The Servile State · Chapter
How the Distributive State Failed explained
This chapter traces the decline from a distributive property system to capitalism in England, beginning with the mishandling of the sixteenth-century economic revolution and the confiscation of monastic lands.
What happens
This chapter traces the decline from a distributive property system to capitalism in England, beginning with the mishandling of the sixteenth-century economic revolution and the confiscation of monastic lands. Instead of vesting in the Crown, these lands were captured by an oligarchy, leading to a society where a small minority owned the means of production and the majority became a dispossessed proletariat. By the nineteenth century, England had become a purely capitalist state, and the Industrial Revolution, born in this context, entrenched capitalist and proletariat relations, making capitalism inherently unstable and creating an acute social problem.
Themes in this chapter
Property as the Foundation of Freedom
The chapter argues that the loss of widespread property ownership led to the loss of economic freedom for the majority, as property was concentrated in the hands of a few.
The Inherent Instability of Capitalism
The chapter concludes that the capitalist system developed in England is 'intolerably unstable' and presents an acute problem that must be solved.
Historical Cycle of Slavery and Freedom
The decline from a free distributive state to a proletarian society is framed as a catastrophic loss of freedom, echoing earlier cycles of servitude.
Characters to notice
- Henry VIII
Mentioned as the monarch over early sixteenth-century England, whose Crown inherited power but whose confiscation of monastic lands ultimately passed to an oligarchy.
- The Crown
The intended recipient of monastic lands, but the lands were captured by a wealthy section of the community instead.
- Europeans
Referenced as 'our' society and the societies of Western Christendom that were economically free at the close of the Middle Ages.
- Unknown
The narrator who analyzes the historical process and reflects on the failure of the distributive state.
Key passages
“The first step in the process consisted in the mishandling of a great economic revolution which marked the sixteenth century.”
The initial cause of the decline was the mismanagement of the major economic changes in the 1500s.
Identifies the sixteenth-century economic revolution as the starting point of the failure.
“The lands and the accumulated wealth of the monasteries were taken out of, the hands of their old possessors with the intention of vesting them in the Crown—but they passed, as a fact, not into the hands of the Crown, but into the hands of an already wealthy section of the community.”
Monastic lands were seized with the plan to give them to the Crown, but they actually ended up with a rich minority.
Highlights the key event of land capture by the oligarchy.
“England had become before the close of that period a purely capitalist state, the type and model of capitalism for the whole world.”
By the end of the 1800s, England was a fully capitalist nation, serving as the global template for capitalism.
Describes the culmination of the process into a capitalist state.