Guild socialism

“ This by itself would not imply Socialism at all: it would be merely a revival of the medieval guild, or a fresh attempt at the now exploded self-governing workshop of the primitive co-operators. Guild Socialism, with the emphasis on the Socialism, implies that the industries, however completely they may be controlled by their separate staffs, must pool their products. All the Guild Socialists admit this. The Socialist State must therefore include an organ for receiving and distributing the pooled products ”

“ Guild Socialism, championed by the ablest and most industrious insurgents of the rising generation in the Society, raised its issue with Collectivism only to discover, when the matter, after a long agitation, was finally thrashed out at a conference at Barrow House, that the issue was an imaginary one, and that Collectivism lost nothing by the fullest tenable concessions to the Guild Socialists. ”

“ Such are a few of the weaknesses involved by the theoretical basis on which Guild Socialism is built. When we come to its practical application we find the creed still more unsatisfactory. Even if we grant—an enormous and quite unjustified assumption—that the Guildsman, if he is to be paid merely for being alive, will work hard enough to pay the community for paying him, we have then to ask how and whether he will achieve greater freedom under the Guilds than he has now. ”

“ Cole is enormously concerned about whether the society which follows the revolution is to be run by state collectivism, by guilds or cooperative societies, by a democratic parliament or by functional representation. In fact, it is as a new theory of representative government that guild socialism challenges attention.
The guildsmen do not expect a miracle to result from the disappearance of capitalist property rights. They do expect, and of course quite rightly, that if equality of income were the rule, social relations would be profoundly altered. ”

“ Did not the Bolsheviks try something like this system, with results that were not conducive to efficient production? And to meet the danger that the officials as a whole might combine "in a huge conspiracy against the rank and file," Messrs Bechhofer and Reckitt can only suggest vigilance committees within the Guilds. In a word, Guild Socialism seems to be a system that might possibly be worked by a set of ideally perfect beings; but as folk are in this workaday world one can only doubt whether it would be conducive either to freedom, efficiency or a pleasant life for those who lived under it. ”

“ In England a new school is arising which is equally opposed to syndicalism and to the bureaucracy of state socialism. Or rather it takes half of each. Guild socialism believes in state ownership of the means of production, but that the control of each industry or “guild”—appointment of officers, hours and conditions of work etc.—should be vested in the membership of the industry. The syndicalists throw over the state entirely, the guild socialists believe in the “co-management” of the state. ”

“ The feudal system became an absurdity when its basis of communism with [160] inequality of condition had changed into private property with free contract and competition rents. The guild system had no machinery for dealing with division of labor, the factory system, or international trade: it recognized in competitive individualism only something to be repressed as diabolical. But competitive individualism simply took possession of the guilds, and turned them into refectories for aldermen, and notable additions to the grievances and laughing stocks of posterity. ”

“ During and after the war, however, the demand for a reconstruction of the world’s entire political and economic structure became more insistent. Radical ideas as to what ought to be done, and radical proposals as to how it ought to be done were brought forth and spread. The world found itself, almost in a day, face to face with demands for the complete repudiation of democracy as an ideal and of individualism as a principle of economic organization. Proposals for state socialism, guild socialism, communism, and a dictatorship of the proletariat were put forth aggressively on every hand. ”

“ The Syndicalist movement, native to France, but spreading the influence of its ideas over the whole industrialized world, the Industrial Unionist movement, the American equivalent of Syndicalism, and our own doctrine of National Guilds, or Guild Socialism, are all conscious attempts to build a policy upon the half-conscious tendencies of Trade Union action. In all these the claim is made in varying forms that the workers themselves shall control in the common interest the industries in which they are engaged. ”

“ Those which encumber rural property and keep it unimproved are to be abolished by purchase. Every employment shall be open to all, and the highest rank in the army shall be attainable by the member of the middle class and the peasant, as well as by the noble. All forms of economic activity shall also be open to all. The permission of the guild and the authorisation of the government shall no longer be necessary before a man can take up this or that trade, create this or that industry, open this or that shop. The guilds themselves will cease to exist ”

“ But the guild system broke down because every guild was concerned with its own interests irrespective of the interests of the whole community. Every guild therefore became a class corporation which sought to use the guild for purely selfish purposes. Entrance to the guild was confined to members of the families of those controlling the guild ”

“ The guild was an organisation for the promotion of the common interests of the workers at a time when law and order were not sufficiently established by strong central governments, and when the present distinction between labourer and capitalist had not declared itself. It was a fairly equitable organisation of an industry which was local and associated with city life, and which worked with a very limited and undeveloped technique. ”

“ Again, those who controlled the guild sought by limiting the number of its members to create a privileged society from which they could derive wealth without labor. Thus the whole business of killing and selling meat was at one time in Paris confined to twenty persons. These persons did not themselves engage in the business, but they sublet their respective monopolies to others, and thus constituted an idle aristocracy. ”

“ Guild Socialists regard the State as consisting of the community in their capacity as consumers, while the Guilds will represent them in their capacity as producers; thus Parliament and the Guild Congress will be two co-equal powers representing consumers and producers respectively. Above both will be the joint Committee of Parliament and the Guild Congress for deciding matters involving the interests of consumers and producers alike. The view of the Guild Socialists is that State Socialism takes account of men only as consumers, while Syndicalism takes account of them only as producers. ”

