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1
2
3an essay on the
4restoration of property
5To the parents of the Directors.
6An
7Essay
8on the
9Restoration of Property
10by
11Hilaire Belloc
12Norfolk, VA
132002
14An Essay on the Restoration of Property.
15Copyright © 2002 IHS Press.
16First published in 1936 by The Distributist League.
17Text of the Essay copyright the Estate of Hilaire Belloc.
18Preface, footnotes, typesetting, layout, and cover design
19copyright 2002 IHS Press.
20All rights reserved.
21ISBN-13 (eBook): 978-1-932528-23-7
22
23Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
24Belloc, Hilaire, 1870-1953.
25An essay on the restoration of property / by Hilaire Belloc.
26p. cm.
27ISBN 0-9714894-4-0 (alk. paper)
281. Land reform--England. 2. Land tenure--England. 3. Property--
29England. I. Title
30HD1333.G72 E543 2002
31333.3’142--dc21
322002073663
33Printed in the United States of America.
34This edition has largely preserved the spelling, punctuation, and
35formatting of Belloc’s original 1936 edition.
36FRONTISPIECE: Haytime in the Cotswolds by James Bateman.
37IHS Press is the only publisher dedicated exclusively
38to the Social Teachings of the Catholic Church.
39Table of Contents
40Page
41Introduction.......................................................7
42Preface...............................................................19
43The Restoration of Property.................................25
44“...though certainly it is impossible to change a false philosophy
45in time to save the situation, yet there may be enough normal
46love of freedom remaining, however feeble, to be used as a
47starting point. There may be embers aglow here and there,
48sufficient to start the small beginnings of a flame.”
49Introduction
50“People do not live and work in order to buy stocks.”
51– The Nation
52August 19, 2002
53Insofar as Hilaire Belloc is known at all by the modern world, he
54is known only as a writer of children’s tales. He is known in his
55most innocuous and least-threatening aspect – an easy escape
56for those who do not wish to have comfortable lives and convenient
57assumptions challenged and exposed. Yet even a fair appreciation
58of Belloc’s stories for children is, if taken in isolation, ultimately a
59failed appreciation of Belloc himself; to appreciate this fierce critic
60of modernity as merely a children’s writer is not really to appreciate
61Belloc at all. It is to appreciate an aspect of him, much the way he
62accused non-Catholic historians of appreciating this or that aspect
63of European history. Only those who can truly sympathize with a
64life of crusading for the Truth can fully appreciate Belloc’s career,
65for Belloc crusaded for Truth in all fields, at all times, and in every
66subject: in fiction, in religion, in politics, and in economics.
67Yes, economics.
68Modern practitioners of the “dismal science” would be reluctant,
69of course, to grant Belloc any status as an “economist;” nor
70would Belloc have wanted such a status. For modern economists
71spring from a tradition both foreign and hostile to that which nurtured
72Belloc. Theirs is a tradition of materialist philosophy and an
73obsession with a mere technical analysis of what is; today the analysis
74is more often than not an attempted explanation of what isn’t (like
75corporate assets or the value of a portfolio of futures commodities).
76Belloc’s is rather a science of reality, based upon a conception not
77merely of what is, in this vale of tears, but more importantly of what
78ought to be, according to Divine and natural law.
79The Restoration of Property
80Readers therefore will not find, in Belloc’s works, traces of
81that skepticism which speaks of politics as merely the “art of the
82possible,” and of economics as a science of hypotheses based solely
83on observable phenomena and codified into a collection of equations,
84charts and graphs. As an integral Catholic, Belloc followed in the
85footsteps of St. Thomas the realist, who spoke of Politics as the moral
86science “which considers the proper ordering of men,” and Political
87Economy as that science “concerned with the using of money…for
88the good estate of the home.”
89Thus is Belloc’s treatment of economic questions, in Restoration
90of Property, Economics for Helen, and the Servile State, concerned with
91reality in both its profoundest sense and its most practical. Profound
92because Belloc has always before him a knowledge of the Purpose of
93the sciences, a knowledge that all of the tools, techniques, and means
94employed by them are given clear and well-defined directions and
95orientations by their various Purposes. And practical because when
96Belloc considers economic matters he is concerned not with the
97pie (-in-the-sky) charts of modern economic theoreticians, but rather
98with how to solve the problem of securing for men the material necessities
99of life in a manner most befitting both their dignity as free men
100and their sublimity as souls destined for Heaven. There is nothing
101novel in so doing; Belloc simply follows St. Thomas in subordinating
102the acquisition of wealth to the true needs of man: “That a man
103may lead a good life, two things are required. The chief requisite is
104virtuous action…. The other requisite, which is secondary and quasiinstrumental
105in character, is a sufficiency of material goods, the use
106of which is necessary for virtuous action” (On Kingship, I, xv).
107Such an approach has for a long time seemed quaint and
108“unrealistic” to a society concerned with satisfying “the bottom line”
109and getting “more bang for the buck.” Has seemed quaint – until
110recently. Today such an approach is touted almost as a “revelation”
111by many moderns who, all of a sudden, are realizing – even if unconsciously
112– that St. Thomas had the order of economic priorities exactly
113right. Protesting the domination of economic activity by finance, and
114the lawlessness of corporate America, a recent editorial in the Nation
115declares, “The larger purpose of the economic order, including Wall
116Street, is to support the material conditions for human existence.”
117Introduction
118How charmingly similar to the approach taken by the classical and
119Catholic political economists, men forming a constant and coherent
120tradition extending over 2200 years, from Aristotle of the fourth
121century B.C. to Charles Devas of the early 20th century A.D.!
122The editorial continues: “During the past two decades, a
123profound inversion has occurred in the governing values of US
124economic life and, in turn, captured politics and elite discourse – the
125triumph of finance over the real economy. In the natural order of
126capitalism, the financial system is supposed to serve the economy of
127production – goods and services, jobs and incomes – but the narrow
128values of Wall Street have become the master.”
129Such an observation is both a step forward and a step back.
130A step forward, because it confirms that there are some who have
131managed to keep a strong enough hold on common sense to recognize
132that, ultimately, all of the financial wizardry in the world
133means nothing if it doesn’t translate into a secure provisioning of
134the average family with the goods and services that are necessary for
135a healthy and becoming life. A step backward, though, because to
136demand that the “natural order of capitalism” subject finance to real
137economic values is to ask of it something that it was never intended
138to provide. A system based purely on free competition cannot possibly
139be expected to produce, of its own nature, the subordination
140of finance and capital to the needs of men, precisely because those
141“little” needs do not possess the economic might that would allow
142them to compete successfully with huge conglomerations of business
143and money. “It’s a jungle out there” is no quaint reference to a family
144trip to the zoo; the cliché only too well describes modern economic
145life as it is practiced and accepted by modern men in the “civilized”
146West. “Survival of the fittest” does not produce order, harmony, and
147well-distributed bliss when the operative principle is not an “indifferent”
148and inanimate Mother Nature, but rather the capacity of
149fallen Man to desire an infinite amount of wealth, regardless of the
150consequences for himself or his neighbor.
151No matter how obvious such an observation might seem, even
152the most brilliant of modern economists remain shocked and surprised
153that a system which does not have any built-in restraint upon
154man’s avarice can produce such devastating results: “I can only say,”
15510 The Restoration of Property
156said John K. Galbraith in a recent interview with the U.K.-based
157Independent, “I hadn’t expected to see this problem on anything like
158the magnitude of the last few months – the separation of ownership
159from management, the monopolization of control by irresponsible
160personal money-makers.”
161One wonders what exactly Mr. Galbraith had expected to see.
162Such “shock and surprise” can only be attributed to a failure – intentional
163or otherwise – to look not at the figures but at the facts; facts
164of both history and logic, which reveal that the glory of the Christian
165West consisted not “in every man doing what he pleases,” as the great
166Leo XIII put it in his magnificent encyclical Libertas, “for this would
167simply end in turmoil and confusion;” but rather in submission, both
168individual and social, to the Eternal Law, a Law that remains even
169today written on the hearts of men, and which was at one time written
170also in their constitutions, statutes, codes, and charters.
171“He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (St. Matthew xi:1),
172Our Lord said. Few, even among Catholics, did hear. In retrospect
173the Church’s prescience is striking: “…it is obvious that not only is
174wealth concentrated in our times but an immense power and despotic
175economic dictatorship is consolidated in the hands of a few, who
176often are not owners but only the trustees and managing directors
177of invested funds which they administer according to their own arbitrary
178will and pleasure.” This isn’t a recent CNN financial “special
179report;” this is Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno over seventy years
180ago. Men will learn eventually, and if they insist on rejecting the
181received wisdom of generations past, they do not thereby succeed at
182invalidating it; they merely condemn themselves to learning it, time
183and again, by ever grimmer experience.
184***
185Thus is the time more propitious now than it has been in recent
186memory to re-introduce the wisdom of the Distributists – those
187such as Fr. Vincent McNabb, G.K. Chesterton, Arthur Penty, and
188others, including, of course, Hilaire Belloc, who sought consistently,
189coherently, and unapologetically, to apply the Social Doctrine of the
190Church to 20th-century problems. Modern men seem to be in a rare,
191though doubtless brief, mood of willingness – and almost eagerness
192Introduction 11
193– to think about all things economic. We avail ourselves, therefore,
194of the opportunity herewith to put before the reader Belloc’s classic
195Essay on the Restoration of Property.
196That the Essay does not include comprehensive figures and statistics
197typical of studies of the vast fabric of economic life should be
198obvious from its short length; that will be, no doubt, welcome news
199to most. Though it may not be so to some who might be tempted to
200ask, “What else is there to discuss in the field of economics?” Such
201a question stems from the fact that there are few today who have
202any exposure to a method of reasoning which “begins at the beginning,”
203as Belloc says in his famous essay on Industrial Capitalism. It
204is a method which starts with the Purpose of economic life, as wise
205men have always conceived of it, and as even those not so wise have
206recently and reluctantly admitted. It examines that purpose, and proceeds
207to propose means which are fitted to achieving it. It deals with
208facts – facts of human nature, facts of history, hard facts of economic
209life such as land, homes, clothing, tools, and trades. What it does not
210deal with is isolated bits of data which can be manipulated at will,
211and presented in a very pretty package, in order to reflect whatever
212degree of reality – or unreality – the situation requires.
213What is, therefore, both assumed and implied by such a method
214is that man is the master of his destiny, and his mastery extends even
215to things economic. Man has free will, and the question at the root of
216Belloc’s reasoning in Restoration of Property – like the reasoning of St.
217Thomas and all those who followed him – concerns how man should
218use that free will in order to achieve the end of economic life, namely,
219“the good estate of the home.”
220This question of freedom is central to the Restoration, both
221implicitly and explicitly.
222Implicitly because the Essay, and the science of Political Economy
223in general, assumes that it is up to man to regulate, according
224to his free decisions, economic forces and economic activity in order
225to achieve the end desired. The political economist does not concede
226that there is an economic “law,” inviolable and unchangeable, that
227must be obeyed the way man obeys the laws of an inanimate universe,
228in spite of the fact that some Catholics – interested perhaps in currying
229favor with rehabilitated liberals who worship the “free market”
23012 The Restoration of Property
231– themselves maintain that very position, based upon out-of-context
232quotations from Scholastic theologians who are speciously (and
233scandalously!) accused of laying the foundations of modern capitalism.
234Such a conception is foreign to the true economic science; it is a
235conception born of “the principles of rationalism” which produced, as
236Pius XI explained, a “body of economic teaching far removed from
237the true moral law.” The true economic science deals with real men,
238who can make decisions, right or wrong, or leave them unmade; and
239thus the central question of economics as with politics is how ought
240things to be ordered. Belloc himself reminds us of this point in the
241Essay:
242The defenders of industrial capitalism – such few of them
243as are left – and those with the same type of mind who defend
244Socialism, and its only logical form, Communism, have told us
245over and over again that amalgamation is inevitable. They call
246it an “economic necessity” because they think that any instrument
247or method cheaper or more efficient for the special purpose
248of production or transport must necessarily oust the somewhat
249less cheap or somewhat less efficient. They also imply that
250there is a necessity for the greedier man and the more cunning
251man to eat up the more generous and less instructed.
252They who talk thus confuse what they here call “necessity”
253with that true necessity imposed by universal physical laws
254independent of the human will.
255Belloc deals with the question of freedom explicitly as well:
256he examines how best to guarantee man’s economic freedom. This
257freedom, for Belloc, is not the one imagined by the classical liberals
258and their Objectivist, libertarian, or “conservative” heirs. It is not a
259defense of license – man’s freedom to do no matter what to no matter
260whom, and the silly conception that such a capitalist freedom is the
261only one which truly respects man’s free nature. Belloc’s is a defense
262of the economic freedom which comes from the possession of sufficient
263productive property, such that a man need not depend upon
264his employer for a wage, but has rather to depend upon himself and
265his land, craft, tools, and trade for his sustenance.
266Introduction 13
267At first hearing, the notion is almost incomprehensible! Belloc
268himself recognized how difficult it would be for us moderns to
269understand: “When men have become wage slaves they think in
270terms of income. When they are economically free they think in
271terms of property.” But think in such a fashion we must, if we are
272ever to remedy the current disordered state of affairs in which man’s
273real needs are subordinated to the exigencies of the amassing of
274financial wealth.
275For those who are still loath to admit it, a quick glance at the
276facts should put to rest any notion that the current system makes
277man as much an owner of real wealth and property as was his noble,
278European, yeoman ancestor, to whom Belloc and his colleagues so
279often refer.
280(1) “Conservatives” like to speak of the culture of death; they
281would do well to focus their attention on the culture of debt, for the
282institutionalized Usury so characteristic of the post-medieval world
283is as deadly to society, and as unnatural and unproductive, as are
284the host of cultural ills ranging from abortion to homosexuality to
285euthanasia. Those who claim to be home-owners forget that in most
286cases the real homeowners
287are the banks, and that they themselves
288are on a rent-to-own program which normally lasts 30 years and sees
289a “modest” compound interest rate translate into a payment in real
290terms of several times the value of the home. Meanwhile, the culture
291of debt offers the opportunity to squander whatever ownership one
292has acquired by re-mortgaging a home in exchange for cash to be
293consumed on luxury items of all kinds. The whole of mortgage debt
294in the U.S. is close to five and a half trillion dollars; the rate of savings
295as a percent of disposable income has remained near zero for
296several years; and the ratio of household debt to disposable income is
297now over one hundred percent! So much for modern man, the proud
298“home owner.”
299(2) Today, finance, economics, and wealth itself is largely a
300fiction. Few own real, tangible property; most own and deal in
301electronic assets. A single day’s change in the U.S. stock market of
302a few percent “creates” or “destroys” over a trillion dollars worth of
303“wealth,” though such a change affects nothing in companies’ physi14
304The Restoration of Property
305cal assets, or in their ability to produce a product or provide a service.
306Americans who have been forced, both by inflation and the going
307economic “advice,” to put their hard-earned money into stocks have
308been afforded the opportunity to watch the elimination of billions of
309dollars worth of retirement funds and pension plans tied up in stocks
310and mutual funds as a result of corporate bankruptcies or stock
311market devaluations. And all of this takes place without a single
312tangible asset – without real wealth – ever changing hands.
313Meanwhile, the “wealth and power” of the American corporation
314is sustained by a record $4.7 trillion worth of “credit,” which
315must eventually be paid back to venture capitalists, banks, and bondholders.
316Add to that the fact that corporate accounting seems ever
317more determined not to account for anything. A financial newsletter
318recently reminded its readers of just how false and deceptive corporate
319financial statements can be, through the use of “infamous ‘pro
320forma earnings’ – a calculation designed to exclude as many expenses
321as possible from the reported earnings. Expert practitioners of the
322pro forma charade,” the newsletter continued, “could paint a very
323pleasing picture of a company’s financial health, no matter how grim
324the actual cash flow trend.”
325And the fictitious financial wheel is kept rolling by the “mother
326of all creditors,” the U.S. Federal Reserve, a private banking corporation
327which, since its foundation in 1913, has held the reigns of
328financial power in America through its strangle-hold on credit, a
329power which Pius XI called the ability to “regulate the flow, so to
330speak, of the life-blood whereby the entire economic system lives”
331(QA, 106). Should any of the big investment firms find themselves
332exposed to excessive risk, thanks to their own financial irresponsibility,
333they will no doubt be labeled “too big to fail;” they can be kept
334alive by a creation of cash (out of thin air) by the private banking
335cartel which hasn’t balked at floating even the U.S. government to
336the tune of a $6.12 trillion public debt.
337(3) The financial wealth which does exist is concentrated, to
338an unprecedented degree, into a very few hands. That of the top one
339percent of households in America exceeds the combined wealth of
340the bottom ninety-five percent. A snapshot look at 1998 shows that
341the top-earning one percent had as much income as the one hundred
342Introduction 15
343million Americans with the lowest earnings; and while corporate
344executives’ pay in 1980 was a “mere” forty-two times that of the average
345production worker, by 1998 the figure grew to 419 times!
346***
347There is currently no shortage of criticism of this absolutely
348catastrophic situation. A threat to creature comforts and useless luxuries,
349though born essentially of “credit” that has no real existence,
350will make even the most uninterested howl with rage. What is absent,
351however, and what Belloc herein offers, is a solution.
352That no solution will be forthcoming from anywhere else is
353obvious from the alternatives with which we are even now presented
354by those proposing to remedy the situation. Some suggest “restoring
355the New Deal,” a socialist scheme attractive to some because
356of the evils that the “free market” itself had produced, but, more
357accurately, an opportunity for others to accomplish in one stroke an
358unprecedented expansion of government power and centralization,
359the final steps of which would no doubt be played out in any “New
360Deal II.” Still others propose more of what lies essentially at the root
361of the economic disorder: “greater freedom and limited government
362in the spirit of Smith and Jefferson,” as Milton Friedman suggests
363in his 1990 book, Free to Choose.
364No, it is only the true Catholic, the heir of both true philosophy
365and sound economic practice, who offers not merely a third way, but
366the only way; a solution to the crisis which stems ultimately from what
367Devas, in his Political Economy, calls “the disastrous separation of
368economics from ethics, [which] was to be expected with the decay of
369philosophy, the loss of the sense of the unity of science, and the corresponding
370separation of political science from ethics.”
371Belloc, however, sees that unity of philosophy and the sciences;
372and for him it is a unity that is also historical. Belloc is still very
373much the historian, even in the present Essay. He knows that it is the
374moderns who reject the wisdom of history in continuing to defend
375the “unlimited freedom of struggle among competitors” which Pius
376XI correctly condemned as leading to the “concentration of power
377and might, the characteristic mark, as it were, of contemporary economic
378life” (QA, 107). It is rather the Distributists who articulate the
37916 The Restoration of Property
380programs which are compatible with human nature, and correspond
381to the common practice of mankind: a practice of the defense of the
382small property owner from economic extinction, “by the setting up
383of institutions for the protection of small property...institutions [that]
384have never broken down of themselves, but always and only under
385the conscious action of a deliberately hostile attack.”
386That attack began, as Belloc says, with “the destruction of the
387Guilds, coupled with the seizure of collegiate property in all countries
388transformed by the Reformation.” It is an attack that continues
389to our day, intentionally on the part of a few, but mostly by force of
390habit on the part of those born into a system in which “completely
391free rein [is] given to human passions” (QA, 133).
392It was to remedy this state of things that Belloc and his colleagues
393enunciated and defended the Distributist Vision, and for
394which aim we are now pleased to present Belloc’s masterful Essay.
395We may be permitted to hope that its re-issue will contribute in
396some small way to a Restoration of not only property, but also of that
397conception of economic life which subordinates money and wealth to
398both the true needs of man and to the true Order which is Divine.
399The Directors
400IHS Press
401August 15, 2002
402Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
403“As Our glorious Predecessor, Pius XI, has so effectively shown in
404his Encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno, it happens too often that
405human needs do not, in accordance with their natural and objective
406importance, rule economic life and the use of capital. On the
407contrary, capital and its desire for gain determine what the needs of
408man should be and to what extent they are to be satisfied. Therefore,
409it is not human labor in the service of the common welfare that
410attracts capital to it and presses it into its service. Rather, capital
411tosses labor and man himself here and there like a ball in a game. If
412the inhabitant of the city suffers from this unnatural state of affairs,
413so much the more is it contrary to the very essence of the farmer’s life.
414Notwithstanding all his difficulties, the tiller of the soil still represents
415the natural order of things willed by God. The farmer knows
416that man, by his labor, is to control material things; that material
417things are not to control man.”
418—Pope Pius XII
419November 15, 1946
420
421Preface
422The “Essay on the Restoration of Property” which is here put
423before the reader, requires a word or two by way of preliminary,
424lest it should be misunderstood.
425It will be noticed in the first place, that I have not dealt with
426the matter as a general, but as a particular, problem. I have discussed
427only opportunities for restoring property in modern England. I have
428given my reasons for so restricting the field. With English society
429affording today an extreme example of the destruction of property as
430an institution, to show the possibility of its restoration here is to show
431the possibility of its restoration anywhere.
432Another and more practical reason is that in writing of England
433the writer has a concrete subject with which he is better acquainted
434than he is with the conditions of other countries.
435It is therefore not a waste of effort or a provincial anomaly to
436consider the case of England by itself; for what is true of England in
437the matter is applicable to any less capitalistic society. My arguments
438apply, for instance, to Belgium, on its industrialized side, although in
439Belgium there is a large body of popular ownership remaining, and
440a strong peasantry which needs no revival.
441Some may criticize me for not discussing the social and political
442arguments against small ownership. Its dangers and drawbacks
443are considerable and certainly deserve weighing against its advantages.
