Desvanecimientos Rápidos

Distributism can be seen to have constituted a revolutionary response to the conformity of the modem industrial age by its critique of a collectivist-plutocratic state, and was the political expression of the neo-Thomist revival in Catholic intellectual circles prevalent in the early 20th century. Distributism, which can be seen as forming a political ideology and political policies around the implications of neo-Thomist thought, also greatly influenced Saunders Lewis.

174 For further discussion of this point see

Gehler, Michael & Kaiser, Wolfram (Eds.) (2004) Christian Democracy in Europe since 1945. London.

Routledge.

175 Penty, A.J. (1906) The Restoration o f the Gild System. London. Swan Sonnenschein.

Penty, A.J. (1919) Guilds and the Social Crisis. London. George Allen & Unwin.

Penty, A. J. (1920) A Guildsman’s Interpretation o f History. London. Allen & Unwin.

Penty, A.J. (1923) Towards a Christian Sociology. London. George Allen & Unwin.

Orage, A.R. (1914) National Guilds: An inquiry into the wage system and the way out. London. G. Bell

& Sons.

Orage, A.R. (\9 \l) A n alphabet o f economics. London. T. Fisher Unwin.

Between 1908 and 1910, The New Age, a journal edited by A.J. Orage, rejected Fabianism for the culturally conservative “neo-classicism” articulated by T. E. Hulme.

The New Age fused cultural conservatism with progressive politics in a philosophy it called Guild Socialism, which opposed the centralised model of Fabian socialism with a model in which control over production rested in the hands of the workers and the trade unions, which would function like medieval guilds. The origins of Guild Socialism are to be found in the 19th century reaction to industrialisation, particularly as articulated by Ruskin and Morris.176 A small but subtle difference between Guild Socialism and Distributism belies the fact that the terms are often used synonomously and that the broad sweep of ideas underlining each are identitical. These ideas, as well as Guild Socialism and Distributism themselves, clearly influenced Saunders Lewis.

Distributism forms the basis of his social vision for Wales as set out in Canlyn Arthur, and obviously resonates deeply with his culturally conservative, neo-Thomist Catholic ethos. All of these ideals were then developed into his own brand of Welsh nationalism.

As set out in Principles o f Nationalism, a neo-classicism, the organic community, the rejection of political centralism, and a political idealising of the social systems of the Middle Ages were all elements which Saunders Lewis valued. Indeed, if it is to be understood that nationalism is a fluid concept that necessarily intersects and interfaces with other social and political ideologies, then Saunders Lewis’ Welsh nationalism effectively interfaces with neo-Thomist and Distributist political thought.

An analysis of early 20th century ‘Distributism’ or ‘Guild Socialism’ is thus highly appropriate in seeking to describe and analyse Saunders Lewis’ own social and political thought, the parallels being too obvious to ignore. Saunders Lewis’ employment of Catholic social doctrine in his vision of Welsh society (as articulated in Canlyn Arthur) is paralleled by that of Chesterton and Belloc. Distributism was a composite of several

176 Ruskin, John. (1872) Munera Pulveris: Essays on Political Economy. Elder Smith Press.

Ruskin, John. (1985) Unto This Last (and Other Writings). London. Penguin Press.

Henderson, Willie. (2000) John Ruslan’s Political Economy. London. Routledge.

Morris, William. (1973) Political Writings o f William Morris. London. Lawrence & Wishart.

Morris, William. (1993) News from Nowhere (and Other Writings). London. Penguin Press. (Original edition: 1890)

social and moral theories first articulated by Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) and Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) in The New Age, edited by A.R. Orage.

Distributism was developed as a social and political idea by Chesterton and Belloc and devised as a rationale for the equitable distribution of property and the restoration of worker control in commerce, agriculture, and industry. Distributism was essentially based on a retrospection of European history, and expressed Chesterton’s and Belloc’s concerns about contemporary, as well as future, mass industrial society. The ideas - behind Distributism were not especially new, innovative, or revolutionary, but were based upon what was believed to have ‘worked in the past’. Distributism called for a return to the Christian social conscience in conjunction with ideas propounded by intellectual peers such as Hulme, Eliot, etc. As a result of this, it was highly critical of the trend towards the dehumanising centralised state control of society. As an antidote to this trend, Distributism extolled the efficacy of the self-contained organic community. The inherent value of the organic community is, of course, what is promoted in Canlyn Arthur by Saunders Lewis, and also crucial to this is the necessity for political decentralism.

Distributism sought the restoration of society to a ‘human’ organic scale, and that this was to be achieved through a return to a social system based on the medieval guilds.

Economic life would run through a multiplicity of small units organised according to natural economic classes and productive functions. The idea behind this was to create a balanced or mixed economy of independent farmers and small industries owned and operated by the workers themselves, thus creating a sort of peasant-worker society 177

This was developed in Saunders Lewis’ work and described as ‘co-operative nationalism’. For Chesterton and Belloc, the Roman Catholic Church was to provide whatever federal and international control might be needed.178 This is not evident in

177 It is of note that eradicating the concentration of heavy industry is apparent also in Plank 9 of the Communist Manifesto. In contrast to Saunders Lewis, Marx envisaged that this be made possible through state planning.

