Catholics Against Capitalism

Thanks for your post, ZC, there's much here that's true, but often misapplied because of our ahistoric tendency to assume that their cultural values are or should be the same as ours (a form of anachronism

Multi-generational guilds were indeed a feature of the Middle Ages, and in fact were one of the best features: they fostered a stable society in which every trade or profession had its own public honors, its own ethic of mutual aid, and its own fraternal and intergenerational obligations. This included making sure that everyone in the rising generation would receive the tools and the skills needed to support himself and his family honorably.

It was a way of life rich with customary relations; many of its exchanges were embedded in local folkways rather than mercantile calculations: e.g. customary gift-giving accounted for a surprising amount of the circulation of property.

Whether the Hindu ideal or classic practice of caste relations included this, I do not know. Somebody who knows a whole lot more about Hinduism would have to tell me. My impression, though, is that caste fostered non-contact with other strata of society, whereas the European guild system fostered interaction, e.g. the joint festivals of saints' days and so forth.

The novel "Kristin Lavransdatter" (Sigrid Undset, Nobel Prize 1926) has a fascinating view of how it worked in 14th century Catholic Norway. One character in particular, Lavrans (Kristin's father) is a model of how an honest and religious man undertook his reponsibilities for the commmon good. In contrast, Kristin's husband, Erlend, is a far more tarnished example of how an unprincipled man would take everything to his own advantage.

When you look into the history of guilds and of the economy of the Middle Ages, you see a lot of good and bad.

Guilds served much the same function then as today. Limit competition, increase prices to the customer, and stifle invocation. If you look at the modern day guilds in say publishing, and their desperate attacks to destroy e publishing, you realize they are not doing it to support the authors, or the readers, but to advance themselves and their political agenda.

There is a reason that so many people fled to the larger “free” cities. If you could get to one, and live for a year and day, you were free of your guild/serfdom.

Yes, it did give you some stability. In theory at least. But it also locked you into your father’s profession. If you were a son of a shoe maker, you would be a shoe maker. Even if your talents led to something else.

The reason such arrangements were made came from the great plague during the time of Justinian. The depopulation was so great, the costs of labor became so high, that the State decided to force sons into their fathers profession in order to stabilize (in theory) the economy. Since the rich Senators and nobles could not pay the peasants to till the land, they forced them to. Now it wasn’t all one way, the noble became the patron of the peasant, which was a times a rather expensive prospect. In return however he got a cheap labor force.

What is interesting to me is that the fall of serfdom has often be attributed to another great plague. I suspect that it happened that way because during the Black Death, there were not any major invasions coming from outside Christendom. During Justinian’s time, living as a serf (or being forced into life as a tradesmen like your father) was preferable to dealing with the waves of germanic barbarians coming in. During the Black Death, while the armies of Islam were advancing, the populace didn’t feel the same level of panic that the prior generations did. They were more willing to leave the land to go to a place with more rights and freedom.

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