“ As for the fairer portion of our guild, being for the most part ostracized in general society, they bore a grudge against their sex, and affected a thousand airs of mannishness. Some always dressed in male attire; many sported little moustaches and chin-tufts, rode man-fashion in the Bois de Boulogne, fought duels; and all smoked. Like other converts, they went farther in their faith than the old believers, and talked Communism, Socialism, and Saint Simonianism, with a freedom that rose high above all the little prejudices ordinary life fosters. ”

“ The working class is not inclined to help the small producer, should he attempt the re-establishment of restrictions to the freedom to choose [Pg 181] a trade and of emigration, or the restoration of the guild and corporation restrictions, contemplated with the end in view of artificially keeping dwarf-production alive for a little while longer,—more than that is beyond their power. ”

“ The society based upon reason had fared no better. The antagonism between rich and poor, instead of dissolving into general prosperity, had become intensified by the removal of the guild and other privileges, which had to some extent bridged it over, and by the removal of the charitable institutions of the Church. ”

“ The guild therefore early established elaborate rules fixing standards and prices so that no man could charge a high price for a low standard of goods, nor could he compete with others in the same guild by offering a high standard of goods for a lower price than that determined by the guild. ”

“ Originally a commercial union with religious sentiments and some political powers, the growing division of function between capital and labour destroyed the industrial catholicity of the first type of guild, the merchant guild, and raised opposition to it amongst the craftsmen. To begin with, the craftsmen won, but the gulf between the capitalist who had wealth, and the labourer who had only skill widened apace, and the guilds again drifted into positions of economic privilege and antagonised the poorer workmen. ”

“ Some of them, like the miners and railroad men, would be very strong, and probably deeply attached to the view of their function which they learned from the battle with capitalism. It is not at all unlikely that certain favorably placed trade unions would under a socialist state become the center of coherence and government. But a guild society would inevitably find them a tough problem to deal with, for direct action would have revealed their strategic power, and some of their leaders at least would not offer up this power readily on the altar of freedom. ”

“ And it is these miserable wrecks of ancient guilds, those organisms, mangled and oppressed by the State that "scientific" economists have the ignorance to confound with the guilds of the Middle Ages! What the great Revolution swept away as harmful to industry was not the guild, nor even the trade-union ”

“ In truth, was it possible for the State to tolerate a guild or corporation of a trade, with its tribunal, its militia, its treasury, its sworn organisation? It was for the statesmen "a State within the State"! The State was to destroy the guild, and it destroyed it everywhere: in England, in France, in Germany, in Bohemia, preserving only "the semblance of the guild as an instrument of the exchequer, as a part of the vast administrative machine. ”

“ The guild cannot function under intensive methods of production or where production is primarily for profit, or where the factory system prevails, or where capitalism is the established system, or under combinations, trusts or other devices for the establishing and maintenance of great aggregates tending always towards monopoly. However much we may admire the guild system and desire its restoration, we may as well recognize this fact at once. The imperial scale must go and the human scale be restored before the guild can come back in any general sense. ”

“ But it has always encountered obstacles which have arrested its progress. First there have been disagreements between those who favour the idea. Should the guild be optional or compulsory, open or closed? What share should masters and workmen take in it? Should it aim only at mutual assistance, or should it be competent to act in disputes between members? On the one hand there were those who were afraid of reviving the tyrannical monopoly of the old wardenships and on the other those who were afraid of forming, without meaning to do so, the framework for a socialistic organization of labour. ”

“ Even the broken reed on which we had rested high hopes of eternal peace,—the guild of the laborers—the front of that very important movement for human justice on which we had builded most, even this flew like a straw before the breath of king and kaiser. Indeed, the flying had been foreshadowed when in Germany and America "international" Socialists had all but read yellow and black men out of the kingdom of industrial justice. ”

“ In proportion as a decreasing part of the community was devoted to offensive and defensive activities, an increasing part became devoted to production and distribution. Growing more numerous, more powerful, and taking refuge in towns where it was less under the power of the militant class, this industrial population carried on its life under the system of voluntary coöperation. Though municipal governments and guild-regulations, partially pervaded by ideas and usages derived from the militant type of society, were in some degree coercive ”

“ Let the National Guard, who brought about the Revolution, and seduced or overcame the loyalty of the troops of the line, explain, if they can, the benefit they are likely to derive from this triumph of Socialism over Bourgeoisie, of labour over capital, of numbers over property. The Revolution was the work of their hands, and they must reap its fruits, as unquestionably they will bear its responsibility. ”

“ For if Socialists are engaged in a class war, which practically all of them believe may, and many believe must, lead to revolution, it is as necessary to disarm the opposing classes as it is to abolish military discipline because of its inherent evil. It is this fact that explains the importance of all Socialist efforts against imperialism, colonialism, nationalism, patriotism, war and armies—and not the idea, common among Socialists, that Socialism alone can be relied on to establish permanent international peace. ”

“ In every state, the army is for the property owner; in every European conflict, the working class is duped and sacrificed for the benefit of the governing class, the bourgeoisie, and the parasites. Therefore the XVth Congress approves and extols every action the anti-military and anti-patriotic propaganda, even though it only compromises the situation of all classes and all political parties. ”