Economics for Helen by Hilaire Belloc

The Servile State is that which was found among our forefathers everywhere. It is the Servile State in which we Europeans all lived when we were pagan two thousand years ago. For instance: In old pagan Italy before it became Christian, or in old pagan Greece -- both of them the best countries in the world of their time and both of them, as you know, the origins of our own civilisation -- most of the people you would have seen working at anything were slaves, and above the slaves were the owners: the free men.

Since we are talking of the political applications of political economy, we have to consider _human happiness_, which is the object of all human living; and when we talk of "advantage" or "disadvantage" in any particular economic state we mean its greater or less effect on human happiness.

The great disadvantage of the slave-owning state is clearly apparent: in it the mass of men are degraded: they are not citizens: they cannot exercise their own wills. This is so evident and great an evil that it must be set against all the advantages we are about to notice. Slavery is a most unhappy condition in so far as it wounds human honour and offends human dignity; and that is why the Christian religion gradually dissolved slavery in the process of many centuries: slavery is not sufficiently consistent with the idea of man's being made in the image of God. Slavery can also be materially unhappy, if the masters are cruel or negligent. The great mass of slaves in such a society might be, at the caprice of their masters, very unhappy; and under bad phases of those societies they _were_ very unhappy.

But we must not be misled by the ideas that have grown up around the word "slave" in the modern mind. Because we have no one in England to-day who is called a slave and bought or sold as a slave, and no one is yet compelled by law to work for another man, therefore we regard slavery as something odd and alien; and because it is natural to dislike things which are odd and alien, unaccustomed, we think of slavery as something simply bad.

That is a great mistake. The Servile State had -- and, if it comes back, will have again -- two great advantages: which were _personal security_ and _general stability_.

_Personal security_ means a condition in which everybody, master and man, is free from grave anxiety upon the future: can expect regular food and lodging and a continuance of his regular way of life.

_General stability_ means the continuance of all society in one fashion, without the violent ups and downs of competition and without the friction of unwilling, constantly interrupted labour -- as in strikes and lock-outs.

In the Servile State work always got done and was done regularly. The owners knew "where they were. " With so much land and so many slaves they were sure of a certain average annual produce. On the whole it was to the advantage of a man to keep his slaves alive and fairly well fed and housed. Also, the human relation came in, and a man and his slave, in the better and simpler forms of the Servile State, would often be friends and were usually in the same relation as people are to-day with their dependents. For instance: in well-to-do houses of the Servile State we know from history that certain slaves were often the tutors of the children, and thus had a very important and respectable position, and there were other slaves who acted as good musicians and architects and artists. There was always the feeling of a fixed social difference between slave and free, but this did not necessarily nor perhaps usually lead to great unhappiness.

This stability and security which slave-owning gave to all society (to the owned to some extent, and to the owners altogether) also produced a very valuable effect, which is, the presence of _leisure_. Because revenue was fairly certain, because this kind of arrangement prevented violent fluctuation of fortune, competition in excess, and the rest of it, therefore was there a considerable proportion of people at any time who had ample opportunity for study, for cultivating good tastes, for writing and building well, and judging well, and -- what is very important -- for conducting the affairs of the State without haste or the panic and folly of haste.

One alleged _economic_ disadvantage of slave-owning must be looked at narrowly before we leave this description of the Servile State.

One often hears it said that slave labour is less productive than free labour, that is, labour working at a wage under Capitalism. People sometimes point to modern examples of this contrast, saying that places like the Southern States of America, where slave labour was used a lifetime ago, were less productive than the Northern States, where labour was free. But though this is true of particular moments in history, it is not generally true. Free labour working at a wage under the first institution of capitalism -- when, for instance, a body of capitalists are beginning to develop a new country with hired free men to work for them -- will be full of energy and highly productive. But when what is called "free labour" -- that is, men without property working by contract for a wage -- gets into routine and habit, it is doubtful whether it is more productive than slave labour. It is accompanied by a great deal of ill-will. There is perpetual interruption by strikes, and lock-outs,[4] and the process of production cannot be as minutely and absolutely directed by the small and leisured class as can slave labour. _There is no reason why a free man working for another's profit should do his best._ On the contrary, he has every reason to work as little as possible, while a slave can be compelled to work hard.