Information AboutGuild |
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ORGANIZATION The guild was made up by experienced and confirmed experts in their field of handicraft. They were called Master Craftsmen . Before a new employee could rise to the level of mastery, he had to go through a schooling period during which he was first called an Apprentice . After this period he could rise to the level of Journeyman . Apprentices would typically not learn more than the most basic techniques until they were trusted by their peers to keep the guild's or company's secrets. Some argue that the title 'journeyman' is derived from the itinerant nature of the position. However, it is more likely that the title derives from the French word for 'day' (''jour'') from which came the middle English word ''journei''. Journeymen were generally paid by the day and were thus day laborers. After being employed by a master for several years, and after producing a qualifying piece of work, the apprentice attained the rank of journeyman and was given a letter which entitled him to travel to other towns and countries to learn the art from other masters. These journeys could span large parts of Europe and were an unofficial way of communicating new methods and techniques. After this journey and several years of experience, a journeyman could be elected to become a master craftsman. This would require the approval of all masters of a guild, a donation of money and other goods, and in many practical handicrafts the production of a so-called Masterpiece , which would illustrate the abilities of the aspiring master craftsman. The medieval guild was offered a letters patent (usually from the king) and held an Oligopoly on its trade in the town in which it operated: handicraft workers were forbidden by law to run any business if they were not members of a guild, and only masters were allowed to be members of a guild. Before these privileges were legislated, these groups of handicraft workers were simply called 'handicraft associations'. The town authorities were represented in the guild meetings and thus had a means of controlling the handicraft activities. This was important since towns very often depended on a good reputation for export of a narrow range of products, on which not only the guild's, but the town's, reputation depended. Controls on the association of physical locations to well-known exported products, e.g. wine from the Champagne and Bordeaux regions of France , Fine China from certain cities in Holland , Lace from Chantilly , etc., helped to establish a town's place in global commerce — this led to modern Trademark s. In many German towns, the more powerful guilds attempted to influence or even control town authorities. In the 14th Century , this led to numerous bloody uprisings, during which the guilds dissolved town councils and detained patricians in an attempt to increase their influence. FALL OF THE GUILDS Despite its advantages for agricultural and artisan producers, the guild became a target of much criticism towards the end of the 1700s and the beginning of the 1800s. They were believed to oppose Free Trade and hinder Technological Innovation , Technology Transfer and Business Development . According to several accounts of this time, guilds became increasingly involved in simple territorial struggles against each other and against free practitioners of their arts, but the neutrality of these claims is doubted. It may be Propaganda . 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. Even Karl Marx (not normally in league with Adam Smith) in his '' Communist Manifesto '' criticized the guild system for its rigid gradation of social rank and the relation of oppressor/oppressed entailed by this system. From this time comes the low regard in which some people hold the guilds to this day. For example, Smith writes in '' The Wealth Of Nations '' (Book I, Chapter X, paragraph 72): : It is to prevent this reduction of price, and consequently of wages and profit, by restraining that free competition which would most certainly occasion it, that all corporations, and the greater part of corporation laws, have been established. (...) and when any particular class of artificers or traders thought proper to act as a corporation without a charter, such adulterine guilds, as they were called, were not always disfranchised upon that account, but obliged to fine annually to the king for permission to exercise their usurped privileges. In part due to their own inability to control unruly Corporate behavior, the tide turned against the guilds. Because of industrialization and modernization of the trade and industry, and the rise of powerful nation-states that could directly issue Patent and Copyright protections — often revealing the Trade Secret s — the guilds' power faded. After the French Revolution they fell in most European nations through the 1800s , as the guild system was disbanded and replaced by free trade laws. By that time, many former handicraft workers had been forced to seek employment in the emerging manufacturing industries, using not closely-guarded techniques but standardized methods controlled by Corporation s. This was not uniformly viewed as a criticized the Alienation of the worker from the products of work that this created, and the Exploitation possible since materials and hours of work were closely controlled by the owners of the new, large scale Means Of Production . INFLUENCE OF GUILDS Guilds are sometimes said to be the precursors of modern Trade Union s, and also, paradoxically, of some aspects of the modern Corporation . Guilds, however, were groups of self-employed skilled craftsmen with ownership and control over the materials and tools they needed to produce their goods. Guilds were, in other words, small business associations and thus had very little in common with trade unions. However, the journeymen organizations, which were at the time illegal, may have been influential. The exclusive privilege of a guild to produce certain goods or provide certain services was similar in spirit and character with the original Patent systems that surfaced in England in 1624 . These systems played a role in ending the guilds' dominance, as Trade Secret methods were superseded by modern firms directly revealing their techniques, and counting on the state to enforce their legal Monopoly . Some guild traditions still remain in a few handicrafts, in Europe especially among Shoemaker s and Barber s. Some of the Ritual traditions of the guilds were conserved in Order organizations such as the Freemasons . These are, however, not very important economically except as reminders of the responsibilities of some trades toward the public. Modern Antitrust law could be said to be derived in some ways from the original statutes by which the guilds were abolished in Europe. MODERN GUILDS Modern guilds exist in different forms around the world. In many European countries guilds have had a revival as local organisations for craftsmen, primarily in traditional skills. They may function as fora for developing competence and are often the local units of a national employers organization. In the United States guilds exist in several fields. The Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild Of America are capable of exercising very strong control in Hollywood because a very strong and rigid system of intellectual property respect exists (as with some medieval trades). These guilds exclude other actors and writers who do not abide by the strict rules for competing within the film and television industry in America. Real estate brokerage is an excellent example of a modern American guild. Telltale signs of guild behavior are on display in real estate brokerage: standard pricing (6% of the home price), strong affiliation among all practitioners, self-regulation (see National Association Of Realtors ), strong cultural identity (see Realtor ), little price variation with quality differences, and traditional methods in use by all practitioners. In September 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors challenging NAR practices that, DOJ asserts, prevent competition from practitioners who use different methods. The DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission in 2005 advocated against state laws, supported by NAR, that disadvantage new kinds of brokers. For a description of the DOJ action, see {Link without Title} . U.S. v. National Assoc. of Realtors, U.S. District Court Norther District Illinois, Eastern Division, September 7, 2005, Civil Action No. 05C-5140. Other associations which can be classified as guilds, though it isn't evident in their names, include the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association . Scholars from the History Of Ideas have noticed that Consultant s play a part similar to that of the journeymen of the guild systems: they often travel a lot, work at many different companies and spread new practices and knowledge between companies and corporations. Many professional organizations similarly resemble the guild structure. Professions such as architecture, engineering, and land surveying require varying lengths of apprenticeships before one can be granted a 'professional' certification. These certifications hold great legal weight and are required in most states as a prerequisite to doing business there. Thomas 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. Insurance including any Professional Liability , Intellectual Capital protections, an Ethical Code perhaps enforced by peer pressure and software, and other benefits of a strong association of producers of knowledge, benefit from Economies Of Scale , and may prevent cut-throat competition that leads to inferior services undercutting prices. And, as with historical guilds, resist foreign competition. The Free Software community has from time to time explored a guild-like structure to unite against competition from Microsoft , e.g. Advogato assigns journeyer and master ranks to those committing to work only or mostly on free software. Debian also publishes a list of what constitutes Free Software . In the City Of London , the ancient guilds survive as Livery Companies , most of which play a ceremonial role. In Online Computer Games players form groups called Player Guild s who perform some of the functions of ancient guilds. They organize group activities, regulate member behavior, exclude non-conforming individuals, and react as a group when member safety or some aspect of guild life is threatened. In games where fictional "building" is possible they may cooperate on projects in their online world. The practice was taken from the Guilds in the quasi-medieval settings of the Role-playing Game Dungeons And Dragons . The first computer implementation was in the ground-breaking MUD Avalon . The first graphical online RPG to provide guilds was '' Neverwinter Nights '', which ran from 1991 to 1997 on AOL . ECONOMIC SURVIVAL OF GUILDS Due to the fact that guilds had costs to run and advertise their members, for example the AIA, membership fees were often charged heavily to make that guild keep running. REFERENCES
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