Guild Socialism is now the favourite form. Under this the government of the country is to be twofold, from top to bottom. Guilds of producers are to own and run businesses, having eliminated the capitalist as such, and are to be organized into local, county, and national guilds of the workers in that business. Then all the national guilds unite in a Parliament of producers, who govern wages, and, I presume, the import and export trade. Over against this stand our present geographical constituencies and our present Parliament, which is the nation organized as consumers. The State, represented by the present geographically elected Parliament, is to remain supreme, is to be the ultimate owner of the property used by the Guilds, with the right to tax it, by a quit rent. The Guilds are to be the taxable units.[83] Rent, interest and profits are to be abolished. No provision for compensation is part of the proposal; but no doubt that would depend upon circumstances, and upon what could be arranged. It would also give rise to much difference of opinion among the advocates of the new order. And much would depend on whether it came gradually and peacefully, by consent--or after a revolutionary general strike--or, again, after civil war. One hears of an intention to respect life interests, but no more. Clearly this issue will subject our people to a political test which may be beyond their strength, and may, if we are not guided by justice and mercy, lead to a generation of violence and the ruin of many hopes. The ideals behind the movement are noble--to give the workman a proprietary interest in his work, to break down the pernicious distribution of wealth which economic freedom has brought about, to bring up a healthy and well-bred race, not a well-bred class only, to put public service in place of profit as the motive for labour; to banish the wretched insecurity of unemployment, and take away the bored life of the idle rich; to use the surplus wealth of industry for the education of the whole people and for a full life for all. Nothing less than this is the guerdon of success. If the Guild is to guarantee a wage to all its workers, well and ill, under good trade and bad, in defiance of changes in demand due to fashion or invention, or to changes in weather or to foreign imports, there will certainly have to be great powers in the Guild for the transfer of labour from where it is not wanted to where it is. Also, seeing that only a certain number of workers are wanted in the pleasanter occupations, some authority in the guilds will have to assign their duty to all labourers, instead of leaving the choice to competition with the sharp tooth of hunger behind it.