SOURCE: "Harold J. Laski: A Preliminary Analysis," in Political Science Quarterly, Vol. LXV, No. 3, September, 1950, pp. 370-92.

[In the following essay, Hawkins takes a critical look at Laski's Marxism, and the ways this ideology affected his interpretation of the world.]

To all who are concerned with the scope and function of political authority the ideas of Harold Joseph Laski are of signal importance. Over the course of his lifetime Laski' s ideas reflected in many respects the strength and weakness both of those who strive to maintain liberty as the main end of democratic government, and of those who see in equality the fountainhead of democracy which is secured largely through state action. Beginning his public career as an extreme critic of the state, Laski had been for many years prior to his death an outstanding spokesman for collectivism. This vigorous personality was one of the most controversial figures in the academic and political world of the twentieth century.

Elsewhere a review and analyses of Laski's different political philosophies from pluralism to Marxism have been attempted by this writer.¹ Here I wish to point out one significant result of Laski's treatment of the old and continuing problem of liberty versus authority in the particular circumstances of the twentieth century in which the problem is posed. For all his freely recognized scholarly contributions, his many services in the cause of democracy, his life-long devotion to equality, Harold Laski to some degree always failed the liberal democrat.² In particular I desire to call attention to the several unfortunate results of Laski's failure during the years after he accepted Marxism.

Characteristic of liberalism is the assumption that antagonistic interests in society can be effectively adjusted and readjusted by methods of persuasion and negotiation. This assumption presumes the construction and support of institutions which assist in the task of peaceful adjustment. In his early days as a pluralist, Laski often discouraged the liberal's faith in the workability of democratic institutions. Later, as a modified pluralist, Laski was inconsistent and contradictory in his attitude toward the basic postulate of liberalism, and in his view of liberal institutions. Finally, during his Marxist stage, he frequently rejected the liberal postulate.

As a pluralist, Laski in his extreme devotion to liberty was essentially a philosophical anarchist who placed the demands of the voluntary associations and those of the state upon an equal plane. As a modified pluralist, his very suggestive democratic collectivism, largely secured under state auspices, was in turn accompanied by an incompatible assertion of the overriding principle of obedience to individual conscience. A careful observation of Laski's Marxism reveals, in spite of its generous liberal leavening, the acknowledgement of inevitable conflict in place of negotiation, and the acceptance of the need to abandon democratic institutions if necessary to secure the "right" end.

In making this general criticism it is of the greatest importance to underscore the difference in degree and in kind existing between Laski's failure to the liberal democrat as a pluralist and modified pluralist, and his failure as a Marxist. The assumption of the sovereignty of the individual's conscience, as well as the demand for resistance in accordance with its dictates, present in all three major stages of Laski's thought, is the primary reason for his failure in the earlier two periods. In his early stages he assumes the idea of peaceful adjustment through a healthy competition among social groups, themselves, and the state for the individual's loyalty. The atmosphere of political insecurity induced by his extreme assertions of the sovereignty of conscience, however, threatened the existence of constitutional government. During the later Marxist years the continuing axiom of resistance is but a supplement to a theory of the state which fundamentally believes conflict instead of persuasion to be the means of making important social change. At the same time Laskian Marxism uses the institutions of democracy to achieve the results predicted by this anti-liberal hypothesis. The use of the principle of moral compulsion to resistance is here narrowed to its application to the class struggle for possession of the state.

Against Laski as a pluralist and later as a liberal socialist who favored pluralism, a criticism of confusion and contradiction may be entered. Against Laski the Marxist the criticism may also be stated in moral terms. At times while actually denying the assumptions of democracy, he was willing to use liberal institutions to secure good ends—even at the cost of sacrificing the essentials of democracy.

