Toward the Third Way
May 29, 2026
Americans have lost faith in either party to bring about a just economy. The Left has descended into communism, putting the means of production and the power to distribute property in the hands of the State. The Right disingenuously touts a free market while tilting the playing field toward the rich and wealthy corporations. Whatever crumbs either provides to the masses come at the cost of freedom. Both create slaves—the Left to government and the Right to the wealthy few (and government). And both the Left and the Right increase the gulf between rich and poor.
There is a third way. As argued in my previous column, Hilaire Belloc’s “Propriety State” steers a path between these two failures. Set forth in An Essay on the Restoration of Property and The Servile State, Belloc champions a society in which property and the means of production are widely distributed among families. The Proprietary or “Distributist” State is the only form of society that combines economic sufficiency and security with freedom. In short, it is the only Christian way of organizing society.
