Chapter XIX: Building the Ownership Society  The last chapter--
finally!  Distributism and the Current Crisis  Discussions of
what to do about the current crisis commonly take the form of an
argument between “socialism” and “capitalism.” However, such a
discussion is flawed in both of its terms. Real socialism
collapsed in 1989, and few would want to return to that horrific
system. What is less well understood is that pure capitalism
itself collapsed in 1929, never to rise again anywhere in the
world. There are few citizens with any living memory of real
capitalism, and the memories they have are generally
unfavorable. Capitalism collapsed for the same reason as
communism, a victim of its own internal contradictions that
caused chronic instability. Workers found the system
unacceptable, to be sure, but so did the capitalists themselves,
and few were very sorry to see it go. Pure capitalism had proved
itself toxic to both capital and labor, just as Belloc predicted
it would in 1913.  The first task in reforming