Movement that called for workers' control of industry through a system of national guilds, organized internally on democratic lines, and state ownership of industry.
It began in England in 1906 with publication of Arthur J. Penty's The Restoration of the Gild System and was organized into the National Guilds League in 1915. It reached its apex with the left-wing shop stewards' movement during World War I and, after the war, with building guilds that built houses for the state. Both movements collapsed after the economic slump of 1921, and the league was dissolved in 1925.