444Property, or management, concentrated in few hands, is used
445with greater knowledge and under better opportunities for large
446developments. A society of small owners may be over conservative
447and timid, probably more ignorant, than an economic oligarchy
448controlling its mass of wage slaves. In Foreign Affairs it is less likely
449to judge wisely and act rapidly. It may well be suspicious of new
45020 The Restoration of Property
451inventions and clumsy and recalcitrant at adapting itself to the use
452of new instruments. The reason I have not dealt with these aspects
453of the proprietary state, where a determining number of families are
454economically free, nor with the corresponding moral advantages of
455freedom and its frequent practical advantages, is that in so small a
456compass I desired to confine myself to the one issue of how such a
457freedom can be recovered. That simple issue would be confused if
458other considerations were intruded. It is as though one were discussing
459how life may be restored by artificial breathing, though well
460knowing that life may be a grievous burden.
461Another point in which the reader may think me guilty of
462omission is the absence of any full discussion upon the new schemes
463of Social Credit. I have just touched on them in the last section of
464the essay, but only very briefly. My reason is this: that such schemes
465(notably the chief one, the Douglas Scheme1) do not directly advance,
466nor are directly connected with the idea of property. They are only connected
467with the idea of income. They propose, especially the Douglas
468Scheme of credit, to restore purchasing power to the destitute masses
469of society ruined by industrial capitalism.
470That is exactly what a good distribution of property would also
471do; but a credit scheme could, in theory at least, do the thing at once
472and universally, while the restoration of property is unlikely to be
473achieved, and must, however successful, be a long business, spread
474over at least a couple of generations. Further, no restoration of property
475could be universal, applying to the whole of society equally.
476The object of those who think as I do in this matter is not to
477restore purchasing power but to restore economic freedom. It is true
478that there cannot be economic freedom without purchasing power
479and it is true that economic freedom varies in some degree directly
480with purchasing power; but it is not true that purchasing power is
481equivalent to economic freedom. A manager at £1,000 a year who
482may get the sack at the caprice of his master has plenty of purchasing
483power, but he has not economic freedom. I do not avoid discussion
484of the new credit schemes, either from ignorance of them or from
485underestimating their high importance, but only because they are
486not to my purpose. If you are trying to persuade people to live on
487Hilaire Belloc 21
488land instead of on the water you need not add a chapter on the art of
489swimming.
490Further, it will appear that I propose no general scheme for
491restoring freedom and property. This may, indeed, be called a capital
492defect. All Reform depends upon some clear doctrine postulated and
493developed. No reform (it would seem) can hope to prosper which
494does not advance a programme covering all the field. I have not
495attempted to do so. For instance, though I have spoken much of
496distributing shares in corporate enterprise, I have spoken little of
497machinery whereby the holder of few shares could be given some real
498control over the policy which his company pursues.
499Now my reason for such slight dealing with such a major
500problem is that I believe it, today, insoluble by general means. The
501evil has gone so far that, though the preaching of a new doctrine is
502invaluable, the creation of new and effective immediate machinery
503is impossible. The restoration of property must essentially be the
504product of a new mood, not of a new scheme. It must grow from
505seed planted in the breast. It is too late to reinfuse it by design, and
506our effort must everywhere be particular, local, and, in its origins at
507least, small.
508Lastly, I must say a word here on something which appears
509more than once in the course of this essay, and that is my strong
510doubt upon the possibility of restoring property at all when it has
511once thoroughly disappeared.
512It is customary in presenting any political thesis to include
513an element of hope. Professional politicians always make a point of
514prophesying success and even more respectable and sincere reformers
515love to exaggerate the chances of their ideal and even affirm its
516ultimate victory as certain.
517This has always seemed to me great folly. Wisdom consists in
518the appreciation of reality. If you approach a most difficult task under
519the illusion or the pretence that it is less difficult you may strengthen
520your supporters by the drug of illusion but you weaken them much
521more by persuading them to work in the void.
522Respect for reality compels me to say that the Restoration of
523Property, when that institution has all but disappeared, is a task almost
52422 The Restoration of Property
525impossible of achievement. If it were quite impossible of achievement
526it would not be worthwhile wasting breath or ink upon. It is not quite
527impossible of achievement; at least, it is not quite impossible to start
528the beginnings of a change. But the odds against a reconstruction of
529economic freedom in a society which has long acquired the practice
530and habit of wage slavery is difficult beyond any other political task.
531I do not know whether it be possible to start even the beginnings
532of a change. I doubt heavily that it is possible to plant successfully
533even the small seedlings of economic freedom in our society,
534here, in England, today.
535What I certainly know is that failing such a change, our industrial
536society must necessarily end in the restoration of slavery. The
537choice lies between property on the one hand and slavery, public or
538private, on the other. There is no third issue.
539Hilaire Belloc
540King’s Land,
541February, 1936.
542
543“There is a third form of society, and it is the only one in which
544sufficiency and security can be combined with freedom, and that
545form is a society in which property is well distributed and so
546large a proportion of the families in the State severally own
547and therefore control the means of production as to determine
548the general tone of society; making it neither Capitalist nor
549Communist, but Proprietary.”
550The Restoration of Property
551I
552Man, to live, must transform his environment from a state in
553which it is less to a state in which it is more useful to himself.
554This process is called “The Production of Wealth.”
555Moreover, if a man is to live conformably to his nature, there
556must be available for his consumption a certain amount of wealth, in
557a certain variety, for a certain unit of time. For instance, in our society,
558he must have so much bread, so much meat, so much of a number
559of different foods every day, so much beer or wine or spirits (or, if he
560be too weak to consume these) so much tea or coffee or what not; a
561sufficient amount of somewhat complicated clothing, all to last over
562such and such an amount of time; and a sufficiency of fuel, housing
563and all the rest of it, also to last a certain time.
564Now this transformation of environment called “The Production
565of Wealth” is obviously only possible through the use of
566the instruments of production. A family can only live conformably
567to its human nature (that is, without undue suffering) in a given
568civilization on condition that it receive securely and constantly so
569much of this varied wealth for its consumption. But the wealth can
570only come into existence through the manipulating of natural forces
571by certain instruments; and there must also be an existing store
572of food and clothing and housing and the rest of it so that human
573beings may carry on during the process of production. These stores
574of wealth, these instruments and these natural forces are the Means
575of Production.
576It is obvious that whoever controls the means of production
577controls the supply of wealth. If, therefore, the means for the production
578of that wealth which a family needs are in the control of others
57926 The Restoration of Property
580than the family, the family will be dependent upon those others; it
581will not be economically free.
582The family is ideally free when it fully controls all the means
583necessary for the production of such wealth as it should consume for
584normal living.
585But such an ideal is inhuman and, therefore, not to be fixedly
586attained, because man is a social animal. It is not impossible of
587achievement for a short time, and has been briefly achieved whenever
588a lonely settler has fixed himself with his family and his stores in an
589isolated spot. But such complete economic freedom for each family
590cannot be permanent, because the family increases and divides into
591further numerous families, forming a larger community. Moreover,
592even were the isolated free family to endure, it would fall below the
593requirements of human nature, its isolation stunting and degrading
594it. For men cannot fulfill themselves save through a diversity of
595interests and ideas. Multiplicity is essential to life, and man to be
596truly human must be social.
597Society being necessary to man, there arise in the economic
598field these two limitations to economic freedom:—
599First, Difference of Occupation: Each in a society will concentrate
600upon what he has the best opportunity for producing and,
601by exchanging his surplus of it for that which another has the best
602opportunity of producing, will increase the wealth of all: or what
603comes to the same thing, lessen the burden of labour for all. Thus
604men live more happily in an agricultural village if there be a miller to
605grind the wheat instead of every family grinding it under their own
606roof, a cobbler to mend and make boots – and so on.
607Second, A Principle of Unity: There must exist in some form
608the State. A sufficiently large unit for the development of the Arts
609and the better complexities of life must be organized. Its power
610must be appealed to for the satisfaction of justice, the prevention of
611internal disorder and for the arrangement of defence against external
612aggression. In general the State must exercise some restraint upon
613the ideal economic freedom of the family or freedom itself cannot be
614guaranteed.
615But, while difference of occupation restricts the ideal independence
616of the family, it does not destroy freedom until one or another
617Hilaire Belloc 27
618differentiated (and necessary) occupation can withhold its necessary
619function and thus impose its will. If the miller can refuse to supply
620flour to the rest, who have lost their instruments and aptitude for
621grinding wheat, he will be their master. So with the unifying authority
622of the State. If the State can cut off livelihood from the family, it
623is their master, and freedom has disappeared.
624Therefore, there is a test of the limit after which such restriction
625of freedom is hostile to our aims and that test lies in the power of the
626family to re-act against that which limits its freedom. There must be
627a human relation between the family and those forces which, whether
628through the division of labour or the action of the State, restrict the
629family’s liberty of choice in action. The family must have not only
630power to complain against arbitrary control external to it, but power
631to make its complaint effective.
632It has been found in practice (that is, it is discoverable through
633history) that economic freedom thus somewhat limited satisfies the
634nature of man, and at the basis of it is the control of the means of
635production by the family unit. For though the family exchange
636its surplus, or even all its production, for the surplus of others,
637yet it retains its freedom, so long as the social structure, made up
638of families similarly free, exercises its effect through customs and
639laws consonant to its spirit: the Guild; a jealous watch against, and
640destruction of, monopoly; the safeguarding of inheritance, especially
641the inheritance of small patrimonies. The freehold miller, in such
642a society as was ours not so long ago, though he had no arable or
643pasture, was a free man. The yeoman, though he got his flour from
644the miller, was a free man.
645The name for control of the Means of Production is “Property.”
646When that control is exercised severally by individual units
647we call it “Private Property” to distinguish it from property vested
648in public bodies. When so great a number of families in the State
649possess Private Property in a sufficient amount as to give its colour
650to the whole, we speak of “widely distributed property.”
651It has been found in practice, and the truth is witnessed to by
652the instincts in all of us, that such widely distributed property as a
653condition of freedom is necessary to the normal satisfaction of human
654nature. In its absence general culture ultimately fails and so certainly
65528 The Restoration of Property
656does citizenship. The cells of the body politic are atrophied and the
657mass of men have not even, at last, an opinion of their own, but are
658moulded by the few who retain ownership of land and endowments
659and reserves. So property is essential to a full life, though it is debatable
660whether a full life is to be aimed at. There may be some who
661dislike freedom for themselves. There are certainly many who dislike
662it for others, but, at any rate, freedom involves property.
663Today in England, and to a less degree in many other countries,
664widespread property has been lost. Ownership is not a general
665feature of society, determining its character. On the contrary, absence
666of ownership, dependence on a precarious wage at the will of others is
667the general feature of our society and determines its character.
668The family does not possess that freedom which is necessary
669for its full moral health and that of the State of which it is the unit.
670Hence our society has fallen into the diseased condition known as
671“Industrial Capitalism.” In this state the control of the Means of
672Production is vested in a comparatively small number; consequently
673economic freedom has ceased to be the note, giving its tone to society.
674“Capitalism” does not mean a state of society in which capital
675has been accumulated, its accumulations protected, and itself put to
676use in producing wealth. Capital so accumulated, protected and used
677must exist in any human society whatsoever, including, of course, a
678Communist one. Nor does “Capitalism” mean a state of society in
679which capital is owned as private property by the citizens. On the
680contrary, such a society of free owners is the opposite of Capitalism
681as the word is here used. I use the term “Capitalism” here to mean a
682state of society in which a minority control the means of production,
683leaving the mass of the citizens dispossessed. Such a dispossessed
684body of citizens is called a “Proletariat.”
685Industrial Capitalism has in its present phase other grave
686evils attached to it besides the loss of freedom, for the twin evils of
687Insecurity and Insufficiency are attached to it. The main body of
688citizens, the Proletariat, are not sufficiently clothed, housed and fed,
689and even their insufficient supply is unstable. They live in a perpetual
690anxiety.
691Hilaire Belloc 29
692Now those two evils of insecurity and insufficiency might be
693eliminated and yet economic freedom be absent from the mass of
694society.
695There are two ways in which they could be eliminated without
696the restoration of freedom:—
697The first way is through that which I have called elsewhere
698“The Servile State.” In this form of society the minority controlling
699the means of production supports all the vast majority of the dispossessed,
700even those whom it does not use in exploitation, and thus
701forms a stable society though one from which freedom is eliminated.
702That is the direction in which we are drifting today. The capitalists
703keep men alive by exploiting them at a wage, and when they cannot
704do this, still keep them alive in idleness by some small subsidy.
705The second way is Communism – of its nature unstable but
706practicable at a heavy strain though, presumably, for only a comparatively
707short space of time. Under this second system the means
708of production are controlled by the officers of the State, who are the
709masters of all the workers (slaves of the State), and the wealth produced
710is distributed, at the discretion of the State officials, among the
711families, or, if an attempt be made to abolish even the family, then
712among the individuals of the community.
713There is a third form of society, and it is the only one in which
714sufficiency and security can be combined with freedom, and that form
715is a society in which property is well distributed and so large a proportion
716of the families in the State severally own and therefore control the means
717of production as to determine the general tone of society; making it neither
718Capitalist nor Communist, but Proprietary. If, then, we regard economic
719freedom as a good, our object must be thus to restore property.
720We must seek political and economic reforms which shall tend to distribute
721property more and more widely until the owners of sufficient
722Means of Production (land or capital or both) are numerous enough
723to determine the character of society.
724But is economic freedom a good?
725Unless we regard it as a good the search for methods by which
726property may be restored is futile or harmful. Indeed, as we shall
727see in a moment, unless a sufficient number of our fellow citizens
72830 The Restoration of Property
729feel with a sufficient degree of intensity that economic freedom is a
730good, economc freedom (that is, well-divided property) can never be
731restored.
732So it behoves us at the outset to consider this question, whether
733or not economic freedom is a good.
734Economic freedom can only be a good if it fulfills some need
735in our nature.
736Now there is discoverable in man, Freewill. His actions are of
737moral value to him if they are undertaken upon his own initiative;
738not if they are undertaken under compulsion. Therefore the use of
739choice is necessary to human dignity. A man deprived of choice is
740by that the less a man, and this we all show through the repugnance
741excited in us by unauthorized restraint and subjection, through coercion
742rather than authority, to another’s will. We cannot do good, or
743even evil, unless we do it freely; and if we admit the idea of good at
744all in human society, freedom must be its accompaniment.
745Next, economic freedom is a good because man’s actions are
746multiple, both his desires and his creative faculties; but it is only
747in the possession of economic freedom that this multiplicity can be
748effective. Deprived of economic freedom the units of society, the
749family and in some degree the individual, lack the power to express
750that diversity which is life. In the absence of economic freedom there
751must weigh upon any human society a dead and mechanical uniformity,
752increasingly leaden, and heavy and stifling, in proportion to the
753absence of freedom.
754To all this two answers may be given by those who dread that
755restoration of property, or those who regard it as impossible.
756First, it may be said that men do have economic freedom under
757State ownership. Secondly, it may be said that economic freedom,
758though a good, is of no moment in comparison with material satisfaction.
759As to the first answer: It has been widely said in the recent past
760that economic freedom can exist without the institution of property,
761because, under a Communist system, men own though they own
762corporately: they can dispose of their own lives, though such disposition
763be indirect and through delegates. This false argument is born
764of the dying Parliamentary theory of politics; it proceeds from the
765Hilaire Belloc 31
766false statement which deceived three generations of Europe, from
767the French Revolution to our own day, that corporate action may be
768identified with individual action. So men speak of their so-called
769“Representatives” as having been “chosen” by themselves. But in
770experienced reality there is no such thing as this imagined permanent
771corporate action through delegation. On some very simple and
772universal point, which all understand, in which all are interested
773and on which all feel strongly, the desire of the bulk of people may
774be expressed for a brief moment by delegation. Men voting under
775strong emotion on one single clear issue, may instruct others to carry
776out their wishes; but the innumerable acts of choice and expression
777which make up human life can never work through a system of
778delegation. Even in the comparatively simple field of mere political
779action, delegation destroys freedom. Parliaments have everywhere
780proved irreconcilable with democracy. They are not the people.
781They are oligarchies, and those oligarchies are corrupt because they
782pretend to a false character and to be, or to mirror, the nation. They
783are in reality, and can only be, cliques of professional politicians;
784unless, indeed, they are drawn from an aristocratic class which the
785community reveres. For class government, the product of the aristocratic
786spirit, is the condition of oligarchies working successfully and
787therefore of a reasonably efficient Parliament. Such an instrument is
788not to be found save in the hands of a governing class.
789If this be true of mere politics it is obviously true of that millioned
790affair, our daily lives. Ownership by delegation is a contradiction
791in terms.
792When men say, for instance (by a false metaphor), that each
793member of the public should feel himself an owner of public property
794– such as a Town Park – and should therefore respect it as his own,
795they are saying something which all our experience proves to be
796completely false. No man feels of public property that it is his own;
797no man will treat it with the care or the affection of a thing which
798is his own; still less can a man express himself through the use of a
799thing which is not his own, but shared in common with a mass of
800other men.
801As to the second answer: It is said by many today that the
802satisfaction of man’s immediate material necessities is on a different
80332 The Restoration of Property
804and infinitely more important plane than the satisfaction of his need
805for freedom. Economic freedom, if indeed it be a good at all, is (they
806say) a good of a much lesser sort, intangible, and something which
807men can well do without; therefore, since the enjoyment of it imperils
808the obtaining of material necessities, it must give way to that much
809greater good: a secure sufficiency of livelihood.
810There is in this reply a measure of truth which gives it all its
811strength. It is half true; but the falsehood attached to the half truth
812vitiates the whole statement.
813Where urgent material necessities are unsatisfied they must be
814satisfied first. Shipwrecked men on a raft at sea must live, exceptionally,
815under Communism. The dispossessed in a capitalist society
816must at least be kept alive. But it is not true that, such exceptional
817remedies for an unnatural evil having been used, we must go on to
818destroy the good of economic freedom for the advantage of enjoying
819greater material wealth.
820This last argument is one of the many which we find in common
821to those who defend the Capitalist system and those who defend the
822Communist system: for Socialism and Capitalism are twin successive
823products of the same false philosophy.
824The defenders of Capitalism tell us that it may have destroyed
825men’s economic freedom; under Capitalism a man can less and less
826choose what he wants nor express his personality and character in the
827arts; but at least Capitalism has given him in far greater numbers a
828far greater mass of material goods than he had before it arose. The
829Communist goes one better. He says, “Yes: and under my system, by
830suppressing economic freedom altogether we shall give him yet more
831material goods, and we shall see that everybody gets them in almost
832unlimited amount.”
833If it were indeed true that economic freedom could not co-exist
834with a great deal of production, and still less with a sufficient distribution,
835it would still be worthwhile for those of our temper to sacrifice
836some portion of the material good, and even more worthwhile
837to permit inequality in distribution, for the sake of the economic
838freedom. But the truth is, as we shall see later on, that the supposed
839conflict between freedom and abundance, between freedom and a
840general enjoyment of that abundance, is an illusion born of CapitalHilaire
841Belloc 33
842ism. It is an illusion which arises from the fact that the men who
843cherish it have so lived under a capitalist system all their lives that
844they can conceive of no alternative save a further development of it
845into Communism.
846There remains indeed one answerable reply of objection. It is
847that of the man who says, “This or that, which economic freedom
848endangers, is a greater good in my eyes than is such freedom.” For
849instance, he may think the military glory of the State a greater good,
850or magnificence on the part of the few a greater good. To such an
851objection we can only reply that our tastes differ and that we prefer
852freedom.
853Economic freedom is in our eyes a good. It is among the highest
854of temporal goods because it is necessary to the highest life of
855society through the dignity of man and through the multiplicity of
856his action, in which multiplicity is life. Through well-divided property
857alone can the units of society react upon the State. Through it
858alone can a public opinion flourish. Only where the bulk of the cells
859are healthy can the whole organism thrive. It is therefore our business
860to restore economic freedom through the restoration of the only
861institution under which it flourishes, which institution is Property.
862The problem before us is, how to restore Property so that it shall be,
863as it was not so long ago, a general institution.
864Three provisos must be kept clearly in mind before we approach
865the problem and attempt its practical solution.
866The first proviso is that in the restoration of property we are
867not attempting, and could never reach, a mechanical perfection. We
868are only attempting to change the general tone of society and restore
869property as a commonly present, not a universal, institution.
870The second proviso is that we cannot even begin such a reform
871unless there is a favourable state of mind present in society, a desire to
872own property, sufficient to support and maintain the movement and
873to nourish institutions which will make it permanent.
874The third proviso is that in this attempt to restore Economic
875Freedom, the powers of the State must be invoked.
876The first proviso is, I say, that, unlike the Servile State and
877unlike the Communist State, the Proprietary State does not present
878an ideal solution. There can be no perfection about it; it must remain
87934 The Restoration of Property
880incomplete: nor could there be a better proof that the attempt is a
881human one, consonant to human nature.
882To establish the Servile State one has but to follow certain lines
883which lead rapidly to an ideal conclusion, a society where all men, the
884few Capitalists and the mass of proletariat are all securely nourished
885– the latter on a wage, or, lacking this, a subsidy in idleness. The
886same is true with regard to the Communist State: a society where all
887men are securely nourished as slaves of the government. A simple
888formula and its exact application will, in each case, produce the ideal
889society envisaged.
890In the first case all that is needed to produce the complete
891Servile State is a series of laws whereby every family – or every
892individual, if the family be eliminated – shall receive at least so much
893wealth as will maintain a certain standard of comfort and leisure;
894this minimum being provided for the dispossessed out of the stores
895controlled by the possessors. It will be distributed either in the form
896of wages, that is, the granting to the dispossessed by the possessors
897of some portion of the wealth which the dispossessed are producing
898by leave of the possessors; or, in the case of those who cannot be so
899employed, of relief during their enforced idleness.
