A Guildsman's interpretation of history

Front matter

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LIBRARY

Preface

The piimary object of this history is to relate the social problem to the experience of the past and so to help bring about a clearer comprehension of its nature. " The reason," says the author of Erewhon, " why we cannot see the future as plainly as the past is because we know too little of the actual past and the actual present. The future depends upon the present, and the present depends upon the past, and the past is unalterable," It is by studying the past in the light of the experience of the present and the present in the light of the past that we may attain to a fuller understanding both of the present and the past. Certain aspects of industrialism are new to the world, and the past offers us no ready-made solution for them, but to understand them it is necessary to be familiar with Mediaeval principles, for such Mediaeval problems as those of law and currency, of the State and the Guilds, lie behind industrialism and have determined its peculiar development. If we were more familiar with history we should see the problems of industrialism in a truer perspective and would have less disposition to evolve social theories from our inner consciousness. This neglect of the experience of the past is no new thing; it is as old as civilization itself. Thus in criticizing some of the fantastic proposals of Plato for the reorganization of Greek society, Aristotle says : " Let us remember that we should not disregard the experience of the ages ; in the multitude of years, these things, if they were good, would certainly not have been unknown ; for almost everything has been found out, altl^fi)ij;^r^g^times they are not put MARTIN P. CATI^RWOOD LIBRARY

NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL

ELATJONS

6 A Cruildsman's Interpretation of History

together ; in other cases men do not use the knowledge that they have." It would be a mistake to push this idea too far, and refuse to entertain any proposal which could not claim the authority of history, but it would be just as well before embarking on any new enterprise to inquire if history has anything to say about it. If we did we should find that debatable matter was confined within .very narrow Umits, and with minds enriched through the study of history we should not waste so much of our time in fruitless discussion. Above all, we should speedily discover that there is no such thing as a cure-all for social ills. We should become more interested in principles and have less regard for schemes.

Though the Guild theory is ultimately based upon historical considerations, the absence hitherto of a history written from the Guildsman's point of view has been a serious handicap to the movement. Not only has this lack prevented it from giving historical considerations the prominence they deserve, but when Guild ideas are adopted by Socialists who have not been historiced students they are apt to be distorted by the materialist conception of history which lies in the background of the minds of so many. Hence it becomes urgent, if the movement is not to be side-tracked, that Guildsmen should have a history of their own which gathers together information of importance to them. In this volume are gathered together such facts from a himdred volumes, and it is hoped by organizing them into a consistent theory to show not only that history is capable of a very different interpretation from the one that materiaUsts affirm but that the Guild Movement has a definite historical significance. Indeed, we are persuaded that the success which has followed its propaganda is ultimately due to the fact that it has such a significance.

That the materialist conception of history is a one-sided and distorted conception, all students of history who are not materialists by temperament are well aware. It is made plausible by isolating a single factor in history and

Preface 7

ignoring other factors. The theory of the Class War is as grotesque and false an explanation of the history of society as a history of marriage would be that was built up from the records of Divorce Courts, which carefully took note of all the unhappy marriages and denied the existence of happy ones because they were not supported by documentary evidence. The heresies of Marx stand on precisely such a footing. They are false, not because of what they say, but because of what they leave unsaid. Such theories gain credence to-day because capitaUsm has undermined all the great traditions of the past, and thus emptied hfe of its contents. It is true that by the light of the materialist conception considerable patches of history, including the history of the present day, may be explained. It is true of the later history of Greece and Rome as of Europe after the Reformation ; for in the decHne of all civiUzations the material factor comes to predominate. But as an explanation of history as a whole and of the Mediaeval period in particular it is most demonstrably false, and only ignorance, if not the deUberate falsification in the past, of Mediaeval history could have made such an explanation plausible. It is important that this should be recognized, not merely because it is an injustice to the past to have its reaUty distorted, but because of its reaction upon the mind of to-day. It makes all the difference to our thinking about the problems of the present day whether we beUeve modem society has developed from a social system which was inhuman and based upon class t5n:anny, in which ignorance and superstition prevailed, or from one which enjoyed freedom and understood the nature of liberty in its widest and most philosophic sense.

