The Servile State
London & Edinburgh: T.N. Foulis, 1913. Second edition. Octavo (8 inches tall), original gray cloth, black titles to spine and front board, uncut. Early owner signature, mild toning to spine, sporadic faint foxing. A near-fine copy. Item #1717
"THAT THE MERE CAPITALIST ANARCHY CANNOT ENDURE IS PATENT TO ALL MEN"
Scarce second edition of The Servile State—Hilaire Belloc's critique of Industrial Capitalism and an important expression of the Distributist movement. "I have always felt that The Servile State was a much more significant book than we suspected. No one on today's socialist left can condemn 'capitalism' more eloquently than Belloc could and did" (James Schall). Rare.
Despite using the largely-secular vocabulary typical of the age, Belloc's attempt to chart a middle course between the mirror ills of Capitalism and Socialism was a direct descendent of Rerum Novarum—Pope Leo XIII's landmark encyclical of 1891. Speaking for "a social tradition that is neither capitalist nor socialist" (James Schall), Belloc "seemed to argue that the Catholic Church alone had discovered a desirable and sustainable social order, a politics at once very ancient and very new that would revive a dying civil society" (James M. Wilson, The Catholic Thing). Published a year after the October 1912 first edition, this printing adds a lengthy Preface to Second Edition ("Kings Land, Shipley, Horsham, Sussex"), in which Belloc answers the critical reviews, which "convinces the author that parts of his argument are liable to misconception. The Socialist ideal," Belloc continues, "in conflict with and yet informing the body of Capitalism, produces a third thing very different from the Socialist ideal—to wit, the Servile State. It is important to have this point clear."
"My argument that slavery was slowly transformed and that the old Pagan Servile State slowly approached a Distributive State under the influence of the Catholic Church is not a piece of special pleading put forward to please my co-religionists. It is a plain piece of historical fact." The Servile State asserted the importance of "ownership" of land by smallholders: "Whereas 'capitalism' or economic proletarianism centralized the ownership of land and capital into the hands of a small number of powerful businessmen, socialism centralized or collectivized it into the hands of a small number of powerful politicians. In both cases the vast majority of ordinary people remained without either land or capital and was therefore proletarianized. As such, the choice between 'capitalism' (as Belloc defines it) and socialism was a choice between economic proletarianism and political proletarianism. It was a choice between being ruled by Big Business or Big Brother" (Joseph Pearce). Though popular enough to warrant this second edition in 1913, and a third edition in 1927, The Servile State would not be published in the United States until after the Second World War (1946). Bound with the publisher's two-page catalogue ("Some Literary Books") at the rear. James Schall. Another Sort of Learning: Selected Contrary Essays; Joseph Pearce. Literary Converts: Spiritual Inspiration in an Age of Unbelief; See Patrick Cahill. The English First Editions of Hilaire Belloc, 54.
Price: $300.00