900This is the simple ideal of society to which we, in modern
901England, are advancing with great rapidity; indeed we have almost
902reached it.
903The Possessors alone remain to enjoy economic freedom, the
904dispossessed – the very great majority – are deprived of it; but there
905is already at least security of some revenue for nearly all, and there
906can, with proper organization, be sufficiency for all as well. The only
907good lost to the masses, if it be a good, is freedom. For in such a state
908of society (the Servile State) the determining note is lack of freedom:
909the determining mass of society have no experience of economic
910liberty. The master class directs and is free: but society thinks and
911acts in terms of wage earners. The masses are kept alive, they are
912taught by a subsidy in childhood, treated by a subsidy in illness, and
913maintained by a subsidy in old age, widowhood and incapacity from
914accident. Soon no one of them may be suffering either hunger or
915cold or lack of any plain material necessity consonant to the type of
916Hilaire Belloc 35
917civilization in which they live. But their activities are at the mercy of
918their masters.
919Under the Communist scheme the matter is simpler still. It
920being made an offence for any man to own, all right to the use of
921accumulation by a family or an individual being destroyed, and all
922right of inheritance being also destroyed, the whole produce of the
923community is available for distribution to all. And Economic Freedom
924has disappeared for all through the action of a very few and
925simple but absolute coercive laws.
926The formulae of the two schemes have been put in the past very
927well by the late Mr. Orage,2 in words which appeared some 20 or
92830 years ago in The New Age. I have not the exact phrases by me, but
929their sense is as follows:—
930“Imagine a condition of affairs in which one machine is capable
931of producing all that society requires. Let that machine (and the
932natural forces) be under the control of one man. He is then the
933Capitalist of an ideally perfect Industrial Capitalist System. He will
934employ directly in industry as many men as may be required to work
935the machine. They will receive sustenance in the form of wages. He
936will also employ sundry other men, not directly in producing wealth
937with the machine, but ministering to his enjoyment; they may paint
938for him, print books for him, act plays for him, supply his domestic
939wants, and so forth. The rest will be unemployed. But as society
940would never be stable if the rest were to be condemned to death by
941starvation, laws will appear which demand by taxation, or customs
942will appear which demand by voluntary organization, so much of the
943produce of the machine as is necessary to support the unemployed.
944But these will not have the determining of what they are to receive,
945for they are not possessors. Their subsistence is doled out to them
946without their having discretion in the matter. And that is the Servile
947State. Or imagine the machine, and the material forces to which it is
948to be applied, controlled, not by one possessor, the Capitalist, but by
949the officers of the community, who shall at their discretion employ or
950dole out to each from the production of the machine; then you have
951the Communist State.”
95236 The Restoration of Property
953But the Proprietary State, the state of society such as our ancestors
954enjoyed, in which property is well distributed, does not admit
955of this simplicity, nor, being human, of this mechanical perfection.
956Property being a personal and human institution, normal to man,
957will always be, and must be, diversified. There is no advantage moral
958or social in land and capital being exactly distributed and there is no
959possibility of their being universally distributed. It would suffice for
960the health of the State by the Restoration of Property if, at the end
961of the reforming process, so many families were found possessed of
962property (in a sufficient amount) to give their tone to the State; just
963as today the wage earner and salary earner, the proletarians of every
964grade, give their proletarian tone to the State. The proletarians today
965vary in the degree of their dispossession, some have only the clothes
966they stand in, others a little furniture as well, others some further
967small insufficient accumulation – a few shares, or a mortgaged house
968or what not – but the note which they strike, the character which they
969impress upon society, is that of a wage-earning State rapidly turning
970into a Servile State.
971But whereas the Servile State to which we are now tending
972can be complete, the Proprietary (or Distributist) State neither can,
973nor should be, complete; for it cannot of its nature be mechanical.
974There will be many comparatively poor, and some comparatively
975rich. There will presumably be some proportion of dispossessed. But
976Property, and its accompaniment, Economic Freedom, will be the
977mark of society as a whole.
978The second proviso, that we can do nothing unless there is a
979state of mind favourable to us, may seem to make the whole effort
980futile. The state of society in which we are now living in England
981has largely forgotten what property is. Men talk in terms of employment
982and wages. When they talk of ownership the word calls up in
983their minds the ownership of large property by a few. Whether there
984remains today in England a desire for economic freedom (that is, for
985property) sufficient to nourish the beginnings of a change, nothing
986but experiment can decide. Increase of revenue, not ownership, is
987the object of most men. Ownership is certainly not the object of most
988men; if it were, there would have been successful protest long ago
989against the wage-earning system.
990Hilaire Belloc 37
991As we all know, there was some confused protest at the beginning
992of the Industrial Revolution and throughout its earlier stages;
993there was violence used to try and prevent the enclosure of the commons
994and there were riots against the new machines. But that was a
995long time ago. Take the process as a whole, from the first step, the
996great confiscation of corporate property in the sixteenth century,
997through the Statute of Frauds in the seventeenth century, when a
998mass of small yeomen were dispossessed, follow it on to the midnineteenth
999century, and you do not find at any stage a clear determination
1000to maintain well-divided property, nor even a widespread
1001instinct in its favour. It was because such a spirit was lacking that
1002Capitalism came upon us. In countries where that spirit was present,
1003though Capitalism has also taken root there, it has never flourished
1004in the same way, it has always been handicapped.
1005But though the appetite for private property has weakened,
1006though it is not present as yet in the mass of the wage-earning
1007population, its relics may possibly prove, if the first experiments can
1008be undertaken, sufficiently alive to leaven the whole body of society
1009gradually. It may be possible to “re-plant” property even in England,
1010just as one can re-afforest poor ground by taking advantage of
1011exceptional patches, establishing the new growth there, sheltering its
1012beginnings, and leaving it to propagate itself when it shall have sufficient
1013strength. Only, what we must not trust to is the mere machinery
1014of reform. Of its nature property is the product of human desire; we
1015can help on that desire to achieve its fulfilment, but we cannot create
1016it. We cannot make owners by merely giving men something to own.
1017And, I repeat, whether there be sufficient desire for property left
1018upon which we can work, only experience can decide.
1019The third proviso, that we must call in the State to help us,
1020should present no difficulties save to minds misled by the false categories
1021of the nineteenth century – by such terms as “Individualism,”
1022for instance, which never did or could correspond to reality.
1023The evil from which we are suffering today is not the evil of
1024State interference but the evil of the loss of Freedom. State interference
1025may have for its effect a loss of Freedom and certainly usually
1026has for its object the loss of Freedom; but it always may be, and very
1027often must be, invoked for the very purpose of restoring Freedom.
102838 The Restoration of Property
1029There must be laws to protect property not only against direct rapine
1030but against dissolution through the exaggeration of competition.
1031There must be State sanction for the powers of the Guild, for the
1032process of Inheritance, for the restriction of undue burdens. There
1033must be some official machinery for fostering the propagation of
1034small property just as there is official machinery today fostering the
1035destruction of small, widespread property by large owners: and the
1036effort at restoring property will certainly fail if it is hampered by a
1037superstition against the use of force as the handmaid of Justice. All
1038the powers of the State have been invoked by Capitalism to restore
1039servile conditions; we shall not react against servile conditions unless
1040we avail ourselves of the same methods.
1041II
1042As we approach the problem of the restoration of property
1043there are two main principles to be kept in mind:—
1044(i) The first is that any effort to restore the institution of property
1045(that is, re-establish a good distribution of property in a proletarian
1046society such as ours has become) can only be successful through a deliberate
1047reversal of natural economic tendencies.
1048(ii) The second is that our effort will fail unless it be accompanied
1049by regulations making for the preservation of private property, so much of it
1050as shall have been restored.
1051Both of these principles are essential to success. As I have said,
1052without a sufficient desire for property present in a sufficient number
1053of people, the attempt cannot succeed anyhow. But however strong
1054that desire, and however widespread, the effort will also fail if these
1055two principles are not concurrently observed.
1056I have compared the restoration of property in a society such as
1057ours, where it has been ruined, to the re-afforestation of land.
1058Another parallel is the reclamation of swamp. Natural tendencies
1059have made a piece of land marshy. It lies low, the rainfall is heavy,
1060the soil impervious and sticky. To reclaim it you must act against
1061natural tendency. You must drain, cut channels, embank; and having
1062done so, you must see to it that the banks, drains and channels shall
1063be maintained against the constant effort of nature to drag the land
1064back to swamp again.
1065So it is with property. Property, as a general social institution,
1066well-divided property, having disappeared and Capitalism having
1067taken its place, you cannot reverse the process without acting against
1068natural economic tendencies. Well-divided property will not spring
1069up of itself in Capitalist society. It must be artificially fostered. Communism
1070will spring up of itself and flourish in Capitalist society, for
107140 The Restoration of Property
1072it is a product of Capitalist thought and moves along the same lines as
1073Capitalism. But well-divided property will not so arise.
1074Moreover, once restored, Property must be constantly sustained
1075or it will lapse again into Capitalism.
1076Private property acting unchecked, that is, in the absence of
1077all safeguards for the preservation of the small man’s independence,
1078tends inevitably to an ultimate control of the means of production by
1079a few; that is, in economics, to Capitalism and therefore, in politics,
1080to Plutocracy.
1081At this point I must introduce a digression to meet two objections
1082which will be made by any socialist reader upon his hearing this
1083admission (as he would call it) on my part. For whether a man be a
1084socialist enthusiastically (because he believes communal property to
1085be the most just economic arrangement) or whether he is a socialist
1086reluctantly (because he believes that communal control, though
1087odious, is the lesser of two evils and the only alternative to control
1088by a few rich men), takes it for granted that industrial capitalism was
1089ultimately inevitable wherever private property was a social institution.
1090On reading, I say, this which he would call an “admission”
1091on our side, that private property unchecked by special preservative
1092conditions lapses into Capitalism and all its evils, he may consider
1093that since the defenders of property are agreed it must be so, further
1094discussion is a waste of time. Or he may be one of those who say,
1095“perhaps private property could have been restored under simpler
1096conditions, but in modern society, with its use of machinery and its
1097rapidity of communication, it is too late to make the attempt.”
1098Both these positions are erroneous.
1099The first, which is the commonest and which we hear on every
1100side, all around us, is based upon the two main characteristics of
1101modern political thought, false history and a false philosophy. The
1102idea that Capitalism arose of itself, and necessarily, from the mere
1103institution of private property, is the fruit of bad history pressed into
1104the service of bad philosophy.
1105It is not true that Capitalism arose inevitably from the necessary
1106development of economic institutions under the doctrine
1107Hilaire Belloc 41
1108of private property. Capitalism only arose after the safeguards
1109guaranteeing well-distributed property, private property, had been
1110deliberately broken down by an evil will insufficiently resisted. It was
1111not Capitalism that came first and gradually dissolved the institution
1112of well-divided property; it was the conditions under which alone
1113well-divided property could survive, and had survived for centuries,
1114which were first destroyed. Only then, after their destruction, was
1115the field free for the growth of plutocracy in politics and Capitalism
1116in the economic structure of the State. There was something of a
1117proletariat before this great revolution took place. There were landless
1118men, many of them, by the end of the Middle Ages, and there
1119were already many men working at transport and exchange, and in
1120the Crafts, who had not enough property to count. But the point is
1121that they did not give their tone to the State. They were not so numerous
1122as to mark the character of society until the religious revolution
1123of the sixteenth century had destroyed the ancient walls which had
1124protected the freedom of the human city.
1125The first great blow was the destruction of the Guilds, coupled
1126with the seizure of collegiate property in all countries transformed by
1127the Reformation, but most thoroughly and universally in England.
1128This was followed up in England by a series of positive enactments
1129of which that one called the Statute of Frauds was perhaps the chief
1130instrument in destroying the English land-owning peasantry.† The
1131great efflorescence of Capitalism came after all that bad work had
1132been done, and was only made possible by that bad work.
1133Nor is it true that machinery in its various forms, including the
1134modern conquest of space (rapidity of transport in material things
1135and ideas) lies at the root of this modern evil. The machine does not
1136†The Statute of Frauds, made law by the Big Landlords and the Lawyers’
1137Guild under Charles II, after the breakdown of English Monarchy and
1138the beginning of aristocratic government in its place, provided, among
1139other things, that no title to land should be valid unless there were written
1140proof of the same. Now the mass of small English yeomen had no such
1141documents to show. They held their land from father to son under the
1142village landlord in fee-farm
1143tenure, paying only small quit rents. They
1144were thus owners and hereditary owners of their tenures by traditional
114542 The Restoration of Property
1146control the mind of man, though it affects the mind of man; it is the
1147mind of man that can and should control the machine.
1148Moreover, it is not true that the machine is necessarily a centralizer
1149of effort; in some cases it is, in others it is not. The railway
1150worked in favour of those who desired to centralize effort for their
1151own advantage; it added a new support for an already founded
1152capitalist system. But the internal combustion engine works the other
1153way. It transports men and things in decentralized fashion, and it is
1154at the command of the small man. The motor bus in the country was
1155decentralizing the control of passenger traffic, and the lorry that of
1156small goods traffic, when capitalist monopoly got to work and began
1157to eat up the lesser units which were further persecuted by restrictive
1158laws. Had a cumulative tax been clapped on to the ownership of more
1159than a few vehicles licensed for country transport, a tax becoming
1160high at half a dozen vehicles and prohibitive at a dozen, we should
1161have continued the small property in transport that was growing up.
1162Similarly steam factory machinery in the mid-nineteenth century
1163and earlier could be used in favour of already established Capitalism
1164and in a fashion hostile to small property. But electrical power works
1165just the other way. Its origin is more efficient if centralized, though
1166there is no compulsion to centralize it; but its distribution may be
1167infinitely varied and split up into the smallest units.
1168Moreover, even where the modern instrument is expensive and
1169therefore makes for centralization, it could be owned and worked as
1170Guild property, or in distributed shares, well safeguarded.
1171The whole attitude of the old-fashioned socialist, or, as he has
1172now logically become, the Communist, with his well-worn argument
1173of inevitability, is rooted in a wrong conception of what men are
1174– that is, a false philosophy – supported by a wrong conception of
1175the historical process reached by the putting of events in the wrong
1176historical order. And though it is true that unchecked competition
1177and immemorial custom and hereditary free-holders. But, after the
1178Statute of Frauds, the local village landlord could, and gradually did,
1179claim ownership of the land and reduce this class of peasant to a tenant on
1180a competitive rent, and a lease of only such length as the landlord chose to
1181grant. He gradually sank to become a proletarian labourer.
1182Hilaire Belloc 43
1183must ultimately produce the rule of ownership by a few, yet it is
1184also true that mankind has always felt this to be the danger, has
1185instinctively safeguarded itself against that danger by the setting
1186up of institutions for the protection of small property, and that these
1187institutions have never broken down of themselves, but always and
1188only under the conscious action of a deliberately hostile attack. So the
1189carefully planned irrigation of the Tigris and Euphrates3 combatted
1190with success the natural tendency of the swamp and the desert till the
1191Mongol deliberately destroyed such safeguards of civilization.
1192* * * *
1193There are seven main avenues whereby unchecked competition
1194tends to put a few into the control of the means of production, transport
1195and exchange, and therefore of society as a whole. There are
1196seven main ways whereby healthy normal human society with a mass
1197of well-distributed ownership can degenerate into a Capitalist society,
1198the mark of which is the exploitation of the many by the wealthy few,
1199and the power of plutocracy over all.
1200These seven avenues may be tabulated as follows:—
12011. The larger unit is in proportion less expensive than the
1202smaller in management, rent, upkeep and all things that are called
1203in commercial jargon “overhead charges.” The only limit to this tendency
1204is the difficulty of organizing and conducting units beyond a
1205certain size; and that difficulty is more and more easily overcome by
1206practice and the development of perfected organization.
12072. The larger economic unit is better able to purchase all
1208the more expensive instruments for production, distribution and
1209exchange, whether in the form of machinery, advertizing or information
1210– through which last, other things being equal, the richer man
1211is possessed of a better basis for judgement than the poorer man.
12123. The larger unit can borrow more easily in proportion than the
1213smaller. It can especially tap bank credit more easily and bank credit
1214is, today, the chief factor in economic activity of all kinds.
12154. The larger institution can undersell the smaller one at a
1216loss, until the smaller one is imperilled or killed. The richer man,
1217or combination, can thus “rope in” the smaller man, or “freeze him
121844 The Restoration of Property
1219out”; that is, compel him to alliance on onerous terms or actually
1220destroy him.
12215. The larger unit will accumulate capital under easier conditions
1222than the smaller. The rich man feels less the privation of
1223saving and can take as sufficient enticement a smaller profit or a
1224lower interest on money than could compensate the poorer man for
1225his sacrifice.
12266. Plutocracy once established will corrupt the legislature so
1227that laws will be made in its favour, increasingly handicapping the
1228small man and advantaging the larger.
12297. Plutocracy once established will equally corrupt the administration
1230of justice, weighing the scales in favour of the rich man
1231against the poor man.
1232Let us consider these seven dangers more particularly.
12331. The overhead charges. This is one of the stock arguments of
1234Communism, and a good one so far as it goes. The old typical illustration
1235used to be, in this country, the retail urban milk trade. Your
1236Fabian4 bewailed the state of affairs in which two small men, each
1237with the goodwill of a milk walk, over-lapped. He pointed out that
1238the expenses of distribution would be vastly reduced by one system
1239controlling the whole mass of small milk walks as they existed not so
1240long ago. He has lived to see the thing come about, in this country
1241at least; for the small man in the milk trade has almost disappeared.
1242But the mass of small free dealers in milk have not been merged in
1243the Socialist State. They have become wage slaves. A huge monopoly
1244has swallowed them up.
1245And what is true of the milk trade is true of all the other
1246examples of distribution and of most of the examples of production.
1247Chain shops have destroyed the individual shopkeeper. Where there
1248were, say, forty thousand independent grocers, there came to be forty
1249thousand managers, the wage slaves of a combine, because the cost
1250of administration is less, and this economic advantage handicaps the
1251small man against the great. It has gone on all around us during the
1252past generation at a pace which has increased, in England at least, out
1253of all knowledge, until today on all sides we are gripped by monopoly.
1254Those of my generation can remember a time when for a hundred
1255Hilaire Belloc 45
1256necessities of daily life individual shops or craftsmen were present
1257throughout London. Today they are fast disappearing; most of them
1258have already gone.
12592. Information. In purchasing information for a correct judgement,
1260the larger group of capital has an obvious advantage over the
1261smaller. It is apparent in every economic activity, and in one department
1262of it, the ease of negotiations, is perhaps more striking than
1263the rest. You can make a merger of a few great firms and with that
1264merger create a monopoly in what they produce or distribute, where
1265you could not make a merger of a number of small firms. With such
1266power admitted freely, working without check, monopoly is the inevitable
1267term to which the whole process of competition tends.
1268Again, the large unit in modern scientific production – e.g.,
1269electrical – has a mass of technical experts and a quasi monopoly of
1270informed ability in execution. To such, even a national government
1271must perforce turn when great works are undertaken. The power of
1272the larger unit to purchase the more expensive material instrument
1273which the smaller units cannot purchase (save in combination) is also
1274obvious; but it is not always equally apparent, as it should be, that the
1275larger unit can more easily command another immaterial instrument
1276of the greatest force: publicity. We all know that advertizing has
1277become one of the worst plagues of English modern life; what we
1278must also keep constantly before our eyes is that the opportunity for
1279this abuse increases out of all proportion with the increase of the unit at
1280work. £100,000 spent on advertizing has not 100 times the effect of
1281£1,000 – it has much more than 1,000 times the effect.
1282It has been discovered that with a dull urban population, all
1283formed under a mechanical system of State education, a suggestion
1284or command, however senseless and unreasoned, will be obeyed if
1285it be sufficiently repeated. Now, in issuing such suggestions and
1286commands the larger man has an overwhelming advantage over the
1287smaller. He can, as it were, compel by suggestion. He can create by
1288it a market for his wares which the small man could never command
1289and out of which the small man will be driven.
1290We all must remark and deplore the undoubted truth that
1291this particular form of plutocratic advantage (I quote it only as an
129246 The Restoration of Property
12933. What the power to obtain credit (especially, of course, bank
1294credit) means today we shall discuss when we come to examine the
1295part played by finance in industrial Capitalism; but we note here
1296that the advantage enjoyed in this department by the larger unit is,
1297again, as in the other instances given, out of proportion to the size
1298of the units engaged. The small craftsman can hardly borrow at all
1299– perhaps a few pounds privately at ruinous interest. The somewhat
1300larger man can borrow more, in proportion, upon the security of his
1301business, but he is not “interesting” to the banker. The owner – or
1302controller – of a very large business can borrow on quite another
1303scale. He does not command, say, ten times the credit of a rival with
1304example, but I do so because it is the most glaring and offensive
1305example of all) tends not only to establish a few rich men or small
1306groups of masters in distribution and production, but also to produce
1307and to distribute the worst things. Everyone must have noticed how
1308an article deteriorates after an “advertizing campaign” has been
1309started in its favour.
1310It is true that this particular evil would in time correct itself as
1311the general evil of Capitalism increased, for when all is monopoly,
1312even advertizing will not be required. But as things stand today, this
1313fungoid growth of advertizing has done evil beyond anything which
1314our fathers could have imagined. Undoubtedly it is the strongest
1315of the forces which have so degraded our Press. The Press cannot
1316print, even where it should so desire (and being itself in the hands of
1317monopolists it does not so desire to print) any truth which the great
1318advertizers desire to have suppressed. And that is why our field of
1319vision, even on the most urgent public affairs, grows narrower and
1320narrower.
