There is no form of social activity which can do without the appropriate moral discipline. In fact, every social group, whether to be limited or of some size, is a whole made up of its parts: the primary element, whose repetition forms the whole, being the individual. Now, in order that such a group may persist, each part must operate, not as if it stood alone, that is, as if it were itself the whole; on the contrary, each part must behave in a way that enables the whole to survive. But the conditions of existence of the whole are not those of the part, by the very fact that these are two different things. The interests of the individual are not those of the group he belongs to and indeed there is often a real antagonism between the one and the other. These social interests that the individual has to take into account are only dimly perceived by him: sometimes he fails to perceive them at all, because they are exterior to himself and because they are the interests of something that is not himself. He is not constantly aware of them, as he is of all that concerns and interests himself. It seems, then, that there should be some system which brings them to mind, which obliges him to respect them, and this system can be no other than a moral discipline. For all discipline of this kind is a code of rules that lays down for the individual what he should do so as not to damage collective interests and so as not to disorganize the society of which he forms a part. If he allowed himself to follow his bent, there would be no reason why he should not make his way or, at very least, try to make his way, regardless of everyone in his path and without concern for any disturbance he might be causing about him. It is this discipline that curbs him, that marks the boundaries, that tells him what his relations with his associates should be, where illicit encroachments begin, and what he must pay in current dues towards the maintenance of the community. Since the precise function of this discipline is to confront the individual with aims that are not his own, that are beyond his grasp and exterior to him, the discipline seems to him—and in some ways is so in reality—as something exterior to himself and also dominating him. It is this transcendent nature of morals that finds expression in popular concepts when we find them turning the fundamental principles of ethics into a law deriving from a divine source. And the bigger the social group becomes, the more this making of rules becomes necessary. For, when the group is small, the individual and the society are not far apart; the whole is barely distinguishable from the part, and each individual can therefore discern the interests of the whole at first hand, along with the links that bind the interests of the whole to those of each one. But as the society expands, so does the difference become more marked. The individual can take in no more than a small stretch of the social horizon; thus, if the rules do not prescribe what he should do to make his actions conform to collective aims, it is inevitable that these aims will become anti-social.
For this reason, no professional activity can be without its own ethics. And, indeed, we have seen that very many of the professions do satisfy this desideratum. It is the functions of the economic order alone that form an exception. Even here, some rudiments of professional ethics are not lacking, but they are so little developed and have so little weight that they might as well not exist. This moral anarchy has been claimed, it is true, as a right of economic life. It is said that for normal usage there is no need of regulation. But from what source could it derive such a privilege? How should this particular social function be exempt from a condition which is the most fundamental to any social structure? Clearly, if there has been self-delusion to this degree amongst the classical economists it is because the economic functions were studied as if they were an end in themselves, without considering what further reaction they might have on the whole social order. Judged in this way, productive output seemed to be the sole primary aim in all industrial activity. In some ways it might appear that output, to be intensive, had no need at all to be regulated; that on the contrary, the best thing were to leave individual businesses and enterprises of self-interest to excite and spur on one another in hot competition, instead of our trying to curb and keep them within bounds. But production is not all, and if industry can only bring its output to this pitch by keeping up a chronic state of warfare and endless dissatisfaction amongst the producers, there is nothing to balance the evil it does. Even from the strictly utilitarian standpoint, what is the purpose of heaping up riches if they do not serve to abate the desires of the greatest number, but, on the contrary, only rouse their impatience for gain? That would be to lose sight of the fact that economic functions are not an end in themselves but only a means to an end; that they are one of the organs of social life and that social life is above all a harmonious community of endeavours, when minds and will come together to work for the same aim. Society has no justification if it does not bring a little peace to men—peace in their hearts and peace in their mutual intercourse. If, then, industry can be productive only by disturbing their peace and unleashing warfare, it is not worth the cost. In addition, even taking economic interests alone, a high rate of output is not everything. Value attaches to regularity as well. Not only is it essential that the article be produced in quantity, but that there be a regular flow of material sufficient to occupy the labour force. There should not be alternating periods of over and under production. No regulated planning means no regularity.
