Academic career In 1916, Laski was appointed as a lecturer of modern history at
McGill University in
Montreal and began to lecture at
Harvard University. He also lectured at Yale in 1919 to 1920. For his outspoken support of the
Boston Police Strike of 1919, Laski received severe criticism. He was briefly involved with the founding of
The New School for Social Research in 1919, where he also lectured. He knew many powerful figures and claimed to know many more. Critics have often commented on Laski's repeated exaggerations and self-promotion, which Holmes tolerated. His wife commented that he was "half-man, half-child, all his life". Laski returned to England in 1920 and began teaching government at the
London School of Economics (LSE). In 1926, he was made professor of political science at the LSE. Laski was an executive member of the socialist
Fabian Society from 1922 to 1936. In 1936, he co-founded the
Left Book Club along with
Victor Gollancz and
John Strachey. He was a prolific writer and produced a number of books and essays throughout the 1920s and the 1930s. At the LSE in the 1930s, Laski developed a connection with scholars from the
Institute for Social Research, now more commonly known as the
Frankfurt School. In 1933, with almost all the Institute's members in exile, Laski was among a number of British socialists, including
Sidney Webb and
R. H. Tawney, who arranged for the establishment of a London office for the Institute's use. After the Institute moved to
Columbia University in 1934, Laski was one of its sponsored guest lecturers invited to New York. Laski also played a role in bringing
Franz Neumann to join the Institute. After fleeing Germany almost immediately after
Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Neumann did graduate work in political science under Laski and
Karl Mannheim at the LSE and wrote his dissertation on the 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.
Teacher Laski was regarded as a gifted lecturer but he would alienate his audience by humiliating those who asked questions. Despite this, he was liked by his students, and was especially influential among the
Asian and
African students who attended the LSE. Describing Laski's approach,
Kingsley Martin wrote in 1968:
Ralph Miliband, another of Laski's students, praised his teaching: Laski also had a large influence on
Indian independence activist and later India's first Defence Minister
V. K. Krishna Menon, both politically and personally. Indeed Laski is famously quoted as stating "Krishna Menon is the best student I ever had."
Ideology and political convictions Laski's early work promoted
pluralism, especially in the essays collected in
Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty (1917),
Authority in the Modern State (1919), and
The Foundations of Sovereignty (1921). He argued that the state should not be considered supreme since people could and should have loyalties to local organisations, clubs, labour unions, and societies. The state should respect those allegiances and promote pluralism and decentralisation. Laski became 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. He also believed that since the
capitalist class would not acquiesce in its own liquidation, the
co-operative commonwealth was not likely to be attained without violence. He also had a commitment to
civil liberties,
free speech and
association, and
representative democracy. Initially, he believed that the
League of Nations would bring about an "international democratic system". From the late 1920s, his political beliefs became radicalised, and he believed that it was necessary to go beyond capitalism to "transcend the existing system of
sovereign states". Laski was dismayed by the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 and wrote a preface to the
Left Book Club collection criticising it, titled
Betrayal of the Left. Between the beginning of
World War II in 1939 and the
attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, which drew the United States into the war, Laski was a prominent voice advocating American support for the
Allies, became a prolific author of articles in the
American press, frequently undertook lecture tours in the United States and influenced prominent American friends including
Felix Frankfurter,
Edward R. Murrow,
Max Lerner, and
Eric Sevareid. In his last years, he was disillusioned by the
Cold War and the
1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état.
Zionism and anti-Catholicism Laski was always a
Zionist at heart and always felt himself a part of the
Jewish nation but viewed traditional
Jewish religion as restrictive. In 1946, Laski claimed in a address that the
Catholic Church opposed democracy, and said that "it is impossible to make peace with the Roman Catholic Church. It is one of the permanent enemies of all that is decent in the human spirit." In his final years, he became critical of what he saw as extremism in Israel at the outbreak of the
1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, arguing that they had not prevailed "upon an indefensible group among them to desist from using indefensible means for an end to which they were never proportionate."
Political career , 1938 Laski's main political role came as a writer and lecturer on every topic of concern to the left at that time, including
socialism, capitalism,
working conditions,
eugenics,
women's suffrage,
imperialism,
decolonisation,
disarmament,
human rights, worker education, and
Zionism. He was tireless in his speeches and pamphleteering and was always on call to help a Labour candidate. In between, he served on scores of committees and carried a full load as a professor and advisor to students. Laski plunged into Labour Party politics on his return to London in 1920. In 1923, he turned down the offer of a Parliament seat and cabinet position by
Ramsay MacDonald and also a seat in the Lords. He felt betrayed by MacDonald in the
crisis of 1931 and decided that a peaceful, democratic transition to socialism would be blocked by the violence of the opposition. In 1932, Laski joined the
Socialist League, a left-wing faction of the Labour Party. In 1937, he was involved in the failed attempt by the Socialist League in co-operation with the
Independent Labour Party (ILP) and the
Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) to form a
Popular Front to bring down the Conservative government of
Neville Chamberlain. In 1934 to 1945, he served as an alderman in the Fulham Borough Council and also the chairman of the libraries committee. Also in 1937, the Socialist League was rejected by the Labour Party and folded. He was elected as a member of the Labour Party's
National Executive Committee and he remained a member until 1949. In 1944, he chaired the
Labour Party Conference and served as the party's chair in 1945 to 1946. In 1942, he drafted the Labour Party pamphlet
The Old World and the New Society calling for the transformation of Britain into a
socialist state by allowing its government to retain wartime
economic planning and
price controls into the
postwar era. In the
1945 UK general election campaign, Churchill warned that Laski, as the Labour Party chairman, would be the
power behind the throne in an
Attlee government. While speaking for the Labour 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." The next day, accounts of Laski's speech appeared, and the
Conservatives attacked the Labour Party for its chairman's advocacy of violence. Laski filed a libel suit against the
Daily Express newspaper, which backed the Conservatives. The defence showed that over the years Laski had often bandied about loose threats of "revolution". The jury found for the newspaper within forty minutes of deliberations. Attlee gave Laski no role in the new
Labour government. Even before the libel trial, Laski's relationship with Attlee had been strained. 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 Churchill. Laski tried to pre-empt
foreign policy decisions by laying down guidelines for the new Labour government. Attlee rebuked him: Although he continued to work for the Labour Party until he died, Laski never regained political influence. His pessimism deepened as he disagreed with the
anti-Soviet policies of the Attlee government in the emerging
Cold War, and he was profoundly disillusioned with the anti-Soviet direction of
American foreign policy. ==Death and legacy==