1321Hilaire Belloc 47
1322a tenth of his business; he commands twenty or thirty times the
1323amount and on easier terms.
1324There are three main ways in which this advantage works:—
1325(a) The large unit can bargain for special rates of interest,
1326lower than are granted to the smaller unit, because (1) the cost of
1327“handling” the loan is proportionately less, (2) the transaction is
1328unilateral in the case of the small man but mutual in the case of the
1329large man. It does not matter much to the bank whether Jones the
1330grocer is their client for £1,000, while it is life and death to Jones to
1331get the money. He will pay, say, 8 or 10% in interest and “charges”;
1332but even so it is hardly worth the bank’s while to bleed him. But, it
1333matters a great deal to the bank to have Sir Hannibal Smith for a
1334client, with his loan of a million, bringing profit to the bank at the
1335rate of £45,000 a year, or even only £40,000. And Sir Hannibal is
1336fully aware of that fact.
1337(b) It may often “pay” the bank, in the case of the big man,
1338to “throw good money after bad.” It never pays the bank to do so
1339in the case of the small man. He is sacrificed at once and his ample
1340security is pouched by the Creditor. The bank is not unwilling to see
1341him outed. He was becoming a nuisance. But with the Big Man it
1342is otherwise.
1343If the bankers sell the big man up, they lose a potential
1344source of later income; so they try to “tide him over.” We see the
1345effects of this in mills which the banks supported through the Slump
1346until they owed far more than they were worth; and of large commercial
1347men whose private households are actually paid for week by
1348week out of the banks resources, because the banks find, or think
1349they find, it to their advantage to keep them afloat.
1350(c) A subtle point, but a very real one: the large client is in the
1351same “atmosphere” as the bank. They are both “Big Business.” The
1352psychology of credit works here most powerfully in the very large
1353man’s favour, and the proof of this truth is seen in the numerous
1354cases where, after a man in a large way has failed, bank credit has
1355been discovered to have been put at his service upon his mere name
1356or with quite insufficient security.
13574. The large unit can undersell the smaller unit by fraud as well
1358as by cheaper overhead charges. This is one of the oldest complaints
1359against centralized capital and the worst of the big man’s methods in
136048 The Restoration of Property
1361his swallowing up the small man. It was one of the first evils of the
1362growing capitalist system to be noted. It was already in full swing
1363shortly after the middle of the nineteenth century. It is, of course, for
1364all those who admit the doctrine of the Just Price, manifestly a form
1365of theft.
1366It works thus:—The larger unit of capital can afford to lose on
1367its wares for a longer time than the smaller unit. If both the larger and
1368the smaller unit are producing a particular article at a pound, both
1369in competition sell it at fifteen shillings, each will be losing five shillings
1370on every sale. The process could not go on indefinitely, but the
1371larger unit of capital can stand the loss longer than the smaller one.
1372The small man will break, while the large man is still solvent. And
1373this iniquitous method by which the large man destroys the small,
1374is, in all its modifications and varied forms, not only one of the most
1375obvious, but one of the most pernicious, activities of capitalism. It is
1376also, as we shall see later, when we come to the question of restrictive
1377prohibitions, one of the most difficult to deal with. For there are
1378many conditions under which a man may honestly and in good faith
1379sell at a loss, and to distinguish between these and the conditions
1380under which he sells in order to ruin a competitor is difficult.
13815. The larger unit of capital will automatically be accumulated
1382for a lesser proportionate reward than the smaller one. This is an
1383exceedingly important point which the earlier critics of Capitalism overlooked.
1384It is a major cause in the disastrous swelling of large accumulations
1385and corresponding disappearance of small property and economic freedom.
1386Capital accumulates for a certain reward. Capital is created by
1387saving out of production for the purposes of future production, and
1388it will not be so accumulated by anyone, the individual owner nor the
1389Communist State, save for some standard of remuneration. A certain
1390measure of this reward sufficient to provoke an accumulation of
1391capital, produce what John Stuart Mill5 called “the effective desire of
1392accumulation,” and we cannot do better than adopt this conventional
1393term. Without “an effective desire of accumulation of Capital,” either
1394in the private citizen or in the direction of the Communist State, the
1395stores of livelihood, the maintenance of instruments, and (of course)
1396addition thereto will dwindle and fail, and wealth will decline. Men
1397will not forego a present for a future good save on terms of increHilaire
1398Belloc 49
1399ment. Whether as individuals, as families or as governments, men
1400will not deprive themselves of the immediate enjoyment of a sum
1401of wealth for the sake of a future sum of wealth, unless the second
1402is larger than the first. A man certainly will not wittingly forego
1403ten pounds worth of immediate enjoyment if he knows that at the
1404end of the year he will have only the same ten pounds for his pains.
1405He may not save that ten pounds if he knows that at the end of the
1406year he will only have ten guineas. He will more probably do so if
1407he sees eleven pounds at the end of the year. But at any rate he must
1408have some increment as an incentive, and the amount of increment
1409which will set him to work to save, the reward sufficient to make him
1410forego immediate enjoyment, is the measure of his “effective desire
1411of accumulation.”
1412It is an error, as I have just said, to imagine that this factor
1413is only present under Capitalism. It is necessarily present under
1414Communism, or under well-divided property, and indeed in any
1415economic system whatsover. Under Communism, for instance, the
1416Government officials will not risk an added strain of want among
1417their slaves unless there is prospect of later advantage. With welldivided
1418property the point is obvious.
1419In general, then, Capital is accumulated with the purpose of
1420future production in excess of its present amount, and if such addition
1421were not expected, Capital would not be accumulated at all.†
1422Now, this being so, we note at once that the wealthy man (or
1423controller of the larger unit) will feel an effective desire for accumulation
1424for a smaller proportionate increment than will the poorer man.
1425We put it conversationally when we say that it is worth a man’s while
1426to get £2,500 a year on £50,000 capital, but hardly worth his while to
1427forego £1’s worth of enjoyment in January in order to get a benefit of
1428an extra shilling at the end of the year. Another way of putting it is
1429to repeat the obvious truth that the margin for saving in the case of
1430†The replacement of Capital as it is consumed is not the same thing as
1431accumulation. But it follows the same rules. A railway company repairs
1432and restores its plant, not for extra profit, but to maintain the existing
1433profit. So does the village carrier. But even maintenance involves
1434foregoing immediate use, and such sacrifice is easier for the company
1435than for the carrier.
143650 The Restoration of Property
1437poor men is narrow, while that of rich men is wide. It is easier to save
1438£5,000 a year out of £10,000 a year than to save £500 a year out of
1439£1,000 a year. And out of £50 a year no man could save £25 (in England
1440today) and keep alive. The poor man who saves “against a rainy
1441day,” who looks on his savings as a sum to be called upon later for
1442his maintenance, will often take very low interest rather than none.
1443Often he will seek for none and merely leave his money on current
1444account, if he has a bank, or to take the interest which a Capitalist
1445government keeps ridiculously low in savings banks and certificates
1446(in order not to compete with its wealthy supporters) or to keep it in
1447a box. But when it comes to serious amounts sufficient to start a man
1448independently, it is another matter. He will not make a venture at a
1449livelihood as farmer or shopkeeper for an insignificant percentage of
1450his savings.
1451In other words, you cannot tempt small capital to make the
1452beginnings of serious accumulation at the rates which are sufficient
1453for large capital. In order to get the small man to accumulate – in
1454order, that is, to create well-distributed small capital through the
1455serious accumulation of little savings – you must early begin to offer
1456a proportionately higher reward than you do for large savings.
1457Unrestricted economic tendency works therefore to the advantage
1458of large units in this case again. The cost of managing a quantity
1459of little savings bank accounts, for instance, is out of all proportion
1460greater than the cost of handling large balances and in point of fact
1461we always find, in the modern capitalistic system, that the first small
1462beginnings of savings are offered lower rewards than the larger ones.
1463The Post Office gave no more than half the rate of the State after the
1464war, and the Savings Certificates were calculated at a rate lower than
1465that of the main national loans.
14666. The effect of plutocracy in corrupting the legislative machine
1467needs in theory no demonstration, for we all know nowadays that
1468such corruption is ubiquitous, and nowhere does it work with greater
1469force than under a parliamentary system. To have effect there is no
1470necessity for actually handing over shares or money to the politicians
1471(though a great deal of that simple form of corruption does
1472take place) for even when such direct action of plutocracy upon the
1473Hilaire Belloc 51
1474legislative machine is not exercised, there is indirect “pressure” of all
1475kinds. The evil is less formidable under active monarchy than under
1476any other form of government, for the whole point of absolute monarchy
1477is that the monarch is too wealthy to be bullied. But in all other
1478forms of government the pressure of the whole wealthy class upon
1479the legislative machine is felt, and when that wealthy class is supreme
1480and has complete economic power over the mass of the citizens, laws
1481will inevitably be made favouring the continuance of the system and
1482handicapping the better distribution of property. Not only statutes,
1483but all kinds of regulations and customs will conform to this rule.
1484There has also lately arisen a new form of “pressure.” A large
1485unit of production – say, electrical – pushes through Parliament some
1486great public scheme, often to the material benefit of the nation, but
1487so that the wealthy men who control the unit shall necessarily receive
1488the profits on the large sums of public money expended, or, what
1489comes to the same thing, enormous salaries paid out of the taxes.
14907. The last noticeable effect of plutocratic pressure is that
1491exercised upon the administration of justice. This again, in its
1492cruder and simpler form is less dangerous than in its indirect form.
1493Where the direct bribing of lawyers is eliminated there remain two
1494powerful examples of plutocratic effects upon them. The first is the
1495cost of obtaining justice; the second, the legislative effect of judicial
1496decisions.
1497As to the first of these, we are today surrounded by it on every
1498side. The cost of recovering the smallest debts is out of all proportion
1499to the cost of recovering a large one. The scale of payments which
1500have to be met before a citizen is enabled to have justice at all is
1501higher in a plutocracy, such as ours, than under any other form of
1502government. Justice in the matter of small sums is sold by the lawyers
1503at a preposterous cost, and on larger sums is still very high through
1504the cost of appeals. It is a mere commonplace that the wealthier unit
1505can take a thing in this country to the ultimate Court of Appeal, the
1506House of Lords, where the poorer rival cannot.
1507The effect of the same spirit upon judicial decisions has been
1508evident through history during the last 350 years, and was particularly
1509strong during the great confiscations of land. It was largely by
151052 The Restoration of Property
1511judicial decisions, rather than by direct legislation, that the waste
1512lands, the minerals, forests, commons and the rest, were stolen from
1513the monarchy in the past, and handed over to its wealthier subjects.
1514The thing began with the active decay of royal power under Elizabeth,
15156 and continued through the seventeenth century.
1516Our first approach, then, to the problem must be the consideration
1517of what remedies are available by way of check, modification or
1518prohibition, for meeting these seven lines of attack along which large
1519property advances in its ceaseless campaign for absorbing or attempting
1520to absorb small property and to turn the small owner into a proletarian.
1521To the consideration of those remedies I will now turn.
1522III
1523The practical problem before us is how to effect the beginnings,
1524at least, of a restoration of property in this society
1525of ours wherein property has been almost destroyed, its
1526principles forgotten, and acquaintance with it lost in the determining
1527majority of our fellow citizens.
1528The problem is one applying to this particular country – England
1529– at this particular moment. We have to deal with it in a very
1530different way from what we might adopt in a country where property
1531was still for most men a desire, and for a further sufficient number of
1532men a known experience.
1533We can only try to restore it as an experiment: only attempt to
1534establish it in some measure. We can only sow the seeds of such a
1535restoration in a country which has fallen prey to industrialized capitalism
1536with a determining number of its citizens proletarian – that is,
1537wage slaves.
1538Now, the obvious intellectual answer to the main question:
1539“How shall we proceed?” is to discover the root of the evil and attack
1540the root.
1541On the surface the cause of the evil would appear to be
1542unchecked competition, with its destruction of all those safeguards
1543whereby property maintained itself for centuries before the breakdown
1544which began with the Reformation. But we can go deeper
1545than that. The profound, ultimate root of the whole affair is a certain
1546mood – an attitude of mind. Where you have a public opinion supporting
1547well-divided property, a state of society which takes welldivided
1548property for granted and therefore a philosophy consonant
1549with well-divided property, institutions or customs conservative of
1550property will arise of their own accord. Conversely, attacks upon
1551the small owner, his attempted destruction by the great man, will be
1552defeated.
155354 The Restoration of Property
1554“Therefore” (says the intellectual observer of the problem), “we
1555can only effect even the beginnings of the mighty change we have in
1556view by going to the very ultimate causes to apply our remedy there.
1557We must change the philosophy, that is, the religion of the society in
1558which we live. A false and poisonous philosophy having produced
1559industrial capitalism with its herd of wage slaves, and having
1560destroyed normal human economic freedom, we must re-establish
1561a sane philosophy – or rather religion – whence right institutions
1562would necessarily proceed. We must convert England to a right
1563religion before we can make Englishmen free.”
1564Well, this obvious and radical attitude, at the risk of paradox,
1565I beg leave to challenge.
1566I do not think that in England as now constituted there is a
1567chance of changing the minds of men from that philosophy whence
1568all these evils have proceeded. Nor do I think that the enormous
1569structure of industrial capitalism, with its establishment, as a dominating
1570social feature, of a millioned proletariat in the place of free
1571citizens, can be quickly overset by the propagation of ideals. This
1572attempt at general conversion must go on all the time, side by side
1573with the practical tackling of the problem, and such effort at conversion
1574is itself practical; but at the moment we cannot expect from it
1575effects on a scale worth noticing, and meanwhile society runs down
1576steeply into the Servile State.
1577It is the conviction that a change of philosophy is not possible
1578in time to be of service, which has decided most of those who have
1579enough historical knowledge and enough moral sense to hate capitalism,
1580and at the same time enough intelligence to despise Socialism,
1581to stand aside or (or what comes to the same thing as standing
1582aside) to discuss the abstract doctrine of economic freedom without
1583attempting to issue a concrete programme for its re-creation. All
1584around us everything works for the destruction of such small proportion
1585of well-divided property as remains. Every unit in our social
1586machinery, every habit of our thought takes the present perversion of
1587civilization for granted. It takes it for granted that the only solution
1588of our evils is a solution of the same nature as those evils, to wit, the
1589Socialist solution. “We have lost,” they say, “our economic freedom,
1590Hilaire Belloc 55
1591and it is impossible to recover it.” Or again, “since there must be
1592monopoly and since the mass of men must be slaves of monopoly, let
1593us at least put monopoly into the hands of the State and not leave it
1594to a few millionaires.”
1595To this objection I answer that, though certainly it is impossible
1596to change a false philosophy in time to save the situation, yet there
1597may be enough normal love of freedom remaining, however feeble,
1598to be used as a starting point. There may be embers aglow here and
1599there, sufficient to start the small beginnings of a flame.
1600It is, indeed, true that the position to be attacked is formidable.
1601It is so formidable that anyone may be forgiven for regarding it as not
1602only impregnable, but invulnerable. English industrial Capitalism
1603with its clique of masters and its myriad of dependents, is a fortress
1604against which any efforts we may make through attempted reforms of
1605laws here and there, through attempted founding of new institutions
1606here and there, might be compared to the attacking of one of the
1607old-fashioned stone fortresses by unarmed men. They could hardly
1608loosen a stone. They are surely impotent to effect any breach, however
1609slight, in the invincible defence.
1610But when you are considering how a fortress may be attacked
1611with the means at your disposal, it is your first business to ask yourself
1612where its weak points are to be found. The weakness may seem
1613slight, the opportunity of action against such great and highly organized
1614strength may seem negligible, but the very first business is to
1615find out, at least, where there is an opportunity, even on a small scale,
1616for beginning. In other words, the practical thing is not to attempt
1617to undermine industrial capitalism at once and as a whole – that can
1618only be done by a change in the religion or philosophy of the citizens;
1619nor even to attempt to make suddenly a great breach in the defence
1620(for that could only be done with weapons we do not possess) but to
1621seek out those points, however apparently insignificant, in which the
1622reversal of the great process can be sporadically begun.
1623I would, therefore, in the consideration of a practical programme,
1624set out the various points of that programme in an order
1625almost exactly the opposite of the intellectual order, and would begin
1626with the things that can be done even now, at once, with some chance
162756 The Restoration of Property
1628of partial and limited success. The process may be compared to the
1629killing of a tree by one who must attack with some instrument – say,
1630shears – too feeble for cutting the tree down, let alone uprooting it;
1631too feeble even for inflicting a serious wound upon its trunk; too
1632feeble for cutting off main branches or perhaps secondary branches,
1633but not too feeble for clipping leaves.
1634Now, if you cut enough leaves off a tree the tree dies; and a man
1635not having an axe or a saw or a spade may yet with small shears and
1636the slight aggressive power of his two hands begin to destroy one
1637after the other the leaves. With this principle in mind, and for that
1638purpose, I ask what concrete proposals are available for weakening
1639Industrial Capitalism and its Socialist fruit. How can we, meanwhile,
1640sow fresh seed, from whence the institution of property shall
1641begin to re-arise?
1642There are three main departments in the problem: (a) the
1643restoration of the small cultivator, distributor and craftsman, either
1644as individual families or as employers in the human domestic word
1645“employer” that is, dealing with but few and personally known
1646subordinates; (b) the division of property in enterprises necessarily
1647large, among many holders in sufficient amount; (c) the confirming
1648of such wholesome division by institutions which shall maintain it
1649and prevent a recurrent degradation of property into capitalism.
1650Before considering these three departments of our effort, a
1651digression must be admitted upon the function of what is today
1652called “The State”; what used to be called (in the days when men
1653preferred reality) “The King.”
1654We have already said that no such reformation as we are contemplating
1655can be undertaken or continued without the use of State
1656power. And to understand the necessity for this we must get rid of
1657the false category whereby men think in terms of two contrasted
1658methods which they call Socialism and Individualism.
1659These terms do not indicate a true contrast. There is no
1660such thing as Individualism. An action by the State is one thing
1661when it is used to free mankind and to give the citizens economic
1662independence, and an exactly opposite thing when it is used to take
1663that independence away. As men would have put it when property
1664was, indeed, well-distributed and when it corresponded to a strong
1665Hilaire Belloc 57
1666national monarchy, “the King is there to safeguard the freedom of
1667the small man against the tyranny of the great.” That is a King’s
1668main function, and there is nothing in common between the exercise
1669of that function and the oriental idea of the King as universal
1670owner with all men his slaves. On the contrary, the right conception
1671of kingship as the moderator and preserver of freedom is the very
1672contrary to, and destruction of, the wrong conception of kingship as
1673a universal despotism. We shall find as we proceed in our search for
1674Economic Freedom, that we cannot follow it for any distance without
1675calling in the powers of the State, to contrast with, and as far as possible
1676to destroy, the usurped powers of Big Business.
1677To return, then, to the concrete proposals for a remedy. We
1678propose to re-establish the peasant, the craftsman and the small (and
1679secure) retail tradesman.
1680The Peasant, as being by far the most important of all these and
1681the foundation of all, I reserve to a separate chapter.
1682If we look at our present industrialized society we perceive, of
1683the two other opportunities for particular action, the opportunity for
1684restoring the small distributor (that is, the small shopkeeper) and the
1685opportunity for restoring the small workshop (that is, the craftsman).
1686The first is, under present English conditions, a much more promising
1687opportunity than the second.
168858 The Restoration of Property
1689As to the restoration of the small distributor (or perhaps we
1690may call it “the saving of him,” for he still survives as a type with
1691very numerous examples), there would seem to be two converse economic
1692policies available together. The first is the handicapping of the
1693large distributor, by differential taxation; the second is using such a
1694system for the artificial economic protection of the small distributor
1695– in both of which policies, of course, one must go directly contrary
1696to the accepted doctrines of the past, which have led us into the mess
1697where we are now floundering.
1698There are three forms of differential taxation on large distributors
1699(I mean, of course, large retail distribution as it exists today in
1700England), all three of which must be applied simultaneously. These
1701three are Differential Taxation (1) against chain stores; (2) against
1702multiple shops; (3) against large retail turnover.
1703(1) There must be a differential tax on chain shops, that is, on
1704the system whereby one man or corporation controls a great number
1705of different shops of the same kind. To control two such may involve
1706but a small tax, to control three a larger one in proportion; and so
1707on, with the curve rising steeply until the ownership of, say, a dozen
1708in the territory over which the Government has power becomes economically
1709impossible.
1710The chain shop, as we now know it, has, by the way, not only
1711the evil of destroying the small distributor, but the further evil of
1712controlling wholesale distribution and even production.
1713Suppose, for instance, a system of chain shops acting as fishmongers;
1714a particular group extends until it controls the fishmongering
1715business of, say, half the trade – say, for the sake of precision,
171610,000 shops. It has not only destroyed the economic independence
1717of 10,000 men who would have been each the free owner of a
1718fishmonger’s business; it has not only substituted for them 10,000
1719wage slaves liable to ruin at any moment by the arbitrary decision of
1720an impersonal master who has no human relationship with them, but
1721it is also in a position to dictate prices to the people who send the fish
1722inland from the ports, and to control in great measure the nature and
1723direction of the fisheries. That is manifestly a usurpation of social
1724power and should be destroyed.
1725Hilaire Belloc 59
1726(2) The multiple shop also must be handicapped by differential
1727taxation, based upon the number of categories with which it deals.
1728One multiple shop (or department store) combines, let us say, in a
1729particular case, fifty categories; it acts not only as a chemist and a
1730boot-seller, a wine merchant and tobacconist, but as a stationer etc.
