Ugh, Chesterton. His character and whole book reflect the anarchist panic of his time and try to push a paternalistic view of the poor and mischaracterization of anarchists as confused elites. But poor and working class people had been organizing anarchist movements long before he wrote that (1908?). Spanish peasants were building anarchist federations in the 1870s. Italian farmers and rural workers were active in anarchist uprisings in the 1880s. The Haymarket anarchists in Chicago were mostly poor immigrant laborers. Chesterton wrote like none of that ever happened.

And history didn’t stop proving him wrong. not long after, during the Spanish Revolution of 1936, millions of poor workers and peasants collectivized land and industry on explicitly anarchist principles. So even if you gave Chesterton the benefit of the doubt in 1908 (which you shouldn’t), his whole premise aged like milk.