1. What is contributism, plainly?
The trouble with describing capitalism is that capitalism is not just one thing, but an amalgamation of things. It is a social system — a set of rules designed to dictate and incentivize the behavior of actors within a society. It is a practice — a collection of individual behaviors which all follow roughly the same logic. It is a social milieu — the unspoken (and perhaps unspeakable) orientation of a society, which invisibly guides and informs the behavior of all of its participants. It is an economic theory — a set of ideas and principles which both interpret and inform social relations, societal rules, and individual practice. And it is, most importantly, a normative lens — a way of seeing the world which colors our perspective and teaches us to make value judgments about ways of being. Any shorthand description of capitalism is not necessarily wrong, but it is necessarily incomplete, as it must choose an emphasis and therefore de-emphasize some crucial elements of how it operates on and through its participants.
What’s worse, in all of this, capitalism is constantly shifting: new theory informs new practice informs new rules informs new theory informs new orientation informs new value judgments informs new rules, and so on. As such, what counts as capitalism is under constant debate, and there is no clear arbiter to decide who is right and who is hopelessly misguided (the markets, perhaps? Wikipedia?).
The goal of this reader is not to describe capitalism, but to describe an alternative to it. And if that alternative — which I will call contributism — is to be understood as at all similar in scope to capitalism, then we must unfortunately also recognize that any shorthand description of it will be necessarily incomplete, too selective in its emphasis to serve general purpose.
However, I have found that nuance in communication works a bit like fine cologne: applied strategically, it enhances the overall presentation immensely, but add a few too many spritzes, and your audience starts to quietly inch away. And if you insist on pouring on the whole bottle at once, what was meant to add clarity becomes a suffocating muddle, and most people begin to look for polite excuses to avoid your company altogether. So, to keep your company and avoid causing offense — olfactory or otherwise — I will begin with the simplest explanation, and add nuance in layers over time rather than all at once.
What is contributism, plainly? Capitalism is often described in terms of its primary emphasis on private ownership of capital: it is the right of men to own and capitalize property. Private ownership of the means of production births competition, which spurs production and generates plenty.
In these terms, contributism’s primary emphasis is participation through contribution: it is the right of all humanity to give. Participatory contribution towards common value births collaboration, which humanizes, spurs production, constrains excess, and distributes wealth.
In a word, contributism is the lens, practice, theory, orientation, and social system which structures itself around the fundamental right to find fulfillment and belonging through participatory contribution.
Read next: 2. For the Human —