
Artists Are Reviving the Idea of the Medieval Guild - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/t-magazine/craft-guild-la-friche-zaventem-ateliers.html
======
bradford
So, I had a problem. I wanted furniture that would last at least a decade.
Without going into too much detail, I cannot stress how poorly constructed
modern manufactured furniture is. It's also super expensive to pay a
craftsperson to make a one-off item.

I ended up making my own, and I couldn't have done this without the existence
of a nearby arts center that had space for rent and (I'm guessing) $50K worth
of machinery. I see similarities between the 'guilds' mentioned in the article
and my local arts center. I also see needs that could be met if the art-center
(guild) concept was extended beyond it's current function.

Not really sure about its feasability, just incredibly dissapointed in the
offerings that I was presented with in our free-enterprise system and perhaps
a bit idealistic about locale-specific workshops that might serve consumers
better.

~~~
jimmaswell
50k worth of machinery? Maybe if you're getting really fancy, but for some
basic furniture you shouldn't need more tools than a handheld circular saw,
hammer or cordless screwdriver, and optional belt sander and maybe a vice
grip.

~~~
Kluny
Maybe it wasn't basic.

~~~
jimmaswell
Maybe. I'm curious what was made here. People certainly didn't need all that
machinery when they made their own furniture in the wild west.

~~~
msbarnett
Perhaps he was aiming for a level of quality slightly higher than "some wild
west two-by-fours nailed together"?

The second you start looking at making aesthetically pleasing furniture you're
looking at doing proper joinery (tenons, dovetails and the like) not hammering
nails in.

Likely at the very least you'll want either a table saw, a router, and a
number of jigs, or quite a few different specialized hand saws and some high-
quality chisels. Likely you'll want to resaw boards to correct thickness as
well, so figure a Bandsaw or for larger pieces, a planer.

~~~
jimmaswell
Sure, I'm just pointing out you don't need that much investment to make your
own serviceable furniture, assuming you have the room. Personally I like the
basic wood look on furniture.

~~~
bonesjpone
Japanese furniture and temples were all built using only joints and advanced
wood working techniques. Minimal tools were needed, and if they were needed..
they were built by hand all the same.

~~~
munk-a
And given a few rocks of particular mineral compositions you can build
yourself an iPhone, it doesn't mean it's an efficient way to do it - in the
case of the flexible japanese joints it might be that it needs to be done by
hand to ensure the proper give, but I'd imagine a few modern tools would make
it much easier to do.

Same as this general thread - access to good tools makes things cheaper and
easier to do.

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Nasrudith
Although guilds and their meaning varied over time I don't think it fits the
medieval definition - they're not controlling anything even education/training
or optional certifications like Unions.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild)

I think co-op is a way more accurate term for it.

~~~
schnable
Agree.

The trade unions in many big cities really are like guilds. They monopolize a
particular trade, fix prices, offer apprenticeships and certifications,
provide benefits/retirement packages, and attempt to quash any competition by
non-members.

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manfredo
The medieval guild should not be viewed as an effective model. It ensured some
degree of standardized quality of service and goods, but they also functioned
to artificially inflate the price of labor by constricting supply. They we're
discriminatory in who was allowed to join. A peasant couldn't just decide to
become a watchmaker. An apprentice's family often had to pay to have their
child educated. Many scholars have speculated that guilds reduced overall
productivity.

That said, the spaces described in the article are not like this. They seem to
basically be hackerspaces for artists.

~~~
syn0byte
So trade schools and certifications; What's old is less old again!

~~~
manfredo
Not all trade schools work to reduce the supply of labor. If you hold a trade
school that teaches people to be a plumber or carpenter and you don't
artificially constrain who can and can't work as a carpenter or plumber then
this isn't behaving like a guild.

Certifications are more complicated - definitely some instances of
certifications function as little more than to reduce the supply of labor. But
there are some cases where wanting to certify some level of competence may be
desirable.

------
spectaclepiece
Happy to see this article on the front page of hacker news, it feels like it
ties together two important parts of my life. I help run one of Swedens
biggest communal workshops for artists and designers and its hard to
underestimate the value of communal workshops of the sort highlighted in this
article.

Most of us who dwell here live in a world where the infrastructure is digital.
Need to build a bigger thing? Just upgrade your instance or scale your
cluster. Need stronger tools? Just find it and read the manual.

For artists and designers working in the physical space it's not that easy.

Got a commission for a large public sculpture that won't even fit in the door
to your studio? Spend all the money you earn on it to rent a commercial space.
Need welding machines, casting oven or a ten meter textile printing table?
Contract it out and loose creative control.

