Kropotkin on the Economy of a Medieval Town
Discussion
Ted Trainer:
"The economy of the medieval town.
The social arrangements and psychological characteristics of a basically capitalist economy outlined above contrast starkly with those of the medieval town economy. A short indication of this illustrates the above points, firstly that there are many forms of economy and secondly that some involve far more admirable values, dispositions and ways than are found in a capitalist economy. Kropotkin’s book Mutual Aid (1902) provides an impressive outline of the functioning of the guilds in medieval societies. There were many kinds of guilds but most were engaged in producing goods and services.
The guild “… had its own self-jurisdiction, its own military force, its own general assemblies, its own traditions of struggles, glory, and independence, its own relations with other guilds of the same trade in other cities …. When the town was called to arms, the guild appeared as a separate company, armed with its own arms … under its own self-elected commanders. It was, in a word, an independent unit of the federation.”
Consider the extreme difference between the mentality that motivated economic activity and ours today. Members were “…driven by a morality quite unlike ours, notably because of the intense sense of camaraderie; the guild (which) considers all its members as brothers and sisters.”
Kropotkin refers to “…the general brotherly feelings … the social duties of the brethren …. If a brother’s house is burned, or he has lost his ship, or has suffered on a pilgrim’s voyage, all the brethren must come to his aid. If a brother falls dangerously ill, two brethren must keep watch by his bed till he is out of danger, and if he dies, the brethren must bury him … and follow him to the church and the grave. After his death they must provide for his children, if necessary; very often the widow becomes a sister to the guild.” “… if a scarcity visited the city, all had to suffer from it more or less; but apart from the calamities, so long as the free cities existed no one could die in their midst from starvation, as is unhappily too often the case in our own times.” “… it was the city itself which used to buy all food supplies for the use of the citizens. … the cargoes of subsistences … were purchased by certain civic officials in the name of the town, and then distributed in shares among the merchant burgesses, no one being allowed to buy wares landed in the port unless the municipal authorities refused to purchase them.”
Kropotkin argues that … “These towns and guilds seem to have constituted a high point in the history of mutuality”, and that “…the freedom from kings and lords that they ensured enabled the flourishing of great architectural and artistic achievement.” In that era and situation ideas, values, dispositions and behaviour were powerfully collectivist. Whatever the drawbacks, if any, of the guild system might have been, it should leave no doubt that economic activity does not have to be driven by the miserably self-centred and greedy individualistic conception of human nature enshrined in conventional economic ideology."