"The present essay should be sufficient in itself to silence all such criticism on the first count. Herein it is at once obvious and striking just how practical the Distributist Vision was; practical not in the sense of easy, but practical in the sense of being articulated with a view toward application and implementation. For in the Restoration of Property, Belloc's concern is not so much with explaining what a Distributist society is, but with sketching, even if in neccessarily brief and vague terms, what that society looks like, how it might be achieved, and how it should be preserved."--Jacket.
In recent years, prominent scholars, public intellectuals, and politicians have advocated reforming America’s economic model to embrace “common-good capitalism.” Catholic social teaching is a major influence on this movement. Is common-good capitalism compatible with the historical American commitments to private property rights and ordered liberty? What resources from Catholic social teaching can help orient free enterprise towards the common good? This book is the first scholarly inquiry into these exciting new questions. We can better understand common-good capitalism by exploring the political economy of distributism. Formulated in the early 20th century by prominent Catholic intellectuals such as Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton, distributism emphasizes the importance of widely dispersed property ownership for human flourishing. Distributist thinkers, opposed both to capitalism and socialism, sought a humane approach to politics and economics that reflected the truths of Catholic social teaching. Some of the distributists’ claims about markets and government must be revised in light of contemporary social science. Nevertheless, their political-economic vision contains profound truths about the human condition, which social scientists would be unwise to ignore. Distributism’s insights about the nature of liberty and the social foundations of human dignity can improve ongoing conversations among economists, political scientists, and philosophers. The Political Economy of Distributism explores distributism both as a research program and a blueprint for political-economic reform. As many are reconsidering the relationship between markets and government, this timely book demonstrates the perennial relevance of the Catholic intellectual tradition to public affairs. Academics, public servants, policy experts, and concerned citizens can all benefit from this timely study of common-good capitalism’s prospects.
These are easily the most challenging essays on the planet. Pinwill is an original conceptual thinker with a dry sense of humor and turn of phrase. Whether its politics, national economics, history, theology or money his writing all comes from somewhere different. You’ll need to buy his essays to discover whether you love or hate them. He has even thrown in the first Profit and Loss Account ever done for the United States, and the first Comprehensive Balance Sheet ever done for Australia, to show us that he is not just a pretty face and a comedian. His “Mongrel Dog” articles are all at the expense of politicians. His pieces on money leave all bankers’ ears burning. He proves with very scholarly accounts that modern nations are profitable, and suggests that the profit might be distributed as a National Dividend rather than a National Debt. Yes, he certainly comes from another place and is going to a different one as well. Walk with him for a mile and you will feel the seductive attraction of his destination.
This groundbreaking new source of international scope defines the essay as nonfictional prose texts of between one and 50 pages in length. The more than 500 entries by 275 contributors include entries on nationalities, various categories of essays such as generic (such as sermons, aphorisms), individual major works, notable writers, and periodicals that created a market for essays, and particularly famous or significant essays. The preface details the historical development of the essay, and the alphabetically arranged entries usually include biographical sketch, nationality, era, selected writings list, additional readings, and anthologies
Hilaire Belloc was a soldier, sailor, scholar, traveller, poet, historian, essayist, biographer, novelist and political philosopher, the epitome of Renaissance Man. He was also a political activist. With fellow writer G.K. Chesterton, Belloc was a leading advocate of distributism. Distributism advocates widespread property ownership and condemns both capitalism and those forms of socialism which lead to concentrations of power and wealth. Anthony Cooney, a modern-day distributist and editor of the Liverpool Newsletter, tells his story.
Hilaire Belloc’s thinking on the economy constitutes, by its originality and acuity, a heterodox approach of the greatest interest in addressing the economic problems of his time and those of our own. Belloc’s main interest as a writer were on economics and history, and his works were praised by economists such as F. A. Hayek or Wilhelm Röpke and political philosophers such as Robert Nisbet and Russell Kirk, but his contributions have been often overlooked. To address that oversight, this book inserts Belloc ́s ideas into the academic dialogue on economics. Despite not being a trained economist, Belloc developed his thought based on a coherent system rooted in original elements such as the scholastic tradition. Belloc’s Christian or “post-scholastic” economics updates and renews many of the scholastic concepts to make them applicable to the economy of the world he knew. Issues such as the impossibility of socialism, entrepreneurship, the effects of monetary policy and credit on economic cycles, or the sustainability of the welfare state were studied by Belloc from a very singular perspective. Describing and interpreting the economic thought of Belloc, the book will be of interest to scholars and students, as well as general readers, interested in heterodox perspectives on economics.
Jefferson's Freeholders explores the processes by which Virginia was transformed from a British colony into a Southern slave state. Focusing on ideas of ownership, the book emphasizes the persistent influence of English common law on the state's political culture. It uniquely details how the traditional principles of land tenure were subverted by the economic and political changes of the nineteenth century and how they fostered law reforms that encouraged the idea that slavery should replace land ownership as the distinguishing basis for political power.
Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land is the first practical guidebook to give restorationists and would-be restorationists with little or no scientific training or background the “how to” information and knowledge they need to plan and implement ecological restoration activities. The book sets forth a step-by-step process for developing, implementing, monitoring, and refining on-the-ground restoration projects that is applicable to a wide range of landscapes and ecosystems. The first part of the book introduces the process of ecological restoration in simple, easily understood language through specific examples drawn from the authors’ experience restoring their own lands in southern and central Wisconsin. It offers systematic, step-by-step strategies along with inspiration and benchmark experiences. The book’s second half shows how that same “thinking” and “doing” can be applied to North America’s major ecosystems and landscapes in any condition or scale. No other ecological restoration book leads by example and first-hand experience likethis one. The authors encourage readers to champion restoration of ecosystems close to where they live . . . at home, on farms and ranches, in parks and preserves. It provides an essential bridge for people from all walks of life and all levels of experience—from land trust member property stewards to agency personnel responsible for restoring lands in their care—and represents a unique and important contribution to the literature on restoration.
