[OOM]|
There is a danger at the present moment that [OOM]| the organisers of the Labor movement may be [OOM]| diverted from their proper work by political [OOM]| issues, arguments about peace terms, conscription, [OOM]| and so forth, that can be very well left to the [OOM]| people and politicians. There are plenty of [OOM]| politicians, in embryo and otherwise, and too few [OOM]| organisers who have any real knowledge of the [OOM]| industrial movement, or any clear idea about its [OOM]| immediate future. And that future calls for some [OOM]| hard thinking. Labor is confronted by dangers, [OOM]| within and without, and seems to go blundering [OOM]| along in the dark, trying one road and then [OOM]| another, and achieving very little but [OOM]| exasperation.
What is badly wanted is a [OOM]| practical theory that can be perfected in times of [OOM]| war to meet the peace that is to come. For the [OOM]| coming of peace will try the Labor movement more [OOM]| grievously than the presence of war. To begin [OOM]| with, the return of a few hundred thousand [OOM]| soldiers (who, in spite of all repatriation [OOM]| schemes, are sure to be thrown on the labor [OOM]| market) will be sufficient to strain our present [OOM]| craft unionism to breaking point. If it could [OOM]| break and be supplanted by something better, so [OOM]| much to the good, but as yet there is very little [OOM]| evidence of the industrial unionism that is to [OOM]| take its place. Australia has had enough of craft [OOM]| unionism. The spectacle of a Boilermakers' Union [OOM]| in conflict with a Fitters' Union, or a carter [OOM]| trying to get the better of a baker's journeyman, [OOM]| is not an inspiring one. It can only lead to [OOM]| chaos, and the return of craft unionism to its [OOM]| original idea ~~ the effort of skilled workmen to [OOM]| achiever a higher standard of comfort than their [OOM]| unskilled fellows, even at the expense of their [OOM]| unskilled fellows.
Industrial unionism, [OOM]| then, must take the place of the present [OOM]| organisation in crafts, and there must be a [OOM]| clearly-defined object other than the pursuit of [OOM]| high wages. Everyone knows that there is no end to [OOM]| the balloon race of prices against wages, except [OOM]| the exhaustion and exasperation of all concerned. [OOM]| And real wages are an elusive quantity. It is [OOM]| extremely hard to prove whether, with all our [OOM]| legislation, our workers are better off than those [OOM]| of some European countries, or whether the [OOM]| twenty-five dollars an American machinist gets in his [OOM]| pay-envelope at the end of the week means more [OOM]| than Collingwood's three pounds ten. The problem [OOM]| can only be left, like a never-ending barrel of [OOM]| meal, to the statisticians.
It is plain, [OOM]| however, that mere high wages are not worth the [OOM]| trouble of organisation. There is a theory, I [OOM]| believe, that by continual strikes the workman can [OOM]| increase his share of the surplus product till he [OOM]| captures it all. There is nothing to support the [OOM]| theory except the flood of rhetoric that generally [OOM]| accompanies it. Everything goes to prove the [OOM]| capital is very mobile indeed, and that as soon as [OOM]| its dividends fall below a certain level in any [OOM]| one industry or country it can transfer to another [OOM]| without even paying its passage. There is no [OOM]| patriotism about capital, and the theory could [OOM]| only be maintained by assuming that all industries [OOM]| in all countries reached the same stage of [OOM]| economic development at the same time, and that, [OOM]| say, the Argentian of Buenos Ayres had the same [OOM]| impulses as the Australian. Many Internationalists [OOM]| would probably like this to be so, but their [OOM]| dreams have no direct relation to reality. And [OOM]| even if the theory of slowly filching all the [OOM]| surplus product from Capital by strikes, sabotage [OOM]| and whatnot were water-tight, it would be an [OOM]| uninspiring line of development, wasteful [OOM]| economically and psychologically demoralising to [OOM]| the workers concerned. It certainly provides no [OOM]| constructive idea for the new Commonwealth.
[OOM]|But such a hope is provided by the proposals of [OOM]| Socialism, say some. As an advocate of National [OOM]| Guilds, my criticism of formal Socialism is that [OOM]| it is vague and abstract about practical methods. [OOM]| It very often talks in the set phrases of economic [OOM]| determinism, or in a German American dialect that [OOM]| is very hard for an Australian to understand. Set [OOM]| phrases are sometimes used to conceal a lack of [OOM]| thought, and they exercise a hypnotism upon the [OOM]| untrained mind that is paralysing in effect. There [OOM]| is no economic proposal that cannot be expounded [OOM]| in simple English, and the more simple its [OOM]| phrasing, the more likely it is to be alive and [OOM]| real. But all this is by the way. The National [OOM]| Guilds have not come to supplant Socialism, but to [OOM]| give it definite form and shape, and to relieve it [OOM]| of many fads, vegetarianism, anti-nationalism, and [OOM]| the like, that have no logical association with it [OOM]| at all. They offer the worker a path to the [OOM]| control of the workshop he spends his time in and [OOM]| the conditions he works under, and are not [OOM]| concerned whether he wears Jaeger underclothing or [OOM]| believes in some new religion that has just [OOM]| arrived from Chicago. These are personal and [OOM]| individual matters, and have no relation to [OOM]| economics.
To mere Collectivism, however, [OOM]| the advocates of National Guilds offer a criticism [OOM]| that is fundamental in principle. There is no real [OOM]| revolt against the present conditions of [OOM]| production in the Collectivist. He merely takes [OOM]| over the capitalist's theory that the factory, the [OOM]| mine, the workshop must be run with increasing [OOM]| organisation and efficiency, and that man's [OOM]| destiny is to be a minder of expert machines, only [OOM]| he postulates that the ownership of them must be [OOM]| vested in the State, and that all citizens shall [OOM]| be Government servants. Craftsmen will have none [OOM]| of the dignity and responsibility of saying what [OOM]| class of goods they shall produce and under what [OOM]| conditions they shall work. All the intimate [OOM]| matters of their daily lives in the workshop will [OOM]| be regulated by the State, which in practice means [OOM]| the politicians. And we know how ably and [OOM]| sympathetically a lawyer or a grocer, thrust into [OOM]| Ministerial power by the chances of the moment, [OOM]| administers any of the nationalised industries [OOM]| today. He is the clutching hand of the organised [OOM]| consumer, and the employees generally pray to be [OOM]| delivered from him and from the efficient manager [OOM]| he puts in charge of them.
A system of [OOM]| National Guilds would provide for the control of [OOM]| the individual factory by the workmen employed in [OOM]| it, subject to the general control of the Guild. [OOM]| That is the only basis on which industrial [OOM]| democracy can securely rest. The Guild, in its [OOM]| turn, would be represented at the Guild Congress, [OOM]| sitting in permanent session, and this body would [OOM]| determine matters of markets, the amount of taxes [OOM]| each of its constituent parts should pay to the [OOM]| State, and other general questions.
But [OOM]| this merely clears the way for an outline of the [OOM]| Guild and its ideals of production. To that I will [OOM]| return in my next article.