THE LIBRARY OF THE NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR RELATIONS AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924002306342 GUILD SOCIALISM BOOKS BY G. D. H. COLE Guild Socialism SoaAL Theory Chaos and Order in Industry LABOtm IN THE Commonwealth Self-Government in Industry Introduction to Trade Union- ism GUILD SOCIALISM A PLAN FOR ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY BY G. D. H. COLE FELLOW OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD Author of " Chaos and Order in Industry," "Social Theory," etc. NEW YORK FREDERrCK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1920, by Frederick A. Stokes Company All rights reserved First published in the United States of America, 1921 PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION The theory and policy of Guild Socialism, or Na- tional Guilds, have been developed over a period of years, and primarily with a view to British industrial conditions. The widespread interest which they have aroused in the United States of America shows, however, that, while there is much in the American conditions that is different, there are nevertheless, broadly speaking, similar social diseases calling for similar remedies. It is not for an Englishman to prescribe to the citizens of other countries the medi- cine for their social ills: he has amply enough on hand in seeking to act as a physician — one among many — to his own countrymen, threatened as they seem to be by the alternatives of a sudden breaking up or of a gradual breaking down of the mechanism of British industry. This is, indeed, too pessimistic a statement to express the real facts of the industrial situation in Great Britain at the present time; for there are forces of creation as well as forces of de- struction at work. But at best it will be a hard-rvm race between these forces, and the prospects of a vic- tory for the creative forces have not grown brighter of late. In the United States of America, although a sim- ilar contest is proceeding, it has neither reached the vi PREFACE same phase nor passed through the same stages. British industry to-day is vastly more concentrated and trustified than American industry, and the very smallness of Great Britain has led, among employers and workers, to a much closer organization and a much greater uniformity of method and policy. New schemes and policies tend to arise in Great Britain nationally, and experiments to be made on a national scale — facts which make theorizing per- haps easier, but practical tests more difficult than in America. All these considerations, and many others like them and behind them, mean that, even if Guild Socialism has a message for the citizens of the United States, it is likely to assume among them a form different in many respects from that which it has taken on in Great Britain. I have made, and can make, no attempt to indicate what this different form should be. That can only be determined by the American people them- selves. Already, in the books of Mr. Ordway Tead and others, there are signs of the emergence of ideas closely akin to those of the Guild Socialists of Great Britain. The significance of the " Plumb Plan " of the American railway men is discussed elsewhere in this book ; and, only during the last few months, the new Farmer Labor Party has adopted a plank in its platform which indicates at the least a tendency to- wards the conception of industry in terms of democ- racy which has been the basis of the Guild move- ment. It is difficult for me to estimate the real significance of these and similar movements and ten- dencies in the world of American industry; but I PREFACE vii have the thought that, after all, there is nothing peculiarly British about the fundamental ideas which underlie the Guild movement. The form which it has assumed — its actual clothing of institutions and programs — is mainly British ; but the ideas be- hind it, if they are valid at all, are in the main uni- versal, and are capable of giving rise to many diverse systems based on different material and psycho- logical conditions. For example, if the theory of representative de- mocracy which is set forth in this book is true at all, it cannot be true for one country only. The social structure requisite for democracy will differ from place to place, as the functions of government and administration, the character of the Society, the oc- cupations of the people, and the national tempera- ments and traditions vary from place to place. Nevertheless, forma manet; and, in the hope that there is something of value for the citizens of the American Commonwealth I offer this book for the consideration of the American public. G. D. H. Cole. London, England, October 1920. CONTENTS I The Demand for Freedom II The Basis of Democracy . . . III A Guild in Being IV The Guild System in Industry . V The Consumer VI The Civic Services .... VII The Structure of the Commune VIII The Working of the Commune . IX Guild Socialism in Agriculture X Evolution and Revolution . XI The Policy of Transition . . XII The International Outlook . . Index FAGS I l8 53 67 84 103 124 144 156 170 187 199 GUILD SOCIALISM CHAPTER I THE DEMAND FOR FREEDOM The control of industry — A world-wide demand — Its prac- tical character — Guild Socialism as an expression of it — Involving political as well as economic reorganization — Arising directly out of the present social situation — Giving direction to existing tendencies and forms of organization — The fundamental assumptions of Guild Socialism — Will the basis of Society — Democracy and self-government good in themselves — Active, not passive citizenship needed — Democracy all round — In industry as well as in politics — As a means to self-expression — Society not so organized to-day — Existing political "democracy'' a sham — Substitution of representative for represented — Real democracy impossible without eco- nomic equality — And real representation except in rela- tion to specific purposes — The fact of class-war — In- equality of status in industry — Its social and political effects — Existing Society as the expression of .capitalism — Challenged by working-class organization — This chal- lenge not constitutionally recognized — The meaning of " Direct Action " — How Trade Unions already exercise power — The effect of Trade Union regulations, in un- dermining capitalism — What Capitalism is — Capitalism as wage-slavery — The " commodity " theory of labor — Unemployment and " industrial maintenance " — Collective bargaining — From bargaining to control — The changing psychology of the workers — The effect of the war — Why the workers will not increase output — The failure of coercion — And of " Whitleyism " — The possibilities be- fore us — The defeat of Labor — Continued deadlock lead- ing to Revolution — Immediate Revolution — Constructive 1 2 GUILD SOCIALISM preparation for Revolution — Revolution with and with- out violence — The Guild Socialist Policy — The inter- dependence of functions and authority — The ousting of the governing classes — " Encroaching control " — The future of Trade Unionism — Social organization and hu- man happiness. FOR any just appreciation of the social forces at work in the world to-day, there is no fact more essential to grasp than the broadening and deepening demand of the organized workers for the " control of industry." This demand is made, not in one country or in one form alone, but in nearly every country in which the industrial system is strongly established, and in as many forms as there are differ- ent national temperaments and traditions. Nor is the demand new; for it has appeared, at least occa- sionally, throughout the history of the Labor Move- ment, in the " Owenite " Trade Unionism of the thirties in Great Britain, among anarchists and com- munists on the Continent of Europe, and among the early revolutionaries and reformers of the United States. But its character at the present time differs from any that it has possessed before, not only be- cause it is more universal and has struck far deeper roots, but because it is now based firmly on the posi- tive achievements of working-class organization, and is no longer purely Utopian, but constructive and practical. This book on Guild Socialism is an attempt to explain the real character of this demand, particu- larly as it appears amongst the English-speaking peoples, and at the same time to present the centrd ideas of Guild Socialism as above all an attempt to THE DEMAND FOR FREEDOM 3 give theoretical and practical expression to the as- pirations on which the demand is based. It is written in the belief that, until we devise and create forms of social organization within which these as- pirations can find reasonable satisfaction, there is neither hope of any " reconstruction " which will make our industrial system efficient nor prospect of health in the body social as a whole. Although, therefore, the way of approach and the main subject- matter of this book are industrial, its implications and conclusions will be found to extend over a con- siderably wider field than that of industry, and in- deed to involve a theory of democratic representative government as a whole and constructive proposals governing the general lines of political as well as industrial reconstruction. The Guild Socialist theory, while, like all other social theories, it makes certain fundamental as- sumptions concerning the objects of human asso- ciation and men's life in Society, arises essentially out of the actual historical situation in which we are placed at the present time. The Guild Socialist be- lieves what he believes, not so much as the result of a process of abstract reasoning, as because, if his fundamental assumptions are granted, the Guild So- cialist solution of the social problem seems to him to spring simply and naturally out of the form in which that problem presents itself to-day. He claims, not to be imagining a Utopia in the clouds, but to be giving form and direction to certain quite definite tendencies which are now at work in Society, and to be anticipating the most natural 4 GUILD SOCIALISM developments of already existing institutions and social forces. He does not mind being called a " visionary " ; for he is quite convinced that his visions are eminently practical. The best way, then, of understanding the Guild Socialist attitude is to see, first, what are the funda- mental assumptions about Society which the Guilds- man makes ; secondly, how he visualizes the situation with which the industrialized communities of Europe, America and Australasia are at present con- fronted ; and thirdly, what are the forces and institu- tions in whose development he believes that the solu- tion of the problem principally lies. A correct ap- preciation of these points will clear the way for a constructive exposition of Guild Socialist proposals. Guildsmen assume that the essential social values are human values, and that Society is to be regarded as a complex of associations held together by the wills of their members, whose well-being is its pur- pose. They assume further that it is not enough that the forms of government should have the pas- sive or " implied " consent of the governed, but that the Society will be in health only if it is in the full sense democratic and self-governing, which implies not only that all the citizens should have a " right " to influence its policy if they so desire, but that the greatest possible opportunity should be afforded for every citizen actually to i exercise this right. In other words, the Guild Sociahst conception of de- mocracy, which it assumes to be good, involves an active and not merely a passive citizenship on the part of the members. Moreover, and this is per- THE DEMAND FOR FREEDOM 5 haps the most vital and significant assumption of all, it regards this democratic principle as applying, not only or mainly to some special sphere of social action known as " politics," but to any and every form of social action, and, in especial, to industrial and economic fully as much as to political affairs. In calling these the fundamental assumptions of Guild Socialism, I do not mean to imply that they are altogether beyond the province of argument. They can indeed be sustained by arguments of ob- vious force; for it seems clear enough that only a community which is self-governing in this complete sense, over the whole length and breadth of its ac- tivities, can hope to call out what is best in its mem- bers, or to give them that maximum opportunity for personal and social self-expression which is requisite to real freedom. But such arguments as this, by which the assumptions stated above may be sustained and reenforced, really depend for their ap- peal upon the same considerations, and are, in the last resort, different ways of stating the same funda- mental position. The essence of the Guild Socialist attitude lies in the belief that Society ought to be so organized as to afford the greatest possible oppor- tunity for individual and collective self-expression to all its members, and that this involves and implies the extension of positive self-government through all its parts. No one can reasonably maintain that Society is organized on such a principle to-day. We do, in- deed, possess in theory a very large measure of de- mocracy ; but there are at least three sufficient reasons 6 GUILD SOCIALISM which make this theoretical democracy largely in- operative in practice. In the