Guilds

Description

"Guild refers to various self-determining circles of trust and merit in professional and socio-cultural domains. Membership is contingent on specific training or apprenticeship processes and testing, to ensure transmission of a body of knowledge and standards of practice. Guilds increased the reliability of fair exchange in contracts for goods or service by asserting high standards of workmanship and holding to an engrained moral "peer pressure" for integrity and honorability. As a scalable "community of practice" the guild system helped to spread, evolve, and maintain advanced productive skill-sets while upholding traditions and characteristics of localities and specialties. There was often an element of enforced "trade secrecy" within a guild membership to secure valuable know-how, and this tendency toward enclosure of knowledge commons contributed to a loss of ground and stature in the face of free-trade capitalism and intellectual property legislation."

Characteristics

From Nathan Schneider, from the Wikipedia:

• A largely urban phenomenon, the controlling forces in many cities; those not governed by guilds were termed “free” cities

• The word “guild” derives from “the gold deposited in their common funds”

• “predecessors of the modern patent and trademark system”

• “The guilds also maintained funds in order to support infirm or elderly members, as well as widows and orphans of guild members, funeral benefits, and a 'tramping' allowance for those needing to travel to find work.”

• “Journeymen were able to work for other masters, unlike apprentices, and generally paid by the day and were thus day labourers” - their traveling was a means of spreading innovations across Europe

• “Two of the most outspoken critics of the guild system were Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith, and all over Europe a tendency to oppose government control over trades in favour of laissez-faire free market systems was growing rapidly and making its way into the political and legal system. The French Revolution saw guilds as a last remnant of feudalism.” - “Karl Marx in his Communist Manifesto also criticized the guild system for its rigid gradation of social rank and the relation of oppressor/oppressed entailed by this system.”

• “Guilds were more like cartels than they were like trade unions”

• “Thomas W. Malone of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology champions a modern variant of the guild structure for modern “e-lancers”, professionals who do mostly telework for multiple employers.”

• “Groups called guilds exist in online communities such as massively multiplayer online games.”

Progression of members

1. Apprentice
2. Journeyman / Fellow
3. Master

on wikipedia:guild

Discussion

from David de Ugarte:

Criticism: [guilds] were an impediment to the development of the freedom of movement and the homogenisation of the workforce required for the success of industrialisation.

Every guild was really a knowledge community. The entire structure of the community revolved around knowledge transmission. That knowledge was partly technical and specialised, but it was also linked to a particular work ethic, to the construction of a moral discourse from the symbolism of tools and daily life.

Initiation ceremonies of weavers, dyers, stonemasons and blacksmiths in British guilds...were still being performed in the 20th century. The apprentice was identified by the object and tools of his profession, which was represented in the manner of a psychodrama, e.g. by means of a piece of iron being forged, a stone being struck for the first time, or a canvas about to be painted.

Apprentices were not regarded as part of the profession. Only the passage from apprenticeship to fellowship – with the experience of fraternity evoked by the very term – allowed the neophyte to become part of the community. Whereas an apprentice was taught the use of tools and was told about the guild history and myths, a fellow was expected to contribute in a practical way. And in the case of stonemasons, for whom mathematics was a fundamental part of guild knowledge, geometrical demonstrations were also expected, such as the famous "five points of fellowship", which were used to calculate the central point in the layout of a building to be raised.

Itinerancy: When an apprentice was being trained but couldn't be guaranteed a job, instead of being incorporated as a fellow, he was invited to travel, visiting different workshops, for some time. Workshops with pending orders would temporarily accept him, and continue his training while learning new techniques from him. At the end of the itinerancy apprentices would become fellows in their original workshop or else in a workshop sprung from it. This system not only served to optimise workforce distribution, but also to spread innovations within the same guild, homogenising the "state of the art".

Likewise, limiting the maximum number of masters in a given workshop encouraged the geographic spread of the guild, in the same way as the right to segregation previously discussed nowadays encourages sectorial expansion from an economically democratic business.

The statutes and texts of the guilds were a natural mingling of practical questions, such as salaries, with specialised technical knowledge and moral metaphors constructed from daily practice.

Nowadays "professional" does not make us think of someone who has a job linked to a specific group knowledge which he or she has accessed by taking certain vows and undergoing a personal / moral transformation. But it is crucial to understand the logic of social cohesion in the Old Regime. That cohesion logic constituted a clear impediment to the development of the industrial, national world. The identities generated by the guild tradition were dense and inhabited a universe of full meanings and a real community logic which would not take easily to a flat world of abstract markets and homogenisation.

Source: the book, Phyles: Economic Democracy in the Network Century. by David de Ugarte (http://deugarte.com/gomi/phyles.pdf)

Reference: Jorge Francisco Ferro, La masonería operativa, Kier, Buenos Aires, 2008.

Should we re-invent guilds for the 21st century?

Thomas Malone:

"One particularly promising new approach has emerged from our work in MIT's initiative on "Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century. This approach no longer relies exclusively on the "usual suspects of the industrial era -- employers and government -- to provide the benefits associated with a traditional job.

