Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'capitalism'

October 13, 2011

Belloc, Distributism and Political Power

I can always find common ground with the Distributists I meet. We want to replace the government-corporate cronyism that characterizes so much of our current economic system. And we want our culture to raise up young people with the skills, virtues and freedom to accumulate productive capital and invest it in ways that promote human flourishing for themselves and others. Continue Reading...
October 12, 2011

Samuel Gregg on the GOP Roundtable

Acton director of research Samuel Gregg offers his thoughts on last night’s GOP Roundtable in this NRO Symposium. Gregg thinks the debate offered an important alternative to the government-driven economy talk that fills the news every other night of the week. Continue Reading...
September 27, 2011

Roger Scruton: No escaping morality in economics

Roger Scruton has written an excellent piece on the moral basis of free markets; it’s up at MercatorNet. He begins with the Islamic proscriptions of interest charged, insurance, and other trade in unreal things: Of course, an economy without interest, insurance, limited liability or the trade in debts would be a very different thing from the world economy today. Continue Reading...
August 31, 2011

Distributist Fantasies

If modern distributists would like to identify themselves as agrarians, they may, and line up behind John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, and the rest of the contributors to I’ll Take My Stand. Continue Reading...
August 29, 2011

Distributists Ignore the Lessons of History

Distributism is not a new idea—it wasn’t conceived by G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. As Belloc explains in The Servile State, their idea was a return to certain economic principles of medieval Europe—a guild system, wider ownership of the means of production, etc.—in Continue Reading...
August 25, 2011

Debate: Capitalism vs Distributism

“More and more, I find Catholics dividing themselves into capitalist and distributist camps,” writes Bernardo Aparicio García, president of the Catholic journal Dappled Things. To help readers establish “a firm foundation” for thinking about economic questions, García opened up the pages of his journal to Robert T. Continue Reading...
August 24, 2011

Gregg: Two Principles Candidates Must Hold Dear

Director of Research Samuel Gregg has a piece in Public Discourse today as part of a series on the 2012 presidential election. “Fix America’s Economy: Two Principles for Reform” explains why limited government is better government, and how the principle of subsidiarity can guide regulation that governments undertake. Continue Reading...
June 21, 2011

Capitalist Anthropology

On RealClearMarkets, Mark Hunter dismantles “The End of Capitalism and the Wellsprings of Radical Hope,” by Eugene McCarraher in the Nation magazine. McCarraher’s article appears to be destined for the ash heap of Marxist utopian literature. Continue Reading...