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The Servile State

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In "Road to Serfdom" economist F.A. Hayek recognized the vision of Hilaire Belloc's 1913 book "The Servile State". Writing during World War II, Hayek said: "Even much more recent warnings [about Socialism] which have proved dreadfully true have been almost entirely forgotten. It is not yet thirty years since Hilaire Belloc, in a book which explains more of what has happened since in Germany than most works written after the event, explained that `the effects of Socialist doctrine on Capitalist society is to produce a third thing different from either of its two begetters - to wit, the Servile State."

In short, Belloc said, you get the worst of both worlds, a master class (monopolist Capitalists) using the power of government (Socialism) to control workers. There is name for the condition where one group of people uses the force of law to control the work another group of people; it is called "slavery".

He wrote this in a much different era and it takes some effort to put aside some of the things we take for granted. Belloc saw things like worker's compensation laws as baby steps toward slavery. They tended to create in the law two classes of people, employers (read "Masters") and workers (read "serfs"). It divided "us" into "us and them".

"Servile State" goes full circle, beginning with slavery in the Roman Empire. The slaves had a degree a freedom and could save up money to free themselves, but they were still slaves. Under Christianity the slave became a peasant with rights of inheritance. Christianity introduced a rough egalitarianism ("And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts crying, `Abba, Father.' So that he is no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, an heir through God." - Galatians 4:6-7.) and the breakdown of the empire encouraged rights by tradition (A farmer might say, "Well, we get to keep 2/3 of everything we grow because it's always been that way."). Belloc argues that rights were increasing throughout the Dark Ages. His view of the time may be a bit rosy, but recent scholarship has tended to lighten up that Darkness and vindicate Belloc's reading.

Then came the Renaissance and Reformation. The aristocracy began taking commonly held peasant lands. In England the aristocracy used these lands to graze sheep in order to sell the wool. Thomas More, a fierce defender of traditional rights, lamented this at the time in "Utopia": "`Your sheep,' I said. `Once they were gentle and ate little, but now I hear that they have become so greedy and wild that they are devouring the human population." Calvinism's theory of predestination would come along to justify this redistribution of wealth. The rich were rich because they were also the Elect. The newly impoverished peasants were poor because they were the damned. That the "ignorant peasants" tended also to cling to the Old Religion of Catholicism only reinforced this view. The aristocracy took the opportunity to extend their land monopoly by confiscating Church lands as Christendom crumbled.

From there on, according to Belloc, things tended to go downhill, at least in Europe. The State was growing in power and intrusiveness. Pure sweatshop monopoly Capitalism and pure Communism were both bound to fail, Belloc wrote. He said they were too unstable and he was right. Perhaps we would create a society where each person would own enough of the means of production to support himself. Perhaps we could become nations of small farms and family businesses. Belloc called this Distributivism and it owes much to Pope Leo XII's encyclical "Rerum Novarum" where the pope outlines a just society. Belloc, ever the pessimist, thought this would make a great ideal society, but that people weren't up for it. Instead he thought we would decline into a new thing, the Servile State. Whether it would be the slavery of fascism or the Welfare "Nanny" State run amok, he didn't say.

In this liberty classic, the Catholic intellectual Hilaire Belloc writes that the present system of capitalism is likely to give rise to something new, the servile state, because of inherent instabilities within it. Belloc defines this state as, "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 whole community with the mark of such labor we call the servile state." This servile state is a return to the form of pagan slavery that existed in Europe before the advent of Christianity abolished it. Belloc contends that from the original pagan form of slavery, Christianity brought about a new system of society, the distributivist society. In this system, every individual was an owner of property and belonged to guilds which allowed for him to own the means of production. However, the distributivist system failed with the breakdown of the Christian faith. For example, the Reformation allowed for the Crown to confiscate monastic lands. Thus, a small group of indiviudals, the capitalists, came to own the means of production and the property. Belloc does not blame the existence of capitalism on the Industrial Revolution like most other thinkers have. Rather, he sees the problem in society as existing before the Industrial Revolution. Belloc contends that had distributivism not broken down, the Industrial Revolution would have been beneficial to all concerned. The current system of the capitalist state is unstable however, and may give rise to one of two separate things. Reformers have tried to create from the capitalist system a collectivist (or socialist) state. In the collectivist state, private property would be abolished and a group of managers would control all property for the proletariat in trust. Belloc contends that this form of collectivism is likely to give rise to a third thing, the servile state. One way reformers have tried to accomplish this goal is through "buying out" capitalism. Since the state is an older institution than the capitalist owners, it has been considered possible that the state can "buy out" the capitalists. Belloc finds such an idea problematic and shows how this is not possible to occur. Alternatively, the other possibility is for society to return to a distributivist system in which all individuals own property and the means of production. Belloc finds this alternative to be the best, however, he notes that it is unlikely to happen given the current direction in which society is taking and amounts to "swimming upstream". So, while the socialist alternative works within the capitalist system, it will ultimately lead to servitude. Belloc points out examples of how legislation designed to benefit the proletariat has actually increased the development of the servile state. Examples of this include regulation such as employee compensation and minimum wage laws, which were in the initial stages of being enacted in Belloc's England. The future for freedom looks grim because the proletariat is willing to give up its political freedom in exchange for security and guarantee of subsistence standards. For example, Belloc points out that minimum wage laws actually benefit capitalists because they guarantee that there will not be unruliness among the workers. Also, such laws and regulations involve the creation of a class distinction between proletariat and employer. Given the direction the welfare state has taken contrary to liberty and towards further regulation, these cogent writings of Belloc from near the beginning of this last century serve as an important warning and prophecy for the future. We have indeed headed in the direction of servitude, and Belloc's distributivist ideal seems less and less likely.

