Harold J. Laski - The State in Theory and Practice
Here you can read online Harold J. Laski - The State in Theory and Practice full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 1935, publisher: Routledge, genre: Science / Politics. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
Romance novel
Science fiction
Adventure
Detective
Science
History
Home and family
Prose
Art
Politics
Computer
Non-fiction
Religion
Business
Children
Humor
Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.
- Book:The State in Theory and Practice
- Author:
- Publisher:Routledge
- Genre:
- Year:1935
- Rating:4 / 5
- Favourites:Add to favourites
- Your mark:
The State in Theory and Practice: summary, description and annotation
We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "The State in Theory and Practice" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.
This timeless classic by Harold J. Laski explains the nature of the modern state by examining its characteristics, as revealed by its history. The State in Theory and Practice is a work that grows in significance, rather than dwindles over time. This is because, as Sidney A. Pearson, Jr. points out, Laski helped develop and expound the foundational arguments of the political left.After the collapse of the Soviet Union, even on the hard left, few people thought of Marxism, at least in its classical formulation by Laski in the 1930s, as a political alternative. Much of the interest in Laski seeks to separate the early Laski of pluralist parliamentary arguments from the later Laski of Marxism. Laskis appeal rests on subtle aspects of his science of politics that require a detailed examination before their full significance can be understood. The state is a work that operates at several layers of assumptions and implications.The significance of Laski starts with the observation that among many intellectuals on the left, the political critique of liberal democracy remains as influential after the collapse of the Soviet Union as it was when Laski wrote. The leftist critique of classical liberalism is one of the touchstones of modern political thought and Laski remains part of that tradition. Laski is one of the links between what might be called the old left of the pre-World War II era and the new left of the 1960s and later.
Harold J. Laski: author's other books
Who wrote The State in Theory and Practice? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
The State in Theory and Practice — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work
Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The State in Theory and Practice" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.
Light
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
the
STATE
in
THEORY
and
PRACTICE
STATE
in
THEORY
and
PRACTICE
the
STATE
in
THEORY
and
PRACTICE
STATE
in
THEORY
and
PRACTICE
Harold J. Laski
with a new introduction by
Sidney A. Pearson, Jr.
Sidney A. Pearson, Jr.
Originally published in 1935 by Harold J. Laski
Published 2009 by Transaction Publishers
Published 2017 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
New material this edition copyright 2009 by Taylor & Francis.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2008031068
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Laski, Harold Joseph, 1893-1950.
The state in theory and practice / Harold J. Laski; with a new introduction by Sidney A. Pearson, Jr.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York: Viking Press, 1935. With new introd.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4128-0831-6
1. State, The. I. Title.
JC257.L37 2008
320.1--dc22
2008031068
The state in theory and practice / Harold J. Laski; with a new introduction by Sidney A. Pearson, Jr.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York: Viking Press, 1935. With new introd.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4128-0831-6
1. State, The. I. Title.
JC257.L37 2008
320.1--dc22
2008031068
ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-0831-6 (pbk)
The purpose of this book is to discover the nature of the modern state. It seeks to explain that nature by an examination of its characteristics as these have been revealed by its history; and, in their light, it seeks to outline a theory of the state more in consonance with that history than the classic outlook. In some sort, it is a sequel to my Democracy in Crisis (1933), the philosophic implications of which it tries to develop further.
I owe much to friends who have helped me with criticism and discussion. Above all, I must thank my colleagues Mr. H. L. Beales, Professor M. Ginsberg, and Dr. W. I. Jennings. None of them, of course, has any responsibility for these pages. What it owes to my wife I only can know. But of this neither of us would speak.
Mr. Victor Gollancz has kindly allowed me to use several pages from a chapter contributed by me to The Intelligent Mans Way to Prevent War, edited by Mr. Leonard Woolf.
Harold J. Laski
London, October 24, 1934.
Contents
H AROLD L ASKIS T HE S TATE : T HE P ERILS AND A TTRACTIONS OF S OCIAL S CIENCE AS A P REDICTIVE S CIENCE
Who was Harold Laski and why should one of his least discussed books in his own lifetime, The State, written in 1935, be read today? The first part of the question is more easily answered than the second. Both answers are to be sought in his personal biography and the extensive influence his work has had on twentieth century thought in general, especially political thought on the Left.
