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Glite Dictionary
guild socialism

guild socialism

9.9
A political idea that says the state should own industry but groups of workers should run it
  • noun
  • Archaic
translation icon : socialismo gremial
  • The concept of guild socialism gained traction in Britain, emphasizing the importance of worker-managed industries.

Examples

  • Advocates of guild socialism believed that industries should be owned by the state but run by workers in guilds.

  • Many early 20th-century socialists supported guild socialism as a way to empower workers through collective ownership.

  • Temple developed a type of guild socialism that featured a Meidner-like plan for creating worker-controlled collective capital funds.

    Academic text (1995)

Antonyms

capitalism
292 3.8

A system where people or companies own businesses and property to make money

Surface Forms

guild socialism singular
guild socialisms plural

Morphology

guild + socialism

The noun phrase is transparently compositional: it denotes a type or variant of socialism characterised by the role of guilds. A B1 learner who knows 'guild' (an association) and 'socialism' (collective ownership) can infer that this refers to socialism organised around or involving guilds, though fine historical details are specialist.

Etymology

Guild socialism comes from the image of old craft guilds, groups of skilled workers who ran a trade, together with socialism, the idea of 'shared or public ownership'. It was a plan that imagined industries owned by the state but run by workers' guilds, so the term now means 'state-owned industry managed by workers'.