Harold Laski

From Includipedia, the inclusionist encyclopedia

Harold Joseph Laski (Manchester, June 30, 1893 – March 24, 1950 in London) was an English political theorist, economist, author, and lecturer, and served as the 1945-1946 chairman of the Labour Party.

After attending Manchester Grammar School and New College, Oxford, Laski became (1922-1936) a member of the executive committee of the socialist Fabian Society, and in 1936 he joined the Executive Committee of the Labour Party. Cowling describes him as a "prolific publicist and journalist."

In 1926 he was appointed professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics. One of his more famous books is Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (which was dedicated to Edward R. Murrow). He was active on the American university lecture circuit. His 19 year friendship with Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, begun when he was 23 and Holmes was 75, is reflected in two volumes of correspondence, published in 1953.

He had a massive impact on the politics and the formation of India, having taught a generation of future Indian leaders at the LSE. It is almost entirely due to him that the LSE has a semi-mythological status in India. He was steady in his unremitting advocacy of the independence of India. He was a revered figure to Indian students at the LSE. One Indian Prime Minister said 'there is a vacant chair at every cabinet meeting in India reserved for the ghost of Professor Harold Laski'.^[1]

His elder brother was Neville Laski.

The staunchly anti-Socialist writer Ayn Rand is said to have based on Laski the character Ellsworth Toohey, the main villain of her book "The Fountainhead": a sort of compliment, since Rand's Toohey, while depicted as soulless and malevolent, is also shown as extremely competent, capable and hard-working, though despising singular greatness and the will of man.