For an interesting alternative understanding of the modern world and its condition see Julius Evola's _Revolt Against the Modern World_.

Hilaire Belloc's 1912 classic represents the former UK Liberal Party parliamentarian's break with capitalism, state socialism and the welter of piecemeal liberal and social democratic reforms that would ultimately evolve into the modern welfare state.

The book is simultaneously easy to read and clearly argued, yet sometimes verbose and long winded. Still it's logically argued and conceptually sound.

The `Liberty Press' edition I read included an excellent introduction by American sociologist Robert Nisbet. This extended essay includes personal biographical insights which indicate that `The Servile State' played an important role in the development of Nisbet's own stream of pluralist conservative thought, a line hitherto neglected by Nisbet's intellectual biographers. Nisbet, following Belloc, champions the role of intermediate institutions, between the citizen and the state, as providing the true institutional skeleton of freedom. Although usually characterized as a conservative, Belloc's Servile State played a critical role in influencing such radical non-conservatives as Dorothy Day and John Anderson, the founder of the Sydney left libertarian movement. This movement later spawned such prominent Australian international intellectuals as Germaine Greer, Robert Hughes and Clive James. Anderson, I believe, even attributed his rejection of Marxism to Belloc. One can easily imagine Belloc engaged in lively debate over drinks with these now prominent, if somewhat wayward, descendants.

Still `Servile State' is not purely a polemical book. It includes insightful historical analysis of the rise and decline of slavery in the west. It shows just how deep rooted and unpeculiar "the peculiar institution" has been. And just how poor most of the more popular explanations for it's survival across the centuries have been. The great myth of slavery is that it represented the permanent subjugation of defeated foreign enemies. Although prisoners of war were often enslaved, this source of slaves was statistically trivial. Belloc's explanation has the advantage of explaining the relative "success" of slavery, both in it's historical longevity and relative absence of social or intellectual critique. Slavery flourished as it provided a means to avoid poverty. The destitute would sell themselves and their descendants to provide for immediate needs. This piece of inconvenient history has actually become even more inconvenient since Belloc's day as the welfare state, and it's corresponding net of taxes, border controls and ID cards, has grown. Has 'democracy' allowed 'the masses' to sell themselves into state slavery on an installment basis?

The book touches on Belloc's own explorations of the role of Henry VIII's confiscations of Church property and it's redistribution to court favourites thus founding the great landed fortunes of England. Thus as Belloc notes in other books, establishing a powerful vested interest materially invested in the official anti-catholicism that held sway in the anglo-saxon world virtually for centuries. Belloc sees this act and subsequent actions pushed through by a state dominated by the same interests, for example, the enclosure of the commons, as tilting the development of English capitalism and industrialism against the now landless masses and proletariat. Propertyless masses are simultaneously prey to both the advocates of socialism and victims of economic instability. The servile state, Belloc hypothesizes, is built by these pressures from below and above. The most prominent capitalists have no problem aligning themselves with the state, however interventionist. This insight, offered in 1912, before the great wars and great depression accelerated the growth of big government, is perhaps the book's most accurate prophecy.

