Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow - Libcom

Anarchism and libertarian socialism in Britain 29
Socialist bearings, several pamphlets, and many articles. 49 He developed a theory of
functional democracy, rejecting democratic representative government in favour of a
pluralistic society in which representation would be functional – that is, derived from
all the functional groups of which the individual is a member (the most important
are named as political, vocational, appetitive, religious, provident, philanthropic,
sociable and theoretic), final decisions having to emerge as a consensus between the
different groups, not as the fiats of a sovereign authority:
… there must be … as many separately elected groups of representatives as there
are distinct essential groups of functions to be performed. Smith cannot represent
Brown, Jones and Robinson as human beings; for a human being, as an individual,
is fundamentally incapable of being represented. He can only represent the common
point of view which Brown, Jones and Robinson hold in relation to some definite
social purpose, or group of connected purposes. Brown, Jones and Robinson must
therefore have, not one vote each, but as many different functional votes as there are
different questions calling for associative action in which they are interested. 50
Much of Cole’s conception of a fully participatory society had its origins in Rousseau,
whose Social Contract and Discourses he had translated for the Everyman edition of
1913, though Morris, whom he described as ‘of the same blood as National Guildsmen’,
was the major lifelong influence on Cole. 51
Although many of his fellow Guild Socialists – together they had converted
the Fabian Research Department into the Labour Research Department – were to
become Communists, Cole himself stuck with the Labour Party while remaining
fundamentally a Guild Socialist and libertarian. He could still write in 1941: ‘One man
cannot really represent another – that’s flat. The odd thing is that anyone should have
supposed he could.’ Similarly he believed that ‘every good democrat is a bit of an
anarchist when he’s scratched’. 52 At the end of his life he concluded his monumental
history of socialist thought with a forthright statement:
I am neither a Communist nor a Social Democrat, because I regard both as creeds of
centralization and bureaucracy, whereas I feel sure that a Socialist society that is to
be true to its equalitarian principles of human brotherhood must rest on the widest
49 See the selective bibliography in A.W. Wright, G.D.H. Cole and Socialist Democracy (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 286–8.
50 G.D.H. Cole, Guild Socialism Re-stated (London: Leonard Parsons, 1920), p. 33. G.D.H. Cole,
Social Theory (London: Methuen, 3rd edn, 1923), pp. 66–72, classifies the range of functional associations.
51 G.D.H. Cole, Self-Government in Industry (London: G. Bell, 1917), p. 121. For Morris, see also ibid.,
pp. 119–22, 280, 302; G.D.H. Cole, William Morris: A Lecture Given on 16th January 1957 to the
William Morris Society at the Art Workers’ Guild (London: William Morris Society, 1960). For the
debt to Rousseau, see G.D.H. Cole, ‘Conflicting Social Obligations’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, XV (1915), an important paper in the evolution of Cole’s ideas; and G.D.H. Cole, Essays
in Social Theory (London: Macmillan, 1950), chap. 8.
52 Cole, Essays, pp. 98, 100.