Concerning Guild Socialism
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chapter 7 Concerning Guild Socialism Introduction Guild Socialism is a form of socialism which is almost entirely British and developed in the twentieth century over a relatively short period. This social- ism is still a noteworthy episode in the history of the European working-class movement for its distinctly libertarian tendency at a time when the dominant Marxian socialism of the Second International, with its increasing comprom- ise with the existing social order, was on its way to decay as an independent movement of the working class. Guild Socialism advocated workers’ self-government in industry through the national worker-controlled guilds. The guild theory, originated by Arthur Penty in his work Restoration of Guilds (1906), stressed the spirit of the medieval trust guilds.1 The name ‘Guild’ is taken from the Middle Ages, during which the fun- damental form of industrial organisation in Europe was the ‘Gild’ or ‘Guild’, an association of independent producers or merchants for the regulation of production or sale. Indeed, it was the common form of popular association in the mediaeval town. The element of identity between the mediaeval Guild and the National Guilds proposed by Guild Socialism in the twentieth century is, however, far more of spirit than of organisation.2 Secondly, by ‘guild’ its partis- ans mean something based on trade unionism, but essentially different from the existing trade unionism in two particulars: (1) even if a trade union is what is called an industrial union including the entire body of workers, it is an incom- plete body, because it excludes the technical workers attached to the industry, in other words, it does not include all of the persons engaged in that industry who are essential to its efficient functioning. One of the ways in which a guild would be different from a trade union is that it would include the whole of the workers by hand as well as experts – brain workers and manual workers of every kind – all the workers who are essential to the carrying on of that industry with efficiency as a public service. In their attitude to the trade union move- ment, the guild socialists ‘have that object in mind: trying to create that sort of organisation that would be capable not merely of overthrowing capitalism – 1 See the article ‘Guild Socialism’ in Columbia Electronic Encyclopaedia (2012). 2 See Cole 1921, p. 46. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004377516_009 concerning guild socialism 187 which is a comparatively easy job – but replacing capitalism – which is a very much harder job’.3 (2)The second point of difference of the guild from the trade union, the guild partisans hold, is that the guild would be mainly concerned not with looking after the interest of its members in an economical sense but with the efficient functioning of industry. ‘The main job of the guild would be not protection, not collective bargaining; it would be turning out the goods, seeing that the industry is efficiently conducted, actually running and administering the industry’.4 After Penty’s work, mentioned earlier, later elaborations by three authors, A.R. Orage, S.G. Hobson and, above all, G.D.H. Cole, led to the incorporation of aspects of the Marxian critique of capitalism and of syndicalism. In what follows we draw on Hobson and Cole, though more on Cole than on Hobson, since it was Cole who covered the widest ground. As a student of this system sums it up, ‘Guild theory made three essential claims: it was to provide a critique of the existing system of industrial capital- ism, to outline the basic requirements of an alternative social system, and to suggest the best method of transition from one system to the other’.5 Generally speaking, Guild Socialism accepts Marx’s economic critique of capital(ism) as a system of ‘wage slavery’, though it does not always make clear the distinction between labour and labour power. Thus its theorists hold that by the system of wage slavery, individuals are turned into commodities sub- ject to purchase and sale in the market. On the other hand, Guild Socialism distinguishes itself from most other left-wing movements by emphasising the alienation caused by wage slavery. Capitalism not only reproduces economic inequalities, but also vast inequalities of status, elevating a small group of indi- viduals, while subjecting the mass of humanity to the indignity of being owned and controlled in the work process. 3 Cole 1968, p. 8. 4 Cole 1968, p. 9. Emphasis added. 5 Wright 1974, p. 169. He is however outright wrong to say on the same page that the Guild Socialists, while accepting the basic Marxian categories, went beyond Marx by asserting ‘the human consequences of economic exploitation which we now describe in terms of “aliena- tion”’. This shows only the author’s profound innocence of Marx’s own texts from his youth to the ultimate writings dwelling on this central theme, though not always using the same vocabulary..