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The Crisis of Civilization

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Our choice, says Belloc, is Catholicism or chaos, and "the crisis ... does not permit of indefinite delay." He shows in this work that ever since the disaster of the Protestant Reformation, our civilization has been coming apart. Catholicism built the Western World - from Roman times through the Dark Ages to the High Middle Ages - but the false doctrine and social philosophy of Protestantism, based on Calvin, is causing a steady and continuing breakdown of that world. Belloc shows the Reformation's evil results in the economic sphere, through the dissolving of Catholic restraints on usury and on unbridled competition. He states that "Calvin opened the door to the domination of the mind by money." Belloc concludes that the return of Catholicism is the only remedy for our crumbling world, because our basic principles of civilization are Catholic in origin and only by being energized and guided by the Faith will they - and our civilization - continue to be what they are and continue to help poor, fallen mankind in this world. Belloc maintains that we are drifting back towards slavery and only by re-embracing Catholicism will disaster be averted.

Long have I searched for an excellent and readable overview of the history of Western Civilization. In Belloc's tremendous work, I have found it. This is doubtless the greatest and most important broad overview of the Western Civilization I have ever encountered. Belloc herein argures that Christianity changed the foundation of the Graeco-Roman Empire from slavery to Faith. He further postulates that the Reformation was a terrible catastrophe in its resultant disintegration of unified Christendom. Belloc argues that Judeo-masonic communism and Judeo-protestant capitalism are the forces that undermine the future of civilization. This work is awesome, prophetic, and uniquely insightful. It is also tremedously well written. Indeed, reading Belloc is like having a conversation with a learned and wise old friend. You savor each word, and don't want the converstation to end. This is a great book!

Addendum 03-Apr-06

I have had occassion this past weekend to reread this very important book. In the interim, I had read on the order of twenty of Belloc's other titles, the four volumes extant of Warren Carroll's history of Christendom, several of William Thomas Walsh's great works, and a smattering of Dennis Fahey, Nesta Webster, and Gordon Craig Alexander, among others. What the latter intensive reading has demonstrated is the amazing wisdom contained in this short, but terribly imporant book.

Belloc completed this book in the late 1930's, near the conclusion of his amazing literary career. He then wrote at a time when FDR's New Deal Socialism controlled the United States, Hitler's national socialism directed Germany, which Belloc still called Prussia, and Stalin's scientific socialism ran the Soviet Union. What the programs of all three despots had in common, of course, was socialism. And it was this evil in all of its various disguises that Belloc here inveighed against. Of course, a greater crisis soon ensured, the tragedy of World War II, ended by the unspeakable horror of nuclear immolation of Japan's most Catholic city, Nagasaki. Yet the words of Belloc still ring true, even in this dawning decade of the 21st century. Without a societal return to the Faith, we are certainly doomed to serfdom, and possibly much worse. Read this wonderful and beautifully written masterpiece, and be well informed and richly blessed by the process. God bless.

