Guild and State examines the values of social solidarity and
fraternity that emerged from medieval guilds and city-communes, and
the effect of traditional corporate organization of labor on
socioeconomic attitudes and theories or the state. What ordinary
guildsmen and townsmen thought about these issues can be gleaned
from chronicles, charters, and reported slogans. But in tracing
attitudes toward the guilds of early Germanic times to today's
equivalent -- trade unions -- a distinction must be made between
popular "ethos" and learned "philosophy."
In Europe, from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries, the
corporate organization of labor and of town-market communities
developed side-by-side with the ideals of personal liberty, market
freedom, and legal equality. Both affected the ideology of the
European commune and city-state in specific and discernible ways.
Self-governing labor organizations and civil freedom developed
together as coherent practices. The values of mutual aid and craft
honor on the one hand, and of personal freedom and legal equality
on the other, formed the moral infrastructure of our civilization.
Alternate ideals balanced, harmonized, and even cross-fertilized
one another -- as in the principle of freedom of association.
Contrary to preconceptions, however, corporate values were
seldom expressed philosophically in the Middle Ages. Political
theory and the world of learning from the start emphasized liberal
values. It was only after the Reformation that guild and communal
values found expression in political theory. Even then only a few
philosophers acknowledged that solidarity and exchange -- the poles
around which the values of guild and civil society,respectively,
rotate -- are not opposites but complementary, and attempted to
weave these together into a texture as tough and complex as that of
urban society itself.
The Enlightenment and industrialization led to an apotheosis of
liberal values. Guilds disappeared and were only in part replaced
by labor unions; the values of market exchange have since been in
the ascendant -- though Hegel, Durkheim, and more recently,
advocates of liberal corporatism maintain the possibility of a
symbiosis between corporate and liberal values. In Guild and State
there emerges an alternative history of political thought, which
will be fascinating to the general as well as the specialist
reader.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
