It runs the police.
It makes whatever laws are necessary to regulate personal conduct and
personal property.
These powers are exercised not by one commune, but by a federal
structure of local and provincial communes with a National commune at
the top. Mr. Cole is, of course, welcome to insist that this is not a
sovereign state, but if there is a coercive power now enjoyed by any
modern government for which he has forgotten to make room, I cannot
think of it.
He tells us, however, that Guild society will be non-coercive: "we
want to build a new society which will be conceived in the spirit, not
of coercion, but of free service." [Footnote: _Op. cit._, p.
141.] Everyone who shares that hope, as most men and women do, will
therefore look closely to see what there is in the Guild Socialist
plan which promises to reduce coercion to its lowest limits, even
though the Guildsmen of to-day have already reserved for their
communes the widest kind of coercive power. It is acknowledged at once
that the new society cannot be brought into existence by universal
consent. Mr. Cole is too honest to shirk the element of force required
to make the transition. [Footnote: _Cf. op. cit._, Ch. X. ] And
while obviously he cannot predict how much civil war there might be,
he is quite clear that there would have to be a period of direct
action by the trade unions.
3
But leaving aside the problems of transition, and any consideration of
what the effect is on their future action, when men have hacked their
way through to the promised land, let us imagine the Guild Society in
being.
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