Excerpt from National Guilds: An Inquiry Into the Wage System, and the Way Out Present writers that at last the trade unions were now finally determined to form a permanent element. In society. In short, every speculation concerning the future of industry was henceforward bound to take into account the trade unions as well as the State. Reflecting upon this in the light of a considerable experience, both theoretical and practical, the writers were driven to the conclusions herein stated. In no respect they believe, have they written without their book or in the spirit of Utopianism. The analysis of the nature of wages, here made, for the first time, the foundation of a critique of labour economics, leads inevitably to the conclusion that by no manner of means can wages gener ally be raised while the wage system continues. There follows from that the necessity, in the minds of real reformers at any rate, to consider the means by which the wage system itself may be abolished, in the interests, in the first instance, of the proletariat, but no less, though secondarily, in the interests of society and of civilisation. The indispensability of the State, upon which the present writers lay stress the more that the Syndicalists deny it, is affirmed and maintained at the same time that the right of Labour to control its production is throughout assumed. In the conception of National Industrial Guilds the writers believe that the future will find the solution of the problems now vexing one-twentieth of our population and mining the remainder. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.