Classical economic theory has often boasted of the disappearance of former scarcities which in fact have become impossible since the lowering of tariffs and the ease of communications allow one country to get from others the supplies it happens to need. But the former crises in food supplies have given place to commercial and industrial crises that are no less scandalous in the disturbance they cause. And the more the dimensions of societies increase and the more the markets expand, the greater the urgency of some regulation to put an end to this instability. Because, as discussed earlier, the more the whole exceeds the part, the more the society extends beyond the individual, the less can the individual sense within himself the social needs and the social interests he is bound to take into account.
Now, if these professional ethics are to become established in the economic order, then the professional group, hardly to be found in this sphere of social life, must be formed or revived. For it is this group alone that can work out a scheme of rules. At this point, however, we come up against a historical projudice. The name in history of this professional group is the guild1 and this guild is held to have been bound up with our political ancien régime and therefore as not being able to survive it. It appears that to claim a corporate organization for industry and commerce would be retrograde and, in principle, such reversions are rightly considered as unhealthy phenomena.
There is, however, a primary fact which should put us on our guard against this reasoning, and that is the very long history of the guilds. If they only dated from the Middle Ages we might indeed believe that as they had come into existence with the political system of those days they had inevitably to pass away with it. But they have in fact an origin far more ancient. The craft guild has been with us from the time that crafts first began and industry ceased to be purely agricultural—that is, since there have been towns. In Rome, it certainly goes back to the pre-historic era. A tradition related by Plutarch and Pliny attributed its institution to the king Numa. “The most admirable foundation of this king”, it says, “was the division he made of the people by crafts. The city was made up of two peoples, or rather, there were two distinct parts. … To do away with this main and serious cause of dissension, he divided the whole people into a number of bodies and this was done according to crafts. There were the flute-players, the goldsmiths, the carpenters and so on. …” (Numa, XVII). It is true this is only a legend, but it suffices to prove the ancient history of these collegia of craftsmen. However, under the kings as well as under the republic they had so obscure an existence that we have little knowledge of how they were organized. But as early as the time of Cicero their number had become considerable. “All classes of workers seem possessed by the desire to multiply the craft associations. Under the Empire, we see the domain of the guilds expanding to a degree that has perhaps never since been surpassed, if one takes the economic differences into account.” (Waltzing). Then came a time when all categories of workers (and these various classes were many, since the division of labour was already far advanced) seemed to be forming into collegia. It was the same with those who lived by trading. At this very moment, the collegia changed in character. At first they were always private groups that the State controlled by ordinance only from a distance. They then became regular organs of public life. It was only by government authority that they became established and they fulfilled genuine official functions. The guilds for foodstuffs (butchers, bakers and so on …), for instance, were responsible for the general supply of provisions. It was the same with the other trades, although to a less degree. Carrying thus a public office, the members of these trade guilds, in exchange for the services they rendered, had certain privileges, granted to them by successive emperors. Little by little the official, in principle of small import, took the upper hand and the guilds became regular cog-wheels of the administration. But having fallen thus under tutelage, they then became so crushed by responsibilities that they wished to regain their independence. The State, now all-powerful, opposed this by making the occupation and the obligations of law and order involved in it, hereditary. No one could free himself except by putting forward someone else to take his place. The guilds endured thus in servitude until the end of the Roman Empire.
