The Case for Industrial Partnership, by G.D.H. Cole (no named reviewer)

[p034] Cole’s 44th The Case for Industrial Partnership. G. D. H. Cole, 1957 (Macmillan, 7s. 6d.) G. D. H. COLE has apparently written 43 books since the World of Labour: it is a sign of the sterility of Fabianism that the 44th has to say again much of what the first said: but more politely, leaving out a lot that would have made it a better book. The World of Labour was written at a time when syndicalism represented a real challenge to ‘Sidney Webb real- ism’. In it Cole put his feet on the ground at least some of the time. ‘It is now commonly recognized that political institutions ought to rest on a foundation of equal citizenship for all: I have steadily maintained that this requirement holds good no less for industrial institutions, and that until this principle is recognized and applied in practice our formally democratic political institutions will never work in a really satisfactory democratic way’. These are brave words and because we have forgotten the name of DeLeon, and because the lessons of the Russian Revolution are still to be learnt by our working class, perhaps this book deserves a wide, but critical, working- class audience. The concepts of ‘partnership’ advocated by Professor Cole are not likely to influence the motor-car strik- ers of last year, who have fewer illusions about the partner- seeking impulses of the bosses than he has. In any case, the events of April 1957 revealed a boss-class as uninterested in industrial democracy as ever! It becomes apparent that Lenin knew more about all this in 1917 than Professor Cole does now. Suez Apologia