The Servile State

by Hilaire Belloc

Of course citizen A expected it would produce more, and was awaiting a surplus value, or he would not have made the contract with citizen B. But, at any rate, citizen B put his name to the agreement, and as a free man, capable of contracting, was correspondingly bound to fulfil it.

In fulfilling this contract the ploughshare B is driving destroys a pipe conveying water by agreement through A’s land to C. C suffers damage, and to recover the equivalent of that damage his action in justice and common sense can only be against A, for B was carrying out a plan and instruction of which A was the author. C is a third party who had nothing to do with such a contract and could not possibly have justice save by his chances of getting it from A, who was the true author of the unintentional loss inflicted, since he designed the course of work.

But when the damage is not done to C at all, but to B, who is concerned with a work the risks of which are known and willingly undertaken, it is quite another matter.

Citizen A contracts with citizen B that citizen B, in consideration of a sack of wheat, shall plough a bit of land. Certain known risks must attach to that operation. Citizen B, if he is a free man, undertakes those risks with his eyes open. For instance, he may sprain his wrist in turning the plough, or one of the horses may kick him while he is having his bread-and-cheese. If upon such an accident A is compelled to pay damages to B, a difference of status is at once recognised. B undertook to do work which, by all the theory of free contract, was, with its risks and its expense of energy, the equivalent in B’s own eyes of a sack of wheat; yet a law is passed to say that B can have more than that sack of wheat if he is hurt.

There is no converse right of A against B. If the employer suffers by such an accident to the employee, he is not allowed to dock that sack of wheat, though it was regarded in the contract as the equivalent to a certain amount of labour to be performed which, as a fact, has not been performed. A has no action unless B has been culpably negligent or remiss. In other words, the mere fact that one man is working and the other not is the fundamental consideration on which the law is built, and the law says: “You are not a free man making a free contract with all its consequences. You are a worker, and therefore an inferior: you are an employee; and that status gives you a special position which would not be recognised in the other party to the contract.”

The principle is pushed still further when an employer is made liable for an accident happening to one of his employees at the hands of another employee.

A gives a sack of wheat to B and D each if they will dig a well for him. All three parties are cognisant of the risks and accept them in the contract. B, holding the rope on which D is lowered, lets it slip. If they were all three men of exactly equal status, obviously D’s action would be against B. But they are not of equal status in England to-day. B and D are employees, and are therefore in a special and inferior position before the law compared with their employer A. D’s action is, by this novel principle, no longer against B, who accidentally injured him by a personal act, however involuntary, for which a free man would be responsible, but against A, who was innocent of the whole business.

Now in all this it is quite clear that A has peculiar duties not because he is a citizen, but because he is something more: an employer; and B and D have special claims on A, not because they are citizens, but because they are something less: viz. employees. They can claim protection from A, as inferiors of a superior in a State admitting such distinctions and patronage.

It will occur at once to the reader that in our existing social state the employee will be very grateful for such legislation. One workman cannot recover from another simply because the other will have no goods out of which to pay damages. Let the burden, therefore, fall upon the rich man!

Excellent. But that is not the point. To argue thus is to say that Servile legislation is necessary if we are to solve the problems raised by Capitalism. It remains servile legislation none the less. It is legislation that would not exist in a society where property was well divided and where a citizen could normally pay damages for the harm he had himself caused. [10]