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In outlining the Guild [OON]| State it is necessary to separate it clearly from [OON]| the proposals of Syndicalists. The latter assume [OON]| that the union, or syndicat, should own in [OON]| entirety the tool of its trade, and pay no [OON]| allegiance of any kind to the State. To this the [OON]| advocates of National Guilds reply, firstly, that [OON]| absolute ownership of the instruments of [OON]| production by syndicats is contrary to the sense [OON]| of justice, since these things belong by right to [OON]| the community; secondly, that the State is [OON]| necessary to deal with matters that have no direct [OON]| concern with production.
There are other [OON]| important objections to Syndicalism, but they are [OON]| not specifically economic. It seems to regard man [OON]| entirely as a producer, just as Collectivism [OON]| regards him entirely as a consumer. The carpenter [OON]| would live mentally in a little world of [OON]| carpenters, and his only outlook on life would be [OON]| through the window of the house he was building. [OON]| People would tend to develop craft characteristics [OON]| rather than national ones, and the hod-carrier [OON]| would bear the stamp of his hod on his face.
[OON]|In the Guild State, on the other hand, a man [OON]| would be reminded that he was a citizen as well as [OON]| a producer. The State would be there, not only as [OON]| an instrument of government, but as a concrete [OON]| expression of the national life. No advocate of [OON]| National Guilds contemplates the passing of those [OON]| national characteristics which give variety to [OON]| civilisation, or of that national feeling which is [OON]| the mortal enemy of Imperialism, and which has [OON]| fostered the creative instincts of men in the [OON]| past. The guilds would probably adapt themselves [OON]| to the temperament of different countries, taking [OON]| a less rigid form in France than in Germany, in [OON]| Australia than in England.
The State, then, [OON]| would have supreme power in the political world [OON]| and the Guild Congress in the smaller industrial [OON]| world. The ownership of the instruments of [OON]| production would be vested in the State, and they [OON]| would be leased on charter to the Guilds, who [OON]| would return the equivalent of rent in the form of [OON]| taxes. It is probable that these taxes would be [OON]| the chief revenue of the State, unless indeed a [OON]| tariff was demanded by one or other of the [OON]| producing guilds to protect itself against cheap [OON]| production in more backward countries. For the [OON]| creation of the Guild State is not dependent on [OON]| all countries adopting the system at the same [OON]| time.
But what would be the constitution of [OON]| the individual guild? It would be a combination of [OON]| all the labor power, administrative, executive and [OON]| productive, in any particular industry. It would [OON]| include the salaried person as well as the [OON]| wage-earner, the skilled worker as well as the [OON]| unskilled; in short, it would be a development of [OON]| the ideal industrial union of today. The chief [OON]| difference would be a psychological one ~~ that it [OON]| would have realised that its combination was for [OON]| the sole purpose of control of its industry, and [OON]| not for wresting shorter hours and higher wages [OON]| from the employers. Any time it could spare from [OON]| organisation would have been spent in studying [OON]| methods of production and the details of its own [OON]| industry.
About a dozen of such guilds [OON]| would be sufficient to carry out the whole [OON]| productive and distributive business of Australia. [OON]| There is no more advantage in having a number of [OON]| weak guilds than a number of weak unions, and the [OON]| tendency would be toward amalgamation wherever [OON]| industries were at all akin. In production it [OON]| would be more economic for one guild to control [OON]| directly all the allied processes of its [OON]| particular industry, and it would simplify the [OON]| machinery of internal government. The thousand-odd [OON]| craft unions of England today, with all their [OON]| different organisers, secretaries and what not, [OON]| are a standing example of the waste and [OON]| inefficiency of small organisations. And there is [OON]| no need, even, to go as far as England. In [OON]| proportion we have nearly as many overlapping [OON]| unions here at home.
But the exact [OON]| classification of crafts in the guild is, after [OON]| all, a technical matter for experts. The guild [OON]| itself, with its unit, the factory, the mine or [OON]| the workshop, would be a small democracy, [OON]| containing a number of smaller ones. It would [OON]| decide for itself the number of hours it would [OON]| work, and the conditions it would work under, and [OON]| would elect all its own officers, from the foreman [OON]| to the general manager. Probably the elected guild [OON]| directorate would lay down the law on general [OON]| matters, such as the standard of goods to be [OON]| produced, while the individual factory would [OON]| decide practical questions of working conditions, [OON]| such as are now embodied in the various Factory [OON]| Acts.
And just here it is better to [OON]| anticipate any criticism from the cynical outsider [OON]| on the question of elected officers or a popular [OON]| decision on the number of hours to be worked. The [OON]| general theory is that men left to themselves [OON]| would choose the foreman that allowed them to go [OON]| slowest on the job and ballot for a two-hour working [OON]| day. In the guild, however (to come down to the level [OON]| of the stockbroker or the Flinders-street [OON]| importer), every man would have a direct interest [OON]| in increasing the total productive power. [OON]| That would lead him, for instance, to work eight [OON]| hours instead of six, and to choose the most [OON]| capable foreman and manager; and he would be [OON]| better able to make a shrewd choice than any [OON]| outsider. Moreover, work under a guild system [OON]| would not be the depressing slavery it mainly is [OON]| today, for apart from the fact that there would be [OON]| no profiteer living on the surplus product, the [OON]| aim of the guild would be to cultivate and [OON]| stimulate each man's pride in his craft.
[OON]|This opens general questions, which are more [OON]| real to some craftsmen, even today, than the [OON]| matter of high wages. Modern Capitalism has broken [OON]| down most of the traditions of good workmanship [OON]| that gave some of the artist's joy to the worker, [OON]| and made the finished product a thing of beauty. [OON]| The aim of the guilds, in manufacturing for an [OON]| Australian market rather than for a cheap and [OON]| nasty foreign one, would be to restore those [OON]| traditions of workmanship and to create new ones. [OON]| After all, in the final analysis, the only happy [OON]| society is that in which the bulk of men find joy [OON]| in their daily work. And a unionism which [OON]| encourages men to scamp their work, or to go slow [OON]| on the job (even though such a policy may be [OON]| effective in winning the immediate battle), is [OON]| helping Capitalism in the destruction of the [OON]| spirit of good workmanship. The danger is that it [OON]| is not so easy to revive a thing that has been [OON]| killed, no matter how good the intention. To [OON]| understand this one has only to study some old [OON]| Japanese prints, lacquer-work, or pottery, and [OON]| then visit Kobe or Tokio today.
The guild, [OON]| then, would have supreme control of its own [OON]| domestic affairs. The Guild Congress, however, [OON]| sitting in permanent session, would deal with [OON]| inter-guild relations, or matters that affected [OON]| all the guilds in common. This body would be the [OON]| real Workers' Parliament, and would have the same [OON]| authority in the industrial world that the Federal [OON]| Parliament would have in the political world. And, [OON]| free from the complicated affairs of industry, the [OON]| State would be able to concentrate on the things [OON]| that properly concern it ~~ education, foreign [OON]| relations, public health, and other national [OON]| questions.
But the practical question [OON]| before us today is how to transform the craft [OON]| union into an industrial union that will form a [OON]| nucleus for the guild. To that I will return.