The Outline of Sanity - Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Despite a Global Economy in total disarray, and nations teetering on the brink of debt default, many people still retain a touching faith in the system that brought us to this sorry pass. In 'The Outline of Sanity' G K Chesterton's questions the most basic assumptions of both Capitalism and Socialism, showing that each leads to a soul-less sterile society, where individual humans become 'units' of consumption or production, with everyone a faceless servant of the Rich or of the State. With his usual wit and eloquence, Chesterton demolishes the philosophic basis of both systems. In their place, he advocates a society which rejects the consolidation of capital and power into the hands of the few and focuses instead upon the distribution of ownership across society, where to a much greater extent than at present, each man is his own master and power resides locally. This is a timely book, as relevant now as when it was first published some 85 years ago, an analysis which, as Chesterton himself said 'outlines ... the broad strokes necessary to bring society back to its senses.'