A Pluralist Vision of Society in Defiance of State Power: Guild Socialism in China after the First World War

Global Critiques of the State and Socialist Pluralism in China

After the outbreak of the First World War, classical political theories, especially liberalist notions of the state, came under vigorous reconsideration as the militarized and expansionist state came to be regarded as the very cause of the unprecedented disaster. While V. I. Lenin’s The State and Revolution called for a replacement of the state or the “old bureaucratic machine” with a dictatorship of the proletariat, revolutionizing the Marxist theory of the state (Lenin, 2004 [1917]), there was another trend, emerging from Britain, that gainsaid any central role of the state in a socialist transformation. Against any collectivist arguments of politics, particularly Fabianism, British thinkers such as G. D. H. Cole, Harold Laski, and others proposed a pluralist revision of the theory of the state. Based on their faith in the “vitality and the legitimacy of self-governing associations as means of organizing social life,” pluralists wanted to “replace a centralized state which claimed a plenitude of sovereign power” with “a state in which power and administrative capacity were diffused to autonomous functional and territorial bodies” (Hirst, 1993: 2). ⁵

While much less well known than Lenin’s theory, these pluralist ideas nevertheless constituted a conspicuous anti-statist current in the politics of socialism after the First World War. Many contemporary political philosophers explicitly remarked on the recent tendency to attack the state and to discredit collectivism (Wilde, 1920; Somerville, 1923). ⁶ For example, the British political thinker A. D. Lindsay remarked that “just when the collectivist theory of the State seems assured of its triumph, if we listen we can hear growing notes of discontent. Suddenly we realize that in some quarters the state itself is on trial” (Wright, 1979: 32).

Chinese intellectuals engaged with such global trends as they struggled to find their way out of what the Korean historian Baik Youngseo 백영서 has termed the “double-structured crisis,” that is, the crisis of republicanism revealed by the crippled operation of Republican politics and the prevalence of warlord politics on the one hand and, on the other hand, the civilizational crisis that emerged in the aftermath of the First World War (Baik, 2021). A series of debates in the early 1920s on such issues as the relationship between Eastern and Western civilizations 東西文化論戰 (1919–1921) and an “outlook on life” and its relation to science 人生觀論戰 (1923–1924) showed China’s attempts to overcome the civilizational crisis through constructing new visions of the world as well as of China itself. While retaining faith in democracy as a “new tide in the world” (Gu, 2001), the crisis of republicanism also promoted significant intellectual efforts to find better forms of democratic politics that would “substantiate republicanism” (Baik, 2021: 120). “Disillusionment with the failures of the central government had led to calls for provincial autonomy” on the one hand (Zarrow, 2005: 132), and on the other hand some intellectuals undertook a radical reimagination of politics, engaging with socialisms in search of alternatives to the failed bourgeois representative democracy. Indeed, in the contemporary environment, characterized by “the arrival of the working class and social division,” “socialism became visibly and viscerally relevant to social life, as well as an urgent matter of intellectual investigation and practice” (Karl, 2020: 50).

In this global and national context, Zhang Dongsun joined other Chinese intellectuals in pondering over issues of the state and democratic politics from a socialist pluralist standpoint. First of all, Zhang embraced pluralism as a result of his reflections on the First World War. Just as G. D. H. Cole in Britain became increasingly antistatist and more firmly determined to oppose state socialism after his wartime experience of the alliance between the state and capital (Wright, 1979: 43–49), Zhang in China also consolidated his pluralist position in reaction to the Western powers’ statism 國家主義, which he thought, together with capitalism, had gone bankrupt at the time of the war (Zhang, Sept. 1, 1919a: 2–3).

It is important to note that as a philosopher, Zhang appreciated the anti-Hegelian significance of pluralist theories. ⁷ In fact, Cole, together with other political pluralists such as Laski and J. N. Figgis, strongly criticized “the then-prominent Hegelian assumption that a single, centralized authority constituted the distinctive mark of a modern society.” Cole instead condemned the state as an organization intrinsically corruptive of the authority of other forms and disempowering of workers (Ferguson, 2007: 19). Zhang perceived this anti-Hegelian theory as a more apt tool to address contemporary issues of the state and politics. He emphasized that, rather than pursuing the “transcendental” meaning, pluralist thinkers such as Laski, Cole, and Leon Duguit grounded their theories on actual observations of states and governments. That is to say, their theories revealed that particular interests—class and/or military interests—lay behind the state, which ran contrary to the state’s claim on the general will. Appreciating recent changes in the relationship between state and society driven by the emergence of the working class, and joining pluralists to critique the liberalist notion of state sovereignty, Zhang stressed that these theories posed a significant challenge to the Hegelian “metaphysical” theory (Zhang, Aug. 30, 1921; Zhang, Sept. 1, 1921).

According to Zhang, China was no exception to this global trend. The “pathetic” position of governments in Chinese history, from the monarchies of the past to the warlords of the present, which had always needed backing by military force, showed not only that politics was not transcendental but also that the superior power of the government was just a theoretical fabrication (Zhang, Sept. 1, 1921). In addition to this decline of governmental authority, Zhang also noticed that the rise of society and the emergence of self-conscious masses in China justified a new direction in political theory away from defenses of a strong state. Despite his reservations about radical movements (Zhang, Apr. 7, 1919; Zhang, Apr. 13, 1919), Zhang acknowledged the positive meaning of the May Fourth Movement as a mass movement 群眾運動 that showed a rare potential for organizing the Chinese people (Zhang, Aug. 22, 1919; Zhang, May 29, 1921). In particular, Zhang stressed that the general strike in Shanghai, staged in support of the May Fourth Movement on June 3, 1919, indeed proved the validity of the new theories. The general strike was carried out with no violent clashes as all participants realized their responsibility to maintain social order under the student leadership that took the place of the illegitimate authorities (the military and the police). According to Zhang, this clearly attested to the fact that social order could be founded on spontaneous social organizations (Zhang, Aug. 30, 1921).

