Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/199

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production shall be exercised by the workers in the various industries—that is, that the railways shall be managed by the railway workers, the mines by the miners, the post office by the postal servants, and so with regard to other industries and services. Syndicalists have now repudiated the claim that these industries shall be owned by the workers in the separate industries. . . . The Syndicalist, like the Anarchist, repudiates the State, and would make the social organization of the future purely an industrial one." As we shall see, it is chiefly in the matter of their attitude to the State that Syndicalism and Guild Socialism differ, since the latter has, apparently, to leave a good deal to the State.

Certain obvious difficulties naturally came into the mind of any one who took a first draught from the Guild Socialist fountain as above described. How, one wondered, could economic freedom be secured for the producer except at the expense of himself as a consumer? And as every one, as a rule, produces one, or a fraction of one, article or service and consumes thousands of them, is the sum total of the, freedom of each likely to be furthered by this process? How are the Guilds to solve the question of value—that is, on what basis are they