first place, even the theory of democracy to-day is still largely of the " consciousness of consent " type. It assigns to the ordinary citizen little more than a privilege — which is in practice mainly illusory — of choosing his rulers, and does not call upon him, or assign to him the opportunity, himself to rule. Present-day practice has, indeed, pushed the theory of representa- tive government to the length of substituting almost completely, even in theory, the representative for the represented. This is the essential meaning of the doctrine of the "sovereignty of Parliament." Secondly, such democracy as is recognized is con- ceived in a narrowly " political " sense, as applying to a quite peculiar sphere known as politics, and not in a broader and more comprehensive sense, as ap- plying to all the acts which men do in association or conjunction. The result is that theoretical " demo- crats " totally ignore the effects of undemocratic or- ganization and convention in non-political spheres of social action, not only upon the lives which men lead in those spheres, but also in perverting and anni- hilating in practice the theoretical democracy of modern politics. They ignore the fact that vast in- equalities of wealth and status, resulting in vast in- equalities of education, power and control of envir- onment, are necessarily fatal to any real democracy, whether in politics or in any other sphere. Thirdly, the theory of representative government is distorted not only by the substitution of the representative for the represented, but also as a consequence of the THE DEMAND FOR FREEDOM 7 extended activity of political government falsifying the operation of the representative method. As long as the purposes of political government are comparatively few and limited, and the vast mass of social activities is either not regulated, or regulated by other means, such as the Mediaeval Gilds, it is perhaps possible for a body of men to choose one to represent them in relation to all the purposes with which a representative political body has to deal.^ But, as the purposes covered by political government expand, and more and more of social life is brought under political regulation, the representation which may once, within its limitations, have been real, turns into misrepresentation, and the person elected for an indefinitely large number of disparate pur- poses ceases to have any real representative relation to those who elect him. It appears to the Guild Socialists, as to all real Socialists, obviously futile to expect true democracy to exist in any Society which recognizes vast in- equalities of wealth, status and power among its members. Most obvious of all is it that, if, in the sphere of industry, one man is a master and the other a wage-slave, one enjoys riches and gives com- mands and the other has only an insecure subsistence and obeys orders, no amount of purely electoral machinery on a basis of " one man one vote " will make the two really equal socially or politically. For the economic power of the rich master, or of iThus, government in Great Britain for some time after 1689 was a fairly adequate representation of the aristocracy, whom alone it set out to represent. 8 GUILD SOCIALISM the richer financier who is above even the master, will ring round the wage-slave's electoral rights at every point. A Press which can only be conducted with the support of rich capitalists and advertisers, an expensive machinery of elections, a regime in the school which differs for rich and poor and affords a training for power in the one case and for subjection in the other, a regime in industry which carries on the divergent lessons of the schools — these and a hundred other influences combine to make the real political power of one rich man infinitely greater than that of one who is poor. It is a natural and legitimate conclusion that, if we want democracy, that is, if we want every man's voice to count for as much as it is intrinsically worth, irrespective of any extraneous consideration, we must abolish class dis- tinctions by doing away with the huge inequalities of wealth and economic power on which they really depend. We are faced by the fact that, owing to the pre- ponderant influence of economic factors, the present machinery of Society expresses the point of view of the social class which still continues to control its economic life. But at the same time it is clear that the power of this class is more and more challenged by its rival — the working class — acting upon it through the organizations which are becoming more and more fully representative of all its groups and sections. The principle social phenomenon of our times is the rise of working-class organization, first and foremost in its Trade Union form, but also in the Cooperative Movement and in other less impor- THE DEMAND FOR FREEDOM 9 tant aspects. This working-class organization al- ready represents a very great social power ; but it is a power unrecognized in the constitution. It may be said that it is no more extra-constitutional than the even greater power of the huge capitalist trusts and combines of which the Federation of British Indus- tries has assumed the leadership ; but the extra-con- stitutionality of capitalist organizations hardly arises as a practical question because they represent the same class as now holds social and economic author- ity in the community and political authority in the State. The workers, on the other hand, as the dis- possessed class both economically and politically, have to employ their industrial organization as al- most the sole means at their disposal for making their will felt, whatever the question at issue may be. As they acquire a greater sense of their industrial strength, they seek to turn it to more ambitious uses, and attempt to employ it as an instrument of com- munal government. This is essentially the mean- ing of " Direct Action." The form of economic organization which " Di- rect Action " challenges, regarded from the upper end, is called " Capitalism." Regarded from the lower end the same system is properly called " Wage- Slavery." It is so called because it imposes, on the mass of those who work under it, a quasi-servile status, and because it does this by means of the wage system. The institution of wages is one by which the employer or company is enabled to buy labor, in the quantities in which it is required as the raw material of profit, at a market price not essentially 10 GUILD SOCIALISM differing from the market price for ordinary com- modities. Labor may be bought cheap or dear, ac- cording to market conditions, or, if there is no profit to be made out of it, it need not be bought at all. When the workman's labor is bought, he receives -a. wage : when it is not bought, he receives no wages. In the latter circumstances, the correct capitalist pro- cedure used to be either to leave him to starve or to force him into the workhouse under the deterrent conditions of the " New Poor Law " ; but, this prov- ing neither humane nor economical, the small pro- vision which the better paid workers succeeded in making for themselves through their Trade Unions has in recent years been supplemented by State and employers' contributions in certain trades, and the workman has further been subjected to compulsory deductions from his wages to provide against peri- ods of unemployment. These doles, however, do not affect the fundamental fact that, under the theory of Capitalism, the laborer has no rights in in- dustry. He sells to the capitalist, for what he can get, as much of his labor-power as he can, and the whole of his claim upon what he produces is sup- posed to be liquidated by the payment of a wage. The whole value of his product, over and above his wages, is absorbed by others in the forms of rent, interest and profits. This is, of course, a very inadequate summary; but it will suffice for our present purpose, which is only that of showing the breaches in the system which are already being made by the onslaughts of the growingly powerful working-class organizations. THE DEMAND FOR FREEDOM 11 These achieve their results by rescuing the worker from isolation, and substituting for individual competitive sale by each worker of his labor-power rudimentary forms of collective bargaining, through which the Trade Unions prescribe, for all their mem- bers, minimum conditions under which the sale of labor-power is to take place. These conditions, as the power of the Unions grows, increase in number and stringency, and come to represent more and more actual interference by the workers with the way in which the industry is run. The Trade Union, however, in all the regulations which it lays down, still always remains a body ex- ternal to the actual conduct of industry. It cannot give actual orders as to the way in which factories are to be run : it can, broadly speaking, only impose prohibitions. This leads necessarily to the result that its action is to a great extent negative and re- strictive, and thus operates in the same way as an externally imposed State law regulating industry, and possesses the same disadvantages. The further this external system of prohibitions is pushed, the greater difficulties it creates for the existing system. The employer complains, often with some justice, that he can no longer run his factory in his own way; but the Union on its side can only protect its members by hampering him, and has no positive power to run the factory in his stead. Smooth working is some- times established in practice by a method of mutual give and take ; but the whole system is essentially one of unstable equilibrium, and it seems clear, at any rate to the Guild Socialists, that there are only two 12- GUILD SOCIALISM possible alternatives. Either the power of the Unions to impose restrictions must be broken ; or it must be transformed from a negative into a positive power, and, instead of having only the brake in their hands, the Trade Unions must assume control of the steering-wheel.^ This statement, purely in terms of contending economic powers, of the deadlock at which the pres- ent industrial system is arriving is essentially in- complete ; for behind these powers are the wills that wield them. The deadlock exists, not simply or mainly because an equilibrium of powers is being reached, but also because the psychological attitudes of the economic classes concerned in industry are undergoing, partly no doubt as a result of the chang- ing balance of powers, a fundamental alteration. The capitalist system, or wage-system, as we have roughly outlined it above, was workable only as long as the various classes accepted willingly, or could be compelled to accept, their respective posi- tions under it. In the early days of the factory sys- tem, and especially in the period of " Owenite " Trade Unionism and of the Chartist Movement, there was indeed a widespread revolt of the workers against a status and intolerable conditions which were then largely new ; but the power and organiza- tion at their command were not then adequate to throw off the yoke, and they were compelled to ac- cept a system in which they did not willingly ac- quiesce. The failure of their revolt, followed by a 2 This ignores for the moment the supposed alternative of " joint control," which is discussed later, see Chap. XI. THE DEMAND FOR FREEDOM 13 slight but real improvement of conditions led, to a great extent, to a mood of acquiescence; and during the latter half of the nineteenth century the factory system was carried on with a considerable measure of resignation and even consent of the part of the workers, who still sought to improve their position under the system, but rarely, as they had done, to end it altogether. Towards the end of the century, after the growth of the modem Socialist Movement and the spread of organization among new sections of workers, the mood of revolt began again to grow ; but even down to the war period, despite the unrest of the years immediately preceding 1914, it had hardly reached dimensions sufficient seriously to alarm the governing classes, or to threaten the im- pending overthrow of the capitalist system. The war, not so much by introducing new fac- tors as by hastening immensely the operation of those which were already at work, completely altered the situation. Not in one, but in many countries, it brought the movement of revolt to a head, leading in some cases to actual revolution, but in far more to a state of tension which, without producing immediate revolution, threw the capitalist system largely out of gear. This occurred because everywhere the war brought to the organized working-class an im- mensely increased consciousness of their strength, and of the possibility of translating that strength into recognized and effective social power. It also largely discredited capitalism as a method of pro- duction and caused the State — the political machin- ery of Society — to assume more nakedly and ob- 14 GUILD SOCIALISM viously the shape of an instrument of class-domina- tion. The Russian Revolution, moreover, however Bolshevism as a policy vi^as regarded, produced everywhere a very powerful effect on the minds of the workers, and the knowledge of it, mingling in their consciousness with the other factors, created on their part a disposition far more ready for change. Add to this the fact that war breeds a disregard of minor consequences and a readiness for desperate remedies, and that it introduces