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La utopía capitalista y otros ensayos
El texto, ingenioso y humorístico, tiene la inconfundible marca chestertoniana.
La utopía capitalista y otros ensayos, publicado en 1917 e inédito en español, es un agudo, e irónico análisis del capitalismo que, a pesar del tiempo transcurrido, conserva gran actualidad y vigor. Denuncia el servilismo de la prensa, la corrupción de los ministros, la excesiva concentración de la riqueza en pocas manos, la mentalidad eugenésica..., al tiempo que realiza propuestas que hoy son también necesarias: la empresa familiar, la mejora en la distribución de la propiedad, el sistema de protección social basado en la auto-organización, no en la dependencia del Estado...
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) fue un periodista incansable y autor de una vasta producción de ensayos, novelas, biografías, poemas, libros sobre literatura, filosofía, teología, historia, libros de viajes...
La utopía capitalista y otros ensayos, publicado en 1917 e inédito en español, es un agudo, e irónico análisis del capitalismo que, a pesar del tiempo transcurrido, conserva gran actualidad y vigor. Denuncia el servilismo de la prensa, la corrupción de los ministros, la excesiva concentración de la riqueza en pocas manos, la mentalidad eugenésica..., al tiempo que realiza propuestas que hoy son también necesarias: la empresa familiar, la mejora en la distribución de la propiedad, el sistema de protección social basado en la auto-organización, no en la dependencia del Estado...
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) fue un periodista incansable y autor de una vasta producción de ensayos, novelas, biografías, poemas, libros sobre literatura, filosofía, teología, historia, libros de viajes...
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1917
49 people are currently reading
366 people want to read
About the author
G.K. Chesterton
4,683 books5,824 followersGilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic.
He was educated at St. Paul’s, and went to art school at University College London. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly.
Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology.
He was educated at St. Paul’s, and went to art school at University College London. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly.
Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
February 2, 2013
Some of the most thought-provoking political and social commentary I've read in years. It's hard to believe Chesterton's essays are nearly a century old; they are hugely applicable to the current cultural problem of equating financial success with virtue, and the problem of media bias (in many directions). I did not agree with every word he wrote, but I hung on every syllable.
March 15, 2020
This book is foundational to my calling, my philosophy of art and society, and my understanding of culture.
February 9, 2016
A disappointment, mostly, though not without some redeeming features. The work constitutes Chesterton's World War I-era screed against capitalism. Particularly in the beginning, it is in parts hardly coherent. He makes ridiculous claims like people would appreciate getting broken products from a large firm simply because it comes from a large operation. While he may have a point that people are inherently (and perhaps unnecessarily?) impressed by size alone, this sort of "evidence" actually hurts his case because it fails the everyday common-sense test which is usually Chesterton's strong suit.
His militant opposition to individualism and capitalism initially seemed to me to be an extension of his anti-Jewish feelings (perhaps bordering on, though perhaps not full-blown anti-Semitism); not only does Chesterton confirm that bias in his work, he adds to it his anti-Protestant feelings by blaming the ills of capitalism on Jews and Puritans alike. Even more disconcerting was the way he began to refer to himself as a Socialist; in his previous works, he referred to Socialists in the same way he referred to Anarchists, with a combination of sympathy and scoffing. He still insists Karl Marx was incorrect (one would hope, as a supposed apologist for the Catholic Christian faith!), but he openly admired Marx's and other Communist's "honor." Too bad Chesterton was not writing this a few years later as these same Communists were deliberately starving millions, torturing, imprisoning, and arbitrarily executing millions more, to include especially the poor and downtrodden. Which really gets to what Chesterton has right in this work (some of his complaints, at least, have merit) and what he has mixed up.
As the work develops, Chesterton begins to refer to the Servile State and its sheep-like citizens (perhaps subjects would be a better term?). Here Chesterton gets closer to an important truth, but he is so steamed up at the rich because they are rich he fails to see where not only the fault, but the real danger lies. It is the state itself that poses the real danger, especially to the poor, as it is precisely the poor who have no real influence on the levers of state; this has proven true in the Soviet Union, in today's USA, and in the United Kingdom of Chesterton's time.
Chesterton complained of monopolists charging exorbitant rates, but it was only through government action that any company ever established and maintained any kind of monopoly for any length of time. For as much nostalgia that Chesterton typically holds for the Middle Ages (though he has nearly replaced that in this present work with a nostalgia for the French Revolution, guillotines and all!), monopolies were surely at their most obnoxious during that same Medieval period with royal charters and all of that nonsense. A poor person in modern America has access to goods and services that nobility and even royalty in the Middle Ages never dreamed of. Surely factory workers were better off in Chesterton's time than they were in Charles Dickens's, just as they are better off now than they were in Chesterton's. I remember growing up in a community where virtually everyone worked for General Motors; they all had their own homes, usually at least two cars, a boat for fishing and/or water skiing, and often a second home or cabin "up north" for skiing and camping. Marx would not recognize these as his Proletariat, they were far too bourgeois.
Chesterton admits that stealing from a rich man and stealing from a poor man is equally a violation of property rights, but he insists there is a difference in the dignity of the act. Who then is rich? Who then is poor? When the Communists first took over in Russia, they went after the rich farmers (the "kulaks"). No doubt many of them really were rich, and maybe a few of them treated their poorer neighbors badly. When the Communists ran out of these kulaks, they went back out again and found more kulaks and still more, and so on, until the kulaks they were rounding up were simply not starving quite as much as their neighbors. And so they demolished all of their wealth, without anyone really receiving any of it, and left only the least successful and competent farmers to farm "collectively" (and have much of their produce confiscated, no less). No wonder millions starved. Chesterton talks of liberty, but if a person makes herself rich through hard work and pleasing consumers, now she is to be made a slave of redistributors like the latter-day Chesterton.
Chesterton's romantic notions of the French Revolution were equally disturbing, particularly since Chesterton was plenty familiar with the facts and details of it. While he may have identified with the anger and issues of those manning the barricades, the simple truth is they were manipulated by the petty tyrants who seized power from one another in a rapid succession, mismanaging the economy into a ruin, terrorizing the very common people that Chesterton claims to sympathize with, ransacking the Church and murdering its clergy, and finally ending by crowning a conquering emperor. Hardly a "democratic" or even socialist achievement to crow about.
