Harold J Laski: 20 books

This is Laski’s most important book after A Grammar of Politics. It discusses, on a grand scale, every aspect of American public life. Laski surveys American traditions and the American spirit, political institutions, the entire educational, religious, economic and social scene, America as a world...

To mark the centenary of its first publication in 1848, the Labour Party issued this important special edition of the Communist Manifesto. In his (then) new historical introduction, Harold Laski discussed the authors of the Manifesto, their background and the development of their ideas. He outlined...

This is Laski’s most important book after A Grammar of Politics. It discusses, on a grand scale, every aspect of American public life. Laski surveys American traditions and the American spirit, political institutions, the entire educational, religious, economic and social scene, America as a world...

This work remains of interest to anyone concerned with Britain’s political institutions and how they might be reformed. Laski was strongly in favour of utilising Britain’s capacity for decisive government to drive through great social reforms. He was still confident that there was a majority will...

This influential study, originally published in 1921, develops aspects of Laski's theory of the state, ideas he introduced in his first important publication, Authority in the Modern State (1919). According to Laski, the state is not a supreme entity; it is one association among many that must compete for the people's loyalty and obedience.

This volume distils the themes expounded in A Grammar of Politics for the non-specialist reader. It is the best outline of Laski’s views in his transitional period.

An excellent and entertaining essayist, Laski’s volume deals with the issues of politics and law in Europe and American during the 1920s and 30s. It is unified by the concpetion of democracy as a society of equals sharing in a common good.

As a sequel to Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty, this volume, originally published in 1919, expands Laski’s pluralist doctrine of the state, (using France as its reference) but covers rather broader ground, since its main object is to insist that the problem of sovereignty is only a special...

An influential study of political power, originally published in 1917. Laski's theoretical ideas are elaborated through examples drawn from political and religious movements, such as the Catholic Revival and the creation of the German Empire. He concludes that the state is not a supreme entity; it is one association among many that must compete for the people's loyalty and obedience.

This book, originally published in 1952, unfinished and perhaps imperfect, is the last book of one of the most acute political thinkers of the twentieth century. Laski’s earlier optimism about a swing to the Left was beginning to be reversed, and in this volume he saw the defects of his previous...

Laski’s magnum opus, this volume outlines the history and functions of state institutions which (in the author’s view) are desirable for the effective functioning of a democracy. Topics discussed include: The necessity of government; state and society; rights and power; liberty and equality; property...

In this tract, Laski discusses the British case for the destruction of Hitler from the angle of the university student, especially from America, who had doubts about the complexities of the situation. He illustrates why all parties in Britain felt that future freedom of intelligence depended on victory.

This volume is an expanded version of the Weil lectures given at the University of North Carolina in 1931 and is one of the two texts of Laski’s quasi Marxist period.

This volume bases a clear and unbiased account of Communist philosophy on the Marxian Materialist Concept of History and Marxian Theory of Value. The spear-head of Marxism is its doctrine of class-struggle and from this Laski sets out on in his exposition of the Communist attitude. Although...