1731Another deals with seventy categories, another with only twenty five.
1732We need a tax differentiated by the number of categories. It will be
1733easy for a small man to add some little extra activity to his main one
1734– he can sell newspapers as well as tobacco, for instance – but when
1735it comes to dealing with more than quite a few categories, differential
1736taxation should begin, and before it came to dealing with the great
1737number now occupying the chief department stores it should have
1738become prohibitive.
1739It will be objected, of course, that for such a system you would
1740need an extension of bureaucracy, that the definition of the various
1741categories will be difficult etc. It is true that in all these reforms we
1742shall have to extend, for the moment, bureaucratic action. The nature
1743of the modern world is such that we cannot escape from being at least
1744helped by the State in our reforms.
1745But in practice the danger is not so great as it seems, for the
1746various forms of retail distribution are fairly well-established; there
1747are divisions apparent to ordinary common sense, and this is so true
1748that many of them, as it is, can only come into existence through a
1749licence granted by, or purchased from, the State – tobacconists, for
1750instance. Let that system be extended to a consider number of trades,
1751and the thing is done.
1752There are licences for carrying on a tobacconist’s shop and for
1753carrying on a wine shop – let there be also a licence for carrying on
1754a grocery and fishmongering business, or what not; let the licence
1755be granted as a matter of right to any applicant; let its cost be insignificant
1756to the man who applies for only one or two licences, but then
1757let it begin to rise more and more steeply as the number of licences
1758applied for increases.
1759(3) The third form of tax is a tax upon turnover. Your large
1760retail distributor who has only one place of business, and who deals
1761with only one kind of business can be, and is, in his way, destructive
176260 The Restoration of Property
1763to the small man just as much as the large distributor who owns
1764chains shops or as a multiple department store. Let there be no tax on
1765turnover up to a certain sufficiently high level, then let it begin and
1766grow steeply until it becomes prohibitive.
1767As to the second, converse, half of this policy. The money raised
1768by the differential tax against large distribution, the money provided
1769by that middle zone between the beginning of large distribution and
1770the point where the differential tax becomes prohibitive, should be
1771used to protect artificially the small man against the great. It should
1772be used to establish and conserve corporate credit with the Guild to
1773which – as we shall describe in a later article – the small distributor
1774should belong; it should even be used, perhaps exceptionally, to
1775subsidize the starting of the small man.
1776Here it may be objected that in many cases nowadays these
1777reforms would be of no productive effect because the small distributor
1778whom we are trying to save and to increase in number, is already
1779a distributor only in name and has already become in practice a
1780servant. This is notably the case with the tobacconists. The wholesale
1781producer and distributor has made of the retail tobacconist nothing
1782more than his agent; he can threaten the small retailer with extinction
1783unless he buys at a dictated price and sells at a dictated price. The
1784capitalist tyranny acts here as it does in the refreshment trade, with
1785the “tied house.” The remedy for this is a separate matter which we
1786will deal with later on when we consider the reforms necessary in the
1787control of production and wholesale distribution, but for the moment
1788let the suggested reforms in the matter of retail distribution stand.
1789The opportunity for restoring the individual artisan and small
1790human employer of craftsmen is, as has been said, far less than that
1791for restoring the small distributor. For this there are two reasons. In
1792the first place, concentrated production under large groups of capital
1793can produce in many categories not somewhat cheaper than the individual
1794or the small group, but enormously cheaper – though note that
1795this is not universally true. Next (and this is really more important)
1796fashion and habit have come in to help the evil. The purchaser has
1797lost the habit of, and the desire for, choice.
1798I say that this spiritual disease is more important than the
1799merely mechanical fact of cheap production. Such a statement will
1800Hilaire Belloc 61
1801sound fantastic in the ears of those who are accustomed, as all
1802modern men are, to implied materialism. Yet here, as in every other
1803department, it is the mind that governs and not the material conditions.
1804To see how true this is, consider what the effect actually is of
1805choice exercised before our eyes in the modern world and what the
1806effect would be if the use of choice were widely extended.
1807It is notorious that in certain districts, in certain trades covering
1808great numbers of people, choice is still exercised and has a great
1809effect. For an instance, I would quote the demand for Cheshire
1810cheese among the Lancashire operatives. They know what they want
1811and they insist upon it; they will not accept a substitute or an inferior
1812article. See also the effect of choice as it is exercised (though in a
1813restricted field, it is true), by the middle and upper middle classes in
1814certain categories of furniture and design. Here, as in nearly everything
1815else, the right process has been largely reversed; men take what
1816is imposed upon them and not what they themselves choose. Supply
1817controls demand and not demand supply. But there is still a sufficient
1818amount of choice remaining, as anyone in the furniture trade will
1819tell you, to produce considerable effect in the more expensive lines.
1820Whether it be possible to effect such a moral revolution as reviving
1821the general habit of choice only experiment can show. It has been
1822done in some categories; in others it has quite failed. But in most it
1823has not even been tried. With the exercise of choice, of individual
1824will, of preferring this to that and seeing that you get it, you extend
1825the opportunity for the artisan, the individual craftsman, the man
1826who makes a thing to order, as also for the small master, the man who
1827employs and personally supervises a few.
1828It must be admitted that there is only a limited field here available
1829for the restoration of economic independence. Concentrated
1830mechanical production will for long necessarily occupy the greater
1831part of the economic area involved in any particular form of manufacture.
1832Still, for the purpose of spreading the moral effect of economic
1833independence, and familiarizing modern men with the idea
1834thereof, the re-erection even of a small number of craftsmen protected
1835by a charter and guild in some of our departments of production would
1836be of the highest value.
183762 The Restoration of Property
1838Take, for example, the man who makes simple or more ornate
1839wooden furniture on a small scale with personal knowledge of the
1840methods, and without having recourse to concentrated mechanical
1841means. We cannot replace him in his old position of making all the
1842furniture needed in the community; he will, for a long time to come,
1843account for no more than a small fraction; but we can easily multiply
1844his present numbers by five, even by ten, perhaps by more than ten,
1845and so set an example of what is desirable in the commonwealth.
1846What is more, we could put before the eyes of people now unaccustomed
1847to them objects of a proper shape, not turned out on a hideous
1848pattern, which some capitalist group happens to find the cheapest,
1849but suited to the tastes of the producer and the purchaser.
1850It must be admitted, of course, that in the beginning an effort
1851of this kind would be the merest nibbling at the edges of a vast field.
1852To our socialist opponents the effort will seem at first not only negligible,
1853but ridiculous. We shall probably have a great deal less effect
1854at first than had William Morris7 and his school – for these, though
1855at heart in favour of economic freedom, called themselves Socialists
1856and were therefore listened to with some respect by people who had
1857forgotten what property was. But if we could add to the moral effect
1858a definite political weapon – the subsidizing and protecting of the
1859small artisan at the expense of Big Business; the confirmation of the
1860small artisan’s position by a legalized Guild System (which I touch
1861on in the latter part of this booklet) – we shall be able to do more
1862than the dilettantes of the nineteenth century were ever able to effect,
1863though in their time there was a much larger proportion of independent
1864artisans remaining who might still have been saved.
1865In the case, therefore, of the artisan, as in the parallel case of
1866the shop, the thing to work for is a revolution in political principle;
1867a new set of ideas and therefore a new set of enactments, the reverse
1868of those which built up industrial capitalism. We need enforceable
1869laws and actual institutions which shall artificially advantage the
1870small distributor against the great, and the small craftsman or small
1871user of machinery against the large manufacturer. That is, of course,
1872“uneconomic.” In other words, it will cost effort. So do the luxuries
1873personally enjoyed by the big capitalists today. A well-made piece of
1874furniture, neither repulsive nor mechanical in design, will cost more
1875Hilaire Belloc 63
1876than a piece turned out by mass production. But you are buying
1877something for society at that price, and it is a something well worth
1878society’s while – much better worth while in our eyes than cheap
1879furniture. That “something” is citizenship, and the escape from
1880slavery.
1881I am here tempted to repeat the objection that must occur to the
1882reader throughout this essay: “All this is moonshine, because there is
1883no condition of mind in a modern industrial State prepared for such
1884a political change.” Possibly not. But at any rate those are lines, and
1885the only lines, along which the change can be effected. The small
1886distributor and the small craft producer could thus be re-established.
1887He would not be made universal; he would at first be only a rather
1888larger minority than the present small minority is; but he would from
1889the first be more secure than he is at present, though he would not
1890at first appear in the community in very much larger numbers. Also
1891those numbers would grow.
1892But, apart from his numbers, the mere presence of the secure
1893small owner, after we had made him secure, would have remedial
1894effect. His presence would be an object lesson in freedom and establishment,
1895and let us hope, a hint to his neighbours to change their
1896own condition, where this was possible, from one of wage slavery to
1897one of independence.
1898Even were such a policy successful beyond any limits now
1899thought possible, there must remain a very large field in which the
1900individual craftsman or the small human employer of craftsmen,
1901the individual small shopkeeping family has no place. Vast areas of
1902modern production and exchange will necessarily concern great units
1903and great units alone. How shall these be dealt with? How shall welldivided
1904property re-arise in those fields of economic effort where the
1905small unit can in the nature of modern things have no place?
1906That is the next question to be answered, and I shall now deal
1907with it. After that I shall ask how a similar policy can be applied to
1908the land; in the last section I shall deal with the political organization
1909necessary for consolidating the position of small property by guild
1910and charter, and corporate credit when it shall have been restored.
1911IV
1912I said at the end of my last division that, after the comparatively
1913straightforward task of restoring in some degree (but as much as
1914possible) the small distributor, and in a necessarily lesser degree
1915(but as much as possible) the craftsman, we should have to tackle a
1916more serious task, the distribution of ownership in those great units
1917of production, distribution, transport, etc, which cannot of their
1918nature be worked “severally” as can the forge, the carpenter’s shop or
1919the grocery. These large units cover nearly all the field in the highly
1920industrialized countries such as England, but they cover a large part
1921of it in nearly all powerful modern nations, and an appreciable part
1922even in those which can still be called agricultural.
1923This field of the large unit has tended to become larger and
1924larger in the last lifetime and is still expanding. The economic area in
1925which you cannot hope to recreate the small distributor and the small
1926craftsman has tended to increase at the expense of the area in which
1927you can restore him.
1928This tendency is due to two quite different causes, between
1929which it is most important to distinguish, especially as most of those
1930who deal with these matters in our modern economic writing confuse
1931them badly. There is, first of all:—
1932(a) The economic unit which has, from the nature of the instrument
1933used, to be worked on a large scale; the classical example is the
1934railway system.
1935Next you have:—
1936(b) The economic unit which becomes a large one, not from the
1937nature of things, not because the instruments used must be gathered
1938together in one centre or under one combination and control, but
1939because the elimination of competitive costs, and even the greater
1940perfection of methods accompanying amalgamation, tend to produce
1941Hilaire Belloc 65
1942such great units. Here the force at work is not a mechanical one. It
1943is the character of men and has nothing to do with the nature of the
1944instruments concerned – or little to do with it – and much more to do
1945with the effects of untrammelled competition.
1946We have seen how true this is of the chain shop and the big store,
1947and the same thing is at work, of course, in production and transport.
1948You see it in the eating up of the small motor bus services by new
1949big combines, which should logically grow into one great “combine”;
1950you see it in the production of such things as gramophone records
1951in great centralized factories, and in many such factories under one
1952control – and, of course, in scores of other instances.
1953I say it is all-important to distinguish between the two kinds
1954of tendency: they are to be dealt with in quite different fashions.
1955The defenders of industrial capitalism – such few of them as are left
1956– and those with the same type of mind who defend Socialism, and
1957its only logical form, Communism, have told us over and over again
1958that amalgamation is inevitable. They call it an “economic necessity”
1959because they think that any instrument or method cheaper or more
1960efficient for the special purpose of production or transport must
1961necessarily oust the somewhat less cheap or somewhat less efficient.
1962They also imply that there is a necessity for the greedier man and the
1963more cunning man to eat up the more generous and less instructed.
1964They who talk thus confuse what they here call “necessity” with
1965that true necessity imposed by universal physical laws independent
1966of the human will. There is no necessity for amalgamation into larger
1967and larger units, where the instruments used do not of themselves
1968impose larger and larger units. The only “necessity” here is the
1969logical necessity of consequences following upon certain human
1970arrangements. Where you have arranged the rules of the game in any
1971particular fashion, there will necessarily follow certain consequences,
1972but those consequences no longer follow when you change the rules
1973of the game.
1974If you were to declare immunity for those who stole watches
1975there would follow as a necessity a great deal of watch-stealing as
1976compared with the stealing of other objects. If there were no punishment
1977for assault you would find weaker men, physically, bullied all
1978over the place by stronger men; and in the same way if there is no
197966 The Restoration of Property
1980restriction of competition or of the scale of ownership or of the size
1981of amalgamation and control thereof, then, indeed, there is a sort of
1982necessity making for the increase of the economic unit. But it is only
1983“necessity” so long as the rules stand thus – change the rules and the
1984necessity disappears.
1985Where, however, the instrument used is of such a nature that
1986it can only be used on a large scale then there is indeed a necessity
1987for a large economic unit. I have quoted the railways as the classical
1988example of this. To build a railway from Bilbao to Leon8 will cost
1989a very large sum indeed; you will have to prepare the gradients, to
1990build bridges, make cuttings, pierce tunnels through the mountains,
1991and when you have done all that you must have your rolling stock
1992and the rest – you cannot operate the thing save as one very large
1993unit. But there is no necessity that all motor buses going along an
1994already existing road from Bilbao to Leon should be owned by one
1995big combine, or one rich person, or even all controlled from one
1996centre. They will only tend to be so controlled if you leave competition
1997unchecked; that is if your society and your laws are so organized
1998that property is safeguarded by the laws while its good distribution
1999is not safeguarded.
2000Now our policy in dealing with these two quite distinct groups
2001of large units should, I think, be four fold:—
20021. In the matter of units which are necessarily large, because
2003the large instrument alone is capable of doing the work, we must
2004watch every opportunity of substituting the smaller unit for the
2005larger whenever a new discovery permits this; but where there is no
2006such opportunity, where the large unit is inevitable, we must have
2007control either for the purpose of creating well-distributed property
2008in the shares thereof, or for the purpose of managing the use of it as
2009a communal concern. For instance, much of the centralized mechanical
2010production of our time arose when expensive and necessarily
2011centralized steam power supplanted man power. It now could be
2012decentralized through the widely distributed use of electrical power.
2013A differential tax on power used would effect this. Use a differential
2014tax to make the electrical power cheaper per unit when used on a
2015small scale by the small man than when used on a large scale.
2016Hilaire Belloc 67
20172. Where amalgamation and the formation of large units is due
2018not to the nature of the instrument but to unchecked competition,
2019we must deliberately reverse the process, as in the case of the shopkeeper
2020and craftsman. We must penalize amalgamation and support
2021division of units. For instance, the grinding of wheat into flour has
2022become the monopoly of a few large mills which took advantage of
2023the Great War. It would be immediately possible to penalize these
2024by differential taxation and restore the smaller millers by the subsidy
2025thus available.
20263. In all cases where separately owned shares in the unit are
2027possible (and they are nearly always possible) we should aim at creating
2028the largest possible number of shareholders and at preventing the
2029growth of large blocks of shares under one control.
20304. We should especially act against that typical modern evil
2031which may be called “irresponsible control,” whereby the economic
2032unit is managed without real responsibility to the shareholders, and
2033even without the real possession of the shares by those who control
2034them.
2035Let us take these four points one by one.
20361. The process of discovery and application does not (as was
2037arbitrarily affirmed in the nineteenth century and even later) necessarily
2038make for the large unit. New discoveries and new applications
2039do not produce in any inevitable way the expensive instrument as
2040against the inexpensive. The idea that they do so was, like most socalled
2041“scientific” ideas, an irrational conclusion drawn from blind
2042habitual experience, which did not consider the logical nature of the
2043problem
2044It was the experience of those who began the use of modern
2045machinery that the machines to their hand grew increasingly expensive
2046as they grew more efficient and could be used very much better
2047– often could only be used – in large centralized fashion. The system
2048was already well started and had gathered momentum when new
2049instruments appeared eminently favourable for a smaller division
2050of the unit. But the opportunity was not fully taken advantage of
2051precisely because of that momentum gained by the earlier system of
2052large units. First we had the electric motor, whereby power could be
205368 The Restoration of Property
2054almost infinitely divided; next we had the internal combusion engine
2055whereby it could be still further divided, especially for the purposes
2056of transport. Of this somewhat more advantage was taken than of
2057electricity; but in both cases the advantage was rapidly neutralized
2058by amalgamations which had nothing to do with the nature of the
2059instrument but were merely the result of uncontrolled competition
2060and political corruption; the rich man swallowing up the poor man
2061and bringing “pressure” to bear for the passing of regulations hampering
2062his humbler rival. What that word “pressure” means in all its
2063forms of bribery and blackmail, every political assembly knows.
2064What the future may reserve for us in the way of new instruments
2065we cannot tell, but at any rate with those already in hand
2066there is an indefinitely large field for the expansion of well-divided
2067membership.
2068In those cases where the instrument is necessarily very expensive
2069we may, as I have said, adopt one of two methods: we may either
2070promote the ownership of it into shares, the proper division of which
2071and the saving of which from irresponsible control will be later
2072discussed; or we may accept the principle of communal ownership,
2073whether by a Guild or by the State, but under the general proviso
2074that ownership by the State is better avoided where possible, because
2075the private citizen has no control over the State as he has over the
2076Guild.
2077State ownership is better, of course, than ownership by a few
2078very rich individuals, or even the ownership by many small shareholders
2079who are at the mercy of a few rich ones, as they are under
2080our English company law, but there is always the danger in State
2081ownership that the men who work for the State-owned instrument
2082will turn, if they are not turned already, into wage slaves, without
2083other support than the weekly provision made for them by their
2084master – the State.
2085This is not strictly and necessarily the result, but it tends to
2086be the result. The Belgian and Italian railway systems, for instance,
2087the one when it was State-owned, and the other still being Stateowned,
2088worked, and work very well for the community and remained
2089curiously free from the corruption which so-called “representative
2090institutions” always breed. The Parliamentarians of the two States
2091Hilaire Belloc 69
2092in question left, I understand, a clean working and efficient bureaucracy
2093to do the management, though no doubt they occasionally
2094put themselves and their hangers-on into particular jobs connected
2095with the monopoly. We must not start with the principle that State
2096ownership is always bad through its tendency both to inefficiency
2097and corruption; but we must start with the proviso that it should be
2098avoided wherever possible, in cases of active exploitation, although
2099State protection by charter for the purpose of preventing irresponsible
2100monopoly is essential. A chartered guild composed of the workers in
2101the system would be one form of communal system securing a better
2102distribution of wealth; so would a chartered shareholding company,
2103to which the rules we are about to consider (applicable to all shareholding
2104and designed with the object of a good division of property
2105in the shares) should apply.
2106But in all this department we must remember that the necessarily
2107large unit covers a far smaller field than is generally imagined.
2108There is the railway; there is the Post Office, including telephones
2109and telegraphs; there is the road system of the country. But the great
2110mass of production, distribution and transport does not fall under
2111this category. It is not monopolist of necessity. It only becomes so by
2112bad human arrangements which can be bettered.
2113Meanwhile every new discovery or new application of an existing
2114discovery, which makes for the break-up of monopoly must be
2115fostered. For instance, it is directly against our policy to bolster up
2116the railway against well-divided road transport. It is, on the contrary,
2117part of our policy to favour the new road transport against the
2118railway, because road transport can be worked in small units and the
2119railways cannot.
2120But it is essential that our support of rural transport should be
2121a support of the small man and that we should differentiate strongly
2122against the use of the road by the great units, especially those which
2123deal in heavy goods. Railway property has at least become better
2124distributed than most of the great capitalist groups, whereas some of
2125the monopolies which are getting the advantage of road transport at
2126the public charge are virtually in the hands of half a dozen men and
2127often – as in the case of oils – the property of aliens.
212870 The Restoration of Property
21292. As to those amalgamations into large units which are the
2130result of competition and human arrangements independent of the
2131nature of the instrument used, we can act there exactly as it was
2132proposed to act in the matter of the chain shop. We can penalize
2133the large unit, and subsidize and advantage in every way the smaller
2134unit.
2135This does not mean, of course, that we can break up units
2136which of their nature must be of a certain size. One type of production
2137will need an organization such that you cannot have less than
2138a certain size of unit connected with it, another will require a still
2139larger size, and in every such case you will, for the better distribution
2140of property, have to organize for property in the form of shareholding.
2141But what is essential is to prevent the amalgamation of units
2142beyond the maximum size required for actual production in that
2143particular department.
2144For instance, you may say: “We cannot make incandescent
2145lamps in the modern fashion without such and such a minimum
2146amount of capital. It is necessary for the making of the lamps that
2147such considerable units should exist.” Yes, but it is not necessary that
2148many factories should be amalgamated into one. Production and distribution
2149may be rendered somewhat cheaper by so doing, the work
2150may even be somewhat more efficiently done, but the price you have
2151to pay in the loss of freedom is a great deal too high.
2152Another striking example is breweries. Today they tend to be
2153few and centralized. Better beer and a greater choice would result
2154from penalizing the large brewery and with the revenue subsidizing
2155the small one, down to the cottage brewer.
2156In the mixed cases you must advantage the smaller unit against
2157the greater. An excellent example is the modern production of
2158footgear. Footgear can be produced by machinery on a large scale,
2159and much more cheaply than it can be by the hand craftsman. Such
2160footgear is also much worse than that produced by the hand craftsman.
