Old Principles and the New Order

By Vincent McNabb, O.P. The Distributist movement, led by Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton, and supported by Vincent McNabb, O.P., promoted a particular type of subsidiarity. Contrary to socialism and communism, which advocate for the redistribution of wealth, distributism seeks the distribution of the means of production to as many people as possible and advocates for a “return to the land,” with agriculture as the economic primary and the family as the basic unit of cooperative society. Per McNabb, the Church and her ministers must enter this territory: “The Church is not primarily interested in politics or economics, because neither politics nor economics are primary. Yet the Church is necessarily, and greatly interested in politics and economics because both politics and economics are moral.” To control the production of wealth is to control human life itself. To refuse man the opportunity for the production of wealth is to refuse him the opportunity for life. (Hilaire Belloc)