Raihdeyracht

Raihdeyracht (roughly translated as The Way of the Wheel, or Wheelerism) is a blue-shade political, social, and economic philosophy characterized by social ownership of the means of production and the organization of society along lines of labor guilds, or unions. Raihdeyracht advocates for workers' control of industry through the medium of trade-related guilds or syndicates in a kind of societal contract with the wider public. Several broad "craft guilds" each run under their own administrations, their own policies, their own collective bargaining agreements, and their own guild halls. While all guilds exist primarily for the betterment of their respective members, under Raihdeyracht thought, they are made to collaborate politically to ensure that a worker-controlled state remains in control of society. In this way, each guild is a spoke to the greater "wheel" that is the Raihdeyracht society. Profits generated by these guilds are controlled directly by the workforce of each guild, or accrue to society at large in the form of social dividends.

Although it shares many qualities with related ideologies such as Noyonism or National Revivalism, Raihdeyracht is generally considered to be its own unique shade of the deep-blue collectivist ideologies. Although other states have borrowed certain ideas from Raihdeyracht, the only society which wholeheartedly espouses it is the small Sedic nation of Lathadu in east Alutra, from where it was first born in the 19th century CE.

Terminology
Raihdeyracht was partly inspired by the guilds of craftsmen and other skilled workers which had existed throughout Lathadu and all East Alutra in the Middle Ages. In 1806, Cormac Penty published "A Proposal for the Restoration of the Guild System" in which he opposed factory production and advocated for a return to the earlier period of artisanal production organized through guilds. For this reason, Penty is considered by many as being the "Grandfather of Raihdeyracht." The terms "guild", "syndicate", and "union" are all generally considered to be interchangeable when referring to modern organization of labor. However, "guild" is typically used for older organizations, while "union" is preferred by newer ones. Likewise, "syndicate" is typically used to refer to a grouping of guilds and/or unions by trade.

The term Raihdeyracht comes from the Gundiagh, meaning "way of the wheel" or "wheelerism." The term is considered to be a play on the ideology's focus on individual trades/guilds of trades. As once said by Lathadun revolutionary and Premier Carmac Kneale. "We have in our midst tailors, carpenters, farmers, and men of industry all. But know you this: you are all wheelers!  Only with all of your support can the wheel turn!"

Origins
The first modernly appreciably syndicates established in Lathadu in the 18th century tended, by nature of the industries in which their members worked, to be organized by craft: shoemakers, cartwrights, farriers, and later, typesetters, among many other professions, worked in small shops in which they had little contact with workers in other fields. Many of these came out of a guild tradition, in which skilled workmen often owned their own shops or, if they worked for one another, had a good deal of control over how the work was done, which they policed by maintaining standards for admission into the trade. This often included the requirement that entrants go through an apprenticeship program controlled by the guild (and later, syndicate) rather than the employer, and dictating the process, tools, standards, and pace of work.

As the economy of the Lathadun Federation continued to modernize, these syndicates quickly became the driving force for economic growth and change in the nation. They soon began to contend with the regional Banns for power and influence, a move which upset many buff-shade traditionalists. This rise in economic influence and power is commonly attributed as one of the primary causes of the Lanshad Teige beginning the bloody period known as the Silent Years. This would, in turn, give the syndicates the push to unite, which they eventually would under the charismatic leadership of men such as the Forrest Brothers, Carmac Kneale, and Pol Cabmuc.

Raihdeyracht was not as heavily informed by theory or a systematically elaborated ideology the same way Radical Federalist groups were by the writings of Acoul Noyon (although its early proponents were certainly influenced by Noyon and his ideas). The ideology is defined by a kind of "ideological sobriety" as it was described by revolutionary Aedan Forrest. "Inside the syndicates, there is little philosophizing. They are groups of men defined by action, and such grandstanding does not become these men." Though workers' education remains important, at least to committed activists, early wheelers distrusted the intelligentsia, wishing to maintain workers' control over the movement. Raihdeyracht thought was elaborated upon and defined in pamphlets, leaflets, speeches, and articles in various syndicate-run newspapers. These writings consisted mainly of calls to action and discussions of tactics.

