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George Douglas Howard Cole (1889–1959) was an English political theorist. As a libertarian socialist, his career was dedicated to advancing the cause of labor. He was a founding member of Fabian Society and a strong defender of the cooperative movement.

Cole became a Fabian while studying at Oxford and joined its executive under Sidney Webb. He became a principal proponent of guild socialism, a libertarian alternative to orthodox Marxism. He expounded his ideas in New Age and the weekly founded by Beatrice and Sidney Webb and George Bernard Shaw, New Statesman. He wrote, “I became a Socialist because only a society of equals can set free from the twin evils of riches and poverty, mastership and subjection. That is the only kind of society that is consistent with human dignity and decency.” Cole envisioned a socialism that is decentralized and participatory, with basic units in the workplace and the community. Both British Labour prime ministers Hugh Gaitskell and Harold Wilson were his students.

In his 1920 work, Social Theory, he advanced the theoretical basis of guild socialism, drawing on the ideas of J. N. Figgis and others. Earlier, in The World of Labour (1913), Cole argued for industrial democracy in which industry would be controlled by organized labor. On the principle that industrial power precedes political power, Cole said that direct action was more effective than winning elections and changing society through legislation. In his view, industry should be socialized, not nationalized, and production should be organized by national guilds and not by bureaucrats or technocrats. Each industry was to be a self-governing body, and interguild cooperation was to be channeled through coordinating agencies. Society was based on the principle of association and as a plurality of self-governing voluntary associations, and only through such associations could freedom be preserved. Any system in which a sovereign state regulated and administered every area of life was anathema to Cole.

By the mid-1920s, guild socialism fell out of favor. Cole spent the rest of his life rethinking his ideas. It was only at the end of the twentieth century that his ideas experienced a revival.

Cole was also a theorist of the cooperative movement and made a number of contributions to cooperative studies, cooperative economics, and cooperative history, including Century of Co-operation (1944) and The British Co-operative Movement in a Socialist Society (1951). His writings (over 130 books) may be divided into five broad and overlapping categories: guild socialism; history; biography; economic, political, and social analysis; and fiction. His strongest treatment of guild socialism was Self-Government in Industry (1917), a charter of the romantic socialism that inspired Cole all his life. He revised his ideas in The Case for Industrial Partnership (1957). His historical works include the five-volume History of Socialist Thought (1953–1960). His biographies include The Life of William Cobbett (1924) and The Life of Robert Owen (1925). Many of his seminal ideas were distilled in Principles of Economic Planning and An Intelligent Man’s Guide to the Post-War World (1947).

Bibliography:

Carpenter, Luther P. G.D.H. Cole: An Intellectual Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.
Cole, Margaret. The Life of G.D.H. Cole. London: MacMillan, 1971
Wright, Anthony W. G.D.H. Cole and Socialist Democracy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.