The Servile State (1912)

Their wordsIts test is, I repeat, the withdrawal from a man of his free choice to labour or not to labour, here or there, for such and such an object; and the compelling of him by positive law to labour for the advantage of others who do not fall under the same compulsion.

Their wordsIn no matter what field of the European past we make our research, we find, from two thousand years ago upwards, one fundamental institution whereupon the whole of society reposes; that fundamental institution is Slavery.

Their wordsIndeed, the most striking feature of that Servile Basis upon which Paganism reposed was the human equality recognised between master and slave. The master might kill the slave, but both were of one race and each was human to the other.

Their wordsNo dogma of the Church pronounced Slavery to be immoral, or the sale and purchase of men to be a sin, or the imposition of compulsory labour upon a Christian to be a contravention of any human right.

Their wordsAbove all, most jealously did the Guild safeguard the division of property, so that there should be formed within its ranks no proletariat upon the one side, and no monopolising capitalist upon the other.

Their wordsIt was not machinery that lost us our freedom; it was the loss of a free mind.

Their wordsBut the great main fact upon which the whole thing is dependent is the fact that the Monastic Lands, at least a fifth of the wealth of the country, had been transferred to the great landowners, and that this transference had tipped the scale over entirely in their favour as against the peasantry.

Their wordsThe Capitalist State is unstable, and indeed more properly a transitory phase lying between two permanent and stable states of society.

Their wordsThe vast bulk of so-called “free” contracts are to-day leonine contracts: arrangements which one man was free to take or to leave, but which the other man was not free to take or to leave, because the second had for his alternative starvation.

Their wordsMost men now fear the loss of employment more than they fear legal punishment, and the discipline under which men are coerced in their modern forms of activity in England is the fear of dismissal. The true master of the Englishman to-day is not the Sovereign nor the officers of State, nor, save indirectly, the laws; his true master is the Capitalist.

Their wordsThere are but three social arrangements which can replace Capitalism: Slavery, Socialism, and Property.

Their wordsThe Capitalist State breeds a Collectivist Theory which in action produces something utterly different from Collectivism: to wit, the Servile State.

Their wordsIn a word, the man who desires to re-establish property as an institution normal to most citizens in the State is working against the grain of our existing Capitalist society, while a man who desires to establish Socialism—that is Collectivism—is working with the grain of that society.

Their wordsWhat proportion would refuse it no one can determine; but I say that even as a voluntary offer, and not as a compulsory obligation, a contract of this sort which would for the future destroy contract and re-erect status of a servile sort would be thought a boon by the mass of the proletariat to-day.

Their wordsWe have of this an example in actual law at this moment. And that law the Insurance Act (whose political source and motive I am not here discussing) follows in every particular the lines of a Servile State.

Their wordsThe provision of a fixed schedule during unemployment thus inevitably leads to the examination, the defining, and at last the imposition of a minimum wage during employment; and every compulsory provision for unemployed benefits is the seed of a minimum wage.

Their wordsI have said that the principle of a minimum wage involves as its converse the principle of compulsory labour.

Their wordsCapitalism has seen to it that it shall be a winner and not a loser by this form of sham Socialism, as by every other.

Their wordsFor my part, as I have said in these pages, I do not believe there are more than two: a reaction towards well-divided property, or the re-establishment of servitude. I cannot believe that theoretical Collectivism, now so plainly failing, will ever inform a real and living society.

Their wordsAnd as I am upon the whole hopeful that the Faith will recover its intimate and guiding place in the heart of Europe, so I believe that this sinking back into our original Paganism (for the tendency to the Servile State is nothing less) will in due time be halted and reversed.