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Editorial Review Product Description
"The Serville State" has endured as his most important political work. The effect of socialist doctrine on capitalist society, Belloc wrote, is to produce a third thing different from either - the servile state, today commonly called the welfare state. ... Read more Customer Reviews (18) 
The greatest condemnation of Capitalism ever written.
Belloc is one of a lost breed of free thinking individuals to whom power was to be challenged and truth to be laid bare,for all to see and judge in the open light. The Servile State ,written almost 100 years ago,remains the greatest critique of the capitalistic system in print. The talking points of the free marketers and communists can not hold water to actual facts,logic and historical truth,all having the bottom ripped out from underneath them leaving mere indoctrinated ditto heads repeating what they heard on cable TV.
The Servile State is a economics book that does something very interesting...something neither Marx,nor Von Mises or other Capitalist propagandists can do: Belloc proves how his ideal economic form ,Distributism, not only CAN work but DID work in history. The Servile State is the state where the masses are forced by law to work for those elite few whom own the means of production.The status of man goes from freedom to subservient slave,a man dispossessed or property himself and unable to drag him self out of the bondage he is in for literally the entire government is designed for the few to dominate over the many. Much of the book is written to prove how once upon a time,man was free to own the means of his own production,the true owner of his business,farm,home,and how the government in England started the path to capitalism by theft,double dealing, and out right conspiracy. The land was bought up or stolen from the people and made into slaves,wage workers with no say in their own life or profession and given to the few barons and lawmakers who had the power and state backing to do what ever they pleased.
The start of Capitalism is not the traditional one which colleges teach of.The necessary illusions taught by professors claim that capitalism was born of the industrial revolution,'mass production for the masses' to accommodate man and his wants etc,etc. In facts show the entire foundation of the system is one of theft and domination. Belloc explains how Henry 8th stole the Catholic church lands during the reformation and sold it off to his favoured subjects.The position of the people from this starting point are contrasted with those of modern times whom now only know of Servile Statehood,the concept of individual property ownership,not even a dream but a long ago forgotten ideal remembered by merely a few.
Socialism,or communism,is also described by Belloc as not the freedom giving,people powered entity Marx and his advocates claimed,but in fact a process that works along side capitalism to deprive man of his rights to obtain and control property. Socialism confirms the masses in their subservience by having the means of production controlled not by the masses of citizens but by the few politicians who managed to become the State. As G.K. Chesterton pointed out,Communism is the end result of Capitalism: the means of production owned by the very few elite with everyone else their servants. The various schemes of creating a socialist state are discussed and debunked in practical and inevitably prophetic terms. The modern 'liberal' or 'progessive' doctrines are likewise shown to be not liberating,freedom,democracy giving policies but concrete confirmations of the status of rulers and ruled. Minimum wages ,'independent contracts',and various other schemes,legally acknowledges one man to be the elite and the billions of others proletariats.
The Servile State can be considered a reading of prophecy by many for the exact things he discussed might,can,and could happen, did and are occurring right now. As stated before Belloc was one of a few voices 'crying out in the wilderness',one of a few last remaining voices of sanity among the howls or the insane. As the small independent owner dries up and shuts his door,as the Multi-national corporations dominate the globe,remaking every city in their image,as millions lose their home not to fire or war ,but the writing of a pen,the evidence is clear: this is a servile WORLD. As Pope Joe Ratzinger pointed out ,every economic decision is a moral decision.The choice to feed the monsters more is a choice not of 'voting with our dollars',but voting ofour status...to continue to accept servitude as a natural state or to rebel against socialism and capitalism leaving mankind to be really and truly free.
A "Third Way"?
The Servile State is Belloc's treatise on Distributivism; however he spends more time refuting the doctrine of capitalism.He does this by taking a historical approach: the book looks at slavery in the Roman Empire, Feudalism in the Middle Ages, and the Industrial Revolution of the Modern Era.With this setup, Belloc goes on to make the startling claim that the laborers in the capitalist system are no different than the slaves in the Roman Empire.He also says the serfs under Feudalism were better off than the factory workers of the early 20th century.Finally, he contends the problems with Capitalism inevitably require the Communist solution.Thus Distributivism cannot be a solution unless the people willfully choose to depart from the path they already upon.
These are all contentious claims and Belloc does defend them.Whether he does so persuasively is not so clear, but his book is a must read for those concerned about finding a possible "Third Way" between Capitalism and Socialism.
A work of great clarity
Belloc's account of The Servile State,the condition in which society is characterised by a majority of dispossessed proletarians without the means of production who are faced with the choice to work for the benefit of the minority (an oligarchy of those who do possess the means of production) or starve has only one omission - it does not (nor does it intend to) provide a remedy.
