Letter to a friend who wanted to know what essay/book he should read to understand G.K. Chesterton's economics:
Utopia of Usurers: A collection of over two dozen of Chesterton's most trenchant essays on what Capitalism is, and how bad it is . . .".
It's short (only 99 average-size pages of text in my copy from IHS Press). If you don't want to read a book, you can consider the representative quotes below. If you're looking for an essay, you might want to try this blog post, but I can't vouch for it (I didn't read the entire thing, but the writer is reliable). You may also want to check out this TDE post from two years ago in which I compared distributism to today's economic libertarianism (see section entitled "Ebony and Ivory").
Keep in mind that GKC drew a distinction between capitalism and the free market. He loathed the former and loved the latter. I'm not sure his distinction is valid, since the free market results in the accumulation of capital. I have often speculated that GKC and Belloc wouldn't have been so anti-capitalistic if they weren't painfully aware that many of the rich people of their day got rich because their forebears accepted gifts of stolen real estate from Henry VIII. Better-informed Chestertonians would disagree with me on that point, though I think they would concede that the history behind capital accumulation in England stuck in GKC's and Belloc's (esp. Belloc's) craw (sp?).
Ӣ "Big Business and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business." - G.K.'s Weekly, 4/10/26
Ӣ "[No society can survive the socialist] fallacy that there is an absolutely unlimited number of inspired officials and an absolutely unlimited amount of money to pay them." - The Debate with Bertrand Russell, BBC Magazine, 11/27/35
Ӣ "Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists." - The Uses of Diversity, 1921
Ӣ "Price is a crazy and incalculable thing, while Value is an intrinsic and indestructible thing." - Reflections on a Rotten Apple, The Well and the Shallows, 1935
Ӣ "Business, especially big business, is now organized like an army. It is, as some would say, a sort of mild militarism without bloodshed; as I say, a militarism without the military virtues." - The Thing
Ӣ "All but the hard hearted man 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." - Utopia of Usurers, 1917
Ӣ "From the standpoint of any sane person, the present problem of capitalist concentration is not only a question of law, but of criminal law, not to mention criminal lunacy." - "A Case In Point," The Outline of Sanity
Ӣ "Because a girl should have long hair, she should have clean hair; because she should have clean hair, she should not have an unclean home; because she should not have an unclean home, she should have a free and leisured mother; because she should have a free mother, she should not have an usurious landlord; because there should not be a usurious landlord, there should be a redistribution of property; because there should be a redistribution of property, there shall be a revolution." - What's Wrong with the World
Ӣ "There is only one thing that stands in our midst, attenuated and threatened, but enthroned in some power like a ghost of the Middle Ages: the Trade Unions." - A Short History of England
Ӣ "[Capitalism is] that commercial system in which supply immediately answers to demand, and in which everybody seems to be thoroughly dissatisfied and unable to get anything he wants." - "How to Write a Detective Story." The Spice of Life
Ӣ "Our society is so abnormal that the normal man never dreams of having the normal occupation of looking after his own property. When he chooses a trade, he chooses one of the ten thousand trades that involve looking after other people's property." - Commonwealth10-12-32
Ӣ "The real argument against aristocracy is that it always means the rule of the ignorant. For the most dangerous of all forms of ignorance is ignorance of work." - NY Sun 11-3-18
Ӣ "Making the landlord and the tenant the same person has certain advantages, as that the tenant pays no rent, while the landlord does a little work." - "Hudge and Gudge," What's Wrong with the World
Ӣ "You can't have the family farm without the family." - Tales of the Long Bow
Ӣ "I would give a woman not more rights, but more privileges. Instead of sending her to seek such freedom as notoriously prevails in banks and factories, I would design specially a house in which she can be free." - What's Wrong World
