Guild Socialism and the Historians

Historians have often marginalised or dismissed Guild Socialism, and biographers have underplayed the Guild Socialist commitment of some of its most prominent adherents. This article details the historiographical neglect of Guild Socialism and argues that it has been due not only to the antipathy of historians steeped in the state socialist traditions, but also to the impossibility of placing Guild Socialism within the dominant historiographical paradigms developed by those traditions. The collapse of state socialism in all its forms affords an opportunity to re-examine Guild Socialism, which may yield a fuller historical understanding of the progressive politics of the period, and suggest possible avenues for the development of radical politics in the future.