Chesterton's political points seem to be more on target than the spleen he vents about economic circumstances. For instance, he recognizes the role of propaganda in sustaining regimes to include tyrannies: "Even the tyrant never rules by force alone; but mostly by fairy tales." (location 78597) Although he calls for action against the rich (presumably by the very state that he criticizes at every turn), at least his assessment of the state reflects his more usual clear-eyed observations. For instance, the rules of the government "are meant to protect a man against himself--that is, they are meant to protect a man against his manhood." (location 79488)
When reviewing the war raging at that time, he correctly criticizes those who tried to act as though all were to blame for it: "But whatever you do, do not blame everybody for what was certainly done by somebody." (79309-79310)
When examining the middle class participants in the Servile State, Chesterton's description might well be of so many people today: "They cannot face a fact, or follow an argument, or feel a tradition; but, least of all, can they, upon any persuasion, read through a plain impartial book, English or foreign, that is not specially written to soothe their panic or to please their pride." (location 79504-79506)
And when looking at the press in the Servile State, Chesterton's comments might well have been written this morning. The internet and social media offered opportunities for breaking the monopoly of bad journalism, but states everywhere feel threatened enough to take action; whether China's overt Great Firewall or Washington's more subtle "net neutrality," governments around the world are tightening the noose on the new modes of information dissemination. We seem to edge ever nearer to C.S.Lewis' vision of media disturbingly portrayed in That Hideous Strength. As for Chesterton's observations:
a monopoly of bad journalism is resisting the possibility of good journalism. (location 79762-79763)
It is not the "popular Press." It is not the public Press. It is not an organ of public opinion. It is a conspiracy of a very few millionaires, all sufficiently similar in type to agree on the limits of what this great nation (to which we belong) may know about itself and its friends and enemies. The ring is not quite complete; there are old-fashioned and honest papers (location 79769-79772)
Once Chesterton finishes with his broadsides at the rich because they are rich, he returns to his more usual style of more down-to-earth common-sense (if oftentimes from a very unusual perspective) observations. One of my favorites that he leaves us with toward the end is, "The chief difference between men and the animals is that all men are artists; though the overwhelming majority of us are bad artists." (location 79828-79829)
Worth reading, but only with a critical eye. I could give a rather long list of Chesterton works one ought to read first, getting to this only if one has the inclination and time. Many of the myths Chesterton buys into here are still with us today, and it will only be when we can overcome them that we have any chance to solve the problems Chesterton dwells on herein. Which is to say, many of the problems Chesterton highlights have merit, but the solutions he proposes would only to perpetuate or even aggravate those same problems, as his fellow Socialists proved as soon as they took over Russia and made it into the Soviet Union.
I read this as part of the The G.K. Chesterton Collection 34 Books and my location references are to the work I read.
His militant opposition to individualism and capitalism initially seemed to me to be an extension of his anti-Jewish feelings (perhaps bordering on, though perhaps not full-blown anti-Semitism); not only does Chesterton confirm that bias in his work, he adds to it his anti-Protestant feelings by blaming the ills of capitalism on Jews and Puritans alike. Even more disconcerting was the way he began to refer to himself as a Socialist; in his previous works, he referred to Socialists in the same way he referred to Anarchists, with a combination of sympathy and scoffing. He still insists Karl Marx was incorrect (one would hope, as a supposed apologist for the Catholic Christian faith!), but he openly admired Marx's and other Communist's "honor." Too bad Chesterton was not writing this a few years later as these same Communists were deliberately starving millions, torturing, imprisoning, and arbitrarily executing millions more, to include especially the poor and downtrodden. Which really gets to what Chesterton has right in this work (some of his complaints, at least, have merit) and what he has mixed up.
As the work develops, Chesterton begins to refer to the Servile State and its sheep-like citizens (perhaps subjects would be a better term?). Here Chesterton gets closer to an important truth, but he is so steamed up at the rich because they are rich he fails to see where not only the fault, but the real danger lies. It is the state itself that poses the real danger, especially to the poor, as it is precisely the poor who have no real influence on the levers of state; this has proven true in the Soviet Union, in today's USA, and in the United Kingdom of Chesterton's time.
Chesterton complained of monopolists charging exorbitant rates, but it was only through government action that any company ever established and maintained any kind of monopoly for any length of time. For as much nostalgia that Chesterton typically holds for the Middle Ages (though he has nearly replaced that in this present work with a nostalgia for the French Revolution, guillotines and all!), monopolies were surely at their most obnoxious during that same Medieval period with royal charters and all of that nonsense. A poor person in modern America has access to goods and services that nobility and even royalty in the Middle Ages never dreamed of. Surely factory workers were better off in Chesterton's time than they were in Charles Dickens's, just as they are better off now than they were in Chesterton's. I remember growing up in a community where virtually everyone worked for General Motors; they all had their own homes, usually at least two cars, a boat for fishing and/or water skiing, and often a second home or cabin "up north" for skiing and camping. Marx would not recognize these as his Proletariat, they were far too bourgeois.
Chesterton admits that stealing from a rich man and stealing from a poor man is equally a violation of property rights, but he insists there is a difference in the dignity of the act. Who then is rich? Who then is poor? When the Communists first took over in Russia, they went after the rich farmers (the "kulaks"). No doubt many of them really were rich, and maybe a few of them treated their poorer neighbors badly. When the Communists ran out of these kulaks, they went back out again and found more kulaks and still more, and so on, until the kulaks they were rounding up were simply not starving quite as much as their neighbors. And so they demolished all of their wealth, without anyone really receiving any of it, and left only the least successful and competent farmers to farm "collectively" (and have much of their produce confiscated, no less). No wonder millions starved. Chesterton talks of liberty, but if a person makes herself rich through hard work and pleasing consumers, now she is to be made a slave of redistributors like the latter-day Chesterton.
Chesterton's romantic notions of the French Revolution were equally disturbing, particularly since Chesterton was plenty familiar with the facts and details of it. While he may have identified with the anger and issues of those manning the barricades, the simple truth is they were manipulated by the petty tyrants who seized power from one another in a rapid succession, mismanaging the economy into a ruin, terrorizing the very common people that Chesterton claims to sympathize with, ransacking the Church and murdering its clergy, and finally ending by crowning a conquering emperor. Hardly a "democratic" or even socialist achievement to crow about.