Laski's devotion to freedom during his pluralist days was expressed in an inveterate suspicion of any kind of state. He insisted that the will of the voluntary group must be regarded as co-sovereign with the will of the state no matter how the state was organized. He insisted that the purpose of the groups was similar to that of the state. Such a view made the threat of anarchy more omnipresent than contingent. Under such a doctrine the rule of law of the liberal constitutional state was likely to be replaced by group anarchy.³

Laski's later compromise with the positive sovereign state in the twenties, which came about largely because of his desire for mass economic security, only increased his zeal for freedom. Then, as the socialist who stood with the liberal tradition, he attempted to foster greater opportunity for the exercise of freedom through the extension of equality largely through state action. His extreme individualism, however, was irreconcilable with his collectivist principle. Laski's "contingent anarchy" doctrine which made individual conscience the supreme arbiter as to what constituted good law was, in effect, contrary to his acceptance of the positive liberal state. It elevated the individual conscience above the social conscience of the community. In marginal questions it assumed that it was morally right that the individual's idea of right purpose ought to prevail over the wishes of the community of individuals, even where the community's wishes were expressed through the democratic state.⁴

But whatever the inadequacies of his suggestive arguments during the first fifteen years of his public career, Laski's devotion to freedom and to equality never compromised the democratic philosophy. Man who does not voluntarily take out membership in that steadily increasing powerful organization, the sovereign state, could be grateful for such a champion as pluralist Laski. However much the elements of his later socialism of the twenties were contradicted by the individualism insisted upon at the same time, no denials were expressed concerning the validity of the liberal democratic philosophy. In each of these first two periods of his thought an extreme consent doctrine discouraged the possibility of a workable constitutionalism. But the acceptance of liberal assumptions of a certain good will among conflicting groups, and of the use of reason to achieve the good life, is evident—particularly the latter.

Laski's socialism before he accepted Marxism originated in a moral indignation against injustice. As a liberal socialist he was undogmatic in his views, fiercely devoted to the interest of all dissenters and to the free examination and choice of all beliefs, and hopeful for the successful negotiation of differences through parliamentary methods.⁵ His view of Marxism and of Soviet communism was one of intelligent skepticism. Concerned with understanding, rather than denunciation, he brilliantly illuminated the appeal of the Marxist-Leninist faith while calling attention to its errors. He rejected Marxism as incompatible with democracy.⁶

This devotion to liberalism and straightforwardness with regard to communism is often absent after Laski turned to Marxism. Despairing of the adequacy of liberalism and liberal institutions to secure that equality which he eagerly sought for the plain man, he attempted to marry liberalism to Marxism. Arguments that capitalists will not accept the peaceful victory of socialism, that it will be necessary to suspend traditional constitutional processes to secure a socialist victory, that parliamentarism can no longer work in our day, that capitalists in a democracy will turn to the Fascists to protect property interests against a successful socialist appeal to public opinion, are repeatedly put forth.⁷ Indeed liberalism historically is viewed as an end product of capitalism.⁸ In contrast to his liberal socialist views of previous years Laski, on occasion, served as an apologist for the monolithic state party of the Soviet Union. Periodically, too, he substituted adoration of the "Soviet Idea", for scholarly examination of communism.⁹

Yet, despite instances of his clearly fatal compromises of liberalism, Laski was regarded by many liberal democrats as a democratic socialist. Professor William Ebenstein, for example, in his anthology of modern political thought, Man and the State, has this to say:

The Lockean-Jeffersonian theory of revolution has been vigorously reaffirmed in our own time by Harold J. Laski. His political thought has sprung from the rich heritage of the liberal faith, and his socialism is but an enlargement of his liberalism from the purely political into the economic and social aspects of life. His defense of the democratic socialist movements against the inroads of revolutionary communism, resumed by him with renewed vigor after the end of the Second World War, is inconsistent with the attempt to build up Harold J. Laski into a gauleiter or commissar. While no yogi, he never embraced the creed of the commissar.¹⁰

And not the least of the tributes is that of Max Lerner that "Laski's faith is that of a democratic socialist."¹¹

From these verdicts one must, in view of the total picture, firmly demur. These are not times for equivocation on the basic differences between authoritarianism and a free way of life. In order to secure at home those ends in which he passionately believed and in his views of Russian totalitarianism and of international affairs, Laski frequently compromised the kind of socialism which may justly claim to be the modern expression of liberalism.

