Hilaire Belloc Quotes About Liberalism

Quotes about: Liberalism

Slowly but certainly the proletarian, by every political reform which secures his well-being under new rules of insurance, of State control in education, of State medicine and the rest, is developing into the slave, leaving the rich man apart and free. All industrial civilization is clearly moving towards the re-establishment of the Servile State.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Moving, Men

Hilaire Belloc (2009). “Essays of a Catholic”, p.167, TAN Books
The smaller man approaching our modern banking system, which controls all issue of credit and therefore pretty well all our industrial and commercial activities, is not what the controllers of that credit call "interesting." He borrows with difficulty and upon high terms, and must pledge security out of all proportion to that which his richer rival has to put down.

Hilaire Belloc

Men, Issues, Interesting

Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.101, TAN Books
When the mass of men are dispossessed - own nothing - they become wholly dependent upon the owners; and when those owners are in active competition to lower the cost of production the mass of men whom they exploit not only lack the power to order their own lives, but suffer from want and insecurity as well.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Men, Order

Hilaire Belloc (2017). “The Great Heresies”, p.110, Ignatius Press
When the mass of families in a State are without property, then those who were once citizens become virtually slaves. The more the State steps in to enforce conditions of security and sufficiency; the more it regulates wages, provides compulsory insurance, doctoring, education, and in general takes over the lives of the wage-earners, for the benefit of the companies and men employing the wage-earners, the more is this condition of semi-slavery accentuated.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Men, Steps
Political freedom without economic freedom is almost worthless, and it is because the modern proletariat has the one kind of freedom without the other that its rebellion is now threatening the very structure of the modern world.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Political, World

Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.102, TAN Books
Communism worked honestly by officials devoid of human frailties and devoted to nothing but the good of its slaves, would have certain manifest material advantages as compared with a proletarian wage-system where millions live in semi-starvation, and many millions more in permanent dread thereof. But even if it were administered thus Communism would only produce its benefits through imposing slavery.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Benefits, Slavery
We may not say to the poor: "You have a right to fight the rich merely because they are rich and in order to make yourselves less poor." We may say: "You have a right to fight to prevent the conditions of your life becoming inhuman," but we may not say, "You have a right to fight merely because you desire to have more and your opponent to have less."

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Fighting, Order
Even if the wealth and power be well distributed throughout a community, its members will not be happy unless they are inwardly so, and obviously where the distribution is bad, where the few have a vast superfluity and the many are consumed by anxiety or want, or where a few controllers can exercise their will over the many, society has failed, even though its total wealth and power be increased.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Exercise, Community
Capitalism had arisen through the misuse and exaggeration of certain rights, notably the right of property - the basis of economic freedom - and the right of contract, which is one of the main functions of economic freedom. Therefore, even under Capitalism, so long as the old principles were remembered it was possible to recall the principles whereby Society had once been sane and well ordered.

Hilaire Belloc

Rights, Long, Principles
Consider in what way the industrial system developed upon capitalist lines. Why were a few rich men put with such ease into possession of the new methods? Why was it normal and natural in their eyes and in that of contemporary society that those who produced the new wealth with the new machinery should be proletarian and dispossessed?

Hilaire Belloc

Eye, Men, Ease
To control the production of wealth is to control human life itself. To refuse man the opportunity for the production of wealth is to refuse him the opportunity for life; and, in general, the way in which the production of wealth is by law permitted is the only way in which the citizens can legally exist.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Opportunity, Men

Hilaire Belloc (1970). “Belloc: A Biographical Anthology”
Economic freedom is in our eyes a good. It is among the highest of temporal goods because it is necessary to the highest life of society through the dignity of man and through the multiplicity of his action, in which multiplicity is life. Through well-divided property alone can the units of society react upon the State. Through it alone can a public opinion flourish. Only where the bulk of the cells are healthy can the whole organism thrive.

Hilaire Belloc

Eye, Men, Cells

Hilaire Belloc (2002). “An Essay on the Restoration of Property”, p.26, IHS Press
Ownership by delegation is a contradiction in terms. When men say, for instance (by a false metaphor), that each member of the public should feel himself an owner of public property-such as a Town Park-and should therefore respect it as his own, they are saying something which all our experience proves to be completely false. No man feels of public property that it is his own; no man will treat it with the care of the affection of a thing which is his own.