With this realization of recent changes in politics in both theory and practice—changes toward society and away from a strong state at both the global and national levels—Zhang, like other intellectuals in China and elsewhere, was pressed to retheorize the relationship between state and society. As the contemporary American political scientist Ellen Deborah Ellis commented, since “the conditions of modern life are changing so rapidly,” “the existing political organization no longer adequately expresses or reflects the social organization behind it” (Ellis, 1923: 584–85). Zhang felt it necessary to readjust to such new social dynamics, especially those created by new social forces such as workers and students; based on his postwar observation of the trend that governments lost their “wholeness” 總 as local self-government and industrial self-management developed (Zhang, Sept. 2, 1921), he found pluralism to be an appropriate tool for such a task.

It was indeed from this pluralist standpoint that Zhang engaged with the political campaign of national unification that was soon followed by the First United Front in 1924 and the Northern Expedition beginning in 1926. While making it clear that he did not object to monistic discourses on the military integration of the nation in order to save the people from being exploited by warlords, Zhang stood clearly in opposition to political monism 政治的一元論. Against Sun Yat-sen’s 孫中山 (1866–1925) advocacy for national unification led by a centralized government, he argued that “today’s China must promote pluralism” (Zhang, Oct. 27, 1921). He thus announced his disapproval of both authoritarian power and a centralized structure of control and argued for cautious policies that would put limits on the government. That is to say, based upon his pluralist views Zhang was firmly opposed to centralist arguments, including the state-centered vision of socialism endorsed by GMD socialists like Dai Jitao 戴季陶 (Dirlik, 1989: 132–33), and pronounced his support for the project of building a “federalist state” 聯邦國 (Zhang, Oct. 27, 1921). ⁸

It was also from this pluralist standpoint that Zhang, together with his fellow guildsmen, engaged in the socialist debate as opponents of Marxism, one of the radical “isms” then emerging in China. In this very formative stage prior even to the founding of the CCP, Chinese Marxists already made clear their acceptance of a dictatorship of the proletariat, under the influence of the Communist International (the Comintern), “as the only way to establish communism” (Dirlik, 1989: 208, 246). ⁹ Against this backdrop, as this article will investigate, Zhang and his followers criticized the dictatorship of the proletariat for what they presumed to be its anti-democratic, collectivist nature and instead engaged with socialist pluralism, especially G. D. H. Cole’s theories.

Rescuing Society from the State

The circumstances of the time, dictated especially by the new dynamics of emerging forces such as professional organizations 職業團體, as well as workers and students, looked quite agreeable for a guild socialist movement. Many people had showed serious interest in a system of occupational representation 職業代表制 as they felt frustrated with representative democracy and party politics after the 1911 Revolution. For example, one of the most influential journals during the time, Eastern Miscellany 東方雜誌, introduced guild socialist theories by publishing Chinese translations of G. D. H. Cole, Sydney Webb, Arthur J. Penty, and Bertrand Russell, and publicized the idea of occupational representation as a way to realize “the spirit of democracy to represent the greatest number of the people” beyond the limitations of representative democracy (Yu, 2011: 100). ¹⁰

It was in this atmosphere that Zhang and three Peking University students, Hu Shanheng 胡善恆 (1897–1964), Xu Liuji 徐六幾 (1898–1925), and Guo Mengliang 郭夢良 (1898–1925), organized the New Man Society 今人會 in September 1921 and started the guild socialist movement in earnest. ¹¹ Despite their organizational looseness as a coterie of self-styled guild socialists, the New Man Society members clearly distinguished themselves from the socialists of the past who, they claimed, had simply pursued distributional equalization or replacement of ownership, which addressed “only part of the malady already revealed in a capitalist society.” Rather than making do with such partial solutions, they redefined the meaning of socialism as nothing less than the question of how to live, not how to accomplish a proletarian revolution, and declared that “our goal is to fundamentally reconstruct an entire society.” They maintained that “what we request is neither simple industrial freedom nor political liberty. We request freedom as a fundamental principle of human life” (Tongren, Sept. 16, 1921: 1).

This interpretation of socialism as a broad question of how to live certainly corresponded to Zhang Dongsun’s idealist philosophy of socialism. He viewed socialism as a new type of civilization, founded upon principles of mutual aid and cooperation, to replace the moribund civilization of capitalism and statism. Because socialism meant a type of civilization, not simply a mode of production, Zhang thought that “the transformation to socialism would necessarily entail a total reconstruction of humanity, from personal to communal life and from spiritual to material life.” In this regard, he carried out a “new culture movement” 新文化運動 (not to be confused with the New Culture Movement of the early 1920s), which he also described as “education in a broader sense,” to cultivate socialist principles of mutual aid, cooperation, and self-governance, so as to ultimately achieve socialist transformation (Zhang, Dec. 1. 1919: 5, 7; Lee, 2019: 294).

Moreover, the cultural approach to socialism and emphasis on educational methods matched up with Zhang’s vision of politics as “everyday affairs” 家常便飯 (“What does politics mean?,” July 2, 1922). ¹² Deploring the failure of early Republican politics followed by the rampancy of the warlords, Zhang particularly criticized power struggles among career politicians 政客, which, he said, contaminated the whole society as “corrupt practices of exclusion and suspicion” predominated (Zhang, Aug. 29, 1919). Political discourses had come to be regarded as unrefined, and the majority of the population developed an aversion to politics. This situation caused a vicious circle in Chinese politics as political corruption made the people lose their “desire for politics” 政治慾, abandoning public affairs to a minority of career politicians. Zhang argued that in order to overcome this minority rule, which he believed would eventually develop into oppression, it was necessary to nurture the majority’s political desire and enhance its ability to participate in politics (Zhang, Aug. 23, 1920). As he believed that the lack of appetite and capability for politics resulted from uneven dissemination of knowledge, Zhang particularly stressed the importance of “political education” 政治教育 to popularize knowledge and to cultivate the people’s judgment so that they could practice politics on their own, just “as they put on clothes and have a meal” (“What does politics mean?,” July 2, 1922).

