still remained pretty margnal.
The closest thing to a manifesto by "dencentralists" (as they sometimes called themselves, objecting to both state socialism and corporate capitalism) was published in 1936:
"They did not use the word “conservative” very often, preferring to call themselves “decentralists” or “agrarians.” Eclectic in background, they were columnists, poets, historians, literary figures, economists, theologians, and civic advocates. In 1936, Herbert Agar, a prominent author, foreign correspondent, and columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal and Alan Tate, poet and social commentator, brought a selection of their writings together in a now nearly forgotten book: Who Owns America? A New Declaration of Independence." https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/08/who-owns-america-new-herbert-agar-ralph-nader.html (The book can be borrowed online at https://archive.org/details/whoownsamericane00agar/page/n7/mode/2up)
What probably destroyed Distriburism in the US was the Cold War. Catholic conservatives and their Protestant fellow travelers were just too worried about Communism to devote much energy to the critque of corporate capitalism any more. https://books.google.com/books?id=T1yOAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT367 (And some of the southern agriarians saw racial integration as something as bad as--indeed indistinguishable from--Communism, and were willing to make common cause with southern industrialists to combat it as Donald Davidson--a contributor to *Who Owns America?*--did in the 1950s. https://books.google.com/books?id=hWBUDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA252) The end of the Cold War and the rise in environmental cosnciousness led to something of a revivial of interest in Distributism but it still remained pretty margnal.
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