War-Time Financial Problems

by Hartley Withers

XIV

NATIONAL GUILDS

October, 1918

The Present Economic Structure—Its Weaknesses and Injustices—Were things ever better?—The Aim of State Socialism—A Rival Theory—The New Movement of Guild Socialism—Its Doctrines and Assumptions—Payment "as Human Beings"—The "Degradation" of earning Wages—Production irrespective of Demand—Is that the Real Meaning of Freedom?—The Old Evils under a New Name—A Conceivably Practical Scheme for some other World.

Most people will admit that there are many glaring faults in the present economic structure of society. Wealth has been increased at an exhilarating pace during the last century, and yet the war has shown us that we had not nearly realised how great is the productive power of a nation when it is in earnest, and that the pace at which wealth has been multiplied may, if we make the right use of our plant and experience, be very greatly quickened in the next. The great increase in wealth that has taken place has been certainly accompanied by some improvement in its distribution; but it must be admitted that in this respect we are very far from satisfactory results, and that a system which produces bloated luxury plus extreme boredom at one end of the scale and destitution and despair at the other, can hardly be called the last word, or even the first, in civilisation. The career has been opened, more or less, to talent. But the handicap is so uneven and capricious that only exceptional talent or exceptional luck can fight its way from the bottom to the top, the process by which it does so is not always altogether edifying, and the result, when the thing has been done, is not always entirely satisfactory either to the victorious individual or to the community at whose expense he has won his spoils. The prize of victory is wealth and buying power, and the means to victory is, in the main, providing an ignorant and gullible public with some article or service that it wants or can be persuaded to believe that it wants. The kind of person that is most successful in winning this kind of victory is not always one who is likely to make the best possible use of the enormous power that wealth now puts into the hands of its owner.

Those who are fond of amusing themselves by looking back, through rose-coloured spectacles, at more or less imaginary pictures of the good old mediaeval times, can make out a fair case for the argument that in those days the spoils were won by a better kind of conqueror, who was likely to make a better use of his victory. In times when man was chiefly a predatory animal and the way to success in life was by military prowess, readiness in attack and a downright stroke in defence, it is easy to fancy that the folk who came to the top of the world, or maintained a position there, were necessarily possessed of courage and bodily vigour and of all the rough virtues associated with the ideal of chivalry. Perhaps it was so in some cases, and there is certainly something more romantic about the career of a man who fought his way to success than about that of the fortunate speculator in production or trade, to say nothing of the lucky gambler who can in these times found a fortune on market tips in the Kaffir circus or the industrial "penny bazaar," Nevertheless, it is likely enough that even in the best of the mediaeval days success was not only to the strong and brave, but also went often to the cunning, fawning schemer who pulled the brawny leg of the burly fighting-man. However that may be, there can be no doubt that now the prizes of fortune often go to those who cannot be trusted to make good use of them or even to enjoy them, that Mr Wells's great satire on our financial upstarts—"Tono-Bungay"—has plenty of truth in it, and that our present system, by its shocking waste of millions of good brains that never get a chance of development, is an economic blunder as well as an injustice that calls for remedy.

This being so, it is the business of all who want to see things made better to examine with most respectful attention any schemes that are put forward for the reconstruction of society, however strongly we may feel that real improvement is only to be got, not by reconstructing society but by improving the bodily and mental health and efficiency of its members. The advocates of Socialism have had a patient and interested hearing for many decades, except among those to whom anything new is necessarily anathema. There was something attractive in the notion that if all men worked for the good of the community and not for their own individual profit, the work of the world might be done much better, because all the waste of competition and advertisement would be cut out, machinery would be given its full chance because it would be making work easier instead of causing unemployment, and a greater output, more evenly distributed, would enable the nation to breed a race, each generation of which would come nearer to perfection. So splendid if true; but one always felt misgivings as to whether the general standard of work might not deteriorate instead of improve if the stimulus of individual gain were withdrawn; and that the net result might probably be a diminished output consumed by a discontented people, less happy under a possibly stupid and short-sighted bureaucracy, than it is now when the chances of life at least give it the glorious uncertainty of cricket. Since the war our experiences of official control, even when working on a nation trained in individual initiative, have increased those misgivings manifold; and hundreds of people who were Socialistically inclined in 1914 will now say that any system which handed over the regulation of production and distribution to the State could end only in disaster, unless we could first build up a new machinery of State and a new people for it to work on.

