Once again, I’d like to respond to Justin’s comment on one of my posts, this time to my post “Distributism in a Nutshell”.
The great E. F. Schumacher addressed the issue of economies of scale, i.e. the need to have big businesses to produce things like cars, in Small is Beautiful, one of the books that I suggested in my earlier post, “Distributism for Beginners”. I also address this issue in several chapters of my own book, Small is Still Beautiful, another of the books that I suggested in the earlier post. I do not have the time to go into length on the Ink Desk (hence the suggestion that the books be consulted) but Schumacher argues that “smallness within bigness” is possible in the largest companies. There are two ways that this can be achieved. First, through transforming the companies into producers’ cooperatives, thereby giving the workforce a real subsidiarist stake in the large company for which they work. This model has proved hugely successful in many parts of the world and Schumacher and I both offer several case studies to illustrate the efficiency of this option. The other option is to practice subsidiarity within large companies by having the different parts of the company becoming largely self-governing. Many multinational corporations, including car manufacturers, have employed this model because it has been shown to be more efficient than the old-fashioned methods of top-heavy centralized control. Shucmacher employed the following analogy. The old centralist and centralized approach can be likened to the CEO attempting to juggle too many balls, with the inevitable result that some are droppped; the “smallness within bigness” or subsidiarist model can be likened to the CEO holding a bunch of balloons, each of which is self-supporting. His function is not to juggle them but simply to ensure that they work together.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the point of distributism is to give economic autonomy to the individual such that he is not a helpless victim to the vagaries of an economic system that ultimately makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.
Looking at it from the outside, my impression is that this is possible only if the basic means of production are so decentralised that no one man can take control of any large part of them. A large company, even its shares are owned by its workers, still begs for control by one man or a small coterie. Several hundred or several thousand men together do not make decisions; they support and follow those who do. This is more so if the men are employees and must account for the work they do. Somebody has to do the accounting and so inevitably a hierarchy arises.
The one case of industrial distributism I can think of that worked was the guild system. It worked because each guildsman was effectively his own master, who worked in his own shop in his own area. He had to maintain the standards of the guild but he was not dependent on it for his livelihood. I maybe missing something but I just don’t see how this kind of independence can be made to work today.