Chesterton's political points seem to be more on target than the spleen he vents about economic circumstances. For instance, he recognizes the role of propaganda in sustaining regimes to include tyrannies: "Even the tyrant never rules by force alone; but mostly by fairy tales." (location 78597) Although he calls for action against the rich (presumably by the very state that he criticizes at every turn), at least his assessment of the state reflects his more usual clear-eyed observations. For instance, the rules of the government "are meant to protect a man against himself--that is, they are meant to protect a man against his manhood." (location 79488)
When reviewing the war raging at that time, he correctly criticizes those who tried to act as though all were to blame for it: "But whatever you do, do not blame everybody for what was certainly done by somebody." (79309-79310)
When examining the middle class participants in the Servile State, Chesterton's description might well be of so many people today: "They cannot face a fact, or follow an argument, or feel a tradition; but, least of all, can they, upon any persuasion, read through a plain impartial book, English or foreign, that is not specially written to soothe their panic or to please their pride." (location 79504-79506)
And when looking at the press in the Servile State, Chesterton's comments might well have been written this morning. The internet and social media offered opportunities for breaking the monopoly of bad journalism, but states everywhere feel threatened enough to take action; whether China's overt Great Firewall or Washington's more subtle "net neutrality," governments around the world are tightening the noose on the new modes of information dissemination. We seem to edge ever nearer to C.S.Lewis' vision of media disturbingly portrayed in That Hideous Strength. As for Chesterton's observations:
a monopoly of bad journalism is resisting the possibility of good journalism. (location 79762-79763)
It is not the "popular Press." It is not the public Press. It is not an organ of public opinion. It is a conspiracy of a very few millionaires, all sufficiently similar in type to agree on the limits of what this great nation (to which we belong) may know about itself and its friends and enemies. The ring is not quite complete; there are old-fashioned and honest papers (location 79769-79772)
Once Chesterton finishes with his broadsides at the rich because they are rich, he returns to his more usual style of more down-to-earth common-sense (if oftentimes from a very unusual perspective) observations. One of my favorites that he leaves us with toward the end is, "The chief difference between men and the animals is that all men are artists; though the overwhelming majority of us are bad artists." (location 79828-79829)
Worth reading, but only with a critical eye. I could give a rather long list of Chesterton works one ought to read first, getting to this only if one has the inclination and time. Many of the myths Chesterton buys into here are still with us today, and it will only be when we can overcome them that we have any chance to solve the problems Chesterton dwells on herein. Which is to say, many of the problems Chesterton highlights have merit, but the solutions he proposes would only to perpetuate or even aggravate those same problems, as his fellow Socialists proved as soon as they took over Russia and made it into the Soviet Union.
I read this as part of the The G.K. Chesterton Collection 34 Books and my location references are to the work I read.
April 23, 2025
It's not enough to simply state the correct opinion: you must argue for it, build up to it, and generally lead the reader along to your conclusion. Chesterton normally does this through his verbose paradoxes, which are conspicuously absent in this little collection. Instead, he lets his anger get the better of him, for perhaps the first and only time that I've seen.
I agree completely with his complaints against capitalism, all of which have either held their relevance or since intensified. But contrary to what I read on Wikipedia, this collection does not argue in favor of distributism. In fact, it never even mentions the word, let alone the concept. There has to be a middle way between two insanities (communism and capitalism), because most people are not insane. People may be cowed, as most capitalist-enablers are, or they may be overly well-read in theory, like most communists are, but neither are insane. The only reason why we live in this capitalist hellscape is because of the cowardice of both.
To anyone who takes Christianity at face value and assumes nothing else, capitalism is immoral. I have long argued that capitalism (chiefly through its propaganda organ, social media) enshrines trivial virtues like "hard work" and "innovation" over and above "the huge virtues that defy it" (such as many obvious ones: generosity, selflessness, trust, love, and more). The more I consider the parasitic relationship capitalism has to conservative Christians (note: NOT traditional Christianity), the more I realize the Pharisaical parallel that Chesterton mentions: "Many great religions, Pagan and Christian, have insisted on wine. Only one, I think, has insisted on Soap. You will find it in the New Testament attributed to the Pharisees."
It's so obvious to those who exist outside of capitalism as far as possible, that capitalism is objectively a bad thing, leading to an immense corruption of any sense of "justice." As Chesterton prophetically puts it: "It is as if a highwayman not only took away a gentleman’s horse and all his money, but then handed him over to the police for tramping without visible means of subsistence. And the most monstrous feature in this enormous meanness may be noted in the plutocratic appeal to science, or, rather, to the pseudo-science that they call Eugenics." The first part of this is prescient insofar as he describes with disturbing accuracy the current state of illegal homelessness in the US, and the second half anticipates the eugenic wave which I expect to arise when my generation gets elderly and wants to commit assisted suicide. As far as I can tell, nothing is strong enough to stem either tide, so I have little hope for the future.
Likewise, though I agree with Byung-Chul Han's assessment that we're transitioning out of the discipline society and into an achievement society, Chesterton anticipates by half a century Foucault's complaints about the ubiquity of the prison system/surveillance state:
Prisons for All
If the capitalists are allowed to erect their constructive capitalist community, I speak quite seriously when I say that I think Prison will become an almost universal experience. It will not necessarily be a cruel or shameful experience: on these points (I concede certainly for the present purpose of debate) it may be a vastly improved experience. The conditions in the prison, very possibly, will be made more humane. But the prison will be made more humane only in order to contain more of humanity.
When I got in a productive argument with one of my brothers this past weekend, one of the things I mostly failed to convince him of was the danger of special interests controlling the news which he over-indulges in. As Chesterton wrote: "Home Rule is a very good thing, and modern education is a very bad thing; but neither of them are things that anybody is talking about in High Wycombe. This is the first and simplest way of missing the point: deliberately to avoid and ignore it." For example, no one is talking about prison reform except the radical left. Somehow, no one on the right is moral enough to question the for-profit prison system. The only example I've heard of this outside of a blip during the 2020 riots was "Prison Song" by System of a Down. So long as the news (the chief organ of propagandists in the two-party duopoly) keep using the vague "they," nothing will ever change ("Nor does the expression make clear who “they” are...nor is it evident how it is going to be stopped or who is being asked to stop it."). These organs intentionally incite rage then refuse to give any concrete solutions, only concrete enemies to blame for it. I repeatedly prodded my brother, begging him to see how suspicious it is that the partisan news's explanation of the world is conveniently airtight. The more I read, the more I am forced to admit that nothing is airtight; this isn't to be read as "nothing is objective," which is what my brother reflexively and falsely accused me of saying, as a defense mechanism to maintain the coherency of his heavily-funded worldview.
Chesterton was dead-on when he called it a "servile superstition that the Press, as run by the capitalists, is popular (in any sense except that in which dirty water in a desert is popular)." The huge amounts of money dumped into the "Republican" and "Democratic" American dogmas ensures that they have quick and ready (thus inherently superficial and disposable) answers to everything. It's the peak of ideology, where original thought is entirely replaced, board by board, like the ship of Theseus. The person being re-programmed undergoes the re-education in a gradual enough way (though it may only take a matter of weeks or months), and by the conclusion, all the think-tank pre-fab responses are stored in bandoliers filled with magazines, ready to be loaded and shot at any resistance, automatically deemed "enemy." The barrel is rifled for accuracy and and all parts are oiled for an exceptionally smooth action.
