This book lays out, in very broad outline, Belloc's version of European economic history, starting with ancient pagan states, in which slavery was critical to the economy, through the medieval Christendom process which transformed an economy based on serf labour in a state in which the property was well distributed, to 19th and 20th century capitalism. Belloc argues that the development of capitalism was not a natural consequence of the Industrial Revolution, but a consequence of the earlier dissolution of the monasteries in England, which then shaped the course of English industrialisation. English capitalism then spread across the world.
Оглавление
Hilaire Belloc. The Servile State
The Servile State
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
The Subject of This Book
SECTION ONE. DEFINITIONS
SECTION TWO. OUR CIVILISATION WAS ORIGINALLY SERVILE
SECTION THREE. HOW THE SERVILE INSTITUTION WAS FOR A TIME DISSOLVED
SECTION FOUR. HOW THE DISTRIBUTIVE STATE FAILED
SECTION FIVE. THE CAPITALIST STATE IN PROPORTION AS IT GROWS PERFECT GROWS UNSTABLE
SECTION SIX. THE STABLE SOLUTIONS OF THIS INSTABILITY
SECTION SEVEN. SOCIALISM IS THE EASIEST APPARENT SOLUTION OF THE CAPITALIST CRUX
SECTION EIGHT. THE REFORMERS AND REFORMED ARE ALIKE MAKING FOR THE SERVILE STATE
Appendix on “Buying-Out”
SECTION NINE. THE SERVILE STATE HAS BEGUN
CONCLUSION
Endnotes
Отрывок из книги
Hilaire Belloc
Published by
.....
Many would argue that a man so compelled to labour, guaranteed against insecurity and against insufficiency of food, housing and clothing, promised subsistence for his old age, and a similar set of advantages for his posterity, would be a great deal better off than a free man lacking all these things. But the argument does not affect the definition attaching to the word servile. A devout Christian of blameless life drifting upon an ice-flow in the Arctic night, without food or any prospect of succour, is not so comfortably circumstanced as the Khedive of Egypt; but it would be folly in establishing the definition of the words “Christian” and “Mahommedan” to bring this contrast into account.
We must then, throughout this inquiry, keep strictly to the economic aspect of the case. Only when that is established and when the modern tendency to the re-establishment of slavery is clear, are we free to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the revolution through which we are passing.
