LASKI HAROLD JOSEPH 1893-1950 PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE: LECTURE NOTES

Notes for lectures in European political thought: Government courses 6 and 6A. Also notes for lectures on 18th and 19th century British history.

Harold Joseph Laski 1893 - 1950

Harold Joseph Laski 1893 was born in Manchester, the son of a wealthy Jewish cotton merchant. He was educated at Manchester Grammar school. He studied eugenics at University College London in the first half of 1911 and later that year entered New College Oxford with a history exhibition and graduated in 1914 with first class honours in modern history. As he was rejected from the army on medical grounds he accepted a lectureship at McGill University in Montreal where he remained until 1916. He then joined the staff at Harvard University where he formed his close friendship with Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior (1841 - 1935), a judge in the United States Supreme Court. He left in 1920 to join the London School of Economics, where he became professor of political economics in 1926, a post which he retained until his death. His political theories were mainly concerned with sovereignty, the nature of the State and social change.

Harold Laski put his political ideas into action and was on the executive committee of the Fabian Society, 1921 - 1936, and the Labour Party, 1936 - 1949.

His publications include:

• The Problem of Sovereignty(1917)
• Authority in the Modern State(1919)
• Political Thought from Locke to Bentham(1920)
• Foundations of Sovereignty(1921)
• Letters of Burke(ed.) (1922)
• The Defence of Liberty against Tyrants(ed.) (1924)
• Autobiography of J. S. Mill(ed.) (1924)
• A Grammar of Politics(1925)
• Communism(1927)
• Liberty in the Modern State(1930)
• The Dangers of Obedience(1930)
• An Introduction to Politics(1931)
• Studies in Law and Politics(1932)
• The Crisis and the Constitution(1932)
• Democracy in Crisis(1933)
• The State in Theory and Practice(1935)
• The Rise of European Liberalism(1936)
• Parliamentary Government in England(1938)
• The American Presidency(1940)
• Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time(1943)
• Faith, Reason, Civilisation(1944)
• The American Democracy(1948)

Two volumes

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