a considerable dis- location into the working of the ordinary mechan- ism of Society, and into the factory most of all, and you have all the essential causes of the profound change which has come over the attitude of the work- ing-class in all the industrialized countries. This change of attitude was swift in producing a change in the actual industrial situation. Not only did it make the workers more ready to embark on disputes, both great and small, whether with the Government or with their employers: it also very greatly affected their everyday state of mind in the factory and at their work. Not only did they learn to strike more readily: they were visited by an in- creasing unwillingness to work for capitalist masters. The effect of this was seen at once not only in more constant factory bickerings, but also and far more in a rapid fall in individual output, which no applica- tion of " incentives to production," whether in the form of " payment by results " or of pamphlets and other exhortations to " produce more in the cause of industrial prosperity and national revival " ^vailed to check. Thus, at the very moment when THE DEMAND FOR FREEDOM 15 the external threat of the powerful working-class organizations to capitalist and the capitalist State be- gan to look most threatening, the capitalist system began to find itself also undermined from within by the reluctance of the workers to serve it as well and faithfully as they had done in the past. Nor could this reluctance be effectively met by coercion; for the devils of hunger and fear, by which the workers had been driven back to the factories and compelled to produce in the days of the former revolts, have now, owing to the increased absolute power of the organized workers of to-day, lost most of their effect. Everywhere the workers are proceeding steadily with the undermining of the capitalist order of Society. Guild Socialists, then, not merely envisage the present position as one that can only continue for a limited period and at the cost of progressive deteri- oration, and believe that they have rightly conceived of the best general form for the next stage of social development to assume : they also definitely pin their faith to an expansion, both in function and in mem- bership, of the organizations which the workers have created for their own defense, and hold that the signs of this expansion are everywhere to be de- tected in the present tendencies of working-class policy. They see the clash between the old order and the new both as a struggle for power of rival social classes, possessing and dispossessed, and as a striving by the organized workers for the assump- tion of social functions which they feel themselves increasingly well able to perform in the common in- 16 GUILD SOCIALISM terest. Moreover, the decreasing efficiency of cap- italist industry and the lessened willingness of the workers to produce seem to Guildsmen the inevitable outcome of a situation in which the distribution of social status and authority has lost all correspond- ence with the real balance of economic competence. Out of such a situation must come revolutionary change, with or without violence: the object of Guildsmen is to inform this Coming revolution with a constructive spirit, and to devise for its further- ance a positive policy in harmony both with the aspirations of the common people and with the capac- ity of the organization which the common people have made for their protection under capitalism. Guild Socialism therefore appears largely as a theory of institutions and as a policy directed to the transformation of the social structure. It is this, however, not because it believes that the life of men is comprehended in their social machinery, but because social machinery, as it is good or bad, harmonious or discordant with human desires and instincts, is the means either of furthering, or of thwarting, the expression of human personahty. If environment does not, as Robert Owen thought, make character in an absolute sense, it does direct and divert character into divergent forms of ex- pression. Environment, in modern Societies at least, is very largely a matter of social mechanism. To get the mechanism right, and to adjust it as far as possible to the expression of men's social wills, is therefore the surest way, not only to the well-being of the body politic, but to the happiness THE DEMAND FOR FREEDOM 17 and sense of well-directed achievement which chiefly constitute individual well-being. It is not because they idealize industrialism or social institu- tions that Guildsmen spend so much time in theor- izing and planning about them : it is because they see the best chance of human well-being in getting these aspects of life put firmly and properly into their right place. CHAPTER II THE BASIS OF DEMOCRACY The structural shortcomings of existing society — The theory of Parliamentary, or State, Sovereignty — Its gradual emergence in theory and practice — State and Guilds in the Middle Ages — The destruction of the Gilds — The period of laissez-faire — The re-introduction of regula- tion—In the hands of the State — Towards the "Servile State" — Socialist attitudes to the State — The error of political Socialism — The undemocratic character of Par- liamentarism — Exit the Sovereign State — All true rep- resentation functional — The democratic principle applies to all forms of association — The two main forms of social association — Common vocation and common in- terest — Is everything everybody's business? — Not in the same sense — Producers' and consumers' attitudes com- pared — One-sided views — State Socialism and Coop- erativism — "Syndicalism" and Industrial Unionism — The Guild Socialist reconciliation — Based on a distinc- tion of functions — What the producer wants — And what the consumer wants — The internal organization of industry — And its "foreign policy" — Tendency of each school to claim too much — No real divergence of in- terest — The producers to have internal self-government — The consumers' point of view to be safeguarded — Only direct control of management is freedom for the producer — The workers would reject State Socialism — Or pure Cooperativism — Producers' responsibility the key to willing service. IN the course of the last chapter the point was emphasized that for the constructive task of social reorganization more is needed than a plan 18 THE BASIS OF DEMOCRACY 19 for the assumption of power by a social class, how- ever equipped. There is also needed a positive plan of action for that class to pursue both in the course of and after its assumption of power. Guild So- cialism claims to present the essential features of such a plan, based directly upon the workers' own organizations and assigning to them the leading role in the process of transformation. As a necessary preliminary to the unfolding of this plan we have now to pursue the second line of criticism suggested in the preceding chapter, and to see wherein, even if we suppose the class char- acter of existing Society to be eliminated, its so- cial structure still fails to satisfy the conditions of reasonable human association and government which we have laid down as our fundamental as- sumptions. Of course, I do not deny that many of the features of present-day social structure which we shall have now to examine are indirectly the result of its class basis ; but they are such as might, in theory at least, continue in existence after the abolition of social and economic classes, and their continuance has indeed hitherto been assumed to be desirable by many who call themselves Socialists. Under the present system, the supreme legis- lative control of policy is supposed to reside in Parliament, and the supreme executive power in a Cabinet which is supposed to be a sort of committee of the parliamentary majority in the House of Commons. Theoretically, the competence of Par- liament knows no limits, and it can pass laws deal- ing with any subject under the sun. Moreover, as 20 GUILD SOCIALISM the body politic becomes more diseased, the number and diversity of the laws which it passes and the subjects with which it deals steadily increase. It is true that at the same time the real power of Par- liament wanes, and its functions are largely usurped by the Cabinet acting as the trustee of the great vested interests. This, however, does not concern us; for we are studying Parliament and Cabinet as they appear, with other institutions such as the standing army and the national police, in the form of the modern State. The theory of State omni-competence has grown up gradually. Locke, a typical political philoso- pher of an earlier period, certainly regarded the State, not as " sovereign " in the sense now attach- ing to the term, but as strictly limited in function and capacity. There was a time, away back in the Middle Ages, when the State was only one of a number of social institutions and associations, all of which exercised, within their more or less clearly defined spheres of operation, a recognized social power and authority. During the period which followed the close of the Middle Ages, these other bodies were for the most part either swept away or reduced to impotence ; but the effect of their dis- appearance was not, except to a limited extent for a time in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the assumption of their powers by the State, but the passing of the social purposes which they had regulated outside the sphere of communal regula- tion altogether. Thus the ground was cleared for the unguided operation of the Industrial Revolu- THE BASIS OF DEMOCRACY 21 tion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the vast structure of modern industrialism grew up without any attempt by Society, as an organized system, to direct it to the common advantage. This unregulated growth in its turn created the urgent need for intervention; and, all alternative forms of communal structure having been destroyed or sub- merged, it was the State which was called upon to intervene. Thus took place the vast extension of the sphere of State action, which, while it was partly protective in its origin, led to the confronta- tion of the pigmy man by a greater Leviathan, and produced a situation extremely inimical to personal liberty, of its real inroads upon which we are only now becoming fully sensible. As Mr. Belloc would say, it created the conditions in modem Society which are making for the Servile State. The events of the last few years have opened the eyes of many to the real character of this develop- ment, and in particular have created a revolution in Socialist thought on the subject of the State. This is indeed a question on which Socialists have always been sharply divided; but the schools of Parliamentary Socialists, whether they have called themselves Marxian or not, have always, in oppo- sition both to the industrial Socialists and to the catastrophic revolutionaries, been inclined to hold that Socialism would come about by the assumption by the people, or the workers, of the control of the State machine, that is by the conquest of parlia- mentary and political power. They have then con- ceived of the actual achievement of Socialism mainly 22 GUILD SOCIALISM by the use of this power for the expropriation of the rich, the sociahzation of the means of produc- tion, and the reorganization of industry under State ownership and under the full control of a Parliament dominated by Socialists. In fact, the only essential structural change to which they have looked forward, apart from the social and economic change involved in expropriation, is the completion of the present tendency towards State Sovereignty by the piling of fresh powers and duties on the great Leviathan. If the fundamental assumptions on the basis of which we set out are right, this idea is certainly altogether wrong. For we assumed, not only that democracy ought to be fully applied to every sphere of organized social effort, but that democracy is only real when it is conceived in terms of function and purpose. In any large community, democracy necessarily involves representative government. Government, however, is not democratic if, as in most of the forms which pass for representative government to-day, it involves the substitution of the will of one man, the representative, for the wills of many, the represented. There are two respects in which the present form of parliamentary repre- sentation, as it exists in all " democratic " States to-day, flagrantly violates the fundamental principles of democracy. The first is that the elector retains practically no control over his representative, has only the power to change him at very infrequent intervals, and has in fact only a very limited range THE BASIS OF DEMOCRACY 23 of choice.^ The second is that the elector is called upon to choose one man to represent him in rela- tion to every conceivable question that may come before Parliament, whereas, if he is a rational being, he always certainly agrees with one man about one thing and with another about another, or at any rate would do so as soon as the economic basis of present class divisions was removed. The omnicompetent State, with its omnicompe- tent Parliament, is thus utterly unsuitable to any really democratic community, and must be destroyed or painlessly extinguished as it has destroyed or extinguished its rivals in the sphere of communal organization. Whatever the structure of the new Society may be, the Guildsman is sure that it will have no place for the survival of the factotum State of to-day. The essentials of democratic representation, posi- tively stated, are, first, that the represented shall have free choice of, constant contact with, and con- siderable control over, his representative.