thing all by itself. The Fabians, having captured the Independent Labour party, hoped to gain control of Parliament and achieve socialism through legislative reform. But "if you place the least reliance upon political means to achieve industrial reform," S. G. Hobson bluntly told the Trades Union Congress in 1913, "you are criminal fools." Hobson, a guild socialist, pointed out that more than forty members of the Labour party had been elected to Parliament in 1906 but that working conditions continued to deteriorate. Cole argued in 1913 that the Labour party could never hope to become a majority. His objections to Fabianism, however—many of which applied to Marxian socialism as well—went far beyond tactical considerations. Marx had "infected" socialists with an "economic fatalism," he argued, which made them acquiesce in centralization and top-down control of industry as an unavoidable precondition of economic efficiency. Instead of taking concrete steps to counter hierarchical authority in the workplace, they staked everything on the hope that socialist parties could gain control of the state. Social democrats and revolutionary socialists disagreed merely about the means by which this goal could be accomplished. Neither side appeared to understand that a change of masters would do the workers very little good. The object was to get rid of masters altogether and to make the workers "fit" to operate the industrial plant by themselves.

Cole rightly suspected that most socialists had no interest in this project and no confidence that workers could ever take over the control of production. Beatrice Webb, evidently speaking for the Fabians as a group, wrote in her diary, "We have little faith in the 'average sensual man,' we do not believe that he can do much more than describe his grievances, we do not think he can prescribe his remedies." Even in public, the Fabians did not attempt to conceal their low opinion of the workers they professed to champion. Democracy, the Webbs argued, required only "assent to results," not participation in the deliberations by which they were achieved. This was a much too narrow and grudging idea of democracy to suit Cole and other guild socialists. ^*

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*	Cole also criticized the cosmopolitan ideal shared by Fabians and Marxists. He believed in the value of national attachments and took the position that socialism would

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