In this context, Zhang Dongsun and his colleagues believed that the guild socialist movement in China should be operated primarily as political education in a broader sense, with the purpose of universalizing political knowledge, particularly such guild socialist principles as self-governance and decentralization. In this regard, the New Man Society’s manifesto stated that the method to attain a “new form of human life” 人類生活的新形式 was to “propagate ideas” rather than to propagandize a revolution (Tongren, Sept. 16, 1921: 1; New Man Society, Nov. 6, 1921a). Specifically, Zhang hoped “to use occupational schools 職業學校 to implement an education of guild socialism” to educate “the youth in the industrial world” in both the theory and practice of guild socialism. He further desired that these students—future workers in national industries—would spread the ideas of guild socialism widely to achieve a social reconstruction in accordance with the guild socialist principle of the “functional” 職能的 or “occupational” 職業的 organization of society (Zhang, Sept. 16, 1921: 4; Tongren, Sept. 16, 1921: 1).

As some historians have already pointed out, it seems legitimate to explain the guildsmen’s concentration on educational and cultural activities as resulting from the influence of anarchism, one of the most prominent radical ideologies in China at the time (Dirlik, 1989; Zhang, 2007: 176–79). In fact, Zhang himself remarked that guild socialists approved of the “two contentions that anarchists have made; the first is that society and the state are not one and the second is that social order and political regulation are not in a necessary relationship” (Zhang, Jan. 6, 1922: 1). He further acknowledged that anarchism, although not an attainable idea, showed the significance of society’s capacity for spontaneous order in place of political coercion, thereby contributing to the recent endeavor of overcoming old metaphysical theories of politics (Zhang, Aug. 30, 1921). ¹³

While retaining the anarchist emphasis on society, education, and small groups, however, Zhang Dongsun and his fellow guildsmen drew a very clear distinction between their ideas and anarchism, especially by expressing their fundamental disagreement with the anarchists’ blanket rejection of politics. In fact, guildsmen denied neither government nor governance itself. According to Zhang, society should be likened to silk and government to a flower embroidered on the fabric. While silk would still remain as silk without a flower, it would also be acceptable to embroider a flower on it, as long as no harm came to the silk. In other words, while it is true that a government (the floral embellishment) is not absolutely necessary to society, its existence can be tolerated as long as it remains harmless (Zhang, Aug. 30, 1921).

The guildsmen’s cultural inclinations, which unlike those of the anarchists were compatible with such a conditional admission of the state/government, exemplified the middle path between Marxism and anarchism that guild socialism took under Zhang’s guidance. According to Zhang, all socialisms, including communism, social democracy, syndicalism, and anarchism, were “almost the same in the economic dimension,” sharing such economic principles as public ownership of the means of production and workers’ self-management. What distinguished these socialisms from one another was their political positioning. According to him, there was a major division between the factions that emphasized politics—communists and social democrats—and the factions that did not—anarchists and syndicalists. Zhang positioned guild socialism, together with the unionist faction 協社派, between these two extreme divisions because, unlike anarchism or syndicalism, it was concerned with politics to some degree, but never assumed the absolute priority of politics in social life, unlike communism and social democracy (Zhang, Jan. 6, 1922: 1). ¹⁴

Of course, guild socialism’s middle position did not mean it was equally distant from every extreme faction. While rebuking anarchists for making a fuss over nothing but sharing a faith in a good society built on free associations, guildsmen presented a more serious, fundamental opposition to the communist prioritization of politics. For example, Zhang charged that communist discourses on politics focused only on political revolution, which they assumed would solve every problem. As seen in the Bolshevik Revolution, however, for communists revolution was just a “political expediency,” a mechanism to overthrow the current government, attain power, and coerce socialist policies into being (Zhang, Sept. 16, 1921: 4).

This criticism came from the guild socialist, pluralist view of society—fundamentally different from the Marxist organic view. According to Zhang, Marxists viewed society as an enormous, delicately manufactured apparatus 機器 and individuals as merely its components. However, society was neither an organic body 有機體 nor like an organic body. “All individuals are autonomous and cannot be treated merely as parts of a machine.” Against this organic view, Zhang proposed to see a society as an “association” 聯合 of various organizations, not a unity 單體. While individuals, as autonomous social beings, belong to various organizations 團體, developing multiple linkages to one another, organizations also make complex chains with one another. In this way, a society is composed of multiple intersections 交集 between the chains forged by individuals as well as organizations. Zhang thus concluded that society could never be a single whole, but was rather a composite 綜合 of numerous associations (Zhang, Mar. 3, 1922).

In Zhang’s view, G. D. H. Cole constructed this functional vision of society on the philosophical basis of pluralism, which Zhang applauded as “the most perfect philosophy in the modern world of knowledge,” propounded by the “great figure in modern philosophy” William James. While discerning such a philosophical implication, Zhang said that “in the same manner in which pluralism does not approve a ‘complete’ 整塊 universe, it [guild socialism] does not approve a ‘complete’ society.” This new view of society was no less meaningful than the discovery of relativity in physics, Zhang stressed: “If Einstein altered Newton’s fate 命, so did Cole alter Hegel’s fate” (Zhang, Mar. 3, 1922).

Besides such theoretical appreciation, Chinese guildsmen acknowledged guild socialism’s potential as a practical reform plan for China, which would secure a society’s autonomy while, at the same time, avoiding the anarchist absurdity of denying politics altogether. According to Zhang, a society, or a composite of autonomous individuals and spontaneous organizations, could remain integrated as a whole through a balanced operation of devolution 責任下落 and coalition politics 聯治, an idea that Zhang drew from Bertrand Russell’s 1917 book Political Ideals. On one hand, devolution meant a distribution of power from a minority to a majority, as well as from the state or central government down to the provincial level, and this principle was reified in forms of industrial self-governance and local self-governance. On the other hand, coalition politics, a social process complementary to devolution, did mean control of private possessions and the use of force to integrate individuals and organizations (Zhang, Sept. 1, 1919b: 20–21; Russell, 1917: 47).

In other words, through a devolutionary process, social autonomy would be secured, avoiding the evils of political centralization. At the same time, through the coalitionary process of public control, society would be consolidated to maintain its unity against disorderly dispersion. These are the pluralist principles that Zhang and his fellow guildsmen put forward as a means of keeping a society democratic: while society would remain independent, free of state encroachment, individuals would be protected from society.

