Artisans and Guilds

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ARTISANS AND GUILDS

artisans and political radicalism
artisans as cultural mediators
the role of the guilds
comparison of guild situation in germany and france
historical importance of artisans
bibliography

In most European countries artisans have played a decisive role in developing industrial production, propagating democratic and socialist ideas, and promoting new cultural values. In the past, historians had too often described them as victims of capitalist industrialization and followed in this the diagnostic of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's Communist Manifesto (1848), which predicted the agony of small enterprises as a result of capitalist accumulation. More recently, the different paths of development of artisan professions during the nineteenth century have been underlined, and historians have shown how in the second half of the century some artisan professions survived, others adapted to the new economic conditions, while in other cases the character of artisan production was transformed as new occupations entered the small enterprise sector. The originally high number of shoemakers, tailors, and carpenters often declined because of the development of new forms of production and commercialization that limited their independence or field of production, whereas other artisan groups, including plumbers, electricians, and mechanics, grew in number and expanded as part of a broad process of industrial development.

In the middle of the nineteenth century great European cities such as Paris and London were dominated by small workshops and artisan producers. By the beginning of the twentieth century professions with close links to the consumer market, such as butchers and bakers, increased in number and often also in wealth, while others connected to building, such as bricklayers, carpenters, and plumbers, also profited from urbanization. The reason for these different developments can be found in the very nature of capitalism, which not only is based on big capital and big enterprises but also developed links between small workshops and larger firms. The forms of dependence and of cooperation varied from one sector to another and over time. The French economic historian Maurice Lévy-Leboyer described the functions of small enterprises as the "soupape de sécurité" (safety valve) of industrial capitalism.

artisans and political radicalism

From the French Revolution of 1789 onward, artisans have been linked with ideas of political radicalism. The sans-culottes movement with its stress on direct democracy, social equality, and nationalism initiated an evolution that was continued with different national variations throughout the nineteenth century. Radical artisans showed up again in the Revolution of 1848 in France, as well as in the Paris Commune (1871), and were a major force in the French socialist movement at the end of the nineteenth century. But they can also be seen in the Fratellanza artigiana d'Italia (founded 1861; Fraternity of artisans of Italy) which attempted to create a national democratic movement in Italy. They were active in German social democracy—August Bebel, co-founder of the Social Democratic Party, was a wood turner—despite the fact that the party was more committed to representative democracy and centralism. The Chartist movement (1838–1848) in Britain should also be seen in this context. The world of small producers who owned their means of production not only formed the backbone of many radical organizations but also played an important part in influential social utopian projects in nineteenth-century Europe. Charles Fourier's phalanxes as well as Étienne Cabet's Icarie were based on the image of the artisan, while in Germany Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen's agricultural cooperative banks and Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch's cooperatives were addressed primarily to the artisans and their interests.

The radicalization of the artisans did not contribute to the politics of the Left alone, and during the century artisans also moved to the Right. German artisans were well known for their defense of traditional guild structures, which, especially in urban centers, gave them control of production, an eminent role in the formation of apprentices, as well as important political rights in urban administration. During the 1850s and 1860s they adopted the ideas of self-help, but following the founding of the German Empire in 1871 their right-wing orientation predominated. They wanted to monopolize the right to have apprentices, to open a workshop, and to link the title of master to a successful cursus honorum (course of honors)—and they succeeded in obtaining most of these demands. By the end of the century membership in corporative organizations was obligatory if two-thirds of the masters of an occupation in a town agreed to make it so. This created important links with political parties because artisan organizations had become one of the most successful lobbies in the German Empire.

artisans as cultural mediators

Artisans were also important cultural mediators. In direct and personal contact with their clients, they

exercised an undeniable cultural and political influence. Situated in the heart of towns or in bigger city's quarters, they formed the backbone of sociability and associations. All across Europe they took part in singing associations, in religious circles, or in gymnastic groups. While such groups were committed to national goals in central and eastern Europe, artisans played a major part in promoting not only nationalism but also regionalism and localism. In Italy, Austria, and Germany, from the medieval era on, they started to invent their own national traditions, collect specific idioms of former artisans, and develop collections and museums. The past was used to legitimize their demands, but also to mobilize images of social harmony, quality work, and public commitment. Artisans were especially effective in defending values that were closely linked to their activities, and their strong commitment to local affairs and conditions made them suspicious of international capital. The need for capital to open a workshop made them defenders of private property, and the key value in this context was their independence in producing and selling their products. During the second half of the nineteenth century this independence came under pressure from state and capital interventions, and was sharply defended. Artisans presented images of social life that were antagonistic to the industrial mass society: personal links instead of isolation in the masses, quality work instead of mass production, family bonds instead of dissolution of social forms.

