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.”
IV
“The question,” the Memorandum continues, “of the retail prices of household commodities is emphatically the most practical of all political issues to the woman elector. The male politicians have too long neglected the grievances of the small household, which is the prey of every profiteering combination.” And this brings us to the answer to our question how far the present orientation of labour satisfies the conditions we have laid down as necessary to worthy social progress. The rigid fixing of the retail prices of household commodities,—the primary necessities of life—plainly substitutes the principle of production for need and use for that of production for profit; and while this of itself does not eliminate the profiteer altogether, it tends so to limit the area of exploitation as to bring the small household, which is after all the unit of society, within reasonable distance of a healthy security of material circumstance. Moreover, the principle of the National Minimum virtually dissolves the connection between work and the means of subsistence, so that the worker gains security of maintenance and a large accession of freedom and independence. Still further, the principle of democratic control brings to every worker complete immunity from exploitation by those upon whom an antecedent economic advantage has conferred power and enables him to graduate to the dignity and responsibility of partnership.
But what then? Having achieved this new status, it is certain that he will not be satisfied. For the thing that is stirring in the mind and heart of organised labour to-day is something much deeper than a desire for a more satisfactory physical life or for economic independence. Labour is indeed unable to make articulate more than the margin of the new desire of which it is aware; but the phenomenon which we have called “labour unrest” properly understood, is the result of a craving, imperious and not to be denied, for a larger life. Of this larger life the worker instinctively feels that economic security and independence are the indispensable pre-requisites. According to the measure of his intelligence and insight, he is aiming for these things. That is the inwardness of the present stirrings of organised labour. The worker knows that while he is compelled to hire himself out at a price in order to provide himself and his children with bread, under conditions which make a sufficiency of bread permanently uncertain, and which virtually deny him the opportunity of being anything more—from his first working day to his last—than the tool of interests from which he is powerless to detach himself, he can never become the man he might be or experience the joy of life which his intuitions declare to be his rightful inheritance. The greater part of life, and especially of the worker’s life, is an unredeemed and unexplored tract; and the possibilities hidden in those regions beyond, eye hath not seen neither hath ear heard. But dimly and indistinctly the worker has caught glimpses of this promised land and he has set his face that way. But he has justly perceived that between him and the promised land lies the “great divide” of economic disinheritance with all that it entails of insecurity and bondage. To-day he has come so far as to be in the very act of crossing this divide. That he does not discern clearly what manner of life awaits him in his promised land is no wonder; for none of us know, since as yet none of us have tasted save only in brief and transitory moments the rare quality of the fellowship and the creative urge which belong to the life of spiritual freedom. The British Labour Party speaks of “the promotion of music, literature, fine art, which have been under capitalism so grossly neglected, and upon which, so the Labour Party holds, any real development of civilisation fundamentally depends.” This is a hint of the “milk and honey” of the promised land, and it is only in hints we can speak until we have entered upon our inheritance of spiritual life, and have begun to explore its untold riches. But the road into that land is the road of economic freedom and independence; and that is the road which organised labour is making to-day. It has discovered that “society, like the individual, does not live by bread alone,—does not exist only for perpetual wealth production.” If it makes bread and produces wealth, it is only that men may live, and living may together strive to achieve the glorious liberty of the sons of God.