Making Sense of Complex Economic Systems - A Critique of Distributist Economic Theory

In recent years we have been critiqued on Catholic progressive political platforms, by those who coopt the name Dorothy Day, for broadcasting the views of Catholic higher education academics, authors, scientists, business experts, theologians and ethics professionals who do not wholeheartedly support distributist economics. How could a Catholic Worker do such a thing?

St. Thomas Aquinas said there are four basic addictions: money, power, pleasure and honor.

I have been a member of a Catholic Worker community for 15 years. I am an economist by training and worked for decades in the investment banking and venture capital industries. I struggled with addictions for 40 years, lost everything and experienced the despair of homelessness. Then I had a profound conversion experience at the graveside of Thomas Merton. With the help of a JustFaith study group at my parish, we launched the Dayton Catholic Worker in 2005. Our intentional community is comprised of homeless people in recovery from addictions. Our treatment methodology is the 12 Steps process of reconciliation (applied Catholocism). Over 80% of our guests have achieved sustainable faith - measured as one year of continuous abstinence from drugs and alcohol. I am fairly certain that in the practice of the works of mercy, the soul I am saving is my own. It's Love that cures addictions!

Financing our inner-city intentional community has been a challenge. There are no deep-pocket benefactors. There is no land to develop an agrarian commune. Dorothy Day opposed tax exemption status as war protest, but given the present realities of fundraising some communities have structured nonprofit social programs financed with government and private grants.

The Catholic Worker recommends during formation that if your community wants to focus on advocacy, first develop some expertise. So, we had to inventory our collective skills and resources. We chose to organize a social cooperative business owned and operated by community residents, named the Catholic Internet Television Network (CITVN) to produce Youtube-quality documentaries and live webcasts focused through the lens of Catholic Social Teaching for distribution to 256,000 higher education professionals located in 76 countries. You might think of CITVN as a 21st-century version of a Catholic Worker newspaper and virtual roundtable discussions with the immediacy of face-to-face.

Dorothy Day was a journalist. She published a newspaper with a national circulation that peaked at 150,000 subscribers. She consulted with experts and tried to discern or understand the signs of her times focused through the lens of Catholic Social Teaching. She experimented with Marxist economics, which she abandoned after ten years for it's focus on atheism. She embraced Catholocism, social action, and the french worker-priest movement. She became a 3rd order Benedictine. She was attracted to distributist economic theory. She started cooperative farms without much success. She advocated for the homeless, migrant workers, cemetery and laundry unions, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Mihn, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, women's suffrage, child labor laws and civil rights. She defended Rosevelt's new government relief programs that arose from the ashes of depression but opposed Social Security. She protested four American wars, rejected Just War Theory and tried to have some influence on Vatican II. She thought pot smoking and promiscuous "hippies" were the result of self-indulgent middle-class affluence. Perhaps her latter views were influenced by her youthful experiences with self-indulgence, promiscuity and abortion. She defied her Bishop, insisting the Catholic Worker will not talk about contraception

Dorothy understood the systemic injustices of the 1930s-1970s and tried to rationalize an economic third way from the depth of her soul. Her anarchist distributist views were influenced by Proudhon's mutualist economic theory. She agreed that "class war is a fact and one does not need to advocate it", but posed the question of how to respond. Her answer was pacifism.

Like Dorothy, I find myself afloat in a dynamic 21st-century world that is complex and riddled with systemic evils. Like Dorothy, I attempt to fuse contemplation, Catholic Social Teaching, the works of mercy, intentional community and modern economic analysis to make sense of it all. Our understanding of economic systems has greatly advanced through technology and lived experiences and Catholic Social Teaching has developed throughout the last eighty plus years.

So, my response to critics on Catholic progressive political platforms who demand to know how we can broadcast the views of Catholic higher education academics, authors, scientists, business experts and ethics professionals who do not wholeheartedly support distributist economics:

I identify four areas of thought in which Distributists offer some wisdom:

(1) objections to the divorce of economics and ethics;

(2) objections to the collusion of large business and government and the resultant concentration of power;

(3) advocacy for entrepreneurs and widely distributed wealth; and,

(4) objections to the welfare state and its effects on the citizen’s relationship to government.

Sadly, these days many people who self-identify as distributist don’t stop at these solid insights. They offer concrete solutions to these social problems—solutions which betray grave misunderstandings of economics and even theology, to include:

(1) a willful ignorance of 21st-century economic systems;

(2) borrowed infallibility;

(3) a secret lust for big government;

(4) a distrust of sensibly regulated free markets;

(5) an inability to fathom why someone would want to work for someone else;

(6) a disrespect for property rights and the stewardship model defined by Pope Paul VI in Populorum Progressio; and,

(7) an inability to appreciate the value of complex economic systems that have made possible the greatest explosion of wealth the world has ever seen--including stunning increases in life expectancy, caloric intake, housing quality, education, literacy, and countless other good things, as well as dramatic decreases in infant mortality, famine, and disease. And contrary to what the propagandists assert, nothing could be more obvious than the fact that the benefits of complex economic systems have overwhelmingly benefited the poor.

There are some fairly far fetched distributist ideas on how to make everyone a small business owner ranging from MMT theory to capital homesteading to a guaranteed income for everyone. Virtually all these solutions rely upon a government takeover of industry, giving away free money borrowed from the Fed (printing money without devaluing the dollar or triggering inflation by relying upon increased taxation and the fiscal restraint of the political class as the economy heats up). These proposals tend to fall apart at the level of tactical implementation, credit risk management, the incentives of politicians and generally have no supporting empirical evidence of efficacy.  

Please do not misunderstand, I believe ESOPs and co-ops have a place in society. CITVN is a coop business owned and operated by a Catholic Worker Movement community of homeless people, thanks largely to the kindness of seed-stage benefactors and media underwriters. Employee-owned business structures may provide a viable exit strategy for small business owners who have no family to take over the business and work well for agricultural products and utilities distribution, credit unions that do consumer finance, distressed housing rehabilitation and the local brewpub. But, members got to have their own skin in the game (no free-riders) to assure that failure is not an option, meet credit risk management criteria to obtain a business loan, exceptional leaders who can manage the business and a good product or service that can compete in the free market.

Systemic structural and social evils still abound. I am optimistic. We continue to make gradual improvements in economic systems and Catholic moral theology. God has given us what we need to discern the signs of the times and learn how to love.