Localism: Coming Home to Catholic Social Teaching
Edited by Dale Ahlquist and Michael Warren Davis.
Sophia Institute Press, 2024.
Hardcover, 240 pages, $21.95.
Reviewed by John C. “Chuck” Chalberg.
If the editors of this collection win the day, a new “ism” will be added to the short list of “isms” forever seeking to capture the hearts and minds of us all. From Karl Marx on, it was a simple and straightforward contest between capitalism and socialism. Then came the catch-all label of progressivism to muddy the intellectual and political waters, if only because progressives could be either capitalist-minded sorts or socialist-minded sorts. In any case, progressives of both sorts have generally been vague when it comes to detailing precisely what it is that they have been hoping and scheming to progress toward.
Perhaps that’s because, in practice, it appears that both have been scheming and building toward some version of “bigness.” That might be bigness, as in the bigger the business the better. Or it might result in bigger and bigger government. Or worse yet, it might eventually lead to both. Or even worse yet, it might lead to a world dominated by Hudge and Gudge operating essentially in collusion with one another to destroy the family.
Hudge and Gudge? Hudge, the socialist, and Gudge, the capitalist, were G. K. Chesterton’s terms for the colluders. Hudge, the socialist, wanted the state to take over many, if not all, family functions, while Gudge, the capitalist, wanted women out of the home and into the workforce. The result would inevitably be the triumph of what Hilaire Belloc termed the “servile state.”
Anticipating such a calamity, something called the Chesterbelloc then added something called “distributism” to the mounting mix of “isms.” The Chesterbelloc? That would be socialist progressive George Bernard Shaw’s term for the combined talents of G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. And distributism? That would be their term for their goal of building a society based on the Catholic principle of subsidiarity.
Subsidiarity? The essence of this principle of Catholic social teaching is that, whenever possible, matters ought to be handled by the smallest and most decentralized competent authority. In other words, matters ought to be handled on the local level whenever possible.
This is implicit in the Chesterbelloc notion of distributism, which centered on achieving the widest possible distribution of property. As such, this approach was consistent with other late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century reform proposals, such as Henry George’s single tax on land or the American Populist party’s call for confiscating land from railroad companies and redistributing the acreage to actual farmers.
Creating and sustaining a society in which land ownership is widely distributed is an admirable goal. Toward achieving that goal Chesterton and Belloc helped create something called the Distributist League in England in the mid-1920s. This was to be a league, mind you, and not a political party. Chesterton thought politics ought to be left to the politicians, since they were likely to be the only people dull enough not to be bored by it!
The ever-present question regarding the creation of a society based on distributist principles is this: Just how does a political entity go about getting property fairly and widely distributed and/or redistributed into as many hands as possible? Some distributists came to the conclusion that a strong leader was necessary to bring this about. More specifically than that, there were those distributists who saw Benito Mussolini as such a leader. In fact, the term itself suggests the need for a powerful leader or some state institution to do the distributing from the top down.
Localism seeks to reverse that process. In this fine collection of essays there is not so much as a single hint that any sort of top down solution is the answer, much less a top down solution that requires either a big government or a political figure with something between near-dictatorial and dictatorial power. For localists, it’s bottom up all the way.
Of course, the other major criticism of distributism is that it has no relevance for the modern world, especially the modern urban and suburban world where most people in the industrialized west actually live. After all, distributism was proposed when rural life still predominated, and it was designed primarily with rural life in mind. Forty acres and a cow for everyone and all that.
Would it—or could it—be applied to an urban or suburban setting? The authors of these essays have kept this question firmly and foremost in mind. More than that, the vast majority of the essays in this collection have been written for the vast majority of us who are non-rural and who are likely to remain in such a condition.
The authors themselves are a diverse collection—and in the best sense of that much overworked word “diverse.” There are senators and scholars, homemakers and farmers, lawyers and priests. There is even a combination land-use planner and civil engineer, as well as the founding father of the Sierra Leone Chesterton Society. OK, there is only one senator and he is now a former senator (Marco Rubio) and a whole lot of academics of one sort or another, including the very well known (Joseph Pearce, Allan Carlson, and Anthony Esolen) and the not at all well known (but well worth knowing). Nonetheless, there is a whole lot of, dare it be stated, diversity, yes diversity of stories, ideas and suggestions among the twenty-five entries.
In fact, the very variety of the entries presents a problem for the reviewer, a problem not unlike problems facing localists—at least according to editor and essayist Michael Warren Davis, who in his other life is a contributing editor for The American Conservative.
Davis puts it this way: Localism is easy in theory, but hard in practice. Ideology, on the other hand, is just the reverse: “It’s hard in theory but easy in practice.” No matter the ideology, the practice is always the same: blame someone else. That’s the easy part. Capitalists can blame the “tax-happy politicians,” while socialists can blame the “corporate fat-cats.” Either way, you’re neither part of the problem nor part of the solution. Somehow you’re simply a victim of the “system.”
Localists, Davis continues, know that there are no systems, only people. And people can often be the problem. Chesterton would likely agree. When the author of What’s Wrong with the World was asked to explain what exactly was wrong with the world he was known to reply, “I am,” which he thought should always be everyone’s standard reply.
