In England a new school is arising which is equally opposed to syndicalism and to the bureaucracy of state socialism. Or rather it takes half of each. Guild socialism believes in state ownership of the means of production, but that the control of each industry or “guild”—appointment of officers, hours and conditions of work etc.—should be vested in the membership of the industry. The syndicalists throw over the state entirely, the guild socialists believe in the “co-management” of the state. There are to be two sets of machinery side by side but quite distinct: that based on the occupational group will be concerned with economic considerations, the other with “political” considerations, the first culminating in a national Guild Congress, and the second in the State.[[98]]
“Guild Socialism,” edited by A. R. Orage, gives in some detail this systematic plan already familiar to readers of the New Age. A later book of the same school “Authority, Liberty and Function,” by Ramiro de Maeztu, concerns itself less with detail and more with the philosophical basis of the new order. The value of this book consists in its emphasis on the functional principle.[[99]]
Mr. Ernest Barker of Oxford, although he formulates no definite system, is a political pluralist.
John Neville Figgis makes an important contribution to pluralism,[[100]] and although he has a case to plead for the church, he is equally emphatic that all the local groups which really make our life should be fostered and given an increased authority.
In America vocational representation has many distinguished advocates, among them Professor Felix Adler and Professor H. A. Overstreet. Mr. Herbert Croly, who has given profound thought to the trend of democracy, advocates giving increased power and legal recognition to the powerful groups growing up within the state. Mr. Harold Laski is a pronounced political pluralist, especially in his emphasis on the advantage of multiple, varied and freely developing groups for the enrichment and enhancement of our whole life. Mr. Laski’s book, “Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty,” is one of the most thought-stimulating bits of modern political writing: it does away with the fetich of the abstract state—it is above all an attempt to look at things as they are rather than as we imagine them to be; it shows that states are not supreme by striking examples of organizations within the state claiming and winning the right to refuse obedience to the state; it sees the strength and the variety of our group life to-day as a significant fact for political method; it is a recognition, to an extent, of the group principle—it sees that sovereignty is not in people as a mass; it pleads for a revivification of local life, and finally it shows us, implicitly, not only that we need to-day a new state, but that the new state must be a great moral force.[[101]]
Perhaps the most interesting contribution of the pluralists is their clear showing that “a single unitary state with a single sovereignty” is not true to the facts of life to-day. Mr. Barker says, “Every state is something of a federal society and contains different national groups, different churches, different economic organizations, each exercising its measure of control over its members.” The following instances are cited to show the present tendency of different groups to claim autonomy:
1. Religious groups are claiming rights as groups. Many churchmen would like to establish the autonomy of the church. It is impossible to have undenominational instruction in the schools of England because of the claims of the church.
2. There is a political movement towards the recognition of national groups. The state in England is passing Home Rule Acts and Welsh Disestablishment Acts to meet the claims of national groups. “All Europe is convulsed with a struggle of which one object is a regrouping of men in ways which will fulfil national ideals.”
3. “The Trade-Unions claim to be free groups.” “Trade-unions have recovered from Parliament more than they have lost in the courts.”
Let us consider the arguments of the pluralist school, as they form the most interesting, the most suggestive and the most important theory of politics now before us. It seems to me that there are four weaknesses in the pluralist school[[102]] which must be corrected before we can take from them the torch to light us on our political way: (1) some of the pluralists ostensibly found their books on pragmatic philosophy and yet in their inability to reconcile the distributive and collective they do not accept the latest teachings of pragmatism, for pragmatism does not end with a distributive pluralism, (2) the movement is in part a reaction to a misunderstood Hegelianism, (3) many of the pluralists are professed followers of medieval doctrine, (4) their thinking is not based on a scientific study of the group, which weakens the force of their theories of “objective” rights and sovereignty, much as these latter are an advance on our old theories of “subjective” rights and a sovereignty based on an atomistic conception of society.