Besides the historic prejudice we spoke of last time, there is a further fact that has led to the guild system being discredited: it is the revulsion that is generally aroused by the idea of economic control by rule. In our own minds we see all regulation of this sort as a kind of policing, maybe vexatious, maybe endurable, and possibly calling forth some outward reaction from individuals, but making no appeal to the mind and without any root in the consciousness. It appears like some vast set of workshop regulations, far-reaching and framed in general terms: those who have to submit to them may obey in practice if they must, but they could not really want to have them. Thus, the discipline laid down by an individual and imposed by him in military fashion on other individuals who in point of fact are not concerned in wanting them, is confused by us with a collective discipline to which the members of a group are committed. Such discipline can only be maintained if it rests on a state of public opinion and has its roots in morals; it is these morals that count. An established control by rule does no more, shall we say, than define them with greater precision and give them sanction. It translates into precepts ideas and sentiments felt by all, that is, a common adherence to the same objective. So it would be strangely mistaking its nature only to regard its outer aspect and grasp the letter of it alone. From such an angle, this control may indeed have the appearance of being orders that are simply obstructive and prevent individuals from doing what they like, and all in an interest not their own. It is therefore natural enough that they seek to rid themselves of this obstruction or reduce it to a minimum. But beneath the letter lies the spirit that animates it: there are the ties of all kinds binding the individual to the group he is part of and to all that concerns that group; there are all these social sentiments, all those collective aspirations, these traditions we hold to and respect, giving sense and life to the rule and lighting up the way in which it is applied by individuals. So it is a strangely superficial notion—this view of the classical economists, to whom all collective discipline is a kind of rather tyrannous militarisation. In reality, when it is normal and what it ought to be, it is something very different. It is at once the epitome and the governing condition of a whole life in common which individuals have no less at heart than their own lives. And when we wish to see the guilds reorganized on a pattern we will presently try to define, it is not simply to have new codes superimposed on those existing; it is mainly so that economic activity should be permeated by ideas and needs other than individual ideas and needs, in fine, so that it should be socialized. It is, too, with the aim that the professions should become so many moral milieux and that these (comprising always the various organs of industrial and commercial life) should constantly foster the morality of the professions. As to the rules, although necessary and inevitable, they are but the outward expression of these fundamental principles. It is not a matter of co-ordinating any changes outwardly and mechanically, but of bringing men’s minds into mutual understanding.
Moreover, it is not on economic grounds that the guild or corporative system seems to me essential but for moral reasons. It is only through the corporative system that the moral standard of economic life can be raised. We can give some idea of the present situation by saying that the greater part of the social functions (and this greater part means to-day the economic—so wide is their range) are almost devoid of any moral influence, at any rate in what is their own field. To be sure, the rules of common morality apply to them, but they are rules made for a life in common and not for this specific kind of life. Further, they are rules governing those relations of the specific kind of life which are not peculiar to industry and commerce: they do not apply to the others. And why, indeed, in the case of those others, should there be no need to submit to a moral influence? What is to become of public morality if there is so little trace of the principle of duty in this whole sphere that is so important in the social life? There are professional ethics for the priest, the soldier, the lawyer, the magistrate, and so on. Why should there not be one for trade and industry? Why should there not be obligations of the employee towards the employer and vice versa; or of business men one towards the other, so as to lessen or regulate the competition they set up and to prevent it from turning into a conflict sometimes—as to-day—almost as cruel as actual warfare? All these rights and obligations cannot, however, be the same in all branches of industry: they have to vary according to the conditions in each. The obligations in the agricultural industry are not those obtaining in the unhealthy industries, nor of course do those in commerce correspond to those in what we call industry, and so on. A comparison may serve to let us realize where we stand on these points. In the human body all visceral functions are controlled by a particular part of the nervous system other than the brain: this consists of the sympathetic nerve and the vagus or pneumogastric nerves. Well, in our society, too, there is a brain which controls the function of inter-relationship; but the visceral functions, the functions of the vegetative life or what corresponds to them, are subject to no regulative action. Let us imagine what would happen to the functions of heart, lungs, stomach and so on, if they were free like this of all discipline. … Just such a spectacle is presented by nations where there are no regulative organs of economic life. To be sure, the social brain, that is, the State, tries hard to take their place and carry out their functions. But it is unfitted for it and its intervention, when not simply powerless, causes troubles of another kind.
