GUILDHALL ART GALLERY 



3735 



GUILD SOCIALISM 



The chief apartments include 

 the Common Council chamber, 

 constructed- by Sir Horace Jones 

 in 1884 ; aldermen's court room, 

 1670-80 ; the new court-room, by 

 Sydney Perks, 1908 ; and the 

 rating offices, 1909. The library 

 and reading-room, free to the 

 public, date from 1871-72 ; the 

 museum is devoted to London 

 antiquities ; and the art gallery. 

 See The Guildhall, J. J. Baddeley, 

 1899. 



Guildhall Art Gallery, THE. 

 Officially known as the Art Gallery 

 of the Corporation of London. It 

 was founded in 1885, when a suite 

 of spacious rooms was allotted to it 

 in Guildhall. The collection is 

 mainly confined to the British 

 school, and is especially represent- 

 ative of 19th century work. The 

 gallery authorities have made a 

 speciality of loan exhibitions, such 

 as that of Spanish art. 



Guild Socialism. School of 

 socialist thought which works for 

 the reconstruction of society on a 

 democratic basis through indus- 

 trial self-government in the form of 

 guilds, and through the substitu- 

 tion of functional for general repre- 

 sentation in the central authority 

 of the community. Admitting the 

 necessity of some form of industrial 

 society, guild socialists have chiefly 

 been occupied with working out a 

 fresh social theory rather than 

 with tabulating exact ways and 

 means of putting this into practice ; 

 and they have emphasised the in- 

 dustrial problem, because they hold 

 that, until the industry of society 

 can satisfy the primary needs of 

 all its members, all political 

 measures of social amelioration 

 are dangerously delusive. 



The guild is the unit on which 

 the theory builds its structure. 

 This is an autonomous and demo- 

 cratically governed organization, 

 which includes all the workers, 

 whether by hand or brain, actually 

 engaged in an industry or con- 

 nected groups of industries. Thus, 



while land or the capital for in- 

 dustry would be owned by the 

 community, the tilling of that land 

 or the working of those mines or 

 factories would be carried out by 

 the guilds, who would be respon- 

 sible to the whole community for 

 the adequate fulfilment of their 

 functions. Within the guild, direc- 

 tors and technical experts would 

 conduct its work and would them- 

 selves be responsible for such direc- 

 tion to their fellow-members. 



Guilds would naturally differ in 

 internal details ; the groups to 

 which doctors, teachers, or artists 

 belonged would be conducted differ- 

 ently from those of agricultural or 

 mining workers. But the under- 

 lying principles of self-government 

 in professional or technical affairs 

 would be the same for all. The con- 

 ception of the guild is wider than 

 that of the trade union : first, as 

 including all the workers from top 

 to bottom, without distinction of 

 hand or brain ; second, as being an 

 organization which not merely 

 looks after the economic welfare of 

 its members, but actually carries 

 on the particular industry. The 

 guild stands together as a whole, 

 and though remuneration for ser- 

 vices would naturally be graded 

 according to their value, the wage- 

 system as hitherto existing would 

 have no place in its economics. 



But there must be a coordina- 

 tion of the purposes and functions 

 of all the individual guilds, not 

 only where they touch directly, as 

 iron-workers with coal-miners, but 

 also in the intricate relations of the 

 supply of commodities and the de- 

 mands for such made by the con- 

 sumers. This brings up the ques- 

 tion of the central government of 

 the community, whose various and 

 often conflicting interests must 

 be reconciled with those of the 

 guilds. Guildsmen hold that the 

 accepted principles of democratic 

 self-government, such as parlia- 

 mentary representation, are really 

 impracticable, so complex are the 

 workings of the industrial society 

 which they seek to regulate. They 

 urge, therefore, that the citizens 

 should elect representatives not for 

 general, but for specific or func- 

 tional purposes. Thus, alongside of 

 the industrial guilds, we should find 

 bodies representative of the differ- 

 ent functions and interests of the 

 citizens, such as a cooperative 

 council representing them as eco- 

 nomic consumers, a civic council 

 representing their common local 

 needs, or another representing their 

 interests in education or art. 



From these councils would rise 

 other bodies, tentatively described 

 as the commune, combining the 

 functions of the councils in one lo- 

 cality, and the regional commune, 

 to meet the economic, administra- 

 tive, and social requirements of 

 large areas. Over these last im- 

 portant bodies would come a 

 national commune, a body of dele- 

 gates from the great industrial 

 guilds of the country and from the 

 regional bodies. 



The guild doctrine was worked 

 out first in The New Age, edited by 

 A. R. Orage, from 1911 onwards, 

 and by the National Guilds League, 

 with headquarters at 39, Cursitor 

 Street, London, E.G. A significant 

 experiment was made by the for- 

 mation, in 1920, of a guild in the 

 building industry, which undertook 



Guildhall, London. 1. The Gatehouse, restored in 1789, the main entrance in Guildhall Yard. 2. The Great Hall, in 

 which the principal civic receptions and banquets are held. 3. The Library, built 1871-72 



