Guilds in the Middle Ages

by Georges François Renard

Moreover, in our own times, an even more determined attempt is being made to apply the lessons of the Middle Ages to modern industrial problems. Mr. A. J. Penty’s The Restoration of the Guild System, published in 1907, began this movement, which was then taken up and transformed into the constructive theory of National Guilds, first by Mr. A. R. Orage and Mr. S. G. Hobson in the New Age, and later by the writers and speakers of the National Guilds League. A substantial literature, all of which assumes at least a general acquaintance with mediaeval conditions, has grown up around this movement; but so far no National Guildsman has attempted to write the history of the Mediaeval Guilds, or even to explain at all clearly their relation to the system which he sets out to advocate.

Until this very necessary work is executed, the present translation of M. Renard’s study of Mediaeval Guilds should fill a useful place. Indeed, in some ways, M. Renard has the advantage. He is not a National Guildsman, but a moderate French Socialist of the political school, and he therefore presents the history of the Guilds without a preconceived bias in their favour. It is no small part of the value of M. Renard’s study that he brings out the defects of the mediaeval system quite as clearly as its merits.

It must be clearly stated at the outset that the value which a study of Mediaeval Guilds possesses for the modern world is not based on any historical continuity. The value lies rather in the very discontinuity of economic history, in the sharp break which modern industrialism has made with the past. Historians of Labour combination have often pointed out that the Trade Unions of the modern world are not in any sense descended from the Guilds of the Middle Ages, and have no direct or genealogical connection with them. This is true, and the connection which has sometimes been assumed has been shown to be quite imaginary. But it does not follow that, because there is no historical connection, there is not a spiritual connection, a common motive present in both forms of association. This connection, indeed, is now beginning to be widely understood. As the Trade Union movement develops in power and intelligence, it inevitably stretches out its hands towards the control of industry. The Trade Union, no doubt, begins as a mere bargaining body, “a continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving their conditions of employment”; but it cannot grow to its full stature without becoming far more than this, without claiming for itself and its members the right to control production. At first this claim may be almost unconscious; but out of it grows a conscious theory of Trade Union purpose. The Syndicalist movement, native to France, but spreading the influence of its ideas over the whole industrialized world, the Industrial Unionist movement, the American equivalent of Syndicalism, and our own doctrine of National Guilds, or Guild Socialism, are all conscious attempts to build a policy upon the half-conscious tendencies of Trade Union action. In all these the claim is made in varying forms that the workers themselves shall control in the common interest the industries in which they are engaged.

In one of these theories at least there is a conscious retrospection to the Middle Ages. National Guildsmen are seeking to formulate for modern industrial Society a principle of industrial self-government analogous to that which was embodied in the Mediaeval Guilds. They do not idealize the Middle Ages; but they realize that the old Guild system did embody a great and valuable principle which the modern world has forgotten. They are not setting out to restore the Middle Ages; but they are setting out to find a democratic form of industrial autonomy which will spring from the principle which inspired the economic system of mediaeval Europe.

Mediaeval Guilds assumed many different forms under the varying circumstances of their origin—in Holland and Italy, France and England, Scotland and Germany. But, underlying all their different manifestations, a fundamental identity of principle can be found; for, in all, the direct control of industry was in the hands of the associated producers. The relations of the Guilds to other forms of association differed widely from time to time and from place to place. In some cases the Guilds dominated and almost constituted the State or the municipal authority; in others, the power of the State and the municipality were freely exercised to keep them under control. But, whatever their exact relationship to other social powers, their essential character persisted. It was an axiom of mediaeval industry that direct management and control should be in the hands of the producers under a system of regulation in the common interest.

With these general observations in mind, we can now proceed to look more closely at the actual form which mediaeval organization assumed, particularly in this country. M. Renard naturally has the Continental, and especially the French, examples mainly in mind. We must therefore in this introduction dwell particularly upon the conditions which prevailed in mediaeval England.

It was in the Middle Ages that, for the first time, both the English national State and English industry assumed definite shapes and forms of organization, and entered into more or less defined and constant relationships. Concerning their organization, and, still more, concerning the actual, and substantial relations between them, there are many points of obscurity which may never be cleared up; but, apart from special obscurities, the main structure of mediaeval economic life is clearly known. Just as, in the manorial system, agriculture assumed a clear and definite relationship to the feudal State, so, with the rise of town life and the beginnings of an industrial system, the Mediaeval Guilds found a defined sphere and function in the structure of Society and a defined relation to the mediaeval State.

It is always necessary, in considering the economic life of the Middle Ages, to bear in mind the relatively tiny place which industry occupied in Society. England, and indeed every country, was predominantly agricultural; and England differed from the more advanced Continental countries in that she was long an exporter of raw materials and an importer of manufactured goods. This is the main reason why the Mediaeval Guild system never reached, in this country, anything like the power or dimensions to which it attained in Flanders, in Italy, and in parts of Germany. But, even if English Guilds were less perfect specimens, they nevertheless illustrated essentially the same tendencies; and the economic structure of mediaeval England was essentially the same as that which prevailed throughout civilized Europe. It is indeed a structure which, at one period or another, has existed over practically the whole of the civilized world.

Industry was carried on under a system of enterprise at once public and private, associative and individual. The unit of production was the workshop of the individual master-craftsman; but the craftsman held his position as a master only by virtue of full membership in his Craft Guild. He was not free to adopt any methods of production or any scale of production he might choose; he was subjected to an elaborate regulation of both the quantity and the quality of his products, of the price which he should charge to the consumer, and of his relations to his journeymen and apprentices. He worked within a clearly defined code of rules which had the object at once of safeguarding the independence, equality and prosperity of the craftsmen, of keeping broad the highway of promotion from apprentice to journeyman and from journeyman to master, and also of preserving the integrity and well-being of the craft by guarding the consumer against exploitation and shoddy goods.

The Guild was thus internally a self-regulating unit laying down the conditions under which production was to be carried on, and occupying a recognized status in the community based on the performance of certain communal functions. It was not, however, wholly independent or self-contained; it had intimate relations with other Guilds, with the municipal authority of the town in which it was situated, and, in increasing measure, with the national State within whose area it lay. There is about these relations, with which we are here primarily concerned, a considerably greater obscurity than about the main structure of industrial organization. In particular, one of the most obscure chapters in English industrial history is that which deals with the relation between the Craft Guilds of which we have been speaking and the municipal authorities.