Rediscovering the Guild System: the New Age Circle as A British Laboratory Of Corporatist Ideas (1906-1916)

• Autor(a) principal: Torreggiani, Valerio
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Oficina do Historiador
• Texto Completo: https://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/ojs/index.php/oficinadohistoriador/article/view/24578
• topic: Corporativismo. New Age Circle. Primeira Guerra Mundial. Socialismo das Guildas. Catolicismo social.

This article analyzes the role of the New Age circle as a laboratory of corporatist ideas in pre-World War One Britain. The New Age circle was an intellectual informal network composed by radical, anti-liberal individuals coming from the entire political spectrum. Arguing that Corporatism was not just a socio-economic product of fascist, authoritarian and nationalist ideologies, the essay highlights the corporatist tendencies existed within the network in exam between 1907 and 1916. In so doing, we try to show how the United Kingdom participated to a global corporatist reflection started before the advent of Fascism also by non-fascist groups. Therefore the paper firstly presents an overview of the most important intellectual landmarks of the New Age circle, such as William Morris and John Ruskin’s political and economic thought, Cardinal Manning’s social ideas and the concept of group juridical personality of Frederic W. Maitland and John N. Figgis. Secondly, the several and different forms of corporatist thought were presented, such as Penty’s medievalism, G.D.H. Cole’s Guild Socialism, De Maeztu’s right-wing, monarchic organicism and Belloc’s social Catholicism.