For Belloc, servility is the way things have been throughout much of human civilisation. He looks to Rome for the roots of the particular sevile nature of social and economic life in England - which then spread to infect other nations. The arrangement between the owners of the villas and their slaves evolved over the centuries until Belloc's ideal is to be found in the latter part of the middle ages with their cooperative system of guilds, small holdings, common land and dues to the wealthy landowners. The key for Belloc is private property and possession of the means of production. A serf might well have to work certain hours for the lord but he was also free to produce for himself and to improve his own situation. The guilds etc protected against monopolies and the means of production remained widely distributed.
Refuting the usual argument that dispossession followed on the heels of the industrial revolution, Belloc cites the start of the slide into a new state of servility as the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII. During this period the Crown confiscated the lands of the monasteries - approximately 1/5th of the productive land of England. Henry lacked the power to retain all this land which found its way into the hands of a number of wealthy families - some of whom grew to rival the King in terms of wealth and influence. The power of the monarchy was reduced - over time - to that of a puppet of Parliament, which was largely in the hands of the new plutocracy.
When the inventions of the Industrial Revolution arose there was a need for capital in order to commence these great experients. The only source of that capital, following the decline of the cooperatives and the disenfanchisement of the masses, was the rich property owners. The proletariat were utterly at the mercy of the capitalists. As is the way with capitalist systems, the rich minority grew richer as the poor majoirity grew poorer.
Belloc's book remains relevant today - indeed it is essential reading for the masses are often utterly ignorant of the state of affairs, believing having had the terms of their education set by the powers-that-be, and lacking the reasoning to question what they are told by their informers). Many (of the servile) would deny their state of servility as they have been hoodwinked. Freedom, for us, is the freedom of licentiousness, the freedom to spend, and therefore the freedom to perpetuate the system and our own servility.
Communisms great failing was to confiscate the means of production from the rich and to entrust them to the state. Belloc's ideal is to spread the means of production, to grant to each family the right to private ownership and the means of producing food and enough goods not only to maintain life but to increase personal wealth but without the limitless greed of the capitalist. Belloc would have liked the medieval system of cooperatives to have met with the developments of the Industrial Revolution to the benefit of the majority. The vision is compelling, but the problem is how to get there. The powerful rich are not going to let go of their monopoly, the dispossessed are also disunited and deprived of the education to challenge the status quo, and the violent confiscations of the Communists led only to their own evils.
Belloc's prose is impeccable; the book eminently accessible and a pleasure to read. It is high time his other great works were brought back into popularity - The Four Men, The Path to Rome, his histories, poetry and essays. This prolific and original writer deserves to be more widely read in the current age.
A Third State and prescient vision
Though I applaud many of the thoughtful reviews herein, many ofthe commentators are taking the notion of "slave" too literally and in an American sense.That's a pity because this book (and The Road to Serfdom) are as relevant to America now as they were to England then, as we deafly ignore history and move toward socialism--or worse. Belloc believed that when socialism destroys capitalism it becomes a third state, the servile state. Read the introductory pages here and you'll get the drift: "That arrangement of society in which so considerable a number of the families and individuals are constrained by positive law to labor for the advantage of other families and individuals as to stamp the society with the mark of such labor we call the servile state."
Does "half" constitute "so considerable a number"? In a sense this is what America has become, and it is worsening at an accelerated pace. Already the bottom 48 percent of the population pays zero Federal tax (and usually no state tax except sales tax)and are subsidized in one way or another by the State; so we're on the verge of seeing for the first time what one commentator called a "self-interested majority" wherein people can vote for the State to confiscate the labor (wealth) of others for distribution to themselves. And yet all but the vastly wealthy MUST work, regardless of how much the State decides to confiscate of one's labor to give to another it considers more worthy. Thus one's labor is no longer a bargaining chip in America. And real property ownership is something of a myth except in remote pockets of Alaska; if you don't believe that, try not paying your property tax for a few years and see how much you really "own" your property--or for a certified historical example, look up Wickard v. Filburn wherein the Supreme Court ruled that the State could control the amount of wheat a farmer grew for his own consumption on his own land.
In sum when the top half the country entirely supports the bottom half of the country, the top half of the country is slave to the bottom and the bottom is slave to the State handout. If not exactly where we are today, the welfare state is perilously close to the servile state.
Happy slaves and servile minds
Hilaire Belloc was a controversial Catholic intellectual, born in France but mostly active in Britain, where he even served as an MP for a short period. Together with G.K. Chesterton, Belloc advocated a "third way" between capitalism and socialism, known as Distributism. By present standards, he was a very conservative Catholic, and expressed support for Franco during the Spanish Civil War.
"The Servile State" is Belloc's most famous work. First published in 1913, it has been reprinted several times, often by libertarians. It's unclear why since Belloc, of course, wasn't one.
