Practical Distributism

by Jeb Smith

This article was originally published by The Postil Magazine on 1 October, 2025

Christianity inspired both libertarianism and distributism. While the two have significant similarities, there are also some irreconcilable differences. However, I think that Christian libertarians can find much to agree on with distributists, and may discover that they can ally with them more often than with other groups. Distributism primarily derives from Catholic teachings but finds supporters, myself included, in many different denominations.

Both parties can agree or come near to it on several key principles: no property taxes, minimal regulations, generally low taxation, limited or non-existent central governance, and no government bailouts or subsidies for major corporations.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches the principle of subsidiarity, promoting decentralized local control of public policy and the economy. This concept was incorporated into distributism in order to avoid coercive measures and assure self-governance. Each family would constitute a small society, managing its own little kingdom and providing for its own needs. Politics and economics would be localized within small, close-knit, like-minded, self-governing communities where trade and barter take place.

Governance would be localized, diverse, and free of coercion from outside majorities. One town might be libertarian, the next socialist, the next republican, and so on; no distant, uninvolved, and unaware majority overpowering political minorities, robbing them of the politics of their choice. Elections, politics, fundraising, and other issues would dissipate, and the hatred, anger, and frustration over these matters would subside.

Governance would be almost entirely at this local level. Only what could not be done at the family level would pass to the town level; only what could not be done at the town level managed at the county or state level. The higher level would do only what the lower levels could not do for themselves. Government would be localized—with no need for a centralized state or national political parties.

At the heart of distributism is the family. Each family should be independent and able to provide for itself. Economic liberty, free from outside interference, whether governmental or capitalistic, is essential to freedom and inherent in every person. The Third Way: Foundations of Distributionism quotes Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum, wherein he wrote, “There is no need to bring in the state. Man precedes the state, and possesses, prior to the formation of any state, the right of providing for the substance of his body.” Pope Leo continued, “The fact that God has given the earth for the use and enjoyment of the whole human race can in no way be a bar to the owning of private property” and private ownership is “in accordance with the law of nature.”

In other words, God gave man the immutable right to private property and the means to support a family before the government came into being, thus he was born free from bosses or government forces, with rights to property and means of production for survival. Pope Leo viewed a family as a tiny “society” that was “older than any state; consequently, it has rights and duties peculiar to itself, which are quite independent of the state.” Man living with his (often extended) family on a farm, producing for themselves and ruling over their own little kingdom, was the ideal life.

The goal, in a very real sense, of reversing what capitalism and socialism have done is to restore the liberty of individuals and families—essentially, reclaiming their God-given rights. As governments raised taxes and imposed regulations while corporations manipulated the economy, millions in Europe were forced from their land, leaving them no choice but to migrate to cities to work in inhumane factory conditions.

The corporations could then consume more and more of the competition, offering lower prices (or, working in unholy alliance with governments, burdening rivals with taxation and regulation, controlling the market and advertising media, limiting the choices of purchasers, or alone receiving special grants, subsidies, etc.) and taking away the competitor’s ability to live independently.

In the name of open-market fair competition, men were removed from the land, their businesses and their livelihood, and forced to work as wage-slave earners for a capitalist as their only way to survive. The result was an oligarchy of bosses controlling the “free market.”

Biblical law implemented many of the distributist desires. It prevented the power-bloc buildup modern centralized capitalistic, democratic, and socialist societies produce. The years of Jubilee (Leviticus 25:8-28) prevented the mass buildup of both government and large landholders, ensuring land and power were distributed and not centralized or monopolized. Protestant Pastor and author Ted R. Weiland wrote, “The year of Jubilee makes it impossible for a man to amass property or for the government to confiscate private property.”

Preventing governmental expansion, Deuteronomy 17:18-20 limits the king’s power, as does Ezekiel 46:18, and the function of a king under God’s law left him libertarian compared to modern governments.

Biblical law only allows limited taxation and only on increase, with no direct taxes, property tax, national debt, invasion of private property, or many other privileges the modern state employs to gain power. The Biblical economy leaves self-sufficient individuals alone!

The patriarchal society of the ancient Hebraic tribes of Israel placed families and fathers at the head of the local authority, not politicians and bureaucrats. They were free to self-govern so long as they adhered to God’s law, chose him as their Lord, obeyed his customs and did not harm their neighbor.