The cover page is adapted from At Madrid Coal Mine, New Mexico, a painting completed in 1934 by Carl Redin. The cover and title pages feature the League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by The League of Moveable Type. www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/
The Servile State
Chapters (14)
- Epigraph 0:00
- Dedication 0:12
- Preface to Second Edition 0:17
- Introduction 13:50
- I: Definitions 20:24
- II: Our Civilisation Was Originally Servile 49:18
- III: How the Servile Institution Was for a Time Dissolved 1:00:56
- IV: How the Distributive State Failed 1:22:11
- V: The Capitalist State in Proportion as It Grows Perfect Grows Unstable 1:54:13
- VI: The Stable Solutions of This Instability 2:14:33
- VII: Socialism Is the Easiest Apparent Solution of the Capitalist Crux 2:22:29
- VIII: The Reformers and Reformed Are Alike Making for the Servile State 2:42:24
- IX: The Servile State Has Begun 3:35:11
- Conclusion 4:20:28
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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.