In The Servile State, British-French writer and historian Hilaire Belloc makes a provocative case that capitalism will inevitably move toward the reestablishment of slavery. The thesis in this book forms the backbone of Belloc's life-long effort as an advocate for reform to the existing socioeconomic system in the direction of what he terms as "distributism."
As a critic of both socialism and capitalism, and a fervent Catholic, Belloc lays out a history of Europe where, over generations, the pagan slavery of the Roman Empire was transformed into a "distributive" model of the Middle Ages. But, he argues, this model was broken by the rise of capitalism in England during the reign of Henry VIII. Ever since, capitalism has been moving ever closer towards the servile state: the restoration of status in the place of contract, and a vast proletariat of wage-earners with few incredibly wealthy owners.
Perfect for readers fascinated by bold economic theories and alternative visions of society, this prescient work offers a compelling third way between the extremes of socialism and capitalism. Belloc's passionate argument for distributism and his warnings about economic servitude remain strikingly relevant to today's debates about wealth inequality and corporate power.
The source for this public-domain ebook is Standard Ebooks (standardebooks.org). Ebooks from other sources often have typos, inconsistent spelling, missing accent marks, and missing punctuation. Ebooks from Standard Ebooks are proofread line by line against a scan of the original printed pages, then proofread again from cover to cover. They are also formatted and typeset following a professional-grade style manual, resulting in new editions supporting state-of-the-art ereader technology: automatic hyphenation, popup footnotes, complete and consistent metadata, high-resolution and scalable vector graphics, and ereader-compatible tables of contents. All of this makes the finished ebooks accurate, functional, and beautiful, a pleasure to read. (Waking Lion Press is not affiliated with or endorsed by Standard Ebooks.)