Once the Empire had passed away, nothing survived of the guilds but barely perceptible traces in the cities of Roman origin in Gaul and Germany. Moreover, the civil wars that ravaged Gaul and later the invasions, had destroyed trade and industry. The craftsmen, who saw in the guilds the source of these onerous responsibilities, without adequate profit to compensate them, had taken advantage of this state of the country to flee the cities and disperse through the countryside. Thus, as happened later, in the eighteenth century, the life of the guilds in the first century of our era became very nearly extinct. If a contemporary critic had taken note of the situation, he would probably have drawn the conclusion that the life of the guilds had come to an end because they no longer had any intrinsic purpose, if indeed they had ever had such purpose: he might have taken any attempt to revive them as a retrograde step destined to fail, for the reason that movements in history cannot be arrested. This is why the economists, at the end of last century, on the pretext that the guilds of the ancien régime were no longer equal to their rôle, thought themselves warranted in seeing them as mere survivals of the past, lacking any roots in the present and whose last traces should certainly be done away with. And yet the facts should provide a striking contradiction to such reasoning. In all European societies the guilds, after being in eclipse for a time, began a new existence. They were to reappear round about the eleventh and twelfth centuries. “The eleventh and twelfth centuries”, says Levasseur, “seem to have been the period when craftsmen began to feel the need to unite and formed their first associations.” From the thirteenth century onwards we see the guilds flourishing once more and developing steadily until the day when a new decadence begins for them. Do we not discern in this ancient past and this persistent survival a proof that they do not depend on some merely contingent or haphazard circumstance peculiar to a given political regime, but on wide and fundamental causes? They have been a necessity from the foundation of the City to the Empire at its zenith, and from the dawn of Christian societies to the French Revolution. That is probably because they respond to some need at once profound and lasting. The argument that explains their violent dissolution at the end of the last century as proof that they were no longer in harmony with the new conditions of collective existence can be refuted: is this not done by the very fact that, having passed from the scene that first time, they established themselves once more of their own volition and in a new form? Is not the need felt at the present time by all the great European societies to bring back the guild system to life a symptom on the contrary that this radical abolition was in itself an unhealthy phenomenon, and a sign that to-day reforms are called for that are different from those of Turgot and even the very opposite?
There is, however, one thing that, generally speaking, makes us sceptical as to the usefulness any such re-organization might have. If it is to serve its purpose it must be above all through its moral consequences, for each trade or craft association would have to become the focus of a moral life sui generis. Now, the records left to us of the former guilds and the very impression we get of the remnants that still survive, do not lead us to believe them equal to such a rôle. It seems as if they could fulfil only utilitarian functions, as if they could only serve the material interests of the profession. Were they to be set up again, it would simply mean replacing individual egotism by corporate egotism. We form an idea of the guilds (as they were in the final years of their most recent period) as taken up entirely with holding on jealously to their privileges and exclusive rights or even with increasing them. Now, it is not likely that absorption in affairs so narrowly professional could have any very favourable reaction on the morality of the corporate body or its members. Still, we must beware of applying to the whole corporative system something that may have been true of particular guilds at a given moment of their history. This defect is far from being inherent in all guild organization; in the Roman guilds, for instance, it is not to be found at all. The pursuit of utilitarian ends was of quite minor importance to them. “The craft guilds of the Romans”, Waltzing says, “were a long way from having so definite a professional character as those of the Middle Ages; with them we find neither regulation of methods, nor the prescribing of apprenticeship nor exclusive rights; nor was it their aim to collect the necessary funds for developing an industry.” The association certainly gave them greater power to safeguard their common interests should the need arise. This was but one of the useful results that came from it: it was not its main justification. What, then, were its main functions? In the first place, the guild was a religious collegium. Each had its own particular deity, its own ritual which, when the means were available, was celebrated in a specially dedicated temple. In the same way as each family had their lar familiaris, each city its genius publicus, each collegium had its tutelary god or genius collegii. This cult practised by the crafts always had its festivals and these festivals were celebrated with sacrifices. And there were always banquets held in common. It was