Ive never been all that impressed with capitalism or communism due to the focus on means of production Distributism is not a form of socialism or communism. Rather, it envisions an economy with the widest use of private productive property. Distributism is best viewed as a humane microcapitalism. While the American version of it is found in Jefferson’s agrarian society, the Russian version of it is found in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “democracy of small places.” Belloc and Chesterton were not opposed to capitalism per se, but they saw unrestrained capitalism to tend toward state-sustained monopolies. When Chesterton quipped, “Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists,” he had in mind a robust economy of small businesses and family farms. The pastoral ideal of village and farm runs through the writings of many prominent Catholic literary figures. What does one think J.R.R. Tolkien was up to when he gave us those ecoguardians of the forest, the Ents, in his Lord of the Rings trilogy? The smokestack, assembly line, and A-Bomb nauseated Tolkien. What was the Ring itself but greed and power and audacity all rolled up into one formidable symbol? The only industrial power in Middle Earth is Mordor, that vast wasteland, where “nothing lived, not even the leprous growths that feed on rottenness.” When Frodo and Sam return from their quest they are taken back at the changes brought to the Shire, their home. Thugs were now in charge, hobbits were displaced, gardens were ransacked, and the new buildings were ugly. “This is worse than Mordor!” says Sam. “Much worse in a way. It comes home to you, as they say; because it is home, and you remember it before it was all ruined.” Middle Earth fans may not recognize it, but Tolkien was providing a critique of modernity. More specifically, he was critiquing industrial capitalism with its all-encompassing eye, its pursuit of greed, and its black fisted arm towering up from the hollowed plains of Isengard. The Shire motif, replete with village, orchards, and farm plots, underpins the Ring trilogy, for Tolkien was himself a hobbit at heart, and preferred above all else, “peace and quiet and good tilled earth.”
Posted on: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 02:24:40 +0000
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