Harold Joseph Laski

The pluralist position of Professor Laski of the London School of Economics and Political Science is found in his various writings. He has waged a multi-sided attack on the concept of sovereignty of the State. However, he is also the one who subsequently reconsidered his position on the State and has shown a shift from a liberal pluralist position to a democratic socialist position, in between sympathizing and embracing the Guild socialist and Fabian socialist expectations. He, in one of his writings (Foundations of Sovereignty), conceded that ‘legally no one can deny that there exists in every state some organ whose authority is unlimited.’⁶² We would survey and analyse his pluralist position within a liberal pluralist framework as an outright critic of the concept of sovereignty and unlimited power of the State. In the end, Laski argued from a positive liberal position accepting the role of the State as a regulator.

Laski’s pluralist views are spread across many of his writings. Prominent amongst them are: The Problem of Sovereignty (1917), Authority in the Modern State (1919),⁶³ Foundations of Sovereignty and Other Essays (1921), The State in the New Social Order (1922), The Grammar of Politics (1925), Liberty in the Modern State (1930), An Introduction to Politics (1931), The State in Theory and Practice (1935). As we have hinted above, Laski visited many political streams ranging from liberal pluralism to guild socialism to Fabian socialism to positive liberalism and also to class approach to society and state. As it would not be within our scope to cover all his ideas, we will restrict as far as possible, to survey his approach that relates to political pluralist ground.

Within this limit, we may organize Laski’s views in the following categories: (i) Criticism of monist/Austin’s theory of sovereignty, (ii) Concept of pluralist authority and rejection of absolute sovereignty, (iii) State and government—sovereignty of fallible men? (iv) The place of the State in the great society: State and other associations, (v) Internationalism and the state.