Guild System and Political Economy

"Meanwhile, side by side with this emancipation of mankind
in the direct line of descent from the old chattel slaves of the
Roman villa went, in the Middle Ages, a crowd of institutions
which all similarly made for a distribution of property, and for
the destruction of even the fossil remnants of a then forgotten
Servile State. Thus industry of every kind in the towns, in
transport, in crafts, and in commerce, was organised in the
form of Guilds. And a Guild was a society partly co-operative,
but in the main composed of private owners of capital whose
corporation was self-governing, and was designed to check
competition between its members: to prevent the growth of
one at the expense of the other. Above all, most jealously did
the Guild safeguard the division of property, so that there
should be formed within its ranks no proletariat upon the
one side, and no monopolising capitalist upon the other."

Hiliare Belloc 'The Servile State' p39