What's Wrong with the World

Chesterton on Everything That Has Gone Wrong

G.K. Chesterton published What's Wrong with the World in 1910. The book is a collection of linked essays addressing the modern family, the education of children, the emancipation of women, and the failures of both capitalism and socialism to provide ordinary people with what they actually need: a home, a piece of property, and the freedom to raise their children as they see fit.

The Argument

Chesterton's method is paradox. He begins by insisting that before you can fix a problem, you must first have a clear picture of what the ideal looks like. Most reformers, he argues, skip this step entirely. They propose solutions without ever defining what they are solving for. The result is a series of reforms that make things worse in ways nobody anticipated.

He then applies this framework to three subjects: education (where he argues that modern schools have replaced formation with mere instruction), feminism (where he argues that the movement has sold women on the idea that paid labor is more dignified than domestic life), and housing (where he argues that neither big business nor big government can give a family what a small plot of land can). His proposed alternative is distributism: the widest possible distribution of private property.

Why It Still Reads

Chesterton wrote in a style that makes most contemporary prose look anemic. Every paragraph contains at least one sentence you want to underline. The arguments have not dated. If anything, the problems he identified in 1910 have intensified in ways that make the book feel prophetic rather than historical.

About This Edition

• Author: G.K. Chesterton
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 9781720325376

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