This is why I believe that no reform has greater urgency. I will not say it would achieve everything, but it is the preliminary condition that makes all the others possible. Let us suppose that by a miracle the whole system of property is entirely transformed overnight and that on the collectivist formula the means of production are taken out of the hands of individuals and made over absolutely to collective ownership. All the problems around us that we are debating to-day will still persist in their entirety. There will always be an economic mechanism and various agencies to combine in making it work. The rights and obligations of these various agencies therefore have to be determined and in the different branches of industry at that. So a corpus of rules has to be laid down, fixing the stint of work, the pay of the members of staff and their obligations to one another, towards the community, and so on. This means, then, that we should still be faced with a blank page to work on. Supposing the means—the machinery of labour—had been taken out of these hands or those and placed in others, we should still not know how the machinery worked or what the economic life should be, nor what to do in the face of this change in conditions. The state of anarchy would still persist; for, let me repeat, this state of anarchy comes about not from this machinery being in these hands and not in those, but because the activity deriving from it is not regulated. And it will not be regulated, nor its moral standard raised, by any witchcraft. This control by rule and raising of moral standards can be established neither by the scientist in his study nor by the statesman; it has to be the task of the groups concerned. Since these groups do not exist at the present time, it is of the greatest urgency that they be created. The other problems can only be usefully tackled after that.
Taking this as granted, it remains to study the form the corporative bodies should have if they are to be in harmony with present-day conditions of our collective existence. Clearly, there can be no question of restoring them in the form they had in the past. They died out because they could no longer survive as they were. But then, what is the form they are destined to take? The problem is not an easy one. To solve it, we shall have to be a bit methodical and objective, so we must first arrive at how the guild system evolved in the past, and what the conditions were that set the evolution going. We might then judge with some assurance what the system should become, given the conditions at present obtaining in our societies. To do this, however, further research is needed. Even so, it is not beyond us to make out the general lines of development.
Although, as we have seen, the guild system goes back as far as the early days of the Roman city, it was not in the age of Rome what it became later on, in the Middle Ages. The difference did not lie simply in the collegia of Roman craftsmen having a character at once more religious and less vocational than the medieval guilds. These two institutions differed in a far more important feature. In Rome, the guild was an extra-social institution, at least in origin. The historian who attempts to analyse the political structure of the Romans, will not encounter anything on his way that gives him an inkling of the existence of the guilds. They did not come within the Roman constitution as recognized and distinct units. At no time, in the electoral assemblies or in the army rallies, did the craftsmen assemble by collegia. The collegium as such was never known to take part in public life, either as a body or represented by special agents. At the outside, the question might apply to three or four collegia, which we can possibly identify with four of the centuries1 formed by Servius Tullius—tignarii, aerarii (carpenters, copper-smiths), and the trumpeters and horn-blowers. But this is only conjectural. Very likely the centuries thus classified did not take in all the carpenters, smiths and so on, but only those who made or repaired arms and war equipment. Dionysius of Halicarnassus tells us explicitly that workers grouped in this way had a solely military function ϵἰς τὸν πόλϵμον and that in addition there were other workers grouped under the same heading who in time of war had to perform duties of another kind. We may therefore believe that these centuries represented not the collegia but military sub-divisions. In any case, as far as all the other collegia are concerned, they were certainly outside the administrative structure of the Roman people. Thus, these collegia were supererogatory: they were as social forms more or less irregular or at least they could not be reckoned as amongst those that were regular. This is easy to understand. They were set up at a time when the crafts were moving towards a certain development. Over a long period the crafts were no more than a minor and subsidiary feature of collective activity in the Roman world. Rome was essentially an agricultural and military society. As an agricultural society it was divided into gentes, curiae and tribes. Assembly by centuries2 reflects rather the military side. But it was quite natural that the industrial functions, at first unknown, then only very rudimentary, should not affect the political structure of the City in any way. They were cadres set up late in the day alongside normal official cadres: the product of a kind of outgrowth from the very early social structure of Rome. Moreover, until a very late date in Roman history, the craft carried the mark of a moral obloquy; that fact puts out of court any idea that it ever held an official place in the State. Things did no doubt change with time, but the very way in which they changed clearly demonstrates what they were like at the outset. The craftsmen had to have recourse to irregular means to see that their interests were respected and to secure a status in keeping with their growing importance. The collegia had to proceed by way of plotting and underground agitation. This is the surest evidence that the Roman society, in the ordinary way, was not open to them. And although later they ended by being integrated within the State, becoming cogs in the administrative machine, this position was no proud victory for them, nor profitable, but a grievous dependence. They did then gain entry into the State but not to occupy the place to which, it might seem, their services entitled them. It was simply so that they might be the more closely supervised and controlled by the governing authority. “The guild”, says Levasseur, “became the chain that held them captive and which the Imperial hand tightened, the more arduous or the more necessary to the State their labour became. …” To sum up, the guilds, after having been kept outside the normal cadres of the Roman society, were in the end admitted but only to be reduced to a kind of servitude.