The main thesis in "The Servile State" can be summarized as follows. Capitalism is by its very nature unstable. It promotes the interests of a tiny minority of property-holders at the expense of the large majority of propertyless proletarians. Capitalism is therefore only a transitional stage in human history. There are only two alternatives to the capitalist state of affairs: distributism, in which everyone becomes a property owner, or the servile state, in which the proletarians are turned into slaves, but in return get their basic needs met by the capitalists. Belloc didn't think revolutionary socialism was an option (the book was written four years before the Russian revolution). As for reform socialism, Belloc believed that it too was utopian, since it's impossible to "buy out" capitalism. Reform socialism is nevertheless dangerous since it leads, consciously or not, to the establishment of a servile state. Belloc also fears that the workers themselves might accept the servile state: their condition in 1913 was so dismal, that they would readily accept legalized slavery, provided the state compelled the employers to meet their basic needs in terms of clothes, shelter, food, etc.
Belloc then analyzes European history. Initially, slavery was accepted everywhere. During the Middle Ages, slavery began to gradually wither away, being replaced by a distributive system of guilds, village communes and feudal obligations. Property rights became more and more diffused. This process came to an abrupt end during the Reformation, especially in England, where Henry VIII confiscated the lands of the church (which owned a substantial portion of all English land) for the benefit of a new class of wealthy, aristocratic landowners, who dispossessed the peasants and artisans. This eventually created the instability and class conflict characteristic of industrial capitalism.
Finally, Belloc points to various 20th century legislative measures he believes foreshadow the servile state. Among them are the minimum wage, compulsory arbitration, unemployment benefits, regulations of the right to strike and lockout, and employer liability laws. Belloc also attacks compulsory education. He is somewhat pessimistic about the future prospects. The traditions of widely diffused ownership were near-dead in 1913, while socialist measures seemed more realistic. And socialist policies, as already pointed out, were in Belloc's mind really precursors to the servile state.
I can't say "The Servile State" convinced me. For starters, the book is actually an attack on the incipient Western European welfare state. This is probably what commends the book to libertarians. However, only an extremist could suggest that conditions in post-war Western Europe and Scandinavia are "servile". The libertarians also tend to forget that Belloc wasn't against a powerful state (something he makes clear in his discussion about Henry VIII). And while Belloc does call for diffusion of property rights, and presumably wants to end welfare as we know it, he nevertheless envisions a system in which the guilds restrict competition, and where some of the land is held in common. Uncharitably put, the author is closer to fascism than to libertarianism!
The historical analysis, while not a necessary part of Belloc's thesis, isn't convincing either. In fact, its contradictory. On the one hand, Belloc claims that Christianity had something to do with the gradual dissolution of slavery during the Middle Ages. On the other hand, he admits that the causes were economic and political. Further, he writes that the spread of distributism was spontaneous and unplanned, while the development of capitalism was a conscious conspiracy. He also seems to think that an industrial revolution is possible in a system of small property-owners. In reality, big industry out-competes the artisans and peasants.
Belloc's contrast between servile antiquity and the free Middle Ages is unconvincing for other reasons as well. While slavery, for unknown reasons, was indeed abolished in North and Central Europe during the High Middle Ages, it was never abolished in southern Europe, which was equally Christian. Nor was it abolished in the crusader state of the Teutonic Knights, and conditions in Eastern Europe seemed to have remained pretty servile as well. For some reason, Belloc never mentions the later connection between slavery and capitalism either. But slavery wasn't abolished in the United States or the British colonies until the 19th century! Perhaps he can be excused for not predicting the Bolshevik revolution - after all, even Lenin despaired around 1913, sitting exiled in Switzerland.
Can something of Belloc's thesis nevertheless be saved? Maybe, but only in a very revised form. Belloc was, of course, right when he pointed out that classical capitalism was unviable and somehow needed to be stabilized. He is also right that this stabilization requires state regulations of the economy. This is one of the points of the welfare state. Even the United States has de facto federal regulations of its economy. Socialism was another attempt to solve the problems of classical capitalism (it ultimately failed). The closest analogy to a *real* servile state in the modern era seems to have been Nazi Germany. Workers from the territories occupied by Germany during the war were indeed turned into slaves, being forced to work for the German capitalists, but, of course, without getting their basic needs met. However, *German* workers certainly got a slice of the Nazi war pie, in return for not rocking the boat. Thus, Nazi Germany both had a class of nominally free but in effect regimented German workers (who were happy), and a class of enslaved workers (who were less so), both working for the German industrialists.
Thankfully, this servile state was defeated by the Allies during World War Two, making it a moot solution to the problems of the modern world.
"The Servile State" is interesting and a relatively easy read, but at least this happy slave remains unconvinced by its main thesis...
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French Trash