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fications_clari's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
2.5
This book has really solid, interesting ideas. I think it did more or less sell me on distributism. And of course, GK Chesterton's writing is always on point.
Two things made me give the 2.5 rating. Firstly, it's outdated, which I recognize is most definitely not its fault (obviously). In fact, there is so much charm in seeing Chesterton propose the revolutionary concept of the weekend and realizing that it was established *after* he published this book. But there are just so many aspects of this book that feel inapplicable nowadays. Chesterton seems to be for some kind of an
agrarian society, and I just don't think that this is feasible. (Though it should be noted that Chesterton wrote this in England and for Englishmen, and I'm reading this in the Philippines, so it could be a matter of differing environments.) At some point I started skipping portions of the book because I was hungry for more applicable examples. I think if you're looking for applications for distributism you can use today, you'll largely be disappointed, though you will get a foundation on the distributism theory.
Secondly, at one point Chesterton starts talking about colonization. I know he's hardly priaising it to the skies (he criticizes how the English essentially take other people's property and even asserts that what they replace it with - British cultures and customs - isn't worthwhile, at least not without Catholicism) but my gosh did it rankle when he started speculating on good ways to do it. Colonization is bad, period. You either approach countries as equals or you don't approach them at all. Seriously, never have I been so conscious of Chesterton's whiteness as the last few chapters of this book.
I would definitely recommend the first chapter, which I think holds the bulk of his theory. Other than that I'd opt to avoid it because, again, the examples are rather outdated and he starts bordering on racist at the end.
Two things made me give the 2.5 rating. Firstly, it's outdated, which I recognize is most definitely not its fault (obviously). In fact, there is so much charm in seeing Chesterton propose the revolutionary concept of the weekend and realizing that it was established *after* he published this book. But there are just so many aspects of this book that feel inapplicable nowadays. Chesterton seems to be for some kind of an
agrarian society, and I just don't think that this is feasible. (Though it should be noted that Chesterton wrote this in England and for Englishmen, and I'm reading this in the Philippines, so it could be a matter of differing environments.) At some point I started skipping portions of the book because I was hungry for more applicable examples. I think if you're looking for applications for distributism you can use today, you'll largely be disappointed, though you will get a foundation on the distributism theory.
Secondly, at one point Chesterton starts talking about colonization. I know he's hardly priaising it to the skies (he criticizes how the English essentially take other people's property and even asserts that what they replace it with - British cultures and customs - isn't worthwhile, at least not without Catholicism) but my gosh did it rankle when he started speculating on good ways to do it. Colonization is bad, period. You either approach countries as equals or you don't approach them at all. Seriously, never have I been so conscious of Chesterton's whiteness as the last few chapters of this book.
I would definitely recommend the first chapter, which I think holds the bulk of his theory. Other than that I'd opt to avoid it because, again, the examples are rather outdated and he starts bordering on racist at the end.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Colonisation
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