Hillaire Belloc's _The Crisis of Civilization_ is a reactionary polemic against runaway capitalist greed and the subsequent demands of international communism first published in 1937. The tone of this book is probably treasonous to many Amercans because of the disparaging comments about Capitalism and free-market economies. Belloc traces the history of Western Civilization from the rise of the Roman Empire to the state of the world in the twentieth century. The Roman Empire, which largely took on the philosophical initiative of the Greeks, was possessed of great organizational strength. However, the Roman Empire's prosperous economy was based on slavery and an overwhelming sense of despair prevailed. This was the setting where Christianity arrived to take center stage. Belloc describes the early Catholic Church much the say way as today's liberal historians: as an oriental mystery cult with a anthropomorphic God who died and rose again. The difference between the other mystery religions and the Christian Church was that the Church took the Death and Resurrection of Chirst as a literal truth rather than as a symbol standing for something else. Later theological and philosophical thought became more and more definite and less speculative as Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Belloc then goes on to describe the assault that the rise of Islam carried out on the Christian areas of the eastern Roman Empire under Constantinople. Europe would have become Muslim if Western Europe had not defeated Islam at Tours and later launched the Crusades which temporarily delivered the Holy Land back into Christian hands. Belloc regrets the subsequent schism between the Roman Church and the Eastern Church based in Constantinople. Feudalism was the form of government in Medieval Europe, where one's position was based upon status and hierarchical rank. Under this system, the peasantry gradually became more and more economically independent either as agricultural workers or small-business artisans. The guild system set up provided economic security to its members although it did not attempt to make everyone "equal." Competition was limited so that underselling from competitors did not swamp the lesser members of the guild out. This was so that monopolies could not be formed. Usury, the taking of interest on non-productive loans, was viewed as a sin and forbidden by Church law among Christians. Belloc does not idealize Medieval Europe, however. He relates how the Catholic Church became a "religious reign of terror" in the late middle ages. The Church had lost much of its moral authority because of the massive amount of material wealth it had accrued, particularly its extensive land holdings. The Church thus had to maintain its control by brute force. If a government has moral authority and goes in accord with human nature it does not have to resort to arbitrary tyranny to keep the peace. In some cases of heresy, the harsh retributions carried out reflected popular outrage at someone who would act destructively towards the Christian unity of society. Belloc likens these instances of rooting out heresy to the lynchings carried out in the South where law enforcement was not functioning properly. The Protestant Reformation, initiated by Luther against some Catholic practices, utterly destroyed the Catholic Christian unity of Western Europe. The result was a multitude of varying denominations all claiming to be possessed of the true faith but were rather groups following their own wills based on either personal ahistorical misinterpretations of the Bible or political agendas behind splits with the Catholic Church. King Henry VIII lined the English nobility's pockets when he broke from Rome and looted England's monasteries. Calvinism in particular was especially dangerous to the Catholic Church as it had the most complete system of theology, a well organized structure, and an international appeal. The chief errors of Calvinism were that it culminated in the belief that God's universe was mechanistic and deprived man of free will in matters of right and wrong. It denied that the Eucharist was the literal Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, a dogma held by the Church from the beginning. After the Reformation, Capitalism began to arise. The traditional restraints placed upon usury were also removed. Capitalism and the Proletariat came with a vengeance in the 19th century. Industrialization produced nations of sweltering slums. Small businesses were unable to compete with massive conglomerates. Wealth became controlled by the few and the majority of the people were, in Marxist terminology, "wage slaves." Communism, as Belloc notes, was the natural reaction of despair to Capitalist exploitation. Communism was doomed to fail because it was only the bastard child of Capitalism and its idea of a man totally shaped by his economic circumstances goes against the organic and occasionally irrational nature of humanity. The dangers of radical leftism are well known. The French Revolution attacked the Catholic clergy in France as being "counter-revolutionary." The Russian Revolution savaged the Orthodox Church, trying to completely divorce Russia from her spiritual tradition. At the time _Crisis of Civilization_ was first published the Spanish Civil War was raging. In this case the counter-revolutionary forces of Francisco Franco aided by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany was successful against leftist insurgents by adopting their tactics. Belloc concludes that a return to the guild system, a decentralized, non-competitive economy backed by law might have a chance at reversing the decay of society. This would not create any type of utopia on earth, but it would grant greater economic freedom with more people running their own businesses and a greater distribution of private property. Belloc notes that the problem with this system (which has been labeled "distributivism"), is that it presupposes the Christian faith as a basis for society and a prohibition against usury for it to be implemented. This book will definitely be of interest to those who are seeking a "third way" between neo-conservative/classical liberal capitalism (the Republicans) on one hand and the socialist left (the Democrats) on the other.

This is the first of Hilaire Belloc's books that has left me somewhat bewildered. I really do not know what I think about it.

One thing I can say, however, is that it has given me a greater admiration for the Middle Ages, which Hilaire Belloc calls the height of civilization. Over the centuries the slavery was replaced by serfdom, and later, in the Middle Ages, by the free peasantry. Indeed they worked out a meager living, but they were truly independent, either by owning productive land, or by being members of a trade guild. Their minds were not focused on greed. They lived simple, fruitful, and (for many of them, at least) holy lives.