Hilaire Belloc

Men, Care, Politics

Hilaire Belloc (2002). “An Essay on the Restoration of Property”, p.25, IHS Press
The restoration of property would be a complicated, arduous and presumably a lengthy business; the transformation of a Capitalist Society into a Communist one needs nothing but the extension of existing conditions.

Hilaire Belloc

Would Be, Needs, Restoration
Under the old philosophy which had governed the high Middle Ages things had been everywhere towards a condition of Society in which property was well distributed throughout the community, and thus the family rendered independent.

Hilaire Belloc

Philosophy, Independent, Community

Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.84, TAN Books
One man in one mood will attack Industrial Capitalism for its destruction of beauty; another for its incompetence; another for the vileness of the men who chiefly prosper under it; another for its mere confusion and noise; another for its false values; it was until recently most fiercely attacked for its impoverishment of the workers, its margin of unemployment and the rest - indeed so fiercely that it was compelled to seek palliatives for the evil. With a mass of men it was attacked from a vague but strong sense of injustice; it allowed a few rich to exploit mankind.

Hilaire Belloc

Strong, Men, Evil
But if we are to retain freedom, then we can only do so by keeping the determining mass of the citizens the possessors of property with personal control over it, as individuals or as families. For property is the necessary condition of economic freedom in the full sense of that term. He that has not property is under economic servitude to him who has property, whether the possessor of it be another individual or the State.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Citizens, Politics

Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.110, TAN Books
It is therefore our business to restore economic freedom through the restoration of the only institution under which it flourishes, which institution is Property. The problem before us is, how to restore Property so that it shall be, as it was not so long ago, a general institution.

Hilaire Belloc

Long Ago, Restoration, Politics

Hilaire Belloc (2002). “An Essay on the Restoration of Property”, p.26, IHS Press
Since it is to the advantage of the wage-payer to pay as little as possible, even well-paid labor will have no more than what is regarded in a particular society as the reasonable level of subsistence. The lower ranks of labor will commonly have less, and if public relief were afforded even up to the wage-level of the lowest ranks of labor, that relief would compete in the labor market; check or dry up the supply of wage-labor. It would tend to render the performance of work by the wage-earner redundant.

Hilaire Belloc

Dry Up, Relief, Levels
We cannot make owners by merely giving men something to own. And, I repeat, whether there be sufficient desire for property left upon which we can work, only experience can decide.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Men, Giving

Hilaire Belloc (2002). “An Essay on the Restoration of Property”, p.29, IHS Press
In the midst of all these innumerable forms of a common protest and universal ill-ease there has grown up one definite body of doctrine whose adherents are called Communists and who desired the total subversion of what had been, hitherto unquestioned among civilized European men, the general doctrines of property and individual freedom.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Men, Doctrine
But though Usury is in itself immoral, and justly condemned by every ethical code, its chief and worst defect in the particular case we are now examining, the growth of Capitalism and its increasing proletariat, is the centralization of irresponsible control over the lives of men: the putting power over the proletariat into the hands of a few who can direct the loans of currency and credit without which that proletariat could not be fed and clothed and maintained in work.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Men, Hands

Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.96, TAN Books
The very large units of production and exchange have access to credit on a large scale, sometimes without any cover at all, merely upon the prospect of their success, and always upon terms far easier than are open to their smaller rivals. It is perhaps on this line of easier credit that large capital today does most harm to small capital, drives it out and ruins it.

Hilaire Belloc

Doe, Credit, Rivals

Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.101, TAN Books
Had there been any existent vital and energetic institution left in Society after the Reformation for the use of small property in coordinated form-that is, in combination, so that the average man's holding could be put to useful purpose in company with the holdings of a great number of other men of his own sort, the new evils would not have arisen.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Men, Average

Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.103, TAN Books
The larger the unit of capital present, the easier the transaction called emission of credit. Centralized lending of this kind (which is today universal) actively promotes the absorption of the small man by the great, the reduction of small property owners to a proletarian condition.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Men, Credit

Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.97, TAN Books

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Born: July 27, 1870
Died: July 16, 1953
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

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