Forward Progress
Return to Order: From a Frenzied Economy to an Organic Christian Society
by John Horvat II
York Press, 2013
(353 pages, $21.95, hardcover)
reviewed by Allan Carlson
Calls for a return to the organic social economy of medieval Europe, as an alternative to the "creative destruction" of industrial capitalism, have been heard since the late nineteenth century. Some of these wound up caught in the dangerous currents of European fascism in the 1920s and 1930s. More creative and useful visions of such a restoration can be found in the "Distributist" theories of the British authors Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton and in the quest by Austrian economist Karl Polanyi for an order in which productive activities would be "embedded" once again in social relationships.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Allan C. Carlson is the John Howard Distinguished Senior Fellow at the International Organization for the Family. His most recent book is Family Cycles: Strength, Decline & Renewal in American Domestic Life, 1630-2000 (Transaction, 2016). He and his wife have four grown children and nine grandchildren. A "cradle Lutheran," he worships in a congregation of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. He is a senior editor for Touchstone.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on christianity from the online archives
32.4—July/August 2019
on Probability, Death & the Existence of God by Graeme Hunter
more from the online archives
19.4—May 2006
The Culture War Is Between Religious Believers on Both Sides by Howard P. Kainz
33.3—May/June 2020
Bach's Cantata BWV 106, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbesteZeit (God's time is the very best time) by Ken Myers
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