The obvious problem is that that's a fantasy: the world is never smooth and straightforward. Things are complicated, often so complicated that anyone honestly exploring the wilderness of ideas feels so harassed and solitary that they are inevitably cowed into one ideology or another, if not for comfort at least for safety, for the survival of one's sense of self. This is precisely what happened to my father, a retired pastor. Every time I fairly criticize capitalism, he reflexively accuses me of communism; this practiced defense mechanism prevents any further thought, discussion, or exploration. It is designed to ignore myriad problems that Chesterton brings up, despite Chesterton being as rigorously orthodox a Christian as my father. For example, every time I see Musk or Bezos or Zuckerberg standing beside Trump, it's further confirmation that "the capitalists of our community are becoming quite openly the kings of it. Hell, you don't even need the entourage, Trump himself is a billionaire, and brags about it! As Chesterton laments, at least in the past the moneyed interests had the decency to hide themselves behind Super PACs and misleading slogans. Now it's so bare-faced that it makes me want to spit.
There are many obvious problems to the dogmatic fear of any criticisms of capitalism. The largest of which is one which will only radically accelerate with the infestation of AI into all companies and institutions:
The big commercial concerns of to-day are quite exceptionally incompetent. They will be even more incompetent when they are omnipotent. Indeed, that is, and always has been, the whole point of a monopoly; the old and sound argument against a monopoly. It is only because it is incompetent that it has to be omnipotent. When one large shop occupies the whole of one side of a street (or sometimes both sides), it does so in order that men may be unable to get what they want; and may be forced to buy what they don’t want. That the rapidly approaching kingdom of the Capitalists will ruin art and letters, I have already said. I say here that in the only sense that can be called human, it will ruin trade, too.
The only general stores I have nearby are Walmart and Hy-Vee. Walmart only sells cheap plastic things anymore, and Hy-Vee is more expensive despite selling the same cheap things. Likewise, Amazon's quality has been slipping, with no ability to criticize their shipping methods (you cannot leave seller feedback on anything shipped directly from Amazon, only their subsidiaries) or their products (in order to report a package that never arrived, they asked me to mail back the package [which never arrived] so they could mail a replacement). Nine times out of ten, the subsidiaries do a much better job packaging their parcels, mostly because they are held accountable by a rating system, bloated as it is by 5-star bots.
Look: we're not asking for a socialist utopia, all we want is decentralization away from monopolies, less work, and fewer products. I was shocked to learn the meaning of "Twelfth Night" as being a thoroughly traditional and medieval refusal to over-work in the winter months: To anyone who knows any history it is wholly needless to say that holidays have been destroyed. ...Shakespeare’s title of “Twelfth Night: or What You Will” simply meant that a winter carnival for everybody went on wildly till the twelfth night after Christmas. Those of my readers who work for modern offices or factories might ask their employers for twelve days’ holidays after Christmas. And they might let me know the reply. Most people today have no sense of work-life balance. They work themselves to the bone to buy things they don't need. I'm sorry to people who are genuinely poor, but that's exceptionally few of us. Most of us simply by shite we don't need, then complain. We buy into the trends and advertising and peer pressure. We know deep down it's immoral and gluttonous to over-spend, but we do anyway, and we claim we have to take on extra hours to afford it. No, you need to work fewer hours, sleep more hours, and find inexpensive hobbies, like reading 100+ year old books.
A house with a decent fire and a full pantry would be a better house to make a chair or mend a clock in, even from the customer’s point of view, than a hovel with a leaky roof and a cold hearth. But a house with a decent fire and a full pantry would also be a better house in which to refuse to make a chair or mend a clock—a much better house to do nothing in—and doing nothing is sometimes one of the highest of the duties of man. All but the hard-hearted must be torn with pity for this pathetic dilemma of the rich man, who has to keep the poor man just stout enough to do the work and just thin enough to have to do it.
As was confirmed for me by the sanity-check of Max Weber's book on the Protestant Work Ethic, we do live in an insane age; you are not to be blamed for feeling over-worked. You are! You, the average person, are sane. It is precisely hustle culture (that my brother supposedly hates, but implicitly supports whenever he simps for capitalism) which is to blame, which has poisoned both the lower and upper classes. It has poisoned academia, which expects you to be overworked. It has poisoned the literal air we breathe and the water we drink and the "food" we eat (it's too generous to call American food "food" at this point). Capitalism is an insane system careening toward the inevitable catastrophe of untenable exponential growth. I will here echo the one time Chesterton has ever been properly pissed off, because it pisses me off too:
By all the working and orthodox standards of sanity, capitalism is insane. I should not say to Mr. Rockefeller “I am a rebel.” I should say “I am a respectable man: and you are not.”
I agree completely with his complaints against capitalism, all of which have either held their relevance or since intensified. But contrary to what I read on Wikipedia, this collection does not argue in favor of distributism. In fact, it never even mentions the word, let alone the concept. There has to be a middle way between two insanities (communism and capitalism), because most people are not insane. People may be cowed, as most capitalist-enablers are, or they may be overly well-read in theory, like most communists are, but neither are insane. The only reason why we live in this capitalist hellscape is because of the cowardice of both.
To anyone who takes Christianity at face value and assumes nothing else, capitalism is immoral. I have long argued that capitalism (chiefly through its propaganda organ, social media) enshrines trivial virtues like "hard work" and "innovation" over and above "the huge virtues that defy it" (such as many obvious ones: generosity, selflessness, trust, love, and more). The more I consider the parasitic relationship capitalism has to conservative Christians (note: NOT traditional Christianity), the more I realize the Pharisaical parallel that Chesterton mentions: "Many great religions, Pagan and Christian, have insisted on wine. Only one, I think, has insisted on Soap. You will find it in the New Testament attributed to the Pharisees."
It's so obvious to those who exist outside of capitalism as far as possible, that capitalism is objectively a bad thing, leading to an immense corruption of any sense of "justice." As Chesterton prophetically puts it: "It is as if a highwayman not only took away a gentleman’s horse and all his money, but then handed him over to the police for tramping without visible means of subsistence. And the most monstrous feature in this enormous meanness may be noted in the plutocratic appeal to science, or, rather, to the pseudo-science that they call Eugenics." The first part of this is prescient insofar as he describes with disturbing accuracy the current state of illegal homelessness in the US, and the second half anticipates the eugenic wave which I expect to arise when my generation gets elderly and wants to commit assisted suicide. As far as I can tell, nothing is strong enough to stem either tide, so I have little hope for the future.
Likewise, though I agree with Byung-Chul Han's assessment that we're transitioning out of the discipline society and into an achievement society, Chesterton anticipates by half a century Foucault's complaints about the ubiquity of the prison system/surveillance state:
Prisons for All
If the capitalists are allowed to erect their constructive capitalist community, I speak quite seriously when I say that I think Prison will become an almost universal experience. It will not necessarily be a cruel or shameful experience: on these points (I concede certainly for the present purpose of debate) it may be a vastly improved experience. The conditions in the prison, very possibly, will be made more humane. But the prison will be made more humane only in order to contain more of humanity.
