Chapter 16. Guild Socialism

¹ Cole: Self-Government in Industry, p. 321.

¹ A full-length account of the development and origins of Guild Socialism will be found in Niles Carpenter: Guild Socialism.

¹ When he gets going, Proudhon runs them hard.

² Cole: Self-Government in Industry, p. 231.

³Ibid. p. 208.

⁴Ibid. p. 122.

⁵Ibid. p. 114.

¹National Guilds: An Inquiry into the Wage System and the Way out, edited by A. R. Orage, pp. 21, 75. This book, which occupies a considerable place in Guild Socialist literature, appeared substantially as a series of articles in The New Age during the years 1912–13. As published, it gives no indication of authorship. Mr. Cole, however, says that the articles were written by Mr. Hobson with the collaboration of Mr. Orage (Cole, Chaos and Order in Industry, p. 49).

²National Guilds, p. 291.

³ Cole: Labour in the Commonwealth, p. 137.

⁴National Guilds, p. 55. (The reference is to the Labour Party in its entirety.)

⁵Ibid. pp. 95, 224.

⁶ Cole: Self-Government in Industry, p. 235. Fortunately, the volume in which this incitement to universal sabotage appears is in every way a credit to the integrity and the high craftsmanship of all concerned in its production.

⁷Ibid. p. 225.

⁸ Cole: Labour in the Commonwealth, p. 136.

¹ Hobson: Guild Principles in War and Peace, p. 85.

²Ibid. pp. 85,134.

³ Cole: Labour in the Commonwealth, p. 21.

⁴ Hobson: Guild Principles in War and Peace, pp. 146,154.

⁵National Guilds (Orage), p. 44.

⁶ Reckitt and Bechhofer: The Meaning of National Guilds, p. 4 (2nd edition).

⁷ Hobson: Guild Principles in War and Peace, p. 58.

⁸ In the Local Appeal Boards set up to deal with questions under the Essential Work Orders, where employer and worker appear together, nothing is more refreshing than the complete absence of awe shown by the worker in the presence of the employer whom (presumably) God has placed over him, and of the Board whom no less a person than the Minister of Labour has appointed to hear the case.

⁹ Cole: Self-Government in Industry, pp. 154–155.

¹ Reckitt and Bechhofer: Meaning of National Guilds, pp. 13—14 (2nd edition).

² Hobson: Guild Principles in War and Peace, p. 37.

³Ibid. p. 59.

⁴Ibid. p. 139.

⁵ Like all philological questions, the distinction (if any) between wages and pay is interesting, even if for the present purpose unimportant. The Guild Socialists doubtless wished a change in the method of determination and the conditions of remuneration, but they put themselves on hopelessly weak ground in insisting so vehemently and stridently that the change they desired was represented by the change from wages to pay. No doubt the precise shade of meaning attached to words may vary from one part of the country to another; but in the north-eastern corner of this island the workers probably refer as often to their ‘pay’ as to their ‘wage.’ They would say (two generations ago, at any rate) that So-and-so was getting ‘gey guid pey.’ Perhaps we avoided the word ‘wages,’ because of its theological connection with sin and death. Also, for what it is worth, the world in general speaks of ‘pay-day’; and a ‘pay-sheet’ is just as common as a ‘wages-sheet.’ If there is a distinction, it is probably that ‘pay’ is a more universal word, applicable to all periodic payments; on the other hand, if there were a wage, with overtime or a bonus, probably the whole sum would be described as the week's pay, and not as the week's wage. There is a further consideration tending to make the word ‘pay’ universally applicable; it is that ‘pay’ is also (and indeed originally and properly) a verb, while there is no verb corresponding to the word ‘wage.’ Consequently salaries are paid; and wages are paid; and but for reasons of euphony, pay would be paid. There is something rather ridiculous in the grievance of the Guild Socialists that Mr. and Mrs. Webb ‘decline to accept the common meaning of the word “wages”’ (National Guilds, p. 74), when in fact the distinction they draw is entirely of their own imagining. Presumably Mr. Cole is merely being unpleasant when, in reproving Mr. Webb for his indifference to words, he wonders ‘whether, it would be equally indifferent to Mr. Webb if his weekly allowance were called “hush money,” or to Mrs. Webb if she were paid entirely in “blackmail”’ (The World of Labour, p. 416). The answer to this is to consult any ordinary dictionary, which will reveal that it finds considerable difficulty in distinguishing ‘wages’ and ‘pay,’ but that it has no difficulty at all in giving another and very different meaning to the other two terms. With regard to the repeated emphasis on the fact that the soldier receives ‘pay’ and not ‘wages’ it is mildly interesting (though again it is of no importance) to note that the Authorised Version of the Bible, the highest authority on the usage of English, in the only passage where it deals with the remuneration of soldiers, makes no bones about speaking of wages. The reader will recall the advice given by John the Baptist to the soldiers: ‘Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.’ As a contribution to the solution of the wage question, the whole discussion is of an unparalleled irrelevance; but those who seek to appraise Guild Socialism must follow where Guild Socialists lead.