Separating the Economy from Politics

It is a well-known fact that Zhang Dongsun’s interest in guild socialism was influenced by the British thinker Bertrand Russell. Zhang worked to introduce Russell’s political thought to a Chinese audience, characterizing it as a form of “self-governing socialism” 自治的社會主義. He published his own reviews of Russell’s works and also joined the Society for Common Learning 共學社 to publish a series of Russell’s works in translation 羅素叢書. ¹⁵ When Russell visited China in the fall of 1920, Zhang accompanied him on a lecture trip to Hunan, via Hangzhou and Nanjing, beginning in October 1920. During this one-month trip, Zhang observed that most Chinese people, except for a small minority in treaty ports and cities, did not even have a “human existence” 人的生活. Zhang thus argued that China’s most serious problem was poverty 貧乏 and that “empty talk about isms” could not solve this problem. In complete agreement with Russell, Zhang maintained that “the only way of rescuing China is the very increase of wealth,” or “industrialization” (Zhang, Nov. 6, 1920).

Despite Zhang’s admiration of Russell’s self-governing socialism and agreement with Russell’s prescription of industrialization for contemporary China, Zhang and Russell put forward very divergent solutions to China’s problems. Russell was believed to have been an ardent guild socialist before his arrival, but upon leaving China he announced that guild socialism, not to mention Western-style democracy or Soviet-style socialism, would not be feasible there. He instead suggested that a modified form of state socialism would be more useful for underdeveloped countries like China, as “an orderly government” could push forward economic development. Russell emphasized that “if China can acquire a vigorous and honest State, it will be possible to develop Chinese industry without, at the same time, developing the overweening power of private capitalists by which the Western nations are now both oppressed and misled” (Russell, 2008 [1922]: 164). As a condition for an industrialization free of the evils of both private capitalism and Bolshevik-style socialism, this system of state socialism should be “led by men who, unlike the Bolsheviks (and capitalists), would keep ever in mind the state’s and people’s interests.” He also stressed that its successful operation would depend on the support from a “literate, politically aware population” to be created through universal education (Ogden, 1982: 551–52; see also Feng, 1993: 169–70, 176; Fung, 2005: 329; Russell, 2008 [1922]: 160–67).

Russell’s prescription of a “modified form of state socialism” was criticized most severely by communists as a “disguised form of socialism,” for its stress on industrialization appeared to lack ideological commitment to socialism (Ogden, 1982: 551–53). Russell’s supporters in China found this prescription of state socialism in place of guild socialism unacceptable as well. Indeed, it was in September 1921, after Russell had left China, that Zhang and his colleagues organized the New Man Society to publicly announce their dedication to guild socialism (Tongren, Sept. 16, 1921: 1). Why did Zhang and his fellow guildsmen continue advocating guild socialism even after their mentor from Britain had dismissed its viability in China? While seeing poverty as China’s most serious problem, how did Zhang decide to promote guild socialism, a form of socialism that was usually regarded as suitable only for advanced nations like Britain? In particular, while agreeing with Russell on the urgent need for industrial development in China, why did Zhang disagree with his mentor’s prescription of state socialism, which, save for capitalism, was usually regarded as the most efficient system of economic development? Did Chinese guildsmen believe that guild socialism would be beneficial to China’s industrial development too?

To answer these questions, it is necessary to recall that Zhang’s promotion of industrialization after his trip to inner China had provoked the so-called socialist debate, in which Chinese Marxists criticized Zhang for abandoning socialism and advocating capitalism (Cai, 1988). In fact, Zhang had argued that China should follow a course of capitalist development, apparently an “irresistible” 不可抗的 and “natural” 自然的 trend in the world, as it seemed impossible to practice socialism in China, a poverty-stricken country that had not yet seen the emergence of a proletariat (Zhang, Dec. 5, 1920: 28–30). However, it appears that when Zhang and his fellow guildsmen organized the New Man Society in September 1921, roughly one year after the socialist debate had begun, they had embraced a socialist path to industrialization.

As the Chinese historian Gao Bo 高波 has pointed out, during the debate, Zhang had prescribed capitalist development because of its irresistibility, not for its desirability (Gao, 2018: 256, 258, 287), and this conditional approval of capitalism’s temporary advantage, only for the immediate purpose of increasing production, actually left room for its modification. Indeed, when they published Study of Socialism in 1921–1922, the Chinese guildsmen came up with a new conceptual frame to separate capitalism from industrialization: They historicized capitalism as just one particular form of industrialization, one that European nations happened to have adopted. Therefore, capitalism was not the sole, inevitable path to industrialization and there was no reason socialism could not be combined with industrialization. The guildsmen emphasized instead that socialism could be achieved by utilizing industrial inventions such as machinery, mass production, capital, and industrialized labor. They thought that these methods, institutions, and technologies were “in nature the same as what would be necessary in a socialist society, and they are not things that cannot be brought into socialism” (Tongren, Sept. 16, 1921: 1).

While opening up the possibility of socialist industrialization, the guildsmen viewed state socialism as both inappropriate and impractical. The Russian model, they believed, was fundamentally undemocratic and inhumane. In January 1921, when Russell was still in China, Zhang quoted Russell’s 1920 work The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism to argue that the Russian Communist Party concentrated only on the equal distribution of material wealth, which could not fully address the injustices of human society. What was worse, the Russian Communist Party enforced policies of economic equalization or nationalization 國有化 of property in a very high-handed way (Zhang, Jan. 20, 1921). Seen from a guild socialist perspective, nationalization meant only the replacement of private capitalists with state ministries. State management of property was not equivalent to the socialization 社會化 of property in any deliberative sense (New Man Society, Nov. 6, 1921b: 1). In other words, the discourse of nationalization simply resembled a discourse of governmental ownership 政府所有主義, which would propel the nation into a struggle for political power (Zhang, Jan. 20, 1921). In this regard, Xu Liuji also contended that “state socialism and democracy run contradictory to each other; actually [state socialism is] just a kind of bureaucratism 官僚主義” (Xu, Mar. 15, 1921: 51).