The ability to share resources and tools is essential for the creative
professions and the fact that their purpose is highlighted in this article is
a positive sign.

Spaces like these are not guilds which restrict supply or inflate the price.
They are more like docker containers which allow complicated infrastructures
to be run and built on you local physical infrastructure.

~~~
AdamM12
How do you deal w/ tragedy of the commons type problems? Use to go to a hacker
space to use machinery for a project and it seemed that the guys running it
constantly complained about stuff not being put away properly all the time.

Another note...

I've recently thought a communal food hall would be pretty interesting where
people who are trying to start their own restaurant, food truck, etc. could
have some base infrastructure at a low cost so they could build out their
product over a few months. I'm sure these probably exist.

~~~
spectaclepiece
It hasn’t been a big issue the past five years I’ve been there. It’s for
professional artists and designers so they all have a common interest in
taking care of it. It’s been going for almost 50 years.

The bigger problem comes from what kind of production you allow. We focus on
large scale production but it’s not a production line. Nobody needs permission
to work on anything specific but some people have exploited the subsidized
rates and then you need to step in.

~~~
AdamM12
Yeah I can understand the ethos of that but don't you think that part of the
goal should be to allow them to build up the capital to expand out of the
space? Do you have some type of progression to get them to scale up and out?
It seems like it would be a tricky thing to navigate. You wouldn't want to
artificially restrict them from growing. Then they'd end up staying in the
space taking up room that could be used by one or more up and comers.

------
astazangasta
Guilds still exist and wield considerable power. See the the American Bar
Association or American Medical Association.

~~~
rtkwe
These go well beyond what the Bar Association and AMA do though by providing
space where it'd otherwise be unaffordable for the individual members. The Bar
and AMA are much more focused on the regulatory and lobbying side of things
with little of the support roles, which honestly makes sense given that their
membership is generally very well paid so the funding and support functions
aren't as necessary.

~~~
lotsofpulp
A portion of their high pay is because of the regulatory and lobbying side.

~~~
wlesieutre
For example from 1997:

[https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-
xpm-1997-03-01-19970600...](https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-
xpm-1997-03-01-1997060012-story.html)

 _> "The United States is on the verge of a serious oversupply of physicians,"
the AMA and five other medical groups said in a joint statement. "The current
rate of physician supply -- the number of physicians entering the work force
each year -- is clearly excessive."_

~~~
jtuente
> Cohen said medical schools have been producing the same number of doctors,
> 17,000 a year, for more than a decade. But, he said, there has been
> "explosive growth in the number of entry-level positions for residents."
> About 8,000 of the 25,000 positions are filled by graduates of medical
> schools outside the United States.

> Cohen said federal money should "no longer be used to support the training
> of foreign nationals."

And it seems the actual focus is on whether to fund foreign students.

------
dfboyd
About halfway down there's something that looks like the Iron Throne, but made
out of cheese.

------
cat199
"and the groundswell of socialist rhetoric in the face of increasing urban
gentrification"

true medieval guilds were not socialist - they were christian - and cannot
truly be recreated within a classical liberal / free-market economic system
since they were protected cartels with monopoly power over
production/distribution within their respective territories granted by the
local aristocracy with the blessing/protection of the church.

this is not a judgement or value statement either way - but a point that
painting historical guilds as 'socialist' (with the implicit marxist class
progression from feudalism -> capitalism -> socialism this entails), is
revisionist, and misrepresents (hides?) the actual historical structure of
which guilds were a part, and 'steals the credit' via misattribution to an
ideology which actually sought the _destruction_ of the remnants of the guild-
based system.

which also is not to say that the idea of medieval guilds and socialist worker
cooperatives don't have anything in common from a materialist perspective
either...

~~~
msla
> true medieval guilds were not socialist - they were christian - and cannot
> truly be recreated within a classical liberal / free-market economic system
> since they were protected cartels with monopoly power over
> production/distribution within their respective territories granted by the
> local aristocracy with the blessing/protection of the church.

There _is_ a tradition of Christian Socialism, arguably including the
Primitive Church, but the rest of your critique is spot-on.

> this is not a judgement or value statement either way - but a point that
> painting historical guilds as 'socialist' (with the implicit marxist class
> progression from feudalism -> capitalism -> socialism this entails), is
> revisionist, and misrepresents (hides?) the actual historical structure of
> which guilds were a part, and 'steals the credit' via misattribution to an
> ideology which actually sought the destruction of the remnants of the guild-
> based system.