“9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population ova: the country”.

Marx, Karl. & Engels, Friedrich. (2002) The Communist Manifesto. London. Penguin Classics. P.243.

178 Belloc, Hilaire. (1931) Essays o f a Catholic Layman in England. London. Sheed & Ward.

Saunders Lewis’ thought In contrast, he advocates the League of Nations as the arbiter of supranational authority.179 Independent, small farming was to be the backbone of this society based on decentralised control, self-sufficiency, and rural reconstruction. This was developed in a more Welsh nationalist vein by Saunders Lewis, who insisted that the economic self-sufficiency of the organic community would sustain Wales’ political and cultural self-sufficiency as a nation, and spare it from the political and economic encroachment of England.

Chesterton and Belloc’s vision of society, this new ‘old’ society, was definitely not imperialist. This is also true of Saunders Lewis’ vision. He viewed imperialism as the logical extension of the statism which he condemned as the principle of state sovereignty in Principles o f Nationalism. Political and social decisions were to be made by the people in small groups, negotiated by personal interaction. In this regard it has affinities with anarchism’s tenet of ‘no coercion’. The Distributist societal ideal bears resemblance to that described by Kropotkin.180 Distributism was anti-utopian and did not offer a rationalist blueprint for society as had other leftist intellectual movements of the same era, such as the Fabian Society.181 Subscribing to this belief, Belloc and Chesterton refused to be tied down to specific policies, believing instead that any social outcome needed to come from individual human desire and conditions, rather than from central planning imposed from above. A socialist centrally-planned economy was therefore to be rejected. In parallel with this, ‘localism’ was therefore also key to Saunders Lewis’ social and political thought,. If a nation was deemed to be made up of smaller communities, as Saunders Lewis believed it was, then this was vital. These were the ‘local’ communities in which Welsh culture ‘lived’.

179 Saunders Lewis, John. (1926) Principles o f Nationalism. Machynlleth. Evan Jones Printers. P.8.

180 Peter Kropotkin, along with Mikhail Bakunin, was one of the foremost proponents of anarchism, often noted as a ‘libertarian communist’. He differs with Saunders Lewis’ thought regarding the matter of collectivism and private property. Kropotkin’s thought is outlined in works such as:

Kropotkin, Peter. (1906) The Conquest o f Bread. Chapman and Hall.

181 The Fabian Society, an intellectual socialist movement founded in 1884. It advocated reformist and gradualist measures rather than revolutionary ones. Several Guild socialists including those mentioned above became disillusioned with the movement which, on the whole, sanctioned the role of the state in social and economic life. The Fabian Society effectively laid the intellectual and ideological foundation of the British Labour Party. For an academic analysis of the history of Fabian socialism in the context of wider British socialism see

Beer, Max. (2002) A History o f British Socialism. London. Routledge. P.274.

Those who propounded Distributism claimed it to be much more than a political theory:

it was a philosophy or way of life firmly founded on religious principles. Belloc was a life-long Roman Catholic, Chesterton converted in 1922. Chesterton was particularly concerned with retrieving the ‘sanctity’ of human relationships through articulating a form of Thomism that sought to reintegrate the individual into a corporate state. The key to this reintegration of the individual was the family and private property, but of course, not too much property. Saunders Lewis also underwent the same conversion in 1932, his attraction to Catholic social thought predating his actual conversion to the Catholic faith. Canlyn Arthur also seeks to reintegrate the individual person in this respect, with Saunders Lewis also extolling the virtue of the family and private property, but of course, again not too much property. He outlines his thought in the chapter entitled ‘ The Small Capitalist ’ where the economy is to be regulated in such a manner that market ‘conflict’ competition is effectively nullified.

Distributism criticised both socialism and capitalism. Capitalism was deemed to be dehumanising as it entailed a denial of property to the vast majority of individuals and had no concept of its own limits. Communism, or socialism, was seen to be the

‘unnatural child’ or spawn of capitalism, and was subsequently criticised for its reduction of the individual to a role subservient to the state. This obviously mirrors Saunders Lewis’ thought on the matter.

It should be noted that Distributism, in its widest possible connotations, covers a vast array of thinkers and ideas spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their ideas were often anti-imperial, anti-elite, anti-utopian, and, for some (but not all), anti­

machine. Distributists were in favour of societal balance; in the distribution of property (which they viewed to be the basis of economic wealth), in family life, and in the human scale of organisations.182 Saunders Lewis was certainly anti-imperialist, but there is a certain ambiguity in his attitude towards elitism. His nationalism sees him conceive of the nation in terms of vertical solidarity as opposed to the horizontal

182 Distributism was not particularly compatible with the women’s suffrage movement of the time, perhaps because it failed to explore adequately the role of women in the much-lauded family unit.

Chesterton attempted in his works to give credit and honour to women’s domestic labour, but obviously that did not solve the financial problems of poor families already ‘divorced’ from the land.

solidarity of socialism.183 His elitism is of the democratic and meritocratic variety, rather than the elitism manifested in terms of hereditary acquisition of political power.