¹ Cole: Labour in the Commonwealth, p. 118.

²National Guilds (edited by Orage), p. 39.

³Ibid. p. 123.

¹ Penty: Post-Industrialism, p. 87.

² Cole: The World of Labour, Preface to 1917 edition, p. xiii.

³ Cole: Labour in the Commonwealth, p. 62.

⁴ The question is dealt with more or less everywhere, but more specifically in Cole, Self-Government in Industry, chap. 5; and in Cole: Guild Socialism Restated, chap. 11.

¹ Cole: The World of Labour, p. 21.

²Ibid. p. 259.

³ Cole: Labour in the Commonwealth, p. 46.

⁴ Cole: The World of Labour, p. 15.

⁵Ibid. pp. 33–34.

⁶Ibid. chap. 9, in particular pp. 286–288, 319. Also p. 329.

¹ Cole: Guild Socialism Restated, pp. 178–179. They are a curious mixture of reasons: (i) there is no chance of the working classes at present voting together; (ii) a class-conscious government (assuming the attainment of the impossible) would take a century to the job, following Parliamentary methods; (iii) the State is unsuited to effect fundamental structural alterations in society; (iv) there would be, before the job was finished, a counter-revolution, based on economic power.

²National Guilds (edited by Orage), p. 221.

³Self-Government in Industry, p. 116.

⁴ Cole: Labour in the Commonwealth, pp. 137–138; The World of Labour, Preface to the 1917 edition.

¹ Cole: Self-Government in Industry, p. 195.

²Ibid. p. 113.

³Ibid. p. 206.

⁴National Guilds (edited by Orage), p. 23.

⁵Ibid. pp. 24–25.

⁶ Cole: Self-Government in Industry, p. 70.

⁷Ibid. p. 122.

⁸Ibid. p. 117.

⁹ It will be found chiefly in Cole: Social Theory; but for a shorter statement of essentials, see also Self-Government in Industry, chap. 3. The theory, of course, was not static.

¹ Cole: Social Theory, p. 29.

²Ibid. pp. 25, 29.

³Ibid. pp. 33–37.

⁴Ibid. pp. 48–49.

¹ Cole: Self-Government in Industry, p. 82.

¹ Cole: Social Theory, p. 11.

²Ibid. pp. 124–127.

³ J. N. Figgis: Churches in the Modern State.

⁴ The inter-relationships of the guilds is, however, a subject of admirable complexity (Guild Socialism Restated, pp. 67–70).

¹ It represents the stage of Self-Government in Industry. See p. 87.

² Hobson: Guild Principles in War and Peace, p. 112.

³Ibid. p. 61.

⁴ Hobson: National Guilds and the State, p. 109.

⁵National Guilds (edited by Orage), p. 134.

⁶ Cole: The World of Labour, p. 28.

⁷ Cole: Guild Socialism Restated, p. 123.

⁸Ibid. p. 138.

¹National Guilds (edited by Orage), p. 13.

² One of the guiding principles of the I.L.O. (Article 427) is that ‘labour should not be regarded as a commodity or an article of commerce.’ See also, more recently, the Declaration of Philadelphia (April-May, 1944): ‘The Conference reaffirms the fundamental principles on which the Organisation is based and, in particular, that: (i) labour is not a commodity.’

¹ Hawtrey: Economic Destiny.

¹ Cole: Self-Government in Industry, p. 78.

¹ That is, of course, on the assumption of ‘National’ guilds, which perhaps, because of the dominance of Mr. Cole, became in a sense the orthodox theory. Indeed, in the earlier stages, National Guilds were hardly big enough for Mr. Cole: ‘our modern Guilds must be national and even, in many respects, international and world-wide.... The epoch of world-commerce calls for national and international Guilds’ (Chaos and Order in Industry, p. 44). The disputes regarding the rival claims of national and of small local guilds have been avoided in the text; but (if only in illustration of the divergences in the school, and as a warning against the danger of accepting an over-simplified statement), it should perhaps be made clear that Mr. Stirling Taylor regarded the small guild as essential, if the evils of bureaucracy were to be avoided: ‘Self-management under the national system would be little more than a name’ (The Guild State, p. 84). Generally, his views of Guild Socialism were tainted with relics of the evil past. He visualised ‘sane competition’ among a reasonable number of guilds in the same area (ibid. p. 93). Also the guilds were to be the creation of the State, by charter, on the petition of those concerned. For Mr. Taylor, in fact, the State remained pretty well intact: ‘We will leave everything to the State which the guilds cannot conduct with greater skill as professionals’ (ibid. p. 113). But indeed Mr. Stirling Taylor's world comes rather near a glorified state of co-operation and copartnership.

¹ Field: Guild Socialism.

¹ Cole: The Next Ten Years in British Social and Economic Policy, p. 16.