Arthur Joseph Penty (17 March 1875 – 1937) was an English architect and writer on

guild socialism Guild socialism is an ideology and a political movement advocating workers' control of industry through the medium of trade-related guilds "in an implied contractual relationship with the public". It originated in the United Kingdom and was at ...

and

distributism Distributism is an economic theory asserting that the world's productive assets should be widely owned rather than concentrated. Developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, distributism was based upon Catholic social teaching princi ...

. He was first a Fabian socialist, and follower of Victorian thinkers

William Morris William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English textile designer, poet, artist, writer, and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts movement. He was a major contributor to the revival of traditiona ...

and

John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English polymath a writer, lecturer, art historian, art critic, draughtsman and philanthropist of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as art, architecture, Critique of politic ...

. He is generally credited with the formulation of a Christian socialist form of the medieval

guild A guild ( ) is an association of artisans and merchants who oversee the practice of their craft/trade in a particular territory. The earliest types of guild formed as organizations of tradespeople belonging to a professional association. They so ...

, as an alternative basis for economic life. Penty was the elder of the two architect sons of Walter Green Penty of York, designer of the York Institute of Art, Science and Literature. While a pupil and assistant with his father, Penty absorbed the spirit of the Arts and Crafts Movement and the progressive movement in Glasgow.

Early life

Arthur Penty was born at 16 Elmwood Street, in the parish of St Lawrence, York, the second son of Walter Green Penty (1852–1902), architect, and his wife, Emma Seller. After attending St Peter's School in York he was apprenticed in 1888 to his father.

Architect in York

When, in the 1890s, Penty joined his father's architectural practice, now renamed as Penty & Penty, "a marked improvement in the quality and originality of the firm's work" ensued. Among surviving buildings by Walter and Arthur Penty are: *1894: The Bay Horse, a

public house A pub (short for public house) is in several countries a drinking establishment licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption Licensing laws of the United Kingdom#On-licence, on the premises. The term first appeared in England in the ...

in Marygate. *1895-6: Rowntree Wharf on the River Foss, originally a flour warehouse for Leetham's Mill, which burnt down in 1931, now flats and offices. *1899: Terry Memorial

almshouse An almshouse (also known as a bede-house, poorhouse, or hospital) is charitable housing provided to people in a particular community, especially during the Middle Ages. They were often built for the poor of a locality, for those who had held ce ...

s in Skeldergate. *1900–02: Buildings in River Street, Colenso Street and Lower Darnborough Street in the Clementhorpe area south of the River Ouse. He attracted national and even international attention, including favourable notice in Herman Muthesius's '' Das englische Haus'' (1904). His younger brother, Frederick T. Penty (1879–1943) took over the business after their father died. Arthur's other younger brother, George Victor Penty (1885–1967), emigrated to Australia to pursue a career in the wool industry.

Move to London

Around 1900 Penty had met A. R. Orage; together with Holbrook Jackson they founded the Leeds Arts Club. Penty left his father's office in 1901, and moved to London in 1902 to pursue his interest in the arts and crafts movement. Orage and Jackson followed in 1905 and 1906; Penty in fact led the way, and Orage lodged with him in his first attempts to live by writing. There is a plaque on a house on the Thames riverside in Old Isleworth (near Syon Park) commemorating his residence there.

Influence

For a time, from 1906, Penty's ideas were widely influential. Orage, as editor of ''

The New Age ''The New Age'' was a British weekly magazine (1894–1938),credited as a major influence on literature and the arts during its heyday from 1907 to 1922, when it was edited by Alfred Richard Orage. It published work by many of the chief politi ...

'', was a convert to

. After

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

guild socialism dropped back as a factor in the thinking of the British Labour movement, in general; the idea of post-industrialism, on which Penty wrote, attributing the term to A. K. Coomaraswamy, receded in importance in the face of the economic conditions. Several of Penty's books were translated into German in the early 1920s. Penty was an acknowledged influence on the writings of Spain's Ramiro de Maeztu (1875–1936), who was murdered by Communists in the early days of the Spanish Civil War.

Distributism

The somewhat complex British development of distributism emerged as a conjuncture of ideas of Penty,

Hilaire Belloc Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc ( ; ; 27 July 187016 July 1953) was a French-English writer, politician, and historian. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. His Catholic fait ...

and the Chestertons, Cecil and Gilbert. It reflected in part a first split from the Fabian socialists of the whole New Age group, in the form of the Fabian Arts Group of 1907. Orage was a believer in Guild socialism for a period. After

C. H. Douglas Major (rank), Major Clifford Hugh Douglas, Institution of Mechanical Engineers, MIMechE, Institution of Electrical Engineers, MIEE (20 January 1879 – 29 September 1952), was a British engineer, economist and pioneer of the social credit economi ...

met Orage in 1918, and Orage invented the term

Social Credit Social credit is a distributive philosophy of political economy developed in the 1920s and 1930s by C. H. Douglas. Douglas attributed economic downturns to discrepancies between the cost of goods and the compensation of the workers who made t ...

for the Douglas theories, there was in effect a further split into 'left' (Social Crediters) and 'right' (distributist) thinkers. This is, though, fairly misleading as a classification; it was also to some extent a split between theosophist and

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

camps. Penty associated with the Catholic Ditchling Community. Penty went with the distributists. Distributism in the 1920s took its own direction, as Belloc wrote his version of it in the period 1920 to 1925 and connected it with his political theories. The British Labour Party declared against

in 1922.

