The guildsmen also propose to establish equality by force,
but are shrewd enough to see that if an equilibrium is to be
maintained they have to provide institutions for maintaining it.
Guildsmen, therefore, put their faith in what they believe to be a new
theory of democracy.
Their object, says Mr. Cole, is "to get the mechanism right, and to
adjust it as far as possible to the expression of men's social wills."
[Reference: _Op. cit._, p. 16.] These wills need to be given
opportunity for self-expression in self-government "in any and every
form of social action." Behind these words is the true democratic
impulse, the desire to enhance human dignity, as well as the
traditional assumption that this human dignity is impugned, unless
each person's will enters into the management of everything that
affects him. The guildsman, like the earlier democrat therefore, looks
about him for an environment in which this ideal of self-government
can be realized. A hundred years and more have passed since Rousseau
and Jefferson, and the center of interest has shifted from the country
to the city. The new democrat can no longer turn to the idealized
rural township for the image of democracy. He turns now to the
workshop. "The spirit of association must be given free play in the
sphere in which it is best able to find expression. This is manifestly
the factory, in which men have the habit and tradition of working
together.
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