Partly, perhaps, owing to this discredit into which the doctrines of State Socialism have lately fallen, increasing attention has been given to a body of theory that was already active before the war and advocates a system of what it calls Guild Socialism, under which industry is to be worked by National Guilds, embracing all the workers, both by brain and by hand, in the various kinds of production. Its advocates are, as far as I have been able to study their pronouncements, decidedly hostile to State Socialism and needlessly rode to some of its most prominent preachers, such as Mr and Mrs Webb, who at least merit the respect due to those who have given lives of work to supporting a cause which they believe to be sound and in the best interests of mankind. But in spite of their chronic and sometimes ill-mannered facetiousness at the expense of State Socialism and its advocates, the Guild Socialists, as we shall see, have to rely on State control for very important wheels in their machinery and leave gaps in it which, as far as disinterested observers can see, can only be filled by still further help from the discredited State. It is no disparagement of the efforts of these writers and thinkers to say that their sketch of the system that they hope to see built up is somewhat hazy. That is inevitable. They are groping towards a new social and economic order which, in their hope and belief, would be an improvement. To expect them to work it out in every detail would be to ask them to commit an absurdity. The thing would have to grow as it developed, and we can only ask them to show us a main outline. This has been done in many publications, among which I have studied, with as much care as these distracting times allow, "Self-Government in Industry," by G.D.H. Cole, "National Guilds," by A.R. Orage (so described on the back of the book, but the title-page says that it is by S.G. Hobson, edited by A.R. Orage), and "The Meaning of National Guilds," by C.E. Bechhofer and M.B. Reckitt.

These authorities seem to agree in thinking (1) that the capitalist is a thief, (2) that the manual worker is a wage slave, (3) that freedom (in the sense of being able to work as he likes) is every man's rightful birthright, and (4) that this freedom is to be achieved through the establishment of National Guilds. As to (1) Messrs Bechhofer and Reckitt speak on page 99 of their book of the "felony of Capitalism" as a matter that need not be argued about. Mr Cole makes the same assumption by observing on page 235 of the work already mentioned that "to do good work for a capitalist employer is merely, if we view the situation rationally, to help a thief to steal more successfully." Well, this view of capital and the capitalist may be true. Mr Cole is a highly educated and gifted gentleman, and a Fellow of Magdalen. He may have expounded and proved this point in some work that I have not been fortunate enough to read. But as the abolition of the capitalist is one of the chief aims put forward by these writers it seems a pity that they should thus first assert that he is a thief to be stamped out, instead of explaining the matter to old-fashioned folk who believe that capitalists are, in the main, the people (or representatives of the people) who have equipped industry, and enormously multiplied its efficiency and output, and so have enabled the greater part of the existing population of this country (and most others) to come into being. But to the Guild Socialists the identity of robbery with capitalism seems to be so self-evident that it needs no proof. Next, as to the wage system. They seem to think that to earn a wage is slavery and degradation, but to receive pay is freedom. With the best will in the world I have tried to see where this immense difference between the use of two words, which seem to me to mean much the same thing, comes in in their view, but I have not succeeded. Perhaps you will be able to if I give you Mr Cole's own words.

On page 154 of the book cited, he says that the wage system is "the root of the whole tyranny of capitalism," and then continues:

"There are four distinguishing marks of the wage system upon which National Guildsmen are accustomed to fix their attention. Let me set them out clearly in the simplest terms,

"1. The wage system abstracts 'labour' from the labourer, so that the one can be bought and sold apart from the other.

"2. Consequently, wages are paid to the wage worker only when it is profitable to the capitalist to employ his labour.