Such Presentism is sadly rife whenever non-historians try to make a point
about comparing modern ideas to historic ones. The idea that people in the
past weren't moderns with worse hygiene, but instead had their own worldview
and goals divorced from the modern mindset, is quite lost on them.

~~~
cat199
'socialism' as it is traditionally understood is a post-enlightenment
philosophy specifically positing that the church is a tool of the ruling
classes used to surpress the workers.. while there are some (many!) strands of
christian ethics/social philosophy espousing a collectivist material position,
and many (most) of these predate this type of socialism, these are _christian_
and not socialist (due to the aforementioned distinction) - i'm not an expert
here, but I am quite confident that these strands were never (mis)labeled as
'socialist' until _after_ the arrival of the paris commune / marx / bakunin,
etc.

~~~
msla
Without going too far off-topic: Marxist Socialism is inherently anti-
religious, but there were Socialist traditions before Marx, and a number of
them were Christian in philosophy. The Diggers in Seventeenth Century England
are one example, and there's still a non-Marxist strain of Socialism in the
Liberation Theology movement.

So, is Socialism inherently anti-religious? Only if you think the Marxists own
the term.

~~~
cat199
as mentioned, not an expert - was the term 'socialist' used by any of the pre-
internationale groups? would they identify as such? or as christian with a
particular emphasis?

either way, in common discourse 'socialist' is not the same as 'socially
oriented'; 99.9% of the time (and also i posit for this article) it is pretty
safe to assume that the reference relates to one or another group claiming
some ideological lineage to the paris commune / 1st internationale seeking the
abolishment of capitalism, private property, and religious authority.

this is still true even for mainstream european socialist parties, etc, even
if they don't promote strict adherence so much these days (and so are more
'social democratic')

also: many anarchists are socialists but not marxists, though they do agree
with the class theory part..

------
tomcam
The quality of comments on this page greatly exceeds the quality of the
article itself. HN is quite special that way, at least to me.

------
BurningFrog
One of the main factors behind the rise of capitalism and the ensuing era of
industrialism and 30-fold increase of prosperity of ordinary people was
breaking the suffocating power of the guilds.

"Free enterprise" was originally a call to revolt against the guilds.

~~~
vkou
> 30-fold increase of prosperity of ordinary people

And here I thought the 30-fold increase of prosperity of ordinary people came
about because we now have ubiquitous access to what, in pre-industrial times,
was considered unlimited amounts of energy.

Stop producing electricity, stop burning coal, stop pumping oil, and you'll
very quickly see prosperity regress to pre-industrial levels, regardless of
what economic deity you worship.

~~~
BurningFrog
There is a lot to that of course, but the technology to exploit those energy
sources were developed in the era of dawning free enterprise, right in the few
countries that led the movement.

Not at any other time through thousands of years of civilization or five large
continents.

~~~
vkou
Those countries were in the middle of reaping the economic windfall of a
century of colonial theft and exploitation, combined with relative internal
stability, all in the context of advancements in metallurgy that took
millennia to develop (All the while having large coal reserves... And a
shortage of wood, because they've just finished clear-cutting their forests.)

For some reason, the industrial revolution did not develop in any other
societies over the centuries that shared a similar system of free enterprise
with imperial England... Why didn't the various Italian city states
industrialize during the Renaissance?

~~~
BurningFrog
The vast majority of the colonial theft and exploitation came _after_
industrialization, and as a _result_ of it. Once you're 10x wealthier and more
technologically advanced than the rest of the world, it will be conquered, one
way or another.

And while individuals got very rich from colonizing, and rulers got much pride
from ruling vast new lands, the colonizing societies as a whole did not really
get richer from it. There are benefits from colonies, but there are also
costs.

Of course, Spain and Portugal _did_ build vast preindustrial colonial empires
in the New World. Not by being (very) much more advanced, but mostly by the
incredible luck of having much better immune systems! The fact that 80-90% of
the New World people just spontaneously died on encountering Europeans, for
reasons none of the sides understood, is one of the most astonishing events in
history to me!!

So they (mostly Spain) had a few centuries of weird prosperity in mountains of
gold and silver, while still having a primitive mercantilist economy. Once
capitalism and the industrial revolution started elsewhere, they were left in
the dust, their pretty metal stashes no match for liberated human ingenuity.

You do ask a good question. Why did the stars align in 1760s England, and not
in the several other places in history that seemingly had most of the
ingredients? I've seen it asked a few times, and never answered. I won't
pretend that I, some random programmer with opinions on a web forum while
eating breakfast, have the answer either...

------
sideshowmel
Guilds sound good in theory, but would have a disastrous end result.

~~~
okmokmz
How so?