2161But you cannot, with modern urban populations, abandon the
2162mechanical production of footgear. What could be done would be to
2163encourage the hand craftsman so that his necessarily small numbers
2164should at any rate be extended as much as possible. You should tax
2165Hilaire Belloc 71
2166the mechanical production, and, above all, you should see to it that
2167there should be no amalgamation of factories or establishment of very
2168large factories, where, at no very considerable loss of efficiency, the
2169smaller factory will do.
2170In other words, you must here, as everywhere, reverse the present
2171current economic life; you must do the opposite of what was done
2172by those who began the industrialization of the modern world – you
2173must act in a fashion which they would have called reactionary. That
2174spirit of reaction must run through all our effort at the restoration of property
2175if there is to be any chance of its even partial success.
21763. The setting up of smaller units held in shares and controlled
2177by Guild or company monopolies, where these are necessary, will be
2178of no service to those who desire to restore property unless the shares
2179are well distributed.
2180To effect a good distribution therein you must apply differential
2181taxation, in three ways:–
2182First, to the size of the individual shareholding group. You
2183must make it difficult for the large group to buy up the smaller one.
2184You must make it easy for the smaller group to start at the expense of
2185the larger one, and then to grow to a certain size in spite of the efforts
2186the larger one will make to crush it.
2187Secondly, you must limit the individual holding of shares; not
2188by arbitrary legislation (merely saying that not more than so many
2189shares may be held in one hand), but again, by differential taxation.
2190Where the holder of so many shares desires to increase his holding
2191he must pay a tax which rises so steeply that as his accumulation
2192proceeds it is soon checked, and the proceeds of that tax can be put
2193to subsidizing of purchase by the smaller holders. That is a new
2194principle to which we are quite unaccustomed, but without it the
2195restoration of property will not begin.
2196Thirdly, there must be a capital tax on industrial shares (as
2197distinguished from land, which is in a different category altogether).
2198More must be provided by such a capital tax and less by income tax.
2199Thus only do you really differentiate against the big holder.
2200It may be argued that we have something of the kind already
2201in the Death Duties. To this argument, I answer that the parallel
220272 The Restoration of Property
2203is false. The Death Duties do not prevent accumulation nor redistribute
2204it after it is made; all they do is to take away a certain part of
2205private accumulation and dissipate it in keeping alive various State
2206functionaries, and paying usury (principally to the banks) on nonproductive
2207State debts. But a capital tax on the value of shares held,
2208and levied continuously on the amount held, would automatically
2209produce the desired result.
2210When you have these forces at work in combination a wide
2211distribution of ownership of shares will necessarily follow.
22124. Lastly, we must provide against that worst of modern evils in
2213matters of shareholding – irresponsible control. As things are today
2214you get the following state of affairs:—
2215Some swindler (to give his true name) having 51% of the shares
2216in a company (we will call it A) puts forward company A as the purchaser
2217of 51% of the shares in Company B. In other words, he uses
2218the property of the other 49% of the shareholders in Company A,
2219without responsibility to them, and makes Company A the controller
2220of Company B. He then uses his control of Company B to purchase
222151% of the shares of Company C – and so on. At last one individual
2222(or small group) has in his hands the control of an indefinitely large
2223number of shareholders to whom he is not responsible.
2224The actual process has, of course, become by this time
2225infinitely
2226more complicated than that and is capable of any amount of
2227modification, but that is the principle at work.
2228In order to defeat it there must be an established principle that:—
2229(a) There shall be no majority control save through a very large
2230majority, certainly more than 51% and better 90%. A small proportion
2231of individual shareholders (not of share value) should suffice to
2232veto a policy or change.
2233(b) No affiliation of companies, nor power of purchase of
2234shares by a company as a person.
2235Now we remark that irresponsible control is also called “inevitable”
2236through the breakdown of an unwieldy machinery of voting.
2237A general meeting of shareholders is really no control at all. It was
2238designed for a time when all society was differently organized,
2239smaller and much simpler. There is no reason why voting power
2240Hilaire Belloc 73
2241in shareholders should be unwieldy were the companies reasonably
2242small, and there is no reason why voting on all major proposals
2243should not be done by post. Here comes in the difficulty, as there
2244must come in all these things, the question of degree. Which proposals
2245are so important that the opinion of the shareholders must
2246be taken? With a good distribution of property and a habit of well
2247distributed shareholding, and a growth of small units, common sense
2248would soon decide this on its largest lines.
2249Take a case of which the lines in the main (as I remember them)
2250were these: Some years ago a company with a very large number of
2251shareholders was got hold of by an “operator” (to use the euphemism
2252he himself affected). It was a company owning many hotels. He
2253“controlled” it, if I remember right, by the method which I have
2254given in simplified form above. He did not personally own the bulk
2255of the hotel property. He even indirectly controlled but a very small
2256fraction of it. But his control over the whole was nonetheless absolute.
2257His own business in life happened to be the sale of furniture
2258– whether it was his direct business as a manufacturer, or whether
2259he had got it through yet another series of operations, I forget. At
2260any rate, he started to make the hotels in question furnish themselves
2261completely to his advantage – to purchase furniture they did not need
226274 The Restoration of Property
2263at a higher price than they should have paid – in order to fill his own
2264pockets as a seller of furniture. In that case the thing was exposed
2265and widely talked about because the “operator” made some technical
2266mistake or other which enabled his victims to bring him into court.
2267But it is a model of the kind of thing flourishing on all sides in a
2268thousand different forms. If it proceeds unchecked it makes the good
2269distribution and security of shareholding impossible.
2270To all these propositions it will be replied, of course, as in the
2271former examples, that they are impracticable. The whole structure of
2272the modern world renders this so. The evil of Industrial Capitalism is
2273now mature; it has taken firm root; it has developed and is now “set”
2274in all its complications. You could not undo even a part of it without a
2275crash – even if you had despotic power; and to hope to do so without
2276despotic power is plainly chimerical. You would never get opinion to
2277move – for opinion has been formed in the very atmosphere of that
2278which you are trying to destroy.
2279To this I answer, first, that our effort at restoring property
2280does not aim at perfection nor even at any large universal upheaval
2281of the existing system. It aims at making a beginning. Just as in the
2282case of the craftsman we know that we cannot put him back where
2283he was before ugly and imperfect things, turned out mechanically,
2284began to oust his much better forms of production. Just as we cannot
2285hope to see in our time the great stores disappear and the lesser and
2286much more useful shopkeepers take their place; just as we cannot
2287even hope probably for any very large curtailment, at any rate for
2288some considerable time, of the pernicious multiple shop system, so
2289we cannot quickly and on a large scale remedy share-shuffling. But,
2290as in the case both of the distributor and the craftsman, we can make
2291a beginning. We can plant a seed and we may doubtfully hope that
2292this seed will grow.
2293Such should be our aims in the matters of shareholding in
2294industrial concerns, in the size of the units and the curtailment of
2295irresponsible control of them.
2296And I would add that in the whole process a very powerful
2297factor making for success would be the public knowledge of how
2298much is held and by whom, and a continued attack upon that secrecy
2299which is half the evil of the present state of affairs.
2300Hilaire Belloc 75
2301Secondly, I would answer, what I fear may seem paradoxical
2302(I have already said it on a past page), that the effort to be made
2303not only does not attempt completion, not only will be satisfied with
2304beginnings, but will very probably fail, even in such a very limited
2305field. The forces against even the partial success of such an attempt
2306are ubiquitous and highly organized, and what is worse, they have
2307become instinctive. Capitalism and its Socialist fruit are taken for
2308granted today in England as the natural air of the country.
2309The reaction towards health will not be easy, even on a small
2310scale, but, once more, the excuse for attempting it is that the alternative
2311is clear. Either we restore property or we restore slavery, to
2312which we have already gone more than halfway in our industrialized
2313society. I do not discuss here whether slavery (whether to a very rich
2314man, or group of men, or to the State) is a bad thing, or a good thing.
2315I only say that, without well distributed property, freedom cannot be;
2316and that, if we leave things as they are, slavery must come.
2317There are many who will say that shareholding in large concerns,
2318however well distributed, is a most imperfect way of realizing
2319economic freedom. True and full economic freedom is only present
2320when a man himself possesses and himself uses the instruments of
2321his craft. The carpenter who makes a table with his own tools exercises
2322a very different function from the same carpenter who happens
2323also to hold shares in a railway, debentures, bonds in national and
2324municipal debts, and so forth. As a craftsman at work he is in full
2325control, personal and alive; as a shareholder his control is distant,
2326indirect and largely impersonal.
2327The criticism is profoundly just. The structure of modern share
2328and bond holding was built up in an atmosphere hostile to full economic
2329freedom and its fruits are not in harmony with such freedom.
2330But a policy of emancipation must deal with things as they are.
2331The carpenter with £30 a year from public bonds (the average family
2332share if an exact distribution existed) with another £30 say, from
2333debentures and shares, is in a much more independent position than
2334the same carpenter dependent upon his craft alone, in a society where
2335the cream of social production is skimmed off for the benefit of a
2336plutocratic class. He has reserves.
2337V
2338The restoration of property means, and has meant throughout
2339history in nearly all places and times, primarily, the restoration
2340of property in land.
2341When men have become wage slaves they think in terms of
2342income. When they are economically free they think in terms of
2343property. Most modern men living under industrial conditions
2344regard economic reform as essentially a redistribution of income;
2345property is for them an illusion; the reality behind it is income. Property
2346for them means only an arrangement whereby a certain income is
2347secured. Free men look at it just the other way. They think of income
2348as the product of property; and the typical form of property, which
2349is also the foundational form, is property in land. Under the eastern
2350despotisms, as also under barbaric, nomad conditions, property in
2351land is either denied in theory or unknown in practice, but in our
2352Western world it is, and has been throughout all our development,
2353the guarantee of citizenship and the foundation thereof.
2354Of this account there is throughout the West (that is, throughout
2355Christendom) an instinct for preserving or, if it has been lost, for
2356restoring widely distributed property in land. During all the stable
2357periods in our civilization such a wide distribution of property in
2358land, among free men at any rate, was the rule. When it became
2359the exception society grew troubled; and that unnatural state of
2360affairs – the presence of men politically free but economically unfree
2361– produced dangerous strains resulting sometimes in a violent transformation
2362of society.
2363That is what happened in the heart of the Roman Empire
2364towards the end of its highest period. During the Dark Ages well
2365distributed property in land gradually reappeared. During the
2366Middle Ages it was the universal rule. Even in the early part thereof
2367Hilaire Belloc 77
2368the serf might still be constrained to work for his Lord, but he was
2369secure in the ownership of a portion of his native land not subject
2370to competitive rent, inalienable so long as the customary dues were
2371paid; and his land passed on from him to his descendants. In most
2372countries this state of affairs developed after the Middle Ages into
2373the establishment of a free peasantry, that is, of citizens possessing, in
2374numbers sufficient to determine the character of their society, land of
2375their own, coupled with political as well as economic freedom.
2376There were parts of Europe, however, in which the clock was
2377set back, notably in Great Britain. The peasantry were swallowed up
2378by the greater land owners and became a proletariat. In this country
2379the historical process is now familiar to many – perhaps by this time
2380to most educated men, though our official academic history long
2381remained silent upon it. First came the strengthening of the greater
2382land owners by the loot of the Church in the sixteenth century, then
2383in the seventeenth century came the eating up by the greater land
2384owners of the smaller yeomanry, notably under that ironically entitled
2385Statute of Frauds, passed, as has been repeated in these pages, by
2386Parliament, that is, by the greater land owners themselves (who
2387were by that time masters of the country) in the reign of Charles
2388II.9 Today England is the typical example of a country in which the
2389desire for land and the sense of ownership in it has, for the mass of
2390the people, fallen to its lowest.
2391English conditions therefore afford the “zero point” for a policy
2392of recovery. If it be possible to restore well distributed property in
2393land under English conditions today, it will be possible to restore
2394such well distributed property in land anywhere. Here, however, we
2395must repeat the principle laid down at the beginning of this essay,
2396that you will not get well distributed property in any form, whether
2397in land or anything else, unless there is some desire present in the
2398community for its acquirement. There must be some spark left in the
2399embers if you are to coax them again into flame; you cannot compel
2400people to become economically free if they do not desire economic
2401freedom at all: if they have so completely lost the instinct for it that
2402they confuse the reception of a secure revenue with freedom. A
2403secure revenue can be guaranteed under any form of slavery – State
240478 The Restoration of Property
2405slavery or private slavery. Such security is not only not identical with,
2406but, as an ideal, actually militates against, economic freedom.
2407Now at this point we must introduce very important distinctions,
2408too often left on one side. These distinctions are as follows:—
2409(1) A distinction between agricultural and urban land, or, to
2410make a more exact definition, a distinction between land mainly
2411occupied for the production of agricultural stuff and land occupied
2412by the man who produces things by machinery or as a craftsman.
2413(2) A distinction between land occupied by the owner and land
2414occupied by someone other than the owner, who pays a rent for it to
2415that other. And let us remember that in all this discussion the word
2416“land” includes buildings and other immovables attached to land.
2417It must be a first principle in attempting the reconstruction of
2418property in land that agricultural land shall be treated differently
2419from urban land, and that the burden upon land occupied by the
2420owner shall be markedly less than the burden upon land and used as
2421a source of profit by letting it out to others. Both these distinctions
2422are revolutionary as applied to the society in which we live today.
2423Both are essential to the recovery of property in land.
2424As to the second, the distinction between land used by the owner
2425and land not used by him, unless it is made and insisted upon and
2426expressed in social law and custom, the effort at the reconstruction
2427of well distributed property in land fails. Today a man in England
2428inheriting from his father a house to which the rental value is, say,
2429£100 a year, is taxed upon it exactly as though he was getting £100
2430a year rent by letting it out to somebody else. This social falsehood
2431is fundamental, and undermines the whole situation. There must be
2432a radical difference in the burdens imposed upon land occupied, as
2433land (according to our view) should be occupied, by a human family
2434living thereon, and land occupied by others from whom the owner
2435draws tribute. Throughout the history of our civilization the pretence
2436that the two were the same has led to the breakdown of society, and if
2437we desire to restore society we must restore the simple principle that
2438a man living under his own roof, and on his own land, shall have the
2439advantage over a man who uses his property only to exploit others.
2440But as to distinguishing between agricultural and urban land,
2441or let us say between land occupied mainly for agricultural productHilaire
2442Belloc 79
2443ion, and the house with or without a garden occupied by a craftsman,
2444or even by the wage slave, the problem is different because under
2445modern conditions there is difficulty in separating the two.
2446You can settle simply enough by inquisition and declaration
2447whether a man is or is not paying rent to others for the privilege of a
2448human home, but it is not so easy to distinguish nowadays between
2449land that is urban and land that is rural.
2450In the thirteenth century the distinction was clear, and it is
2451clearer today in societies where there is a strong peasantry than in
2452societies based upon industrialism. Even in England it is possible to
2453draw a working distinction. Land can be registered and by inspection
2454verified as used in the main for one purpose or for the other, with the
2455policy of always leaning towards the recognition of the agricultural
2456rather than the urban type, that is, the policy of calling a piece of land
2457in doubtful cases agricultural rather than urban.
2458As for the urban type, there ought to be a simple rule: every
2459lease should automatically contain the power of purchase by installment;
2460any lease not containing such a clause should be void if it were
2461a lease for more than a certain number of years. And, should this
2462ordinance lead to the restriction of long leases, that should be met by
2463forbidding the short lease without the option of renewal for a longer
2464period.
2465It will be argued, of course, that the greater part of tenancy
2466under the industrial system today cannot envisage ultimate proprietorship:
2467the wage slaves are too nomadic and too thoroughly dispossessed
2468for that. But such an objection misconceives our object. We
2469are not attempting to reconstruct property in land universally and
2470at short notice. We are attempting a beginning wherever conditions
2471may be favourable. And if today these conditions were observed with
2472regard even to urban land a beginning could be made.
2473Now, as to agricultural land, which is the real crux of the affair,
2474even in such countries as ours (I mean England, Scotland and Wales,
2475excluding Ireland) the problem has a special character of its own.
2476Let us suppose that there be in Great Britain today (England,
2477Scotland and Wales) a sufficient remnant of men with the tradition
2478of using the land. What are the conditions under which this remnant
2479may be fostered and made to grow? If we can be certain of these, in
248080 The Restoration of Property
2481the island as it now is, we can a fortiori apply those principles to other
2482countries where the desire for land is more widely spread.
2483There would seem to apply to this problem the following principles,
2484which I do not put down in any order of importance, for each
2485of them is essential.
2486(1) You cannot make a peasant direct out of a townsman. You
2487may graft the townsman onto the peasant; an existing peasantry can
2488train and teach and digest into itself a certain moderate proportion of
2489townsmen, but you cannot take the townsman and set him down on
2490the land, even under the most favourable conditions, and expect him
2491to live upon it. He will fail (as the phrase goes) “to make a living”;
2492that is, he will soon throw up his job in disgust.
2493You will get exceptional men here and there who can transform
2494themselves. There are still men in the towns who have hereditary
2495instincts for the land; there are others who develop even without
2496experience an understanding of the land. But the mass of men
2497brought up under urban conditions, come on the thing the wrong
2498way round, and are therefore soon repelled by it. They are often
2499attracted by the externals of country life, but have no inkling for its
2500inward practice. Their conception and, what is more important, their
2501habit of labour is mechanical repetition through a limited number of
2502hours during which they have to work at a pressure which renders
2503such limitation necessary.
2504Agricultural work is the other way about. It is multiple rather
2505than repetitive. It is not generally intense. It cannot be limited in
2506hours, but must be indefinitely elastic. Further, there is this fundamental
2507spiritual difference between the two: agricultural work is an
2508interest when it is pursued for its own sake, while modern mechanical
2509work is a grievous task of which men always desire to be rid as soon
2510as may be. The peasant goes on working slowly in his highly varied
2511task throughout the whole of a long summer’s day, and is filled with
2512his occupation. But he keeps it voluntary, prepared to take his own
2513recreation at his own times and to fill in with this or that the hours
2514when he cannot work in the open.
2515(2) The second principle is this: The land will supply under
2516well divided property no more than a modest sustenance under
2517Hilaire Belloc 81
2518normal conditions. The man with a small freehold which he cultivates
2519himself with the aid of his family must not expect to be better
2520off and usually will not be so well off, reckoning in cash values, as the
2521wage slave of a corresponding station in society.
2522It is one of the first things remarked by a wage slave coming
2523from industrial societies to live among a peasantry that the peasants
2524are “beggarly.” There is, of course, another reason for this besides
2525the fact that the land must not be expected to provide more than
2526a moderate sustenance, that other reason being the passion of the
2527peasant for independence. It makes him keen to grasp at the smallest
2528sums of money, to hesitate on spending where he can save, to abhor
2529magnificence, luxuries, and every form of what he feels to be waste.
2530I have used the phrase, “in cash values,” but to this there is an
2531important reservation. Cobbett’s10 small freeholder with a pig, perhaps
2532a couple of milch cows, and communal rights over and above his
2533limited pasturage and arable, would not, if you added up the market
2534value of all that he got by his labour, have an income superior to
2535the regularly paid labourer of the town. But he has two advantages:
2536freedom, that is, a sustenance under his own control; and quality, that
2537is a sustenance better in every way, in material, in hours, in choice, in
2538locale. The peasant eats not only of his own produce but off his own
2539table and at his own hours; and he eats better food and brews better
2540drink.
2541(3) The third principle attaching to well divided property in
2542agricultural land is the principle that a man should himself live off
2543the actual produce as much as possible. That, in practice, he can
2544hardly ever do so altogether, is true; there will always be division of
2545labour, and with a peasantry determined on acquiring a maximum in
2546order to preserve its independence, such differentiation will often be
2547pushed to an extreme limit. You will find many cases upon the Continent
2548of men who live upon a tiny patch of vineyard. Their direct
2549sustenance therefrom is only, say, a couple of gallons of wine a week
2550for themselves and their dependents. They must obtain their bread
2551and meat and clothing and necessary repairs of house and steading
2552from the sale of their surplus. If the wine is of a special quality they
2553will not even drink of their own produce but sell it all. Even where
255482 The Restoration of Property
2555there is a mixed holding much will be sold under the conditions of
2556a high civilization for the purchase of necessaries which the holding
2557does not provide. But the underlying principle remains, and the
2558more it is kept in view the sounder will the position be: “Live of your
2559own.”
2560(4) The fourth principle will, I am afraid, when it is stated
2561plainly, appear fantastic, but it is essential. The burden laid upon
2562the land of the small owner must be light, the tribute he has to pay
2563– wherein I include usury in all its forms – must be a minimum.
2564In other words, when you are attempting to re-establish a peasantry
2565under adverse conditions, that peasantry must be privileged as against
2566the diseased society around it.
2567Today false statistics could easily be prepared showing that a
2568great mass of English land is in the possession of those who till it; but
2569as a fact it is really in the possession of money lenders – principally
2570the banks. The ownership is nominal; the real control is in the money
2571lending power which exacts tribute. Now, unless you are prepared
2572to start afresh with a system under which usury shall not drain the
2573lifeblood of the tiller of the soil, your efforts will fail. Even co-operative
2574banks, of which we will speak later, should play a subsidiary, not
2575a dominating part. The tillage of the land on a small scale is such
2576that if you burden it with these outgoings of usury you wound it with
2577a wound which will ultimately bleed it to death. And what is true of
2578usury is equally true of every other form of tribute.
