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What the Hoppean historiography can add to the Distributist one

By JW · 2026-10-23 12:54:29

(Originally a Substack article, made for a Distributist friend but contains Libertarian elements so I will post it here)

The greatest flaw of the Distributist system is that it is relatively obscure. This has prevented its finer points from being worked out sufficiently and has caused great confusion to arise among critics and supporters alike, to the point that the word “Distributist” is now at threat of being left completely devoid of any and all meaning.

Therefore, I must note that the Hoppean historiography which is here used to further refine the Distributist historiography is, I believe, essential in order to better define the most important part of the Distributist system- that being its belief that alienation from the land causes psychological and economic consequences so severe that a great revolt against the large entities spreading the diseases of propertylessness and (sub)urbanization is required in order to mend the flaws present in modern society so that a return to a dignity may come at last.

Distributism is, at first glance, utterly incompatible with Hoppeanism because of its desire for state intervention in promotion of its ideas and its opposition to big-business even when it does not use the state as a tool for aggression. But the Distributist idea is more so one of popular revolt against big business rather than a systematic, state-led anti-trust movement. This is because of the Distributist distrust of large entities, with them seeing the state as being equally capable of swallowing up the small as big business.

Therefore, state-intervention is not truly necessary for a Distributist society to come about, and it can in fact appear through the appearance of something I will call a “small-consciousness”, whereby individual actors realize that the mere existence of large entities is a threat to their own interests. The Distributist historiography thus begins with a state of relative tolerance towards the small, whereafter some of the small entities grow large and start to consume many of their former compatriots in order to grow ever larger. Eventually, the disappearance of all that is small (small businesses, small cultural communities, small towns/villages) will cause popular discontent to mount up to the point that a great revolt against the large, all-consuming entities begins, whereafter there will be a great public weariness against all large entities which will prevent the great oppression of small, local, rural communities.

The Distributist historiography thus goes as follows:

Some small entities transform into large ones, they use their relative power to consume more small entities and because of the absence of a small-consciousness are able to do this with relatively minimal resistance.

The large entities consume too many small entities, and people become completely alienated from their surroundings. Popular discontent begins to mount.

Small-consciousness is cultivated in the general population and a great revolt begins to foment, after this revolt has managed to destroy the oppressive, large entities, society is able to prevent them from re-appearing by mobilising public resistance against those attempting to create them.

Hoppean historiography on the other hand sees man as being oppressed by coercive state entities, it sees these states as being bad, not because they are big, but because they are coercive and engage in theft and counterfeiting.

To understand the Hoppean historiography, we must understand that the acquisition of wealth is possible only by:

-Homesteading

-Producing

-Saving

-Investing

-Expropriating

That last method of acquiring wealth slowly becomes more and more common throughout history, until so much wealth is expropriated that a popular revolt against the state becomes inevitable in the long term: A class-consciousness is developed among the oppressed, taxpaying population, who rise up against the state in order to eradicate systematic expropriation to usher in a new, glorious age of hitherto unthinkable levels of economic growth and popular prosperity.

The Hoppean historiography explains the success of relatively liberal countries in imperialist enterprises as being caused by the greater amount of wealth available to the state for the purpose of expropriation, it is thus paradoxically the most internally liberal states that are able to expropriate the most by- essentially- “fattening up” their subjects.

Internal Liberalism is also more important on the regulatory front than on the tax front, as taxes raise state revenue while hurting productivity whereas state-regulation costs the state revenue while also still lowering productivity.

But internal Liberalism does not last forever, for the ultimate goal of the expropriatory enterprise (the state) is world-domination. If it can eradicate all of its competition it will not need to be competitive, and can thus steal and counterfeit as much as it desires.

The Hoppean historiography thus goes as follows:

Expropriatory entities appear, they affirm their right to expropriate through state-religion and by demonizing other expropriating entities.