Works

''The Restoration of the Gild System,''
Swan Sonnenschein and Co., 1906. *
"The Restoration of the Guild System,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XIII, No. 14, 1913. *
"The Restoration of the Guild System II,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XIII, No. 15, 1913. *
"The Restoration of the Guild System III,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XIII, No. 16, 1913. *
"The Restoration of the Guild System IV,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XIII, No. 17, 1913. *
"The Restoration of the Guild System V,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XIII, No. 18, 1913. *
"The Restoration of the Guild System VI,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XIII, No. 19, 1913. *
"The Restoration of the Guild System VII,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XIII, No. 20, 1913.
"The Peril of Large Organisations,"
''The New Age'', Vol. X, No. 13, 1912.
"Art as a Factor in Social Reform,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XIV, No. 13, 1914.
"Art and National Guilds,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XIV, No. 16, 1914.
"Art and Revolution,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XIV, No. 20, 1914.
"Guilds and Versatility,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XIV, No. 21, 1914.
"Aestheticism and History,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XIV, No. 22, 1914.
"The Leisure State,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XIV, No. 23, 1914.
"The Upside Down Problem,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XIV, No. 24, 1914.
"Mediaevalism and Modernism,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XIV, No. 25, 1914.
"Art and Plutocracy,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XV, No. 1, 1914.
"Fabians, Pigeons, and Dogs,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XV, No. 2, 1914.
"Liberty and Art,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XV, No. 5, 1914. * Essays on Post-Industrialism (1914) edited with Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy
''Old Worlds for New,''
George Allen & Unwin ltd., 1917.
"After the War,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XX, No. 11, 1917, pp. 246–248.
"The Function of the State,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XXII, No. 9, 1917, pp. 165–166.
"National Guilds v. the Class War,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XXIII, No. 16, 1918, pp. 250–253.
"Dance of Siva,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XXIII, No. 17, 1918, pp. 274–275.
"On the Class War Again,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XXIII, No. 21, 1918, pp. 330–331.
"Syndicalism and the Neo-Marxians,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XXIII, No. 24, 1918, pp. 376–377.
"The Neo-Marxians and the Materialist Conception of History,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XXIII, No. 25, 1918, pp. 393–394.
"A Guildsman's Interpretation of History,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XXIV, No. 1, 1918, pp. 5–7.
"National Guild Theory,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XXIV, No. 2, 1918, p. 31.
"A Guildsman's Interpretation of History: From Rome to the Guilds,"
''The New Age'', Vol. XXIV, No. 3, 1918, pp. 38–41.
''Guilds and the Social Crisis,''
G. Allen & Unwin ltd., 1919. * ''The Guild Alternative''.
''A Guildsman's Interpretation of History,''
George Allen & Unwin ltd., 1920 st Pub. 1919; reprinted by IHS Press, 2004
''Guilds, Trade and Agriculture,''
George Allen & Unwin ltd., 1921.
''Post Industrialism,''
with a Preface by G. K. Chesterton, George Allen & Unwin ltd., 1922.
"The Obstacle of Industrialism."
In ''The Return of Christendom'', George Allen & Unwin, Ltd. * ''Gilden, Gewerbe und Landwirtschaft'' (1922) translated by Otto Eccius * ''Towards a Christian Sociology'' (1923), * ''Agriculture and the unemployed'' (1925) with William Wright * ''The Elements of Domestic Design'' (1930) * ''Means and Ends'' (1932). * ''Communism and the Alternative'' (1933) * ''Distributism: A Manifesto'' (1937) * ''The Gauntlet: A Challenge to the Myth of Progress'' (2002) collection, introduction by Peter Chojnowski * Distributist Perspectives: Volume 1 – Essays on the Economics of Justice and Charity (2004) with others

References

* Kiernan, Edward J. ''Arthur J. Penty: his Contribution to Social Thought'', The Catholic University of America Press, 1941. * Matthews, Frank. "The Ladder of Becoming: A.R.Orage, A.J. Penty and the Origins of Guild Socialism in England," in David E. Martin and David Rubenstein (editors), ''Ideology and Labour Movement,'' 1979. * Thistlewood, David. "A. J. Penty (1875–1937) and the Legacy of 19th-Century English Domestic Architecture," ''The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians'', Vol. 46, No. 4, Dec. 1987. * Sokolow, Asa Daniel
"The Political Theory of Arthur J. Penty,"
''The Yale Literary Magazine'', 1940.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Penty, Arthur People educated at St Peter's School, York 1875 births 1937 deaths English Christian socialists English political writers Members of the Fabian Society Writers from York Architects from York Distributism Corporatism