Word: laski
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
British Laborite Harold J. Laski is a sometime professor of economics at London's School of Economics, sometime lecturer at Harvard, sometime White House guest of Franklin D. Roosevelt, great & good friend of many a New Deal bigwig, including Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. Samuel Grafton writes I'd Rather Be Right, a New Dealing column in the New York Post. Both their books are important because they talk out loud in public about hopes that most New Dealers prefer to talk about only among New Dealers. Both are, whether the authors know it or not, handbooks...
...minds of Authors Grafton and Laski, World War II is 1) a symptom that capitalist democracy can no longer solve its own economic and social problems; 2) a heaven-sent chance to ram through, under the guise of wartime necessity, radical social changes that citizens would never stand for in peacetime. Laski calls his program "revolution by consent." He proposes that the owners of property consent to what they cannot prevent...
Patiently, Laski explains why. Capitalist democracy is "at best a fragile thing," a delicate compromise between privilege and the masses. But "a democracy that is to wage totalitarian war must end economic and social privilege as the price of victory." With a serene twinkle Professor Laski views the dilemma of the middle classes. On one hand, the fascists threaten them; on the other, so do the masses. Says...
Jubilated Liberal Pundit Harold J. Laski: "The three pivotal economic positions in the Ministry are held by Labor [War Cabinet's Greenwood, Supply's Morrison and Labor's Bevin]. Behind their occupants is the solid support of the trade unions. These are gains of an immense kind. They mean that Labor dominates the economic organization for the conduct...
There is no need to praise the intelligence of Mr. Laski's thought nor the excellence of his expression, for knowledge of both is already common property, particularly at Harvard. What should not pass without comment is the single unifying element which comes to the surface in all eight chapters of this book; the author's indomitable optimism. How long it will now remain with him is another question; but the fact that he has it at all is noteworthy. If the world which must be rebuilt after this war is over can number Mr. Laski among its architects, then...