equal importance to the various strains of thought which have contributed to produce it. They would all, however, agree in repudiating any intention or desire to force a rigid system upon a passive people. No true democracy will accept a Utopia which it does not itself create. The essentials of the Guild idea are the recovery of initiative by the ordinary worker, his release from bondage to the base purposes of profit, and his achievement of complete and responsible industrial democracy. By such transformation alone can society be saved; to make clearer the way to it is the purpose of all that follows here.

a

We wish to acknowledge our debt to Mr. A. J. Penty, Mr. E. E. Beare, and Mr. J. MacCallum for help afforded in the fourth chapter, and to Mr. Rowland Kenney for many valuable suggestions.

M. B. R.

April, 1918.

C. E. B.

CHAPTER I

THE GUILD IDEA

B

Self

What is a "National Guild"? Examples: a National Mining Guild; a National Transport Guild. government and national responsibility.

I

THE GUILD IDEA

A NATIONAL GUILD would be a democratically selfgoverning association which, consisting of all the workers engaged in any main industry, would be responsible for carrying it on in conjunction with the State.

As

For example, a National Mining Guild would be composed of every worker of all grades-administrative, technical, skilled and unskilled, on the surface and underground-actively engaged in mining. a democratic association, its members would be associated on an equal basis, and not in the undemocratic industrial relationship of employers and employees. As a self-governing body, the National Mining Guild would have full powers, without outside interference, over all industrial matters affecting its members, over the administration of all the mines in the country, and over everything that concerned methods and conditions of mining. Ownership of the mines and of the plant and other forms of capital used in mining would be vested in the State, but they would be at the disposal of the Mining Guild to be worked in the public interest.

Similarly, in the case of, say, a National Transport Guild, the whole national machinery of transport (railways, shipping, vehicles, canals, etc.) would be the property of the community, but the monopoly of its working would be exercised by the Guild.

In every main industry, then, the workers, organised in a self-governing National Guild, would have the monopoly and control of its working in partnership with the State, which would be the owner of the means of production. The aim of National Guild service is the right conduct of industry in the interests of the community. For this every Guildsman would be responsible to his Guild, and every Guild to the community through the other Guilds and the State.