Besides the issue of bureaucratism (in agreement with Russell’s critique of Russian communism), state socialism did not appear to be a viable plan for socialist industrialization either (in contrast to Russell’s prescription). Zhang advanced the argument as follows:

[We] must know that, although it is said that the Communist Party holds the power of the state today in Russia, communism has not yet been established there. Not only have various policies advocated not yet been implemented, but those changes that had already been enforced have gradually been allowed to lapse in favor of the old practices. These days Lenin openly admits that [what has been done is] just a substitution of private capitalism with state capitalism. [We] can see not only that Russia is not a precedent for reforming the economy through political measures, but that it is proof of a failure to reform the economy through political measures. In fact, we do not object to Bolshevism because [we] support guild socialism; rather, we advocate guild socialism because we see that Bolshevism is not workable. (Zhang, Sept. 16, 1921: 4)

From these observations of Russia’s current situation after the New Economic Policy was implemented in 1921, Zhang concluded that the communist government in Russia itself had in effect become capitalist 資本家化. He became convinced of the impracticability of state socialism, which appeared to have been malformed into state capitalism; he argued that “so-called state socialism was just state capitalism” from the beginning (Zhang, Jan. 6, 1922: 2). Now that revolutionary socialism had appeared to retreat into state capitalism, there was no reason for China to stick to the method of radical revolution.

Instead, Zhang and his fellow guildsmen believed that guild socialism showed a better path toward socialist industrialization, with the promise of realizing the industrialization of China while avoiding the evils of both capitalism and state socialism. They believed that state socialists or communists relied heavily on an outmoded argument for the omnipotence of politics 政治萬能主義, and because of this prioritization of politics, particularly state politics, state socialism stood opposed to democracy (Xu, Mar. 15, 1921: 48). They criticized state socialists for viewing the government as a “magic wand” that could even “turn a man into a woman,” channeling their attempts to reform everything, including the economy, primarily through political measures, and more precisely through governmental power. Against this, guildsmen maintained that politics was only one dimension of a whole society, not the totality of all social existence, and argued that economic problems should be solved by economic measures. This is the guild socialist principle epitomized by G. D. H. Cole’s famous dictum, “Economic power precedes political power.” In other words, the guild socialist principle of separating economy from politics was indeed intended to secure democracy in the midst of economic reforms, in contrast to state socialism, which depended heavily on political measures to enforce socialist reforms (Zhang, Jan. 6, 1922: 1–2).

While we have seen above that guildsmen advocated guild socialism as a desirable plan for China, there remains a question to be answered: Did they believe it was actually viable in contemporary China too? Facing the common criticism that guild socialism would be possible only in a developed industrial country, Zhang retorted by asking, “What kind of socialism would ever be possible in today’s China?” Zhang continued that, according to Marxist historical materialism, there would be no possibility for China to practice socialism at its current stage before industrialization; rather, China should promote capitalism to the point where class conflicts would eventually lead to a social revolution (Zhang, Sept. 16, 1921). In other words, Zhang maintained that a genuine class revolution would never be possible in China because of the lack of class basis, and thus any activism in the name of socialism would lead only to a “false worker-peasant-ism” 偽勞農主義 (Zhang, Dec. 5, 1920). Rather than concentrating on a political revolution, which looked impossible in contemporary China anyway, he believed that it would be better to commence work to change the entire society at once in accordance with guild socialist principles. The first step toward such a total transformation of society would be to reform existing guild organizations 同業公會 (or 同業公所) and to take advantage of occupational schools (Zhang, Sept. 16, 1921; Xu, Jan. 6, 1922). In this sense, guild socialism was conceived of as both desirable and practicable.

The Functionalist Redefinition of the State and Democracy

State socialism, like anarchism and syndicalism, viewed the state as an inherently oppressive organization that privileged one class (the bourgeoisie) over another (the proletariat). Unlike anarchism’s and syndicalism’s complete rejection of the state, however, state socialism turned to the state for administrative efficiency once it succeeded in its political revolution. In fact, state socialists believed that a proletarian dictatorship was required for a transition to communism; the people, except for the bourgeoisie, would all work to become the proletariat after the revolution, so a dictatorship of the proletariat would actually mean dictatorship by the majority of the people. Therefore, a proletarian dictatorship would not run counter to democracy at all—on the contrary, democracy could only be realized through a dictatorship of the proletariat and its unique ability to efficiently suppress reactionary activities (Xin, Sept. 1, 1921: 2–3). Indeed, state socialists believed that the proletarian state that would arise after the destruction of the bourgeois state was the true agent for democracy (Shi, July 1, 1922: 31–32).

Chinese guildsmen were adamant in repudiating the claim that democracy could be secured through proletarian dictatorship. They believed that the notion of proletarian dictatorship, and more broadly the class-centered notion of the state itself, prompted the state’s coercive administration to violate social autonomy and thus went against the spirit of democracy. The guildsmen thus made earnest theoretical attempts to depart from the class theory of the state. Interestingly, as they separated industrialization from capitalism to open up possibilities for socialist industrialization, as noted above, they took up a similar strategy of historicizing the state to dissociate it from capitalism and create conceptual alternatives to the class theory of the state.

For example, Guo Mengliang argued that the state had already existed long before the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, when capitalism emerged. However, the state as it existed at present was not a timeless form; it was just taking another of the many particular shapes it had taken in its long history as a form of governance. In other words, the present form of the state as a tool of class domination was merely a unique phenomenon of the current era of capitalism. In this regard, Guo contended that the state and capitalism were not in a “necessary” 必然的 relationship but only in a “contingent” 偶然的 one (Guo, Mar. 26, 1922: 2). Now that there was no reason to assume any necessary connection between the state and capitalism, the state did not have to be seen as necessarily an organization of class domination, which was a historical problem of capitalism. Therefore, there would no longer be any reason either to completely deny the state as a form of governance, as anarchists did, or to assume its withering away, as Marxists did.