not only to do honour to the god of the guild that the fellow members came together, but also on other occasions. For instance, at the feast of the strenia, “the Roman cabinet-makers and ivory workers gathered together in their schola; they received five denarii, cakes, dates, etc. … at the expense of the funds.” The domestic festival of the cara cognatio or caresta (cherished kindred) was also celebrated; and just as presents were given in families on the First of January (?), so on this occasion a distribution of monies from the common fund was made within the collegia. There has been speculation whether the guild had a relief fund, and whether it regularly helped those members who were in need. Opinions on this point are divided. But these contentions lose colour and point by the fact that these distributions of money and provisions made at the festivals, these banquets …(? always held in common) in any case took the place of relief and may have stood for indirect aid. At any rate, those in want knew that at certain periods they could count on this disguised subsidy. As a corollary of this religious side, the Roman guild had too a funerary aspect. Its members were united in the ritual of their cult during their life-time just as the gentiles were, and like them they wished to sleep their last sleep together. All the guilds rich enough to do so had a columbarium in common where each of the members had a right to be buried. When the collegium had not the means to buy a funerary holding, it at least ensured for its members an honourable funeral ritual at the expense of the common fund. But the first was the more general. A common ritual, communal banquets, communal festivals, a communal cemetery—do we not find here the distinguishing features of the Roman domestic structure? “Every collegium”, says Waltzing, “was one big family. The community of calling and interests replaced the ties of blood, and had not the associates too, like the family, their common ritual, their meals in common, their common sepulchre? We have seen that the religious and funerary ceremonies were like those of the family: and like these too, they celebrated the cherished kindred and the ritual of the dead.” Elsewhere he says: “These frequent feasts were a powerful element in turning the collegium into a big family. No other term could better describe the nature of the ties that linked the associates and there are many signs proving that a great sense of brotherhood existed. The members looked on each other as brothers and sometimes used this name amongst themselves.” The more usual expression was sodales. This very word indeed expresses a spiritual kinship implying close brotherhood. The patron and patroness of the collegium often took the style of father and mother. A proof of the devotion that the associates had for their collegia is seen in the legacies and gifts they made to them. There are, too, the memorial inscriptions, which read pius in collegio—‘he was the devoted son of his collegium’—just like the saying and indeed the inscription, pius in suos. According to Boissier, this family life was indeed the chief aim of all the Roman guilds. “But in the case of the artisan guilds”, he says, “the associates met chiefly for the pleasure of enjoying life together and for a sociableness not so limited as in the family circle and yet not so diluted as in the city: they wanted to be in the company of friends and in that way make life freer and more agreeable.”
The Christian societies did not in their framework follow the pattern of the city, and the medieval guilds equally had no very close likeness to the Roman guilds. Yet they too created a moral environment for their members. “The guild”, says Levasseur, “united those of the same calling by close ties. Very often it was set up in the parish or in some particular chapel and placed itself under the protection of a saint who became the patron of the whole community. … It was there in the chapel that the associates would meet together and there too would attend solemn Mass with all due ceremony; thereafter the associates would leave in a body to spend the rest of the day in joyful feasting. Looked at in this way, the medieval guilds resembled very closely those of the Roman era.” … “In order to meet all the expenses, the guild had to have a budget, and this was provided. … A portion of the funds was set aside for works of charity. … The cooks (of Paris) devoted one-third of their fines to support the aged poor of their trade who had fallen on evil days through lack of trade or by old age. … Long afterwards, in the eighteenth century, there is still to be found an entry in the goldsmiths’ accounts of a free loan of 200 livres to a goldsmith who had been ruined.” The respective duties of masters and workmen were, too, set out in clear-cut rules fixed for each particular trade. So, also, were the obligations of the masters to one another. Once engaged, a workman could not arbitrarily break his engagement. “The statutes of all guilds are at one in forbidding the hiring of a hand who has not finished his time and impose a heavy fine on the master who offers the hire and the hand who accepts it.” But the hand, on his side, could not be discharged without a reason. In the case of the burnishers, the reasons for the dismissal had to be approved by ten of the hands and by the four wardens of the craft. A regulation decided for each craft whether night work was permitted or not. In case of prohibition, it was expressly forbidden