A friend recently asked me whether I’d read a new work of polemics from a conservative who attacks the ideas of distributism. The friend and the work (and its author) will remain nameless, but here is the reply that I sent to my friend, defending distributism:

I haven’t read [the author’s work that you mention] but I suspect that I have heard the thrust of his arguments in other “free market” attacks on distributism. Distributism, in a nutshell, is the principle of subsidiarity with regard to productive property, i.e. land, labour and capital. Free marketeers argue that subsidiarity with regard to productive property cannot be achieved except through big government and unjust taxation, i.e. distributism in practice is not much different from socialism. But free marketeers gloss over the fact that the free market is an illusion, i.e. the market is not “free” because it is manipulated by big business and big government to pursue the objectives of big government and big business. The market is not “free” but is the tool of the most powerful. Free marketeers also ignore the fact that big business and big government make very comfortable bedfellows, e.g. the capitalist-socialism of the European Union and the cosy partnership between global corporations and communist China. In contrast, distributists acknowledge that the free market is a myth and that the world is being carved up between the cosy axis of big business and big government. This can only be combated by a system that favours small government and small business. If this includes tax policies that favour small businesses and political decentralisation that gives real power back to local and state government, so be it. The “realists” will no doubt argue that such policies will simply lead to the global corporations taking their business elsewhere. Such “realists” don’t seem to realise that global corporations have already taken their business elsewhere, outsourcing most of their production, and therefore most of the jobs of their employees, to the pacific rim. When globalism has asset stripped the United States of its manufacturing base, which has largely happened already, and its service industries, which is now proceeding apace, the only parts of the US economy that will remain will be those parts that can’t be exported to areas of lower unit labour costs, e.g. health and education. Since health and education are those parts of the economy that cost money and do not make it, the US will then be utterly bankrupt. This is the path that the free market realists would have us follow. It is the yellow brick road to cloud cuckoo land. In the face of such “realism” I’ll take distributism every time!