Beyond Distributism by Woods Jr Thomas E

Author:Woods Jr, Thomas E
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Acton Institute
Published: 2012-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

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IV

Bring Back the Guilds?

It is in the context of established firms using the force of law to suppress competition that we should consider another proposal frequently heard among distributists and that was echoed in corporatist thinking: restoring the medieval craft guilds, which are sometimes cited as a morally superior alternative to the free market. These guilds operated as follows. Each occupation had its own guild, to which all employers and employees in that occupation belonged. The guild regulated minimum prices, wages, hours of operation, and product quality. In this way, one shop was prevented from underselling another. Cooperation rather than competition was the rule, and the result was occupational stability: There was a niche for everyone in a given line of work.

The logic of the guild is such that certain people who wish to enter a particular trade are denied entry. If a particular guild should happen to have a relatively liberal policy of admitting new producers to its craft, it will certainly insist on a minimum price at which all producers will be allowed to sell the good in question, and/or will limit the amount of the good that any given master will be permitted to produce. Whatever the case, the outcome is the same: higher prices and less production than if free entry into the profession, a free price system, and unrestricted production had been allowed.

Belloc looked upon the guilds as examples of fruitful cooperation among producers in contrast to the cutthroat competition of capitalism. The guild system, said Belloc, was “designed to check competition between its members: to prevent the growth of one at the expense of the other. Above all, most jealously did the guild safeguard the division of property, so that there should be formed within its ranks no proletariat upon the one side, and no monopolizing capitalist upon the other.” Nowhere in Belloc do we read that the guilds were, “frankly institutions in restraint of trade,” as another writer points out.

They usually persuaded their towns to keep out, by a high protective tariff or elsewise, goods competitive with their own; such alien goods, if allowed to enter the town, were sold at prices fixed by the affected guild.… By city ordinance or economic pressure the guild usually compelled craftsmen to work only for the guild or with its consent, and to sell its products only to or through the guild.87

Neither do we hear about the restrictions on sneezing in front of one’s shop (since that might attract undue attention to that shop vis-à-vis other ones), or about the guild rule in medieval Flanders that anyone caught varying the formula for a particular scarlet dye could be “condemned to the crushing fine of £105 or, failing payment, to the loss of his right hand.”88

Aspects of the guild system have existed in our economy in the past and some continue through the present. Their consequences have arguably been to frustrate rather than to promote the principles of Catholic social teaching enumerated above.

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