Mondragon Corporation and High Tech Distributism
Click to viewI came upon a link to this video a while ago, about a Basque tech company based on Distributist principles.
I was extremely skeptical when I first heard of the Distributist idea itself. The idea of the re-distribution of wealth at first struck me as socialistic (and thus humanistic) until I did more research into it, and found it to be anything but. What I especially came to admire was its localist idea; that the re-disribution of property would happen on a community level, with every man having at least the property necessary to be his own means of production. A central state, if must exist at all, plays a minimal role, leaving these communities to their own means.
It also fits the bill of Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum and Pius XI's Quadragesimo Anno rather well, especially the latter. Among my favorite quotes in that encyclical:
"Twin rocks of shipwreck must be carefully avoided. For, as one is wrecked upon, or comes close to, what is known as "individualism" by denying or minimizing the social and public character of the right of property, so by rejecting or minimizing the private and individual character of this same right, one inevitably runs into "collectivism."
-Pius XI
This had been tried on a micro level, specifically with the Guild of St. Joseph and St. Dominic, a self-sustaining community which lasted from 1907-1989, mainly dying due to the failure to do any kind of recruiting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guild_of_St_Joseph_and_St_Dominic