The Rural Reconstruction Association ( RRA ) was a British agricultural reform movement established in 1926 with Montague Fordham as its Council Secretary, a post he held for 20 years.
13-504: Influenced by the ideas of guild socialism , the RRA sought for a time the creation of a National Agricultural Guild with land ownership held by land councils who would operate as local sections of the Guild. Its main consistent aims however were to revive agriculture and to decentralise the population of Britain. It sought to standardise prices and produce grading, regulate imports and encourage more of
26-528: A balance between agriculture and industry which, it argued, would benefit both sectors by ending over-reliance on manufacturing. As such, the Agricultural Marketing Act 1931 , Wheat Act 1932 and Agricultural Marketing Act 1933 , all of which moved towards protectionism in agriculture, were seen by the RRA as a vindication of their arguments. Their 1936 document The Revival of Agriculture attacked modern economics whilst praising what they saw as
39-595: A federal body representing the workers’ guilds, consumers’ organizations, local government bodies, and other social structures." Ernst Wigforss —a leading theorist of the Social Democratic Party of Sweden —was also inspired by and stood ideologically close to the ideas of Fabian Society and the guild socialism inspired by people like R. H. Tawney , L.T. Hobhouse and J. A. Hobson . He made contributions in his early writings about industrial democracy and workers' self-management. The theory of guild socialism
52-582: A leading contributor to The New Age , published National Guilds: An Inquiry into the Wage System and the Way Out . In this work, guilds were presented as an alternative to state control of industry or conventional trade union activity. Guilds, unlike the existing trade unions, would not confine their demands to matters of wages and conditions but would seek to obtain control of industry for the workers whom they represented. Ultimately, industrial guilds would serve as
65-502: A more "individualistic" form of guild socialism would be a natural outcome for a united humanity hundreds of years in the future. Cole's ideas were also promoted by prominent anti-authoritarian intellectuals such as the British logician Bertrand Russell , first through his 1918 essay Roads to Freedom. Other thinkers who incorporated Cole's writings on guild socialism include the economist Karl Polanyi , R. H. Tawney , A. R. Orage , and
78-542: The American liberal reformer John Dewey . For scholar Charles Masquelier, "[i]t is by meeting such a twofold requirement that the libertarian socialism of G.D.H. Cole could be said to offer timely and sustainable avenues for the institutionalization of the liberal value of autonomy...By setting out to 'destroy this predominance of economic factors' (Cole 1980, 180) through the re-organization of key spheres of life into forms of associative action and coordination capable of giving
91-537: The Middle Ages . In 1906, Arthur Penty published Restoration of the Gild System in which he opposed factory production and advocated a return to an earlier period of artisanal production organised through guilds. The following year, the journal The New Age became an advocate of guild socialism, although in the context of modern industry rather than the medieval setting favoured by Penty. In 1914, S. G. Hobson ,
104-537: The medium of trade-related guilds "in an implied contractual relationship with the public". It originated in the United Kingdom and was at its most influential in the first quarter of the 20th century. It was strongly associated with G. D. H. Cole and influenced by the ideas of William Morris . Guild socialism was partly inspired by the guilds of craftsmen and other skilled workers which had existed in England in
117-436: The more realistic approach of Elizabethan times, where financiers were servants of producers rather than masters. They argued that this system could be returned by controlling imports and so allowing domestic agricultural produce to reach a higher value. This would mean that banks would be more prepared to advance loans to farmers and would lead to the creation of a system of agricultural credit banks. A revived agricultural sector
130-559: The movement as Jenks, a former member of the British Union of Fascists , was close to the Union Movement . The group enjoyed the support of some leading British figures as Sir George Stapledon and Lord Lymington were amongst the members of its board whilst Lord O'Hagan served as President of the movement for a time. Guild socialism Guild socialism is a political movement advocating workers' control of industry through
143-420: The organs through which industry would be organised in a future socialist society. The guild socialists "stood for state ownership of industry, combined with ‘workers’ control’ through delegation of authority to national guilds organized internally on democratic lines. About the state itself they differed, some believing it would remain more or less in its existing form and others that it would be transformed into
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#1732863372217156-522: Was also presented as being central to national well-being as it would encourage fresh organic produce. The group grew close to the Economic Reform Club and Institute (ECRI) in the 1940s and with the ECRI it produced, between 1944 and 1956, a journal dedicated to the reform of the rural economy edited by Jorian Jenks . Jenks' Rural Economy journal proved the focal point for fascist sympathies within
169-522: Was developed and popularised by G. D. H. Cole who formed the National Guilds League in 1915 and published several books on guild socialism, including Self-Government in Industry (1917) and Guild Socialism Restated (1920). A National Building Guild was established after World War I but collapsed after funding was withdrawn in 1921. The science fiction work of Olaf Stapledon suggested that
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