G. D. H. Cole

“George Douglas Howard Cole was an English political theorist, economist, historian, and novelist. As a believer in common ownership of the means of production, he theorised guild socialism (production organised through worker guilds). He belonged to the Fabian Society and was an advocate for the co-operative movement.

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Neither a Marxist nor a social democrat, Cole envisioned a guild socialism of decentralised 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 criticized both state socialism and syndicalism as leaving open the possibility of tyranny, and envisioned a form of socialism where all enterprises would be democratically run by the workers through trade unions with the state remaining to guarantee consumers’ rights and civil liberties. Cole’s ideas were influential in intellectual circles but were generally dismissed by Labour Party leaders such as Ramsay MacDonald.”