Without a Bolshevist in the world

The practical tendency of all trade and business to-day is towards big commercial combinations, often more imperial, more impersonal, more international than many a communist commonwealth – things that are at least collective if not collectivist. It is all very well to repeat distractedly, “What are we coming to, with all this Bolshevism?”  It is equally relevant to add, “What are we coming to, even without Bolshevism?” The obvious answer is – Monopoly.  It is certainly not private enterprise. The American Trust is not private enterprise. It would be truer to call the Spanish Inquisition private judgment. Monopoly is neither private nor enterprising. It exists to prevent private enterprise. And that system of trust or monopoly, that complete destruction of property, would still be the present goal of all our progress, if there were not a Bolshevist in the world.

Now I am one of those who believe that the cure for centralization is decentralization.

(G. K. Chesterton, The Outline of Sanity, 1926)

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