But then the protestant rebellion changed all that. The Church was looted. Usury became a widespread practice. Money became all-important. Widespread slavery returned (especially on the American continent - and backed by the slave owners' private interpretation of Scripture, of course!). And now, today, very few people own productive land, thus the "proletariat" (people who have no productive property and nothing to sell but their services) has grown. And let us not forget the protestant preachers and their "Health and Wealth" gospel!

So while making some interesting historical points it seems that Mr Belloc is against big business. But we are no longer a nation of farmers. We build products today (automobiles, airplanes, complex machines, electronics, rockets, etc.) that could not be built efficiently in "Mom and Pop Shops." Are we to do away with technology, like the Unabomber suggests? (shudder!)

I give this book four stars. I finished reading it months ago, but I must admit I am stumped by it. It is good reading, though, and I encourage you to read it for yourself.

_The Crisis of Civilization_ consists of lectures delivered by Catholic intellectual and historian, Hilaire Belloc, at Fordham University in 1937. The book is radical in that it advocates Belloc's unique economic system which he was to christen "distributivism" in his book _The Servile State_ which amounts to a return to the medieval guild system, as well as a curtailment of capitalism, monopoly, and usury, a restoration of property, and a return of Europe to the Roman Catholic Faith. For Belloc, the Faith (by this he always means the faith of Roman Catholicism) was central to the development of Western civilization, and with the Reformation and the splitting of Christendom a great loss occurred for Western civilization. The first chapter of this book deals with "The Foundation of Christendom" and shows how Christianity spread throughout Europe by operating through corporate cells (much as the communist revolutionaries operate), which consisted of Ekklesia - the familiar hierarchy of deacon, priest, and bishop, all united under the Western Patriarch, the heir to Saint Peter, the Pope. According to Belloc, it was Christianity which made possible the rise of the pagan slave to the level of serfdom, which involved ownership of property while living on the manor of a lord. With the collapse of the Roman empire, the medieval society was born, and it was this society which involved widespread ownership of the means of production, privately owned. However, a crisis occurred in medieval society brought about by heresy and a rising anti-clerical tide which resulted in the questioning of hierarchy and authority, the denial of the validity of the Roman mass, and eventually the Reformation. One heresy that was initially destructive for Christendom was that of the religion of Mohammed, which Europeans did battle against during the Crusades. For Belloc, Calvinism (or in its Catholic form Jansenism, or Gallicanism) was particulary destructive because of its doctrine of predestination. Predestination caused men to look for the Elect among the successful and thus was born a mindset which involved striving to obtain money and wealth in this life as opposed to focussing on the afterlife and the world beyond. This striving for wealth gave birth to competition and with the Industrial Revolution was completed the system of capitalism (based upon competition) which Belloc finds so noxious. Belloc also remarks that it was at this time that traditional emphasis on "status" was replaced by emphasis upon "contract". This emphasis upon contract made it difficult for the proletariat to obtain the benefits of production, reducing them to the level of "wage slaves". In addition, the lending at excessive interest or usury became commonplace in Europe. Nearly all religions have condemned usury, including of course Islam and Roman Catholicism, however when usury was allowed to proliferate the bonds holding society together began to weaken. Belloc unequivocally condemns the usurer keeping to the original teachings of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. Monopoly capitalism gave birth to an entirely new system of oppression, and in opposition to this was developed the ideology of communism (which denied tradition, religion, the existence of God, and the tradition of private ownership of property). Communism was presented as a panacea for the evils of monopoly capitalism; however, as Belloc believes it is a truly wicked doctrine attempting to rise up against tradition and overthrow society. Belloc also shows how materialism began to flourish through the doctrines of both Karl Marx and Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century. Instead of the communistic solution, Belloc offers a unique alternative to restore widespread ownership of property as well as to curtail the evils of monopoly and usury. Belloc writes, "First, the better distribution of property; secondly, the public control of monopolies; thirdly, the re-establishment of those principles and that organization which underlay the conception of the guild." Indeed, the widespread ownership of property and the means of production is for Belloc to be made possible by the establishment of a guild system (based on the medieval guild system) which will curtail the effects of monopolies from buying out the small business owner. Of course, such a system will only be made possible with the return of Europe to the Faith. Belloc ends the book with a discussion of the need for a Roman Catholic presentation of history, against the many Protestant and anti-Catholic historians (for example, Gibbon and Mommsen). He also notes the need for a Roman Catholic newsletter and system of education. The system presented here by Belloc is consistent with the teaching of the Roman Pontiffs. In particular, the encyclical _Rerum Novarum_ issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 calls for a society which would look much the same as that advocated by Belloc along with a corporativist state. The traditional teachings of the church and of such scholastics as Saint Thomas Aquinas on the free market and the "just wage theory" as well as the condemnation of communism by the papacy also play an important role in the thinking of Belloc.