Laski was born in 1893 to wealthy, liberal Jewish parents. He was precocious as a child and entered Oxford where he graduated with a First in 1914. As an undergraduate at Oxford he actively embraced both atheism and the guild socialism of G. D. H. Cole. As a child and as an adult he tended to be sickly and was rejected as unfit for military service at the outbreak of World War I. He began his academic career shortly thereafter at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He also taught briefly at Harvard University in the United States where he was very much impressed by American pragmatism, especially the theories of John Dewey and William James. The experiences at Harvard made him a lifelong student of American government, politics, and society in general; he always regarded himself as a major interpreter of American government to his English audience. He returned to England in 1920 where he secured a post at the London School of Economics, a position he held until his death in 1950.
Most contemporary students of politics who know his name are more likely to encounter it secondhand as the object of George Orwells merciless attack in his Politics and the English Language. From the 1920s through the 1940s, Harold Laski was one of the most influential Marxist academic political theorists in the English-speaking world. Although his academic teaching institution was primarily in England at the London School of Economics, the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. referred to him as a writer whose influence among Americans far exceeded that of any native Marxist. Throughout his lifetime, Laski was an intellectual figure on the Left to be reckoned with.
The State is a work that seems to grow in significance as The Age of Laski, like a cat with nine lives, never quite seems to die. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990 there has been a modest revival of interest in Laski that has focused on almost every aspect of his work and has treated his Marxism almost as an afterthought. A new generation of writers on the Left has found in Laski something worth restoring in political science apart from his overt Marxist point of reference. Reading Laski anew must therefore attempt to answer what this something is. On the one hand it seems to be rooted in the notion that Marxism as a theory can be revived without the Marxism of historical experience; what might be described as Marxism for vegetarians.
Reevaluating Laski, however, will require some effort since the twentieth century has not been kind to the Marxist theory of progress; clearly the vegetarian phase of Marxism has yet to appear as something we can all experience. Indeed, looking back on the twentieth century as a whole, it is difficult to say that the twentieth century represents any sort of political progress over, say, the nineteenth or eighteenth century at all. The very idea of progress of a political sort seems even more problematic to later generations than it did to Laski and his generation.
The second part of the question, why should he be read today? is more difficult to answer in part because it is tied to the first question as if by an umbilical cord that is impossible to break, however much some may try. Laski was a man of the Left and his embrace of Marxism as the best mode of modern political analysis and the Russian Revolution as the best example of the practical union of political theory and practice could easily be read at the beginning of the twenty-first century as an academic embarrassmentcompounded by the unanticipated collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, one of the two great totalitarian failures of the twentieth century. In light of the failure of Soviet Marxism, we might read Laski simply or primarily to understand the appeal of Marxism among intellectuals of his era. Reading him in this way might make him someone of historical interest, but not necessarily a writer of continuing interest.
Yet Laskis appeal has persisted beyond the collapse of Marxism as a political system and much, though not all, of socialism as an economic system. Socialism as a theory seems unrelated to economic practice, much less our experiences with the intersection of economics and politics in the very sorts of regimes Laski despised. We may conclude that his appeal may even be enhanced in the sense that Laski can now be read without specific reference to the Soviet Union as the embodiment of his idea of theory and practice; the theoretical structure of his arguments can be divorced from the reality of the Marxist state just as the theoretical arguments for socialism can be divorced from the economic performance of socialist experiments. Some explanation for the continued relevance of Laski in the post-Soviet era and in contemporary political science therefore seems to be in order. He remains worth reading, thought not necessarily for exactly the same reasons he was so widely read in his own day. At the height of his influence in the 1930s, he seemed to offer a viable theoretical explanation and political alternative to the Great Depression and the rise of fascism that perplexed so many of his contemporaries.
Light
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
Similar books «The State in Theory and Practice»
Look at similar books to The State in Theory and Practice. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Harold J. Laski
Reviews about «The State in Theory and Practice»
Discussion, reviews of the book The State in Theory and Practice and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.