Their position in the Middle Ages was quite otherwise. From the outset, as soon as the guilds come on the scene, they give an impression of being the normal framework of that section of the population which was called upon to play a very considerable part in the State: this was the third estate, the commonalty or bourgeoisie. Indeed, for a long time the bourgeois and the craftsman were one and the same. “The bourgeoisie in the thirteenth century”, says Levasseur, “was made up exclusively of craftsmen. The class of magistrates and jurists had hardly begun to take shape; the scholars still belonged to the clergy; the number of small freeholders (rentiers3) was very limited, because landed property was at that time almost wholly in the hands of the nobles; there remained to the commonalty only the labour of the workshop or the counting-house, and it was by their industry or trading that they had won a status in the kingdom.” It was the same in Germany. The bourgeoisie was the population of the towns; now, we know that the towns in Germany had become established around permanent market sites set up by a feudal lord at some point of his domain. The population which had settled around these markets and which became the urban population was made up mainly of craftsmen and merchants. The towns from the beginning were the centres of manufacturing and trading activity: it is this fact that distinguishes the urban groups of Christian societies from those which are their counterpart—or appear to be—in other societies. The identity of both kinds of population was such that the terms mercatores and forenses are synonomous with that of cives: the same applies to jus civilis and jus fori. Thus, the framework of the crafts was the earliest structural form of the European bourgeoisie.
Likewise, when the towns, which in the beginning were seignorial dependencies, became free, and the communes were formed, the corporate body or craft guild, which had anticipated this transition, became the basis of the constitution of the commune. Indeed, “in almost all the communes, the political system and the election of magistrates were based on the division of citizens into craft guilds.” Very often the voting was done through the craft guild and the heads of the corporate body and those of the commune were chosen at the same time. “At Amiens, for instance, the craftsmen met every year to elect the mayors of each corporation (guild) or banner; the elected mayors then nominated twelve échevins who brought in twelve others, and this corps of échevins in turn presented to the mayors of the banners three persons from whom they chose the mayor of the commune. … In some cities, the method of election was still more complex, but in all of them the political and municipal structure was closely linked with the structure of labour.” And just as the commune was an aggregate of the craft guild, so the craft guild was a commune on a small scale. The guild had indeed been the model for the institution of the commune, which was a larger and more expanded form of it.
Let us sum up briefly. From being at first obscure, despised and exterior to the political constitution, we see the guild become the basic element in the commune. We know, on the other hand, what the commune has been in the history of all the great European societies: it became with time their corner-stone. The commune is an aggregate of the guilds or corporate bodies and is itself formed on the guild model. From these facts we see that it is the guild, in the final analysis, that has served as a basis for the whole political system which emerged from the progress of the commune. In Rome, it was outside any cadre but of our own societies it was the basic framework or cadre itself. We see that, in its course, it has grown in dignity and significance to a remarkable degree. And there is still another reason for discrediting the hypothesis according to which it is destined to pass away. As we go on in history to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the guild becomes a still more necessary clement in the political structure. So there is small likelihood that of a sudden all justification for its existence should be lost. All to the contrary, it would be far more valid to hold that it will be called on to play an even more vital part in the future than in the past.