Based on Belloc's lectures at Fordham University, New York, in 1937, "Crisis of Civilization" is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it is an insightful interpretation of history from an unabashedly Catholic viewpoint. On the other hand, some of Belloc's temporal notions of how to best cope with the dangers posed by this crisis seem anachronistic 65 years later.

The most compelling sections of the book may be found in the 100 or so pages. These passages alone make the book very worthwhile reading as Belloc delves into the creation and heyday of Christendom. He then tackles the negative temporal effects that the fragmentation of unified of Christendom had on Europe and the world in the wake of the Reformation. As usual, Belloc pulls no punches when it comes to ascribing many of the evils of our society (at least in 1937) to the theology that emanated from Reformation thinkers. He quite rightly considers the rise of modern capitalism as a result of Protestant theology.

However, Belloc goes off the rails, when he buys into the marxist logic that capitalism naturally devolves into monopoly and eventually communism -- the true, real, and most dangerous enemy to Catholicism. While he is certainly correct that world communism (or "green environmentalism", or "anarchism", or "progressivism", or whatever pseudonyms it's operating under these days) was and is the most vicious foe of the Catholic Church, Belloc errs in thinking that communism inevitably grows from market capitalism. Of course, it's difficult to fault him on this as he was writing in the late-1930s during the Great Depression when capitalism seemed to have failed and communism and atheistic socialism of various brands seemed on an unstoppable trajectory toward world domination

Naturally, then, some of Belloc's remedies to the capitalism were perhaps alarmist. As a supporter of American free-market capitalism, I found Belloc's proposed system of social engineering through massive taxation odious to say the least. However, his idea that the teachings of the Catholic Church can form a bulwark against the spread of communism by softening the more cut-throat aspects of capitalist society are right on the mark. It's not surprising, then, that since Belloc's time, the Church has been targeted for infiltration, corruption, and destruction by the forces of world communism and their useful idiots. And recent history has shown us that those countries where Christianity is strongest hold out the best against the easy despotism offered by socialists.

In case it's not obvious to this point, "Crisis of Civilization" provides an enormous amount of food for thought and is thus well worth reading, even if only to spur debate about where Belloc went wrong in the light of historical hindsight: the fall of Soviet and Eastern European communism; the present crumbling of European and Canadian socialism (yes, it's inevitable -- just look at the Canadian national health system); and the incredible dynamism and resilience of the American economy which has resisted many of the socialist incursions that European nations have foolishly embraced and which, contrary to Belloc's thesis, is still primarily driven by the engine of the small businessman.

Hilaire Belloc's book titled THE CRISIS OF CIVILIZATION was published in 1937. Belloc lived through World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution and its aftermath, and saw the rise of the National Socialists in Germany. Belloc knew there were terrible disruptions in Western Civilization, and he was aware of the terrible effects of the Great Depression. Belloc argued that these catastrophies were due mostly to the Reformation and the decline of Catholic influences.

