Distributism Quotes

“If we do not restore the Institution of Property we cannot escape restoring the Institution of Slavery; there is no third course.”
― Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State

“What is needed is a form of tax which not only spares the small man at the expense of his wealthier rival, but actually subsidizes the small man where subsidy is necessary.”
― Hilaire Belloc, The Crisis of Civilization

“A time of ongoing cultural revolution when the adversaries of Christianity have made plain their intent to use the state machinery to promote radical social ideologies hardly seems an opportune moment to discuss how the rights of property might be compromised. Private property is an important bulwark against the ongoing anti-Christian campaign. Although opponents of the free market will doubtless claim that they wish to interfere with the rights of property only to this or that extent, or only to bring about this or that allegedly desirable social outcome, there can be little excuse for such naiveté in our day. No Christian should want to build up an institution that he would be terrified to see in the hands of his ideological opponents.”
― Thomas Woods Jr., Beyond Distributism

“The essential of the guild-idea is that [of] men pursuing the same form of activity, but only in cooperation limited to the end of preserving the economic freedom-that is the property and livelihood-of each member of the guild.”
― Hilaire Belloc, The Crisis of Civilization

“Man, like every other organism, can only live by the transformation of his environment to his own use. He must transform his environment from a condition where it is less to a condition where it is more subservient to his needs.
That special, conscious, and intelligent transformation of his environment which is peculiar to the peculiar intelligence and creative faculty of man we call the Production of Wealth.
Wealth is matter which has been consciously and intelligently transformed from a condition in which it is less to a condition in which it is more serviceable to a human need.
Without Wealth man cannot exist. The production of it is a necessity to him, and though it proceeds from the more to the less necessary, and even to those forms of production which we call luxuries, yet in any given human society there is a certain kind and a certain amount of wealth without which human life cannot be lived: as, for instance, in England to-day, certain forms of elaborately prepared food, clothing, fuel, and habitation.
Therefore, to control the production Of wealth is to control human life itself. To refuse man the opportunity for the production of wealth is to refuse him the opportunity for life; and, in general, the way in which the production of wealth is by law permitted is the only way in which the citizens can legally exist.”
― Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State

“The vast growth of the proletariat, the concentration of ownership into the hands of a few owners, and the exploitation by those owners of the mass of the community, had no fatal or necessary connection with the discovery of new and perpetually improving methods of production. The evil proceeded in direct historical sequence, proceeded patently and demonstrably, from the fact that England, the seed-plot of the Industrial System, was already captured by a wealthy oligarchy before the series of great discoveries began.”
― Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State

“Apologists for modernity and capitalism within the Catholic Church insist that capitalism is compatible with defined dogmas declared by the magisterium, with the tenets of natural law, and with the incontrovertible truths expressed in the divine positive law. Catholics such as this writer are insulted with the epithets of "socialists" or "unpatriotic" or "ignorant" for failing to see the good brought by modern democracy, for calling into question the nature of the supposed freedoms granted by governments elected through popular sovereignty without reference to Christ the King and His Vicar the Pope, and for insisting on a return to an understanding of human life predicated on the essential nature of human family and divine worship to the happiness of man on earth and his beatitude in Heaven. This writer is waiting for an explanation of how the separation of the state from the Church has lent support to the absolute sanctity of life from conception to natural death. He desires to see proof that democratically elected governments and their citizens are committed to prohibiting divorce and the destruction of the family as mandated by God when He physically walked the earth two thousand years ago . . . If indeed there is a difference on the moral plane between capitalist consumption of goods and communist redistribution of goods, it is high time that man be given evidence of the existence of this singular truth which heretofore has been an amazingly well kept secret. Other than the fact that both communists and capitalists seek to produce as many material things as possible with the capitalists having far more success thereat, none has convincingly demonstrated that aught else separates the two systems in their impact on the understanding of the sanctity of human life, the controls placed on the conduct of human life, and the ultimate end of human life. (pages 171-172)”
― Fr. Lawrence Smith, Distributism for Dorothy