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Small is beautiful / localism / alternatives to corporations |
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| Adbusters | satirising corporate advertising |
| Center for Economic & Social Justice | promoting equal opportunities to capital ownership for every person; lots of interesting ideas and articles |
| Competition / Anti-trust law | legislation to prevent or break up monopolies |
| Emilia Romagna | region of Italy with an economy based on small businesses and 8000 co-operatives |
| Front Porch Republic | blog with several contributors and a ‘smallist’ slant |
| Mondragon | how small businesses and co-operatives can network to constitute a large portion of the economy – in this case in the Basque Country |
| Practical Action | formerly the Intermediate Technology Development Group, founded by E.F. Schumacher to promote small businesses in developing countries |
| Reconomy | Great project to promote small businesses from the Transition Network |
| Res Publica | think tank with a ‘small is beautiful’ slant |
| Schumacher Center | essay on the relevance of E. F. Schumacher in the 21st century |
| Schumacher Institute | challenging the ‘ever remoter structures of political governance and corporate power’ |
Distributism |
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| Basics of Distributism | on David Cooney’s ‘Practical Distributism’ blog |
| Catholic Worker Movement | founded in 1933 by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, it opposes the unequal distribution of wealth in the world |
| The Chesterbelloc Mandate | blog with lots of interesting articles |
| The Distributism Debate | pdf containing pro- and anti- articles |
| Distributist Review | bank of distributist articles |
| An Introduction to Distributism | article on the ‘Chesterbelloc Mandate’ blog |
| P2P Foundation | wiki on distributism – fascinating stuff |
| Society for Distributism | aka the American Chesterton Society |
| Thomas Storck | list of articles by contemporary distributist thinker |
| Wikipedia | distributism – includes explanation plus history |
Key personalities |
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| Arizmendiarrieta, Jose Maria | 1915-1976; Basque priest who founded the Mondragon movement |
| Belloc, Hilaire | 1870-1953; Anglo-French writer & historian, collaborated with G. K. Chesterton |
| Chesterton, Cecil | 1879-1918; English writer – younger brother of G. K. Considered the theorist of the distributists |
| Chesterton, G. K. | 1874-1936; English writer – see the fantastic list of articles at the bottom |
| Cobbett, William | 1763-1835; English farmer, writer and agrarian campaigner |
| Day, Dorothy | 1897-1980; American activist who founded the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933 with Peter Maurin |
| Jacobs, Jane | 1916-2006; American-Canadian activist and writer who promoted localism and opposed the corporate takeover of cities |
| Maurin, Peter | 1877-1949; American activist who founded the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933 with Peter Maurin |
| Morris, William | 1834-1896; English artist, writer and leader of the Arts & Crafts Movement |
| Penty, Arthur | 1875-1937; English writer on guild socialism and distributism; promoted guilds |
| Pope Leo XIII | 1810-1903; issued the Quadragesimo Anno – see below |
| Pope Pius XI | 1857-1939; issued the Rerum Novarum – see below |
| Ruskin, John | 1819-1900; English art and social critic |
| Sayers, Dorothy L. | 1893-1957; English novelist, her social and economic writings have a distributist slant |
| Schumacher, E. F. (Fritz) | 1911-1977; German economist and author of ‘Small is Beautiful’ |
Seminal texts – in date order |
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| Rerum Novarum | 1891: statement by Pope Leo XIII that criticised communism and unrestricted capitalism and stressed the need to spread the ownership of property thinly |
| Fields, Factories & Workshops | 1901: book by Peter Kropotkin advocating local production / consumption, and co-operation |
| What’s Wrong with the World | 1910: book by G. K. Chesterton |
| the Servile State | 1912: book by G. K. Chesterton (usury is the lending of money for interest); link to the book at bottom of page |
| Utopia of Usurers | 1917: book by G. K. Chesterton (usury is the lending of money for interest) |
| the Outline of Sanity | 1927: essay by G. K. Chesterton |
| Do We Agree? | 1928: cracking debate in 1928 between Chesterton and G. B. Shaw. Chesterton turned out to be right |
| Quadragesimo Anno | 1931: in the 40th year (i.e. 40 years after the Rerum Novarum); calls for principles of solidarity and subsidiarity |
