III
There can be little doubt that the principle of public ownership with democratic control has received a great impulse from the able advocacy of what has come to be known as Guild-Socialism. The work guild in this connection is something more than a reminiscence of the mediæval institution; the present movement has quite definite affinities with its historical precursor, notably in the principle of combining all the members of a craft in co-operation. But the “national” guild goes beyond its forbear in two respects—in the fact of being national where the older institution was local, and in the account it necessarily takes of the more complex and specialised character of modern industry. “A national guild,” says Mr. S. G. Hobson, “is a combination of all the labour of every kind, administrative, executive, productive, in any particular industry. It includes those who work with their brains and those who contribute labour power. Administration, skilled and unskilled labour—every one who can work—are all entitled to membership.” This body of people will lease from the community the right and the means to carry on the industry with which it is concerned, always providing that it shall be under conditions which safeguard the interests of all the people in respect of the products of the industry.
In the eyes of the guildsman, the “original sin” of the existing industrial system is production for profit. In his Guild Principles in Peace and War, Mr. S. G. Hobson puts side by side (inter alia) the following figures, (the particular year to which they belong is not given):
| Iron and Steel | Railway | |
| Industries. | Construction. | |
| Net output | £30,948,100 | £17,103,100 |
| Persons employed | 262,225 | 241,520 |
| Net output per person | £118 | £71 |
| Average wage per person | £67 | £67 |
Here are revealed two facts of great interest. The first is that in railway construction, which is chiefly for need and use, the disparity between the average output and the average wage per person is only four pounds, whereas the iron and steel industries, where production is for profit, the disparity is as high as fifty-one pounds. Railway construction represents output in locomotives, rolling-stock and so forth which the railway companies make for their own use; whereas the products of the iron and steel industries are destined for the market. Where product is for profit, the excess of average output over the average wage is more than twelve times as great as where the production is for use. This is connected with the fact that the iron and steel industries are chiefly concerned with the provision of dividends, whereas in railway construction there is no such direct necessity.
The second fact of importance is that in both cases the average wage is the same. This is the result of two circumstances—first, the commodity-theory of labour, according to which labour-power is regarded as a measureable marketable affair, subject to the law of supply and demand and separate from the personality of the worker; and second, that reserve of labour commonly called unemployment, the existence of which tends to moderate the fluctuations of the labour market. It is in the interests of capital that there should be a permanent margin of unemployment in order that the price of labour should not become excessive at any time by reason of its scarcity.
In the past, the maintenance of the unemployed was, so far as their own members were affected, assumed altogether by the Trade Unions; but by the provisions of the National Insurance Act this has partly been laid upon the employer and upon the community as a whole. But, says the guildsman, since the existence of a reserve of labour seems under present conditions inseparable from the conduct of the industry; and since further, it is impossible to secure that under no conditions there will not be some margin of unemployment, the charge for the maintenance of the reserve of labour should be made to fall on the industry itself. This, however, immediately destroys the commodity-theory of labour. Under such an arrangement, the worker will be regarded not as a potential vendor of so much labour-power, subject to the law of supply and demand, and liable to lose his subsistence and that of his family by the chances of the market, but as a regular member of a society which provides a financial reserve for the purpose of maintaining him when he falls into the labour reserve. So once more, we see the status of the worker transformed. He ceases to be a “hand,” and becomes a partner.
The “national guild” is really no more than the systematic development of this idea of partnership; and because it insists that this partnership shall be real and not fictitious, it rejects all schemes of democratic control in industry which (like the Garton Foundation and the Whitley schemes) still retain the commodity-theory of labour, and all schemes of profit-sharing which is the voluntary bounty of the employer. The guildsman holds that the worker has a direct interest in the thing produced apart from his hire, and that his contribution in the way of labour entitles him to a partnership in the industry as real as that of his employer, and much more real than that of the investor who does no more than rake in his dividends. To this principle of partnership, there is, of course, no logical end but the elimination of the private employer, whether an individual or a company, and the combination of the administrative, executive and productive labour in a given industry in some such way as is contemplated in the “national guild.”
Under these conditions, production for profit will be subordinated increasingly to production for need and use. Industry will be organised no longer in the interests of capital, but in those of the community; and the profits that may accrue will go to the community. The conduct of the industry will be vested in a hierarchy of representative bodies which will consist of persons chosen to act on behalf of the various departments of production and administration; and these bodies will range all the way up from the small shop council to the national council. The guildsmen extend their vision further to a combination of national councils, which will become the economic parliament of the nation, empowered to handle its commercial and industrial affairs and leaving the legislature to occupy itself with those aspects of public life such as education, health, art, local government and so forth which are now so grievously neglected and subordinated to the exigencies of the commercial life of the nation.[[18]]
[18]. The proposed National Industrial Council recommended by the recent National Industrial Conference is plainly an instalment of the National Guild Council.
That roughly is the guild theory. Its great advantage is that while it eliminates competitive profit-making, it also avoids through its emphasis upon democratic control, the danger of excessive centralisation and bureaucratic control inherent in state socialism. On the other hand it does not fall into the syndicalist error of antagonism to the state. It is not without interest to point out here (in anticipation of later discussion) that the national guild reflects on the economic side the current tendency in political philosophy towards a doctrine of the state which regards it as multi-cellular in nature, and would make it federalistic in practice, in contrast with the emphasis of the last generation upon its unitary and absolutist character. It would appear that sovereignty is destined to be distributed among a series of democratic functional controls.
The pressure of events has already validated many of the contentions of the guildsman. We have seen how in the case of the woollen industries the Government has initiated the practice of treating employers as its own paid servants, has recognised the principle of democratic control, has assumed the purchase and control of raw materials, and has superseded production for profit by production for use; we have here all the essentials of a national guild save one; and that one thing needful is the short step from government control to public ownership. Naturally the end of the war will bring some reaction from the position thus achieved; yet it is impossible not to believe that the need to increase the aggregate normal productivity of the nation, imposed by the financial burdens of the war, will ultimately compel a further development of these wartime tendencies. Certainly we have in the British Labour Party some guarantee that this movement will continue. Its memorandum on reconstruction virtually presupposes where it does not explicitly affirm the underlying principles of the guild-movement. “Standing as it does for the Democratic Control of Industry, the Labour Party would think twice before it sanctioned any abandonment of the present profitable centralisation of purchase of raw materials; of the present carefully organised ‘rationing,’ by joint committees of the trades concerned, of the several establishments with the materials they require; of the present elaborate system of ‘costing’ and public audit of manufacturers’ accounts, so as to stop the waste heretofore caused by the mechanical inefficiency of the more backward firms, of the present salutary publicity of manufacturing processes and expenses thus ensured; and on the information thus obtained (in order never again to revert to the old-time profiteering) of the present rigid fixing, for standardised products, of maximum prices at the factory, at the warehouse of the wholesale trader, and in the retail shop.”