The Servile State

by Hilaire Belloc

Overview

In his treatise on European economic history (The Servile State, 1912) Hilaire Belloc explores the many failings of the Capitalist system. He explains that Capitalism emerged from the English Reformation, reached its present form during England's Industrial Revolution, and from there was exported to the rest of the world.

"It was in England that the Industrial System arose. It was in England that all its traditions and habits were formed; and because the England in which it arose was already a Capitalist England, modern Industrialism, wherever you see it at work to-day, having spread from England, has proceeded upon the Capitalist model."

Belloc also suggests that Capitalism has supplanted another, earlier system, one that had developed throughout Catholic Europe, a system he and his good friend G.K. Chesterton referred to as "Distributism."

"Property was an institution native to the State and enjoyed by the great mass of its citizens. Co-operative institutions, voluntary regulations of labour, restricted the completely independent use of property by its owners only in order to keep that institution intact and to prevent the absorption of small property by great."

"This excellent state of affairs which we had reached after many centuries of Christian development, and in which the old institution of slavery had been finally eliminated from Christendom, did not everywhere survive. In England in particular it was ruined."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789357924405
Publisher:	Alpha Editions
Publication date:	11/12/2023
Pages:	94
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.23(d)

About the Author

Hilaire Belloc was a French-English writer and historian who lived from July 27, 1870, to July 16, 1953. Belloc was also a soldier, an orator, a poet, a sailor, a satirist, and a writer of letters, a sailor, and a poet. His Catholic beliefs had a big impact on what he wrote. Belloc became a British citizen by naturalization in 1902, but he kept his French citizenship. He was President of the Oxford Union while he was at Oxford. From 1906 to 1910, he was one of the few people in the British Parliament who said they were Catholic. Belloc was known for getting into fights, and he had a few that went on for a long time. He was also close with G. K. Chesterton and worked with him. George Bernard Shaw, who was friends with both Belloc and Chesterton and often argued with them, called them "Chesterbelloc" because they often argued with each other. Belloc wrote everything from religious poetry to funny verses for kids. His Cautionary Tales for Children were very popular. They told stories like "Jim, who ran away from his nurse and got eaten by a lion" and "Matilda, who lied and got burned to death."

Editorial Reviews

 I have always felt that The Servile Statewas much more significant than we have suspected.

—James V. Schall, S.J., Georgetown University

From the Publisher