Jobs of Our Own: Building a Stakeholder Society: Alternatives to the Market and the State

There is little enthusiasm today for massive state ownership, and no trust in the alternative of unbounded capitalism. Third Way proposals have often turned out to be no less sterile. Veteran Labor thinker Race Mathews argues for distributism--the belief that ownership should be widely distributed rather than concentrated in the hands of the state or wealthy minorities. Mathews draws on the legacies of Christian socialism, social Catholicism, mutualism, associative democracy and civil society for a new vision of society: evolved distributism. He sees common ground between distributism and mutualist bodies such as mutual assurance societies, building societies, co-operatives and credit unions. He also warns that the conversion of mutuals into conventional companies robs the community of assets needed for social reconstruction. He points to evolved distributism, on the model of the great employee-owned co-operatives complex at Mondragon in Spain, as an authentic Third Way.