The Servile State

The Servile State is a book written by Hilaire Belloc about economics. Although it mentions Distributism, for which he and his friend G. K. Chesterton are famous, it avoids explicit advocation for that economic system. This book lays out, in very broad outline, Belloc's version of European economic history: starting with ancient states, where slavery was critical to the economy, through the medieval economies based on serf and peasant labor, to capitalism. Belloc then makes his case for the natural instability of pure capitalism and discusses how (as he believes) attempts to reform capitalism will lead almost inexorably to an economy where state regulation has removed the freedom of capitalism and thereby replaced capitalism with the Servile State, which shares with ancient slavery the fact that positive law (as opposed to custom or economic necessity by themselves) dictates that certain people will work for others, who likewise must take care of them.