The Servile State

The author argues that modern industrial society, in which the means of production are concentrated in few hands, tends toward a stable arrangement enforcing compulsory labor and a durable status division between possessors and non-possessors. He defines key terms (capital, property, capitalist and servile states), traces how Christian influence dissolved ancient slavery into serfdom and a distributive order, explains the decline of that order into capitalism (notably in England), and analyzes capitalism's internal instabilities. He contrasts distributive and collectivist remedies, contending collectivism is likely to slide into servility, and points to legal and financial developments as early signs of an emerging servile condition.