There is no doubt that Laski "never embraced the creed of the commissar"—if that entails an uncritical admiration for Stalinist communism. But as his record clearly indicates, at times, if unwittingly, he served as the commissar's subtle apologist. In the face of his many contradictory attitudes toward the Soviet Union, his statements concerning the irreconcilability of liberalism and socialism, his moody insistence on the inevitability of class war, his insistence too that the essential postulate of liberalism belonged to another age (which accompanied his requiems sung over parliamentarism) it is an error to state that "his socialism is but an enlargement of his liberalism."

If the contradictory elements in Laski's ideas here presented were the expressions from different periods in the development of his thought, there would be little point in criticizing. But these curious expressions appear during the same stage in the thought of this "liberal socialist".¹² They are the results of Laski's grim attempt to serve the demands of liberalism and Marxism equally and at the same time.

The results are plain. Laski's brilliant exposés of Communists' totalitarian morality and their conspiratorial tactics and organization, his unsparing sacrifice and devotion to the British Labor party, and his inspiring prose in praise of democratic socialism illustrate his liberal side. Incongruously at the same time there appear assertions of the great promise of democracy under Stalin, and also criticism of the British Labor party and the "Fabian way", of the philosophy of liberalism itself, and of the formal institutions of democracy in what can be described as "neo-Marxist-Leninist" terms. Stirring pleas for equality and vigorous and helpful socialist criticisms of democratic institutions were frequently accompanied by a rather shocking disregard of the significance of the vital atmosphere in which the formal techniques of democracy operate.

The Lockean demand for resistance on the basis of conscience did reappear during the Marxist period. But this demand which from the start characterizes Laski's writings is really negated at this time. During this period it is not the previous ardent defense of any dissenter, who feels morally outraged by unjust law, that concerns Laski.

Marxist Laski's interest in resistance centers in the need to oppose those who themselves are driven to fight the political manifestations of the inexorable development of the forces and relations of economic production. Morality itself having been fixed in an economic deterministic bed, the resistance of the capitalist, and that of the workers, each of whose ideas of right are basically traced to economic origins, mainly constitute the Laskian concern with dissent. Above all there is a persistent note that resistance really cannot be permitted to those who would oppose the "right" ideas concerning society's productive forces. So constitutional processes may have to be sacrificed. Historical justification is advanced for such action. The onus is placed on the conservatives.¹³ One again asks the question: In light of the total record how could Laski be classified as the socialist heir of Locke and Jefferson?

That force for good which he did possess was greatly dissipated in the efforts at answering the demands of an economic determinism which in some important measure was with him from his earliest writings. As a Marxist Laski was compelled, despite his qualifying observations, to follow an economic determinism according to the precepts of what he had once characterized as a religious creed. The liberal force of his ideas was thus fundamentally secondary to the force of an intolerant absolute doctrine.

Under the influence of Marxism, liberalism becomes little more than the excrescence of capitalism. Identifying liberalism as the political expression of capitalism, Laski argued repeatedly that when this political philosophy could no longer serve the ends of capitalism it would be rejected by the owning class. The business groups could not accept changes which might result from the transfer of liberalism to all classes. For, in Laski's words, liberalism is "the philosophy of a business civilization."¹⁴

Having identified liberalism with capitalism Laski further argued that the twentieth-century man had to choose between liberalism and socialism.¹⁵

It was because of Laski's Marxist faith that he continued to regard the liberal state as being operated in the interest of the employer class. His Marxian economic determinism caused him to insist that the capitalist democratic state has not been one which could be captured and used by any group successfully appealing to the public. It would appear, however, that by means of the liberal state, capitalism has been increasingly modified, and continues to be modified for the benefit of the masses who have sought to limit the power of wealth. But for Laski these changes are only illustrations of capitalist largesse—grudgingly granted. Following an inexorable economic determinism, he argued that, since the capitalist economy is contracting, the process of concession-granting cannot continue.

Under the influence of this economic determinism the true significance of the "dry" revolution in the United States since the late twenties was largely neglected in Laski's mammoth postwar study,The American Democracy. In that volume the capitalist bogeyman is still the determining force in the United States; the American society is still his creation, the American government his executive committee.¹⁶ Under the spell of the same economic determinism Laski had also several times, of course, predicted that the British capitalist class would not accept a Labor party victory at the polls.