If a man believes that society in the past was based upon class tyranny he will see everything in an inverted perspective, he will be predisposed to support all the forces of social disintegration which masquerade under the name of " progress " because he will view with suspicion all traditions which have survived from the past and have a prejudice against all normal forms of social organization. If it be true that the Middle Ages was a time of tyranny, ignorance and superstition, then to a logically minded person it naturally follows that the emancipation of the people is bound up with the destruction of such traditions as have survived, for to such a mind tradition and tyranny become synonymous terms. But if, on the contrary, he knows that such was not the case, that the Middle Ages was an age of real enUghtermient, he will not be so readily deceived. He will know how to estimate at their proper value the movements he sees around him, and not be so disposed to place his faith in quack remedies, for he will know that for the masses the transition from the Middle Ages has not been one from bondage to freedom, from poverty to well-being, but from security to insecurity, from status to wage-slavery, from well-being to poverty. He will know, moreover, that the Servile State is not a new menace, but that it has been extending its tentacles ever since the days when Roman Law was revived.

Looked at from this point of view, the materialist conception of history, with its prejudice against Mediaevalism, is a useful doctrine for the purposes of destropng existing society, but must prevent the arrival of a new one. I feel fairly safe in affirming this, because Marx's forecasts of the future are in these days being falsified. Up to a certain point Marx was right. He foresaw that the trend of things would be for industry to get into fewer and fewer hands, but it cannot be claimed that the deductions he made from this forecast are proving to be correct, for he did not foresee this war. The circumstance that Marx gave it as his opinion that the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine by Germany would lead in fifty years' time to a great European war does not acquit him, since the war that he foresaw was a war of revenge in which France was to be the aggressor and had nothing whatsoever to do with industrial development, which this one certainly had. Not having foreseen

Preface 9

this war, Marx did not foresee the anti-climax in which the present system seems destined to end. And this is fatal to the whole social theory, because it brings to the light of day a weakness which runs through all his theory — his inability to understand the moral factor and hence to make allowances for it in his theories. Marx saw the material forces at work in society up to a certain point very clearly, and from this point of view he is worthy of study. But he never understood that this was only one half of the problem and finally the less important half. For along with all material change there go psychological changes ; and these he entirely ignores. In the case in question Marx failed to foresee that the growth of the pressure of competition would be accompanied by an increase in national jealousies. On the contrary, he tells us in the Communist Manifesto (written in 1847) that national antagonisms are steadily to diminish. But if he misjudged national — I might almost say industrial — psychology on this most fundamental point, it demonstrates that for practical purposes Marx and his materialist conception of history are anything but an infalUble guide. And so we are led to inquire whether, if Marx, owing to his neglect of psychology, proved to be wrong on this issue, he may not be equally untrustworthy in other directions ; whether, in fact, the anti-cUmax which has overtaken national relationships may not likewise take place in industry ; whether the process of industrial centralization which Marx foresaw is not being accompanied by internal disintegration, and whether the issue of it all is to be his proletarian industralized State or a relapse into social anarchy. Such, indeed, does appear to me to be the normal trend of economic development ; for when everything but economic considerations have been excluded from life — and the development of industrialism tends to exclude everything else — men tend naturally to quarrel, because there is nothing positive left to bind men together in a communal life. Looking at history from this point

10 A Guildsman's Intetpretation of History

of view, it may be said that if Marx's view is correct, and if exploitation has played the part in history which he affirms it has, then, frankly, I do not see how civilization ever came into existence. We know that exploitation is breaking civilisation up ; we may be equally sure it did not create it. Moreover, it leaves us with no hope for the future. For if it be true that the history of civilization is merely the history of class struggles, what reason is there to suppose that with the end of the reign of capitalism class struggle will come to an end ? May it not merely change its form ? The experience of the Bolshevik regime in Russia would appear to suggest such a continuation.

It remains for me to thank Mr. J. Pla, Mr. M. B. Reckitt, Mr. G. R. S. Taylor, Mr. L. Ward and Mr. C. White for the interesting material they so generously placed at my disposal, and the Editor of the New Age for permission to reprint such chapters and parts of chapters as appeared in his journal.

A. J. P.

66, Strand on Grbzn. W. 4.

September 1919.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. GREECE AND ROME

II. CHRISTIANITY AND THE GUILDS

Chapter I

The first fact in history which has significance for Guildsmen .|s that of the introduction of currency, which took place in the seventh century before Christ when the Lydian kings introduced stamped metal bars of fixed weight as a medium of exchange. In the course of a generation or two this uniform measure entirely replaced the bars of unfixed weight which the Greeks had made use of when exchange was not by barter. It was a simple device from which no social change was expected, but the development which followed upon it was simply stupendous. Civihzation — that is, the development of the material accessories of life, may be said to date from that simple invention, for by faciUtating exchange it made foreign trade, differentiation of occupation and speciahzation on the crafts and arts possible. But along with the undoubted advantages which a fixed currency brought with it there came an evil unknown to primitive society — the economic problem ; for the introduction of currency created an economic revolution, comparable only to that which followed the invention of the steam engine in more recent times, by completely undermining the communist base of the Mediterranean societies. " We can watch it in Greece, in Palestine and in Italy, and see the temper of the sufferers reflected in Hesiod and Theognis, Amos and Hosea, and in the legends of early Rome."