At the same time, the points just discussed enable us to discern, first, why decay set in about two centuries ago—that is, what has prevented the guild from being equal to the duties incumbent on it—and secondly, what its development should be to reach that level. We have seen that the guild, in its medieval form, was closely bound up with the whole structure of the commune. The two institutions were inter-related. Now, there was nothing to impair this solidarity as long as the crafts themselves had a communal character. As long as every craftsman and every merchant as a rule had as customers only those who lived in the same town or those who came in from the outskirts on market day, the craft guild with its closely localized structure met all needs. But it was a different matter when large-scale industry came in. Given its nature, it could not fit into the cadres of a town. For one thing, its site was not necessarily in a town: it could be set up at any point in the area, in the country as usefully as in the town—at all events, away from built-up areas; in fact wherever it could get supplies at the lowest economic cost and whence it could branch out furthest and most easily. Further, regular customers were secured all over the place and the sales range was confined to no particular region. An institution as closely involved in the commune as the guild was, could therefore not be of use in framing and regulating a form of social activity that was so completely independent of the commune. Indeed, as soon as it came on the scene, large-scale industry found itself outside the old guild system. It was not however, for all that, free of any kind of control by regulation. It was the State that stood direct to industry as in earlier times the trade or craft guild stood to the urban trades. The royal authority granted privileges to the manufacturer with one hand and subjected him to its control with the other. Hence the title of ‘Royal Manufactories’ bestowed on them. This direct tutelage by the State was of course only feasible whilst manufactures were still few and in the early stages. The ancient guild in its early form failed to adapt itself to the new style of industry and the State was able to provide a substitute for the old guild discipline only for a period. It does not follow, even so, that all discipline henceforth was to serve no purpose, but merely that the earlier guild had to be reconstructed to operate in the new conditions of economic life. The change that had come about meant that industry, instead of being local and municipal, had become an affair of the whole country. From all of this we have to draw the conclusion that the guild, too, had to change in parallel fashion and in place of remaining a municipal institution, it had to become a public institution. Experience in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries goes to prove that the guild system, which kept the pattern of a municipal affair, could not be appropriate to industries that in their wide scope and importance made their mark on the common interests of the society. On the other hand, that experience demonstrates that the State was itself not able to perform this office, because economic life is too vast and too complex, with too many ramifications, for it to supervise and regulate its operations effectively. Is not the lesson to be drawn from these facts, that the guild should assume a different character, and that it should get closer to the State without being absorbed by it? In fact, that it should become something national, whilst remaining a subsidiary group and relatively autonomous? The guild was too slow in transforming itself: it failed to bend before the pressure of new needs and so was broken. As it could not adapt itself to this new kind of life emerging, that life quite naturally receded from it. These are the facts that explain what the craft guild had become on the eve of the Revolution: a kind of dead substance or foreign body which only persisted in our social organism by the force of inertia. The moment had to come when it was violently ejected. But the problem of the needs which the guild could not satisfy was not solved by any such root and branch abolition. And so we are left with this whole question, made only more critical and more acute by a hundred years of fumbling and of distressing experiments. It does not, however, seem impossible to solve.
Let us imagine—spread over the whole country—the various industries grouped in separate categories based on similarity and natural affinity. An administrative council, a kind of miniature parliament, nominated by election, would preside over each group. We go on to imagine this council or parliament as having the power, on a scale to be fixed, to regulate whatever concerns the business: relations of employers and employed—conditions of labour—wages and salaries—relations of competitors one with another, and so on … and there we have the guild restored, but in an entirely novel form. The establishment of this central organ appointed for the management of the group in general, would in no way exclude the forming of subsidiary and regional organs under its direction and subordinate to it. The general rules to be laid down by it might be made specific and adapted to apply to various parts of the area by industrial boards. These would be more regional in character just as to-day under Parliament there are councils for the département or municipality. In this way, economic life would be organized, regulated and defined, without losing any of its diversity. Such organization would do no more than introduce into the economic order the reforms already made in all other spheres of the national life. Customs, morals, political administration, all of which formerly had a local character and varied from place to place, have gradually moved towards uniformity and to a loss of diversity. The former autonomous organs, the tribunals, the feudal and communal powers, have become with time auxiliary organs, subordinate to the central organism that took shape. Is it not to be expected that the economic order will be transformed with the same trend and by the same process? What existed at the outset was a local structure, an affair of the community: what has to take its place is not a complete absence of organization, a state of anarchy; rather it would be a structure that was comprehensive and national, uniform and at the same time complex, in which the local groupings of the past would still survive, but simply as agencies to ensure communication and diversity.
It follows that the guild system would in this way be saved from another flaw that it was reproached with in the past, and rightly—that of being static. As long as its horizon was bounded by the walls of the city, it was inevitable that the guild should easily become the prisoner of tradition, like the city itself. In a group so hedged about, the conditions of life cannot change very much; habit has thus dominion over people and over things without any counter-balance and innovations in the end come even to be dreaded. The traditionalism of the guilds and their tendency to routine only reflected the prevailing traditionalism and had the same raison d’être. Still, it did outlive the causes from which it sprang and which were its original justification. The unification of the country, leading to the emergence of large-scale industry, resulted in a widening of perspectives and so to the awakening of a man’s consciousness to new wants as to new ideas. He began to have aspirations hitherto unknown, a greater need of amenities and ease in living. Also, his tastes began to be more subject to change. It was otherwise with the guilds; they failed to change with the times or to be pliable; they kept rigidly to the old ways and customs and were in no state to respond to the new calls on them. Here we see another cause of the guilds’ losing goodwill. But national corporate bodies would not be open to this danger. Their scope and their complexity would protect them against inertness. They would comprise elements that were too many and too diverse for a fixed uniformity to be feared. The equilibrium of such organization can be only relatively stable and would therefore be in complete harmony with the moral equilibrium of a society with the same character and in nowise rigid. Too many different minds would be at work within them for new re-arrangements not to be constantly preparing or, as it were, in a latent state. A group that extends over vast areas (such, for example, as China) is never static because change there is unceasing.