In the years after the war, despite evidence to the contrary, Laski religiously and periodically re-intoned the Marxist belief that liberalism is the social philosophy of a middle class and will be permitted to serve only that class's interests. The successes of the Labor party and the New and Fair Deal programs in Great Britain and America, respectively, did not change his continuing pessimistic prediction of capitalist counterrevolution, where a serious attempt is made to use liberalism against the interest of the owning class. Continually warning against conservative sabotage of the program of the "welfare state", Laski after the war also argued that the capitalists had little to fear from the way in which the governments were expediting the mandates supported by the workers in Britain and America.

The belief in counterrevolution led Laski to argue that frustrated capitalism would seek to revive fascism and plunge the world into another war. In Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, written during World War II, he had argued that if socialism did not come to Britain during the war the likelihood was that after the war British and American capitalists would push the world into a new holocaust against the Soviet Union. During the last years of his life Laski felt that the greatest potential threat to peace was the danger represented in an imperialist America, influenced by the demands of capitalists seeking to preserve a dying economic order. What emerged from the sharps and flats, assertions and qualifications was substantially this: At bottom, despite all her admirable qualities, the United States is the greatest potential danger to world peace. At bottom, despite all her sins which Laski often was at pains to enumerate, the Soviet Union, if there is no war, points the way to a new and better world order.¹⁷ For with Marxist Laski, capitalist America must be the potential force of reaction; and with Marxist Laski, the Soviet Union has been frequently identified as the leader of the progressive revolutionary forces let loose in the world as the result of two world wars.

In view of his total record it may be asked why it was that so many people could regard Laski as a socialist of a liberal persuasion. Probably the most important reason for this belief is that in many ways Laski was apparently deserving of such regard. One side of his philosophy was liberal and it was vigorously asserted. Moreover, Laski, despite his Marxist criticisms of the "Fabian way" and the Labor party, always remained within a reformist political party. Where the unliberal and undemocratic elements of his ideas were exposed to careful public analysis, as for example in the course of the trial in the famous libel suit which Laski brought against the Newark Advertiser and other British newspapers after the 1945 elections, Laski's own interpretations of the "correct" way in which his ideas should be understood satisfied his followers. Few people who accepted the Left liberalism of Laski, it may be assumed, ever took the trouble to read the analysis of such "Marxist liberalism" which the liberal socialist Ernest Barker, Laski's onetime Oxford tutor, presented in the pages of his Reflections on Government.¹⁸

Indeed it is understandable why the liberal, who did not look too closely at the record, should have such a favorable view of Laski. Here was a man who on the basis of his work between the ages of 23 and 37 had justly merited a reputation for scholarship accorded to few people in a lifetime. Here, it seemed, was a vigorous consistent spokesman for the democratic cause who was continually fighting for equality. A gratitude was felt for one who gave cogent replies to those who challenged the compatibility of collectivism and liberty. Here was a champion who could effectively point out the weaknesses in the position of those who, denying the possibility of democratic socialism, at the same time insist in identifying capitalism with democracy. For Laski was one of the most brilliant and penetrating critics of capitalism which the first half of the twentieth century produced. Efforts of reactionaries and crypto-Fascists in Britain and the United States to intimidate him undoubtedly also had an effect in epitomizing him as a liberal socialist. Laski was at times the object of heavy-handed abuse by some professional red-baiters. He was, moreover, one who occasionally criticized communism and, in turn, was viciously criticized by the Communists.¹⁹

Other reasons why Laski was accepted in many circles as a true representative of liberal socialism probably include: the acceptance of the opiate of the poetic pen and soaring phrase (somewhat understandable in view of the mechanical expositions of most scholars); the great hunger existing among certain liberals for some assurance that there still exists in the U.S.S.R. the basis of the equal society which fired the imagination of many generous minds in the stirring days of the October revolution; the kindness of intellectuals who believe that Laski's Marxist ideas "must be taken broadly", which has often really meant that one must accept him as a consistent liberal socialist; the honest concern with achieving a lasting peace (often exploited by Communists and fellow-travelers organizing front organizations) which in recent years made criticism of Laski's visions of equality in Russia appear to be mainly the results of "cold war" psychosis.

