Before we entered on this study we had probably heard from conversation with its disciples a rough outline of its doctrines—economic freedom to be secured by the abolition of the wage system, every industry to be organized into a great watertight blackleg-proof union including all the workers by hand or brain, the capitalist to be got rid of, the great new unions to be the new Guilds, which were to give the worker freedom, and a new community to be founded on the basis of "organization by function."
From this sketch, which proved on examination to be very near the mark, it appeared that there was much in common between Guild Socialism and Syndicalism, which has hitherto had little support in this country. Concerning it Mr. Snowden tells us, in his book on Socialism and Syndicalism, page 205, that "there is no authoritative and definite statement of its philosophy or its policy or its aims by those who profess to accept it. Syndicalism is one thing according to one of its exponents, and something very different according to another." This of course is inevitable in the case of a new doctrine that is developing itself, and Mr. Snowden was nevertheless able to tell us that Syndicalism "proposes that the control of
