It is very satisfactory to note, in view of wild talk that has lately been current with regard to restrictions on our power to export capital, that the Committee has not a word to say for any continuance, after the war, of the supervision now exercised over new issues. The restrictions which it did recommend, while admitting their futility, on imports of capital into our shipping and "key" industries were evidently based on fears of possible war in future. The moral is that this war has to be brought to such an end that war and its barbarisms shall be "spurlos versenkt," and that humanity shall be able to go about its business unimpeded by all the stupid bothers and complications that arise from its possibility.
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.