Instead, it relies on a rich ecology of other organizations to look after the needs of mobile workers as they move from assignment to assignment. We call these other organizations "guilds by analogy to the craft associations of the Middle Ages.

Medieval guilds grew out of tradesman's fraternities and mutual assistance clubs. Guilds trained apprentices and helped them find work. They cemented social bonds; guild members worshipped together and marched as a group in town pageants. They also offered loans and schooling, and if misfortune struck, provided an income for members' families.

Existing organizations perform some of these functions today. As much as 30 percent of the base pay of Screen Actors Guild members goes to the benefits fund; in return, members get health benefits, generous pensions and access to professional development programs.

Imagine an extended version of this where members paid a fraction of their income to the guild in the good times in return for a guaranteed minimum income in the bad times. This is a form of unemployment insurance, but with an important difference. Guild members would have an incentive to help their counterparts find work, assisting them to gain skills needed to be productive, exerting social pressure on members they felt weren't trying.

Guilds could also provide places, physical and electronic, for learning and socializing with colleagues. And membership might give people the sense of identity that many of us get today from positions in large organizations. Indeed, in many cases, guilds might replace the employer as the organization to which workers feel the strongest loyalty.

A variety of existing organizations already fill some of these roles and could form the seeds for more comprehensive guilds. For example, many professional societies already offer their members insurance plans, training and opportunities to socialize. And labor unions have long provided portable benefits for workers in industries, like construction and entertainment, where workers move frequently from one employer to the next.

Both unions and professional societies have significant opportunities to increase the range of services they provide and thus become even more important in the future than they are today. Unlike today's unions, however, the guilds of the future need not hold monopoly control over a profession or occupational group. Instead, multiple guilds may often compete to provide the best services at the best price for the same group of workers.

Another promising source for guilds of the future are temporary staffing firms, which offer benefits to temporary workers that resemble those provided by traditional employers: vacation and sick pay, health insurance and pensions, training, career assistance, even stock options.

New organizations could also grow into guilds of the future. For example, Working Today, a New York-based nonprofit, provides low-cost health insurance and a variety of other services to freelance technology workers in Manhattan's Silicon Alley. Today's flexible economy is far more productive and innovative than its plodding counterpart of a generation ago. For workers to enjoy fully the opportunities this new economy presents, they will require institutions to help blunt the greater risks they face.

Guilds represent a promising approach -- applicable today, adaptable for the future -- to meet workers' needs in an increasingly dynamic American economy." (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2000/oped-1004.html)

"This piece by Thomas Malone, the Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Information Systems and director of the Center for Coordination Science at the Sloan School of Management, and Sloan School Research Associate Robert Laubacher originally appeared in the Boston Globe on August 24, 2000." (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2000/oped-1004.html)

P2P Guilds instead of Phyles?

Poor Richard:

"Various authors have suggested the concept of “phyles” or “tribes” for characterizing horizontal organizational structures in p2p culture. See for example the Las Indias cooperative movement. (p2pfoundation.net)

I am not opposed to these , and in the end it is important for peer groups to self-identify with the descriptions they prefer; but I think I prefer the idea of confederated GUILDS and LEAGUES, and perhaps I can make an argument for these terms that will be persuasive to some.

A guild can function just as envisioned for a phyle (from Greek phulē — tribe, clan) but does not carry the same connotation as a tribe, clan, or phyle of having a primary basis in familial kinship, nor the historical reputation (in certain cases) of rebellion against central authority. The subtle but important difference is that a guild is all about practical know-how and about taking care of business– not about ideology or revolution (eh, at least on the surface…).

Typically a guild (German: Gilde) is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade. In the most general sense a guild is simply an organization of persons (peers) with related interests, goals, etc., especially one formed for mutual aid or protection. Historically guilds were any of various medieval associations, as of merchants or artisans, organized to maintain standards and to protect the interests of their members.

- “The earliest types of guild were formed as confraternities of workers. They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel, and a secret society. They often depended on grants of letters patent by a monarch or other authority to enforce the flow of trade to their self-employed members, and to retain ownership of tools and the supply of materials. A lasting legacy of traditional guilds are the guildhalls constructed and used as meeting places.

- “An important result of the guild framework was the emergence of universities at Bologna, Paris, and Oxford around the year 1200; they originated as guilds of students as at

One point on which I think guilds differ from Las Indias’ conception of phyles (“In Phyles, Community precedes Enterprise” -David Uguarte) is that for guilds, community and enterprise are two sides of one coin. I think this fits well with p2p culture while also being relatively non-confrontational with mainstream corporate/capitalist norms. The ability of guilds and leagues (such as the League of Women Voters) to present a relatively “normal” outward face, may have occasional tactical advantages.

According to Phil Jones,

- “One issue people have with the traditional Guild is that Guilds are demarcated by profession. They aren’t a grouping that implies a multidisciplinary team. Guilds are great for teaching, accrediting and providing a retirement policy but aren’t self-sufficient or “closed” economic loops.”

