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Harold Joseph Laski (June 30, 1893 – March 24, 1950) was a British Marxist, political
theorist, economist, author, and lecturer, who served as the chairman of the Labour Party during
1945–1946, and was a professor at the London School of Economics from 1926 to 1950.

Contents

  [hide] 

1 Early life
2 Academic career
3 Ideology and political
convictions
4 Political career
5 Death
6 Legacy
7 Criticism
8 Partial bibliography
9 See also
10 References
11 External links

[edit]Early life
Harold Laski was born in Manchester on 30 June 1893 to Nathan Laski and Sarah Laski (née
Frankenstein). Nathan Laski was a Jewish cotton merchant and a member of the Liberal Party.
His elder brother was Neville Laski. A cousin was the author and publisher Anthony Blond.
Harold did his schooling at the Manchester Grammar School. In 1911, he
studied Eugenics under Karl Pearson for six months. The same year he met and married Frida
Kerry, a lecturer of Eugenics. His marriage to Frida, a gentile and eight years his senior
antagonized his family. He also repudiated his faith in Judaism, claiming that Reason prevented
him from believing in God. In 1914, he obtained an undergraduate degree in History from New
College, Oxford. He was awarded the Beit memorial prize during his time at New College. He
failed his medical eligibility tests and thus missed fighting in World War I. After graduation he
worked briefly at the Daily Herald under George Lansbury. His daughter Diana was born in
1916.[1][2]

[edit]Academic career
In 1916, Laski was appointed as lecturer of modern history at McGill University and also started
lecturing at Harvard University. He also lectured at Yale Universityduring 1919–20. Laski's
outspoken support of the Boston Police Strike of 1919 earned him severe criticism. After his
brief involvement with the founding of The New School for Social Research in 1919,[3] Laski
returned to England in 1920 and took up a job at the London School of Economics (LSE). Six
years later, he was made professor of political science at LSE, a post he held till his death in
1950. He also lectured regularly in America and wrote for The New Republic. During his years in
Harvard, he became friends withOliver Wendell Holmes, Herbert Croly and Morris Raphael
Cohen. Apart from his academic work at the LSE, Laski was an executive member of the
socialist Fabian Society during 1922–1936. In 1936, he co-founded the Left Book Club along
with Victor Gollancz and John Strachey. He was a prolific writer, producing a number of books
and essays throughout the 1920s and 1930s.[1][4][5]

While at the LSE in the 1930s, Laski developed a relationship with scholars from the Institute for
Social Research, more commonly known today as the Frankfurt School. In 1933, with almost all
the Institute's members by that time in exile due to Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Laski was among
a number of British socialists, including Sidney Webb and R.H. Tawney, to arrange for the
establishment of a London office for the Institute's use. After the Institute's move to Columbia
University in 1934, Laski was one of its sponsored guest lecturers invited to New York.[6] Laski
also played a role in bringing Franz Neumann to join the Institute. After fleeing Germany almost
immediately after Hitler's takeover, Neumann did graduate work in political science under Laski
and Karl Mannheim at the LSE, writing his dissertation on rise and fall of the rule of law. It was
on Laski's recommendation that Neumann was then invited to join the Institute in 1936.[7]

As a lecturer, Laski was hugely popular amongst his students.[4] Describing Laski's

popularity, Kingsley Martin wrote:

“ He was still in his late twenties and looked like a schoolboy. His lectures on the
history of political ideas were brilliant, eloquent, and delivered without a note; he
often referred to current controversies, even when the subject was Hobbes's theory
of sovereignty.[8] ”
Ralph Miliband, another student of Laski, praised his teaching as follows:

“ His lectures taught more, much more than political science. They taught a faith that
ideas mattered, that knowledge was important and its pursuit exciting.... His ”
seminars taught tolerance, the willingness to listen although one disagreed, the
values of ideas being confronted. And it was all immense fun, an exciting game
that had meaning, and it was also a sieve of ideas, a gymnastics of the mind
carried on with vigour and directed unobtrusively with superb craftsmanship. I think
I know now why he gave himself so freely. Partly it was because he was human
 and warm and that he was so interested in people. But mainly it was because he
loved students, and he loved students because they were young. Because he had
a glowing faith that youth was generous and alive, eager and enthusiastic and
fresh. That by helping young people he was helping the future and bringing nearer
that brave world in which he so passionately believed.[9]

[edit]Ideology and political convictions

Laski was a proponent of Marxism and believed in a planned economy based on the public
ownership of the means of production. Instead of as he saw it, a coercive state, Laski believed
in the evolution of co-operative states that were internationally bound and stressed social
welfare.[10] He also believed since the capitalist class would not acquiesce in its own liquidation,
the cooperative commonwealth was not likely to be attained without violence. But he also had a
commitment to civil liberties, free speech and association, and representative democracy.
[4]
 Initially he believed that the League of Nations would bring about a "international democratic
system". However from the late 1920s his political beliefs became radicalized and he believed
that it was necessary to go beyond capitalism to "transcend the existing system of sovereign
states". Laski was dismayed by the Hitler-Stalin pact and wrote a preface to the Left Book
Club collection criticising it, Betrayal of the Left.[11] In his last years he was disillusioned by
theCold War and the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia.[1][2][4][5] George Orwell described
him as "A socialist by allegiance, and a liberal by temperament".[4]