^ The second is that he should be called upon, not to choose some one to represent him as a man or as a citizen in all the aspects of citizenship, but only to choose some one to represent his point of view in relation to some particular purpose or group of purposes, in other words, some particular function. All true 1 Nine times out ot ten, he has only the choice of voting for the least futile or objectionable candidate, or of abstaining. 2 1 am not suggesting that the representative should be reduced to the status of a delegate. But on this see later, Chap. VI. 24 GUILD SOCIALISM and democratic representation is therefore func- tional representation. The structure of any democratic Society must be in harmony with these essential principles. Where it employs the representative method, this must be always in relation to some definite func- tion. It follows that there must be, in the Society, as many separately elected groups of representa- tives as there are distinct essential groups of func- tions to be performed. Smith cannot represent Brown, Jones and Robinson as human beings ; for a human being, as an individual, is fundamentally in- capable of being represented. He can only repre- sent the common point of view which Brown, Jones and Robinson hold in relation to some definite social purpose, or group of connected purposes. Brown, Jones and Robinson must therefore have, not one vote each, but as many different functional votes as there are different questions calling for associative action in which they are interested. It should be noted that the argument, up to the point to which we have at present carried it, does not suggest or prescribe any particular type of constitu- ency or arrangement of the franchise. It does not lay down that men should vote by geographical, or that they should vote by occupational, constituencies, or that they should do both. All that we have yet established is that man should have as many distinct, and separately exercised, votes, as he has distinct social purposes or interests. But the democratic principle applies, not only to the whole body of citizens in a community in relation to each set of THE BASIS OF DEMOCRACY 25 purposes which they have in common, but also and equally to each group of citizens who act in coopera- tion for the performance of any social function or who possess a common social interest. There are indeed two distinct kinds of bond which may link together in association members of the same com- munity, and each of these bonds may exist either between all or between some of the members. The first bond is that of common vocation, the perform- ance in common of some form of social service, whether of an economic character or not : the second bond is that of common interest, the receiving, us- ing or consuming of such services. In the work- ing-class world to-day, Trade Unionism is the out- standing example of the former type, and Coopera- tion of the latter. In a democratic community, it is essential that the principle of self-government should apply to the afifairs of every one of the associations arising out of either of these forms of common purpose. It is, from this point of view, immaterial whether a par- ticular association includes all, or only some, of the whole body of citizens, provided that it adequately represents those who possess the common purpose which it exists to fulfill. Thus, the form of repre- sentative government or administration required for each particular service or interest will be that which most adequately represents the persons concerned in it. But, it will be said, surely to a great extent every- thing is everybody's concern. It is certainly not the exclusive concern of the coal miners, or of the 26 GUILD SOCIALISM workers in any other particular industry, how their service is conducted ; for everybody, including every other industry, is concerned as a consumer of coal. Nor is it by any means the exclusive concern of the teachers what the educational system is, or how it is administered; for the whole people is concerned in education as the greatest civic service. On the other hand, the coal industry clearly concerns the miner, and education concerns the teacher, in a way different from that in which they concern the rest of the people for, whereas for the latter coal is only one among a number of commodities, and educa- tion one among several civic services, to the miner or the teacher his own calling is the most important single concern in social life.* This distinction really brings us to the heart of our problem, and to the great practical difference between Gtiild Socialism and other schools of So- cialist opinion. For the Guildsman maintains that in a right apprehension of this distinction, and in the framing of social arrangements which recog- nize and make full provision for it, lies the key to the whole tjuestion at issue. It is absurd to deny the common interest which all the members of the com- munity have, as consumers and users, in the vital industries, or as sharers of a common culture and code in such a service as education ; but it is no less futile to deny the special, and even more intense, con- ' Of course, I am not here attempting to estimate its im- portance in relation to his personal concerns, or to the family, which fall outside the scope of social organization, except among modern Prussians and eugenists. THE BASIS OF DEMOCRACY 27 cern which the miners have in the organization of their industry, or the teachers in the conduct of the educational system. Nevertheless, there are schools of Socialist, or quasi-Socialist thought, which take their stand upon each of these impossible denials. The Collectivist, or State Socialist, who regards the State as repre- senting the consumer, and the purely " Cooperative " idealist, who sees in Cooperation a far better con- sumers' champion, are alike in refusing to recognize the claim of the producer, or service renderer, to self-government in his calling. The pure " Syn- dicalist," or the pure " Industrial Unionist," on the other hand, denies, or at least used to deny, the need of any special representation of the consumers' standpoint, and presses for an organization of So- ciety based wholly on production or the rendering of service. It is true that, in their extreme forms, both these antagonistic views are dying out, the pressure of each upon the other, and of Guild Socialism upon both, having compelled modification in both cases. But the ordinary State Socialist or Cooperative idealist to-day still stresses mainly the claim of the consumer and allows only a very subordinate and " discreetly regulated " freedom to the producer ; while there are still many who lay nearly all the emphasis upon the producer, and give only a very grudging and half-hearted assent to the claims of the consumer for self-determination. It has been the work of Guild Socialism to hold the balance between these two schools of thought. 28 GUILD SOCIALISM not by splitting the difference, but by pointing out that the solution lies in a clear distinction of func- tion and sphere of activity. The phrase " control of industry " * is in fact loosely used to include the claims of both producers and consumers; but it has, in the two uses, really to a great extent different meanings, and, still more, different associations. When the "Syndicalist" or the Guild Socialist speaks of the need for control by the producers, or when a Trade Union itself demands control, the reference is mainly to the internal conditions of the industry, to the way in which the factory or place of work is managed, the administrators appointed, the conditions determined, and, above all, to the amount of freedom at his work which the worker by hand or brain enjoys. When, on the other hand, a State Socialist or a Cooperator speaks of the need for " consumers' control," he is thinking mainly of the quantity and quality of the goods supplied, of the excellence of the distribution, of the price of sale—- in short, of a set of considerations which, while they are intimately bound up with those which chiefly concern the producer, are still in essence dis- tinct, and have to do far less with the internal con- duct of the industry than with its external relations. They are, so to speak, its " foreign politics " as viewed by the foreigners. *For the rest of this chapter I shall speak only in terms of industry, and not of services such as education, not be- cause I think that one phraseology or treatment will cover both, but because I am reserving the " civic services " for separate discussion. See Chapter VI. THE BASIS OF DEMOCRACY 29 Naturally, if these vital distinctions are not made, each of the claimants to " control of industry " is inclined to claim the whole, or at best to relegate the other to a quite subordinate position. More- over, even when the distinction is clearly stated, there is a strong temptation for those who belong to either movement to claim too much for their own. The Guild Socialist endeavors to hold the scales fairly, and to decide, as far as the matter can be decided except in practice, what are the fair claims on each side. In doing this, the Guildsman has not to face any problem of arbitrating between divergent interests. In a democratic Society, the whole body of con- sumers and the whole body of producers are prac- tically the same people, only ranged in the two cases in different formations. There can be no real diver- gence of interests between them. It is a problem not, as in present-day Society, of economic warfare, but of reasonable democratic organization on a functional basis. The Guild Socialist contends, then, that the in- ternal management and control of each industry or service must be placed, as a trust on behalf of the community, in the hands of the workers engaged in it but he holds no less strongly that full provision must be made for the representation and safeguard- ing of the consumers' point of view in relation to each service. Similarly, he contends that general questions of industrial administration extending to all industries should, where they mainly concern the whole body of producers, be entrusted to an organi- 30 GUILD SOCIALISM zation representing all the producers; but he holds equally that the general point of view of all types of consumers must be fully represented and safe- guarded in relation to industry as a whole. The mere detailed working out of this principle will oc- cupy a considerable part of this book: and for the present it must be left in the shape of a generaliza- tion. I claim, however, that, so far as it goes, it satisfies the conditions of democracy in a way which neither State Socialism, nor Cooperativism, nor Syndicalism, nor any alternative proposal hitherto brought forward is able to parallel. This, however, may be dismissed by " practically- minded " people as a purely theoretical disquisition, and it is therefore advisable to state the case in a more practical way, by relating it closely to what was said in the last chapter concerning the changing psychology of the workers. Let us therefore ask ourselves whether, if all industry passed under the management of a " State," however democratic, or of a Cooperative Movement, however enlightened, the workers engaged in its various branches would have the sense of being free and self-governing in relation to their work. It is true that they would be voters in the democratic State, or members of the Cooperative Society, and would therefore, in a sense, be ultimately part-controllers in some degree of their conditions; but would they regard this as freedom, when, although their concern in the internal ar- rangements of their industry was far closer than that of others, they had at most only the same voice THE BASIS OF DEMOCRACY 31 with others in determining them? Obviously, the answer is that they neither would, nor could be ex- pected to, take any such view ; for, by the time their share in determining conditions had gone its round- about course through the consumers' organization, it would have ceased to be recognizable as even the most indirect sort of freedom. Men will never rec- ognize or regard as self-government in any associa- tion a system which does not give to them directly as a group the right of framing their common rules to govern their internal affairs, and of choosing, by their own decisions, those who are to hold office and authority in their midst. This being so, no solution of the problem of in- dustrial government is really a solution at all unless it places the rights and responsibilities of the in- ternal conduct of industry directly upon the organ- ized bodies of producers. On no other condition will men who have risen to a sense of social capacity and power consent to serve or to give of their best. Any other attempted solution will therefore break down before the unwillingness of the workers to produce, and will afford no way of escape from the impasse to which we have already been brought by the denial under capitalism of the human rights of labor. It is our business, then, to accept un- reservedly this claim of the producer, and at the same time to reconcile it with the consumer's claim that his voice shall also count. We shall see that there is nothing impossible or even difficult in this reconciliation. 