Earlier this year, Dale Ahlquist of the Society of G. K. Chesterton and Michael Warren Davis of The American Conservative presented a book titled Localism: Coming Home to Catholic Social Teaching. The Society of G. K. Chesterton has proposed using Localism as a new name for the Distributist movement. While I don’t agree with completely abandoning the name Distributism, I acknowledge the confusion and difficulty that name causes and agree that Localism is a good way to introduce the principles of the movement to the world at large. It is undoubtedly easier, and will probably be more successful, to introduce the concepts as a localist movement and eventually get around to discussing the more difficult concept of distributive justice and how it isn’t a call for government redistribution. Distributism is, after all, an essentially localist movement.
That is the purpose of this book. The authors (including myself) give a modern presentation of the classic distributist idea emphasizing the localist aspects of those ideas. It should be understood that localism isn’t a rejection of, or isolation from, wider economic and political realities. It is a view that emphasizes the importance of the local aspects of these realities to individual daily lives. A country filled with economically and politically stable local communities is a country that has greater economic and political stability and freedom.
I think this is the best aspect of the book. It challenges the reader to really consider local community and economics as something important to their every day lives and the lives of their friends and neighbors. This is what gives real meaning to the concept of localism and reveals the importance of local jobs, local businesses, local agriculture, local government, local finance, local investment, and many other things that have a far greater impact to the daily lives of the average person than a large corporation which has headquarters and decision makers who have no idea about the real needs of your local community.
Practical Distributism 
I’m sorry but I am in total disagreement about getting rid of the name Distributism here. The term “localism” is too general and muddled when explaining what Belloc, Chesterton and their successors have bequeathed to us long ago. Folks will still be thinking that there is only either Capitalism or Socialism, rather than discovering there is something else than these two. And that would be doing them a severe disservice.
As I said, I don’t agree with getting rid of the name, distributism. I do think that starting with “localism” will avoid the problem of people immediately rejecting what we’re saying because they will assume it means “redistribution.” However, I think we need to keep using the name Distributism. This is why, nearly four years after the Society of G. K. Chesterton, suggested the new name, I am still using Distributism for the work I am doing.
Here is an article I wrote at the time they suggested the name change.
https://practicaldistributism.com/2021/02/11/localism-my-thoughts-on-a-new-name/
This is excellent. Hopefully distributism will finally become more widely known with this better name.