Some of the difficulties which arose in the starting of the Building Guild movement serve to illustrate very clearly certain of the fundamental principles underlying the Guild Socialist movement. When the Building Guilds first tendered for con- tracts they were asked by the local authorities and by the Minis- try of Health, as a private contractor would have been asked, what " financial guarantees " they were willing and able to give. They replied that they would give no financial guarantee, even if they were in a position to do so, since their intention was not to produce for profit, but to produce for the public absolutely at cost price. There is in the constitution of the Building Guilds not only no provision for capital or for interest or profits, but a definite clause which prohibits the distribution, under any circumstances, of any form of dividend or bonus or profit to the workers. This is one of the features which clearly differentiate the Building Guild movement from the move- ment for " Cooperative Production " with which it is some- times confused. In their refusal to give financial guarantees the Building Guilds stressed the fact that they were in a position, as a private contractor was not, to give a " labour guarantee," i.e. a guarantee that they could and would supply all the labour, including technical and supervising ability, necessary for the execution of the job. Stress has been laid, throughout the guild propaganda, on the idea that the power of the workers is based on their possession of a " monopoly of labour," and the Building Guild movement itself is based on this monopoly, largely pos- sessed by the trade unions which control the Building Guilds.
In the second place, difficulties arose because the Building Guilds firmly insisted that all workers employed by them must have security against unemployment, and must receive full-time wages irrespective of bad-weather conditions which so often cause an interruption of building work, of sickness, and of the other factors which serve to make the wages of the worker, especially in the building industry, vary so largely from week to week, and thus throw him into a position of permanent in- security. This condition was accepted in the contracts actually signed by the Building Guilds and endorsed by the Ministry of Health; but considerable trouble subsequently arose over it in consequence of the opposition of the building-trade em- ployers, who regarded it as " preferential treatment."
This point is very important, and is fundamental to the whole guild theory. In the statement of objects of the National Guilds League quoted above, it will be noticed that the Guild Socialists set out first of all to secure the " Abolition of the Wage System." A part of what they mean by this is that the con- ditions under which the workers at present receive wages in- volve permanent insecurity and are therefore degrading, and such as to place the worker at the mercy of the " governing class in industry." Guildsmen, therefore, have always made the principle of " continuous pay," or, as it is sometimes called, " industrial maintenance," a fundamental part of their propa- ganda. They have insisted that all those who are willing to do service for the community have a right to continuous pay in return for that willingness to serve, and that the maintenance of the " reserve of labour " is a necessary and legitimate charge upon the various industries, and forms a real part of their costs of production. This principle of " industrial maintenance " has undoubtedly been one of the most favourably received and influential aspects of the Guild Socialist policy.
Guildsmen thus claim the recognition, not only of the prin- ciple that the responsibility for industrial administration should be placed in the workers' hands, but also of the principle of economic security for every worker in the widest sense. They recognize fully that this involves changes far more fundamental than any mere alteration of the machinery of industrial admin- istration. They are not simply Guildsmen: they are also Socialists. They are in agreement with other schools of socialist thought in holding that it is necessary to transfer the means of production and distribution and exchange from private hands to some form of communal ownership. They are, however, strongly hostile to the older schools of collectivism or " State " Socialism, which contemplate the nationalization of industry in
a sense which would involve its direct administration, after trans- ference to public ownership, by the governmental organization of the political State. Guildsmen have always laid great stress in their propaganda on the evils of bureaucracy and political control in industry; and their system of direct workers' control is put forward as an alternative to State administration.
This, however, does not mean that they hold that the entire control of the various industries and services ought to pass into the hands of the workers organized as producers. They have always contemplated the exercise of direct producers' control over administration in close conjunction with a control over policy in which the representatives of the organized citizen- consumers would have an effective voice. This is what they mean when they say that self-government in industry will be exercised through guilds " working in conjunction with other democratic functional organizations in the community."
Guildsmen differ in their conception of the precise changes which are required in order to give effect to this principle. They are united in recognizing that the working-class co- operative movement is destined to play an important part as the representative of the organized domestic consumers in the society to which they look forward. But there is much difference of opinion amongst them concerning the character and role of the State. The majority in the National Guilds League has taken a view concerning the State which is closely similar to that of the Marxians. They regard the State as a form of capitalistic organization " an Executive Committee for administering the affairs of the whole capitalist class " and they look forward to its supersession " by forms of organization created by and directly expressing the will of the workers themselves. . . . It (the N.G.L.) holds, however, that the exact form of organ- ization required in any country cannot be determined in advance of the situation which calls it into being." There is a minority, however, in the Guild Socialist movement which holds that the State is capable of adaptation to the function of acting as the political representative of the community in a state of society in which economic organization is based on the Guild Socialist principle of industrial self-government.
The Guild Socialist theory concerning the precise forms of socialist organization which would replace the present machinery of industry and the capitalist State is still in the making, or rather, to some extent, in the unmaking. Different Guild Socialist writ- ers have put forward different views on this question; and on the whole the recent tendency of the Guild Socialist move- ment has been towards the abandonment of any attempt to define at all precisely the structure of the future society, and towards a concentration rather upon the principles and policies which are to guide the transition to it, preserving only in general outline a common conception of the character of the future organization. The movement has undoubtedly been influenced, as it has been sharply divided, by events in Russia from 1917 onwards. The National Guilds League in England has affirmed its " solidarity with the Russian Soviet Republic," but has refused to commit itself as an organization to Communist prin- ciples, or to declare for the adoption, in Great Britain, of methods similar to those which the Communists have applied in Russia. It is important to point out that the Guild Socialists and their organization, the National Guilds League, must not be regarded as a party or group at all parallel to other socialist organizations such as the Independent Labour party or the Communist party. Guild Socialists in many cases belong to, and work within, one or other of the socialist parties; and they are held together not so much by a common attitude on the question of socialist political policy, as by a common belief as to the principles which must guide the making of the new society principles which are compatible with varying views as to the policy which it may be necessary to pursue in the political field. Differences on this question of method have not prevented the guildsmen from working together in their endeavour to promote in the trade-union world, and to a less extent in the cooperative movement, a policy designed to strengthen the demand for work- ers' control, and to bring about substantial encroachments by the
