Distributism seems like an ill-defined concept.

This is a fair point, because it is. The concept first appeared in Rerum Novarum, a papal encyclical from 1891. (This is not to say distributism is in itself tied to religious government.)

It’s important to note that the word “distributism” never appears in Rerum Novarum. The encyclical addressed the conditions of labor and the class conflict that came to the fore during the industrialization of the late 19th Century. It laid out duties of workers (do their jobs, avoid vandalism and violence) and duties of employers (respect the human dignity of workers). In furtherance of those goals, trade unionism was endorsed. It introduced the concept that would later become known as the “preferential option for the poor.” Lastly, it endorsed the idea of property ownership by the citizenry, with broadly distributed ownership being optimal. That last point regarding distributed ownership of property is the portion of the encyclical that would develop into what would be later known as distributism. The encyclical stated that the embodiment of these concepts was to be left to secular government. The distributist principle itself doesn’t require religious belief.

Distributism was left to be fleshed out by secular writers, most notably GK Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, both of whom wrote in the first few decades of the 20th Century. While Belloc does a good job of outlining the trajectory of the capitalist system in both The Servile State and Economics for Helen, and Chesterton’s writings are useful today in spirit, both Chesterton and Belloc’s practical applications of distributist concepts were very much tied to conditions as they existed in England in the early 20th Century and appear dated today. This makes modern distributism to some degree a blank slate.

I would define distributism today very simply as “the use of the legal system to encourage decentralization of capital ownership.” Exactly what that would entail is up for debate, a debate which would likely entail throwing ideas at the wall, evaluating their tradeoffs, and seeing what sticks. This is very much in the spirit of the approach taken by Chesteron and Belloc.

Distributism differs, for example, from communism in that it does not seek to abolish property ownership altogether, or deny that there be any hierarchy at all within an economic system.

If you were to pull 100 names out of the phone book, weed out the ultra-wealthy as well as people heavily involved in politics, banking, or professional economics, an economic discussion among them would probably end up with broad agreement on some pretty distributist concepts.

My thought process on a post-capitalist system isn’t wholly dictated by distributism, but is heavily influenced by it. In my original essay and in the interview I discussed some examples of policies that I believe achieve distributist ends.

If you believe in localism, shouldn’t all power be centered at the lowest level (maybe the level of the individual)?

This is a great point that I should’ve made clearer in the interview. When I speak of localism, I’m speaking of it in the framework of subsidiarity.

Subsidiarity is “the principle that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed at a more local level.”

This notably does not mean that all matters should be handled at the most local level. Ironically, moving all authority to a local level can actually make local control illusory. The debate over the European Union is a great illustration of this concept.

The EU was supposedly founded on subsidiarity as an organizing principle. In practice however, more and more authority has become centralized in Brussels over time. This was an inevitability due to the technocratic, overtly anti-democratic design of the EU as we know it today.

Early Euroskeptic movements unsurprisingly focused on withdrawal from the EU. In the post-Brexit world, however, outside of Britain these movements have had more focus on taking control of EU itself, with the goal being to use that control for devolving powers back to the member states rather than total dissolution of the union.

This was a change in strategy rather than a decline in ambition. Autarky is not a realistic option for any EU state. Most EU states are small. A small state usually cannot avoid entering into trade agreements with larger states, typically on unappealing terms. This allows the larger state to effectively set the smaller partner’s labor, environmental, and other legal standards. Even if the larger state is not able to exploit the smaller one through trade agreements, due to the small state being a small market lacking leverage, oligopolistic holders of capital can simply threaten to not do business in the small state unless their wishes regarding the state’s legal and economic structure are met. In this way, too much devolution of power to the local level actually destroys local control, making the locality a mere vassal of a larger neighbor or worse, a vassal of effectively stateless global corporations.

This all makes EU withdrawal unappealing. Hence most of today’s Euroskeptics seek to take control of the EU, devolve powers back to local authorities such that the local wishes of each state’s citizenry are respected, and retain just enough power at the centralized level such that an effective cartel can be formed against larger powers (both foreign states and global corporations). This would allow each EU member state to be able maximize its individual agency. This is not unlike the rationale behind individual workers choosing to unionize, forming a cartel to effectively leverage their employer.

Through the lens of subsidiarity, for the same reasons that moving all authority to the local level creates a local autonomy that is illusory, moving all authority to the individual level creates an individual autonomy that is likewise illusory.

The genie is out of the bottle. There can be no effective de-globalization.

Maybe, but better to die trying than not try at all, as the alternative is subjugation to oligopolists as outlined in the original essay. The section above explained how a structure like the EU could effectively be used as a cartel against globalizing forces. In the US it would be easier, as the country itself has a large enough market to dictate terms on its own.

As for how countries might re-industrialize, last quarter’s American Affairs Journal made a proposal here (designed for the UK, but broadly applicable to Western nations). It is more eloquent than I could be on the topic.