Oikos and Logos : Chesterton's Vision of Distributism

Abstract

Oikos and Logos:Chesterton's Vision of Distributism Richard Gill (bio) Although he was appalled by the social consequences of industrial capitalism, the English Catholic novelist, poet, and journalist G. K. Chesterton (1875–1936) rejected the idea that socialism was the solution to such an economic malaise. In fact, he believed that socialism represented a continuation and not a curtailment of the process of property expropriation inaugurated by the advent of a capitalist economy, which could only be challenged by promoting the widespread ownership of limited private property. In Chesterton's Christian-Aristotelian vision of distributism, limits are placed on the life processes of nature—the acquisition of goods and human sexuality—as both aspects of economy are transfigured in accordance with the will of the Creator and the needs for sustaining a human community. The institutions Chesterton offers to this end of transcending the market relations of self-interest in these spheres are Christian marriage and a modern form of medieval guild regulation of industry to preserve independent household economies. Leaving London in 1919 on a journey to the Holy Land, Chesterton remarked on the political confusion that he believed was the hallmark of the industrial West: [End Page 64] The employers talk about "private enterprise," as if there was anything private about modern enterprise. Its combines are as big as many commonwealths; and things advertised in large letters on the sky cannot plead the shy privileges of privacy. Meanwhile the Labour men talk about the need to "nationalise" the mines or the land, as if it were not the great difficulty in a plutocracy to nationalise the government, or even to nationalise the nation.1 Chesterton's own sympathies lay on the side of Labour, but he believed that the proposed statist solution—together with its rejection by the plutocracy—was an absurdity: "The mob howls before the palace gates, 'Hateful tyrant, we demand that you assume more despotic powers'; and the tyrant thunders from the balcony, 'Vile rebels, do you dare to suggest that my powers should be extended?' There seems to be a little misunderstanding somewhere."2 To fathom out this misunderstanding, says Chesterton, we need to get to the root of the problem faced by modern Western civilization: "We must begin at the beginning; we must return to our first origins in history, as we must return to our first principles in philosophy. We must consider how we came to be doing what we do, and even saying what we say."3 What is the ideal that modern Western societies are supposed to be achieving? According to Chesterton, it is democracy: "It is this which prophets promise to achieve, and politicians pretend to achieve, and poets sometimes desire to achieve, and sometimes only desire to desire. In a word, an equal citizenship is quite the reverse of the modern world; but it is still the ideal of the modern world."4 Chesterton maintains that the source of this classical republican ideal was Rome. Yet the Republic of ancient Rome was built upon slavery, and here is the crux of the dilemma of labor and liberty in the modern world: The Labour problem is the attempt to have the democracy of Paris without the slavery of Rome. Between the Roman [End Page 65] Republic and the French Republic something had happened. Whatever else it was, it was the abandonment of the ancient and fundamental habit of slavery; the numbering of men for necessary labour as the normal foundation of society, even a society in which citizens were free and equal. When the idea of equal citizenship returned to the world, it found the world changed by a more mysterious version of equality. . . . We have now to assume not only that all citizens are equal, but that all men are citizens.5 The "something" that had happened—which had transformed the desire for an equality of citizens into the equality of men—was Christendom. Recalling that his destination was Jerusalem, Chesterton declared, "I know the name of the magic which had made all those peasants out of pagan slaves, and has presented to the modern world a new problem of labour and liberty."6 Thus for Chesterton...