32 GUILD SOCIALISM Note. — In this chapter I have not challenged the correct- ness of the State Socialist claim that the State "represents the consumer." I may say, however, here that I do not accept this contention, and therefore do not equate State with cooperative management of industry. Asj however, State Socialists and Cooperativists use the same arguments in favor of consumers' management, the difference between them does not arise in connection with this chapter. See later, Chap. V, where the point is dealt with more fully. CHAPTER III A GUILD IN BEING Guilds and " Gilds "— Gilds in the Middle Ages — Their basis — Their character and functions — Their spirit and its value for to-day — Communal and commercial mo- rality — We cannot "restore the Middle Ages" — We can learn from them — What a National Guild would be — Guilds as organized industries — The question of cen- tralization — The dangers of large-scale organization — The factory, or place of work, as the Guild unit — Self- government in the factory — The various grades of Guild members — The question of leadership and discipline — The idea of democratic leadership — Its cooperative char- acter — The choice of leaders — The position of the tech- nician — The technician as adviser — Leadership based on personality — The need for choice of leaders from below — Technical qualifications for leadership — Methods of electing leaders — The election of foremen — Direct and indirect election — The transition to democratic leader- ship — The difficulties admitted — The power of leaders — The " sack " — Trial by peers — The public opinion of the factory — The opportunities of democratic leadership — Not power, but function — Why managers should wel- come Guild Socialism — Unpleasant work — The machin- ery of democracy — And its spirit — " Sacking " a leader — The right of recall — Incompatibility of temperament — Factory autonomy — District and national Guild organiza- tion — Coordination and regulation — Representing the Guild in external relations — Larger Guild organization based on the factory — Craft and sectional representation — The case against centralization re-stated — The dan- ger of bureaucracy and ossification — Why the Guilds will not be centralized. 33 34. GUILD SOCIALISM THE name " Guild " is taken from the Middle Ages. Throughout the mediseval period the predominant form of industrial organization throughout the civilization of Christendom was the Gild or Guild, an association of independent pro- ducers or merchants for the regulation of produc- tion or sale. The mediaeval Gild was not indeed confined to industry: it was the common form of popular association in the medieval town. There were Gilds for social and charitable, and for edu- cational, as well as for industrial purposes; and every Gild, whatever its specific function, had a strong religious basis and an essentially religious form. This is not the place to enter into a dis- cussion of the rise, organization and decline of the mediaeval system; but it is necessary to show, both what are the fundamental differences between med- iaeval Gilds and modern Guilds,^ and what is the essential unity of idea between them. The mediaeval Gild was essentially local, and the Gilds in a single town formed a separate system. This applies less to the merchant than to the craft bodies, but it is true as a generalization, and es- pecially true of the British Gilds. This fact, which corresponds to the comparative localization of mar- kets owing to the scanty facilities for transit, of course largely accounts for the break-up of the Gilds at the close of the Middle Ages. The med- 1 1 have adopted the more correct " Gild " in speaking of the industrial organization of the Middle Ages, while re- taining the more familiar " Guild " to denote the modern theory. A GUILD IN BEING 35 iseval Gild again was an association of independent producers, each of whom worked on his own with a small number of journeymen and apprentices. It was an organization based on small-scale handicraft production, and it broke down before the accumula- tion of wealth which made large-scale enterprise possible. The Gild was a regulative rather than a directly controlling or managing body. It did not itself manage the industry, though it sometimes acted as a purchasing agent for materials: it left actual management in the hands of its members, the master-craftsmen; but it laid down elaborate regulations governing the actions and professional code of the members. These regulations, which are the essence of the mediaeval Gild system, had as their basis the double object of maintaining both the liberties and rights of the craft and its tradition of good workmanship and faithful communal service, as expressed in the " Just Price." They declared war on shoddy work, on extortion and usury, and on unregulated production. They afforded to their members a considerable security, and an assured communal status. They held, in mediaeval Society, a recognized position as economic organs of the body social, possessing a tradition of free service, and, on the strength of that tradition, filling an hon- orable place in the public life of the mediaeval City. I am far from contending that the Gilds were perfect, or that they always, even in their best days, lived up to the full demands of their principles. Certainly, in the days of their decHne, when they were fighting a losing battle in a hostile environ- 36 GUILD SOCIALISM ment, they departed very far from their tradition. But we are concerned less with their actual achieve- ment — which was, for a period of centuries, very great indeed — than with the spirit which animated them, and the principles upon which their power was based. We want to see what in these principles is of value to us in confronting the problems of our own time, and, if their spirit is one that we would gladly recapture, what lessons we can learn from them concerning the foundations on which this spirit rested. For a fundamental difference between mediaeval industry and industry to-day is that the former was imbued through and through with the spirit of free communal service, whereas this motive is almost wholly lacking in modern in- dustrialism, and the attempt to replace it by the motives of greed on one side and fear on the other is manifestly breaking down. It is undoubtedly the case that, though there were sharp practices and profiteering in the Middle Ages, the Gildsman or the Gild that committed or sanctioned them did so in flat violation of moral principles which he or it had explicitly accepted as the basis of the industrial order, whereas to-day moral principles are regarded almost as intruders in the industrial sphere, and many forms of sharp practice and profiteering rank as the highest manifestations of commercial sagacity. In the Middle Ages, there were industrial sinners, but they were conscious of sin; for commercial moral- ity and communal morality were the same. To-day, commercial morality has made a code of its own, and most of its clauses are flat denials of the principles A GUILD IN BEING 37 of communal morality. In the Middle Ages, the motives to which the industrial system made its appeal were motives of free communal service: to- day, they are motives of greed and fear. Clearly, we cannot seek to restore the mediaeval — that is, the communal — spirit in industry by restor- ing the material conditions of the Middle Ages. We cannot go back to " town economy," a general regime of handicraft and master-craftsmanship, tiny-scale production. We can neither pull up our railways, fill in our mines, and dismantle our fac- tories, nor conduct our large-scale enterprises under a system developed to fit the needs of a local market and a narrowly-restricted production. If the medi- aeval system has lessons for us, they are not parrot- lessons of slavish imitation, but lessons of the spirit, by which we may learn how to build up, on the basis of large-scale production and the world- market, a system of industrial organization that ap- peals to the finest human motives and is capable of developing the tradition of free communal service. I fully believe that, when we have established these free conditions, there will come, from producer and consumer alike, a widespread demand for goods of finer quality than the shoddy which we turn out in such quantity to-day, and that this will bring about a new standard of craftsmanship and a return, over a considerable sphere, to small-scale production. But this, if it comes, will come only as the deliber- ate choice of free men in a free Society. Our pres- ent problem is, taking the conditions of production substantially as we find them, to reintroduce into 38 GUILD SOCIALISM industry the communal spirit, by refashioning indus- trialism in such a way as to set the communal mo- tives free to operate. The element of identity between the mediaeval Gilds and the National Guilds proposed by the Guild Socialists to-day is thus far more of spirit than oi organization. A National Guild would be an asso- ciation of all the workers by hand and brain con- cerned in the carrying on of a particular industry or service, and its function would be actually to carry on that industry or service on behalf of the whole community. Thus, the Railway Guild would include all the workers of every type — from general managers and technicians to porters and engine cleaners required for the conduct of the railways as a public service. This association would be en- trusted by the community with the duty and re- sponsibility of administering the railways efficiently for the public benefit, and would be left itself to make the internal arrangements for the running of trains and to choose its own officers, administrators, and methods of organization. I do not pretend to know or prophesy exactly how many Guilds there would be, or what would be the lines of demarcation between them. For ex- ample, railways and road transport might be organ- ized by separate Guilds, or by a single Guild with internal sub-divisions. So might engineering and shipbuilding, and a host of other closely-related in- dustries. This is a matter, not of principle, but of convenience ; for there is no reason why the various Guilds should be of anything like uniform size. The A GUILD IN BEING 39 general basis of the proposed Guild organization is clear enough: it is industrial, and each National Guild will represent a distinct and coherent service or group of services. It must not, however, be imagined that Guilds- men are advocating a highly centralized system, in which the whole of each industry will be placed under a rigid central control. The degree of cen- tralization will largely depend on the character of the service. Thus, the railway industry obviously demands a much higher degree of centralization than the building industry, which serves mainly a local market. But, apart from this, Guildsmen are keen advocates of the greatest possible extension of local initiative and of autonomy for the small group, in which they see the best chance of keeping the whole organization keen, fresh and adaptable, and of avoiding the tendency to rigidity and conserva- tism in the wrong things, so characteristic of large- scale organization, and especially of trusts and com- bines under capitalism to-day. The National Guilds would be, indeed, for the most part coordinating rather than directly controlling bodies, and would be concerned more with the adjustment of supply and demand than with the direct control or man- agement of their several industries. This will ap- pear more plainly when we have studied the in- ternal organization of the Guilds. The members of the Guild will be scattered over the country, in accordance with the local distribution of their particular industry, and will be at work in the various factories, mines, or other productive 40 GUILD SOCIALISM units belonging to their form of service. The fac- tory, or place of work, will be the natural unit of Guild life. It will be, to a great extent, internally self-governing, and it will be the unit and basis of the wider local and national government of the Guild. The freedom of the particular factory as a unit is of fundamental importance, because the ob- ject of the whole Guild system is to call out the spirit of free service by establishing really demo- cratic conditions in industry. This democracy, if it is to be real, must come home to, and be exer- cisable directly by, every individual member of the Guild. He must feel that he is enjoying real self- government and freedom at his work; or he will not work well and under the impulse of the communal spirit. Moreover, the essential basis of the Guild being associative service, the spirit of association must be given free play in the sphere in which it is best able to find expression. This is manifestly the factory, in which men have the habit and tra- dition of working together. The factory is the natural and fundamental unit of industrial democ- racy. This involves, not only that the factory must be free, as far as possible, to manage its own affairs, but also that the democratic unit of the factory must be made the basis of the larger democracy of the Guild, and that the larger organs of Guild ad- ministration and government must be based largely on the principle of factory ^ representation. This 2 It should be understood throughout that, when I speak thus of the " factory," I mean to include under it also the mine, the shipyard, the dock, the station, and every corre- A GUILD IN BEING 41 raises, of course, important financial considerations, which will be dealt with in their place, when we discuss the financial basis of the Guild Socialist com- munity. Before, however, we attempt to consider in detail how either a Guild factory or the larger adminis- trative machinery of a Guild would be organized, it is necessary to discuss certain general questions which afifect the whole character of the organiza- tion. I have spoken of the Guilds as examples of " industrial democracy " and " democratic associa- tion," and we must understand clearly wherein this Guild democracy consists, and especially how it bears on the relations between the different classes of workers included in a single Guild. For since a Guild includes all the workers by hand and brain engaged in a common service, it is clear that there will be among its members very wide divergences of function, of technical skill, and of administrative authority. Neither the Guild as a whole nor the Guild factory can determine all issues by the expedi- ent of the mass vote, nor can Guild democracy mean that, on all questions, each member is to count as one and none as more than one. A mass vote on a matter of technique understood only by a few ex- perts would be a manifest absurdity, and, even if the element of technique is left out of account, a factory administered by constant mass votes would be neither efficient nor at all a pleasant place to spending place which is a natural center of production or service. Every industry has some more or less close equiva- lent for the factory. 