(As demonstrated in the chapter on his ‘social vision for Wales’, Saunders Lewis cannot be described as an anti-technology Distributist.)

Distributist theory contributed heavily to Orage’s advocacy of Guild Socialism in The New Age during the 1910s. Belloc’s titles, The Servile State (1912), as well as his later An Essay on the Restoration o f Property (1936), were instrumental in forging this intellectual subscription to Distributism and Guild Socialism. Guild Socialism, varied only slightly from Distributism, in that it defined itself more as a synthesis of political socialism and industrial syndicalism. Distributism itself (and Guild Socialism as an indirect result) drew upon a range of attitudes and ideas, including Chartism, Burkean organicism, French Revolutionary thought, socialism, anarchism, populism, and liberalism. The Distributist social philosophy of Chesterton and Belloc therefore, “was a peculiar hybrid of both radical and conservative ideas”.184 This analysis is also apt in describing Saunders Lewis’ overall social and political thought regarding a vision where Welsh society was re-established and revitalised by a move ‘back-to-the-land’. 1525 Indeed, the thrust of Saunders Lewis’s own ‘Ten Points o f Policy’ in Canlyn Arthur can be viewed in terms of a ‘back-to-the-land’ ideal.

In 1926, the Distributist League was founded. The Distributist League had two objectives; “the preservation of property, in order that the liberty of the individual and family could be independent of oppressive systems”186, and to seek a better distribution

183 Saunders Lewis sees the need for a political elite to ‘shoulder the burdens’ which the ‘ordinary man cannot be expected to shoulder’ to “lead a country by suffering for it and thinking for it”.

Jones, Dafydd Glyn. His Politics. In Eds. Jones, Alun R. & Thomas, Gwyn. (1973) Presenting Saunders Lewis. Cardiff. University of Wales Press. P.61.

184 Corrin, Jay P. (1991) G.K. Chesterton & Hilaire Belloc: The Battle Against Modernity. Athens &

London. Ohio University Press. P.208.

185 In this study, see the chapter ‘A Social Vision for Wales: Canlyn Arthur ’ for deeper discussion of this.

186 Corrin, Jay P. (1991) G.K. Chesterton & Hilaire Belloc: The Battle Against Modernity. Athens &

London..Ohio University Press. P. 108-9.

of capital by individual ownership of the “means and instruments of production” 187, which was deemed the only way to preserve private property. Saunders Lewis can therefore rightly be termed the interpreter and espouser of Distributist social and political thought of the 1920s in Wales. At its zenith, the Distributist League had over 2,000 members, and then faded into obscurity in the 1940s. Its slide into obscurity and eventual disbandment was due to the drift rightwards along the political spectrum, both by its main proponents, and also in Distributist League literature. Distributism looked to the past for a model of a simpler, kinder, gentler world, and those who expounded it began to focus upon the contemporary abuses of international finance in causing wars, famine, and disruption in social relations. For some Distributists who coveted European cultural and religious attitudes, it was not a large leap to believing in a conspiracy of international Jewish finance being responsible for the social chaos caused by both capitalism and socialism. It should be noted that Saunders Lewis did not fall into this trap. The Distributist League journal, The Weekly Review, eventually began to drift rightwards, in response to what it saw as the threat of worldwide communism. The complete reversal of its earlier original political thought came when the Weekly Review, by then edited by Belloc, advocated British Imperialism in the late 1930s. In contrast, Saunders Lewis’ Welsh nationalism kept him from advocating imperialism, and he maintained a political stance that was steadfastly against totalitarianism.188

Distributism’s failure to regenerate after WWD can be seen as a direct result of this drift rightwards, as well as reflective of the 20th century’s irreversible advance towards large organisations and ‘mass’ societies. Society’s wider advance towards large

187 Ibid. P. 108-9.

188 Saunders Lewis, however, failed to condemn Hitler. In retrospect, this can be seen as a naive attempt to maintain a Welsh ‘neutral’ stance in WWII, an attempt at a separate worldview for Wales, distinct from the British Press. This failure to condemn Hitler is often criticised in retrospect, yet fails to acknowledge his inability to see into the future! Several British institutional figures also failed to condemn Hitler in the late 1930s. Saunders Lewis was critical of Nazism, evident in his drama, Gymerwch Chi Sigaret? (Will You Have a Cigarette?)

Saunders Lewis, John. (1983) Gymerwch Chi Sigaret? (Will You Have a Cigarette?) Swansea.

Christopher Davies.

organisations and ‘mass’ societies also meant that Saunders Lewis’ own formulation of a Welsh Distributism meant his thought as articulated in Canlyn Arthur held less resonance, and post-war Welsh nationalism moved in a markedly liberal direction under Gwynfor Evans. However, due to the size of Wales and the prevalence of its agricultural society, many of the tenets advocated by Saunders Lewis held fast, minus the neo-Thomist foundation. Co-operativism remained an ideal within mainstream Welsh political nationalism, employing the Scandanavian model as a workable structure for Wales.