The fourth element is the revival of open production in a social rather than competitive and individualistic way. Along with creating bodies that maintain high quality standards, care for members’ welfare needs and a whole raft of other aspects of social welfare, we need them to engage in the education of the young in useful skills on-the-job rather than in institutions of learning, however necessary the latter are. Examples of such bodies have been the various guild institutions, in both East and West, before they went into decadence and decline.
Among their pivotal activities were helping manufacturers in their needs to raise capital, for example, to update equipment or increase stock. Because of this the guilds were seen as competitors by the emerging banks and the new fiscal state, and therefore they had to be absorbed or done away with altogether. Subsequently, their history has been rewritten in a fashion that precludes modern man rediscovering this dynamic social institution. However, as long as we remain unaware, we are doomed to be passive employees of the increasingly monopolistic corporate world and passive citizens of an increasingly intrusive state. But as we have seen, corporate gigantism is ultimately untenable. So the human scale and social responsibility of the guild will return to centre stage as matrix for manufacture in the future just as it has been for a major part of history.