Emil Lederer, Zur Literatur über die englische Gildenbewegung (1923)

Lederer’s review essay examines the romantic strand of English guild socialism through writings by Taylor and Penty published in Otto Eccius’s German series. The series foregrounds a tendency less familiar in Germany than the foundational works of Hobson and Cole. Moving from Taylor’s polemic against industrial civilization to Penty’s economic and moral case against machinery, Lederer tests whether their rejection of modern society can yield a practicable alternative. His central objection is that moral conviction and an idealized past cannot substitute for an account of how production, government, and mass populations would actually be organized.

Taylor’s book impresses Lederer as a witty, forceful attack on the industrial system and the modern state. Yet its persuasive energy repeatedly obscures the factories whose existence any reconstruction must confront. Its ideal of guild society also remains unexamined: Taylor holds up an attractive past without looking behind the scenes of its institutions.

Wenn wir uns aber dem zuwenden, was Taylor selbst propagiert, so sehen wir zunächst, daß sein Weg nicht durch die Tatsachen hindurchgeht.

English translation: But if we turn to what Taylor himself advocates, we see first of all that his path does not lead through the facts.

This methodological criticism governs the review. Against the Marxist principle of accepting historical conditions and seeking a path through them, Taylor rejects industrial modernity in favor of an allegedly natural, modest, concrete life. His human ideal is static and apolitical: work, simple pleasures, and interests confined to a narrow personal world. Lederer does not dismiss the desire to escape political domination; he asks whether that desire can overcome the forces that make history and large-scale organization unavoidable.

Oder ob nicht das Wachstum der modernen Völker in einem früher unbekannten Ausmaße, die Massenhaftigkeit des Lebens an sich schon Organisation bedeutet, die an Genauigkeit, Exaktheit und Intensität notwendig ständig wachsen muß?

English translation: Or whether the growth of the modern peoples to an extent previously unknown, the mass character of life, does not in itself already mean organization, which must of necessity grow constantly in precision, exactness, and intensity?

Lederer thus shifts the explanation of modern institutions away from malicious invention or a corrupted mentality toward population growth and the organizational demands of mass existence. He also reverses Taylor’s causal emphasis: modern organization may help produce the very human type Taylor deplores. The difficulty is therefore not simply to restore better dispositions, but to explain how a different social structure could sustain modern populations. Taylor’s pamphlet remains an accomplished expression of romantic guild socialism, yet lacks the institutional detail required of a proposal for socialized economic organization.

Penty approaches the same romantic position through the currency question and England’s postwar economic vulnerability. As Lederer reconstructs his argument, worldwide industrialization creates sellers without sufficient buyers and deprives England of countries willing to exchange food for manufactures. This diagnosis supports an ideal of autarky and a deeper attack on machinery: machines enslave their operators by demanding continuous employment, even when production becomes pointless. Penty’s remedies include prohibiting machinery, regulating “just” prices by production costs, extensive colonization, and breaking monopolies.

Dabei stützt er sich nicht auf ökonomische Kräfte, sondern auf das moralische Bewußtsein: der Sozialismus ist ihm ein Beweis für die Stärke der moralischen Kräfte, habe er doch die Anschauungen über den Wert des Reichtums grundlegend in wenigen Jahrzehnten geändert.

English translation: In doing so he relies not on economic forces but on the moral consciousness: socialism is for him a proof of the strength of the moral forces, since in a few decades it has fundamentally changed the views held about the value of wealth.

For Lederer, this appeal explains both Penty’s confidence and the incompleteness of his program. The organization of guilds, the dismantling of large enterprises, and the provision for mass populations remain only broadly outlined. Moral transformation is expected to make institutional reconstruction possible.

Es braucht auch von seiner Fragestellung aus im einzelnen nicht erörtert zu werden, weil er zunächst nur den Menschen predigt, anders zu werden, dann werden sie die Welt anders gestalten — genau die entgegengesetzte Position des Marxismus, der die Unterlagen der Welt ändern will, um so einem neuen Menschen Raum in der Welt zu schaffen.

English translation: Nor, proceeding from his own question, need it be discussed in detail, because he first of all merely preaches to men that they should become different, and then they will shape the world differently — exactly the opposite position to that of Marxism, which seeks to change the foundations of the world in order thus to create room in the world for a new man.

The concluding contrast locates the dispute in the direction of social causation: must people change before institutions can change, or must social foundations change to enable different people? The review’s significance lies in distinguishing the ethical force of anti-industrial criticism from its adequacy as a program. Lederer acknowledges romantic guild socialism’s imaginative appeal while demanding that any alternative reckon with material production, demographic scale, and concrete institutions.