The Servile State by Hilaire Belloc (books under 200 pages .txt) 📕

and confiscatory measures of our time have nothing to do with the problem here discussed. The state is indeed confiscating, that is, it is taxing in many cases in such a fashion as to impoverish the taxpayer and is lessening his capital rather than shearing his income. But it is not putting the proceeds into the means of production. It is either using them for immediate consumption in the shape of new official salaries or handing them over to another set of capitalists.9

But these practical considerations of the way in which sham socialist experiments are working belong rather to my next section, in which I shall deal with the actual beginnings of the servile state in our midst.

IX The Servile State Has Begun

The manifestation of the servile state in law or proposals of law will fall into two sorts⁠—(a) Laws or proposals of law compelling the proletariat to work⁠—(b) Financial operations riveting the grip of capitalists more strongly upon society⁠—As to (a), we find it already at work in measures such as the Insurance Act and proposals such as compulsory arbitration, the enforcement of trades union bargains and the erection of “labour colonies,” etc., for the “unemployable”⁠—As to the second, we find that so-called “municipal” or “socialist” experiments in acquiring the means of production have already increased and are continually increasing the dependence of society upon the capitalist.

In this last division of my book I deal with the actual appearance of the servile state in certain laws and proposals now familiar to the industrial society of modern England. These are the patent objects, “laws and projects of laws,” which lend stuff to my argument, and show that it is based not upon a mere deduction, but upon an observation of things.

Two forms of this proof are evident: first, the laws and proposals which subject the proletariat to servile conditions; next, the fact that the capitalist, so far from being expropriated by modern “socialist” experiments, is being confirmed in his power.

I take these in their order, and I begin by asking in what statutes or proposals the servile state first appeared among us.

A false conception of our subject might lead one to find the origins of the servile state in the restrictions imposed upon certain forms of manufacture, and the corresponding duties laid upon the capitalist in the interest of his workmen. The Factory Laws, as they are in this country, would seem to offer upon this superficial and erroneous view a starting point. They do nothing of the kind; and the view is superficial and erroneous because it neglects the fundamentals of the case. What distinguishes the servile state is not the interference of law with the action of any citizen even in connection with industrial matters. Such interference may or may not indicate the presence of a servile status. It in no way indicates the presence of that status when it forbids a particular kind of human action to be undertaken by the citizen as a citizen.

The legislator says, for instance, “You may pluck roses; but as I notice that you sometimes scratch yourself, I will put you in prison unless you cut them with scissors at least 122 millimetres long, and I will appoint one thousand inspectors to go round the country seeing whether the law is observed. My brother-in-law shall be at the head of the department at £2,000 a year.”

We are all familiar with that type of legislation. We are all familiar with the arguments for and against it in any particular case. We may regard it as onerous, futile, or beneficent, or in any other light, according to our various temperaments. But it does not fall within the category of servile legislation, because it establishes no distinction between two classes of citizens, marking off the one as legally distinct from the other by a criterion of manual labour or of income.

This is even true of such regulations as those which compel a cotton mill, for instance, to have no less than such and such an amount of cubic space for each operative, and such and such protection for dangerous machinery. These laws do not concern themselves with the nature, the amount, or even the existence of a contract for service. The object, for example, of the law which compels one to fence off certain types of machinery is simply to protect human life, regardless of whether the human being so protected is rich or poor, capitalist or proletarian. These laws may in effect work in our society so that the capitalist is made responsible for the proletarian, but he is not responsible qua capitalist, nor is the proletarian protected qua proletarian.

In the same way the law may compel me, if I am a riparian owner, to put up a fence of statutory strength wherever the water of my river is of more than a statutory depth. Now it cannot compel me to do this unless I am the owner of the land. In a sense, therefore, this might be called the recognition of my status, because, by the nature of the case, only landowners can be affected by the law, and landowners would be compelled by it to safeguard the lives of all, whether they were or were not owners of land.

But the category so established would be purely accidental. The object and method of the law do not concern themselves with a distinction between citizens.

A close observer might indeed discover certain points in the Factory Laws, details and phrases, which did distinctly connote the existence of a capitalist and of a proletarian class. But we must take the statutes as a whole and the order in which they were produced, above all, the general motive and expressions governing each main statute, in order to judge whether such examples of interference give us an origin or not.

The verdict will be that they do not. Such legislation may be oppressive in any