The progress of economic individualism soon divided

14 A GuildsmavCs Interpretation of History

Greek society into two distinct and hostile classes — the prosperous landowners, the merchants and money-lending class on the one hand, and the peasantry and the debt-slaves on the other. Hitherto no one had ever thought of claiming private property in land. It had never been treated as a commodity to be bought and sold. The man who tilled the soil thought of it as belonging to the family, to his ancestors and descendants as much as to himself. But within a generation or two after the introduction of currency the peasantry everywhere began to find themselves in need of money, and they found that it could be borrowed by pledging their holdings as security for loans. It was thus that private property in land first came into existence. Land tended to pass into the hands of the Eupatrid by default. For lean years have a way of running in cycles, and at such times the " haves " can take advantage of the necessities of the "have-nots."'

The reason for these developments is not far to seek. So long as exchange was carried on by barter, a natural limit was placed to the development of trade, because people would only exchange for their own personel use. Exchange would only be possible when each party to the bargain possessed articles which the other wanted. But with the introduction of currency this limitation was removed, and for the first time in history there came into existence a class of men who bought and sold entirely for the purposes of gain. These middlemen or merchants became specialists in finance. They knew better than the peasantry the market value of things, and so found little difficulty in taking advantage of them. Little by little they became wealthy and the peasantry their debtors. It is the same story wherever currency is unregulated — the distributor enslaves the producer. So it is not surprising that the Greeks always maintained a certain prejudice against all occupations connected with bujdng and seUing, which they held were of a degrading, nature. For though it is manifest that society cannot get along without traders, it is imperative for the well-being of society that they do not exercise too much power. The Greeks found by experience that such

< See The Greek Commonwealth, hy Miied Zaamem, pp. 1 10-14.

men were no better than they ought to be and that the association of trading with money-making reflected itself in their outlook on life, leading them eventually to suppose that everything could be bought and that there was nothing too great to be expressed in terms of money.'

Though the Greeks thought much about the problem which had followed the introduction of currency, to the end it eluded the efforts of their lawgivers and statesmen to solve it, and mankind had to wait until the coming of MediaevaUsm before a solution was forthcoming. Then the Guilds solved the problem by restricting currency to its legitimate use as a medium of exchange by means of fixing prices. Plato, it is true, anticipated the Mediaeval solution. In Laws (917) he actually forbids bargaining and insists upon fixed prices. But nothing came of his suggestion. Perhaps it was too late in the day to give practical application to such a principle. For Plato wrote in the period following the Peloponnesian War when profiteering was rampant, and a restoration of the communal spirit to society, such as followed the rise of Christianity, was necessary before such a measure could be apphed. Hence it was that Aristotle reverted to the principle of Solon that the cultivation of good habits must accompany the promulgation of good laws.

AU the early Greek lawgivers who attempted to solve the economic problem which currency had introduced sought the solution not along Guild lines, by seeking to restrict currency to its legitimate use as a medium of exchange, but by restricting the use of wealth. Lycurgus preserves the communal hfe of Sparta for centuries against disruption on the one hand by inducing his fellow-citizens to resume the habits of their forefathers, to sacrifice all artificial distinctions, \mder the rigid but equal discipUne of a camp which included among other things the taking of meals in common, and on the other by enforcing a division of the lands equally among the famiUes and by the institution of a currency deUberately created to restrict business operations within the narrowest limits. It took the form of bundles of iron bars, and it appears to have elnswered the

I See The Greek Commonwealth, by Alfred Zimmem, p. 274.

purpose for which it was designed very well, for the Spartans never became a commercial nation.

This state of things continued down to the Peloponnesian War, when the Spartans, finding themselves at a disadvantage with Athens, inasmuch as without coined money they could have no fleet, departed from the law of Lycurgus. About the same time they threw over their system of land tenure. Continual warfare reduced the number of Spartans, and the accumulation of several estates in one family created disproportionate wealth, a tendency which was facilitated by a law promoted by the Ephor Epitadeus who granted liberty to bequeath property. Thus it came to pass that instead of the 9,000 property-owning Spartans mentioned in the regislation of Lycurgus, their numbers were reduced to 600, of whom only 100 were in full enjoyment of all civil rights. Naturally such economic inequalities broke up the communal Ufe. The poorer citizens found themselves excluded from the active exercise of their civil rights, and could not keep pace with the rich in their mode of living, nor fulfil the indispensable conditions which had been imposed by Lycurgus upon every Spartan citizen.

\ In Attica the problem was faced in a different way. Lycurgus' solution consisted not merely in putting the clock back, as such measures would be called in these days, but by causing the clock to stand still. His solution was a democratic one in so far as democracy is possible among a slave-owning people. But Solon in Attica sought a remedy along different lines. He accepted currency and the social changes which came with it, and substituted property for birth as the standard for determining the rights and duties of the citizens. He divided them into four classes, which were distinguished from each other by their mode of miUtary service and the proportion of their incomes which was paid in taxation. The lowest class paid no taxes at all, were excluded from public offices, hut were allowed to take part in the popular assembly as well as in the courts in which justice was administered by the people. Like Lycurgus, he sought to redress the inequalities of wealth, but, unlike him, he sought a solution, not in the enforcement of a rigid discipline upon the citizens, but by removing the temptation to accumulate wealth. This was the object of his sumptuary laws, which were designed to make the rich and poor look as much ahke as possible, in order to promote a democracy of personal habits if not of income. But though he did not put the clock back as far as Lycurgus," he did put it back to the extent of giving things in many directions a fresh start. It was for this purpose that he cancelled the debts of the peasantry and effected a redistribution of property, re-estabhshing the farmers on their ancestral holdings. Though he failed to restrain usury, he sought to mitigate to some extent its hardships by forbidding men to borrow money on the security of their persons, while he took steps to redeem those defaulting debtors who had been sold into slavery by their creditors, using any pubUc or private funds he could secure for the purpose ; while, further, he allowed the Athenians to leave their money to whom they liked provided there were no legitimate male heirs. These reforms, together with certain changes in the juridical admitiistration, were the most important of Solon's laws. He refused the supreme position in the State, and after making his laws he went abroad for ten years to give his constitution a fair trial. When he returned he found his juridical reforms were very successful, but the economic troubles, though they had been allayed, had not been eradicated. The peasants had been put back on their holdings, but they had no capital and could not borrow money. They did not blame Solon for his laws, but the magistrates for the way they were administered. The State became divided into three hostile parties — the men of the Shore, of the Plain, and of the Mountains — each prepared to fight for its own economic and territorial interests.

Fortunately at this crisis a man arose capable of handling the situation. Pisistratus, who led the mountaineers, was not only a man of statesmanhke quahties, but a noted soldier and a man of large private means, and after some vicissitudes he succeeded in making himself absolute master of the country. When in power he found a remedy for the shortage of capital among the peasants, which was the source of their economic difficulty, by advancing to them capital out of his own private fortune. This provided them with a nest-egg which enabled them to tide over the lean years, or while their trees were growing to maturity. Their troubles were now at an end, and we hear no more about the land question until the Spartans, towards the close of the Peloponnesian War, came and ruined the cultivation.

Meanwhile, as a . consequence of the development of foreign trade, Athens became a maritime, commercial and industrial city in which stock-jobbing, lending at usury, and every form X)f financial speculation broke loose. This led to the division of the social body into two distinct and hostile factions — a minority which possessed most of the capital and whose chief concern was its increase, and a mass of proletarians who were filled with enmity towards this aristocracy of finance, which began to monopoUze all poUtical power. It was thus that the religious aristocracy which for so long a period had governed Greece was superseded by a plutocracy whose triumph Solon had unconsciously prepared when he took income as a basis for the division of the classes. During the Peloponnesian War the plutocracy became very unpopular — presumably for profiteering, to which wars give every opportunity — and in Samos, Messenia and IVtegara the people, tired of economic subjection, revolted, slew the rich, did away with all taxes, and confiscated and divided landed property. The war entirely undermined all stability in the Greek States, leaving behind it as a heritage an unemployed class of soldiers and rowers which the social system was powerless to absorb. They became a constant source of trouble, and from the Peloponnesian War until the Roman Conquest " the cities of Greece wavered between two revolutions ; one that despoiled the rich, and another that reinstated them in the possession of their fortunes." It was in order to find a solution for this unemployed problem that Alexander the Great, at the recommendation of Isocrates, undertook the conquest of Asia and planted unemployed farm colonies of Greeks as far East as Cabul.'

