Harold Joseph Laski Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Harold Laski (1893–1950) was a twentieth-century British political theorist and the author of more than twenty books and thousands of articles. He was also a celebrated teacher at the London School of Economics and Politics, a prominent leader in the Labour Party, and a widely read public intellectual in both Britain and America. His extraordinary career led one

Oxford historian to dub 1930s England “The Age of Laski.” Born in Manchester, England, Laski was the son of a successful Jewish cotton shipper. He was a precocious youth who suffered from bad health. At the age of sixteen, Laski met his future wife, Frida Kerry, who encouraged his interest in eugenics and the suffragette movement. His first article, “The Scope of Eugenics” (1910), published in the Westminster Review, impressed Francis Galton, the scientist who founded eugenics. Laski entered Oxford University to pursue his interest in science but switched to studying history and politics under H. A. L. Fisher and Ernest Barker.

After graduating from Oxford in 1914, Laski was hired to write editorials for the Daily Herald. Turned down for military service due to a weak heart, Laski accepted a history lectureship at McGill University in Canada and, two years later, taught at Harvard University. To supplement his teaching salary, Laski contributed articles for the Nation and the New Republic and published his first book, Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty (1917), in which he praised American pluralism and the federal system. His second book, Authority in the Modern State (1919), called for trade union organization and rigorously defended free speech. Laski’s writings not only established his scholarly reputation, but they also enabled him to cultivate friendships with prominent American figures including associate Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and future president Franklin Roosevelt. While in America, Laski also had begun writing one of his most widely read works, A Grammar of Politics (1925). In this book, Laski set out the principles of Fabian socialism and explored how the British industrial society could be organized according to a more just productive and distributive plan. Like most of Laski’s writings, Grammar of Politics combined general theorizing with practical suggestions for reforming the existing society.

Upon returning to England in 1920, Laski joined the London School of Economics. He was affiliated with the London School for thirty years and, in 1935, became professor of political science. Laski’s radical politics tested the limits of academic freedom. Critics complained that he indoctrinated students in communism. Laski, however, may be more aptly described as a democratic socialist. In Isaac Krammick and Barry Sheerman’s 1993 Harold Laski: A Life on the Left, Laski is quoted as saying “The true socialist is a libertarian, not an authoritarian.”

Laski preferred using words rather than a violent revolution to transform society. Putting his philosophy into practice, he helped found the Left Book Club (which launched English author George Orwell’s writing career) and Political Quarterly, a British journal on politics. In the hope that an educated workforce would bring “revolution by consent” through the electoral process, he encouraged workers to start their own literary periodicals.

Laski often presented himself as a radical, intellectual outsider, but he also was an insider who influenced current events through connections with important political actors. While keeping up his vigorous teaching and writing schedule, he served from 1937 to 1949 on the executive committee of the British Labour Party and was elected chair when the party came to power in 1945.

In his final years, Laski published one of his most popular works on American politics and society, The American Democracy: A Commentary and an Interpretation (1948). He remained actively engaged in teaching and writing until his death from pneumonia at the age fifty-six.

Bibliography:

Laski, Harold. The American Democracy: A Commentary and an Interpretation. New York: Viking, 1948.
A Grammar of Politics. London: Allen and Unwin, 1925.
Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. New York: Viking, 1943.
Martin, Kingsley. Harold Laski (1893–1950): A Biographical Memoir. New York: Viking, 1953.

Krammick, Issac and Barry Sheerman. Harold Laski: A Life on the Left. New York: Penguin, 1993.

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