[edit]Political career
Laski was involved in Labour party politics from the early 1920s. In 1923, he turned down the
offer of a parliament seat and cabinet position by Ramsay MacDonald. In 1931 he left the
Labour party after becoming disillusioned with party politics. In 1932, Laski joined the Socialist
League. In 1937, he was involved in the failed attempt by the Independent Labour Party and
the Communist Party of Great Britainto form a Popular Front to bring down the Conservative
government of Neville Chamberlain. During 1934–45 he served as an alderman in
the Fulham Borough Council and also the chairman of the libraries committee. In 1937, he
rejoined the Labour party and became a member of its National Executive Committee, of which
he remained a member until 1949. Laski suffered a nervous breakdown during the World War
II years, brought about by overwork. In 1944, he chaired the Labour party conference and
served as the party's chair during 1945–46.[1]

During the 1945 general elections Laski was involved in a libel trial which was used by the
Conservative party to criticise Clement Attlee. While speaking against the Conservative
candidate in Newark,Nottinghamshire on 16 June 1945, Laski said "If Labour did not obtain
what it needed by general consent, we shall have to use violence even if it means revolution".
He was replying to a question posed by a member of the audience, Wentworth Day. The next
day accounts of Laski's speech appeared in the Newark Advertiser and other newspapers. The
Conservatives seized this issue and criticised the Labour party for advocating violence. Laski's
position as the member of Labour executive committee and a popular member of the LSE
faculty meant the issue could do serious damage to Labour party's electoral chances. To
mitigate the damage, Laski filed a libel suit against the Conservative Daily Express newspaper.
Appearing for the defense, Patrick Hastings was able to convince the jury to throw out the case.
The jury found for the defendant within forty minutes of deliberations and pronounced
the Newark Advertiser's account to be a fair and accurate representation of Laski's speech.
Laski met the cost of the case (about £13,000) through public donations.[1][12]

Though Laski played a prominent role in Labour party winning the 1945 elections, he did not
have any practical influence in the Labour government's decision-making process. Even before
the Newark libel case Laski's relationship with Attlee was a strained one. Laski had once called
Attlee "uninteresting and uninspired" in the American press and even tried to remove him by
asking for Attlee's resignation in an open letter. He tried to delay the Potsdam Conference until
after Attlee's position was clarified. He tried to bypass Attlee by directly dealing with Winston
Churchill.[1][5] When Laski began laying down guidelines for the new Labour government's
foreign policy, Attlee rebuked him:

“ You have no right whatever to speak on behalf of the Government. Foreign affairs
are in the capable hands of Ernest Bevin. His task is quite sufficiently difficult
without the irresponsible statements of the kind you are making ... I can assure you
there is widespread resentment in the Party at your activities and a period of
silence on your part would be welcome.[5] ”
This rebuke together with the Newark libel case damaged Laski's reputation irreparably. Though
he continued to work for the Labour party till the 1950 elections, he never regained his earlier
influence.[1][4][5]

[edit]Death

Laski contracted influenza and died on 24 March 1950.[1]

[edit]Legacy

Laski had a huge effect on the politics and the formation of India, having taught a generation of
future Indian leaders at the LSE. According to John Kenneth Galbraith, "the center of Nehru's
thinking was Laski" and "India the country most influenced by Laski's ideas".[4] It is mainly due to
his influence that the LSE has a semi-mythological status in India. He was steady in his
unremitting advocacy of theindependence of India. He was a revered figure to Indian students at
the LSE. One Indian Prime Minister said "in every meeting of the Indian Cabinet there is a chair
reserved for the ghost of Professor Harold Laski".[13][14] His recommendation of K. R.
Narayanan (later President of India) to Jawaharlal Nehru (then Prime Minister of India), resulted
in Nehru appointing Narayanan to the Indian Foreign Service.[15] In his memory, the Indian
government established The Harold Laski Institute of Political Science in 1954 at Ahmedabad.[1]

Speaking at a meeting organized in Laski's memory by the Indian League at London on 3 May
1950, Nehru praised him as follows:

“ It is difficult to realise that Professor Harold Laski is no more. Lovers of freedom all
over the world pay tribute to the magnificent work that he did. We in India are
particularly grateful for his staunch advocacy of India's freedom, and the great part
he played in bringing it about. At no time did he falter or compromise on the
principles he held dear, and a large number of persons drew splendid inspiration
from him. Those who knew him personally counted that association as a rare
privilege, and his passing away has come as a great sorrow and a shock.[16] ”
Laski also educated the outspoken Chinese intellectual and journalist Chu Anping at LSE.
Anping was later prosecuted by the Chinese Communist regime of the 1960s.[17]