The guildsmen further proceeded to directly contradict the concept of class centrality. Even if, in accordance with class theory, the current system was inverted and the proletariat seized power, Xu Liuji argued, this simply meant the rise of the proletariat as a new ruling class in place of the class currently in power. It would not, however, solve the fundamental problem of political domination by the governing of the governed (Xu, Jan. 6, 1922: 3). ¹⁶ Instead, guildsmen redefined the state in accordance with the “principle of functionalism” 職能原理 as one of many organizations that perform their respective functions in society. From the functionalist perspective, the state was composed of individual members defined by their function as consumers rather than their class position as capitalists. These consumers 消費者were positioned in distinction to producers 生產者 who organized guilds, but, as Guo Mengliang explicated, producers and consumers were not two separate groups. Rather, producers and consumers represented the two roles that could be taken on concurrently by any citizen (GM, Nov. 26, 1921: 1). If consumers and producers were merely categories that referred to the dual positioning of one person, would it even be necessary to distinguish producers from consumers? How could consumers be distinguished from producers? And how were consumers and producers different from the bourgeoisie and the proletariat?

In the guildsmen’s understanding, consumers were those who engaged in political affairs and thus were represented by the state, while producers were those who engaged in production activities—both mental and manual—and were represented by guilds. According to Guo Mengliang, the consumers in the state were originally producers, but “once they manage state affairs, [they] immediately lose their original position and are expelled from the army of producers to be transformed into consumers.” For example, if a shoemaker took a position in the office of education, he would lose his original status as a producer (shoemaker) and be designated as a state official (GM, Nov. 26, 1921: 1). In this sense, a consumer is defined negatively by his or her lack of direct engagement in production, rather than positively by the function of consumption. Guo continued to stress that he did not mean that a shoemaker could not take a governmental position, but rather intended to use this example to prompt a debate on state socialism. In other words, he proposed this conceptual separation between the state as a consumers’ association and a producers’ association, or a guild, to expose the bureaucratic nature of the state.

Functionalist concepts of state and society were appropriated further to refute the state socialist policy of reforming the economy through political measures. Guildsmen advanced plans to avoid state encroachment on society or bureaucratism by designating the state to perform only specific functions such as jurisdiction, central and local administration, public health, and education. In this functionalist perspective, the state was not an almighty institution at all; it did not hold any authority (and necessity) to dominate over others, but rather performed its particular function in balance with other organizations, which also independently performed their own respective roles. Zhang Dongsun applauded this concept of a “functional state” 職能的國家 as a political invention that G. D. H. Cole devised to overcome the evils of state socialism and “relieve the people’s agonizing life” (Zhang, Jan. 20, 1921). In the sense that this functional state operated in harmony with other organizations without violating their autonomy, guildsmen believed it would lead society to realize what they called “functional democracy” 職能的民主主義 (Tongren, Sept. 16, 1921: 1).

It is important to note that functional democracy would be possible only in a conflict-free condition. In the functionalist perspective, democracy was not a goal to be achieved through the efficient resolution of any possible conflicts—in sharp contrast with the communist concept of democracy as something to be won after a class revolution. For guildsmen, in a society where individuals performed their respective functions as consumers and producers, not as antagonistic classes, there would be no class conflicts, thus no need for class struggle. Rather, functionalism would work to cancel any conflicts between state and society because all organizations—including the state—would independently play their respective roles. How, then, would these diverse roles independently played by organizations be coordinated? Zhang appeared to have this question in mind when he suggested coalition politics as a mechanism of social integration, as we have examined above; however, he did not offer concrete explanations of how such coalition politics would operate (Zhang, Sept. 1, 1919b: 21). Chinese guildsmen did not explicate this issue in detail, opting instead to concentrate on critiques of state socialism.

Such pluralist, functionalist conceptualizations invited harsh criticism from communists, particularly for their rejection of the possibility and desirability of class struggle. Most of all, for communists, the guild socialist concepts of consumers and producers did not make sense at all. While still associated with the communists, Shi Cuntong 施存統 (1899–1970) argued that “if everyone is a producer and, at the same time, a consumer, the confrontation between a producer and a consumer only means that one is in confrontation with oneself. What is the point of this argument?” Shi argued that this was too absurd even to be considered a theory (Shi, July 1, 1922: 31–32). Also, for communists, consumers in a state were none other than capitalists. According to Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀 (1879–1942), when guildsmen proposed that the state would take full charge of political affairs while the guilds handled the economy, they were in effect handing over all the political power held by such agencies as the government, navy, army, and police to capitalists. What was worse, guildsmen failed to acknowledge that the state and other social organizations would necessarily come into conflict with each other. Chen Duxiu admitted that guild socialism was influenced by syndicalism’s industrial autonomy, but he charged that in their failure to account for conflict, guildsmen lost syndicalism’s “spirit of class war” (Chen, July 1, 1921: 8–9).

The debate between guildsmen and communists resulted from their fundamentally different concepts of state and society. Guo Mengliang directly replied to Chen Duxiu’s accusation that guildsmen had lost the spirit of class war and maintained that guildsmen just thought class struggle would not be necessary at all. Rather, according to Guo, guildsmen saw the proletarian dictatorship as a dangerous idea, one that rendered producers merely as subjects who beg for gifts from the dictatorial government. This violated the principle of social autonomy and was thus oppressive (Guo, May 16, 1922: 1). In other words, the controversy demonstrated that they had developed two different concepts of democracy—guild socialist functional democracy versus communist democracy through a class dictatorship.

From the Ownership Problem to a Question of Control

As communist critiques of guild socialism demonstrated, antagonistic class structure in a capitalist society was the most crucial point in Marxist thought. Chinese communists accepted Leninist notions of the irreconcilability of class antagonism along with the dictatorship of the proletariat. They aimed to abolish the private property system, which, they thought, was the cause of class antagonism. This was their primary goal and they believed they could accomplish it only through revolutionary movements and class struggle (Chen, July 1, 1921: 12; Xin, July 1, 1922: 38). It was this class theory that, as we have examined so far, guildsmen firmly opposed, for they regarded it as the very cause of undemocratic, bureaucratic practices under state socialism. Such opposition to this class theory raises another important question: If a society is not class-antagonistic, or if class conflicts are not the most fundamental problem of capitalism, what capitalist problems would they tackle as socialists? In other words, how could guildsmen remain socialists while denying class antagonism? In order to answer this question, we need to recall that Chinese guildsmen redefined socialism as an idea and movement that ultimately pursued freedom as a fundamental principle of human life. Here I argue that this redefinition of socialism came from their critical recognition of alienation as the most crucial problem of capitalism, one that exists beneath all the apparent problems of economic inequality and class exploitation. What is the problem of alienation, and why did they think it was more deeply rooted than any other problems?

