It Starts With a Pen

Whole Farm Cooperative is a 30 member family coop in the heart of Minnesota. The cooperative’s mission is to “nourish our families spiritually and economically” and to build customer awareness about “where their food came from.” Whole Food Cooperative members are dedicated to building a sustainable community and providing local residents with the fruits of their labor of love.

Martin Primus, whose grass-based Dairy -Fresh Air Farm- is a member of Whole Farm Coop, offers some terrific writing for the cooperative’s website. Listed under “Marty’s Musings” (click here, then go to the right hand side of the page) is a particular article called “Distributism,” which is a quasi “open letter” to author and self-labeled libertarian Joseph Saladin, owner of Polyface Farms (we previously covered Polyface Farms). In this piece, Martin argues for Mr. Saladin’s distributist identity rather than the libertarian moniker he's reserved for himself.

Martin also raises the distributist argument when writing for his local paper’s blog, the Sauk Centre Herald. We urge our readers to check it out and comment. Let the Sauk Centre Herald know how important Marty’s contributions are to their publication.

Jesse Yates, another of our readers, recently submitted a piece to the Geauga Times Courier, a weekly paper in Northeastern Ohio. The article is called “Brave New Alternative: Modern Distributism,” which ties the widespread ownership model endorsed by the earliest documents of the United States, with Aldous Huxley’s book Brave New World Revisited, where Huxley prescribes decentralization as the antidote to big business and big government. The editor of the Courier, intrigued by Yates’ provocative piece, praised his argument for micro-property and will publish the forthcoming article.

Joseph Hargrave has recently started a blog presenting his case for distributism, amongst other topics. Joe is no stranger to distributism, having been published in journals such as Inside Catholic (The Case for the Worker’s Cooperative).

Those who subscribe to The Wanderer, the oldest Catholic newspaper in the United States, might have caught last week’s interview between editor Paul Likoudis and myself, discussing “Bellocian” economics. We spoke about the early League’s objections to mass production, today’s crisis, and examples of current neo-distributist programs.

How will we once more light the flame of the “Hound of St. Dominic”? The baby steps begin by making distributism relevant at the local level. Submit an article to your local paper. Blog about it. Answer comment boxes on other sites. Track back to us. Every little bit helps.

You might not change the world tonight, but your pen can light the flame of tomorrow.

Servire Deo regnare est!