Harold Joseph Laski (June 30, 1893 – March 24, 1950) was an English political theorist, economist, author, and lecturer, and served as the 1945-1946 chairman of the Labour Party.

After attending Manchester Grammar School and New College, Oxford, Laski became (1922-1936) a member of the executive committee of the socialist Fabian Society, and in 1936 he joined the Executive Committee of the Labour Party. Cowling describes him as a "prolific publicist and journalist."

In 1926 he was appointed professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics. One of his more famous books is Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (which was dedicated to Edward R. Murrow). He was active on the American university lecture circuit. His 19 year friendship with Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, begun when he was 23 and Holmes was 75, is reflected in two volumes of correspondence, published in 1953.

He had a massive impact on the politics and the formation of India, having taught a generation of future Indian leaders at the LSE. It is almost entirely due to him that the LSE has a semi-mythological status in India. He was steady in his unremitting advocacy of the independence of India. He was a revered figure to Indian students at the LSE. One Indian Prime Minister said 'there is a vacant chair at every cabinet meeting in India reserved for the ghost of Professor Harold Laski'.^[1]

His elder brother was Neville Laski. A cousin was the author and publisher Anthony Blond.

The staunchly anti-Socialist writer Ayn Rand is said to have based on Laski the character Ellsworth Toohey, the main villain of her book "The Fountainhead": a sort of compliment, since Rand's Toohey, while depicted as soulless and malevolent, is also shown as extremely competent, capable and hard-working, though despising singular greatness and the will of man.

Selected Laski bibliography

• Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty, 1917
• Authority in the Modern State, 1919, ISBN 1-58477-275-1
• Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham, 1920
• Karl Marx, 1921
• A Grammar of Politics, 1925
• Communism, 1927
• Liberty in the Modern State, 1930

"The Dangers of Obedience and Other Essays" 1930

• Democracy in Crisis, 1933
• The State in Theory and Practice, 1935, The Viking Press
• The Rise of Liberalism, 1936
• The American Presidency, 1940
• Reflections On the Revolution of our Time , 1943
• Faith, Reason, and Civilisation, 1944
• The American Democracy, 1948, The Viking Press
• The Rise of European Liberalism

See also

• American Studies in Britain

References

• Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Hitler - British Politics & Policy 1933-1940, Cambridge University Press, 1975, p.410, ISBN 0-521-20582-4

External links

• Biography and various quotations regarding Laski
• Brief biographical sketch from the London School of Economics

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