The Philosophical Foundations of Distributism: Catholic Social Teaching and the Principle of Subsidiarity

It is sometimes difficult to nail down exactly what Distributism is (or entails) as a social and political theory. Nonetheless, it is widely accepted that Distributism is an attempt to develop and apply the Catholic Social Teaching (CST) that began evolving seriously in the nineteenth century through the teaching of Leo XIII and his successors. For instance, in his book Toward a Truly Free Market, John Médaille summarizes his Distributist understanding of the principles of government: "Against the clash of special interests, we assert 'The Principle of The Common Good'; against the centralizing tendency, we assert 'The Principle of Subsidiarity'; against the tendency to favor the rich and powerful, we assert 'The Principle of Solidarity'" (ch. 13).¹

It seems clear that these three principles—the common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity—must be central to the philosophical foundations of any developed Distributist theory.² Though they are all deeply interrelated and cannot be properly understood apart from one another, in this article, I want to focus on subsidiarity in particular. Without discounting the others, I think subsidiarity is of particular philosophical interest, not least because it has taken on a life of its own in political theorizing outside of Catholic teaching—for instance, in the debates about the structure of the European Union. Even so, to properly understand subsidiarity requires seeing how it developed in the context of CST, which is its true home.³

Most accounts attribute the formal definition of subsidiarity to Pius XI's encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (1931), where it is identified as "the principle of 'subsidiary function.'" There Pius notes that this

most weighty principle … cannot be set aside or changed, [and] remains fixed and unshaken in social philosophy: Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.

(79)

We should note that subsidiarity is taken to be a principle of something called "social philosophy." At the same time, however, it is a demand of justice, the violation of which is akin to theft. Rather than the violation of private property, subsidiarity instead focuses on the legitimate rights and privileges of "lesser and subordinate organizations" of the "body social."

As the name suggests, Quadragesimo Anno was a refinement of the social teaching inaugurated by Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (1891), and while subsidiarity is not named by Leo XIII, his successors (including John Paul II in Centesimus Annus [1991]) regard the principle as at least implicit in Leo's encyclicals and through him to the thought of St. Thomas.⁴

Even if the principle is present in some form in Leo XIII's writings, however, it is still surprising that this "most weighty principle," which "remains fixed and unshaken in social philosophy," was not formally defined until 1931. This is particularly the case if it is true that Leo XIII's inauguration of modern CST is actually rooted in the philosophy of St. Thomas. How could it be that one of the most important principles of contemporary Catholic thought is of such recent provenance? And even if we accept that the principle is actually rooted in Thomism, why was it not formalized and codified until nearly eight centuries after St. Thomas's death?

Furthermore, how should we understand subsidiarity as rooted within the traditional political philosophy and metaphysics of St. Thomas and Aristotle? If subsidiarity (and the other principles of CST) really are principles of justice in a broadly Thomistic framework, we would expect them to be both accessible to natural reason and grounded in an Aristotelian metaphysics.

In what follows, I will explore both the meaning and the provenance of the concept of subsidiarity as a...