This list of reasons could be extended.²⁰ They obscure, however, the vital point. This is that, having accepted Marxism to aid him in his never-ending quest for an equal society, Laski came under obligation to a deterministic, absolute intolerant doctrine. This social philosophy he tried to accommodate to one which is fundamentally tolerant and experimental. In the process liberalism was so compromised that it was often a façade for securing the success of the inevitable revolution, or its basic assumptions were often (if with some reluctance) denied. The upshot of this marriage of liberalism and Marxism was certainly disastrous to Laski's liberalism.

It also deleteriously affected his work as a scholar. To be sure in Laski's writings since the early thirties there is the suggestiveness which results from the use of dialectical materialism and economic determinism in explaining history and contemporary society. And Laski is all the more beguiling because of the liberalism which interlaces the Marxism in his thought. The value of Marxism, when it is used as one important analytical tool in the study of society, is undeniable. When, however, it is used dogmatically (and the Marxism of the true believer is a rigorously absolute creed), its diagnosis is easily open to challenge.²¹ As we have seen, Laski's brand of "democratic Marxism" led him to give biased and oversimplified descriptions of complex phenomena, to make predictions, which, because they were based upon faulty hypotheses, were unsubstantiated later.

Despite the gloomy observations and prognostications by Laski, the liberal state, on the evidence, appears to be one whose government may be contested for by many different interests in society and may be used to serve the purposes of the community as those interests are expressed by whatever groups capture it upon the basis of periodic appeal to the people. Despite Laski, all classes in the liberal state have so far maintained their loyalty to the essential institutions of a free society. There has been no suspension of vital constitutional processes by the British socialist party for example, nor have the Tories, under the pressure of drastic alterations of property rights, resisted these important changes. On the contrary, the evidence reveals that all classes in Britain since the war are committed to a program of democratic collectivism. If in the past the record of capitalist democracies often showed governmental intervention and influence in the interests of industrial wealth, the record of the past twenty years particularly is one in which the balance has been significantly altered in favor of other interests. Despite Laski's continuing doubts, there is reason for believing that the gains of labor, for example, at the expense of capital are permanent. Over the long pull, then, the evidence supports the validity of the assumptions of the liberal political philosophy, and refutes Laski's grim predictions.

Moreover, despite the admitted suggestiveness of Laski's "tit-for-tat parallelisms" in comparing the Soviet dictatorship and the Western democracies, the significant difference in kind and in degree of freedom existing in these different nations cannot be obscured. Despite Laski's continuing efforts, before, during and since the war, to suggest that the Soviet dictatorship is a temporary deformity from which could emerge a democratic way of life, the evidence is to the contrary. In every aspect of science and culture, conformity to the monolithic state party is required. These facts cannot be explained away by observations that the Soviet Union is not a democracy in the "Western sense" or that such strait-jacketing is due primarily to the insecure international situation. The primary reason, one suggests, is that these actions are the inevitable consequence of Bolshevism.

Laski's Marxist analysis that American imperialist capitalism is the greatest potential source of a third world war neglects to recognize sufficiently at least two facts. In the first place American capitalists are but one significant interest group influencing the policies of the capitalist democracy of the United States, while only one group, the State Party hierarchy, does control the policies of the Russian state. In the second place Laski's description omits the influence of the major shift of world communism toward an aggressive new line which took place in the spring of 1945 under the dictate of Russia disrupting the wartime coöperation and initiating the cold war between former allies.²²

In Laski's thought, then, the dogmatism of the Marxist was not in the end conquered by the experimentalism of liberalism. The irreconcilable combination was, however, responsible for the strange dichotomies expressed during this period. Laski attempted to struggle against his bias, but always he yielded to it. If predictions proved erroneous there was always the future (already determined) to prove him yet correct. And so he went on before and after the war, despite the evidence, making his continual forecasts of possible domestic and international capitalist counterrevolution, and spreading doubts about the permanency of the new adjustments made by the liberal states.