2579I have in mind, as I write, one patch of land, a concrete case,
2580of which I know all the details: thirty acres of land of an average
2581quality in a purely agricultural district. The true burden of taxation
2582weighing upon this small farm is, as things now are, to begin with,
2583an income tax upon the rental; although no rent be paid, although
2584the land and the house upon it be in the possession of the tiller. This
2585income tax, being graduated, may in the case of the small owner be
2586small; but it exists. In the particular case I am considering, as the 30
2587acres belong to an owner of other wealth, the Income Tax is about
2588£4.10s.3p an acre. The tithe, which is I admit a heavy one, comes
2589to nearly six shillings an acre. The land is already to some extent
2590subsidized by the abolition of agricultural rates, but there is the rate
2591upon the house, a rate of four shillings in the pound upon the supHilaire
2592Belloc 83
2593posed rental value. I do not speak of the burden of upkeep in gates
2594and the rest which a certain social standard imposes and which, were
2595a free peasantry in existence, would be greatly lowered at the expense
2596of what are now called “good appearances.” The mere money burden
2597of the rates and taxes, including the tithe, is more than the thing will
2598bear. The effect of them upon the small owner is just what it would be
2599upon the urban worker if he were asked to pay £15 a year out of his
2600subsistence wage. Quite apart from any question of usurious tribute
2601it is a burden more than the thing will stand.
2602To these main principles there are two more which I would
2603add: first the necessity of co-operation among the small owners
2604for the purposes of marketing and for the lowering of the costs of
2605production – for instance, co-operation in the dairy business. The
2606second is the permission of alienation.
2607The reason I exclude these two from the main principles is
2608because a peasantry once established will solve such problems for
2609itself. Co-operation will naturally arise, and the restriction of absolute
2610ownership by rules forbidding alienation kill effort: they are a
2611form of servitude. A free peasantry once established will see to itself.
2612Make it unfree by too close a supervision from any form of bureaucracy,
2613and the moral motive power will be maimed.
2614There is further, a final principle which, while not essential,
2615is operative for good and it lies immediately to our hand. It is the
2616principle that everything should be done by the artifice of law to
2617make it easy for the smaller man to buy land from the richer man,
2618and difficult for the larger man to buy land from the smaller man.
2619You must establish what is called upon the Continent a “cadastrum.”
2620There must be a register of land (it already exists in practice through
2621the income tax schedules) and you must establish by a differential tax
2622– the principle of which you can find in the Wyndham Land Act11 in
2623Ireland – a tendency for the small man to buy from the great, and for
2624the great to sell to the small.
2625Granted such principles underlying your effort, applying that
2626effort to men who are already tilling the land and have an hereditary
2627faculty therein, leaving yourself free to feed into such a system new
2628men hitherto unconnected with the land but capable of being grafted
2629onto an existing peasantry, and your peasantry will prosper and
263084 The Restoration of Property
2631grow. It will grow slowly. It will not, for a very long time become the
2632predominant note in a society already morally ruined by industrialism.
2633But it will form a nucleus of health in such a society.
2634It is evident from what has been said that any such attempt
2635to re-erect a peasantry in a society where the idea of peasantry has
2636almost disappeared must be based upon subsidy, that is, upon gift.
2637You have to foster the new growth, and that can only be done at the
2638expense of other forms of wealth surrounding the new growth. If in
2639England, for instance, you abolish the tithe on the small man (keep
2640it by all means upon the large man) someone will have to find the
2641difference or you will be robbing the tithe owner. The same is true of
2642taxes and of rates. In other words, you cannot start a new peasantry
2643save at the expense of the diseased society surrounding it; and if you
2644are not prepared to impose that sacrifice your peasantry will never be
2645established. It must begin as a social luxury and, while it remains in
2646that initial “luxury” state, it must like all luxuries be extravagantly
2647paid for. What you have to decide is whether there is remaining
2648among us enough tradition to start a peasantry again – the poor
2649beginnings of one, the seedling – and, if so, whether it is worth while
2650to the health and the morals of the community that the economic
2651effort should be made.
2652I have said nothing in reply to those who maintain that a
2653peasantry cannot now be restored because mechanical large scale
2654agriculture must now necessarily destroy the small owner and
2655cultivator. I have wasted no space on that kind of thing for two
2656very good reasons: First that the presumption is as false here as
2657in manufacture: machinery and large combinations do not exclude
2658small property, which can always act in combination; second that we
2659have all around us in the real world, as distinguished from academic
2660writing, peasantries holding their own and surpassing the capitalist
2661exploitation of the land.
2662VI
2663High taxation is incompatible with the general institution
2664of property. The one kills the other. Where property is
2665well distributed resistance to big taxation is so fierce and
2666efficacious that big taxation breaks down. Where an effort is being
2667made to restore well divided property, high taxation will destroy that
2668effect.
2669There is no need to delay upon a definition of what constitutes
2670high taxation as distinguished from normal taxation; like everything
2671in which there is a process of gradation, any definition can be quarrelled
2672with, and every definition will depend upon degree. But we
2673know very well what the thing is. High taxation is taxation which
2674has passed the point after which it becomes a continuous burden of
2675anxiety and interference upon the productive man.
2676John Stuart Mill ventured the judgement that 10% was a fair
2677rough limit to establish. When you took more than 10% of a man’s
2678earnings, or even other income, you began to pass the limit after
2679which the thing interfered with and warped the normal processes
2680of economic life. But, in fact, no numerical standard can be exactly
2681applied. Obviously 10% levied on a man with £5,000 a year, living
2682off State payment of interest, is quite a different thing from 10%
2683levied on a small shopkeeper struggling to keep going with £200 a
2684year profit. Ten percent in direct taxation demanded at one moment
2685in the year is altogether a different thing psychologically from 10%
2686spread out in indirect taxation upon a number of petty luxuries. We
2687know very well in practice when high taxation is present and when
2688it is not, and we know that since the Great War the nations of our
2689own civilization, and particularly Great Britain, have had to endure
2690taxation
2691which has been, and remains, fantastically high.
269286 The Restoration of Property
2693That high taxation is the enemy of well distributed property is
2694apparent in two ways. First, it is apparent in the fact that it can be
2695levied effectively only in proportion as well distributed property has
2696disappeared. Second, its effect in operation is to destroy the process
2697whereby well distributed property is accumulated.
2698Very high taxation indeed – such confiscatory taxation as we
2699are suffering in England today – is impossible where property is well
2700distributed. You can have taxation somewhat too high indeed where
2701property is well distributed, and it will do great harm to the institution
2702of property and gradually impair its good distribution; but to
2703have much higher taxation still working efficiently and producing its
2704full amount, you need a society like our own in which small property
2705has decayed.
2706The reason is simple: it may be put colloquially by saying that
2707you can tax a man with £20,000 a year more heavily in proportion
2708than you can tax a man with £2,000 a year. You can take away, annually,
2709half the income of a very rich man and yet leave him very rich,
2710but if you take away half that of a small man you ruin him. This
2711plain arithmetical truth is observable again in the necessary presence
2712of gradation whenever taxation becomes abnormal. When taxation
2713is normal and low, not disturbing the economic life of the average
2714citizen, you can have a flat rate above a certain very low minimum,
2715and this is, as a fact, what we had in this country in the levying of the
2716income tax before the quite recent and disastrous changes began. If
2717we put on an income tax of 4d in the pound – less than 2% – we can,
2718after exempting the very small incomes, levy it without friction and
2719without injustice upon the rest of the community. Even a man with
2720£200 a year is not seriously disturbed by having to pay less than £4;
2721and though, under a flat rate, the greater the fortune the less the real
2722burden imposed on it, yet the burden is everywhere so slight that no
2723evil results accrue.
2724When you come to high and oppressive taxation you are compelled
2725as by a physical law to graduate. You have to make the burden
2726much greater on the larger fortunes than on the smaller and on the
2727larger incomes than on the smaller, otherwise you could not raise the
2728tax at all. The consequence is that in a nation where much the greater
2729Hilaire Belloc 87
2730part of the population are living on a wage or salary, and where
2731huge accumulations (which have been well called the “negation of
2732property”) are the mark of society, very high taxation can be levied
2733successfully and a much larger proportionate revenue produced than
2734in a society of equal wealth where property is better distributed.†
2735The thing can be put diagrammatically. Suppose in a community
2736in which the total surplus (that is, rents, usury and profits)
2737comes to £2,000,000 a year, and that of this two million pounds one
2738half – £1,000,000 – is divided among ten families while the other
2739half is divided among ten thousand families; then the bulk of the
2740community (the poorer people) have over and above their earnings
2741£100 a year unearned income each. Suppose the average of earnings
2742in the poorer part for each family is £100 a year – then the average
2743total income for these poorer families will be £200 a year. You could
2744not in practice take away one half from these small incomes by taxation.
2745But you could take away one half from the larger incomes. A
2746man with £100,000 a year will grumble badly if you cut him down
2747to £50,000, but he can carry on on £50,000. The £200 a year man
2748cannot carry on on £100 a year.
2749We may lay it down, then, as a general principle that high taxation
2750can be levied with more success in proportion as property is illdistributed:
2751high taxation is incompatible with a wide and equitable
2752distribution of ownership.
2753But what interests us most is the converse proposition – that
2754high taxation being hostile to well distributed property is, in its very
2755essence, hostile to every attempt, such as is ours, to begin a restoration
2756of property. Introduce high taxation into society where well
2757distributed property exists, and you cannot levy it with ease; insofar
2758as you do levy it, you will begin to impair the good distribution of
2759property in that society, but there is every chance that you will fail.
2760Attempt, however, to cultivate the beginnings of property in a society
2761when high taxation is already permanent and you will find that effort
2762†We enjoy in this country, for instance, the power of raising for Revenue
2763near double the amount obtainable from a rival population of much the
2764same size and much the same wealth, but one in which more than half that
2765population are economically free.
276688 The Restoration of Property
2767wasted, unless the rules of taxation are drastically modified. That is
2768the main quarrel which those who desire to reconstruct property (if
2769that be possible), in our modern diseased capitalist state, must have
2770with the present enormity of taxation; that is why they must regard it
2771as mortal to their effort. If it is continued on existing lines, the new
2772effort at recreating small property cannot thrive.
2773The reason for this should be obvious when we consider by
2774what process property is gradually brought into existence amid a
2775proletarian society. It is brought into existence by gradual accumulation;
2776by thrift; by adding to building, to the value of land occupied,
2777to liquid capital in hand, to investments. To recreate small property
2778in society under the curse of Industrial Capitalism requires many
2779other conditions; it requires security, it requires a sound currency,
2780based on some real material, preferably gold or silver, or both. It
2781requires one not to be tampered with by Government or “managers.”
2782It requires special favour for the small man at the expense of the
2783large one, special laws interfering with undue accumulation – and so
2784on. But it also demands moderation in taxation. Under a Capitalist
2785régime, where everything depends upon keeping a margin of profit
2786between the proletarian earnings and the total amount of production,
2787and therefore the leaving of mere wages as little taxed as possible,
2788taxation must be thrown as much as possible on to property. It begins
2789to put a brake upon the accumulation of small property the moment
2790that accumulation arises.
2791The small man is thinking of building on to his premises with
2792his savings, but the rates are 15 shillings in the pound, and he pauses.
2793The small man has accumulated investments which bring him in so
2794much a year; he knows that if he passes a certain limit the increasing
2795steepness of the tax he has to pay will become burdensome. The
2796professional man is earning an income out of which he can build up
2797property for the future by saving, say, a third of his income. But if
2798he is so successful or works so hard that he reaches the point where a
2799full quarter of his income is taken away in taxation, it is hardly worth
2800his while to save more, and he will cease to save.
2801It is true that high taxation does not produce its worst effects in
2802the very beginnings of small property, it comes to have such effects
2803rather when the accumulation is of a certain respectable size, and is
2804Hilaire Belloc 89
2805beginning to attach to what we call “the Middle Class Standard.”
2806But then to preserve and to create the Middle Class Standard is of the very
2807first importance to the creation and preservation of property in the State.
2808This is perhaps the most important point in the whole of this
2809discussion, not only as regards the effect of taxation, but in every
2810other department. It cannot be too much repeated and insisted upon
2811that the ideal of property does not comport equality in property – that
2812mechanical ideal is contradictory of the personal quality attaching to
2813property. It is not a bad but a good thing that rents, the dwelling
2814house, the income from investment, and the rest, should be upon
2815various scales, for such variety corresponds to the complex reality of
2816human society. What is a bad thing is that the destitute wage slaves
2817– a proletariat – should form the determining member of society, and
2818that real production and thrift and personal effort – in other words,
2819work and citizenship – should be encouraged. Under a system of
2820high taxation the gambler escapes while the same taxation kills the
2821man who is trying to save.
2822Consider the two types of man in our society whom anyone of
2823us can observe in action. The one works steadily at, let us say, some
2824small distributing business, a shop; his ideal is to prosper within the
2825limits of the middle class. He will rise perhaps from profits of two
2826or three hundred a year to profits of four, five, six hundred a year;
2827he will lay by money for investment; he will die possessed of a house
2828worth, say, £2,000, and will at last be receiving an income from his
2829business and his savings of, say, £1,000 a year. Such a man under a
2830system of low taxation progresses uniformly and reaps a reward not
2831unconnected with his industry and intelligence. The same is true of a
2832man who makes similar progress through application to a profession.
2833Apply high taxation after a certain point to either of these and the
2834process ceases. It is not worth the worker’s while to make the extra
2835effort.†
2836†Mr. H.G. Wells has put the point with his customary lucidity. He said
2837(in effect) “Suppose a man to be making, say by writing, X£s a year on
2838which the taxation is ¼. He has a real income of (3X/4)=(27X/36X).
2839Let him by extra drudgery add a third to his old nominal income, that is
2840an extra X/3. He has now a total taxable income of 48X/36. But on this
2841higher income the veto is no longer ¼ but 1 3. He has a real income of 32X/36.
284290 The Restoration of Property
2843Now consider the other type, the man who speculates, who
2844gambles, whose ideal is not a solid middle class ending to his efforts,
2845but a larger fortune or ruin. See how he goes to work.
2846He risks the complete loss of his first accumulation, and more
2847often than not suffers that complete loss. If (commonly through no
2848good judgement of his own, but by blind accident) the gamble comes
2849off, he is suddenly heavily enriched; and nine times out of ten the
2850form of the enrichment is such that the fisc has no hold upon it. His
2851gains are advantitious, and not taxed as part of a regular income.
2852He gambles again – again he either ruins himself (as more
2853commonly happens) or again pulls it off. And that second gamble
2854makes him already a conspicuously rich man. He can then, as our
2855industrial society is organized, advance with more certitude and less
2856risk, to a fortune, five, ten or ninety times greater than that which
2857had already put him among the wealthy.
2858When he is upon that scale high taxation begins to operate
2859upon him forcibly; he has an income which is almost wholly assessable,
2860and, in spite of the various forms of evasion, his huge accumulation
2861will more often than not fall under the full operation of the
2862Death Duties. But he remains very rich.
2863All through his career – which has done nothing but harm to
2864the Commonwealth – and to his own character – a career destructive
2865of citizenship in himself and in others – the fisc has been positively
2866encouraging him to take his choice between ruin, perhaps imprisonment,
2867and a great fortune. All through the career of the opposite type,
2868the fisc has been putting the brake on the accumulation of moderate
2869property. In other words, high taxation destroys the middle class. It
2870dries up the stream by which a middle class is brought into existence
2871and maintained. It breeds plutocracy.
2872The process is aggravated in the modern world from the fact
2873that very great fortunes alone today are fairly secure. The more the
2874disease of Industrial Capitalism develops the higher the point below
2875which the investor is uncertain of the future. Therefore men who
2876might not otherwise be tempted to gamble are urged to gamble,
2877He has added to his real income by 5X/36, but he has had to earn another 12X/36
2878to get that increment. More than half of his extra effort has been thrown away. He
2879is taxed on that extra effort, not 1 3 but more than ½.
2880Hilaire Belloc 91
2881and those whose instincts are for slow progressive accumulation are
2882discouraged.
2883There is another aspect of this evil, this destruction of the
2884Middle Class by high taxation; and that is that the middle class
2885being the spokesman for property, property lies undefended when a
2886middle class fails. Through a middle class property, as an institution,
2887becomes vocal because it can express itself upon a basis of leisure
2888and cultivation; it has inevitably been found in the past that when
2889the middle class weakens or is destroyed, even though there remain
2890widespread property in the hands of quite small men, these are at
2891the mercy of the very great fortunes which stand above them, with
2892no intermediary layer. For the very wealthy control society. That
2893is exactly what happened in the breakdown of the ancient pagan
2894civilization and, where Capitalism is at its worst, it is what we see
2895happening today.
2896But when we have determined that high taxation is mortal to
2897well distributed property, and especially to the proper functioning of
2898that ‘flywheel’, which we call the Middle Class, we are still left with
2899the fact that high taxation is present and must be faced.
2900It has come upon the modern world as the result of two causes;
2901the waging of war upon an unprecedented scale financed by Bank
2902Credit at interest, instead of by a levy upon capital, and the increase
2903of State Socialism for the purpose of guaranteeing Capitalism against
2904a revolt of the proletariat. The first is called “interest on War Loans”
2905or “a National Debt,” the second is called “Social Services.”
2906It would seem that both these categories of public expenditure
2907are inevitable as things now stand, and that, therefore, this prime
2908obstacle to our effort – high taxation – will remain and will make our
2909effort futile, at least in those countries where the mass of the people
2910are already proletarian, that is, in those countries which are generally
2911industrialized – and of these, of course, Great Britain is the chief
2912example. Our society, here in England, is that one society among the
2913great nations in which the people have been most thoroughly dispossessed.
2914It is also – and on that account – the society in which the very
2915highest taxation can be levied with the least friction.
2916And how, things being what they are, can such a situation
2917be met? If we cut down beyond a certain limit the so-called “social
291892 The Restoration of Property
2919services,” the Capitalist machine will break down through the revolt
2920or (more probably) the increasing lethargy of its proletariat. If we cut
2921down beyond a certain limit the interest paid upon public debt, State
2922credit will be impaired or destroyed. In other words, we seem to have
2923come to a situation in which extravagantly high taxation is necessarily
2924permanent. Is there any way out of this situation?
2925There is evidently the catastrophic way; already in the last 14
2926years catastrophic steps one after the other have reduced a burden
2927which otherwise could not have been borne at all. The German Reich
2928has destroyed the whole of its public debt by repudiation; the French
2929have destroyed four-fifths of theirs; the Italians two-thirds; and
2930we in this country by a mixture of repudiation, what was virtually
2931forced conversion, and the debasing of the currency (issuing of bad
2932money), have reduced the burden by over half. Yet what remains is
2933sufficiently grievous, in Great Britain at least, to militate against the
2934reconstruction of property in our midst.
2935Will further castastrophic steps relieve us to the point where
2936individual thrift and work will come into play again for the creation
2937of reasonable private accumulations? It is probable: it is not certain.
2938What is certain is that if the level of high taxation continues we shall
2939end with a state of society wherein there will stand contrasted a few
2940very great fortunes on one side and a proletarian mass upon the
2941other, with all hope for the reconstrution of property abandoned.
2942VII
2943There remain to be considered three points. How those who
2944aim at the reconstruction of property should deal with large
2945scale distribution; how they should proceed in order to
2946maintain the life of the first experiments; and, in direct connection
2947with this last, how they should deal with the function of credit.
29481. As to large distribution: wholesale exchange (the merchant as
2949contrasted with the shopkeeper) has become “Big Business,” working
2950on another scale and in a different fashion from retail exchange.
2951Retail exchange has its department stores and chain shops, but
2952it also presents to this day a very great number of small domestic
2953concerns. There is no positive law as yet to prevent the small man
2954attempting to start his individual shop, and though he is heavily
2955handicapped as against the large shop or the chain of shops, he may
2956struggle on. But wholesale exchange and all the machinery of it have
2957been captured by highly centralized capitalism. A handful of men
2958control, and control in permanent fashion (for example) the sending
2959of jute to England. A comparatively small body of men control the
2960reception of wheat in bulk by this country: and so with all the main
2961articles of our import. So also with the handling of the wholesale
2962internal exchanges. There remain, of course, a very large number of
2963small wholesale men engaged in distribution of various kinds, but the
2964markets, as a whole, are dominated by a few, and increasingly so.
2965Now the rule to remember in this department of our effort
2966is that insisted upon through this essay: we are not attempting a
2967universal and immediate revolution and it would be absurd to do
2968so. The Communists have only to follow on the lines of existing
2969capitalism, which has given them birth and in spiritual sympathy
2970with which they work in every practical detail of their programme.
2971Those who, in a much more successful and immediate fashion, are
297294 The Restoration of Property
2973setting up the Servile State, start entirely from Capitalism and are
2974developing of their nature on capitalistic lines. The only economic
2975difference between a herd of subservient Russians and a mob of
2976free Englishmen pouring into a factory of a morning, is that the
2977latter are exploited for private profit, the former by the State in
2978communal fashion. The motive of the Russian masters is to establish
2979a comfortable bureaucracy for themselves and their friends out of
2980proletarian labour. But we want something different from either.
2981We are attempting a radical change. We are attempting a
2982reactionary revolution: perhaps impossible. Thus even where we have
2983to accept centralized power we shall try to get the profits payable
2984severally to very many citizens, and we shall try to make small
2985industry preferred in the use of that power and to prevent its being
2986centralized for the advantage of large units.
2987Now, as we are attempting to reverse an almost irresistible
2988current which is now long established and has dug its bed deep, we
2989can only attempt small beginnings. To change to a metaphor which
2990I have already used, as we are trying to reafforest a vast area which
2991has gone back to desert through the cutting down of trees, we can
2992only begin by replanting carefully and section by section, artificially
2993protecting our tender seedlings until we have established some few
2994areas whence trees can spread.
