Originally published in 1932 by Yale Univeristy Press
Published 2010 by Transaction Publishers
Published 2017 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2009028402
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Laski, Harold Joseph, 1893-1950.
Studies in law and politics / Harold J. Laski ; with a new introduction by Peter Lamb.
p. cm.
Originally published: New Haven : Yale University, 1932.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4128-1069-2
1. Political science. 2. Law. I. Title.
JA38.L353 2009
320.092-dc22
2009028402
ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-1069-2 (pbk)
TO
MR. JUSTICE BRANDEIS
WITH AFFECTION AND ADMIRATION
Peter Lamb
WHEN a collapsed lung brought about the premature death of Harold Laski in 1950, at the age of fifty-six, he was widely recognized as one of the most prolific and controversial political thinkers of his times. He was, furthermore, well-known in the United Kingdom, the United States, and many other countries around the world for his work as a socialist political activist on the left wing of the British Labour Party. Throughout his adult life he pursued these academic and political activities in tandem in a frantic schedule, which contributed to the ill health that would eventually prove fatal. Undertaking these different activities concurrently would, he hoped, serve two interrelated purposes: in his scholarly writings he would shed light on some of the most pressing problems of modern society, along with their causes, whilst as a political activist he would contribute to the solution of those problems.
Readers who select and peruse works that Laski wrote at different points in his life will notice that, in the course of conducting his interconnected political and academic activities, his views on the understanding, planning, and action required to bring about social change were not firmly fixed. As his ideological position gradually changed, so did his analysis and prescriptions. The publication of Studies in Law and Politics in 1932 came at a very noteworthy moment in this development of his thoughts and recommendations for action. It was a moment at which he was becoming increasingly convinced that Marxism, of which he had previously been sharply critical, helped provide some crucial answers to the economic, social, and political problems that his world was facing.
Although one cannot always distinguish clearly between the academic and political purposes in Laskis work, with some of his works actually straddling the two categories, the essays that comprise Studies in Law and Politics fall by and large into the academic. Nevertheless, there are indications in these essays that Laski had a purpose in addition to the purely scholarly, with one eye eagerly seeking possibilities for social and political change that his studies might reveal. He sought tirelessly for opportunities to act on those possibilities and, as is the case throughout his work, the academic and political purposes in his writings in this volume had no clear boundary between them.
After the publication of Studies in Law and Politics, Laski continued to produce many books, articles, and reviews from his position as a scholar. In the 1930s and even more so in the 1940s, however, the writings he produced primarily as a political activist became far more prominent in his output than had earlier been the case. Moreover, even his more academic writings began to take on a more distinct element of political activism. Laski would not have considered this observation significant. For him, political action and political thinking were two aspects of one and the same role he held as a socialist intellectual.
Laskis Dual Role
By no means an ivory tower academic, Laski has been described as both a public intellectual and a public philosopher.
Nevertheless, the Labour leadership did not always welcome Laskis work within his party; and this was particularly the case in the war years of the 1940s. Among the senior politicians of the party who were certainly not favorably disposed to Laskis interventions, Ernest Bevin was especially hostile to what in his view was interference and meddling in party decision-making procedures by the intelligentsiaa category in which he specifically included Laski.
Notwithstanding this uneasy relationship with his party leadership, Laskis pamphleteering, his public speaking, his contributions to conferences and his various other political activities helped inspire the democratic socialist reforms introduced by the post-war Labour government of the mid-to-late 1940s.
In the case of the other aspect of his dual rolethat of academic and scholarperhaps the label public philosopher does not fully capture the breadth of Laskis work. In the words of his former student Ralph Miliband: The books, essays, pamphlets and articles which flowed from his pen ranged over a wide field of history and jurisprudence, political theory, social philosophy and public administration.
A clearly distinguishable feature of Laskis work was his tendency, in his contribution to the various topics and fields within the study of politics, law, and international relations, to incorporate a socialist message. The link was thus formed between this aspect of his role and that of activist in the cause of progressive social change. This approach was summarized very well in a lecture he delivered less than two months before his death, in which he agreed with people who held two connected beliefs. The first of these beliefs was that the first task of learning and scholarship is not research for its own sake, but the achievement of a profounder knowledge of mens relation to nature.
Laskis scholarly expertise earned him the revered Chair of Government at the London School of Economics in 1926a position he held until his death. Holding this prestigious position did not, however, mean that Laski could avoid strong, incisive, and well-argued criticism during his lifetime. As will be illustrated later in this introduction, some of that criticism came from very influential political thinkers. Notwithstanding this criticism, however, his voluminous contribution to the various fields within the study of politics was in his own time hugely influential in academic circles, in addition to the political circles mentioned above. For example, among the many students he influenced who would later become prominent political scientists and political theorists in their own right was C.B. Macpherson, who acknowledged that he had been under Laskis spell in the 1930s and 1940s.