to the master to make his hands keep watch by night. Other regulations were intended to guarantee professional integrity. All kinds of precautions were taken to prevent the merchant or craftsman from deceiving the customer or from giving the merchandise an appearance unwarranted by its true quality. “The butchers were forbidden to inflate the meat, to mix tallow with lard, to sell dog’s flesh, and so on …; the weavers to make cloth of wool supplied by usurers, because this wool might be simply a pledge put down as security for a debt. … The cutlers were prohibited from making knife-handles covered with silk or wound with brass or tin wire, to obscure the plain wood beneath and so deceive an unwitting buyer, etc. …” It is true there came a time (eighteenth century) when these regulations became more vexatious than useful and were exploited to safeguard the masters’ privileges rather than to protect the good name of the profession and the straight dealing of its members. However, there is no institution where deterioration does not set in at some point in its history. It may be that it fails to adapt itself in time to meet conditions of a new era. Or it may be that it develops in a one-sided direction. In that case too great a strain is put on its resources, with the result that it loses its aptitude to give the services for which it was responsible. This may be a reason for seeking to reform it, but not for declaring it for ever useless and doing away with it.
Nevertheless, the facts related show clearly that the professional group is by no means incapable of being in itself a moral sphere, since this was its character in the past. It is even obvious that this was its main rôle during the greater part of its history. At any rate, this is only a particular instance of a more general law. Within any political society, we get a number of individuals who share the same ideas and interests, sentiments and occupations, in which the rest of the population have no part. When that occurs, it is inevitable that these individuals are carried along by the current of their similarities, as if under an impulsion; they feel a mutual attraction, they seek out one another, they enter into relations with one another and form compacts and so, by degrees, become a limited group with recognizable features, within the general society. Now, once the group is formed, nothing can hinder an appropriate moral life from evolving, a life that will carry the mark of the special conditions that brought it into being. For it is not possible for men to live together and have constant dealings without getting a sense of this whole which they create by close association; they cannot help but adhere to this whole, be taken up with it and reckon it in their conduct. Now this adherence to some thing that goes beyond the individual, and to the interests of the group he belongs to, is the very source of all moral activity. That sense of this whole becomes acute, and then, as it is applied to affairs of communal life—the most ordinary as well as the most important—it is translated into formulas, some more defined than others. It is at this point we have a corpus of moral rules already well on the way to being founded.
If nothing abnormal occurs to disturb the natural course of things, all this is bound to come about. Moreover, it is well for the individual and for the society equally that it should be so. It is a good thing for the society when the moral activity thus released becomes socialised, that is, regulated. If left entirely to individuals, it can only be chaotic and dissipated in conflicts: the society cannot be shaken by so much internal strife without injury. Still, the activity is too far removed from the special interests that have to be regulated and from antagonisms that have to be calmed for it to serve as a restraining force, either direct or through the medium of any public office. That is why it is in the interest of the moral activity itself to allow the particular groups that fulfil these functions to be formed on these lines. At times, the activity even has to hasten their formation or make it easier. The individual, in the same way, finds decided advantage in taking shelter under the roof of a collectivity that ensures peace for him. For anarchy is painful to him also, on his own account. He too suffers from the everlasting wranglings and endless friction that occur when relations between an individual and his fellows are not subject to any regulative influence. It is not a good thing for a man to live like this on a war footing amongst his closest comrades and to entrench himself always as though in the midst of enemies. This sensation of hostility all about him and the nervous strain involved in resisting it, this ceaseless mistrust one of another—all this is a source of pain; for though we may like a fight, we also love the joys of peace; we might say that the more highly and the more profoundly men are socialized, that is to say, civilized—for the two are synonomous—the more those joys are prized. That is why, when individuals who share the same interests come together, their purpose is not simply to safeguard those interests or to secure their development in face of rival associations. It is, rather, just to associate, for the sole pleasure of mixing with their fellows and of no longer feeling lost in the midst of adversaries, as well as for the pleasure of communing together, that is, in short, of being able to lead their lives with the same moral aim.