This seems to be the fundamental principle of the only kind of corporative system that would be appropriate to large-scale industry. We have shown the outlines, and it remains to solve a number of secondary questions that cannot be dealt with here. I shall only touch on the most important.
To begin with, it is often asked whether the guild should be compulsory, whether or not individuals should be bound to membership. This question, I feel, is only of limited interest. In fact, from the day when the guild system was set up, it would be such a handicap for the individual to remain aloof that he would join of his own accord, without any need of coercion. Once constituted, a collective force draws into its orbit those who are unattached: any who remain outside are unable to hold their ground. Moreover, it is beyond me to understand the scruples that some feel in this case against any suggestion of compulsion. Every citizen nowadays is obliged to be attached to a commune (parish). Why then should the same principle not apply to the profession or calling? All the more, since in fact the reform we are discussing would in the end result in the professional association taking the place of the jurisdictional area as a political unit of the region.
A more important matter is to know what the respective place and part of employer and employed would be in the corporative structure. It seems to me obvious that both should be represented in the governing body responsible for supervising the general affairs and well-being of the association. Such a body could only carry out its function provided that it included both these elements. However, one is forced to wonder whether a distinction would not have to be made at the base of the structure: whether the two categories of industrial personnel would not have to nominate their representatives separately—in a word, whether the electoral bodies would not have to be independent, at all events when their respective interests were obviously in conflict.
Finally, it seems certain that this whole framework should be attached to the central organ, that is, to the State. Occupational legislation could hardly be other than an application in particular of the law in general, just as professional ethics can only be a special form of common morality. To be sure, there will always be all the various forms of economic activity of individuals, which involve such overall regulation, and this cannot be the task of any group in particular.
So far, we have only briefly indicated the functions which might take shape in the corporative body. We cannot foresee all those which might be assigned to it in the future. Our best course is to keep to those which could be handed over to it straight away. From the legislative point of view, certain functions have to be classified according to the industry, such as the general principles of the labour contract, of salary and wages remuneration, of industrial health, of all that concerns the labour of women and children, etc., and the State is incapable of such classification. The provision of superannuation and provident funds, etc. cannot be made over without danger4 to the funds of the State, overburdened as it is with various services, as well as being too far removed from the individual. Finally, the regulation of labour disputes, which cannot be codified as laws on any hard and fast principle, calls for special tribunals. In order to adjudicate with entire independence, these would have rights that varied with the varying forms of industry. There we have the judicial task, which might be assigned henceforth to the guilds in their revived and altered form. This threefold task would have to be assigned to these three (? ?5) organs or groups of organs: it is there you have practical problems that only experience would settle. The main thing is to set up the group and to give it a raison d’être by endowing it, very cautiously, with some of the functions just mentioned. Once it had been formed and had begun its life, it would develop of its own accord and no one can foresee at what point this evolution would stop. As I said earlier, the other reforms could only be tackled effectively when this first step had been taken: further, it is even possible that they might come about naturally from that step. If some re-casting of the laws of property is to come about, it is not the (? ?5) who can say for his part what form this will take. Anyone knowing the complexity of social life and the room it leaves for the play of the most conflicting elements, is aware of the over-simplification in formulas now current. It is hardly likely that the day will come when the means of production will be logically divorced from the means of consumption, when nothing will remain of the old rights of property, when the position of employer will no longer exist, and when all rights of inheritance will have been abolished. It is not within human foresight to say what part these facts of any future structure … (omission), what portion of the past will permanently survive, and what … (omission) in the future … (omission).
This re-distribution can only come about of its own impetus, by the pressure of facts and experience. If industrial life be organized, that is, if it be given the organ it has need of, then this system, by coming in contact with other social organs, will of itself become a source of radical changes beyond our powers of imagining. Not only is the guild system …(??5).
1 Meaning here ‘infantry troops’.
2 Meaning here ‘voting unit in the assembly’.
3 Tr. note—rentiers: paying rent in money, kind or services. (H.W.C. Davis)
4 ‘réservé sans danger’: should perhaps read: ‘remis sans danger entre les mains de l’Etat’.
5 Question marks represent gaps in the text, originally intended as lecture notes.