"3. The wage worker, in return for his wage, surrenders all control over the organisation of production.

"4. The wage worker, in return for his wage, surrenders all claim upon the product of his labour.

"If the wage system is to be abolished, all these four marks of degraded status must be removed. National Guilds, then, must assure to the worker, at least, the following things:—

"1. Recognition and payment as a human being, and not merely as a mortal tenement of so much labour power for which an efficient demand exists.

"2. Consequently, payment in employment and in unemployment, in sickness and in health alike.

"3. Control of the organisation of production in co-operation with his fellows.

"4. A claim upon the product of his work, also exercised in co-operation with his fellows."

Now, looking with a most dispassionate eye and an eager desire to find out what it is that Labour and its spokesmen are grouping after, can one find in these "marks of degraded status" any serious evil, or anything that is capable of remedy under any conceivable economic system? In all of them the wage-earner is on exactly the same footing as the salary-earner or the professional piece-worker. The labour of the manager of the works can also be abstracted from the manager, and can be bought and sold apart from him. One would have thought that this fact is rather in favour of the manager and of the wage-earner—or would Mr. Cole prefer that the latter should be bought and sold himself? The salary-earner and the professional are only employed when somebody wants them. The manager's term of employment is longer, but the professional pieceworker, such as I am when I write this article, has usually no contracted term, and is only paid for actual work done. I also have no control over the organisation of the production of Sperling's Journal or any other paper for which I do piecework. I am very glad that it is so, for organising production is a very difficult and complicated and risky business, and from all the risks of it the wage-earner is saved. The salary-earner or the professional, when once his product is turned out and paid for, also surrenders all claim upon the product. What else could any reasonable wage-earner or professional expect or desire? The brickmaker or the doctor cannot, after being paid for making bricks or mending a broken leg, expect still to have the bricks or the leg for his very own. And how much use would they be to him if he could? Unless he were to be allowed to sell them again to somebody else, which, after being once paid for them, would merely be absurd.

But when we come to the remedies that Mr. Cole suggests for these "marks of degraded status," we find in the forefront of them that the worker must be secured "payment as a human being, and not merely as a mortal tenement of so much labour power for which an efficient demand exists." This, especially to an incurably lazy person like myself, is an extremely attractive programme. To be paid, and paid well, merely in return for having "taken the trouble to be born," is an ideal towards which my happiest dreams have ever struggled in vain. But would it work as a practical scheme? Speaking for myself, I can guarantee that under such circumstances I should potter about with many activities that would amuse my delicious leisure, but I doubt whether any of them would be regarded by society as a fit return for the pleasant livelihood that it gave me. And human society can only be supplied with the things that it needs if its members turn out, not what it amuses them to make or produce, but what other people want. And It is here that the National Guildsmen's idea of freedom seems, in my humble judgment, to be entirely unsocial As things are, nobody can make money unless he produces what somebody wants and will pay for. Even the capitalist, if he puts his capital into producing an article for which there is no demand, will get no return on it. In other words, we can only earn economic freedom by doing something that our fellows want us to do, and so co-operating in the work of supplying man's need. (That many of man's needs are stupid and vulgar is most true, but the only way to cure that is to teach him to want something better.) The Guildsmen seem to think that this necessity to make or do something that is wanted implies slavery, and ought to be abolished. They are fond of quoting Rousseau's remark that "man is born free and is everywhere in chains." But is man born free to work as and on what he likes? In a state of Nature man is born—in most climates—under the sternest necessity to work hard to catch or grow his food, to make himself clothes and build himself shelter. And If he ignores this necessity the penalty is death. The notion that man is born with a "right to live" is totally belied by the facts of natural existence. It is encouraged by humanitarian sentiment which, rightly makes society responsible for the subsistence of all those born under its wing; but it is not part of the scheme of the universe.