When I got in a productive argument with one of my brothers this past weekend, one of the things I mostly failed to convince him of was the danger of special interests controlling the news which he over-indulges in. As Chesterton wrote: "Home Rule is a very good thing, and modern education is a very bad thing; but neither of them are things that anybody is talking about in High Wycombe. This is the first and simplest way of missing the point: deliberately to avoid and ignore it." For example, no one is talking about prison reform except the radical left. Somehow, no one on the right is moral enough to question the for-profit prison system. The only example I've heard of this outside of a blip during the 2020 riots was "Prison Song" by System of a Down. So long as the news (the chief organ of propagandists in the two-party duopoly) keep using the vague "they," nothing will ever change ("Nor does the expression make clear who “they” are...nor is it evident how it is going to be stopped or who is being asked to stop it."). These organs intentionally incite rage then refuse to give any concrete solutions, only concrete enemies to blame for it. I repeatedly prodded my brother, begging him to see how suspicious it is that the partisan news's explanation of the world is conveniently airtight. The more I read, the more I am forced to admit that nothing is airtight; this isn't to be read as "nothing is objective," which is what my brother reflexively and falsely accused me of saying, as a defense mechanism to maintain the coherency of his heavily-funded worldview.
Chesterton was dead-on when he called it a "servile superstition that the Press, as run by the capitalists, is popular (in any sense except that in which dirty water in a desert is popular)." The huge amounts of money dumped into the "Republican" and "Democratic" American dogmas ensures that they have quick and ready (thus inherently superficial and disposable) answers to everything. It's the peak of ideology, where original thought is entirely replaced, board by board, like the ship of Theseus. The person being re-programmed undergoes the re-education in a gradual enough way (though it may only take a matter of weeks or months), and by the conclusion, all the think-tank pre-fab responses are stored in bandoliers filled with magazines, ready to be loaded and shot at any resistance, automatically deemed "enemy." The barrel is rifled for accuracy and and all parts are oiled for an exceptionally smooth action.
The obvious problem is that that's a fantasy: the world is never smooth and straightforward. Things are complicated, often so complicated that anyone honestly exploring the wilderness of ideas feels so harassed and solitary that they are inevitably cowed into one ideology or another, if not for comfort at least for safety, for the survival of one's sense of self. This is precisely what happened to my father, a retired pastor. Every time I fairly criticize capitalism, he reflexively accuses me of communism; this practiced defense mechanism prevents any further thought, discussion, or exploration. It is designed to ignore myriad problems that Chesterton brings up, despite Chesterton being as rigorously orthodox a Christian as my father. For example, every time I see Musk or Bezos or Zuckerberg standing beside Trump, it's further confirmation that "the capitalists of our community are becoming quite openly the kings of it. Hell, you don't even need the entourage, Trump himself is a billionaire, and brags about it! As Chesterton laments, at least in the past the moneyed interests had the decency to hide themselves behind Super PACs and misleading slogans. Now it's so bare-faced that it makes me want to spit.
There are many obvious problems to the dogmatic fear of any criticisms of capitalism. The largest of which is one which will only radically accelerate with the infestation of AI into all companies and institutions:
The big commercial concerns of to-day are quite exceptionally incompetent. They will be even more incompetent when they are omnipotent. Indeed, that is, and always has been, the whole point of a monopoly; the old and sound argument against a monopoly. It is only because it is incompetent that it has to be omnipotent. When one large shop occupies the whole of one side of a street (or sometimes both sides), it does so in order that men may be unable to get what they want; and may be forced to buy what they don’t want. That the rapidly approaching kingdom of the Capitalists will ruin art and letters, I have already said. I say here that in the only sense that can be called human, it will ruin trade, too.
The only general stores I have nearby are Walmart and Hy-Vee. Walmart only sells cheap plastic things anymore, and Hy-Vee is more expensive despite selling the same cheap things. Likewise, Amazon's quality has been slipping, with no ability to criticize their shipping methods (you cannot leave seller feedback on anything shipped directly from Amazon, only their subsidiaries) or their products (in order to report a package that never arrived, they asked me to mail back the package [which never arrived] so they could mail a replacement). Nine times out of ten, the subsidiaries do a much better job packaging their parcels, mostly because they are held accountable by a rating system, bloated as it is by 5-star bots.
Look: we're not asking for a socialist utopia, all we want is decentralization away from monopolies, less work, and fewer products. I was shocked to learn the meaning of "Twelfth Night" as being a thoroughly traditional and medieval refusal to over-work in the winter months: To anyone who knows any history it is wholly needless to say that holidays have been destroyed. ...Shakespeare’s title of “Twelfth Night: or What You Will” simply meant that a winter carnival for everybody went on wildly till the twelfth night after Christmas. Those of my readers who work for modern offices or factories might ask their employers for twelve days’ holidays after Christmas. And they might let me know the reply. Most people today have no sense of work-life balance. They work themselves to the bone to buy things they don't need. I'm sorry to people who are genuinely poor, but that's exceptionally few of us. Most of us simply by shite we don't need, then complain. We buy into the trends and advertising and peer pressure. We know deep down it's immoral and gluttonous to over-spend, but we do anyway, and we claim we have to take on extra hours to afford it. No, you need to work fewer hours, sleep more hours, and find inexpensive hobbies, like reading 100+ year old books.
A house with a decent fire and a full pantry would be a better house to make a chair or mend a clock in, even from the customer’s point of view, than a hovel with a leaky roof and a cold hearth. But a house with a decent fire and a full pantry would also be a better house in which to refuse to make a chair or mend a clock—a much better house to do nothing in—and doing nothing is sometimes one of the highest of the duties of man. All but the hard-hearted must be torn with pity for this pathetic dilemma of the rich man, who has to keep the poor man just stout enough to do the work and just thin enough to have to do it.
As was confirmed for me by the sanity-check of Max Weber's book on the Protestant Work Ethic, we do live in an insane age; you are not to be blamed for feeling over-worked. You are! You, the average person, are sane. It is precisely hustle culture (that my brother supposedly hates, but implicitly supports whenever he simps for capitalism) which is to blame, which has poisoned both the lower and upper classes. It has poisoned academia, which expects you to be overworked. It has poisoned the literal air we breathe and the water we drink and the "food" we eat (it's too generous to call American food "food" at this point). Capitalism is an insane system careening toward the inevitable catastrophe of untenable exponential growth. I will here echo the one time Chesterton has ever been properly pissed off, because it pisses me off too:
By all the working and orthodox standards of sanity, capitalism is insane. I should not say to Mr. Rockefeller “I am a rebel.” I should say “I am a respectable man: and you are not.”