After 1931 Laski was actually more the crusading pamphleteer than the scholar. His energies were devoted to hammering home repeatedly the same message of "socialism or disaster". It may be predicted, therefore, that Laski's deserved scholarly reputation will rest mainly upon his work as a pluralist and as a modified pluralist who was a liberal socialist.

In perspective Laski's political thought over the years is an expression of a continuous effort at reconciling liberty and authority. The way in which he presented his ideas, however, made that reconciliation impossible. In his earliest years he tried to build a theory of government upon what was really a theory of anarchy. The need for adequate and responsible authority lost out to his emphasis upon group liberty. Later, as a democratic socialist and pluralist, he tried in vain to reconcile a theory of positive government with a theory of extreme individualism. Here, in his anxiety to show that his socialism rested upon an abiding respect for freedom, he insisted upon an extreme individualism which really created an insoluble dilemma. As a Marxist, still in many ways an individualist, Laski attempted to join liberalism to Marxism. It has been the special task of this paper to indicate the unfortunate results which attended this effort. Ironically, in a quest for equality which would further extend freedom for all, Laski often permitted the very substance of freedom to be lost in his zeal for state planning. Especially in his curiously contradictory views of Stalinist communism did freedom lose out to absolutism.

Laski believed most earnestly that the central problem of politics is the problem of authority versus liberty. In his different attempts to solve that ever-continuing problem one may find the particular natures of the theorist's failure to constitutional government. From a chronic fear of the state as an all-absorptive unity Laski eventually went to the other extreme in his rationalizations for the positive state. But few men in our day gave themselves so completely to the struggle to solve the perennial dilemma, which in these times is mainly reflected in the relationship of liberalism to collectivism. One may also hazard the guess that few men in this century will provide so stimulating a challenge to thought upon this problem.

NOTES

¹ In a forthcoming publication of the University of Minnesota Press.

² By "liberal democrat" is meant one who believes that morally all men are equal as ends unto themselves. I am assuming that the liberal democrat seeks the ideal of the good life as it is conceived by the people who are all given a chance to share in its making; that the liberal democrat wishes to see practical manifestations of the ideal expressed in a society having responsible government which uses majority rule as the best tentative method for securing the common good. (Majority rule here is understood as the rule of numbers, each man counting equally, taken upon the basis of certain unalienable rights, namely, freedoms of speech and of person in the broad sense.) Finally, I wish to define the liberal democrat as one who believes that political freedom is the vital freedom in achieving the good life. Political freedom is the vital freedom in securing for the individual, who is the end for which government exists, those conditions of developing himself which are compatible with life in society that of necessity must be politically organized.

³Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty (New Haven, 1916); Authority in the Modern State (New Haven, 1919); Foundations of Sovereignty (New York, 1921). In his pluralist attacks upon state sovereignty Laski saw the object of his assault reflecting the claims of Hegelian idealism. He believed legal sovereignty to be undemocratic.

⁴A Grammar of Politics (New Haven, 1925); Liberty in the Modern State (New York, 1930).

⁵A Grammar of Politics; Liberty in the Modern State.

⁶ See Karl Marx, a Fabian Society brochure, published in 1924, and Communism (New York, 1927). In Communism, Laski was one of the first to underline the fact that the reasons for the acceptance of communism are not primarily materialistic. Nearly a quarter of a century ago he was saying to the world what is today becoming more evident; namely, that to the faith of communism, free men must oppose the faith of democracy. He warned that if the democracies did not inspire their people with an attachment for values of a free society, communism would persist and grow.

⁷ The numerous publications which emphasize in greater or less degree these essential denials of (a) liberal political thought and (b) the adequacy of democratic institutions include Democracy in Crisis (Chapel Hill, 1933); The State in Theory and Practice (New York, 1935); The Rise of European Liberalism (New York, 1936); Parliamentary Government in England (New York, 1938). In World War II, when Laski was arguing that the crisis had brought a chance for a "revolution by consent" if Britain were made a socialist state during the war, these charges that the capitalist democratic state is really an executive of the owning class are repeated. The prediction is made that socialism could not come about through normal peaceful processes if its inception were made contingent on post-war electoral victory. Cf. Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (New York, 1943), chapters iv, v, vii, viii, passim. Doubts that the capitalist democracy will satisfactorily protect working-class interests are expressed after the war in The American Democracy (New York, 1948), and Trade Unions in the New Society (New York, 1949).