Davis notes that Chesterton also had an alternate reply: “What is wrong with the world is the devil, and what is right with the world is God.” Davis and his accompanying essayists agree. Echoing Chesterton, Davis reminds us that “Joseph Stalin (Hudge) and Jeff Bezos (Gudge) harnessed the power of Big Government and Big Business to make the world a worse place to live.” Christ, however, had a different answer.
Christianity, Davis also reminds, was a moral revolution, and another moral revolution is “what we need today.” If such a revolution is to succeed, it must begin on the local level and within each individual. In a very real sense, therefore, Chesterton’s two answers to that same question, namely “what’s wrong with the world,” were ultimately the same answer.
Perhaps this also explains the attempt of modern Chestertonians to replace a call for a society grounded in distributism with a call to build a society committed to “localism.” After all, distributism is essentially an economic theory, while localism encompasses actions in a variety of ways and on a number of fronts. And a number of those ways and a number of those fronts are dealt with in these essays. Far from the least of those actual and potential fronts is the local parish.
So what’s the problem for the reviewer? And how does it relate to the Davis dilemma of localism vs. ideology? These essays are easy to read and hard to summarize. And because they are easy to read, not to mention well worth reading, it’s impossible to do justice to more than a few of them in a single, short review.
Suffice it to say, the thrust of the collection recognizes that their readers are not likely to wind up living on forty acres with a mule. Nor are those same readers necessarily desirous of living such a life. So just what can a typical urban or suburban dweller do in the name of advancing localism and saving one’s own soul? Plenty, according to these essayists.
At the risk of slighting a deserving essayist—or three or more—let’s briefly reference a bit of the plenty. And let’s keep in mind what editor Dale Ahlquist must have asked his contributors to keep in mind, namely that the “first challenge facing localism is the suburbs,” which are the same everywhere and where schools have been built to “look and function like state correctional facilities.” (Full disclosure: both Mr. Ahlquist and your reviewer live not just in a suburb, but in the same suburb, as well as near different public schools that resemble the same correctional facility.)
Christopher Check of Catholic Answers extols the “benefits” of a family enterprise. For the Check family it was raising puppies. In their case the product was Top Meadow Cavaliers. Whether it was a family business or a family hobby is almost beside the point; and whether or not the “distributist (there’s that word again) ideal is out of reach for most of us, the strengthening of family bonds through common work is not.”
Historian Charles Coulombe offers advice for would-be politicians: “If you do choose to enter this field, you must do so out of real love for the place, and out of a real desire to improve and enhance it.” He doesn’t say so, but if those are one’s dual motives for seeking office there is far less likelihood that the successful office seeker will ever be bored.
Dairy farmer Jason Craig reminds us that “local work still exists.” It’s also accessible and “capable of rooting and supporting a family.” Those men who find such work “deserve and respect our patronage.”
In an essay titled “The School of Localism,” Sean Fitzpatrick, who serves on the faculty of Gregory the Great Academy, contends that the “problem in education today is that education is dealt with as a problem instead of a pleasure.” Therein lies the “seed of slavery instead of freedom.” (More full disclosure: When I first began to have homeschooled students in my college classes sometime in the early 1990s, I was initially skeptical of their preparation and ability. But it didn’t take me long to realize that these were invariably among my best students.)
Among my favorite essays in this collection is a piece by Matthew Giambrone, founder and editor of a publication titled Hearth and Field. I had never heard of either Mr. Giambrone or his publication. Here’s hoping that I will learn more of and from him, since his essay was simply delightful. The title itself is alluring: “Localism is Americanism.”
He begins by telling us that his first child was born with a “pronounced distributist streak.” In other (of his) words, we had “birthed a creature who was neither a capitalist nor a socialist.” The timing could not have been better, he continues, since her parents had been wondering about their own “economic affiliations.”
In her father’s case, he had thought of himself as a capitalist, “I guess.” Then about the same time that the baby arrived “by the grace of God” a book by a fellow named G. K. Chesterton also appeared. Immediately entranced, the Giambrones soon discovered someone who “understood us better than we did, someone who could perhaps explain us to us.”
As it turned out, Chesterton did a little more explaining than that, beginning with his “startling claim” that capitalism and socialism really weren’t all that different from one another. Both, after all, sought to “centralize power” and operate from the “top down.” Chesterton, the Giambrones discovered, took a different approach. His “starting point” was the family and the home, and his charge was to call upon its members to build a “decentralized economy” around both.
Giambrone then returns the reader to their new baby daughter, who “tipped us off to her distributist proclivities when she pushed the concept even further,” namely “proximity between production and consumption taken to its perfected end.”
Perhaps you’re wondering what all this has to do with whether or not localism is Americanism. If so, you would not be alone, since Giambone began to wonder about the same thing. His conclusion? It once was—and it could and should be once again. If you’re of a mind to be persuaded, this might well be the first essay to read. But while you’re at it, be sure to read the rest of them. There’s not a clunker among the baker’s two dozen.
John C. “Chuck” Chalberg writes from Minnesota and once performed as G. K. Chesterton.
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