2995Therefore we cannot attack in a frontal manner nor all along
2996the line the established domination of large capital in wholesale
2997exchange. Our chance is to begin with retail exchange and build up
2998from that.
2999All we can do in the matter of wholesale exchange until we
3000are strong enough to affect the mass of it, is to guard the small man
3001jealously from discrimination by the wholesale provider. Still more
3002must we safeguard him against being turned into a mere servant of
3003the wholesale provider. The function of so guarding him we must
3004leave not only to special laws in his favour, but to the bye-laws of his
3005Guild as I shall presently propose.
30062. The safeguarding of the small unit, the seedlings of
3007reafforestation, the delicate experiments in the reconstruction of
3008property, must take the form of the Guild: not the unprotected guild
3009Hilaire Belloc 95
3010arising spontaneously (for that would soon be killed by the predatory
3011capitalism around it) but of the Guild chartered and established by
3012positive law.
3013Now the Guild, which is the essential institution for
3014safeguarding small capital, should be established particularly in the
3015case of crafts, next in the case of retail trade, and only in the third
3016place in the case of the wage earner, the destitute man, the existing
3017slave of capitalism.
3018This is, of course, to reverse altogether the existing order of
3019development in which the wage earners trades unions comes first in
3020strength, the craft union a bad second, and the mutual support of
3021small retail traders is weakest of all. But this state of affairs arose out
3022of capitalism, whereas we are fighting capitalism, and therefore we
3023must begin with the craft guild and the shop guild.
3024Such guilds might be formed on a small scale to begin with.
3025The natural instinct of men still retaining political freedom though
3026they have lost economic freedom is to form associations in defence.
3027When the common morals of Europe were thrown to the winds in
3028the religious chaos of the Reformation, the organs of economic selfdefence
3029were destroyed. The only two guilds that survive today in
3030England are those of the lawyers and the doctors. But the instinct for
3031self-preservation was so strong that even the unfortunate wage slaves
3032began to combine in defence of a standard wage. It is one of the
3033glories of the English that in spite of the most cruel persecution, they
3034managed in a confused way to build up amid wage slavery certain
3035organizations which were a distant echo of the old guild system
3036of their free ancestors. Proletarian England produced the trades
3037unions, some few of which became really effective for the partial
3038protection of a minority of the population.
3039There was, however, no attempt to act thus for the safeguarding
3040of property. The organized village community went under. The small
3041shopkeeper in part, the small craftsman almost wholly, went under.
3042The dykes protecting small property from the ravages of competition
3043were thoroughly broken down.
3044Now it is our business to build them up again today. We
3045cannot, of course, attempt to do so on a large scale. We might create
304696 The Restoration of Property
3047a guild of this or that particular craft: for instance, of cabinet makers.
3048We might create a guild of this or that particular retail trade: for
3049instance, publicans or tobacconists, or of private makers and menders
3050and sellers of footwear. We might propose, and with the right
3051political machinery carry out, charters whereby the Guild should be
3052established with due limits, should admit to practice certain trades,
3053supervise good work therein, prevent the growth of one unit at the
3054expense of the average small craftsman or small shopkeeper – and so
3055on. But we would at first only do very little. Our hope must be that
3056such experiments on a small scale will give the example and spread.
3057Our hope cannot yet be that this example will give, save in a long
3058space of time, its note to the community.
3059But here comes in a very important question. Can the political
3060machinery whereby this reform, or indeed, any wholesome human
3061reform could come about, be framed in a community whereof the
3062laws are, in theory at least, framed by parliaments?
3063Parliaments are necessarily the organs of plutocracy. There is
3064no approach through them whereby the small man can have effect
3065in the economic field. No approach to the guild system, even as a
3066modest and partial experiment, can be expected until political power
3067is decentralized and rearranged according to economic classes and
3068interests. As the parliamentary system decays (and it is going to pieces
3069very rapidly throughout Europe) monarchy or some unexpected
3070revival of public opinion might impose the restitution of charters.
3071Parliaments as we have them now will certainly not do so. Money
3072and the limelight are the motive forces directing parliamentarians.
3073There is neither money nor limelight in the guild idea to attract any
3074parliamentarian towards it.
3075With the re-establishment of the guilds comes the question
3076of chartering (that is, of establishing with legal safeguards) the
3077proletarians’ trades unions.
3078That is certainly no part of our ideal, for the trades union only
3079came into existence as a function of wage slavery. It is a proletarian
3080institution through and through, and a proletariat and proletarian
3081spirit is exactly what we are aiming to destroy. But on the way to
3082the proprietary state chartering of trades unions would give a good
3083example. Some of our greater unions today, though not officially
3084Hilaire Belloc 97
3085chartered, have in practice attained many of the powers which
3086an official charter would give. They, in practice, regulate wages,
3087consider the opportunities of employment, prevent their function
3088from being swamped with numbers, and in general substitute status
3089and order for chaotic competition.
3090It would be possible to begin by regularizing these few
3091successful experiments, by giving them a legal basis, and using
3092them as models for extension into other fields. At any rate the idea of
3093the guild is the idea that must inspire all our efforts to re-establish
3094economic security combined with economic freedom. Even if we
3095only did it in very small beginnings, we could soon recognize the
3096tests of success. If people could not obtain properly made craftsman
3097furniture, save from a man admitted to the Guild and subject to its
3098rules, we should know that in that one small department we had
3099achieved success. Again, the first man fined or sent to prison for
3100trying to establish under false names a chain of retail shops would be
3101a test of success. The first working of an appeal to the Guild against
3102the bad workmanship of a craftsman, or against the coercion of a
3103small distributor by a wholesale provider, would be a test of success.
3104Even though the thing were exceptional and applying at first only to
3105a very few categories of small production and exchange, it could be
3106planted and might strike root.
31073. Dealing with the function of credit is not fundamental to the
3108restoration and maintenance of property. Credit is not a vital element
3109in all societies; it is not a permanent and general social, economic or
3110political problem. The modern function of credit is of comparatively
3111recent development; it has already gone woefully wrong, and appears
3112to be approaching catastrophe. Credit, then, is only a local and
3113ephemeral issue. Nevertheless, it must be dealt with, because for the
3114moment it monstrously overshadows our civic life.
3115On its largest lines the function of credit (in this modern sense)
3116is as follows:—
3117The means of production and exchange and the very currency
3118itself can only be set in motion through the banks. In a modern
3119highly industrialized community, and in England above all, the
3120banks form a monopoly, which decides what machinery shall be set
3121in motion for the production of what wealth, in what amount and
312298 The Restoration of Property
3123by whom. Into the hands of these institutions of credit are placed
3124in larger and larger proportions the natural forces and the stores of
3125goods without which nothing can be made; and at the discretion of
3126the banks is purchasing power doled out.
3127The organization of this system as at present developed
3128after only a few generations and more particularly in the last
3129hundred years, has become in highly industrialized countries,
3130and especially in England, both universal and all-powerful. All
3131payments of significant amount are now made in this country by
3132cheque and nearly all initiative depends upon the support of the
3133banking monopoly which issues, or refuses to issue, a promise to
3134honour cheques. The bank credit at work, being ten times the actual
3135deposits, holds the throttle valve of the whole economic machine. It
3136is of no use attempting to restore the institution of property here in
3137England now until we have given the small owner some power of
3138reaction against this universal master.
3139Now in this problem, as in every other problem of our enquiry,
3140the main rules remain the same. We cannot make a frontal attack,
3141nor can we attempt a universal and immediate change. We can only
3142work piecemeal and from humble beginnings.
3143We can, indeed, on the negative side support the very useful
3144work that is being done by many others who do not sympathize with
3145our ideals. We can spread, (and it is the duty of every good citizen
3146to spread), a knowledge of the arbitrary power possessed by modern
3147banks, and proclaim the duty of controlling it. That general action is
3148open to us, and of great service it is. But we cannot rapidly produce
3149a well divided control of credit nor attack on any ready-made plan
3150the gigantic network of credit control which has arisen almost within
3151living memory and half strangles society. What we can do is to
3152establish small co-operative credit institutions duly chartered and
3153legally protected from attack.
3154Meanwhile any development of the guild system would modify
3155the position of the banks and weaken their monopoly.
3156As small property gradually developed, the banking monopoly
3157would progressively lose more and more of its power. For instance,
3158bank credit, by law of its being, discriminates in favour of the
3159Hilaire Belloc 99
3160big capitalist and against the small man; but it would begin to
3161sing a different tune when it had to meet the power of organized
3162corporations of small men, and when differential taxation began to
3163make it more and more difficult for the large unit, no matter how
3164well supported by bank credit, to eat up the small.
3165It is not practical to suggest a public control of the banking
3166monopoly from above, by the central power of government, save
3167in the case of the national central banks. These being national
3168functions should, quite obviously, be responsible to whatever speaks
3169and acts for the nation. Being the most highly centralized of all
3170social functions, they should be directly at the orders of the central
3171power. But for the rest of the established banking system, it cannot be
3172displaced. Its activities can only be modified by the gradual growth
3173of well distributed ownership.
3174Meanwhile there should be fostered the spread, side by side
3175with the present banking monopoly, of these properly chartered
3176co-operative banks, connected with the guilds of every description.
3177Such popular institutions of credit could not subsist for a moment
3178against the hostility of the independent banking monopoly (which is
3179today more powerful than the State) unless they were supported by
3180privilege: positive laws protecting them and charters of their own.
3181But granted such charters and laws safeguarding them from assault
3182and murder, popular co-operative banks might increase in function.
3183They might even end – just possibly, though most improbably – by
3184transforming the credit system as a whole, and making it the subject
3185of those small units which build up the guild.
3186* * * *
3187With this, I end what are but a series of short suggestions upon
3188the method by which a reaction against Capitalism and its product,
3189Communism, may be begun. These suggestions are few and
3190obviously imperfect. Others will add to and perfect them. But the
3191main task remains: not that of elaborating machinery for the reaction
3192towards right living, but of forwarding the spirit of that reaction in a
3193society which has almost forgotten what property and its concomitant
3194freedom means. •
3195100 The Restoration of Property
3196Notes.
31971. The Douglas Scheme. A reference to the “Social Credit” monetary theory
3198and practical scheme formulated by Major C.H. Douglas (1879– 1952), as
3199expressed in his work by the same name (1924), as well as his other works,
3200including Economic Democracy (1920), The Monopoly of Credit (1931), The
3201Use of Money (1935). The system advocated a National Dividend being
3202distributed to all citizens, in order to aid in the stabilization of prices, the
3203restoration of purchasing power, and the reform of the evils of debt-based
3204money and fractional reserve banking. Once implemented, the scheme was
3205supposed to lead to the creation of the Leisure State.
32062. Alfred Richard Orage (1873–1934). English social thinker and
3207journalist, who was one of the main exponents of the doctrine of the
3208National Guilds. He became joint editor in 1907 of The New Age, of which
3209from 1909 until 1922 he was the sole editor and dominant spirit. Some
3210years after he resigned from editorship of that journal, Orage began editing
3211another one, the New English Weekly, which he continued to do until his
3212death in 1934.
32133. Tigris and Euphrates. The two rivers which supplied water for the
3214irrigation of the farmland between them and thus supported the great
3215civilizations of Mesopotamia. The Tigris, some 1,840 km long, has its
3216origins in southeast Turkey but is largely supplied by tributaries in Iraq.
3217The Euphrates begins in the highlands of eastern Turkey and exits in the
3218Persian Gulf; it is roughly 2,700km in length. The rivers join at Qurna in
3219Iraq. Belloc’s comment on the action of the Mongols is a reference to their
3220destruction of Iraq in 1258.
32214. Fabian. A member of the Fabian Society. This organization was founded
3222in 1884 to bring about a Socialist State, not through armed insurrection or
3223violence, but by incremental politics, piecemeal legislation and peer group
3224pressure.
32255. John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). English philosopher and political economist.
3226Mill was extraordinarily intelligent; he learned Greek by the age of 3.
3227He is remembered chiefly as an advocate of “utilitarianism,” a philosophy
3228of ethics which maintains, in opposition to the classical and Catholic notion
3229of virtue, that an action is good or bad based upon its social consequences.
3230Despite this essential scepticism, his Principles of Political Economy (1848)
3231Hilaire Belloc 101
3232was regarded as a thorough and methodical treatment of economics; it has
3233been regarded both as an apologetic for Capitalism, in the lassiez-faire tradition,
3234and a treatise supporting Socialism (because of Mill’s belief that an
3235ideal economy would be based on worker-owned co-operatives).
32366. Elizabeth I (1533–1603). Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England from
32371558 to 1603, daughter of Henry VIII who declared himself Supreme
3238Head of the Church in England as a result of Rome’s refusal to grant an
3239annulment of his marriage to Catherine. She was no friend of Catholicism;
3240nonetheless, Belloc could say of her, in his Elizabethan Commentary: “We
3241must remember her isolation, her lack of anything that could support her
3242soul, her lack even of what people in her position have a right to demand,
3243the security of the future.”
32447. William Morris (1834–1896). English artist, author, journalist, and
3245social activist. A chief Victorian-era critic of Industrialism, he was an
3246eclectic Socialist who was also variously influenced by the High Anglican
3247“Oxford Movement” of Newman, Keble and Pusey, and the legacy of
3248medieval life and art. In 1856, he embarked on an artistic career, becoming
3249famous for his poetry, his wallpapers, his designs, his writings and his
3250typography; he became the chief inspiration behind the Arts and Crafts
3251movement (1870-1900) which desired to elevate the applied arts to the
3252status of fine arts, and to restore a human scale and dimension to production
3253of useful goods. His critique of Industrialism led him to embrace
3254Socialism; in 1884 he founded the Socialist League, and for a time was
3255editor of its journal, Commonweal.
32568. Bilbao and Leon. Cities in northern Spain about 200 km apart. Bilbao is
3257situated in the Basque region of Northern Spain, facing the Bay of Biscay;
3258Leon is about 150 km due South of the center of the northern coastline.
32599. Charles II (1630–1685). King of England from 1660 to 1685. Fought in
3260the Civil War against the Puritans, which ended with the execution of his
3261father, Charles I, in 1649. He returned to England following the dissolution
3262of the Cromwellian Commonwealth, and converted to Catholicism on
3263his deathbed. In Charles II: The Last Rally, Belloc characterizes Charles’s
3264reign as largely “a struggle between Monarchy and Money-Power.”
326510. William Cobbett (1763–1835). Writer, farmer, ruralist, and political
3266journalist. He was born to poor parents in Hampshire in England, and
3267rose to become one of the most famous polemical journalists of his day.
3268102 The Restoration of Property
3269His reputation was based on his fearlessness and his profound integrity; he
3270spent most of his energy attacking corruption in government. He wrote 17
3271major works, and in 1802 he founded the Political Register, which he managed
3272until his death. At a time when Catholics were still being persecuted
3273in England, he found the courage to write that “the Protestant religion had
3274been established by gibbets, racks and ripping knives,” though Cobbett
3275himself was not Catholic.
327611. Wyndham Land Purchase Act. Introduced in the British Parliament in
32771903 by George Wyndham (1863–1913), and which sought to give tenant
3278farmers in Ireland the right to buy the property that they farmed and
3279encouraged such purchase by offering incentives to landlords who sold.
3280The Act was a response to the growing Land Agitation amongst the Irish
3281who had been dispossessed by the English governing class in preceding
3282centuries.
3283About IHS Press
3284IHS Press believes that the key to the restoration of Catholic Society is the
3285recovery and the implementation of the wisdom our Fathers in the Faith
3286possessed so fully less than a century ago. At a time when numerous ideologies
3287were competing for supremacy, these men articulated, with precision
3288and vigor, and without apology or compromise, the only genuine alternative
3289to the then- (and still-) prevailing currents of thought: value-free and yet
3290bureaucratic “progressivism” on the one hand, and the rehashed, laissez-faire
3291free-for-all of “conservatism” on the other. That alternative is the Social
3292Teaching of the Catholic Church.
3293Catholic Social Teachings offer the solutions to the political, economic, and
3294social problems that plague modern society; problems that stem from the
3295false principles of the Reformation, Renaissance, and Revolution, and which
3296are exacerbated by the industrialization and the secularization of society that
3297has continued for several centuries. Defending, explaining, and applying
3298those Teachings was the business of the great Social Catholics of last century.
3299Unfortunately, much of their work is today both unknown and unavailable.
3300Thus, IHS Press was founded in September of 2001A.D. as the only publisher
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3302Catholics of the third millennium pick up where those of last century left
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3304valuable works of the Catholic economists, historians, and social critics. To
3305that end, IHS Press is in the business of issuing critical editions of works on
3306society, politics, and economics by writers, thinkers, and men of action such
3307as Hilaire Belloc, Gilbert Chesterton, Arthur Penty, Fr. Vincent McNabb,
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3324Applicable documentaion is available upon request.
3325This essay is Belloc’s unabashed look at
3326the establishment which in his day was
3327the Press and in ours is the Media. It is the
3328only work of its kind, being a critique and
3329analysis of the Media from the coherent
3330perspective of a Catholic and a Distributist.
3331In this subtle and thought-provoking
3332The Outline of Sanity is entertaining
3333– it will make you laugh; it is
3334engaging – it will make you think; it
3335is inspiring – it will make you want to
3336read and do more.
3337The Outline is unlike any other
3338book on the otherwise dry topics of
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3341G.K. Chesterton
3342The Outline of Sanity
33430-9714894-0-8
3344$14.95 183 pages
3345paperback
3346The Free Press
3347Hilaire Belloc
33480-9714894-1-6
3349$8.95 96 pages
3350paperback
3351also available at fine bookstores.
3352Other works of Catholic Social Doctrine
3353available from IHS Press include...
3354essay, Belloc draws attention to the connection between Capitalism, Finance, and
3355the Press, and explains the theoretical and practical evils besetting the modern
3356Media as a creature of the current economic and political system.
3357The Free Press is not just a criticism of a Media which manipulates, controls,
3358and suppresses news and opinion according to the dictates of the enforced liberal
3359order of capitalism and so-called democracy. It is an apology for a Free Press
3360– a press which, despite economic and political disadvantages, is free to report
3361accurate news and sponsor an intelligent and serious exchange of ideas.
3362Of particular interest is the Publisher’s Preface, a thorough look at the modern
3363Media and a discussion of what makes Belloc’s writing so relevant today. Anyone
3364suspecting that the Media is more concerned with income than Truth will find
3365this work of great value. It is an essential guide for forming a intellectually sound
3366opinion of the forces controlling the Media and what can be done to liberate it.
3367socialism, capitalism, and economics. Chesterton wrote The Outline as a lively
3368and common-sense yet rigorous examination of how both capitalism and socialism
3369work in the real world. He looked at the effect they had on families, homes, men.
3370He did economics as if “economics” still had something to do with households.
3371The Outline is not just a stinging critique of modern economic life by a keenly
3372intelligent and brutally honest writer. It is an introduction to the alternative
3373perspective, one that transcends old dichotomies and offers a vision of an
3374economic order which, rather than dominating man, actually serves him.
3375The Outline of Sanity provides a glimpse of that Distributist vision which is
3376sure to appeal to both serious Catholics seeking the Catholic answer to today’s
3377problems, and to all open-minded, socially-conscious readers who are not afraid to
3378think about an alternative to the corporate rat race and government bureaucracy.
3379222 W. 21st St., Suite F-122~Norfolk, VA 23517~(757) 423-0324
3380order@ihspress.com www.ihspress.com fax: (419) 715-0361
3381
3382philosophy/politics/sociology
33839 780971 489448
3384ISBN 09714894-4-0 90000
3385an essay on the restoration of property.
3386by hilaire belloc (1870-1953).
3387“The man who attempts to survey the writings of Belloc
3388will think he is undertaking to write the literary history
3389of a small nation.”
3390—Sir John Collings Squire (1884–1958)
3391Distributism has been criticized for lacking a concrete plan and a coherent program to
3392implement its well-articulated Vision. Alleged evidence of this charge is the fact that
3393the Distribusists, who formed the Distributist League in 1926 under the direction of Capt.
3394Herbert Shove, were unable to turn their vision into a concrete social and political program
3395that produced visible, tangible fruit.
3396The present essay should be sufficient in itself to silence all such criticism on the first
3397count. Herein it is at once obvious and striking just how practical the Distributist Vision
3398was; practical not in the sense of easy, but practical in the sense of being articulated with
3399a view toward application and implementation. For in the Restoration of Property, Belloc’s
3400concern is not so much with explaining what a Distributist society is, but with sketching,
3401even if in necessarily brief and vague terms, what that society looks like, how it might be
3402achieved, and how it should be preserved.
3403Why, then, did a Distributist Vision which was explained both conceptually and practically
3404not produce immediate, tangible results? The answer may lie along the lines sketched by a
3405famous historian of philosophy who thus summarized the reason for the eclipse of medieval
3406thought: “Scholasticism did not die from lack of ideas, but from lack of men.”
3407Historian, Social Critic, Novelist and Man of Letters. Both
3408friends and foes alike had a profound respect for his character, an
3409admiration for his knowledge, and a love for the beauty of his prose.
3410Once asked by Douglas Woodruff why he was such a crusader
3411and pugilist, he replied: “People think it was my French blood – because I have written about
3412the French Revolution – that has made me against the rich, but it isn’t; it is my Irish blood! A
3413Frenchman’s instinct when he sees someone rich and powerful is to want to join him. But the
3414Irishman more strongly wants to fight him.”
3415Passion with precision. Prose with style. Condemnation with conviction. Truth like a
3416Tornado! That was Belloc – one of the great enemies of Modernity, and one of the greatest
3417friends of Sanity. “The choice lies between property,
3418on the one hand, and slavery,
3419—hilaire belloc
3420public or private,
3421on the other.
3422“There is no third issue.”