It is noteworthy that Chinese guildsmen appeared to subscribe to the Marxist definition of alienation. According to Erich Fromm (2011: 44), “alienation (or estrangement) means, for Marx, that man does not experience himself as the acting agent in his grasp of the world, but that the world (nature, others, and he himself) remain alien to him. They stand above and against him as objects, even though they may be objects of his own creation.” In fact, the problematization of alienation is not peculiar to Chinese guildsmen. Anthony Wright has commented that “guild theory accepted the main categories of Marxian economics but was more concerned to probe those human consequences of economic exploitation which we now like to describe in terms of alienation.” According to Wright, guildsmen would be called “the grand diagnosticians of alienation” (Wright, 1974, 169–70).

Although he did not employ the particular term “alienation” 異化, Xu Liuji showed his grasp of it (in its original Marxist sense) when he delineated the history of capitalist development into three phases. According to Xu, capitalism developed from a first phase when the people utilized capital, passing through a second phase in which the people and capital utilized each other. It had now reached its third phase, when capital utilized the people and the people thereby lost any chance to freely realize their human nature. Xu appeared to interpret this problem of alienation as a philosophical problem, emphasizing that “capitalism gave materialism and anti-humanitarianism 不人道 to our civilization, and consequently destroyed the goodness of human life and annihilated human dignity.” In other words, for guildsmen, it was within the philosophical question of alienation that the inside facts 內幕 or deep-rooted problems of capitalism in its third phase were located (Xu, Jan. 6, 1922: 4).

With this recognition of alienation as the central problem of capitalism, the ultimate goal of socialism, for guildsmen, became the liberation of the people from this alienated condition of life. Although particularly tinted by the Chinese guildsmen’s anarchist-influenced cultural propensity, this view was rather closer to Marx’s original concept of socialism as “the emancipation from alienation, the return of man to himself, his self-realization” (Fromm, 2011: 43). What is historically significant about Chinese guildsmen’s problematization of alienation in the early 1920s does not reside in its theoretical originality but in its plain resistance to state socialism, the political form of revolutionary Marxism then existing in Russia and the model of socialism that most contemporary Chinese communists hoped to emulate. In reaction to state socialism, Chinese guildsmen appeared to change the focus of socialist movements away from the abolition of the private property system that state socialists were enforcing through a bureaucratic state. Indeed, guildsmen thought that such ownership reforms or communization of properties could not generate meaningful solutions to the problem of alienation. Xu Liuji contended that even if the means of production were communalized and the wealth equally distributed, producers could not attain happiness if they were not given freedom at the same time (Xu, Mar. 15, 1921: 54–56). Zhang Dongsun also stressed that guild socialism never regarded the communalization of property alone as sufficient to transform the capitalist economy, and instead pursued a “thoroughness” 徹底 of transformation (Zhang, Feb. 6, 1922: 3). How, then, could guildsmen carry out “thorough” transformations to attain freedom?

Importantly, guildsmen paid attention to the wage system as the fundamental cause of alienation and thus took it as their primary target for thorough changes. According to Xu Liuji, the wage system, or the institution of trading labor 勞動買賣制度, amounted to little more than slavery. Under this system, laborers degenerated into a commodity; like machines or raw materials, they became simply a part of the cost of production. Capitalists purchased labor as a commodity and took what was produced by this purchased labor into their exclusive possession, but the workers had no claim on what they had produced, thus losing their human dignity. This wage system or commodification of producers significantly dislocated human relationships (Xu, Mar. 15, 1921: 55). Xu further emphasized that under this commodified relationship, production was pursued solely to generate the maximum possible profit from the lowest possible expense. This is what he criticized as a system of “production for profits” 為利潤而生產 (Xu, Jan. 6, 1922: 2). Zhang Dongsun also agreed on this critique: he thought that commodification of labor indicated the particular situation in which the poor could not help but sell their labor power. Zhang stressed that this systematic transaction of human labor was not an inevitable consequence of economic development, but rather a particular problem created under capitalism that ran against the public good (Gao, 2018: 264–65).

Interestingly, guildsmen did not view this system of “production for profits” or the fundamental problem of capitalism as a class question. Rather, for them, capitalists were also alienated victims. As we have observed above, they saw alienation as a question of the materialist and inhumane culture of capitalism that embeds both capitalists and workers into commodified relationships. Although they occasionally used the terms “capitalists” and “workers” to discuss the operation of capitalist economy, they never positioned these classes in antagonistic relation to each other. Rather than aiming to overthrow the exploiting class of capitalists through a proletarian revolution, Xu Liuji even remarked that if capitalists threw harmful materialism out, learned the spirit of cooperation, and realized the virtue of spiritualism, they could at least avoid being reactionary (Xu, Jan. 6, 1922: 3).

In fact, this repudiation of class antagonism as a central focus coincided with their functionalist vision of a society composed of consumers and producers, in the sense that both capitalists and workers were considered to belong to a category of producers, their involvement in production distinguishing them from consumers in the state. Because they claimed the goal of liberating producers (both capitalists and workers) from alienation, guildsmen now interpreted socialism as a humanitarian movement based on the brotherhood of all classes, a movement that would overcome “labor commodification” 勞動商品主義 to realize “labor humanitarianism” 勞動人格主義 (Xu, Mar. 15, 1921: 55–56). Xu Liuji was indeed convinced that “guild socialism is the savior 救星 for all slaves” (Xu, Jan. 6, 1922: 2). It was also based upon this logic of retheorizing socialism as generally humanitarian, with guild socialism as its optimal form, that Chinese guildsmen promoted guild socialism as a suitable model for any country whose people sought to be liberated from their alienated condition of life. Of course, for them, China was no exception to this quest for freedom from alienation.