Belloc begins this study with a comparison of men and women during Ancient Hitory (Ancient Greek and Roman History)with those people who lived during the Dark Ages and Medieval Europe. Belloc makes a convincing case that the European serf during the Dark Ages and Middle Ages had significantly more status than slaves. Serfs had access to land from which they could not be removed, and these people had rights to this land. While serfs had feudal obligations to lords, the lords in turn had obligations to these serfs and were under legal obligation to respect the rights of these serfs.

Belloc also makes the case that the Medieval serfs gradually became free peasants and farmers. Belloc is on solid ground here. There are Medieval records of the serfs becoming free men ( and women). These people owned land, made contracts, supervised businesses, etc. In other words, there was social mobility for these people. Obviously, 21st. century men and women would not accept this conditions, but, as Belloc states several times in his books, one commits a blunder of "reading history backwards."

Belloc also undermines the popular history and media distortions that the Catholic Middle Ages were an age of total superstition and ignorance. The gradual rise of Medieval universities and the brilliant of such great men as St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) undermine such popular distortions. Readers should note the Medieval Europeans witnessed such technical advances as the pendulum, the mechanical clock, Gothic architecture, studies in advanced mathematics, etc.

Given living conditions during the Medieval Era, Europeans were prosperous compared to non-European and non-Catholic areas of the world. Belloc makes this very clear. Demographic studies indicate that Western Europe's popularion in the year was approximately 20 million people. By 1350, just before the Black Death hit Europe, Europe's population was approximatly 40 million people. This increase reflected improved living standards and longer life spans due to gradual increases in living standards.

Belloc carefully diagnoses the Reformation and its effects. Belloc argues that the Reformation underminded Catholic social and moral codes. The Catholic social order and economic thinking limited greed and the dispossesion of the poor. The Catholic guilds had rules and regulations that controlled workmanship and restrained monopoly. The Catholic authorities were that selling at a loss to ruin a smaller enterprise was wrong. Yet, the Reformation which was influenced by the greed of the powerful to loot the wealth of the Catholic Church undermined this moral code. Belloc makes clear that many of the Protestants believed that their wealth and greed were actually signs of God's favor, and the philosophical and spiritual values of the Catholic moral code was undermined by the emphasis on materialism and the outer limits of greed. Free peasants and small businessmen were gradually ruined. One should note that the English did not Poor Laws and poor houses until during and after the Reformation.

Belloc traces this materialism to the late 19th and 20th century. He reflects that the rise of socialist parties and the emergence of Big Communism were based on materialistic thinking. The gradual creation of a proletariat was dangerous of large numbers of working or unemployed poor became politiclly motivated. Belloc warns that such a proletariat would rather ruin civilization than live in terrible conditions for the benefit of the very wealthy.

Belloc mentions that Big Capitalism could not exist forever without some economic catastrophy. The Great Depression may have vindicated Belloc's assertion. Belloc was certainly of the Great Depression as this historical period occured during his life time.

Belloc makes several criticisms, but he has suggestions for the restoration of civilization. Belloc argues that Catholic social teaching and the guild system can restore property to the proletariat. He has a good case against usury which he defines as the issuing or lending of money just for the sake of circulation rather than for economic development. In an age of government sponsored and controlled central banks, the problem emerges when these bankers issue currency for circulation and charge interest to the member banks and ultimately everyone else.On the other hand, Belloc agrees that lenders should share in profits for lending funds for economic development such as industry, business, minning,etc. Such creditors share both the risks and rewards for such activities, and Belloc does not consider this usury.

One minor criticism of Belloc's book is that he should have given a more precise explantion of central banking as opposed to free banking. Belloc's suggestion of returning to the Catholic guild system may be too idealistic, but he makes a useful suggestion to avoid or mitigate economic catastrophy. In spite of such minor criticism, Belloc's THE CRISIS OF CIVILIZATION is thoughtful and worth reading for both Catholics and non-Catholics.