42 GUILD SOCIALISM work in. There will be in the Guilds technicians occupying special positions by virtue of their knowl- edge, and there will be administrators possessing special authority by virtue both of skill and ability and of personal qualifications. What are to be the methods of chosing these officers and administrators within the Guild, and what are to be their powers and relation to the other members when they have been chosen ? The question of " leadership," " discipline," " authority " in their relation to the democratic principle is, of course, as old as the earliest discus- sions of democracy itself. The difiference between democracy and autocracy is not that the latter recog- nizes leadership and the former does not, but that in democracy the leader stands in an essentially dif- ferent relation to those whom he leads, and, instead of substituting his will for theirs, aims at carrying out, not their " real will " as interpreted by him,^ but their actual will as understood by themselves. In short, the democratic leader leads by influence and cooperation and not by the forcible imposition of his will. Leading in this way, he may and should have not less, but far more, " authority " than the autocrat, because he is carrying with him the wills of those whom he leads. A democratic Guild will have leaders, discipline and authority in a fuller and more real sense than these can exist under the industrial autocracy of capitalism. How, then, will these Guild leaders be chosen? That it will be by the Guild itself goes without 5 As in Bonapartjst pseudo-democracies. A GUILD IN BEING 43 saying; for their imposition upon it from without would at once and utterly destroy its democratic character. But this does not mean that every type of leader must be chosen by a mass ballot of the whole Guild. Let us begin our answer by removing from the discussion the man who is chosen, mainly or ex- clusively because he possesses a particular technical qualification, for the performance of a function which is essentially technical. He is not really a leader, but a consultant or adviser, and the matter of choosing him is an expert question which does not raise the democratic issue. It is for the leaders in the real sense — the men who, while they may require special expert skill or technical knowledge, are not chosen for these alone, but mainly for per- sonal character or ability — the men whose work is mainly that of directing the work of others, of mov- ing the energies of a group of men towards an ac- cepted end, of expressing the corporate solidarity and cooperative spirit of the group — that we are here concerned to find the right principle of choice. To me it seems clear that, for any function which demands thus essentially the cooperations of wills, the only right principle is that the person who is to perform it should be chosen by those in coopera- tion with whom it is to be exercised. That is to say, the governing principle in the choice of Guild leaders will be election " from below," by those whom the leaders will have to lead. This principle, however, is fully compatible with certain necessary safeguards. Whenever a post re- 44 GUILD SOCIALISM quires, in addition to personal fitness for leadership, of which those who are to be led are the best judges, definite qualifications of skill or technique, the pos- session of these qualifications can be made a condi- tion of eligibility for the position. A shipowner to-day can only appoint as captain of his ship a man who holds a master's certificate. The seamen of the future Guild will only be able to choose as their captain a man who is similarly equipped. And such certificates of technical qualification will be issued, as they are in some cases to-day, by bodies predominantly representative of those already quali- fied, but with safeguards against the adoption by such bodies of an unduly exclusive attitude. Again, there is no need to lay it down as a rigid principle that the leader must, in every case, be chosen by the actual group of workers whori|f he is to lead, and that no other worker of the same calling is to play any part in the choice. I believe, indeed, that, in nine cases out of ten at least, the right way is for the actual group that needs a leader to choose him, and that, with the full establishment of indus- trial democracy, this method would become prac- tically universal; but there is no need to make it a rigid rule, provided that in every case the choice is made by men who are subject to similar leadership within the same calling and over a reasonably small area. Thus, the managers of a number of building jobs in the same district might conceivably be best appointed by the building workers of the district as a whole, rather than by the workers on each particular job; but this is an exception, due to the A GUILD IN BEING 45 shifting character of building operations. As a general practice, the men on the job should choose their leaders for the job. This applies with the greatest force of all in the smallest area over which industrial leadership is normally exercised. It is indispensable to indus- trial democracy that the foremen, the first grade of industrial supervisors, should be chosen directly by the particular body of men with whom they are to work; for, unless they are so chosen, the spirit of cooperation will not be set flowing at its source, and the whole organization will be deprived of its demo- cratic impulse. Within the factory, direct election by the individual workers concerned will probably be the best way of choosing nearly all the leaders; but, when units of organization larger than the factory are reached, I do not suggest that direct election by the whole body of workers is any longer the best or the most democratic course. Election by dele- gates representing the whole body may often be better and more democratic. This, however, raises the whole question of direct versus indirect election, with which I shall have to deal later in connection with a very much wider problem. This discussion of the methods of choosing lead- ers under a democratic industrial system may seem to be somewhat dull and detailed; but it is one of the fundamental problems of Guild Socialism. For the most frequent argument urged against industrial democracy is that it is incompatible with workshop discipline and productive efficiency, and recent utter- ances of the Russian Bolshevik leaders seem to indi- 46 GUILD SOCIALISM cate that they have come round, temporarily at least, to this view. Let us admit immediately that the in- stitution suddenly to-day of a complete system of democratic choice of leaders such as I have outlined would be attended by enormous difficulties. The workers have no experience of industrial democracy : they have been accustomed to regard those who hold authority in capitalist industry as their natural ene- mies; and they could not, in a moment, revise the habits of a lifetime, or become fully imbued, in a day or a year, with the new conception of leadership as a cooperation of wills. The new system will have to make its way gradually, and it will not be perfectly and securely established until it too has become an instinct and a tradition. We have, how- ever, in the long run, no alternative to trying it; for the old idea of leadership by the imposition of will is breaking down with the old industrial system. We must not, then, in estimating the merits and possibilities of democratic leadership, concentrate our attention too much on the difficulties which would at- tend its instantaneous introduction: we must try to imagine it as it would be after a period of experi- ence, when the workers were getting used to it, and the purely initial difficulties had been overcome. What, under these conditions, would be the new rela- tion between the leader and those whom he would have to lead? In a certain sense, he would clearly be less power- ful. He could not, in a democratic Guild associa- tion, have the uncontrolled power of the " sack," tjie right to. send a man to privation and possibly A GUILD IN BEING 47 worse without appeal. For the Guild members would insist that a man threatened with dismissal should be tried by his peers, and every Guildsman would surely have behind him a considerable meas- ure of economic security. Nor would he be able to ignore public opinion in the factory or in the Guild as a whole as a capitalistic manager can ignore it. But to set against these losses — if they were to be so regarded — he would have far more than counter- vailing gains. He would have a good prospect, if he used ordinary common sense, of having the public opinion of the factory decisively on his side in his attempt to make things go well and smoothly : he would be able to look for a keen desire on the part of the workers to cooperate with him in producing the best results, and, at the worst, there could be between him and them no such barrier as is pre- sented by the fact that the manager in a factory to-day holds his position as the nominee of a capital- ist employer. I strongly suspect that the managers in such a Guild factory would have no cause to complain of lack of power. If they wanted authority, they would find ample scope for it ; but I believe most of them would soon cease to think of their positions mainly in terms of power, and would come to think of them instead mainly in terms of function. Only under the free conditions of democratic industry would the leader find real scope for leadership, and he would find it in a way that would enable him to concentrate all his faculties on the development of his factory as a communal ser\dce, instead of 48 GUILD SOCIALISM being, as now, constantly thwarted and restrained by considerations of share-holders' profit. There is no class of " industrious persons," as the Chartists would have said, to whom the Guild idea ought to have a stronger appeal than to the managers and technicians of industry ; for it alone offers them full opportunities to use their ability in cooperation with their fellow-workers and for the service of their fellow-men. A Guild factory, then, would be a natural center of self-government, no longer, like the factories of to-day, a mere prison of boredom and useless toil, but a center of free service and associative enterprise. There would, of course, be dull and unpleasant work still to be done in the world; but even this would be immeasurably lightened if it were done under free conditions and if the right motives were enlisted on its side.