ABSTRACT
The social credit movement was born out of the guild socialism of the National Guilds movement which flourished briefly after World War I. It inherited the mantel of a philosophy which appealed to people of generous mind, ‘intelligence, social conscience, and genuine capacity for self-denying effort’ as no other English social movement has done since (Mairet 1936: 76). The Draft Mining Scheme was a combination of guild socialism and Douglas finance. It sought to provide an alternative to debt-driven capitalism by giving workers in industry a share in credit creation through the mechanism of a producers’ bank. Devised for the spring conference of the National Guilds League executive in 1920, its emergence was considered a contributory factor in the sinking of the ‘guild ship . . . when the Communists finally scuttled it’ (Mairet 1936: 76). The split between the ‘Douglasites’ and the communists within the National Guild movement was, like all internal dissension, counterproductive and led to a weakening of the movement. However, it is more realistic to see the ‘guild ship’, in the shape of the Building Guilds, as setting out into uncharted waters, to be sunk by the undercurrents of capitalist finance.