I came into contact with Belloc through the work of G.K. Chesterton, of whom I am extremely fond. Chesterton's political writing intrigued me, but Chesterton wasn't really one to set down a concrete outline of what distributism was and would look like in practice. Knowing that Belloc was Chesterton's co-conspirator, I turned to his The Crisis of Civilization to see what distributism was all about. Needless to say, I was quite impressed. Belloc not only outlines what distributism is, he places it in the context of history, establishing where alternate systems like Capitalism and Communism came from, why he thinks that they are wrong, and why distributism (or something similar) was successful in the past and could be again in the future.

Belloc begins by explaining the influence of Christianity (or, as he would say, the Catholic Church) over the Roman Empire and the early Middle Ages. Belloc argues, very convincingly, against the popular concept that conversion to Christanity is what destroyed the Roman Empire, arguing "It was not the spread of the faith which undermined the high civilization of pagan antiquity; on the contrary, the Faith saved all that could be saved; and, but for the conversion of the Roman Empire, nothing of our culture would have remained" (39). He then explains how the Catholic Church saved western civilization during the "dark ages," a period he brands "the siege of Chistendom" as Western Christianity held off incessant barbarian invasions which prevented Western Europe from being able to focus on the arts during that period. It not only preserved classical civilization, it improved it. As Belloc recounts it, "The Catholic Church, having become the religion of the Graeco-Roman society, did among other things two capital things for the settlement of Europe on its political side, and for arresting the descent into chaos. It humanized slavery and it strengthened permanent marriage. Very slowly through the centuries, those two influences were to produce the stable civilization of the Middle Ages, wherein the slave was no longer a slave but a peasant; and everywhere the family was the well-rooted and established unit of Society" (43).

Following the "dark ages" (which were not nearly so dark as popularly thought; the whole concept of the dark ages being repudiated my many contemporary historians), Catholic Christendom flourished, reaching it height in the High Middle Ages, which are what Belloc views as the highest point of Western civilization, by which he does NOT mean that he wants to return to pre-industrial technology, but he refers rather to the unified spirit of Christendom and the economic and political freedom possessed by the age as a whole.

But the ecstasy of supreme civilization was smashed by the Protestant Reformation, the evil of which was not primarily its theology in itself, but its breaking up of unified Christendom by throwing out the whole concept of there being one united church, a concept assumed by even Christians living before the time when the Catholic Church became a solid institution. In throwing off the Catholic Church, reformers also undermined the whole guild system which was built into society, as the guild system had its foundation in the Catholic Church. It was replaced by a new creature which rose, albeit unintentionally, from the Protestant Reformation: capitalism. Capitalism, over time, re-enslaved those who had once been slaves and who had been gradually elevated by Christian influence first to serfs and then to peasants. They were not political slaves, but rather economic slaves. The whole time that the common man has been gaining more and more political freedom over the past four hundred years or so, he has been steadily losing his economic freedom, finding himself more and more dependent upon the few owners of the means of production. As Chesterton famously put it, "Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists." Capitalism brought about the rise of the proletariat, which is nothing but a term for those who posses political freedom but are economically enslaved by a few wealthy capitalists who have made it to the top of the system and created virtual monopolies which drive small-time owners out of business and into economic dependence.

Up to this point, Belloc's case might sound similar to the case made against capitalism by present day socialists. But here the similarity ends. As he says: "Capitalism works for profit, and men have called this in their haste and confusion the main evil of the capitalist system. It is not so. There is nothing immoral or exasperating to human feelings in profit as a motive for production, distribution, or exchange.... Let us then repeat and firmly fix this main point: the evil, the root evil, of that to which the term Capitalism has come to be applied, is neither its functioning for profit nor its dependence upon legally protected private property; but the presence of a Proletariat, that is of men possessing political freedom, but dispossessed of economic freedom, and existing in such large numbers in any community as to determine the tone of all that community" (140-141).