So has the growth of the modern welfare state proved Belloc's prediction of a new servile state? His prediction fails, although the 20th century did see new slave regimes under totalitarian guise, the liberal democracies did not evolve as far in the direction of forced labour as Belloc and later day followers imagined. But then again the dreams of the original founders and pioneers of welfarism failed too. The original welfare pioneers imagined a society of economic justice and security with the poor and homeless protected by impositions on the rich. They never foresaw a day when middle income earners would often be taxed at rates from 30 to 50% of their income with no apparent shift to egalitarianism. Although state enforced compulsory labour has not emerged (yet), Belloc's imagined servile future with a progressively disempowered mass and a surviving class of super-rich but politically well connected capitalists sometimes seems somewhat closer to modern reality than the vision splendid of the welfare pioneers.

Maybe we need to think of Belloc's book as a warning rather than a prophecy.

This is probably Belloc's most famous piece of social commentary.
Published in 1912, it foretold
the gradual merger of capitalism and socialism to form what
we today call the "consumer society."
Belloc traces Western
economic development from Roman times. He argues that the West
had just shed the last vestiges of feudal slavery in favor
of an independent yeomanry by the late Middle Ages when the
Protestant Reformation of the 16th century turned all this around, and resulted in the polarization
of wealth that has continued to this day. His thesis is that capitalism,
left to itself, is inherently unstable and must rely on state
intervention. Ultimately, however, the large corporations benefit from moderate socialism.
The
mass of working people are reduced to servile wage earning
conditions -- achieving basic material comfort, but no
meaningful economic freedom -- being kept in line by the bureaucrats to the benefit
of big business.

Belloc, a social and economic conservative, takes a sledgehammer to our assumptions about capitalism. It can be unsettling at first, but-- once it sinks in--very revealing. I haven't looked at the world the same way since. I now know we live in a corporate state where big government and corporate business are symbiotic. Belloc's apologies for the Catholic church are a bit forced, but he makes a strong case for some sort of societal counterweight to corporate enterprise. You should balance your reading of Belloc with Daniel Bell's "The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism." Then you'll realize that the existing arragement is neither great nor horrid. But, if it's to be much better we'll have to start questioning some of our basic and terribly misguided assumptions.

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.

The Servile State is perhaps Belloc's most complete exposition of his theory of the various possible forms of political economy. Belloc argues that Western Civilization was first founded on a servile economy, where a very small group of men owned the land, labor, and the capital necessary for production. Yes, they owned the labor. Hence, the appelation, servile. Belloc then argues that Western Civilization gradually became, from this servile state, a distributive political economy. By this, Belloc meant that ownership was widespread among free men. Belloc argues quite convincingly that this is the natural state of man. And it is certainly the state of Western Civilization when the predominat influence on civilization was the Mystical Body of Christ, His Holy Church. Belloc argues that this state of affairs came to be changed with the Reformation, what he, in other books, has styled the "shipwreck of civilization". Focusing on England, in particular, Belloc proves that a small, landed aristocracy became overwhelmingly powerful in this "rising of the rich against the poor" and, later, established the inherently unstable capitalist society.

Writing in 1912, Belloc held that the capitalistic society could not endure in its then present form. Looking back, it is how remarkable how prophetic was his vision. He argued that the collectivist form of socialism was, in essence, a chimera. Further, he set forth that the decayed capitalist state would ultimatley revert to a servile status.

As we look about us in 2008, it is truly striking how many of the features of the servile state are upon us. One factor that Belloc did not emphacize so much, but that is also dispositive of our current situation is the crushing impact of debt. Acknowledging that point, we can say that Belloc's book is remarkably prophetic, beautifully written, as are all of his works, and still tremendously important. Pick up this important little book. Give it a good and thoughtful read. And be richly blessed by the experience.

I loved the book. I have been trying to learn about the economic system of distributism for a while, and this book kept coming up as the best starting point. At first, I was skeptical of Mr. Belloc's premise that capitalism degrades into a socialist servile state, but he made the point, and his stuff is very easy to comprehend for us not so smarty pants.

My biggest problem with this book was the editing. It seems like someone ran it through a scanner and then ran a spell check on it, which substituted way too many words with the wrong ones. It actually ends up changing the context of some of the sentences, and I had to go back and re-read whole sections because of it.

It is about the worst editing job I have ever seen, and i would advise people to NOT buy this edition. I am sure there are other editions out there without this problem, and I would highly recommned buying them.

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 fact 'Servile State' shows 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 of our 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.

This is one of the most eudite and insightful books ever written on the topic. Shows how the modern mind has become so thoroughly currupted by Calvinism. The topic is still relevant to-day but since the book was written decades ago, current events could not be cited. To get the full effect from the author's thesis the reader has to read Pat Buchanan's "The Great Betrayal."