Thoughts on Syndicalism: Part Two

Part Two: Guild Socialism in Britain

Syndicalism spread to the British Isles, where it was strong among shipbuilders in the west of Scotland and coal miners in South Wales. James Connolly, one of the executed leaders of the 1916 Easter Rebellion, was a syndicalist of the De Leonist variety. It was in Britain, however, that a group of young intellectuals ironed out some of the kinks in early Franco-American syndicalism and transformed it into guild socialism.

The name ‘guild socialism’ gives it a somewhat misleadingly medieval image. Although this was the intent of the first (in 1906) exponent of the guild idea, A. J. Penty, it was expanded upon in the next decade by S. G. Hobson and G. D. H. Cole, who adapted it to the needs of the modern, industrial economy. In the Middle Ages, guilds united the producers in a particular town or city who practiced the same craft. In addition to the trade union-like function of forming a ‘labour cartel’ to secure higher remuneration, they self-regulated their respective industries. They operated at a time when the state lacked the omnipotence it assumed in later centuries, and was instead one of a number of sovereign institutions in society, alongside the church, the guilds, and other voluntary groupings. Both of these aspects of medieval life (control of the economy by producers and the taming of state power) appealed to the guild socialists.

For the guild socialists, however, the ‘guilds’ of which they spoke were not citywide federations of individual artisans, but nationally-organised industrial unions. Like the unions in a syndicalist economy, the guilds would regulate the internal affairs of their industry, ensuring a supply of labour and raw materials and guaranteeing production of goods and services. The break with pre-war syndicalism came in guild socialism’s view of the state. At this time, Fabian socialists frankly admitted that their goal was to run the economy in the interest of consumers rather than producers, hence their use of the state as their preferred instrument. Guild socialists sought a middle path between anarcho-syndicalism and state socialism; for them, the state could not ‘wither away’ because some organisation was necessary to represent the interests of the consuming public, but neither could the state be entrusted with supreme power, as this would be used to oppress producers.

Different guild socialists had different solutions at various times, but the best exposition of the movement’s principles was Cole’s Guild Socialism Re-stated (1920). A post-capitalist society would have guilds to represent producers, who would self-regulate their industry or service. The ‘consumptive’ functions of the state would be hived off to councils elected on a geographical basis at local, regional, and national levels. There would be Co-operative Councils for regular goods and services, Collective Utilities Councils for public utilities, and Cultural Councils and Health Councils for education, health, and other public services. (Although Cole doesn’t make the connection, these bodies would be similar to the patchwork of special districts in American local government, and which, in the form of school boards and boards for administering the Poor Laws, still existed in Cole’s Britain.) Local, regional, and national ‘communes’, uniting producers’ and consumers’ bodies in equal measure, would carry out the remaining functions of the state: taxation, the police power, high politics, and demarcation of functions in the network of guilds and councils.

A further idea of the guild socialists was the doctrine of ‘encroaching control’. Rejecting both the parliamentary tactics of the official labour movement and blanquiste revolutionary methods of the communists (not to mention Sorel’s general strike), they developed a third way between the two. Instead of merely agitating for wage increases and security of tenure, unionists would seek to wrest managerial powers, such as the appointment of foremen and the supplying of labour, away from the capitalists. In this way, the capitalists would be transformed from dictators of the economy to constitutional monarchs, until they became superfluous.

During and after the war, guild socialism began to permeate the thinking of the labour movement. In 1919, the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain proposed the public ownership of the mines, with national, regional, and local committees comprising an equal ratio of delegates elected by the workers and appointees of the state. Its influence could be seen in the French CGT’s 1919 proposals for tripartite worker-consumer-state co-determination of nationalised firms (mentioned in the previous post, and which Cole regarded as bearing a close resemblance to guild socialism), and in the Plumb Plan, a proposal for the nationalisation of American railways which assigned workers, management, and the state one-third of the members of national and regional boards to govern the industry.

Unfortunately, Cole wasn’t able to resist the lure of consumer-based socialism, and was more or less a card-carrying Fabian by the end of the 1920s (though at least he didn’t follow the trajectory of certain Fabians towards useful idiocy for Uncle Joe). The ideas that he developed as a young radical intellectual, however, serve as a guide to how the interests of producers and consumers can be reconciled in a post-capitalist society. Although the Cole of Guild Socialism Re-stated rejected syndicalism as the producer-centred mirror image of consumer-centred state socialism, it is clear that syndicalists such as Jouhaux and Merrheim, De Leon, and Kollontai were moving in his direction.