ABSTRACT
The political strategy of the Webbs and Tawney's Christian approach to British socialism were complemented, in the pre-war period, by a theory of industrial conflict most fully expressed by G. D. H. Cole. The conflict-equilibrium model which underlay G. D. H. Cole's socialist thought is best illustrated in his theory of trade unionism. Cole refused to be awed by the austere and industrious Webbs. The Fabian Society was Cole's first choice as the instrument of that revision. In fact, the Oxford University Fabian Society, under Cole's influence, turned 'the major proportion of its efforts' to 'attacks on Fabianism'. The theme of liberation through struggle illustrated yet another point of contact between Cole's thought and some versions of Marxism. The state was neither in his words the 'capitalist dodge'48 of the Marxist theory nor the repository of most if not all progressive hopes of the moderate Fabian theory.
