G. D. H. Cole

"A society that acquiesces in the presence in its midst of a vast permanent army of unemployed is a society that has ceased to believe in itself."

"We shall never get a chance of building socialism unless we carry with us in the process the consent of the ordinary man. And he, very naturally, takes short views ... We can be at once opportunist and constructive; but we must never, in the search for constructiveness, forget the need for building on the opportunities of the moment, of offering the plain man realities and not mere promises post-dated to the Socialist future."

"Economy à la Sir George May will not help much; for it means nothing positive. ... We need, if not a Five Years Plan, at any rate a centrally controlled attempt to readjust industry and agriculture to the changing needs of the British consumer and of the world market, with less exclusive concentration on the old staple industries and far more attention to the development of those which have a real capacity for expansion."

"Gradualism, in this sense, however much it appeals to the first thoughts of the electorate, fails because in the event it is unable to deliver the goods. It may put a Labour Government into office; but it will also ensure its subsequent discredit."

"I became a Socialist, as many others did in those days, on grounds of morals and decency and aesthetic sensibility. I wanted to do the decent thing by my fellow-men. I could not see why every human being should not have as good a chance in life as I, and I hated the ugliness both of poverty and of the money-grubbing way of life that I saw around me."

"In any socialised enterprise, no matter what its form, socialisation requires that proper provision be made for the democratic participation of the workers in determining the conditions and allocation of work, both at the work place level and at the higher levels of management and control."

"Professor Cole is a fluent and engaging writer with a natural sense of style, and avoids like the plague anything that smacks of obscurity or pseudo-profundity. His conversational manner, which probably owes something to the lecture-room, makes him always easy to read, though it is also responsible for a certain looseness of texture which sometimes seems more appropriate to the spoken than to the written word. Any impression, however, that Professor Cole is only skimming the surface of his subject may be corrected by consulting the very thorough and systematic bibliography at the end of the volume. This is a work of encyclopaedic learning, however lightly the learning may be worn. Few people to-day have browsed so widely and so far afield as Professor Cole among these lesser known French and British progenitors of socialist ideas."

"Douglas is a strong Tory in everything but politics!"

"However much on the intellectual plane Douglas was an internationalist, emotionally—and he never attempted to hide it—he was profoundly attached to England. He was not even a little Englander—really a little Southern Englander!"

"I discovered how much more he hated the liberals than the tories. This came out vividly when we were walking past the ground of the Highclere Estate. ... At this point Douglas, to my astonishment, launched into a panegyric of the English aristocracy. It might not have been wholly serious, but it did, I think, reflect a certain nostalgia for pre-industrial Britain."

"We afterwards went on to see G. D. H. Cole. ... He struck me as a genuine British Bolshevist, disbelieving in Parliamentary action, disbelieving in the trades union movement and the trades unionist leaders, and waiting only till the shop-stewards movement...was further developed...in order to use the weapon of the general strike, or some approach to it both for political and for industrial purposes. When I suggested that Parliamentary action was the appropriate weapon and that a general election...ought to give Labour a great accession of strength he objected that there were no leaders and no prospect of any. ... Professed himself a thorough "Pacifist"...so that it would seem he was preparing...for a stop-the-war movement by industrial pressure. At the same time he professed to be against the violence which such a movement if carried far enough would necessarily provoke. Personally I should doubt if he has the moral qualities needed for the enterprise."