David Deavel on What's Right (and Wrong) about Distributism

David Deavel on What’s Right with Distributism and What's Wrong with Distributism (Intercollegiate Review):

Distributists and free marketeers are often at each others’ throats. If you scroll through any website dedicated to free markets or liberty, you will find any number of critiques of distributist thinkers, and scroll through the Distributist Review or any other site dedicated to distributist theory and I think you will see that there is a sense that there is often little love lost between the two camps. But there is a great deal of common ground to be found among those who hold a more generally pro-market position and those who describe themselves as distributists. I think there is much truth in many of the distributist positions—truths on which there can be broad agreement among people of good will. But there are a number of points on which its own analysis fails in showing how it could get where it wants to go. In this essay I wish to examine what’s right about distributism. Next week I will detail what’s wrong with distributism and what we should ultimately take from it.

David Deavel is an associate editor of Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture and a contributing editor for Gilbert Magazine