Will the Real Distributists Please Stand Up

From Distributist Review article Mondragon Revisited :

the Mondragon co-operatives offer an astonishingly successful alternative to the way we organise business and economies.

From an article on Mondragon :

At the end of 2009, Eroski was operating an extensive chain of almost 2,400 stores made up of 113 EROSKI hypermarkets, 1,063 EROSKI/center, Caprabo and EROSKI/city supermarkets, 224 branches of the EROSKI/viajes travel agency, 58 petrol stations, 40 Forum Sport stores, 289 IF perfume stores, 7 Abac leisure and culture outlets and 40 goods depots. In addition to this chain, there are 481 self-service franchise outlets. Moreover, in the south of France it has 4 hypermarkets, 16 supermarkets and 17 petrol stations and 4 perfume stores in Andorra.

__________

OK, I got it; Mondragon with it's extensive chain of 2,400 stores is a good Distributist paradigm business model.

But - -

The Mondragon paradigm doesn't square with other Distributist articles at The Distributist Review such as :

Cheering on the Coming Cataclysm

Does it annoy anyone else the way some Catholics are rather cheerful in their predictions of a coming cataclysm?

And that those who cheer it on most fervently are invariably libs. who want to remake the world into some kind of dystopia.

And that those same libs. are also invariably corporate, or institutional, drones who couldn't actually competently, or proficiently, do anything practical with their hands. And so when some cataclysm does come they will be the first to be winnowed out.

Yes, I know their cheering doesn't effect the outcome one way, or the other, but nevertheless they are cheering for an event which would, and perhaps shall, cause severe hardship and perhaps worse to my wife and children.

Wouldn't you like to poke them with a sharp stick, just because they are so damnable annoying?

When ever I read some advocacy for distributism

I’m invariably reminded of this passage in P.G. Wodehouse :

“Bingo,” I cried deeply moved, “you must act. You must assert yourself. You must put your foot down. You must take a strong stand. You must be master in the home.”

He looked at me a long strange look.

“You aren’t married, are you , Bertie?”

“You know I’m not.”

“ I should have guessed it anyway”

I would rather be ruled by the illiterate carpenters I've known

Than be ruled by the Catholic intellectual class who are infatuated with their notions of distributism.

Why? because in comparison to the Catholic intellectual class, those illiterate carpenters are humble and simple men with common sense who know what works and what doesn't at a practical level down on the street which is where it matters. And they've been stepped on and pushed around enough to know what benevolent government really does for them.

In comparison, the Catholic intellectual class is invariably and frighteningly clueless regarding anything practical.

They're completely full of themselves thinking they have not only answers, but should likewise be leaders guiding us to the promised land, when all they in reality do have to give us is dystopian insanity.

Distributive justice and the encyclicals are true guidelines to a holistic well functioning society, but they must be implemented according to common sense and human scale, which in turn means implemented using practical experience to moderate the universal principles.

Looking Backwards, learning from past mistakes.

Is Edward Bellamy's book, Looking Backward, a 21st century distributist manifesto? Because whenever I read the the writing of the New Distributists the dystopian Looking Backward is invariably what comes to mind.

Equality masquerading as solidarity, not subsidiarity, is the mark of the New Distributists. A solidarity similarly envisioned by Bellamy, that is only at odds with most distributist writers insofar as Bellamy envisioned a managerial state where the industrial class would be benevolently ruled by the managerial class, whereas in contrast most distributist writers gloss over the subject.

Distributists write only of democratic rule, but Bellamy's vision of a managerial class is in the final analysis likewise the distributist model because the intensely structured society distributists envision would likewise have to be ruled by a managerial class.

The movie "Summer of 42" is an adolescent boy’s fantasy

But if that fantasy occurred today it would be twisted into a story of sexual abuse.

I remember watching the movies The Summer of 42, The Secret of My Success, and The Graduate, among others, and not once did the thought of sexual abuse enter my mind. But getting lucky sure did.

Not as lucky as the same occurring with a friend's hot babe of an older sister, but pretty darn lucky nevertheless.