Guilds, phyles, tribes, etc. . . .each has extensive variation and we can pick and choose features of one or all and remix to suit our purposes. However, I think that overall, p2p relations have more to do with behavior and knowledge than with kinship. Guilds in the form of trade unions and academic institutions also have a rich history of confederation across multiple disciplines and locations, making the guild, IMO, a more appropriate basic raw material to further hack, improvise, and remix.

Michel Bauwens notes that “for lasindias, guilds can be phyles and are in fact the historical example for it .. the Venetian and Florentine guild councils, who originally ruled the cities, had international structures to support themselves, with halfway houses etc … The Hanseatic League is an interesting example. It never did have a constitution or formal membership as far as I know. Cities, guilds and towns just identified with it and co-operated in respect of matters of common interest, like suppressing piracy.”

Another interesting example is the Iroquois League:

- “The Iroquois League, historically the Iroquois Confederacy, is a group of Native Americans (in what is now the United States) and First Nations (in what is now Canada) that consists of six nations: the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, the Seneca and the Tuscarora. The Iroquois (also known as the Haudenosaunee or the “People of the Longhouse) have a representative government known as the Grand Council. The Grand Council is the oldest governmental institution still maintaining its original form in North America. The League has been functioning since prior to major European contact. Each tribe sends chiefs to act as representatives and make decisions for the whole nation.” (Wikipedia)

Anyway, I like many (if not all) of the characteristics of leagues and guilds, and I like the anachronistic romance of the words. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Justice League of America. . . these could become the League of Extraordinary Peers and the P2P Justice League. Steal This Film is a film series documenting the movement against intellectual property that was produced by The League of Noble Peers.

We could also have P2P Makers Guilds, P2P Designers Guilds, P2P Programmers Guilds, and P2P Privacy Guilds. Such guilds would not be organizational stovepipes. Peers could affirm their interests and expertise by membership in as many guilds as they may qualify for.

Interestingly, many players of computer and video games have become familiar with guilds and their popularity continues to increase. “In computer and video gaming, a … guild is an organized group of players that regularly play together in a particular (or various) multiplayer games. These games range from groups of a few friends to 1000-person organizations, with a broad range of structures, goals and members… Numerous [guilds] exist for nearly every online game available today” (Wikipedia) In some cases the guilds are internal to the game play and sometimes they are external. Some gaming guilds have their own web sites. I don’t know if these gaming guilders are learning good guilding habits or bad ones from the perspective of p2p culture. My distance from the gaming community has obscured this information from me.

In any case, such guilds and leagues as may be created in the service of p2p culture will be able to confederate in any number of flexible ways. So too can those peer groups who, despite my valiant efforts of persuasion, prefer to call themselves phyles, tribes, clans, pods, schools, gaggles, or ganfaloons…

In many cases peers will be able to join multiple guilds, leagues, phyles, etc. as appropriate to their interests and skills. In p2p culture most such groups, despite their other characteristics, will tend to be the peers of each other and will tend to practice the same cooperative individualism or cooperative autonomy that pertains amongst individual people peers. This will make a flexible and resilient network of peers and peer groups spanning local, regional, national and global topologies." (http://almanac2010.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/guilding-the-lilly/)

More Information

some material on guilds from the wiki:

1. http://p2pfoundation.net/Guilds ;
2. http://p2pfoundation.net/Virtual_Guilds ; http://p2pfoundation.net/Virtual_Guilds_and_the_Future_of_Craft ;
3. http://p2pfoundation.net/Guild_System ;
4. http://p2pfoundation.net/Open_Guild ;
5. http://p2pfoundation.net/Distributist_Proposals_for_a_New_Guild_System ;
6. http://p2pfoundation.net/Proposal_for_a_Guild-Based_Business_and_Governance_System_for_the_P2P_Economy ;
7. http://p2pfoundation.net/Restoration_of_the_Guild_System

Essay: From Medieval Guilds to Open Source Software: Informal Norms, Appropriability Institutions, and Innovation

by Robert P. Merges , University of California, Berkeley - School of Law, November 13, 2004

Abstract: This essay draws on recent scholarship concerning the nature and function of medieval guilds. I argue that certain features of these guilds appear in modern institutions that further collective invention ("appropriability institutions"): patent pools, industry-wide standard-setting organizations, informal knowledge exchange among academic scientists, and (in a more limited way) open source software development. In particular, guilds and modern institutions share three features: (1) an "appropriability structure" that makes it profitable for individual entities to develop new technologies and sometimes share them; (2) reliance on group norms, as opposed to formal legal enactments, as an enforcement mechanism; and (3) a balance of competition and cooperation which determines what information is to be shared with the group, and what (if any) individual-proprietary information is not. The current trend toward greater dispersal and atomization of economic activity may increase the importance of such interfirm appropriability institutions.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=661543

Books

• Guilds, Innovation, and the European Economy‎‎
• Wage Labor and Guilds in Medieval Europe‎‎