{"title":"The Distributist Bookshelf","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"whats-wrong-with-the-world-chesterton","title":"What's Wrong With the World","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWe can talk about what is wrong all day long. And we usually do. But we cannot really talk about what is wrong, unless we determine what is right. We all dislike poverty, but we don't really love the poor. We all disapprove of prostitution, but we don't all approve of purity. Chesterton says, \"The only way to discuss the social evil is to get at once to the social ideal. We can all see the national madness; but what is national sanity?\" He answers that question right at the outset: the Christian ideal \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eis\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e the ideal. It is sanity. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBut Chesterton was commissioned to write this book for a \"broad\" audience, and therefore was asked to leave religion out of it (even though he puts it in right at the beginning). He has to focus, however, on what is wrong with the world not from a religious or moral perspective but from a social perspective.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHe identifies the four main things that are wrong with the world: Big Government, Big Business, Feminism, and Public Education. Big Government he calls Hudge, Big Business he calls Gudge. Feminism, surprisingly, is the tool of Big Business, as women are identified as a source of cheap labor and thereby \"liberated\" from their more important and influential and powerful role as mothers. And Public Education, not surprisingly, is the tool of Big Government, as compulsory education gives the State more power and influence than it has ever had in the history of civilization.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHudge and Gudge have conspired against Jones. But who is Jones?\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eRead this classic by the great G.K. Chesterton and find out.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Os Justi Press","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43205428838498,"sku":null,"price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":43205428871266,"sku":null,"price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0566\/1353\/5842\/files\/Chestertonwrongworld.jpg?v=1786549314"},{"product_id":"economics-for-helen-belloc","title":"Economics for Helen","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\"Economics is the name which people have come to give to the study of Wealth. It is the study by which we learn how Wealth is produced, how it is consumed, how it is distributed among people, and so on. It is a very important kind of study, because it often depends upon our being right or wrong in Economics whether we make the whole State poorer or richer, and whether we make the people living in the State happier or not. Now as Economics is the study of Wealth, the first thing we have to make certain of is, \u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhat Wealth is.\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSo writes Hilaire Belloc in this insightful study of wealth, property, and money. A strong proponent of the idea that everyone has a right to the true source of wealth-the means of production-Belloc was one of the pioneers of the distributist movement. In \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eEconomics for Helen \u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e(dedicated to a friend's adolescent daughter), Belloc simplifies these complicated concepts to a level any attentive child can understand without sacrificing nuance. More than a century after its initial publication, Os Justi Press is pleased to present this newly typeset edition with a new Foreword by an expert in Catholic social doctrine, Thomas Storck.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Distributism is as feasible now as it was when Belloc wrote. It requires, of course, that we first persuade our intellects and then command our wills to institute such a social order. May this book, along with the rest of the corpus of distributist writing, aid us in accomplishing that end.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e-Thomas Storck, from the Foreword\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Hilaire Belloc was emphasizing something that many others at the time [the 1920s], such as the Solidarist Heinrich Pesch, were also emphasizing. Economics is a human science about the very basic functioning of human society. It was a discipline that was not something abstract and unintelligible to the average man; rather that economics, as the study of the production, use, and distribution of wealth, was, in its basic concepts, accessible to all. With this conviction in mind, Belloc sets about defining and indicating the relationships between the basic concepts employed in the science of economics, such as wealth, land, the means of production, and capital.... With the social and civic dimension, we also enter into the moral dimension of human existence on account of the concern for justice that is part of man's inherent conception of his life lived among other men.... [This book] opens up new vistas for those seeking an alternative to the materialistic determinism of both the Marxists and the Economic Liberals.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e-Dr. Peter Chojnowski, \u003cem\u003eThe Distributist Review\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Os Justi Press","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43205452398690,"sku":null,"price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":43205452431458,"sku":null,"price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0566\/1353\/5842\/files\/BellocEconomicsHelen.jpg?v=1786549697"},{"product_id":"servile-state-belloc","title":"The Servile State","description":"\u003cp\u003ePart political philosophy, part sociology, Belloc's \u003cem\u003eThe Servile State \u003c\/em\u003eendeavors to describe the modern economic circumstances of England and the West as they stood in the first part of the twentieth century. Writing after Tocqueville and Marx, and indebted to their practice of viewing social and economic life as expressive of more fundamental intellectual forms, Belloc wishes to explain the increasing discontent of modern \"capitalist\" societies. \"Industrial society as we know it will tend towards the re-establishment of slavery,\" he argues, drawing upon the emergent social doctrine of the Catholic Church. Pope Leo XIII's \u003cem\u003eRerum Novarum \u003c\/em\u003e(1891) was the first great document in the Church's summons to a \"third way\" that eschewed the brutality of industrial capitalism and the unnatural rationalism of socialist collectivism, both of them leading to impoverishments of various kinds. Though Belloc's mode of argument was about social forms and his vocabulary mostly secular, the power of his argument emerges from the Christian vision of the dignity conferred by Christ's incarnation on the human person, which inclines us to see slavery as an evil, rather than an inevitable byproduct of \"progress.\" The articulation of this \"third way\" by Hilaire Belloc and his close collaborators G.K. Chesterton and Fr. Vincent McNabb would come to be known as Distributism. \u003cem\u003eThe Servile State \u003c\/em\u003eis a much-admired classic of social theory, one of Distributism's first and most influential articulations.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Os Justi Press","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43205565841506,"sku":null,"price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":43205565874274,"sku":null,"price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0566\/1353\/5842\/files\/BellocServileState.jpg?v=1786555078"},{"product_id":"utopia-of-usurers-chesterton","title":"Utopia of Usurers","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eG.K. Chesterton understood that the small does not defeat the large by imitating its scale; it persists by refusal to be conformed to its errors. Instead of offering readers optimism, he offers them truth-a refusal to consider the battle between traditional sanity and modern madness finished. He understood that the fight was going badly but took up his position regardless, knowing that for men it is truth that matters, not \"success\" as the world defines it.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn this book, the battle at hand is that of the modern financial system and the deepest evil at its heart: usury or the collection of interest. Today, the \"utopia of usurers\" looks very much like an established fact. Usurers visible and invisible now hold financial claims against children who cannot yet protest, even against grandchildren not yet born. The rocket-builder keeps every eye on Mars while every pocket gets picked clean on the way there. Builders of \"social networks\" have nearly persuaded mankind that an artificial reality is the whole of reality. All seems lost.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBut Chesterton would have gloried in such a moment, because he loved nothing better than a fight against long odds, and he would not have lost heart, because he knew that no matter how the numbers ran, the enemy's victory depends on an illusion-a very large and very expensive one, resting on ground that actually belongs to a great many other people. It is a brittle theatre. The curtain falls the moment enough of the audience stands up and walks out. The book you hold in your hands is a guide to unmasking that theatre for what it is.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Os Justi Press","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43205569970274,"sku":null,"price":14.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":43205570003042,"sku":null,"price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0566\/1353\/5842\/files\/ChestertonUtopiaofUsurers.jpg?v=1786555388"}],"url":"https:\/\/osjustipress.com\/collections\/the-distributist-bookshelf.oembed","provider":"Os Justi Press","version":"1.0","type":"link"}