Such are a few of the weaknesses involved by the theoretical basis on which Guild Socialism is built. When we come to its practical application we find the creed still more unsatisfactory. Even if we grant—an enormous and quite unjustified assumption—that the Guildsman, if he is to be paid merely for being alive, will work hard enough to pay the community for paying him, we have then to ask how and whether he will achieve greater freedom under the Guilds than he has now. Now, freedom is only to be got by work of a kind that somebody wants, and wants enough to pay for it. And so the consumer ultimately decides what work shall be done. The Guildsman says that the producer ought to decide what he shall produce and what is to be done with it when he has produced it. "Under Guild Socialism," says Mr Cole,[1] "as under Syndicalism, the State stands apart from production, and the worker is placed in control." Very well, but what one wants to know is what will happen if the Guilds choose to produce things that nobody wants. Will they and their members be paid all the same? Presumably, since they are to be paid "as human beings" and not because there is a demand for their work. But if so, what will happen to the Guildsman as consumer? There will be no freedom about his choice of things that he would like to enjoy. And what about admission to membership of a Guild, the price at which the Guilds will exchange products one with another, and the provision of capital? The nearest approach to an answer to these questions is given by Messrs Bechhofer and Reckitt in Chapter VIII, of the "Meaning of National Guilds." This chapter describes "National Guilds in Being." It tells us that "each man will be free to choose his Guild," which sounds very pleasant, but is completely spoilt by the end of the sentence, which says "and actual entrance will depend on the demand for labour." It sounds just like a capitalistic factory. And then—"Labour in dirty industries, sewaging, etc.—will probably be in the main of a temporary character, and will be undertaken by those who are for the time unable to obtain an entry elsewhere." Most sensible, but where is the freedom? The Guildsman will not be able to do the work that he wants to do unless there is a demand for that kind of labour, and in the meantime, just like the unemployed in the days of darkness, he will be set to cleaning the streets and flushing the drains. Messrs. Bechhofer and Reckitt are, in fact, so sensible and practical that they abandon altogether the freedom of the producer to produce what he likes. "Indeed," they write, "a query often brought to confound National Guildsmen is this: What would happen to a National Guild that began to work wholly according to its own pleasure without regard to the other Guilds and the rest of the community? We may reply, first, that this spirit would be as unnatural among the Guilds as it is natural nowadays with the present anti-communal, capitalist system of industry" (but under the present system any one who worked without regard to the rest of the community would very soon be in the hands of a Receiver); "secondly, if it did arise in any Guild, this contempt for the rest of the community would be met by the concerted action of the other Guilds. The dependence of any individual Guild upon the others would be necessarily so great that a recalcitrant Guild would find itself at once in a most difficult position, and a Guild that pressed forward demands that were generally felt by the rest of the community to be impossible or unreasonable would soon be brought back into line again."

[Footnote 1: "The Meaning of Industrial Freedom," page 39.]

Of course; but if so, where is the Guildsman's alleged freedom? Every Guild and every Guildsman would have to adapt himself to the wants of the community, just as all of us who work for our living have to do now. He would be no more free than I am, and I am no more free than the person who is sometimes described as a "wage slave." The Guildsman might be happier in the feeling that he worked for a Guild rather than a capitalist employer, but this is by no means certain. The writers just quoted show with much frankness and good sense that there would be plenty of opening for friction, suspicion, discontent and strikes. "A Guild," they say, "that thought itself ill-used by its fellows would be able to signify its displeasure by the threat of a strike." The officials of the Guild are to be chosen by the "men best qualified to judge" of their ability, whoever they may be, and every such choice would be ratified by the workers who are to be affected by it. "The Guild would build up in this way a pyramid of officers, each chosen by the grade immediately below that which he is to occupy," Did not the Bolsheviks try something like this system, with results that were not conducive to efficient production? And to meet the danger that the officials as a whole might combine "in a huge conspiracy against the rank and file," Messrs Bechhofer and Reckitt can only suggest vigilance committees within the Guilds. In a word, Guild Socialism seems to be a system that might possibly be worked by a set of ideally perfect beings; but as folk are in this workaday world one can only doubt whether it would be conducive either to freedom, efficiency or a pleasant life for those who lived under it.