The Servile State

Rating:
Summary: interesting
Review: Although this is undeniably an interesting work, there are many curious aspects to it. For one, it is one of the only works ever written by an advocate of "distributivism." Belloc expounds a very strange train of thought indeed, but never the less, comes off with many strong points in the process. However, his view of the middle ages is very out of line, as is his perspective on the history of Catholicism and freedom. Regardless, it is still a fascinating work, well worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A forgotten classic
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Forging the Chains of Slavery: The Nanny State and You
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Another Name For Slavery
Review: In 1912 Belloc was conscious of the folly of New Deal legislation and predicted the sort of problems that came to pass in recent years. Liberals spoke the language of liberty, but they were driving the country toward servitude, all in the name of equality, security, social justice, and humanitarianism.

What today is called the welfare state Belloc was calling the servile state. He defined it as a group of people working, through force of law and taxation, not for themselves or their families but for other people.

Belloc traced this type of slavery to the Reformation, when the Tudor kings of England confiscated the wealth of the monasteries and of tens of thousands of small farmers. This takeover created the propertyless masses, whose economic insecurity compelled them to turn to the state for help. Therefore capitalism prepared the way for ever increasing forms of collectivism and socialism, which further eroded individual liberty. By acting as the Provider, the state also became the Master.

In his lucid introduction, Robert Nisbet notes the similarities between Belloc's views and those of Burke and Jefferson. All three professed a devotion to tradition and continuity while remaining suspicious of large, centralized, bureaucratic organizations, such as the big cities and industries of the time.

Against the Reformation and the sort of capitalism it created, Belloc juxtaposed the Middle Ages, with its abolition of slavery and its wide distribution of property, thus its greater emphasis on individual liberty. With Chesterton he proposed an economic system called distributivism.

Unfortunately, Belloc never said how his scheme could be accomplished, and it never gained many followers. His meager optimism declined throughout his life, as he gradually conceded, like Burke and Jefferson, that he was on the losing side in a world increasingly governed by the managerial state.

No major political party in the world today is working toward anything like Belloc's system of free, self-sufficient property owners, nor is there evidence that this kind of independence is sought by many people. My recommendation for the book is therefore qualified by its futility.

Rating:
Summary: The Servile State Versus The Distributivist Society.
Review: 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_.

Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: 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."

Rating:
Summary: "How the Consumer Society Came to Be"
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: "How the Consumer Society Came to Be"
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly muddled thinking
Review: This was a book that I simply couldn't stop reading, not because it was illuminating. On the contrary, I kept hoping that with the next turn of the page, Melloc would make sense or at the very least say something that wasn't muddled, confused or vague. I got through 200 pages still scratching my head!

His outline is this. Unrestrained capitalism is unstable as it puts property in the hands of the few and the many are left propertyless. This instability can only be resolved in three ways: 1)all property becomes collectively owned through the state (socialism), 2)The return of the 'servile state,' where the propertyless few are forced to labor for bare subsistance provided by those that own the property, and 3)distributive state, where property is distributed equally, but each owner has individual property rights thereto. Melloc's theory is that any attempt at socialism will lead to an equally undesirable servile state, leaving the only real option of distributivism.

In theory this sounds great and to Melloc's credit, he states his goals right off. He then defines his key terms- something that political scientists should ALWAYS do. It's a good thing he does this, because the definitions he gives are completely WRONG!!!

Property, he defines strictly as means of production. Property rights, then, refer only to that with the ability to aide in production. No wonder so many people, as Melloc sees it, are propertyless!! Next he defines capitalism not as a system of contractual economics that recognizes individual property rights (as it's usually defined) but as any situation where the few as opposed to the many, own the means of production. Under any conventional definition that also describes fascism, socialism, and feudalism, but Melloc fails to see the connection (especially with feudalism, which he applauds)!

The next big problem is Melloc's black-and-white approach to what does and does not constitute servitude. Early on, he is clear that one is only a slave if either one is absolutely forced to work (for moderate or little return) or was moderately compelled to work for life (again for moderate or little return). Later on in the book though, we notice Melloc's inability to see any middle ground. He groans at minimum wage, and 'pro-labor' quality control measures simply because he assumes that anyone in an employee/employer position must be there by unwilling servitude. There does exist grey area between the upper-crust and the slave.

The last major problem is his solution of the 'distributive state' where citizens have private ownership of property. Although Melloc never addresses how, when, how often, and what apportionment will be used, the infeasability of the 'distributive state' is not hard to see. Even if we suppose that property will be distributed equally (having been snatched from the former capitalist owners) there still exist two problems. First, by the act of snatching, you've already violated property rights. If property can be taken without just compensation, than the term is meaningless. Second, this equality of property will only last so long. As some have a natural talent for business (or any other trade, for that matter) some owners will outshine others, and the really adroit ones will gradually put the other owners under. Right back where we started; What then?!

So why two stars? Melloc, though politically feeble-brained, is a good writer and if one can keep his definitions straight, his can be rather insightful. His critiques on what would soon be the FDR welfare-state are pretty accurate and in depth. Also, like I said, this book did keep my attention, which for mish-mash like this, is an outstanding feat.