* In this factory there would doubtless be work- shop committees, meetings, debates, voting, and all the phenomena of democratic organization; but, though these are essential, they are not so much of the quintessence of the new thing as the cooperative spirit which they exist to safeguard. Given free choice of leaders and free criticism of them when chosen, a good deal of the mere machinery of de- mocracy might remain normally in the background. * Moreover, how much of the world's really dull or un- pleasant work could we do away with if we really gave our minds to that instead of to profit-mongering ! Machinery would make short work of much; and much we could simply do without. A GUILD IN BEING 49 But there is one further point on which we must touch in order to make our picture of the leader's position complete. What security of tenure would he have, and how could he be removed if he failed to give satisfaction? The workers who chose their manager need not have an unrestricted right to re- call him at any moment. Before he could be de- posed, he should have the right to appeal to his peers — his fellow-managers ; and, if they held him in the right, but the workers still desired his dismissal, the case should go for judgment to a higher tribunal of the Guild. But even so I think that after a cer- tain lapse of time the workers under him should have the right to remove him; for a sustained desire to do so would prove incompatibilty of temperament, which would unfit him for the cooperative task of democratic leadership in that particular factory. He might go through no fault of his own ; but in that case he would be likely soon to find an opening elsewhere. This factory of ours is, then, to the fullest ex- tent consistent with the character of its service, a self-governing unit, managing its own productive operations, and free to experiment to the heart's content in new methods, to develop new styles and products, and to adapt itself to the peculiarities of a local or individual market. This autonomy of the factory is the safeguard of Guild Socialism against the dead level of mediocrity, the more than adequate substitute for the variety which the com- petitive motive was once supposed to stimulate, the 50 GUILD SOCIALISM guarantee of liveliness, and of individual work and workmanship. With the factory thus largely conducting its own concerns, the duties of the larger Guild organiza- tions would be mainly those of coordination, of reg- ulation, and of representing the Guild in its external relations. They would, where it was necessary, co- ordinate the production of various factories, so as to make supply coincide with demand. They would probably act largely as suppliers of raw materials and as marketers of such finished products as were not disposed of directly from the factory. They would lay down general regulations, local or na- tional, governing the methods of organization and production within the Guild, they would organize research, and they would act on behalf of the Guild in its relations both with other Guilds, and with other forms of organization, such as consumers' bodies, within the community, or with bodies abroad. This larger Guild organization, as we have seen, while it need not conform in all cases to any par- ticular structure, must be based directly on the vari- ous factories included in the Guild. That is to say, the district Guild Committee must represent the various factories belonging to the Guild in the dis- trict, and probably also in most cases must include representatives of the various classes of workers, by hand or brain, included in the Guild. The na- tional Committee must similarly represent districts and classes of workers, in order that every dis- tinct point of view, whether of a district or of a section, may have the fullest possible chance of A GUILD IN BEING 51 being stated and considered by a representative body. To the choice of the district and national officers of the Guild much the same arguments apply as to that of other leaders, save that, as we saw, over the larger areas indirect may often afford a more truly democratic result than direct election. The essential thing about this larger organiza- tion is that its functions should be kept down to the minimum possible for each industry. For it is in the larger organization and in the assumption by it of too much centralized power that the danger of a new form of bureaucracy resulting in the ossi- fication of the Guild may be found. A small central and district organization, keeping within a narrow interpretation of the functions assigned to it, may be an extraordinarily valuable influence in stimu- lating a sluggish factory; but a large central machine will inevitably at the same time aim at concentrat- ing power in its own hands and tend to reduce the exercise of this power to a matter of routine. If the Guilds are to revive craftsmanship and pleasure in work well done; if they are to produce quality as well as quantity, and to be ever keen to devise new methods and utilize every fresh discovery of science without loss of tradition; if they are to breed free men capable of being good citizens both in in- dustry and in every aspect of communal life; if they are to keep alive the motive of free service — they must at all costs shun centralization. Fortunately, there is little doubt that they will do so; for men freed from the double centralized autocracy of cap- italist trust and capitalist State are not likely to be 62 GUILD SOCIALISM anxious to make for themselves a new industrial Leviathan. They will rate their freedom high ; and highest they will rate that which is nearest to them and most affects their daily life — the freedom of the factory, of the place in which their common service to the community is done. CHAPTER IV THE GUILD SYSTEM IN INDUSTRY Is Guild organization suitable to all industries? — Large- and small-scale production — Independent factories — The in- dependent producer — The industrial professionals — Small tradesmen and farmers — The case against monop- oly — The extension of the Guilds — In industry, com- merce and finance — Inter-Guild relations — Special rela- tions between particular Guilds — Inter-Guild committees — " Interlocking directorates " — Factory relations — The industrial Guild Congress — Local Guild Councils — Rep- resentation at Congress — Functions of the Congress — The Guild Legislature — And court of appeal — The prob- lem of remuneration — An example from Russia — Alter- native methods — The question of equality — How equality will arise — Equality of income, not remunerative — In- come dissociated from kind of service — The economic status of the Guildsman — The disappearance of unem- ployment — Security with freedom — Old age and child- hood — The "open door" to the Guilds — Methods of entry — Who will do the dirty work under Guild Social- ism? — The case against industrial conscription — The Guild alternative — The plaint of a journalist. IN the last chapter, I attempted to present a pic- ture of the working of a Guild as a democratic industrial association. We have now to study the working of the Guilds as an industrial system, their relations one with another, and their extension over the field of industry and commerce. And here the first question that faces us is whether the Guild method of organization is suitable to all industries, 63 54 GUILD SOCIALISM or whether, in certain cases, other forms of organi- zation will have to be devised to work side by side, and in harmony, with the Guilds. This is by no means a simple question to answer ; for it requires a good deal of explanation in order to make its meaning plain. It is manifest that, in most of its details, the National Guild proposal has been worked out mainly in relation to the great large-scale industries and services which dominate modern economic life. On the other hand, there is certainly nothing in the fact either that an industry is small, or that it follows methods of small-scale production, to make it unsuitable for Guild organi- zation. Indeed, in many respects those small-scale industries in which the element of craftsmanship most exists will find it easiest to understand and adopt the Guild form and the Guild spirit. It is, however, the case that the field of industry includes, in addition to certain forms of production and serv- ice which are clearly distinct and capable of national coordination, others which are more scattered and difficult to attach to any national combination. This applies above all to factories manufacturing a highly individual form of product, or catering for a quite special taste. The National Guild form of organization should be loose and elastic enough to admit into a single Guild many varieties of factory, and the greater part of these " individual " factories would attach themselves to a National Guild. But I can see no objection to — rather every advantage in — fac- tories which do not naturally form such an attach- THE GUILD SYSTEM IN INDUSTRY 55 ment remaining independent. With the National Guild form of organization predominant in indus- trial Society, such factories would, of course, have to conform to the vital Guild conditions, and they would, in most cases, naturally assume themselves a Guild form and reproduce almost exactly the structure, and perhaps even more perfectly express the spirit, of the Guild system. Just as factory autonomy is vital in order to keep the Guild system alive and vigorous, the existence of varying demo- cratic types of factories in independence of the National Guilds may also be a means of valuable experiment and fruitful initiative of individual minds. In insistently refusing to carry their theory to its last " logical " conclusion, the Guildsmen are true to their love of freedom and varied social en- terprise. Moreover, I, at any rate, if I can see the Guild system firmly established in the main industries, feel no anxiety that the forms of organization which survive or are created in the rest of industry will be out of harmony with the Guild idea. Above all, I would let alone, and leave with the greatest possible freedom of development, the small independent pro- ducer or renderer of service, leaving it to the future to determine how far the services in which he is engaged are naturally led to adopt definitely Guild forms, or only to bring their organization into har- mony with essential Guild principles. An attack on the independent producer in the interests of large- scale organization would be a fatal step for the Guild system, and providing that his operations can be 56 GUILD SOCIALISM purged of the capitalist taint and the opportunity of exploiting labor removed, it is much best to " let well alone." This applies not only to small work- shops and craftsmen, but also to many professions, and, in special ways which require further detailed discussion, to some kinds of tradesmen in the busi- ness of distribution and to the farmers in agricul- ture. It follows that there is no need in all cases to claim for each National Guild a monopoly of its own form of production. There is need for it to take over and guildise all capitalist concerns, and all con- cerns that cannot adapt themselves to essential Guild principles and to the democratic spirit; but actual monopoly, while it may be necessary in some in- stances, and may arise naturally in such cases as mines and railways, is at best always a necessary evil, even for a Guild. The " monopoly of Labor " is a necessary instrument for fighting capitalism; but it would not be wise to build the new order in the spirit of monopoly. I do not mean that I con- template the existence of two National Guilds ad- ministering the same kind of service; but there might well be in some cases several regional or local Guilds, and in others factories not connected with the National Guild of their industry or service. Apart from such exceptions, however, which would extend in all over' only a small part of the field of industry, the Guild system is put forward as a plan of general industrial application. Under it all the great industries of production, transport and distribution are capable of being conducted, in THE GUILD SYSTEM IN INDUSTRY 57 respect both of their properly industrial and of their commercial aspects. The financial system, and espe- cially industrial banking, must obviously become in- tegral parts of the Guild organization, and the Banking System must obviously be under the con- trol of the Guilds which it would have to finance. If the Guild arguments apply to one capitalistic industry or service, they apply to all, and their de- mocracy is just as necessary for a distributive or commercial as for a productive group of workers Assuming, then, the existence of largely decen- tralized National Guilds covering all the vital indus- tries and services, let us see how these Guilds would be related one to another. While all forms of pro- duction and economic service are, in the last resort, undertaken for the benefit of the ultimate user or consumer, a great part of both is actually of an in- termediate character. The greater part of the pro- duct of the iron and steel or of the coal industry, for example, goes, not directly to the ultimate consumer, but to other industries which use it for purposes of further production or service. Similarly, the trans- port industries, while they carry millions of passen- gers and of personal packages belonging to passen- gers, are even more engaged in carrying goods which will only reach the consumer, if at all, through the intermediacy of another industry. Of the total volume of exchange, therefore, under a Guild sys- tem as under any other, a large percentage would take place between one industry or service and an- other. That is, there would be an immense mutual traffic among the Guilds. Moreover, the relations 58 GUILD SOCIALISM between Guilds would vary widely in closeness and importance from case to case. The transport and manufacturing industries, for example, would all have very close and constant relations with the coal industry, and nearly all the industries making fin- ished products would have very close relations with the distributive industry. On the other hand, the pottery and cotton industries would have few, if any, direct points of contact with each other. Clearly, where two or more Guilds stood in a close and constant mutual relationship of this char- acter, there would have to be specially close connec- tions established between them. Each would require on its staflf experts who understood the technique of the others, and there would have to be special joint committees, and probably — the equivalent of some interlocking directorates of to-day — mutual exchange of seats on the governing bodies of the Guilds. And all this network of mutual relation- ships would exist fully as much locally and re- gionally as it would nationally; for the need of avoiding centralization extends quite as much to the processes of exchange and to inter-Guild relations as to production. The Guilds would establish re- lations and negotiate exchange to a great extent locally, and probably particular factories belonging to different Guilds would often establish direct re- lations and work by the method of direct exchange. In addition to this close relationship between in- dividual Guilds and parts of Guilds, under which each Guild and its parts would probably enter into a vast variety of special connections, there would be THE GUILD SYSTEM IN INDUSTRY 59 coordination and common action among the whole body of the industrial Guilds. This brings us to our first consideration of the Congress of Industrial Guilds, and of its place in the Guild structure. Its wider place in, the organization of Society as a whole we cannot consider until we have completed our picture of the other forms of essential associa- tion in the Guild community. The Industrial Guilds Congress, successor to the Trades Union Congress of to-day, would represent directly every Guild concerned with industry or economic service.'