June 21, 2014
This collection of Chesterton essays compiles a number of brief discourses on political and economic topics, very much directed at persons and issues of his own day. Ostensibly these writings were selected and compiled as the clearest examples of Chesterton’s own political-economic thought, an objective fulfilled quite nicely. Chesterton considered himself neither a capitalist nor a socialist – which will be quite obvious to any reader – and would have been classified as a “distributist,” though this term is not present in these pages. This view involved a deeply-held belief in the right of men to own personal property and a disavowing of the monopolization of production and resources by the wealthy few, emphases I have come across in other Chesterton writings but never seen as explicitly fleshed out as done here.
I would classify this book as a bit of a curiosity in the Chesterton cannon, not a primary work. Utopia will fascinate Chesterton aficionados, but his personal politics will not be of much interest to the rest. Further, the lack of annotations for his numerous references to minor political figures and the local histories of early 20th-century Europe will cause not a small amount of frustration for any reader, and my own enjoyment of the collection suffered for it. (Imagine someone a century from now reading early 21st-century editorials written about the misdeeds of mid-level government officials or the morality of particular Middle East skirmishes – they would be as lost as we are with Chesterton’s references here.)
The major fascination I personally found with these essays was their clear representation of Chesterton’s extraordinarily sharp, thorough engagement with the important issues of his own lifetime. Here he is not writing to philosophize or moralize, he is writing to add his own booming voice to the scales of the decisions of his own day. Always a grand Catholic, his sanctified mind was set not simply toward the heavens, but passionately toward the issues of injustice facing his cultural moment.
All this being said: ironically, his intense disdain for “Capitalists” (read: soulless, CEO-type, wealthy industrialists), accusations of plutocracy in his own government, and fears of where greed and wealth inequality would lead his society are terribly poignant for the issues of our own cultural moment. Chesterton feared this inequality would lead to an effectively servile state and a democracy that was such only in name, while elections and laws were ultimately determined by and for the wealthy, fears expressed by many in our own recent history. Perhaps such prophetic ideas still (and always) ring true.
I would classify this book as a bit of a curiosity in the Chesterton cannon, not a primary work. Utopia will fascinate Chesterton aficionados, but his personal politics will not be of much interest to the rest. Further, the lack of annotations for his numerous references to minor political figures and the local histories of early 20th-century Europe will cause not a small amount of frustration for any reader, and my own enjoyment of the collection suffered for it. (Imagine someone a century from now reading early 21st-century editorials written about the misdeeds of mid-level government officials or the morality of particular Middle East skirmishes – they would be as lost as we are with Chesterton’s references here.)
The major fascination I personally found with these essays was their clear representation of Chesterton’s extraordinarily sharp, thorough engagement with the important issues of his own lifetime. Here he is not writing to philosophize or moralize, he is writing to add his own booming voice to the scales of the decisions of his own day. Always a grand Catholic, his sanctified mind was set not simply toward the heavens, but passionately toward the issues of injustice facing his cultural moment.
All this being said: ironically, his intense disdain for “Capitalists” (read: soulless, CEO-type, wealthy industrialists), accusations of plutocracy in his own government, and fears of where greed and wealth inequality would lead his society are terribly poignant for the issues of our own cultural moment. Chesterton feared this inequality would lead to an effectively servile state and a democracy that was such only in name, while elections and laws were ultimately determined by and for the wealthy, fears expressed by many in our own recent history. Perhaps such prophetic ideas still (and always) ring true.
February 8, 2011
For over thirty years, G. K. Chesterton has been one of my favorite authors, but this month has made me question my evaluation to some extent. First I read Lord Kitchener, which had the virtue of being short and crisp; but The Utopia of Usurers and Other Essays displayed the author as a fish out of water. He begins by describing a nebulous plot by rich capitalists to sap the rights of the common man. He tries to follow a closely reasoned approach -- which is exactly what this author should not do. Chesterton is a man of wit, wit that is coruscating and penetrating. But as a paragon of logic, he is seriously lacking.
Part of the problem, I believe, is that GKC was at this time (the early stages of World War I) trying to arrive at his later passion for distributism. Unfortunately, the War kept interfering, much like the head of King Charles I kept finding its way into Mr. Dick's head in David Copperfield. Curiously, I find he is better when discussing religion, perhaps because he could not write about religion without passion. But where politics and economics are concerned, the earnestness is there; but the wit is off to Brighton on holiday.
This is the first Chesterton book I have read that lacked any memorable quotes. Fortunately, I think that G.K. realized he had produced a clinker, because he was to return soon to much better efforts. There does, however, seem to be a five year period beginning with 1916 that saw Chesterton being too serious for his special talents.
Part of the problem, I believe, is that GKC was at this time (the early stages of World War I) trying to arrive at his later passion for distributism. Unfortunately, the War kept interfering, much like the head of King Charles I kept finding its way into Mr. Dick's head in David Copperfield. Curiously, I find he is better when discussing religion, perhaps because he could not write about religion without passion. But where politics and economics are concerned, the earnestness is there; but the wit is off to Brighton on holiday.
This is the first Chesterton book I have read that lacked any memorable quotes. Fortunately, I think that G.K. realized he had produced a clinker, because he was to return soon to much better efforts. There does, however, seem to be a five year period beginning with 1916 that saw Chesterton being too serious for his special talents.
April 27, 2019
I wish every Crypto Conservative who slimes along trying to claim Chesterton as one of their own every ten years or so was forced to read this book.
That's right fuckos, go ahead and promote the work of a man who wanted to dismantle capitalism and was in favor of radical land redistribution.
Post Script: As Chesterton has been rightly criticized for his hostility to feminism (which in all fairness arose more from misplaced romanticism than any real belief in inequality) it is a bracing moment for this long time reader to come across the blunt sentence, "The bodies and minds of these women belong to God and themselves."
That's right fuckos, go ahead and promote the work of a man who wanted to dismantle capitalism and was in favor of radical land redistribution.
Post Script: As Chesterton has been rightly criticized for his hostility to feminism (which in all fairness arose more from misplaced romanticism than any real belief in inequality) it is a bracing moment for this long time reader to come across the blunt sentence, "The bodies and minds of these women belong to God and themselves."
November 21, 2015
As usual, Chesterton is a master at explaining things and getting to the heart of the matter. He makes some very pithy points that will leave you pondering for awhile. That being said, his attacks on capitalism as a whole, while also attacking communism in the same breath, is confusing to say the least.
January 5, 2022
Lúcidos comentarios sobre las contradicciones e incongruencias del discurso benefactor del capitalismo desde premisas cristianas y reformistas.