Reading Greek history reminds us of the fact that the

Class War is not a doctrine pecuUar to the present age. But

it is interesting to observe that it entirely failed to effect

a solution of the economic problem which distracted Greece.

I Zimmem, p. 263.

Unregulated currency having given rise to economic individualism and destroyed the common ownership of property, the solidarity of society slowly fell to pieces. It had under-t mined aUke the independence of the peasantry and the old reUgious aristocracy which had hitherto governed Greece, and had concentrated power entirely in the hands ' of a plutocracy which, like all plutocracies, was blind to everything except its own immediate interests. It was thus that Greek sotiety, from being united, became div Jed into two distinct and hostile classes in which the possibility of revolution became an ever-present contingency, "l^e frequent revolutions excited by the abuse of power of the plutocracy led to the thinning of the agricultural population and the misery of the inhabitants, and prepared the people to suffer without resistance— nay, perhaps to welcome the Roman invasion and conquest.

Uncontrolled currency brought the same evils into existence in Rome, where the concentration of capital in the hands of a few and its accompanying abuses developed to a greater extent and far more rapidly than in Greece, once they got under way. That they developed much more slowly in the first instance was perhaps due to the fact that whereas capitaUsm in Athens was a consequence of foreign trade, in Rome it was intimately connected with the growth of miUtarism. This difference is in all respects parallel to the difference in modern times between capitalist development in England and Germany. For while in Greece, as in England, the development of capitaUsm was a private affair due to the initiative and enterprise of individual traders, in Rome, as in Germany, it was closely associated with the poljcy of the Government.

Rome was originally a small agricultural state governed by an aristocracy in which the Patrons and Clients, as the two classes of society were called, bore much the same relation to each other as the lord and serf of feudal times. The Patrons or Patricians, as they were called at a later date, were expected by law and custom to defend the CUents from all wrong or oppression on the part of others, while the Clients were bound to render certain services to the Patrons. Just as the spread of currency undermined the personal relationship existing between the lord and the serf in the Middle Ages, substituting money payments for pa3maents in kind, so it may be assumed that the relationship of the Patrons and Clients in the early days of Rome was transforined by means of the same agency, for it was about the time pf the spread of currency among the Mediterranean communities that a new order of things began to come into existence, when the hitherto harmonious relationship existing between the Patrons and Clients was replaced by one of personal bitterness. The bone of contention was the severity of the law against debtors whereby the defaulting debtor became the slave of the creditor, and as the debtor in nearly all cases was a Client, it created bad feeling between the two classes.

The unpopularity of this law against debtors led to its abolition after the fall of the Decemvirate in the fifth century before Christ. Interest on loans was Hmited to 10 per cent, and later to 5 per cent., while an attempt was made to abohsh usury altogether. But the laws to aboUsh it proved ineffectual. Needy borrowers resorted to usurious lenders, who took good care that repayment was made one way or another. The Patricians appear to have become very grasping and tyrannical, for we read of a series of social disturbances between them and the peasantry over the questipn of debts and the unwillingness of the Patricians to aUow the peasantry to have small holdings of their own. These disturbances were at length brought to an end in the year 286 B.C., when the poorer citizens left Rome in a body, out of protest, and encamped in an oak wood upon the Janiculum. To appease this secession they were granted 14 jugera (about 9 acres) of land each and their debts reduced. For a hundred and fifty years from this date until the appearance of the Gracchi we hear no more of civil dissensions in Rome.

The great change which transformed Rome from an aristocratic and agricultural society into a capitalistic and mihtary one came about as a result of the Punic Wars. Italy was left in a state of economic distress and confusion, and the Romans were led to embark on a career of conquest abroad in order to avoid troubles at home. Moreover, the Punic Wars completely transformed the Roman character. From being a community of hardy, thrifty, self-denying and reUgious people they became avaricious, spendthrift and hcentious. The immediate effect of these wars was to depopulate rural Italy, for the substantial burgesses of the towns and the stout yeomen' of the country fell in great numbers during these wars. To this evil must be added the further one that when the campaigns were over and the soldiers returned home they had often contracted licentious tastes and formed irregular habits which were ill suited to the frugal life of the Itahan husbandman. So it came about that many who possessed small estates were eager to sell them in order that they might enjoy the irregular pleasures of the city, while those who possessed nothing also tended to gravitate there. Thus a flood Of emigration took place from the country to the towns. The countryside became more and more depopulated, while the towns, and Rome most of all, swarmed with needy and reckless men ready for any outrage.