G. D. H. Cole - Socialism

Socialism

Cole became interested in Fabianism while studying at Balliol College, Oxford. He joined the Fabian Society's executive under the sponsorship of Sidney Webb. Cole became a principal proponent of Guild Socialist ideas, a libertarian socialist alternative to Marxist political economy. These ideas he put forward in The New Age before and during the First World War, and also in the pages of The New Statesman, the weekly founded by the Webbs and George Bernard Shaw.

Cole said his interest in socialism was kindled by his reading News from Nowhere, the utopian novel by William Morris. He wrote,

I became a Socialist because, as soon as the case for a society of equals, set free from the twin evils of riches and poverty, mastership and subjection, was put to me, I knew that to be the only kind of society that could be consistent with human decency and fellowship and that in no other society could I have the right to be content.”

Neither a Marxist nor a Social Democrat, Cole envisioned a Socialism of decentralized association and active, participatory democracy, whose basic units would be sited at the workplace and in the community rather than in any central apparatus of the State.

Cole was a powerful influence on the life of the young Harold Wilson, whom he taught, worked with and convinced to join the Labour Party. Before him, Hugh Gaitskell was a student of G.D.H Cole.

Cole wrote at least seven books for the Left Book Club, all of which were published by Victor Gollancz Ltd. These are marked with LBC in the list of his books given below.