A debate between left-liberal John C. Médaille and conservative Robert T. Miller. Predictably, I prefer the latter's take, in part because his take is so modest:
The editors of Dappled Things have asked me to opine on the question of which of two economic systems, capitalism or distributism, is more compatible with a Catholic understanding of the good life. This is hardly the kind of the question that lends itself to a succinct response, but if a short answer is required, it is this: capitalism and distributism are equally compatible with the Catholic understanding of the good life, if by that we mean that neither system violates the moral doctrines taught by the magisterium of the Catholic Church. This answer should surprise no one, for the magisterial doctrines of the Catholic Church entail very little about economics or even politics. They do not, for example, make any particular form of government morally obligatory, and thus the autocracy of the Roman Empire, the constitutional monarchy of Elizabethan England, and the democratic republicanism of the United States are all morally permissible. Similarly, Catholic doctrine does not make any form of economic organization morally obligatory; rather, a wide range of systems, including both capitalism and distributism, are morally permissible.
Now, I suppose the editors asked my opinion on this question because they expected me to argue that capitalism has some special moral standing in Catholic doctrine. Although I will not go that far, I will defend a more modest proposition, namely, that, for people like us in a society like ours, capitalism is the most reasonable choice among the various economic systems we might adopt.
FWIW, I touched on some of the same themes in my essay Catholic Social Thought and the Corporation (October 22, 2003).
