Posted by
Jesse on Saturday, December 20, 2008 4:37:32 PM
"(I)f you believe in democracy, make arrangements to distribute property as widely as possible… From Hilaire Belloc to Mr. Mortimer Adler... men of good will have for generations been advocating the decentralization of economic power and the widespread distribution of property." -Aldous Huxley, from Brave New World Revisited
Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton (who, of course, goes hand in hand with Belloc), Mortimer Adler, and even, in his Dr. Jekyll moments, Aldous Huxley (who seems to be throwing his weight behind the general solution); all intellectual powerhouses and distinct societal influences who affirm another "Way," a "Third Way" from that which leads to the dominance of Big Business and Big Government. Now, in full context Huxley states that these theories are obvious, but, falling within a chapter titled What Can Be Done?, he naturally states that the problem is in their specific application. Strangely, Huxley later writes a novel called Island, which abandons the collective wisdom he's tacitly endorsed above -- or perhaps it's not so strange, for much of Brave New World Revisited is not in line with the perennial stream of wisdom in which Belloc, Chesterton and Adler were immersed (all, by no strange coincidence, Catholic - a religion Huxley is not shy about attacking).
I call this all to your attention because there is an attempt afoot to meet Huxley's challenge (incidentally, with similar Huxlian eloquence and wit) by an author named John Medaille, and, to boot, he'd like to do so with the helpful input of people like you and me http://distributism.blogspot.com/2008/05/come-let-us-reason-together.html . Mr. Medaille is writing a book, The Political Economy of Distributism, for the "non-specialist", and is, before publication, posting the book chapter by chapter for us to read and comment on. I'd also recommend his essay Practical Distributivism (http://www.medaille.com/pracdist.htm ); for me it offered refreshing insight, which began to take up where the solid and promising parts of (Jekyll) Huxley's work left off, and which will no doubt serve as a good introduction to The Political Economy of Distributism.
Also, for "A QUICK COMPARISON OF CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM AND THE "JUST THIRD WAY", see: http://www.cesj.org/thirdway/comparison3rdway.htm