Talk:Distributism

POV
The Social Security section reads like propagandha. And why is there a picture of a farm at the top?

Agree with the writer above. The second paragraph uses too much of the language of appraisal. Encyclopedia articles describe; they don't evaluate. An article on the planet Mars would tell us about what it was like, not sneer at how cold it was or how thin the atmosphere. danon uk

The second paragraph on the social security section as of 15 Oct 2006 looks like a rebuttal to the distributist view on social security. The above observation about Mars is apt, so I deleted that offending paragraph. chamblee, USA 15 OCT 06.

This whole thing is a mess
I came here to read about "what the fuck is distributism?", and I still have no idea. The intro part that should be enough to get an idea what this is just say something about some Pope and that it is based on catholic teaching. And then some pointless speculation about what Pope Francis might think.

The overview make it sound like they are some kind of socialists, but then I am told that it is somehow opposite to both capitalism and socialism. How? " In contrast, distributism seeks to subordinate economic activity to human life as a whole, to our spiritual life, our intellectual life, our family life" What!?

And then "Some have seen it more as an aspiration, which has been successfully realised in the short term by commitment to the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity". "Some"? It is like the whole thing is a mystery even for the distributist them self.

In the background I can see that the idea is to distribute land and property to the people who use it in their work. But how and why?

The text should be rewritten to tell us what distributism is and what it's base is. It seems that catholic stuff was important. Maybe straighten out what that is? Some points about the fundamental ideas and such. Is it even a relevant ideology today or should it be written with the earlier farming society in mind? 62.182.2.225 (talk) 14:42, 26 November 2016 (UTC)


 * These are all good points. Pope Francis has been commented-out from the intro, and I just added a sentence trying to give a simple summary of what distributism means. The WP:LEAD section is supposed to summarize the main points of the article, and it'll be very helpful if someone has time to do a better job of this. —173.56.25.136 (talk) 02:52, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Relationship with socialism
Why don't distributists think of themselves as socialists even though they both advocate for democratic control of the means of production? Also, Dorothy Day was a communist and not a distributist because distributism is limited capitalism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Magnigornia (talk • contribs) 31 March 2020 (UTC)
 * , I suppose that is because by socialism they think of state socialism or Communism and because distributism did not arise within the socialist movement. Also, it is not clear what you mean by "limited capitalism"; do you mean welfare capitalism? That "the world's productive assets should be widely owned rather than concentrated" is actually the goal of socialism and communism, which are opposed to the separation of workers from property. But let us not devolve into a forum. What does literature says? Davide King (talk) 00:03, 27 November 2020 (UTC),


 * The difference between distributism and socialism with regards to property ownership is that, in simple terms, distributism is advocating for the establishment and maintenance of many independently owned operations, while socialism is advocating for one operation which is managed collectively. It is the difference between having many family owned businesses and having a single, collectively owned organization or industry. 76.64.71.147 (talk) 18:34, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

By limited capitalism I meant that small local businesses can still be privately owned but larger ones would be publicly owned. Maybe distributists believe that socialism is an ill-defined term that can mean anything from anarchism to state socialism whereas distributism is more specific.

Lacking in sources (original research)
I've noticed a large amount of this article lacks consistent citations. Some sections are written entirely without a single one for paragraphs on end. Much of the Social Theory section goes uncited, same with a significant portion of the economic theory. Comparing this page with other articles for similar economic theory, it's glaring how many citations it is missing. I'm adding a disclaimer at the top of the article that makes this apparent. DontAskMeAboutThis (talk) 05:02, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Social Security
The link (external link 54 - https://dlp.org.au/policy-students/) to the Australian DLP site gives a 404 "page not found" message. In addition, there seems to be no such policy expressed anywhere on the the DLP site. ["[r]aise the level of student income support payments to the Henderson poverty line"] I tried searching the site for the word "Henderson" - no results. I also looked through https://dlp.org.au/policies/ and found nothing resembling this. Michael Hurwicz (talk) 18:07, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅ Archive link added to the reference. Alexcalamaro (talk) 13:35, 2 January 2024 (UTC)