Internally liberal states beat non-liberal states, states that overregulate themselves are beaten by states that overtax. The amount of expropriating entities steadily decreases, until…

The process of the coming-about of a world government nears its final conclusion, but the economic consequences of a lack of tax-competition (expropriating entities do not fear losing taxpayers to other, less oppressive expropriating entities anymore because of their soft-power over them) results in mass popular discontent.

The taxpaying population develops a class-consciousness, and a popular revolt against the state is started. In the new non-statist society outlaw-producers (companies imitating states) are widely rejected by consumers and the authority of the remaining states steadily begins to decline until they have finally become relics of a less civilized time.

We can see that there are some obvious similarities between these two systems, but the reason I propose to combine some elements of the Hoppean system into the Distributist one in order to create a new, more complete Distributist historiography is the Hoppean observation that, as the quantity of expropriating entities grows smaller and their size grows larger, they become increasingly oppressive towards their constituent populations because of the slow disappearance of inter-state competition.

This can be used to further refine the Distributist critique of large entities, because this observation is made completely independently of Hoppe’s anarchist beliefs. If we thus assume that states are not necessarily immoral entities (as Chesterton does) it is thus obvious that the creation of more and smaller states will massively reduce the amount of oppression present in the world both because of the new absence of extremely large state-entities (super/regional powers) and the greater competition between states, which, if the population has attained small-consciousness, will incentivise them to implement Distributist ideas to the best of their ability in order to attract new taxpaying individuals.

It is also obviously advantageous for rural communities to see large states fractured up because of the tendency present in those states to siphon wealth away from smaller, rural communities and towards larger, more urban areas to allow for the easier promotion of uniformity and the “national values”.

The idea of states as being expropriating entities can also be maintained while still allowing for the support of a popular revolution against large business entities. If consumers voluntarily choose not to support the “large shops” (as Chesterton calls them) there is no need for coercion to take down these enterprises. The emergence of a small-consciousness is thus all that is really needed for a Distributist society to come about- state coercion in favor of Distributist ideas may be helpful, but is not strictly necessary. Therefore, Anarcho-Distributism is also not contradictory whatsoever and a Distributist society can come to pass even after a Hoppean one has appeared without the need for the reappearance of coercive state entities.

Following all of this, I propose the new Distributist historiography to go as follows:

Some small entities transform into large ones, they use their relative power to consume more small entities and because of the absence of a small-consciousness are able to do this with relatively minimal resistance.

<Nothing changes in this phase.

The large entities consume too many small entities, and people become completely alienated from their surroundings. Popular discontent begins to mount.

<The slow emergence of a world government accelerates and large entities increasingly do not need to be as competitive price-wise as they were before. The population is squeezed of their income by this price-oppression and this also contributes to the rise of popular discontent. This newly emerging world-government also tries to push for the eradication of rural communities to make guerilla-opposition against them harder.

Small-consciousness is cultivated in the general population and a great revolt begins to foment, after this revolt has managed to destroy the oppressive, large entities, society is able to prevent them from re-appearing by voluntarily mobilising public resistance against those attempting to create them.

<The world government is defeated and smaller state-entities appear, competition between states returns and is now safe from its previous slow disappearance because the new inter-state competition is one based on the fulfillment of Distributist ideas rather than on the domination of other states. The state thus transforms into an entity that seeks to defend small things rather than trying to gobble them up.

With this new historiography, the Distributist system is more properly defined than it was before and is thus less prone to misinterpretation. It is now better equipped to oppose those who wish to support large expropriating entities for the purpose of promoting small-business by pointing out that these large entities grow more oppressive towards all that is small the more of their competition they gobble up, which they will inevitably do so long as their power has not been broken up.

(Please note that this article is, just as the previous one, written in an apodictic manner- I myself am neither a Hoppean nor a Distributist, but I believe these systems complement each other very well. I hope that those who subscribe to either of those ideologies will agree with my assessment, that is all)