56 Facts About Harold Laski

1.

Harold Joseph Laski was an English political theorist and economist.

2.

Harold Laski was active in politics and served as the chairman of the British Labour Party from 1945 to 1946 and was a professor at the London School of Economics from 1926 to 1950.

3.

Harold Laski first promoted pluralism by emphasising the importance of local voluntary communities such as trade unions.

4.

Harold Laski was one of Britain's most influential intellectual spokesmen for Marxism in the interwar years.

5.

Harold Laski was perhaps the most prominent intellectual in the Labour Party, especially for those on the hard left who shared his trust and hope in Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union.

6.

Harold Laski was born in Manchester on 30 June 1893 to Nathan and Sarah Laski.

7.

Nathan Harold Laski was a Lithuanian Jewish cotton merchant from Brest-Litowsk in what is Belarus and a leader of the Liberal Party, while his mother was born in Manchester to Polish Jewish parents.

8.

Harold Laski had a disabled sister, Mabel, who was one year younger.

9.

Harold Laski repudiated his faith in Judaism by claiming that reason prevented him from believing in God.

10.

Harold Laski was awarded the Beit memorial prize during his time at New College.

11.

In 1916, Harold Laski was appointed as a lecturer of modern history at McGill University in Montreal and began to lecture at Harvard University.

12.

Harold Laski was briefly involved with the founding of The New School for Social Research in 1919, where he lectured.

13.

Harold Laski cultivated a large network of American friends centred at Harvard, whose law review he had edited.

14.

Harold Laski was often invited to lecture in America and wrote for The New Republic.

15.

Harold Laski became friends with Felix Frankfurter, Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann, Edmund Wilson, and Charles A Beard.

16.

Harold Laski knew many powerful figures and claimed to know many more.

17.

Critics have often commented on Harold Laski's repeated exaggerations and self-promotion, which Holmes tolerated.

18.

Harold Laski's wife commented that he was "half-man, half-child, all his life".

19.

Harold Laski returned to England in 1920 and began teaching government at the London School of Economics.

20.

Harold Laski was an executive member of the socialist Fabian Society from 1922 to 1936.

21.

Harold Laski was a prolific writer and produced a number of books and essays throughout the 1920s and the 1930s.

22.

At the LSE in the 1930s, Harold Laski developed a connection with scholars from the Institute for Social Research, now more commonly known as the Frankfurt School.

23.

In 1933, with almost all the Institute's members in exile, Harold Laski was among a number of British socialists, including Sidney Webb and RH Tawney, who arranged for the establishment of a London office for the Institute's use.

24.

Harold Laski played a role in bringing Franz Neumann to join the Institute.

25.

Harold Laski was a gifted lecturer, but he would alienate his audience by humiliating those who asked questions.

26.

Harold Laski was still in his late twenties and looked like a schoolboy.

27.

Harold Laski's lectures taught more, much more than political science.

28.

Harold Laski's seminars taught tolerance, the willingness to listen although one disagreed, the values of ideas being confronted.

29.

Harold Laski argued that the state should not be considered supreme since people could and should have loyalties to local organisations, clubs, labour unions and societies.

30.

Harold Laski became a proponent of Marxism and believed in a planned economy based on the public ownership of the means of production.

31.

Harold Laski 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.

32.

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 US and influenced prominent American friends including Felix Frankfurter, Edward R Murrow, Max Lerner, and Eric Sevareid.

33.

Harold Laski tried to mobilise Britain's academics, teachers and intellectuals behind the socialist cause, the Socialist League being one effort.

34.

Harold Laski had some success but that element typically found itself marginalised in the Labour Party.

35.

Harold Laski was always a Zionist at heart and always felt himself a part of the Jewish nation, but he viewed traditional Jewish religion as restrictive.

36.

Harold Laski was tireless in his speeches and pamphleteering and was always on call to help a Labour candidate.

37.

Harold Laski plunged into Labour Party politics on his return to London in 1920.

38.

Harold Laski 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.

39.

In 1932, Harold Laski joined the Socialist League, a left-wing faction of the Labour Party.

40.

Harold Laski was elected as a member of the Labour Party's National Executive Committee and he remained a member until 1949.

41.

Harold Laski suffered a nervous breakdown brought about by overwork.

42.

The next day, accounts of Harold Laski's speech appeared, and the Conservatives attacked the Labour Party for its chairman's advocacy of violence.

43.

Harold Laski filed a libel suit against the Daily Express newspaper, which backed the Conservatives.

44.

The defence showed that over the years Harold Laski had often bandied about loose threats of "revolution".

45.

Harold 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.

46.

Harold Laski tried to delay the Potsdam Conference until after Attlee's position was clarified.

47.

Harold Laski tried to bypass Attlee by directly dealing with Churchill.

48.

Harold Laski tried to pre-empt foreign policy decisions by laying down guidelines for the new Labour government.

49.

Harold Laski's 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.

50.

Harold Laski contracted influenza and died in London on 24 March 1950, aged 56.

51.

However, Harold Laski had a major long-term impact on support for socialism in India and other countries in Asia and Africa.

52.

Harold Laski taught generations of future leaders at the LSE, including India's Jawaharlal Nehru.

53.

Harold Laski was steady in his unremitting advocacy of the independence of India.

54.

Harold Laski was a revered figure to Indian students at the LSE.

55.

Harold Laski educated the outspoken Chinese intellectual and journalist Chu Anping at LSE.

56.

Harold Laski was an inspiration for Ellsworth Toohey, the antagonist in Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead.