The Servile State is a 1912 economic and political treatise by Hilaire Belloc. It serves primarily as a history of capitalism, a critique of both capitalism and socialism, and a rebuke of developments Belloc believed would bring about a form of totalitarianism he called the "servile state". The "servile state" is a state in which the proletariat – defined as a majority of civil society dispossessed of the means of production – is compelled by positive law to work for those possessed of those same means.