Harold Laski

1920
Harold Laski

Harold Laski (1893-1950) was a political theorist and a leading British intellectual of the twentieth century. Professor of Political Science at LSE from 1926 until his death in 1950, he was a notorious figure loved and respected by students and colleagues alike. He knew both the great and the good, including Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. In the words of LSE Director Lord Dahrendorf, 'Laski instilled the excitement of a school of (economics and) political science, its forever unresolved tension with the outside world, into the minds and hearts of more than one generation of students. He defined, as it were, the inimitable LSE experience.'

For Laski, English Socialism was more profoundly influenced by John Stuart Mill than by Marx. He was a brilliant student at Oxford, taking a first in history, and he taught in the USA, where his outspokenness gained him a controversial reputation, before coming to LSE in 1920. He succeeded Graham Wallas as Professor of Political Science in 1926. He taught a modified Marxism, and he was at the height of his Marxist phase in the mid1930s.

Politically, Laski was influential and controversial. His political outspokenness brought him controversy on both sides of the Atlantic. A member of the Labour party from the time of the Great War, he was a major influence on Labour policy during his time on the National Executive from 1937-49. He helped to shape the Labour manifestos in the late 1930s and in 1945, the landslide year that brought Labour to government in post-war Britain. He was Chairman of the British Labour Party from 1945-46. He was a man of principle, adhering to his socialist beliefs in the 1930s and 1940s when others were sacrificing them. Laski's works include A Grammar of Politics (1925), Liberty in the Modern State (1930), Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (1943), The American Democracy (1948).