American
Politics and Marxist Intellectualism
 In Harold Laski and American Liberalism UH Hilo Professor Emeritus Gary
Dean Best traces the trajectory of Laski’s American career
and accounts for its ultimate failure. For nearly three decades, the English
political scientist Harold Laski was the gray eminence of American liberalism
and its most influential Marxist public intellectual. As a fervent proponent
of the New Deal in the 1930s, much of Laski’s success stemmed from the
fact that he offered answers when so many Americans had only questions. By the
postwar years, however, his reputation was in decline and his influence left
the Democratic Party vulnerable in the1948 elections.
American politics and society were central to Laski’s intellectual enterprise.
As Best shows, probably no one residing in America has published as many words
critical of the United States as did this Englishman. Virtually no aspect of
American life went unscathed, and yet at the root of every attack was American
capitalism, the businessman, those with property, who, in Laski’s view
were the source of all the perversion of American life.
The 1930s was a period of ferment among America’s intellectuals. By the
1940s it was only Laski who was bewildered—at the failure of his diagnoses
and the rejection of his prescriptions even by those who had been captivated
by him in the previous decade. By the time he died, in 1950, his earlier pronouncements
seemed wide of the mark, and the increased stridency and shrillness produced
by his disappointment had begun to bore even many who had been devoted to him
in earlier years.
As this volume shows, the real tragedy for Laski was that he allowed his intellect
to be captured and held captive by the Marxian dialectic, denying himself the
use of his own reason despite that dialectic’s repeated failures. Harold
Laski and American Liberalism will be of interest to intellectual historians,
political scientists, and American studies specialists.
Harold Laski and American Liberalism is available from the Transaction
Publishers website.
—Text excertped from the Transaction Publishers
webiste
UH
In Print
UH faculty and staff who had articles or other works published.
• Hilo Associate Professor Thom
Curtis authored “Fatal Aviation Incidents in Rural Communities:
Response
Preparation Strategies” in Traumatology.
• Manoa Associate Professors Michelle
A. Mazur and Amy
S. Ebesu Hubbard published “Is There Something I Should
Know?: Topic Avoidant Responses in Parent-Adolescent Communication” in Communication
Reports.
• Manoa Associate Professor Denise
Antolini published “Marine Reserves in Hawai‘i: A
New Call
for Community Stewardship” in Natural Resources and Environment.
E-mail news about UH faculty and staff who have appeared In Print to newsatuh@hawaii.edu.
|
