To do this, we must first educate ourselves as to what must be done and where we should be headed. And it is in this area of education that the republication of Arthur Penty's The Guild Alternative should meet with a true joy on the part of the faithful.
We would be hard pressed to name something of which Catholics are more ignorant of than the Christian position on economics, wealth, and industrialism. The Guild Alternative is an antidote for that ignorance. Written in 1921 and originally titled Guilds, Trade, and Agriculture, Penty's short (58 page) volume was written as an unabashed critique of industrialism, and as an equally vehement promotion of agriculture and the medieval guild system. His is not a head-in-the-sand advocating of a return to a pleasant and innocent past, but a rigorous and strict logical critique of industrialism and its incompatibility both with the Faith and the natural order of things which God created. It is not a critique of technology per se, but rather a critique of the ideology behind the poorly-thought-out, head-long plunge that man took toward industrialization, and his consequent exaltation of the machine over the soul.
This critique takes the form of 12 chapters, each several pages long, and each of which discusses a simple and yet fundamental principle in Penty's overall argument. He begins with a short introductory chapter, wherein he lays out what will be a common theme for his work: the importance of putting principle and Truth in any argument over data and observed phenomena. "Our aim should be to bring economic theory into a direct relationship with.moral philosophy." .
He then begins his direct attack on modern society with a three-chapter barrage against modern business and finance. What he terms the "tyranny" of big business, our obsession with investment and the hording of capital, and the workaholic notion of constantly increasing production for its own sake, are three notions which are slain by Penty's pen.
