The Evolution of Laski’s Political Thought

Abstract

To grasp the force of Laski’s critique of modern capitalist democracy and the sovereign state, the continuities and discontinuities in his ideas must be traced since his emergence during the First World War as a prominent pluralist thinker. More specifically, one needs to examine the gradual transformation of his early pluralist thought into the democratic socialist and Marxist ideological positions he adopted. By thus understanding the evolutionary nature of his intellectual development, a clearer picture can be drawn of his distinctive combination during the 1930s and 1940s of broadly Marxist ideas with the continuing commitment to democracy. As this chapter seeks to illustrate, although he continued to advocate the parliamentary road to socialism he became concerned that, however entrenched a socialist party might become in government, the state would resist fundamental change. The crucial gamble would thus be to take power, introduce radical change, and thus put the onus onto the state and its vested interests to concede or react. Success at this domestic level in Britain would lay the foundations for an attempt to persuade other states to cooperate in what would eventually become a post-sovereign global order.