Question

were guilds good or bad for economic growth during the pre-industrial period?

Answer 1

Middle Age guilds played a major part in society. They offered a means for the learning and transfer of trade skills from generation to generation. Members of a guild were given the ability to grow up through hard work in society.

The guild has in many respects been defending members. The guild helped leaders if they came on difficult times or were sick. They controlled working conditions and working hours. The guild also prohibited the sale of profitable goods to non-guild members. Some members of the guild were also exempted from paying the lords and kings heavy taxes.

There may be as many as 100 separate guilds in a big town throughout the Middle Ages. Types include weavers, dyers, armorers, bookbinders, painters, masons, bakers, leatherworkers, broilers, shoemakers, and candle-makers. These guilds were called handicrafts.

There were also merchant guilds in there. The town's manner of managing trade was regulated by merchant guilds. They could become very powerful and control much of the local economy.

Guilds in medieval and early modern Europe offered an effective institutional mechanism by which two powerful groups, guild members and political elites, could collaborate to capture and redistribute a larger portion of the economic pie to themselves at the expense of the rest of the economy. Guilds provided an organizational mechanism for business groups to negotiate exclusive legal privileges with political elites which enabled them to reap monopoly rents. Guild leaders then used their guilds in exchange for funding and compliance to funnel a portion of these rents to political elites. In short, guilds allowed their members and political elites to negotiate a way to extract rents in the manufacturing and commercial sectors, rents which none of the parties could have extracted on their own