August 27, 2020
I am a big Chesterton fan but much of this book went over my head because the social problems of his time are different than ours. Capitalism was much more dangerous then in England than it is now in America. Of course our real problem is Socialism, which Chesterton also did not like (e.g. his love/hate relationship with G.B.S.) Of course his real social doctrine was Distributism, which starts off in a Socialist manner (equal distribution of property) but then lets said property alone. If anyone has heard of "three acres and a cow", that was a slogan from the distributist movement which Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc spearheaded. Anyway it was interesting but I would not recommend it for beginners in Chesterton. For them I would recommend some of his novels (The Man Who Was Thursday, The Flying Inn) or his poetry (notably the Ballad of the White Horse.)
November 24, 2021
A book of essays is always hard to rate overall, and especially so here when I am far removed from the people and places and the time in which and about which these words were written. The main thrust in most of these is an argument against capitalism, and some of the thoughts are worth holding onto and thinking about; however, as the work progresses I find it harder at times to really understand what Chesterton was arguing for or arguing against. This may be my own lack of familiarity with the time and place, however.
January 3, 2019
This book is a collection of essays critical of "capitalism and capitalists," or at least that is how Chesterton would characterize it. This characterization is incorrect, as history would subsequently show, the abuses that Chesterton thinks he addresses are not products of capitalism, but of large organizations and state over-reach. It does not matter who is pulling the strings, whether business or socialists, both are detrimental to the freedom that chesterton guards so carefully.
April 10, 2019
Good book I think GK Chestertons prognosis and assessments of capitalism have much merit. I think his humility gives off a glaring sincerity in his writing. The book also is good news, GK elaborates on many figures, companies, and institutions in his time. His critiques were not ill informed, many corporations, powerful people and influencers contained a shallow shamelessness that matches psychopaths.
February 11, 2022
Entertaining listening 🔰😀
Another will written British 100 year old historical society analysis by G. K. Chesterton. I read this type of novel not knowing what to expect, give it a try. Enjoy the adventure of reading 👓 or 🎶 listening to all kinds of novels 👍 🏰😤😆 2022
Another will written British 100 year old historical society analysis by G. K. Chesterton. I read this type of novel not knowing what to expect, give it a try. Enjoy the adventure of reading 👓 or 🎶 listening to all kinds of novels 👍 🏰😤😆 2022
June 27, 2021
Evolution happens while humans are sleeping, Revolution happens when humans are awake.
November 2, 2023
This guy was brilliant. Greatly overlooked to our own silliness.
December 13, 2024
“…doing nothing is sometimes one of the highest of the duties of man.”
“[The rich Englishman will not believe the actual facts and realities of the French Revolution] because he has no humility, and therefore no realism. He has never been inside himself; and so could never be inside another man.”
“It is not a flippancy, it is a very sacred truth, to say that when men really understand that they are brothers they instantly begin to fight.”
“[The rich Englishman will not believe the actual facts and realities of the French Revolution] because he has no humility, and therefore no realism. He has never been inside himself; and so could never be inside another man.”
“It is not a flippancy, it is a very sacred truth, to say that when men really understand that they are brothers they instantly begin to fight.”
April 18, 2022
“The key fact in the new development of plutocracy is that it will use its own blunder as an excuse for further crimes. Everywhere the very completeness of the impoverishment will be made a reason for the enslavement; though the men who impoverished were the same who enslaved. It is as if a highwayman not only took away a gentleman’s horse and all his money, but then handed him over to the police for tramping without visible means of subsistence. And the most monstrous feature in this enormous meanness may be noted in the plutocratic appeal to science, or, rather, to the pseudo-science that they call Eugenics.”
UTOPIA OF USURERS G K Chesterton.
https://notthegrubstreetjournal.com/2...
UTOPIA OF USURERS G K Chesterton.
https://notthegrubstreetjournal.com/2...
March 31, 2022
Not sure about this collection. It was focused on politics and the economy, and I suspect that I don't know enough about either, in the context of England's history, to comment on the accuracy of Chesterton's evaluations. Might re-read in the future, when I have a better understanding of the theories and circumstances that Chesterton discusses.
August 19, 2014
As a relative newcomer to Chesterton it is none the less quite clear this work is a little atypical to his oeuvre in this provocative, sometimes prophetic if slightly uneven work. Certainly it's clear while the wit is a little less evident than usual, the righteous anger he feels against the capitalist 'usurer' is, whilst often present in his polemics, here most pronounced and a century on gives us a compelling reminder that Chesterton the Catholic and Chesterton the reactionary do not stand in any way contradictory to Chesterton the revolutionary.
Indeed his criticisms of the welfare socialism he was beginning to see as merely the piece meal reparations or worse social controls Capitalism makes to it's own anti-production have a great ring of truth with our current predicament today.
Though this fear of the encroaching 'state' maybe finds stronger footing in the superb 'Heretics' at times ie chapter regarding George Bernard Shaw, I was surprised here he conceives the idea that we are making the world more like a prison and the prison more like the world-more humane even, 'in order to enslave more of humanity in it'. And, along the way he practically invents the idea of 'thoughtcrime' in the process some 30 years before Orwell when he discusses how a person may eventually be considered 'mentally ill' at the convenience of the (totalitarian) states definition, therefor incarcerated under a pretext of protecting society from the subject or indeed from himself. Reading this I have little doubt he would have seen the attacks against the 'welfare dependent' underclass of today and the egregious 'socialism' of usury risk for banking in their proper perspective.
Marxism also gets a brief mention as heartfelt,earnest but to Chesterton essentially incorrect. He briefly dismisses its economic scientism saying they would have done as well to '..read fairy tales' Of course one should not come to Chesterton to read in depth economic theory but at times we may wish for a little more meat on the bone.
But both the socialists and Marxists are viewed almost sympathetically by comparison as quite understandable attempts to counter the prevailing horrors capitalism. The cynicism he levels at the press and politicians and the inadequacy of the democratic process again feels pertinent.
It is worth mentioning, as others have, Chesterton's rather wholesale and rather credulous acceptance of Anti German propaganda regarding the coming Great War. It no doubt mars this book, and while he was never a jingoist is the crudest sense his nationalistic support of the war never faltered as far as I know.
As an Atheist living a century on, it is of course not hard nor surprising for me to disagree with Chesterton's conclusions on many things (WW1,Homosexuality,Female Emancipation) but by the same token history has clearly been kind to his views on many things too, who can consider his attacks on the Eugenics of the day as 'anti-progressive' now?
None the less the pleasure of Chesterton is clearly not in always coming to the same conclusions as him because the pleasure of Chesterton is seeing just HOW he considered people and ideas. Despite the breadth of his views it is a rare occasion I have found his arguments truly weak (a rare exception being is arguments vs Female emancipation in the otherwise mostly excellent 'What is wrong with the world' which are not worthy of him IMO).
So this, while atypical and not by far his most sublime writing, is for me one of Chesterton's essential works.