It is important to note that Xu Liuji’s view of capitalists as victims of alienation, and as subjects of potential reform, never resulted in indifference to the potential of workers to lead a socialist movement. Xu acknowledged that capitalists were those least affected by the system and that they could not comprehend their own victimhood until they were reformed and brought to understand “the fundamental ethics of socialism” and the spirit of cooperation. Rather than addressing any specific programs to reform capitalists, Xu instead emphasized that workers, the poorest victims, should lead a movement that was broadly defined as a reconstruction of human life based on freedom. It is in this sense that Xu pronounced socialism a “movement of the underclass” 下層運動 (Xu, Jan. 6, 1922: 4). As distinguished from class struggle in the Marxist sense, however, guildsmen’s attention to an underclass and its organizations, such as labor unions or guilds, was always colored by their humanitarian perspective: Xu contended that “labor unions are significant not because they are groups of poor laborers but because they contain all life values”—by which he meant free will and the ability to overcome alienation (Xu, Jan. 6, 1922: 4). By supporting a movement of the underclass, which was reinterpreted as a humanitarian struggle for the emancipation of human beings—both capitalists and workers—from capitalist alienation, they could thus remain socialists despite their lack of focus on class antagonism.

What would be the characteristic of a movement of the underclass if it did not acknowledge class antagonism? More specifically, what did workers’ initiative mean if their relationship with capitalists was not antagonistic? Here I should point out that the guildsmen’s movement of the underclass, grounded on their humanitarian reinterpretation of socialism, focused primarily on the issue of control in workplaces, differing from the communist focus on the problem of private ownership. In other words, guildsmen viewed the enhancement of management power in workplaces as a more appropriate strategy to make a “thorough” transformation of human life, to create freedom and “industrial autonomy” 產業自治, than ownership reforms enforced through the power of the state under state socialism. ¹⁷ In this regard, the guildsmen suggested that workers engage in “encroachment on management” 管理蠶食, which meant to transfer the right of management from employers to workers through constant, gradual, and piecemeal change (Xu, Jan. 6, 1922: 4). In this regard, Zhang Dongsun remarked that China did not need to seek radical social change, but did need to be aware that social reconstruction required considerable time. This strategy of encroachment reiterated their commitment to gradualism in opposition to state socialist radical revolution (Zhang, Jan. 6, 1922: 2).

Conclusion

During the ongoing debates among leftist factions in Republican China, communists challenged guildsmen’s presentation of socialism as a humanitarian and gradual movement. Shi Cuntong charged that guild socialism not only denied class revolution but also actively promoted capitalism; the guild socialist strategy of encroachment meant that a group of laborers, especially union members (not the entire proletarian class), would encroach on the authority of capitalist managers while still depending on the premise of capitalist development inside factories. According to Shi, this argument was little more than advocacy for capitalist development, and Chinese guildsmen were only hypocritical scholars who hid behind the label of guild socialism to cover up their real intention to promote capitalism (Shi, July 1, 1922: 29). Repeating the communist stress on revolutionary activism, Xin Kai 新凱 also argued that labor unions should be radicalized to become “activist labor unions” 運動勞動組合 to battle the current system of capitalism, rather than limiting themselves to acting only as a medium for gradually taking over management (Xin, July 1, 1922: 39).

As guildsmen never relented in their objections to the proletarian revolution and adhered to their pluralist, humanitarian, and gradualist principles, the debate between guild socialists and communists was never resolved and was eventually suspended. Guild socialism as a viable movement soon disappeared, while the GMD and the CCP formed the United Front for the goal of reunifying the nation. Indeed, beginning in the mid-1920s, in China as well as in Britain, socialist pluralism and guild socialism appeared to vanish into thin air. The historical conditions of the time, dictated by both the global development of fascism and China’s historical necessity to fight against imperialism while constructing a unified Chinese state, were never congenial to guild socialism.

Moreover, guild socialism was viewed primarily as a utopian and thus impracticable idea in China, as guildsmen could never convince significant numbers of people of guild socialism’s realistic potential. As we have examined above, Chinese guildsmen reinterpreted socialism as a humanitarian movement to pursue freedom from the alienated condition of life, a universal problem from which China was not exempt. They argued for guild socialism’s suitability in China on this rather philosophical ground, irrespective of the country’s economic conditions. Moreover, while acknowledging that this issue of alienation emerged in highly developed capitalist economies (only at the third phase in capitalist development, as Xu discussed above), guildsmen failed to elucidate why China, an underdeveloped country, should devote itself to this future problem. Their assertion of China’s ability and responsibility to join the world to improve theories of socialism for the future world did not have enough appeal to those people who were concerned about more immediate challenges to China’s national survival (Zhang, Feb. 15, 1921: 55–56).

Despite its ephemerality and fruitlessness, however, guild socialism played a meaningful role in the history of Chinese socialism. Based upon its pluralist redefinitions, guild socialism in China stood as an alternative vision to the mainstream discourses of state-centered politics. More significantly, as the form of socialism “most deeply imbued with the hues of May Fourth thinking,” or as the real inheritor of the “Mr. Democracy” figure of the New Culture Movement (Dirlik, 1989: 129; Gao, 2018: 288), it demonstrated China’s endeavor to combine socialism and democracy, which resonated broadly with many contemporary Chinese thinkers. Guildsmen repositioned socialist politics as inherently interconnected with democratic life by retheorizing socialism as a total reconstruction of human life, based on the principles of autonomy and decentralization. By emphasizing everyday transformation via education, they presented their democratic vision of socialism to be realized at the level of daily culture, free from alienation.

The guild socialist movement in 1920s China was also significant from the broader perspective of world socialism. Chinese guildsmen based their theory on their observations of undemocratic, bureaucratic politics under state socialism in contemporary Russia and, as both democrats and socialists, they further presented not only capitalist alienation but also socialist bureaucratism as crucial problems they should work to resolve. Joining the global conversation on the state, democracy, and socialism in the early 1920s—after the end of the First World War and the founding of the Communist International in 1919—Chinese guildsmen conceived of guild socialism as the socialist form most friendly to the democratic and humanitarian spirit. In other words, their simultaneous pursuit of socialism and democracy indeed functioned in 1920s China and the world as a legitimate critique of communist bureaucratism.