From Corporatism to Workers Control: The Development and Demise of British Guild Socialism

This book provides a history and analysis of how the British guild socialist movement was forged in the heat of labour unrest prior to World War I, the experience of the war and subsequent troubled years, including the impact of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Guild socialism proposed a model of participatory pluralism combining workers’ control of industry with local democracy and a federal coordinating ‘National Commune’. In its time, it generated not only considerable intellectual support and international attention but also internal contradictions and tensions. Its major theorist, G.D.H. Cole, aspired towards a society of direct functional community democracy, rejecting the ideas and practice of a state based on a mass electorate. Based on years of detailed research into the relevant newspapers, magazines and archives, the book shows how Cole developed a utopian social theory which still merits attention today, resonating with contemporary radical ideas and a deepening disillusion with representative democracy.

From Corporatism to Workers’ Control is intended for historians of British politics and intellectual history, political theorists and political philosophers more generally, and a wider audience of advocates and activists around the world interested in the principles and practices of associative pluralist democracy.

Jack Vowles is Professor of Comparative Politics at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington. He recently co-edited the book ‘A Team of Five Million? The 2020 “COVID-19” New Zealand General Election (2024)’ and published the article: Authoritarianism and Mass Political Preferences in Times of COVID19: The 2020 New Zealand General Election (2022).