Functional socialism

CHAPTER XI THE REVIVAL OF GUILD SOCIALISM

We shall not understand the meaning of Guild Socialism without some knowledge of the Socialist ferment during the first decade of this century. The conventional historian will probably be content to refer to that period as one in which Socialism gained ground; but what finally matters, if truth is to be served, is to realize that Socialism, then as now, was not a coherent whole but rather a generic term for theories and agitations of which the only common ground was a desperate desire to change the conditions of the wage-earning classes, from those advocating reformist methods to others who were for open revolution. It would be easy to describe these various movements as they shaded off into each other from the cautious right to the turbulent left; what need now only concern us is that by 1910 there was a definite intellectual cleavage between the sober doctrine of State Socialism and the more menacing demands of Syndicalism. Guild Socialism was the resultant of the friction between these two warring schools of thought—a politico-economic sertium quid. The great mass of British Socialists was largely committed to State Socialism, mainly to the Muni-~