the role of the guilds

The development of artisan occupations in Europe was also linked to the survival of guilds. Historians have seen guilds as the typical organizations of the ancien régime because their function was to limit the production and regulation of each occupation. They also played an important role in urban politics and were associated with a specific morality and a code of honor. Seen as expressions of a corporate society based on legal privileges and on the power of professional and familiar traditions, they came under pressure in different European countries at the end of the eighteenth century and were abolished in France by the Law Le Chapelier (1791). It was Napoleon who promoted the freedom of commerce all around Europe and interdicted the corporations. Even if the contradiction between corporations and freedom of commerce existed more in theory than in practice—because the control of corporations was limited and important occupations ceased to be under their control—the abolition of the guilds was part of a liberal program. With the Restoration of 1815, however, the guilds came back and were restored in several countries.

In the United Kingdom the guilds had lost their importance during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but they continued to play an important role after 1815 in most European countries. In the Netherlands, they continued to provide welfare services, while in the south of Germany they were seen as an integral part of "hometowns" based on birth control and limited mobility. In other German and Austrian towns they were defended as institutions that at very low cost imposed bargaining procedures on journeymen and prevented social conflicts from becoming dangerous. In the Italian states they survived also during the first half of the nineteenth century, as well as in the central and eastern European countries. It was only in France that the abolition of the guilds was definitive, and all attempts made by artisans to restore them during the Restoration period (1815–1830) failed.

comparison of guild situation in germany and france

The effect of the guilds on the development of artisan trades can be seen from a comparison between Germany and France. In France, guilds were seen as organizations that obstructed a direct connection between citizens and government and hence prevented the expression of the "general will." Not only liberals and republicans but also the royalist government of the restored monarchy were hostile to them. It is a paradox of the French history of ideas that the republican sociologist Émile Durkheim should have promoted the idea of corporations as a means of social dialogue in order to overcome the anomic structures of industrial society. In Germany, by contrast, guilds were part of the conservative diagnostic of modern society and influenced the demands and programs of artisan organization after 1871. Beside this difference in ideas, the abolition of guilds in France had lasting effects. It thoroughly destroyed the organizational structure of the artisan occupations, which could survive only as chambers syndicales in which they had to cohabit either with bigger firms or with journeymen. It also abolished the traditions of apprenticeship, which in nineteenth-century France never acquired the importance that it continues to hold in Germany even in the early twenty-first century. The cursus honorum within the artisan occupations also collapsed, and the title of master lost its importance. Compared to the organizational structure and the bargaining power of German artisans, in France the opportunities for collective action and organization were heavily reduced. It was only during the 1920s and as a result of the influence of models of artisan organization that drew on the experience of Alsace-Lorraine (and the German system) that the artisan sector in France became structured and organized. Before 1914, the retailing traders were the main representatives of the French middle-class movement.

historical importance of artisans

Artisans were far less numerous than workers or peasants during the nineteenth century, but historians have nonetheless frequently underlined their importance. For German historians, they have been cited to explain the success of the National Socialist German Workers' Party's nostalgia for the past and have been seen as a reason for the German Sonderweg, the belief that Germany's strong monarchy, military, and disciplined hierarchy destined Germany for world power status, along with a belief in spiritual over material values. Many have underlined the links between artisans and shopkeepers and right-wing politics, a tendency that was reinforced after the 1918/1919 revolution, so that it is not surprising that the lower middle class was over represented among those who voted for Adolf Hitler before 1933. According to the German sociologist Theodor Geiger, their vote was attributed to a "panic reaction in the middle classes." Artisans and shopkeepers have therefore been seen as part of the traditional, premodern classes and features of the German society that made National Socialism possible.

This thesis has, however, met with increasing criticism since the 1980s as historians have differentiated between artisans and shopkeepers, stressed the political variety of the occupations, and underlined the very varied ways in which they have participated in modern economic life. In relativizing the importance of membership in interest groups and in stressing studies that demonstrate the diversity of urban situations and commitment, it has become clear that the lower middle classes lived in the social, political, and cultural worlds of their worker and white-collar neighbors. The deconstruction of the term middle class has also proved helpful in this discussion. In the first half of the nineteenth century the term was used to describe the different bourgeois professions and occupations that asserted their distance from the aristocracy and from the working poor. In the second half of the century the term was used to describe artisans and shopkeepers and to legitimate their demands in the liberal tradition of the bourgeoisie. The notion was less used in Germany where the term Mittelstand was prominent and referred not to a class society but to a society of orders. This negation of class structures was seen as a German particularity. This "othering" of the German middle classes was questioned. Social historians could demonstrate that corporate traditions played a certain role in relation to German artisans and shopkeepers, but that artisans did not hinder economic growth, social and geographic mobility, and political diversity. Their self-definition was more complex than the reference to a society of orders suggests.