Word: laski
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...Harold? Who was the man, who at the moment when British socialism had scarcely begun its momentous job, broadcast views so sure to disturb moderate Britons? To some, slim, aloof Professor Laski is just an "inoffensive scholar" (19 books and innumerable articles). To some, he is socialism's No. 1 intellectual soapboxer. To others, in his own words, he is a combination Guy Fawkes and Trotsky, a "reincarnation of Palmer, the Poisoner...
Officially, Laski is chairman of the Labor Party's National Executive Committee (a rotating position). He has been close to Prime Minister "Clem" Attlee (whom Laski considers too conservative), has prestige with Labor's rank & file (who are proud of their "posh" professor), has even greater influence on Britain's leftist intellectuals. But many Labor Party members dislike Laski for his "intellectual snobbishness," his impatience with trade-union "bread & butter questions" of today, his preoccupation with the Marxist power problems of tomorrow...
What the Sirens Sang. Harold Joseph Laski was born (1893) in drab, industrial Manchester, but not to drabness: he was the son of a well-to-do Jewish merchant. As a youth, he was enchanted by those sirens of British socialism, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, who were warbling their Fabian lays over the bleaching bones of Karl Marx. At Oxford, Laski joined the Fabian Society, campaigned for woman suffrage, was a brilliant student in his spare time. When World War I came, Laski disapproved, but tried to enlist. He was turned down because of a weak heart. He went...
...Harvard, into Yale. So young Laski went on to Harvard, where he was liked no better. When the brash Briton spoke up for the cops in Boston's 1920 police strike, the Harvard Lampoon devoted an entire issue to an exposé of "this propagandist in our midst." The flaming red cover showed Laski as a socialist saint (see cut). A cartoon showed the socialist Day of Judgment with Professor Laski surrounded by human freaks, casting better-dressed citizens (Harvard men, no doubt) into outer darkness...
...Later Laski lectured to overflow classes at Yale. He became a full professor of political science at the London School of Economics, where he stayed for 25 years without getting into major trouble (except in 1934, when he lectured in Moscow and pictured a hypothetical British Labor victory, followed by a financial crisis, a Conservative reaction, suspension of the "Constitution," and chaos culminating in the "hope of revolution...