The institutional impossibility of guild socialism

Guild socialism was developed in the 1906–25 period. It has been held up as a ‘libertarian’ and ‘democratic’ alternative to the statist socialism of the Fabians and the Soviet bloc. This article outlines the basic features of guild socialism, particularly in the most influential version of G. D. H. Cole. Guild socialists wanted to minimise markets and to give higher administrative bodies the right to impose prices in cases of dispute. It is argued here that, despite the intentions of its proponents, guild socialism has a strong centralising dynamic that would undermine its defining aspirations for ‘workers' control’. This centralising dynamic will remain, as long as the guilds are denied legal autonomy, (cooperative) ownership of their means of production and their general right to negotiate prices of their outputs and inputs with buyers and sellers. This diminished capacity for local adjustment, with a potential upward referral of crucial decisions and powers, would add to the informational and task burdens of higher administrative bodies. Much of the previous literature on guild socialism has overlooked these problems. Attention must be paid to legal, as well as other, power relations in the analysis of actual or proposed economic systems.