The Servile State By Hilaire Belloc "... If we do not restore the Institution of Property we cannot escape restoring the Institution of Slavery; there is no third course." T.N. Foulis London & Edinburgh 1912 TO E.S.P. Haynes * * * Synopsis of the Servile State Introduction The Subject of this Book:--It is written to maintain the thesis that industrial society as we know it will tend towards the re-establishment of slavery. --The sections into which the book will be divided Section I Definitions:--What _wealth_ is and why necessary to man--How produced--The meaning of the words _Capital_, _Proletariat_, _Property_, _Means of Production_--The definition of the _Capitalist State_--The definition of the _/Servile State/_--What it is and what it is not--The re-establishment of status in the place of contract--That servitude is not a question of degree but of kind--Summary of these definitions. Section II Our Civilisation was originally Servile:--The Servile institution in Pagan antiquity--Its fundamental character--A Pagan society took it for granted--The institution disturbed by the advent of the Christian Church. Section III How the Servile Institution was for a Time Dissolved:--The subconscious effect of the Faith in this matter--The main elements of Pagan economic society--The Villa--The transformation of the agricultural slave into the Christian _serf_--Next into the Christian _peasant_--The corresponding erection throughout Christendom of the /_Distributive State_/--It is nearly complete at the close of the Middle Ages--"It was not machinery that lost us our freedom, it was the loss of a free mind." Section IV How the Distributive State Failed:--This failure original in England--The story of the decline from Distributive property to Capitalism--The economic revolution of the sixteenth century--The confiscation of monastic land--What might have happened had the State retained it--As a fact that land is captured by an oligarchy--England is Capitalist _before_ the advent of the industrial revolution--Therefore modern industry, proceeding from England, has grown in a Capitalist mould. Section V The Capitalist State in Proportion as It Grows Perfect Grows Unstable:--It can of its nature be but a transitory phase lying between an earlier and a later stable state of society--The two internal strains which render it unstable--_(a)_ The conflict between its social realities and its moral and legal basis--_(b)_ The insecurity and insufficiency to which it condemns free citizens--The few possessors can grant or withhold livelihood from the many non-possessors--Capitalism is so unstable that it dares not proceed to its own logical conclusion, but tends to restrict competition among owners, and insecurity and insufficiency among non-owners.