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Guild Socialism and the Historians
Author(s) -
Blaazer David
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
australian journal of politics and history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.123
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1467-8497
pISSN - 0004-9522
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8497.00001
Subject(s) - socialism , guild , historiography , state socialism , politics , political science , state (computer science) , political economy , history , social science , sociology , law , communism , ecology , capitalism , algorithm , habitat , computer science , biology
Historians have often marginalised or dismissed Guild Socialism, and biographers have underplayed the Guild Socialist commitment of some of its most prominent adherents. This article details the historiographical neglect of Guild Socialism and argues that it has been due not only to the antipathy of historians steeped in the state socialist traditions, but also to the impossibility of placing Guild Socialism within the dominant historiographical paradigms developed by those traditions. The collapse of state socialism in all its forms affords an opportunity to re‐examine Guild Socialism, which may yield a fuller historical understanding of the progressive politics of the period, and suggest possible avenues for the development of radical politics in the future.