⁸The Rise of European Liberalism.

⁹Faith, Reason and Civilization (New York, 1944) is a particularly extreme example of how Laski's rationalizations can turn a totalitarian state into a new kind of democracy which represents the hope of civilization. Written during the war when the Russians were bearing the main brunt of the Nazi onslaught, it represents an underlying faith in its author which had appeared previous to the war, and would reappear after the war. In "Leningrad Letter", written for The Nation, vol. 139, July 18, 24, 1934, pp. 69-71, 100-101, Laski, despite some friendly critical observations, contrasted the vital progressive atmosphere of the coming democracy which he was certain was aborning on the banks of the Volga, with the dying democracy of the capitalist West. And in The American Democracy, there are several side remarks about the superiority of the Soviet Union in developing opportunities for individual self-advancement. This continuing faith in the great potentialities for a new democratic superior civilization existing within Stalin's monolithically run despotism reappears in parts of the introduction to the second revised edition of Liberty in the Modern State (New York, 1949). See also the particularly beguiling way in which Laski in his columns in the Nation since the war continued to suggest that the Soviet Union is a new kind of democracy whose dictatorship is only temporary. See especially "Getting On With Russia", The Nation, vol. 166, January 10, 1948, pp. 34-37. All of this, in turn, contrasts with the many published statements during the same period of time which show that Laski also believed that the Soviet Union is a ruthless totalitarian dictatorship!

¹⁰Man and the State (New York, 1947), p, 5.

¹¹ Max Lerner, "The Historian, the Novelist and the Faith", The New Republic, December 6, 1948, p. 20.

¹² Thus while gloomily predicting counterrevolution and the demise of parliamentary institutions, Laski could be an active leader in Great Britain and in the United States in seeking the adjustment of conflict through the traditional liberal methods. Thus, too, while acting as an apologist for Russian communism, he could expose the communist conspiratorial tactics within the British democracy. See The Secret Battalion (London, 1946). While making references to the new civilization and "democracy" in the Soviet Union, he could also indicate that he was under no illusions about the Soviet dictatorship. See Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, chap. ii. (The curious and dangerous contradictions in his dichotomy are strikingly indicated in this book. The early vigorous language, describing the totalitarian state, is contradicted in the later pages.) See, too, the second revised edition of Liberty in the Modern State, pp. 25-31. In many ways Laski's criticisms of capitalism, of the institutions of democracy, of the British Labor party, and so on, were constructive, and there is no intention of this writer to minimize them. Laski's appreciation of the appeals and the accomplishments of Stalinism are also suggestive. The point is that, at bottom, his overriding Marxist perspective made for a series of incompatible views being put forward concerning ideas and institutions about which the liberal democrat cannot equivocate.

¹³Democracy in Crisis, especially pp. 85 et seq.; also The State in Theory and Practice, chap. ii, passim.

¹⁴ Laski thus aided those defenders of an outmoded economic liberalism who themselves consistently, if falsely, attack socialism as incompatible with the political doctrine of liberalism, and consistently, if falsely, identify capitalism with liberalism and democracy.

¹⁵ See "Plan or Perish", the Nation, vol. 161, December 15, 1945, pp. 650 et seq. Once again the opponent of liberal collectivism could look to Laski as a source for the conservative argument that liberalism and socialism are incompatible!