Indeed his criticisms of the welfare socialism he was beginning to see as merely the piece meal reparations or worse social controls Capitalism makes to it's own anti-production have a great ring of truth with our current predicament today.
Though this fear of the encroaching 'state' maybe finds stronger footing in the superb 'Heretics' at times ie chapter regarding George Bernard Shaw, I was surprised here he conceives the idea that we are making the world more like a prison and the prison more like the world-more humane even, 'in order to enslave more of humanity in it'. And, along the way he practically invents the idea of 'thoughtcrime' in the process some 30 years before Orwell when he discusses how a person may eventually be considered 'mentally ill' at the convenience of the (totalitarian) states definition, therefor incarcerated under a pretext of protecting society from the subject or indeed from himself. Reading this I have little doubt he would have seen the attacks against the 'welfare dependent' underclass of today and the egregious 'socialism' of usury risk for banking in their proper perspective.
Marxism also gets a brief mention as heartfelt,earnest but to Chesterton essentially incorrect. He briefly dismisses its economic scientism saying they would have done as well to '..read fairy tales' Of course one should not come to Chesterton to read in depth economic theory but at times we may wish for a little more meat on the bone.
But both the socialists and Marxists are viewed almost sympathetically by comparison as quite understandable attempts to counter the prevailing horrors capitalism. The cynicism he levels at the press and politicians and the inadequacy of the democratic process again feels pertinent.
It is worth mentioning, as others have, Chesterton's rather wholesale and rather credulous acceptance of Anti German propaganda regarding the coming Great War. It no doubt mars this book, and while he was never a jingoist is the crudest sense his nationalistic support of the war never faltered as far as I know.
As an Atheist living a century on, it is of course not hard nor surprising for me to disagree with Chesterton's conclusions on many things (WW1,Homosexuality,Female Emancipation) but by the same token history has clearly been kind to his views on many things too, who can consider his attacks on the Eugenics of the day as 'anti-progressive' now?
None the less the pleasure of Chesterton is clearly not in always coming to the same conclusions as him because the pleasure of Chesterton is seeing just HOW he considered people and ideas. Despite the breadth of his views it is a rare occasion I have found his arguments truly weak (a rare exception being is arguments vs Female emancipation in the otherwise mostly excellent 'What is wrong with the world' which are not worthy of him IMO).
So this, while atypical and not by far his most sublime writing, is for me one of Chesterton's essential works.
February 7, 2022
Came for the wit and erudition. Instead I got the evils of capitalism and inevitability of socialism. Not one of Chesterton's best.
August 22, 2020
At least once a year, I rather like to experience books and movies on their centennial, and so it happens that upon browsing my options for 1917, I figured I might as well see what Chesterton had to say. This particular collection of essays takes aim at capitalism with a number of prescient observations. A few choice quotes follow:
"There will be no art that might not just as well be advertisement."
"The sight of a millionaire is seldom, in the ordinary sense, an enchanting sight: nevertheless, he is in his way an enchanter. As they say in the gushing articles about him in the magazines, he is a fascinating personality."
"I will put before you one plain question. There are some pleasures of the poor that may also mean profits for the rich: there are other pleasures of the poor which cannot mean profits for the rich? Watch this one contrast, and you will watch the whole creation of a careful slavery."
These quotes are taken mainly from the early pages of the book, which I found to be of the greatest interest. Some essays dwell more on matters specific to their time and place as less on prophetic admonitions of capitalist culture.
"There will be no art that might not just as well be advertisement."
"The sight of a millionaire is seldom, in the ordinary sense, an enchanting sight: nevertheless, he is in his way an enchanter. As they say in the gushing articles about him in the magazines, he is a fascinating personality."
"I will put before you one plain question. There are some pleasures of the poor that may also mean profits for the rich: there are other pleasures of the poor which cannot mean profits for the rich? Watch this one contrast, and you will watch the whole creation of a careful slavery."
These quotes are taken mainly from the early pages of the book, which I found to be of the greatest interest. Some essays dwell more on matters specific to their time and place as less on prophetic admonitions of capitalist culture.
November 2, 2011
I usually enjoy Chesterton. This collection of essays had a few more out-dated allusions than usual. Also, I hadn't realized how much he hated Capitalists. He had no love for Socialists, either, so I'm left wondering what economic system he would espouse. He made good observations about the excesses of greed and exploitation of the common man.
August 7, 2013
Chestertonian economics.
August 23, 2013
It's fine. I guess
September 1, 2025
I had this book but no more. I think I like Chesterton, just had to downsize.
October 10, 2014
Enjoyable enough. Chesterton's writing get's a little too twee at times though.
April 20, 2017
The content of this book is a series of articles originally written by the aggressively non-Socialist Chesterton for a Socialist magazine: it was published in book form in 1917. Here follow a list of things from the book that I think are entirely applicable to the United States in its politics, economy, and entertainment (the American people, of course, recently voted to make them all the same thing) a century after its publication:
"[I]n all ... popular narratives, the king, if he is a wicked king, is generally also a wizard. Now there is a very vital human truth enshrined in this. Bad government, like good government, is a spiritual thing. Even the tyrant never rules by force alone; but mostly by fairy tales. And so it is with the modern tyrant, the great employer. The sight of a millionaire is seldom, in the ordinary sense, an enchanting sight: nevertheless he is in his way an enchanter... a fascinating personality. So is a snake. At least he is fascinating to rabbits; and so is the millionaire to the rabbit-witted people that ladies and gentlemen have allowed themselves to become."
"[C]apitalist society, which naturally does not know the meaning of honor, cannot know the meaning of disgrace."
"[A]varice has gone mad in the governing class today... By all the working and orthodox standards of sanity, capitalism is insane. I should not say to Mr. Rockefeller 'I am a rebel.' I should say 'I am a respectable man: and you are not.'"
The question becomes: can one sue a man for libel if he died eighty years before one was elected president?
"[I]n all ... popular narratives, the king, if he is a wicked king, is generally also a wizard. Now there is a very vital human truth enshrined in this. Bad government, like good government, is a spiritual thing. Even the tyrant never rules by force alone; but mostly by fairy tales. And so it is with the modern tyrant, the great employer. The sight of a millionaire is seldom, in the ordinary sense, an enchanting sight: nevertheless he is in his way an enchanter... a fascinating personality. So is a snake. At least he is fascinating to rabbits; and so is the millionaire to the rabbit-witted people that ladies and gentlemen have allowed themselves to become."
"[C]apitalist society, which naturally does not know the meaning of honor, cannot know the meaning of disgrace."
"[A]varice has gone mad in the governing class today... By all the working and orthodox standards of sanity, capitalism is insane. I should not say to Mr. Rockefeller 'I am a rebel.' I should say 'I am a respectable man: and you are not.'"
The question becomes: can one sue a man for libel if he died eighty years before one was elected president?
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