Welcome! The Distributist Review is a new journal for people who want to have serious discussions on the practice and theory of Distributism. The Review will appear in print four times a year, and most of the content (though not quite all) will also be available on this web site.

What is Distributism? In part, that's the mission of this journal; to find a satisfactory definition. For now, here's one approach: distributism is an economic theory which aims at a society where the average adult owns enough private property to support himself or herself. That means not only owning your own home (real ownership, not a 30-year lease from the bank), but also owning the tools by which you create your wealth. They might be a video camera, a llama, or a share in the factory where you work, but in some way, you own them. No one can fire you.

(Here's a longer definition.)

Sound good? Sadly, the real economy is rather more complicated than good intentions. And that is what this journal is for; to get to work, and figure out how to make this happen.

I've received most (but not all) of the articles for the first issue, and we're working on revisions.

I'm going to wait on taking subscriptions until I have things lined up with the printing company. But you can subscribe to the RSS or Atom feed if you'd like to stay posted. (I'll be editing this post, so be sure your aggregator pays attention to edited entries.)

Please contact me if you have any questions or suggestions, and do check out the guidelines if you'd like to contribute! I hope to hear from you.

As you might expect here at the Distributist Review, we're looking for top-quality articles about any topic that is likely to interest Distributists. That's a broad field.

Schedule

We're on a quarterly schedule. Submit any time you like. The chart shows you the earliest that your article will appear.

         Submit by   Revise by   Published
        --------------------------------------
Spring   Nov 1       Dec 1       Mar 1
Summer   Feb 1       Mar 1       Jun 1
Fall     May 1       Jun 1       Sep 1
Winter   Aug 1       Sep 1       Dec 1

Topic

While we will likely have editorial themes in the future, at present the ground is wide open. I welcome any topic which you think relevant to Distributism, e.g, backyard gardening, the significance of blogging, commentary on the Cuban post-petroleum economy, the case from Church documents that a "living wage" is a non-negotiable element of Catholic social doctrine, indigenous "food forests" in South America, the communal architecture of the average medieval city--and that's just off the top of my head. I'm excited to see what you want to say.

I suggest that you query first. There's a chance we're already covering that topic this issue.

We're primarily interested in nonfiction. The only possible exceptions might be humorous poetry or cartoons, or of course photos or gorgeous artwork. Anything else, I fear, will be a waste of postage and bandwidth.

Length

is flexible, with 3,000 to 5,000 preferred and an upper limit hovering around 10,000 words. Shorter pieces of 1,000 or even 500 words are also welcome; perhaps you could have a regular column.

Style

Though we're not associated with an academic institution yet, many readers will expect bibliographies and/or footnotes with something approximating the rigor of an academic journal. I say "approximating" because we don't want to be excessive either. Depending on the subject, citations may not even be needed. True, Chesterton was rather allergic to footnotes, but this wasn't entirely to the good. At a minimum, direct quotations, statistics, startling paraphrases ("St. Thomas actually says..."), and in general any "controversial" facts should have citations.

On the other hand, we Distributists have a rich heritage of men and women writing on serious topics in a voice that their fellow humans might actually want to read. I suggest the best of both worlds: citing anything an opponent might challenge, and writing so well they wouldn't even think to do so.

Submission Format

is up to you. If you write on your computer, please email me the file. However, getting typewritten or (legible) handwritten manuscripts in the mail would be a treat.

I can pry open just about any file format, but if you can save your file in Rich Text Format (RTF extension), we may save time. Any submissions in TeX or LaTeX will warrant tears of joy (I've already received one).

Send to:

editor@distributistreview.org

or include a SASE and mail to:

Bill Powell
The Distributist Review
P. O. Box 594
Lafayette, IN
47901

Payment

Well, I haven't started poking around for corporate sponsors. :) Thanks to print-on-demand technology, the subscription price will actually cover the printing and shipping costs. We will have a few advertisers, but at first we'll probably exchange their ads for ad space in their venues. We'll also be taking donations, as soon as we can scrounge up $2000 or so to start a non-profit.

