Harold J. Laski

British political scientist

• Born: June 30, 1893
• Birthplace: Manchester, England
• Died: March 24, 1950
• Place of death: London, England

Laski combined a strong commitment to social democracy with an equally strong faith in education. His career as a professor at the London School of Economics provided him with the opportunity to develop his political theory while also enabling him to influence the intellectual debate about the Labour Party program of the 1930’s and 1940’s.

Early Life

Harold J. Laski (LAS-kee) was born in Manchester, the son of affluent Jewish parents who were among the leaders of the city’s Jewish community. At an early age, Laski showed a penchant for academic achievement, the precursor of his own academic career. Laski attended New College, Oxford, where he studied history and politics and received a variety of intellectual influences, particularly the scholarship of Frederic Maitland and Otto von Gierke. After graduation in 1914, Laski’s frail physique prevented him from service in the armed forces. Laski possessed a slight build, dark eyes that gave him the appearance of an inquisitor, and large glasses that invested him with the air of a university don. Laski was estranged from his family for a long period because of his marriage at eighteen to a woman six years his senior. This marriage survived all obstacles until Laski’s death. Denied his father’s financial support, Laski secured a position as lecturer in history at McGill University in Canada.

Laski remained at McGill for two years and then moved to Harvard University in the United States in 1916 through the agency of Felix Frankfurter. The precocious young man from Oxford made a strong impression at Harvard, by virtue of his devotion to scholarship, generosity to his students, and the atmosphere of omniscience he exuded. During this period, he formed friendships with several notable Americans, especially Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. His American experience gave Laski a deep affection for the United States and led in later life to his frequent visits on vacation and lecture tours. The Boston police strike of 1919, and Laski’s public advocacy of the strikers’ position, made his future at Harvard uncertain. Personal attacks on his politics and ethnicity convinced him that his academic ambitions would best be served by an appointment in England. In June of 1920, Laski returned to England to accept a position at the London School of Economics, where in 1926 he became professor. This homecoming inaugurated the process by which Laski became perhaps the most renowned academic in Great Britain.

Life’s Work

Laski’s initial success stemmed from his academic publications. Between 1917 and 1925, Laski wrote the “big four” scholarly works that made his scholarly reputation. These works were Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty (1917), Authority in the Modern State (1919), The Foundations of Sovereignty, and Other Essays (1921), and A Grammar of Politics (1925). The central themes of these works included an attack on the traditional bases of state authority, the nature of legal and political obligation, and his attempt to provide a theory of political pluralism that made possible corporate pillars of authority other than the state to which the individual citizen could give allegiance. The fundamental point was to establish that the individual needed protection from the omnipotence of the state. Subsidiary organizations such as trade unions and religious groups provided relief from the excesses of a capitalist society. By 1925, Laski’s analysis stipulated that individual conscience must judge the legitimacy of state action. Associations inferior to the state were better able to meet the material and spiritual needs of citizens.

After 1925, Laski turned increasingly to a more pragmatic examination of social and political problems. Initially, Laski had indulged in a flirtation with guild socialism, a form of British socialism that stressed the role of unions in the transition to socialism. Laski turned away from his early infatuation with corporate entities and faced more systematically the challenges posed by a capitalist social order. He became more concerned with practical problems and spent less and less time on his scholarly writing.

By the end of the 1920’s, Laski conceived his primary task to serve as an intellectual spokesperson for the Labour Party, the only organization committed to those changes in capitalism that would provide a better life for the individual. Political events helped turn Laski’s views in a radical direction. Dramatic episodes such as the General Strike in 1926 and the (to Laski) suspicious circumstances surrounding the fall of the Labour government in 1931 forced Laski to reassess his political values. It became clear to him that the transition from capitalism to socialism would not occur easily. The revolution by consent that he had always envisioned would not happen spontaneously.

In the 1930’s, therefore, Laski’s political thought acquired a militant, Marxist veneer. Laski did not advocate violent revolution, as critics often charged, but he did argue that a major change in economic and social foundations, for the benefit of the individual, might well require a greater degree of government coercion than he had supposed. Though frustrated in a practical realization of his hopes in the 1930’s, Laski saw in the eventual victory of Great Britain during World War II the great opportunity for reconstruction he had always sought. Though his hopes for a British society in line with his political theories did not materialize completely, he had the satisfaction of seeing in the welfare state after 1945 many of the social services that would ensure a life of dignity and justice for ordinary people.