- It too would have its local and regional counterparts in local and regional Guild Councils, successors to the Trades Councils and Federations of Trades Councils which now exist. And again, in order that the tendency to a central- izing point of view may be avoided, these local Councils, or at least the regional Councils repre- sentative of them, should be directly represented in the Industrial Guilds Congress. The local point of view will require to be strongly put, and, since the bulk of inter-Guild exchange will be likely to take place locally, these Local Guild Councils will clearly be bodies of very gr^t economic impor- tance. The Industrial Guilds Congress, to some extent as the central Trade Union body is reported to be in Russia to-day, would be the final representative body of the Guild system on its industrial side, and would 1 It might also well include representatives from the enter- prises organized on essentially Guild lines, but not included in a National Guild. 60 GUILD SOCIALISM have the vital function of laying down and inter- preting the essential principles of Guild organiza- tion and practice. It would be, in fact, on questions requiring central coordination, the Guild legislature, and, either itself or through a subordinate organ, the ultimate court of appeal on purely Guild ques- tions. Many of its most important functions can- not be discussed until we come to consider it in its relations to other bodies in the community; but we can say here that it would act as the representative of the Guilds as a whole in their common external relations, both with other parts of the body social, and with Guild and other' organizations abroad. One of its functions, but by no means among the most important, would be to adjudicate on inter- Guild difficulties and disputes, the local Guild Coun- cils acting as normal courts of first instance on such questions. But its most important internal Guild function would be that of laying down the general principles of Guild conduct, in the form of general regulations within which each Guild would have to work. This brings us very close indeed to a problem which has probably been for some time in the read- er's mind. How is the pay of the individual Guilds- man, and of the various grades of workers in a Guild, to be determined, and how is the level of payment as between the various Guilds to be ad- justed? One of the most important tasks entrusted to the central Trade Union organization in Russia has been that of drawing up, on the advice of the various THE GUILD SYSTEM IN INDUSTRY 61 Unions, elaborate schedules of payment for almost every conceivable class of industrial workers. We may hope that the need for quite such detailed regulation will not present itself in a Guild Society ; but clearly a closely analogous function will fall to the Industrial Guilds Congress. If we assume any inequality of payment to continue — and to this point we shall come shortly — clearly the levels of remuneration to be paid to different classes of work- ers will need to be regulated, at any rate in general terms, by some central body. Guildsmen used to hold that one way of dealing with this question would be to allow each Guild to allocate to its salary fund a sum exactly proportionate to the number of its members, and to divide this sum among them as it might choose; but I am now doubtful whether this method would be practicable, at any rate in the earlier stages. The alternative seems to be for the salary scales drawn up by each Guild to be subject to review and modification by the Guilds Congress, which will be in a position to adjust the claims of various sections of workers. In suggesting this, I am not losing sight of the fact that other associa- tions besides industrial Guilds may have a close concern and claim to a voice in the salaries to be paid. I admit this claim, and deal with the point later in discussing the working of Guild Society as a communal system.^ Here I am only discussing what seems to me a practical method of arriving at a fair balance between the various groups of pro- ducers. 2 See Chap. VIII. 62 GUILD SOCIALISM But, in taking up this attitude, have I not as- sumed the case against equality of income? Yes — and yet, emphatically, no. I assume indeed that equality of income cannot, and must not, be made a condition of the establishment of the Guild system; for I am convinced that the moral and psychological conditions which would make such equality possible could develop only in the atmosphere of a free So- ciety, and even there only by a gradual process. It is essentially true that equality, if it proves, as I think it must, the only solution of the problem of income, can only develop out of the actual experi- ence of free and democratic industrial and social conditions; and I am sure that, when it does come, it will come, not in the absurd guise of " equality of remuneration," but by the destruction of the whole idea of remuneration for work done, and the apprehension of the economic problem as that of dividing the national income, without regard to any particular work or service, among the members of the community. On this point, at any rate, Ber- nard Shaw is right. Until the consciousness arises that will make this change possible, some inequalities of remuneration are likely to persist, although it is quite possible, and indeed most likely, that particular factories or Guilds, seizing the essential justice of equality and realizing the impossibilty of attemptng to measure in economic rewards the respective values of differ- ent kinds of service, will take the initiative in adopting equality for their own members. Their decisions will pass through the Guilds Congress with THE GUILD SYSTEM IN INDUSTRY 63 the rest, and will have their influence in leavening the whole. In addition to the problem of pay, the Guilds Congress will have to survey, from the point of view of all the Guilds, the whole field of economic conditions. We can best see wherein its essential work of laying down and raising the standard of conditions for all the Guilds will consist by exam- ining, in its general outlines, the status and eco- nomic position of the worker engaged in Guild in- dustry. Wherein, apart from the factory and industrial democracy which we have discussed already, will his position in industry differ from that of the wage-worker of to-day? One obvious difference is that unemployment, or rather loss of employ- ment, as it now exists, will have disappeared. There will be no such thing as a Guildsman who has lost his income because, owing to slackness of work, he is out of a job, or has had it drastically reduced because, from the same cause, he is work- ing short time. Every Guildsman will be assured of his full income from the Guild whatever the " state of the market," and, apart from other factors which will cause the present fluctuations of trade to be greatly modified, this fact will be an immense force in steadying the demand for commodities and services. Every Guildsman will be " on the strength " of his Guild in sickness as well as in health ; and he will thus have gained one thing which the wage-worker most manifestly lacks to-day — economic security — and have gained it not by sub- 64. GUILD SOCIALISM mitting to slavery (the slave has security of a sort) ; but as a concomitant of industrial freedom. Secondly, the Guildsman will have become, to a great extent, his own industrial law-giver. He will have the sense of being an active participator in an industrial system based on the social recognition of free service. He will not have to fear for his old age, or for his children's future ; for his service will ensure to him maintenance at his standard when he retires, and before his children there will be an assured place in a system open to all. For the Guilds will be, not closed corporations, but open associations which any man may join; and, should need arise, it will be one of the chief duties of the Industrial Guilds Congress and indeed of the whole community, to preserve the open door into the Guilds, and the career open to merit up to the high- est and most responsible positions in them. This does not mean, of course, that any person will be able to claim admission, as an absolute right, into the Guild of his choice. In many occupations, there will be preliminary training, apprenticeship and tests of fitness to be passed, and it will be the business of the Congress to ensure the fairness of such tests, if it is challenged. ' Moreover, a man clearly can- not get into a Guild unless it needs fresh recruits for its work. He will have free choice, but only of the available openings. The Congress, however, will have, in case of need, to assure itself that no Guild is restricting its numbers, or refusing appli- cants, from any ulterior motive. There will be, in essence, free choice of occupation. THE GUILD SYSTEM IN INDUSTRY 65 But we must meet the inevitable question, " Who will do the dirty work under Guild Socialism?" There have always been Socialists who have favored, for such work, a period of industrial conscription for everybody. I am opposed to this, and I think nearly all Guildsmen are opposed to it. I am op- posed first, and most of all, because I do not want Guild Society to be based at any point on sheer coercion, but also because I am sure that the sys- tem would operate badly and unfairly. It is, more- over, unnecessary. Let us first by the fullest ap- plication of machinery and scientific methods elimin- ate or reduce to the narrowesit limits all the forms of " dirty work " that admit of such treatment. This has never been tried ; for, under capitalism, " dirty work " is the last thing to which invention is usually applied. It is cheaper to exploit and ruin human beings. This method would produce enormous results. Secondly, let us see what forms of " dirty work " we can do without, and make up our minds definitely that, if any form of work is not only unpleasant but degrading, we will do with- out it, whatever the cost. No human being ought to be either allowed or compelled to do work that degrades. Thirdly, for what dull or unpleasant work remains, let us offer whatever special condi- tions are required to attract the necessary workers, not in higher pay, but in shorter hours, holidays ex- tending over six months in the year, conditions at- tractive enough to men who have other uses for their time or attention to bring the requisite number to undertake it voluntarily. Under such conditions 66 GUILD SOCIALISM the doing of this work will fall, not to the outcasts of Society, but to men whose lives are so full of desires to do unpaid work in their own individual way that they choose to earn their livings by doing dull work for a brief part of their time, as many an original writer takes to hack journalism to-day.* '^The alternative would be better; for it would not spoil his style. CHAPTER V THE CONSUMER Who is the "consumer"? — Mr. Everybody and Mr. No- body — Have consumers a common interest? — The "con- sumer " as such — The types of production and consump- tion — The principle of differentiation — The two main divisions — Personal and domestic consumption — " Collec- tive " consumption — Border-line cases — Bread, milk and coal — The importance of the distinction — The basis of cooperativism and collectivism — Both rest their case on consumers' control — The conflict between cooperativism and collectivism — The just claims of cooperation upheld — Cooperation as a working-class movement — The case against State Socialism — Political control of industry rejected — And the claim of a political body to represent consumers — The exclusive claim of cooperativism re- jected — The need for separate forms of consumers' rep- resentation — Municipal Socialism examined — The claims of local authorities to represent consumers — Civic and economic functions of local government — The need for their division — The claims of purely economic local au- thorities — The " Collective Council " — The spheres of cooperation and local government — The relations of pro- ducers and consumers further considered — The con- sumers' needs restated — The Guilds as organized service — And