Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/205

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good deal of discord and friction which might lead to serious economic inefficiency. That is to say, unless the National Guilds representing the producers, and the State representing the consumers, work in complete harmony, the strikes and friction which are so serious a clog on the economic machine under our present system, might be replaced by even more bitter contests, more bitter because they would involve the whole society through its political machinery.

On this subject Mr. Cole does not seem to have thought the matter out very clearly, and here again one must admit that it is no just criticism of National Guildsmen to tell them that they have not got a cut-and-dried scheme to cover every possibility. He tells us (page 86) "that the various Guilds will be unified in a central Guild Congress, which will be the supreme industrial body, standing to the people as producers in the same relation as Parliament will stand to the people as consumers. . . . Neither Parliament nor the Guild Congress can claim to be ultimately sovereign: the one is a supreme territorial association, the other the supreme professional association. In the one because it is primarily concerned with consumption, government is in the hands of the