The Injustice of "Distributism" in Catholic Social Justice

The December 20 edition of the Wanderer contained a recap of writings from Dorothy Day, a social justice activist who positioned herself against capitalism in favor of "distributism." Here is my response. We'll see if they publish it:

Dear Sir or Madam:
I could not help but respond to your publishing Dorothy Day’s October 1954 article “Distributism Versus Capitalism” in the December 20, 2012 edition of the Wanderer. To think how misguided Ms. Day was in her advocacy for distributism is evident everywhere we look in modern society, in America and abroad. Ms. Day, of course, did not have the empirical advantage of reviewing the social, personal and moral destruction that “distributism” has wrought in Africa, Europe, America’s inner cities, not to mention the Soviet Union, and China, until it adopted capitalism, and the next decade in the United States.

Sadly, Ms. Day and the entire social justice crowd seem to have, for the last 100 years or so, been absent from Mass to hear how Jesus crafted parables using capitalistic concepts to demonstrate the failures in morality – of distributism! And let’s shift our thinking here a bit. The term ‘capitalism’ was created by French proponents of Marxism to denigrate the working of free enterprise and free markets, in support of the socialistic/distributist reordering they sought. Jesus, for his part, never denigrated free enterprise (the precursor to free markets), but he did condemn the errors of those who accumulate wealth for its own sake.

In the parable of the Talents, Jesus clearly says there are rewards for the enterprising servants who traded for returns on their master’s talents (15 years’ worth of salary). By contrast, the servant who failed to engage in money-making activity is punished by the master upon his return. Industriousness is rewarded; laziness and fear of failure is punished.

In the parable of the Ten Virgins, Jesus clearly rewards the five who prepared themselves with extra lamp oil ahead of the bridegroom’s late night arrival. The five who did not bring enough oil are refused their requests for sharing by the five who did, and return to their town to get more. Jesus could have taken the outcome of the parable in a different direction, to chastise the five who did not share their oil with the ill-prepared. Instead, he rewarded those who had the forethought and industriousness of preparation, and punished those who did not. If there is any virtue in distributism, Jesus did not even consider it as a part of his lesson for this story.

In the parable of the Tenants, Jesus establishes that there is a wealthy landowner who invests in a vineyard for the purpose of producing grapes and wine. The landowner does everything possible to ensure a good crop, protecting the tenants with a wall and watchtower, building a press and planting the vineyard. He contracts with tenants to produce grapes and press wines, in return for some portion of the yield. The landowner, who Jesus later assigns as God the Father sending his Son, could certainly be described as encouraging and engaging in “capitalism” as it has come to be denigrated in our brainwashed minds, by the likes of Day and others. But truly another way to consider that type of activity might be much closer to descriptions of God’s support of a natural order inherent in all the attendant mechanics of free enterprise, contracts, investments, rents, trading, etc.

From your excerpt, it appeared that Day was railing against the insertion of capitalism in catechesis. She may have been right, that there was at the time a false faith in the ability of capitalism to fairly distribute goods, in her view. But where did that view come from? Jesus? No. She cites L’Osservatore Romano’s description of capitalism as seizing, confiscating and drying up wealth. But is that description true? What would an Ukrainian farmer of the 1930s say about that?

Please read this with care. I’m not defending “capitalism” or “capitalists” as they are caricaturized by Ms. Day and all the untold other proponents of social justice distributism. Jesus warned against the folly of wealth accumulation for its own sake. He demonstrated the folly of the farmer who built silos to accumulate his exceptional grain harvest. He praised the heart of the poor woman who shared her alms to point of jeopardizing her own well-being, and the contrasted that with the stingy rich.

I just wonder how our last century would have been reshaped if Ms. Day and others had understood free enterprise as supporting the ultimate goal of salvation for the individual, in accordance with the parables of Jesus, instead of the temporal gain of distributism that aligned more closely with Marx and his heirs.