THE ELEMENTS OF RECONSTRUCTION by H. G. Wells

Author:H. G. Wells [Wells, H. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788027235537
Publisher: Musaicum Books
Published: 2017-12-08T00:00:00+00:00

GUILD SOCIALISM

It has already been suggested here that no movement in the direction of national trusts has any prospect of success if it is made a matter of private arrangement and secret intrigue. Such methods are not only contrary to the suspicious nature of a modern democracy demoralized by industrialism, but they disregard and waste the enormous possibilities of contributory assistance in an even partially educated populace. And it is in this connexion that more attention needs to be given by organizers and directors of industry to those comparatively modern developments of labour thought which figure as Syndicalism and Guild Socialism. These ideas are stirring great numbers of the younger workers, and they are receiving quite inadequate notice in the general Press. Our governing class, thanks to the facilities for a classical education existing in Great Britain, know far more about the ideas of the Gracchi than they do about the notions that such people as, for example, Mr. Cole and Mr. Mellor and the Editor of The New Age, are spreading industriously in the country.

No doubt there is much to be said for the systematic snubbing of these busy propagandists. England would not be what it is if we did not snub, but large sections of the workers are not snubbing these people and these ideas. Let us by all means continue to snub them, take it out of them socially and so on, but let us at least see whether some use is not to be made of their ideas. These new ideas among the workers need not make for conflict, but they certainly will make for conflict if they are ignored. That is the important fact to grasp. These new views are apt to be couched in terms of class hostility and in the old aggressive and now irritating phrases of militant Marxism, but essentially these new views are constructive views; from the labour side they really present what is a reciprocal movement to the trend of the employer organizations towards trusts and national associations. Like all labour movements, they tend to disregard the practical difficulties in the way of a complete change of control; they do seem at times to contemplate—just as the older Socialists did—a revolutionary change of control. There is no recognition of that fundamental principle of statecraft upon which we have already laid stress in these papers—that new social classes cannot be suddenly created. But this misconception is bound to correct itself at the first attempt at realization, and so it has none of the importance some frightened magnates may be disposed to give it. The fact—the very valuable and cardinal fact—remains that this group of movements of which Guild Socialism is the most typical is rapidly preparing the minds of large masses of workers for industries upon a national scale, and making the position of the hundred-thousand-pound business even worse than it would otherwise be. We have to allow for prejudice and unreasonableness on both sides of this question. Naturally a popular

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