The essence of the problem is this: capitalism, over time, puts the means of production in the hands of a few successful men, reducing the vast majority of humanity to a state of economic servitude in which they are completely dependent upon the few to pay their salaries and produce all of their goods. Socialism and Communism mistakenly identify the problem as being financial inequality, and so attempt to rectify the problem by redistributing wealth. But the true problem is not inequality, but the loss of economic freedom. As such, the answer is not redistribution of wealth, but of property and the means of production. Belloc wants to reinvest the proletariat with economic freedom, breaking up the monopolies of the few wealthy men and businesses which have crushed the smaller businesses by their unethical, greedy pursuit of wealth via accepted capitalistic methods. Belloc does not want to do away with all capitalism; he simply wants to limit it. Its limitation is accomplished by the guild system, in which the guild polices itself and sets boundaries on the price of goods to prevent practices like underselling, in which richer men drive the poorer men out of business by selling at loss until the poorer man goes under. Members of the guild are free to pursue gain, but not (as in capitalism) by harming their fellow guild members. This does not produce financial equality (there would still be richer and poorer members of any guild, just not to the extent seen in capitalistic systems), but rather financial independence.

While this book was extremely compelling, I found same parts to be exaggerated. I am not a Catholic, and my main criticism of this book is that Belloc tries to make becoming Catholic a necessary condition of accepting distributism. It was never really explained why Catholicism is necessary for the guild system, nor can I see any reason why any Christian who accepts the moral principles underlying the whole system of distributism need to become Catholic to be distbributist. Belloc has presented the whole system of distributism as being inherently and only Roman Catholic, which seems a bit odd given that Chesterton was a distributist for years before he became a Catholic.

Overall, though, this was a tremendous book. Belloc is positively prophetic at times. Writing seventy-some years ago, Belloc describes perfectly many issues we are facing today. In commenting on the influence of socialism, he writes that:

"Since it is to the advantage of the wage-payer to pay as little as possible, even well-paid labor will have no more than what is regarded in a particular society as the reasonable level of subsistence. The lower ranks of labor will commonly have less, and if public relief were afforded even up to the wage-level of the lowest ranks of labor, that relief would compete in the labor market.... It would tend to render the performance of work by the wage-earner redundant; for if relief were on a scale approaching regular wages, the average man would not do work for a sum which he could obtain without working" (143-144).

Belloc has perfectly summed up what is going on right now in the United States. Just look around at the welfare system and the bailouts being handed out, and tell me this isn't exactly what Belloc predicted would happen. Belloc might not be right about everything, but his ideas deserve serious consideration. I'm very much looking forward to reading his The Servile State, in which he gives further details about what distributism would look like in action.

Because certain of Belloc's comments in this book can come across as racist or anti-Semetic, his main argument can be obscured....

As per Belloc, Christendom flourished because of "the fruits which the Catholic culture had produced when it was in full vigor, the restriction of monopoly, the curbing of the money power, the establishment of cooperative work, and the wide distribution of property, the main principle of the guild and the jealous restriction of usury and competition....these better conditions are the fruit of the Catholic Church, they can neither be created nor maintained in an atmosphere deprived of Catholic philosophy" (p. 4).

Other notable observations include:
* "The Catholic Church, having become the religion of Graeco-Roman society, did among other things two capital things for the settlement of Europe on its political side, and for arresting the descent into chaos. It humanized slavery and it strengthened permanent marriage....The old pagan world had reposed upon slavery, the great bulk of its human material was made up of slave - perhaps two-thirds, perhaps more" (p. 43).
* With regard to the Protestant Reformation, "As a mere heretical movement wherein a mass of divergent and even contradictory opinions had free play, the movement might have been less destructive. But there was a driving power behind it which was of very great effect; the opportunity for loot....The Reformation has been called in a biting epigram ` a rising of the rich against the poor" (pp. 95, 109).

Via a reinvigoration of Catholic culture, Belloc calls for restrictions on monopoly, usury, and unbridled completion, as well as "the establishment of cooperative work [i.e., the guild], and the wide distribution of property" (p. 4).

Do you people even have a clue what you are talking about?

Go and study some actual history instead of this tainted rubbish, and learn what actually happened.

Too many corrections to make to even begin.