As his political views changed, Laski became a more visible political personality. He never ran for elective office, but his frequent appearances at party meetings, and his newspaper contributions made him a famous advocate of the Labour Party. Laski often played the political insider, although in retrospect his influence in politics was never as great as he pretended. Laski gained a certain notoriety for the militancy of his views; in the general election of 1945, he became an issue because the Daily Express charged that he had endorsed revolution by violence at a public meeting. He filed suit for libel against the newspaper, but a jury found against him, a lack of public vindication that marred his last years.

Laski’s other great area of contribution was as professor at the London School of Economics. In this position, Laski taught students from around the world, combining technical mastery of subject matter with a personal interest in his students to exert a formidable influence on several generations of pupils. Laski possessed the special skill as educator to draw the best from his students, even from those who differed politically and intellectually with him, while maintaining rigorous standards for doctoral work. As a result, his students carried fond remembrances of his tutelage to every part of the world. He did not found a coterie of students to imitate his work but was content to train them and permit them to follow their own inclinations. The best record of his professional influence remained in the intellectual achievements of his many students.

Finally, Laski represented one element of the many connections that bound Great Britain to the United States in the twentieth century. In 1948, Laski published The American Democracy: A Commentary and Interpretation , a work comparable to James Bryce’s The American Commonwealth (1888). Although Laski’s book did not acquire the reputation of Bryce’s, it remains a powerful analysis of American life at midcentury. Laski hoped for appointment as ambassador to the United States, but the position eluded him. Frequent lecture tours to the United States made Laski a familiar figure in American academic circles, the most famous British academic of his generation. His affection for the United States never waned. Laski died, on March 24, 1950, while planning yet another visit to the country he loved.

Significance

The political theories espoused by Laski helped shape the programmatic outlook of the Labour Party prior to its triumph in 1945. Although specific positions cannot be attributed directly to Laski, his writings generated debate at a time when the intellectual focus of the party seemed in doubt. If Laski never had the influence on party decisions that he wished, nevertheless his legacy remains in the definition of socialism as social justice, a commitment to the dignity of each individual.

In his academic work, Laski brought the London School of Economics to a pinnacle of fame never again reached. His visibility both in and out of academic life made the school a center of learning and sometimes of controversy. His facility in lecturing and personal interest in his students made him a beloved figure for graduate and undergraduate students alike. Laski set a standard of university instruction equaled by few and surpassed by none.

Bibliography

Best, Gary Dean. Harold Laski and American Liberalism. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2005. Charts Laski’s influence on American liberalism, from its height in the 1930’s, when Laski was a proponent of the New Deal, until its decline after World War II.

Cosgrove, Richard A. Our Lady the Common Law: An Anglo-American Legal Community, 1870-1930. New York: New York University Press, 1987. Emphasizes Laski’s role as an Anglo-American figure, particularly the influence his experiences in the United States had on the development of his political theory.

Deane, Herbert A. The Political Ideas of Harold J. Laski. New York: Columbia University Press, 1955. Deane is the best overall guide to Laski’s political philosophy. The book offers little context for the circumstances that shaped his theories.

Eastwood, Granville. Harold Laski. London: Mowbrays, 1977. A personal memoir by a friend that stresses the private life of Laski as husband, father, and teacher. It is not a formal analysis of his political thought.

Ekirch, Arthur A. “Harold J. Laski: The Liberal Manque or Lost Libertarian.” Journal of Libertarian Studies 4 (Spring, 1980): 139-150. An interesting essay that stresses Laski’s concern for the individual as he went from Liberalism to socialism. Laski retained a humanistic interest in the individual even as his political ideology changed.

Gupta, Ram Chandra. Harold J. Laski. Agra, India: Ram Prased and Sons, 1966. A popular work that accents Laski’s work as a teacher, especially of international students. It conveys some of the affection that Laski generated in his students.

Hoover, Kenneth R. Economics as Ideology: Keynes, Laski, Hayek, and the Creation of Contemporary Politics. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. Examines the lives and thought of Laski and two other influential economics who espoused different political views to determine how they developed their ideas and how those ideas influenced contemporary politics.

Lamb, Peter. Harold Laski: Problems of Democracy, the Sovereign State, and International Society. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. A study of Laski’s political thought, including his socialist critique of politics within states and his ideas about democracy and rights, and how he applied these concepts to international politics.

Martin, Kingsley. Harold Laski (1893-1950): A Biographical Memoir. New York: Viking Press, 1953. The best life of Laski, written by a longtime friend. Martin wrote with a sympathetic attitude toward his subject but was not blind to mistakes and foibles. Written with affection.

Zylstra, Bernard. From Pluralism to Collectivism: The Development of Harold Laski’s Political Thought. Assen, the Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1968. An excellent, incisive examination of the topic. Zylstra focuses on the early part of Laski’s life in seeking to explain his political theory. Should be read in conjunction with Deane.