The Servile State is frequently cited as one of the foundational books of the Distributist movement, and the first serious, and successful, foray of Belloc into social, political, and economic thought. Sometimes misunderstood as an apologia for genuine “free-market” capitalism and a critique of merely the “welfare-state” approach of quasi-socialist tinkering with a generally capitalist society, it is, on the contrary, a clear and decisive call for the kind of society prevalent before the industrial revolution, the Reformation, the “Enlightenment,” and their combined effects, which gave us the modern world as we know it. Insisting upon the principles, rather than the accidental social and technical features, of medieval society as the only basis for a sound socio-economic order, Belloc also elaborates the alternative that awaits us if we do not recover our “social” senses: the Servile State. It is a condition in which employees of capitalist firms willingly surrender their freedom and independence in exchange for the corporate- and government-provided, cradle-to-grave care that was also characteristic of pagan slave societies, and in which physical care and survival was provided in exchange for labor. The essence of the problem is, as Belloc wrote, this: “The choice lies between property, on the one hand, and slavery, public or private, on the other. There is no third issue.”