Functional socialism

148 FUNCTIONAL SOCIALISM

tained their slaves whether employed or unemployed; modern Capitalism has no interest in the bodies of the wage-earners, but only in the labour commodity. And so our unemployed brothers and sisters go to the scrap-heap. Was it ordained that they should mount Calvary to win for their children an enlightened leisure?

From the foregoing, it is evident that Guild Socialism was not primarily a scheme to rationalize the existing industrial system, but a deliberate effort to place labour, the trustee of function, upon its rightful throne. To that extent, then, our argument has veered towards Syndicalism; but, as we shall soon see, certain definitely socialist factors play their part. But firstafew words on the structure and finance of the Guilds. It is interesting to note here that the case for ““Workers’ Control’, now agitating the labour ranks, is largely based on the original Guild idea.

In alittle book, Guild Principles in Peace and War, I defined a National Guild as a “combination of all labour of every kind, administrative, executive and productive, in any particular industry. It includes all those who work with their brains and those who contribute labour power. Administrators, chemists, skilled and unskilled labour—everybody who can work—all are entitled to membership. Numerically considered, the trade unions must form the bases of these National Guilds; but they, in their turn, must merge into the greater body’. That definition still serves. Each industry was to have its National Guild; all the Guilds were to be subject to and represented