¹⁶ In Trade Unions in the New Society the continuing call to American workers to beware the employer's state is repeated. The litany of government aid to employers before 1930 is recited once more. The gains of the last decade under government are admitted, but the permanence of the gains is questioned. Once, again, Laski gives us his underlying assumption that the state in a democracy having a capitalist economy is the instrument of the ruling (capitalist) class. In denying this assumption one, of course, does not have to deny the degree of truth in Laski's or anyone's observations that the employers will attempt to influence the government and the public to limit or subtract from the workers' gains. If by a successful appeal to public opinion the conservatives gain control of the government, they will have their day. Laski's assumptions, however, again despite his qualifications, do not account for the fact that in the American "employer's state" the labor movement has made gains in strength and in numbers that refute the Laskian Marxist thesis. The "employer's state" has been successfully contended for and won by forces which have drastically limited the former position of the capitalist. This exemplifies the essential postulate of the liberal position—that social conflicts can be successfully adjusted and readjusted by peaceful means. Trade Unions in the New Society also reveals that continuing dichotomy in Laski's thought. Having made it appear that the government of the United States is really the ally of business, Laski then appeals to the workers to organize a labor party to take over the government in typical parliamentary fashion! In view of his other writings, however, one might well suspect that, were a strong American labor party a major contender for the government, Laski would be arguing that in view of "owning class" reaction it might be necessary for the workers' party to suspend constitutional processes.

¹⁷ See for example certain sections of the introduction to the second revised edition of Liberty in the Modern State. The assertions that the Bolshevik dictatorship would produce a democratic way of life, and that despite its temporary harshness it is the protagonist of a new and better civilization, continued in Laski's columns in The Nation in the post-war years in the same vein as had characterized Laski on this subject ever since the early thirties. The supplementary support given to this view of the new kind of democracy developing in Russia which appears throughout The American Democracy has already been noted in this paper. In chapter xi of The American Democracy the impact of Big Business upon the United States Department of State and the hostile attitude of both toward the Russian "socialist experiment" are underscored. The point of the chapter assuredly is that the attempt by Big Business to dominate the domestic United States and the world is the greatest source of a World War III. The repeated points that state sovereignty of capitalist countries is used to protect a set of productive relations which is approved by the dominant economic class and that this is the fundamental cause for war continue on into the post-war period, See "The Crisis in Our Civilization", Foreign Affairs, vol. 26, October 1947, pp. 36-51. In contrast, those who compare Russian post-war action to Nazi actions of the thirties, and say we cannot afford appeasement but must "fight it out", were declared by Laski to be "enemies of the human race". See "Getting On With Russia", The Nation, vol. 166, January 10, 1948, p. 37.

¹⁸Reflections on Government (London and New York, 1942), pp. 179 et seq. Laski is cited as an example of a Marxist-democrat who advances the cause of class war and revolution under the claim of being a democrat.

¹⁹ It may be noted, however, that unlike consistently liberal socialists Laski, before and after the war, was permitted to visit the U.S.S.R. and to make speeches. Evidently Laski was a particular kind of critic which the totalitarian state could tolerate for reasons best known to the Politburo.

²⁰ The increasing menace of fascism throughout the world during the thirties and the suggestiveness of Marxist philosophy at the time are deserving of special mention. Laski was an early outspoken critic of fascism during those days when to many the political choice appeared to be either an extreme Right or an extreme Left. In addition Laski's Marxism was an additional attraction among liberal intellectuals looking for some explanation of the economic and political crises of the decade after 1929.

²¹ On this see Laski's Communism written in 1927 before he became a Marxist.

²² An important consequence of this shift was the expulsion of Earl Browder, who stood for the tactic of continuing coöperation, from the American Communist party. American willingness for continued coöperation as indicated in the Yalta and Teheran treaties, and in the action of Army field commanders in permitting Russian troops to have the honor of liberating Berlin and Prague, was forgotten. A new "two camp" theory of a world divided between Russian socialist nations and American imperialist dominated nations was fashioned in terms of the "historical situation" of Bolshevik Marxism and Soviet strategy. In making this major shift the Soviet Union, some observers argue, was only taking measures to protect itself against the inevitable aggression of capitalist United States. It is, however, just this characteristic of communism, namely, of assumption of conflict and no real lasting basis for adjustment of differences, which distinguishes it from liberalism. Most certainly liberal democratic nations can err and be unfaithful to their liberal heritage. But the force of that liberal basis is a part of the Western World. It is lacking in the Communist camp where the assumption of conflict as a means of settlement is basic. This same assumption of conflict is found in Laski's thought. Despite the evidence, violence and conflict are predicted, and the onus for the violence placed upon the opposition; for the "other side", according to dialectical reasoning, is responsible for the conflict which emerges.