So at present, your contributions will be your generous gift. In the long term, I aim to have enough advertisers and subscriptions to pay contributors at least a respectable honorarium. But I can at least get the ball rolling by offering a complimentary copy or a $10 honorarium, whichever you prefer. You'll have our thanks here below and treasure in Heaven.

Licensing

Certainly, you keep the copyright to your work. We'll get the usual first serial rights. I'd also request nonexclusive reprint rights, as well as the right to offer your articles online. I don't plan to release every article online right away, but my goal is to have each back issue fully and freely available online after 6 months or so. We need more quality Distributist literature online!

I encourage you to consider an alternative license that distributes more rights to the reader, e.g., the Creative Commons License. If possible, I'd like to have the whole Review under at least the first, most restrictive, license: Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives (read more).

This is just what it sounds like: to copy your work, a person must attribute you as author, charge no money, and keep your words intact. You keep your copyright (e.g., to make money by publication), but your work can spread freely. Of course, you can choose a less restrictive license if you like.

I understand that these may seem like uncharted waters, so I'm not going to force this license on anyone. But it seems especially appropriate to periodicals in general, and our work in particular.

Finally,

Thank you

for considering a contribution to the Distributist Review!

How did the Distributist League define "Distributism"?   more »

editor@distributistreview.org

Bill Powell
The Distributist Review
P. O. Box 594
Lafayette, IN
47901

See our submission guidelines if you'd like to contribute.

The Distributist Review is a quarterly journal where Distributists can get into intelligent detail on the practice and theory of Distributism, without having to perpetually explain and defend the basics. In short, we can get to work!

Of course, if any Capitalists (or Socialists, or Whoever) want to have an intelligent, gracious debate in our pages, they're always welcome. But I'm mainly interested in applying Distributist thought to today's issues.

It's been several decades since the full flowering of the Distributist writers; that's several decades of new problems, and ever more data on the old problems. Chesterton critiqued the Big Shops with wit and candor; today there are groups (who've never heard of Distributism) who are patiently collecting data on precisely how much government money Wal-Mart pockets, and exactly how horrendous their supplier factories are. Though some people today are strangely resistant to common sense, there frequently remains a chink through which facts can penetrate.

Not that I envision this Review as aimed primarily at "evangelization." Rather, let's have a place where Distributists can get together and clarify our thought, in order to be "ready to render an account."

My sense is that we Distributists are often very proud of our heritage, but don't feel there are that many live Distributists. I think there are plenty of us, and we need a real journal so we can hear each other out in a "comfortable" setting. (It's quite exciting that Rich Aleman is beginning an annual Distributist Conference at this very same time.)

There's a sense of Distributism being stuck in the past, but it's a vicious circle: sure, we keep repeating Chesterton, but for the same reason you don't teach long division in kindergarten. As long as we're thinking primarily of evangelization, we'll have to keep rehashing the basics. Yet, many people are too "sophisticated" to pay attention to basics, so we have to ignore them for the moment, and get on with the more detailed work, the work of today. As we go, who knows, some pleasing convergence of data we toss off might be just the trick.

Don Goodman compares Chesterton, Belloc, et al. to the Fathers of the Church--they cleared the way, now we have to carry on with the work of Aquinas.

I'm also excited about engaging and discussing the many movements out there that have Distributist elements, e.g., New Urbanism, Permaculture, local currencies, not to mention new technologies like, well, the Internet and print-on-demand. Another major change from Chesterton's day; he had direct contact with the remnants of the sane culture. As far as I can tell, we've pretty much lost that in America, but on the other hand we have many splintered groups who sense what we've lost and are fighting for pieces of it. Yet they rarely, if ever, do the work of discovering a serious metaphysics to underly their actions. Also, they tend to view Christians, especially the Catholic Church, with benign suspicion at best. Depending on who they're looking at, we can't blame them. But if we start talking about them, and with them, who knows what might happen?

Bill Powell
2008 March