It was in much the same way that the morals of the family were evolved. We have the fact that family life has been and still is a centre of morality and a school of loyalty, of selflessness and moral communing: the high standing which we accord to the family inclines us to find the explanation in certain attributes peculiar to the family and not to be found elsewhere. We like to think that consanguinity makes for unusually potent moral sympathies. Yet we saw last year that this consanguinity had by no means the exceptional force it has been given credit for. Those not related by consanguinity have been very numerous in families over a long period of time: the kinship called artificial was acquired extremely easily and had all the effects of the natural kinship. The family is thus not solely or essentially a consanguine group. It is a group of individuals who happen to have been brought together within the political society by an especially close community of ideas, sentiments and interests. Consanguinity did no doubt contribute to bring about this community, but it has been no more than one of the factors.
The physical surroundings, the community of economic interests and community of worship have been elements no less important. Still, we know the moral rôle which the family has played in the history of morals and the force of the moral life that was set up in the group that has evolved. And why should it be otherwise with a moral life springing from the professional group? Certainly, we might expect that that life would have less vigour in some ways, not because the component elements would be feebler in quality but because they would be less numerous. The family is a group embracing the whole sum of existence; nothing escapes it, everything finds an echo within it. It is the political society in miniature. On the other hand, only one specified part of existence comes directly within the province of the professional group, namely, the part concerned with the occupation. Again, we must not lose sight of the very large place in life taken up by the professions, as their functions become more specialized and as the field of each individual activity becomes more confined within the limits of the function it is responsible for.
This close parallel of the family and the professional group is proved in detail and directly confirmed by the facts in the case of the Roman guild. We have seen, surely, that the guild was a great family, that it was formed on the very model of the domestic society, with banquets, festivals, worship, burial, all in common. And here, precisely because we can observe the guild at the start of its evolution, we perceive more clearly than at other stages how it was constituted partly with moral ends in view. As long as industry was exclusively agricultural, it had its natural framework in the family and in the territorial group made up of contiguous families in the village. As a rule, as long as exchange or barter was little developed, the life of the husbandman did not draw him away from his home. He subsisted on what he produced. The family was at the same time a professional group. When did the guild first appear? With the crafts. This was in fact because the crafts could no longer keep their exclusively domestic character. For a man to live by a craft there had to be customers, so that account had to be taken of what other craftsmen of the same trade were doing; they had to compete with them and they had to get on with them. Thus, a new form of social activity was established that went beyond the compass of the family, without having any appropriate framework. If it was not to remain unorganized, it had itself to create one; a group of a new kind therefore had to be formed with this aim. But new social forms that are set up are always old forms more or less modified and partly changed for the worse. The family, then, was the pattern on which the new grouping that came into being was modelled, but it could of course only imitate the essential features, without reproducing them exactly. And so it happened that the budding guild was a sort of family. Whilst this grouping took the pattern of the family, it was, however, in the form of a social activity that was freeing itself by degrees from the authority of the family. It was a breaking up of the attributes of the family.
In emphasizing this parallel, I do not, however, say that the guilds or associations of the future should or could have this domestic character. It is obvious that the more they evolve the more they must develop original characteristics and the further they should get away from the antecedent groups for which they are in part the substitutes. The medieval guild system, in its time, recalled only very remotely the domestic structure. With all the greater reason, it must be the same with the corporate associations needed to-day.
But then the question comes up of knowing what these guilds should be. Having seen why they are necessary we must consider what form they should assume to play their part in present conditions of collective existence. Difficult as the problem is, we shall attempt to say something about it.
Note
1 N. B. French ‘corporation’.