The Guild was above all else an ideological movement, one which owed its existence to a particular understanding of how society should organise itself. The ideology it propagated, one which it wished to propagandise by acting as an exempla, was essentially a response to the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century and the social and moral problems it brought with it. These ideas though did not arise spontaneously; the three key areas where the Guild supported a distinctive ideology, artistic, political and religious, had been the subject of the deliberations of key thinkers of the Victorian era who had often proposed a social model much in keeping with aspects of that which emerged at Ditchling. The distinctive feature of the Ditchling experiment however was the way these ideas were brought together to form a original and important attempt to re-establish much of that was desirable about pre-industrial and, indeed Medieval society. This will become clear by examining these different strands of thought which contributed to the Guild philosophy.
1. Artistic - Ruskin, Morris and the Arts and Crafts movements
The Arts and Crafts Movement began primarily as a search for authentic and meaningful styles for the 19th century and as a reaction to the eclectic revival of historic styles of the Victorian era and to "soulless" machine-made production aided by the Industrial Revolution.
Considering the machine to be the root cause of all repetitive and mundane evils, some of the protagonists of this movement turned entirely away from the use of machines and towards handcraft, which tended to concentrate their productions in the hands of sensitive but well-heeled patrons. Yet, while the Arts and Crafts movement was in large part a reaction to industrialization, if looked at on the whole, it was neither anti-industrial nor anti-modern. Some of the European factions believed that machines were in fact necessary, but they should only be used to relieve the tedium of mundane, repetitive tasks. At the same time, some Arts and Crafts leaders felt that objects should also be affordable. The conflict between quality production and 'demo' design, and the attempt to reconcile the two, dominated design debate at the turn of the twentieth century.
Those who sought compromise between the efficiency of the machine and the skill of the craftsman thought it a useful endeavour to seek the means through which a true craftsman could master a machine to do his bidding, in opposition to what many believed to be the reality during the Industrial Age, i.e., that humans had become slaves to the industrial machine.
The need to reverse the human subservience to the unquenchable machine was a point that everyone agreed on. Yet the extent to which the machine was ostracised from the process was a point of contention debated by many different factions within the Arts and Crafts movement throughout Europe.
2. Political - Chesterton, Belloc and Distributism
Distributism, also known as distributionism and distributivism, is a third-way economic philosophy formulated by such Roman Catholic thinkers as G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc to apply the principles of Catholic Social Teaching articulated by the Roman Catholic Church, especially in Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum and more expansively explained by Pope Pius XI's encyclical Quadragesimo Anno. According to distributism, the ownership of the means of production should be spread as widely as possible among the general populace, rather than being centralized under the control of the state (socialism) or wealthy private individuals (capitalism).
A summary of distributism is found in Chesterton's statement: "Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists." Essentially, distributism distinguishes itself by its distribution of property. Distributism holds that, while socialism allows no individuals to own productive property (it all being under state, community, or workers' control), and capitalism allows only a few to own it, distributism itself seeks to ensure that most people will become owners of productive property. As Hilaire Belloc stated, the distributive state (that is, the state which has implemented distributism) contains "an agglomeration of families of varying wealth, but by far the greater number of owners of the means of production." This broader distribution does not extend to all property, but only to productive property; that is, that property which produces wealth, namely, the things needed for man to survive. It includes land, tools, etc. Distributism has often been described as a third way of economic order between socialism and capitalism. However, some have seen it more as an aspiration, which has been successfully realised in the short term by commitment to the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, these being built into financially independent local co-operatives, such as the Guild.
3. Religious - Medieval Catholicism
The Victorian era saw a revival of interest in pre-Reformation religious practice and belief, reflected in such intellectual developments such as Gothic Revival in Architecture and the Oxford Movement in the church of England. The notion that the Catholic Church had valid claims to being closer to the early church led to a great many conversions in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras.
