The Economic Thought of Hilaire Belloc: A Christian Alternative to the Servile State (Routledge Studies in the History of Economics)

By: Alfonso Díaz Vera

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Synopsis: Hilaire Belloc’s thinking on the economy constitutes, by its originality and acuity, a heterodox approach of the greatest interest in addressing the economic problems of his time and those of our own.Belloc’s main interest as a writer were on economics and history, and his works were praised by economists such as F. A. Hayek or Wilhelm Röpke and political philosophers such as Robert Nisbet and Russell Kirk, but his contributions have been often overlooked. To address that oversight, this book inserts Belloc´s ideas into the academic dialogue on economics. Despite not being a trained economist, Belloc developed his thought based on a coherent system rooted in original elements such as the scholastic tradition. Belloc’s Christian or “post-scholastic” economics updates and renews many of the scholastic concepts to make them applicable to the economy of the world he knew. Issues such as the impossibility of socialism, entrepreneurship, the effects of monetary policy and credit on economic cycles, or the sustainability of the welfare state were studied by Belloc from a very singular perspective.Describing and interpreting the economic thought of Belloc, the book will be of interest to scholars and students, as well as general readers, interested in heterodox perspectives on economics.