[edit]Criticism

Laski has been criticised by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. as "incorrigible teller of tales that
exaggerated – sometimes fabricated – his own accomplishments, charms, and triumphs".
According to Schlesinger:

“ [Laski] gave the highest value to individual freedom but never explained how it
could survive without diversification of ownership. His fatal fluency enabled him to
glide over the hard questions. His besetting sin was the substitution of rhetoric for
thought.[4] ”
Ayn Rand, in a collection of her essays, The Art of Fiction, remarks that after hearing a talk by
Laski in the 1930s, he became for her the personification of the villain Ellsworth Toohey in her
novel, The Fountainhead.[18] In her words,

"It is true that he was not particularly liberal—that is, he was the most vicious liberal I have ever
heard in public, but not blatantly so. He was very subtle and gracious, he rambled on a great
deal about nothing in particular—and then he made crucial, vicious points once in a while [...] I
thought, "There was my character." [...] Years later, I learned that [his] career was in fact
somewhat like Toohey's: he was always the man behind the scenes, much more influential than
anybody knew publicly, pulling the strings behind the governments of several countries. Finally
he was proved to be a communist, which he did not announce himself as or blatantly sound
like."[citation needed]
In his essay Politics and the English Language, George Orwell used a section from Laski's
book, Essay in Freedom of Expression, as an example of writing which demonstrated the
"mental vices" suffered by English speakers.[19][20]
http://www8.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/harold-laski
Harold Joseph Laski was a political theorist and university professor at the London School of
Economics.He is remembered as an important political thinker, intellectual and activist, in
particular during the 1930s.Through meeting Winifred (Frida) Kerry, Laski became
fascinated with eugenics and he published his first article on the topic, ‘The scope of
eugenics’, in the Westminster Review (July 1910). Laski began reading history at New
College Oxford, before transferring to study eugenics in London under Karl Pearson. On 1
August 1911, he and Frida eloped to Scotland to get married. Laski soon returned to Oxford
and took up the study of history again after losing interest in eugenics.
Through Frida, he became a supporter of the Suffragette movement and also developed
close links with the labour movement. He graduated from Oxford in 1914 and took up
temporary employment at the Daily Herald, for which he wrote editorials. His attempt to
join the army during the First World War was rejected on medical grounds. He accepted a
junior lectureship at McGill University where he remained until 1916, before moving to
Harvard, where in 1917 he became editor of the Harvard Law Review. While in the USA,
Laski developed his pluralist theory to refute the notion of the moral superiority of the state.
He argued that the state needed to win its citizens' support by acting in a reasonable way.
Laski was a keen supporter of decentralization and encouraging political participation at
grass-roots level through work-based organizations. His works on pluralist theory
established his reputation as a political theorist. He left the US in 1920 and took up a
lectureship at the London School of Economics. Back in England he became closely
associated and involved with the Labour Party and the Fabian Society, whose executive
committee he joined in 1921. In 1926 Laski was promoted to the Graham Wallas Chair of
Political Science at the London School of Economics.
In 1926 he met Krishna Menon who studied with him at LSE. Through his friendship with
Menon Laski became closely involved with the India League. Laski was a staunch supporter
of India’s move towards independence and argued for India’s right to self-determination.
After his return from the US, he andBertrand Russell spoke at election rallies for Shapurji
Saklatvala. Laski’s commitment to India is derived from the case O’Dwyer v. Nair, a libel
case O’Dwyer brought against Sankaran Nair, where he sat on the jury.
Laski’s influence on Menon was huge. Indeed heprobably learnt his socialism from his
professor. Their relationship went beyond the teacher-student connection, as Laski and his
wife took an interest in the welfare of Menon who was prone to depression. Laski
met Gandhi and Nehru through Menon and theIndia League. In turn, Menon could always
count on Laski’s support, and he would often give speeches in front of students, or speak at
rallies or lobbied the Labour Party. In spring 1930, Laski was asked by Sankey to help with
the planning for the Round Table Conference which would deal with the principles of a
federal constitution. During the 1931 second Round Table Conference, Laski was closely
involved in negotiations, especially on constitutional questions relating to political control of
a possible federal Indian army; he also worked on a criminal code and its implementation.
Sankey also asked Laski to negotiate with Gandhi and the Agha Khan on the future
constitutional status of religion. Yet these efforts failed. Gandhi admired Laski’s commitment
to Indian freedom and he often recommended students to study with him. Together with
Victor Gollancz and John Strachey he launched the Left Book Club, with which many South
Asian writers and activists, such as Mulk Raj Anand, Indira Nehru (Gandhi), and Jawaharlal
Nehrualso became involved. Laski was elected to the constituency section of the Labour
Party national executive committee in 1937, on which he served for 12 consecutive years.
He died in 1950.