Principles
Under Raihdeyracht, syndicates, unlike contemporary unions, do not confine their demands to matters of wages and conditions, but instead seek to obtain control of industry for the workers whom they represent. Ultimately, the guilds serve as the organs through which industry would be organized in a utopian society. Wheelers in political spheres stand for state ownership of industry, combined with workers' control through the delegation of authority to national guilds organized internally on democratic lines. About the state itself, early wheelers sometimes differed. Some believed it would remain more or less in its existing form, while others argued that it would eventually wither away and transform into a more democratic federal body representing the workers' guilds, consumer organization, local government bodies, and other social structures.

According to political and economic scholars, Raihdeyracht can generally being defined based on five criteria:
 * 1) A preference for federalism over centralism.
 * 2) Favoring the replacement of the state by a federal, economic organization of society
 * 3) Seeing guilds as the basic building blocks of a society
 * 4) An emphasis on democratic structures for societal organs
 * 5) Rejection of zero-sum economics, and the belief that all trades prosper best when working in tandem.

Wheelers agree with Noyon's characterization of the state as the "high committee of the ruling class." They hold that a society's economic order determines its political order, and that the former cannot be overthrown by changes to the latter. Although many wheeler and wheeler-aligned individuals work in political parties and run for political office, they see the economic sphere as the primary arena for continuous revolutionary struggle, whereas involvement in politics is at best an "echo" of industrial struggle. Wheelers have historically been skeptical of parliamentary politics, and often hold themselves to be neutral from political parties. Political parties, it is reasoned, group individuals according to their political views, uniting members of different classes. Syndicates, on the other hand, are purely worker-operated enterprises, and could therefore not be divided on political grounds. The veracity of these claims is seen as questionable by many; Lathadu's ruling party for the entirety of its history, the Democratic Laborer’s Party (DLP) is closely entwined with its syndicates. This blurring of the lines between politics and revolutionary struggle have caused some to become disillusioned, leading to the formation of "wildcat unions," or unions not affiliated with a profession's guild. While the existence of these unions is technically unlawful, the Lathadun state is often hesitant to enforce these laws and risk inflaming tensions between the wildcat union and its respective guild. Perhaps the largest and most well known of these wildcat unions is the Cruinnasollan Workers' Autonomous Federation, a group of fishery and agricultural workers who operate in Lathadu's marshy east.

Wheelers advocate for direct action, including working to rule, passive resistance, sabotage, and strikes, particularly the general strike, as tactics against the existing hegemony opposed to indirect action such as electoral politics. Early on in the Silent Years, wheelers would defy laws restricting public speeches and demonstrations in order to clog up jails and court systems as a result of hundreds of arrests in the hopes of forcing officials to rescind such laws. Sabotage ranged historically from slow or inefficient work to destruction of machinery and physical violence. Ultimately, this violence would grow into the Anti-Aristocrat revolutionary movement, and ultimately the modern Republic of Lathadu. Wheelers and wheeler leadership tend to remain vague about the society envisioned to replace modern global capitalism, claiming that it is impossible to truly foresee in detail. Wheelers see syndicates as being the embryo of a new society in addition to being the primary means of struggle within the old. Wheelers generally agree that in a free society, production is managed by workers. The state apparatus will eventually be replaced by the rule of workers' organizations. In such a society individuals would be liberated, both in the economic sphere but also in their private and social lives.

Organization
In Lathadu, the National Federation of Trade Guilds serves as the national trade union center. Within its infrastructure is housed every official syndicate located in Lathadu. The NFTG is divided into several smaller regional federations to allow for greater democratization of the economy. All members of the nation's official syndicates are also members of the NFTG, making it the largest union in the nation and among the largest in the world. The current Secretary-General of the NFTG is Essa Carrickbane, an ambitious and dynamic figure in the public sphere and the youngest person to ever hold the position.