Jointly Edited and Translated by Rafael Khachaturian and Igor Shoikhedbrod.
Introductory Editorial Note[1]
A headline in the June 3, 1934 issue of Pravda (no. 151, p. 6) reads: “The Famous English Scholar Prof. H. Laski Came to Moscow.” A short paragraph follows: “The well-known English public figure and academic professor of political-economic sciences at the London University, Harold Laski, arrived in Moscow on June 2 [1934]. Professor Laski was met at the railway station by Comrade Pashukanis, Director of the Institute of Soviet Construction and Law of the Communist Academy, together with representatives from the VOKS [Vsesoiuznoe Obshchestvo Kul´turnoi Sviazi s Zagranitsei/The All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries]. Harold Laski became acquainted with Soviet construction and the national economy. The English scholar will deliver a series of lectures in Moscow on ‘The Crisis of Democracy in the West’ (TASS) [Telegrafnoye Agentstvo Sovetskogo Soyuza/Telegraphic Agency of the Soviet Union].”
During his visit, Laski gave three lectures at the Institute of Soviet Law, based on his 1933 book Democracy in Crisis, with Pashukanis and Boris Rubenstein serving as respondents. The lectures were said to have been regularly interrupted (or allegedly subjected to a five-hour critique) by members of the Communist Academy hostile to Laski’s criticism of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and his “spirited defense” of the Labour Party and of parliamentary government. The Daily Worker reported that, during his first lecture, Laski had stated ‘all my life socialism has been a dream to me. Here in Soviet Russia it has become a reality. For twenty years I have been a teacher, but I have come here not to teach but, as the devout Moslem goes to Mecca, to learn.’ To this, a Russian critic (perhaps Pashukanis?) was said to have responded: ‘But, Laski, good Moslems go to Mecca not to learn, but to repent.’ (See Isaac Kramnick and Barry Sheerman, Harold Laski: A Life on the Left, 1993, p. 326-328, 385).
Laski’s visit to Moscow was controversial in the United Kingdom. On July 6, 1934, the Daily Telegraph ran a story under the headline “Professor Laski’s Pestilent Talk of Class War.” Five days later, it became the subject of discussion in the British Parliament, eventually becoming a public scandal. A November 9, 1934 lecture by Laski given to the Society for Promoting Cultural Relations with Russia, based on the experience of his visit, was subsequently published as a pamphlet, Law and Justice in Soviet Russia (1935). In that text, Laski distinguished Pashukanis’ work as being of “high quality,” yet expressed reservation about the general tendency toward the “mechanical conformity to Communist formulae” present in Soviet legal scholarship.
Pashukanis had previously made a passing and dismissive reference to Laski’s An Introduction to Politics (1931) in the opening pages of his address, “Problems of State and Law in Light of the Decisions of the XVII Party Conference,” later published in Sovetskoye Gosudarstvo [Soviet State], No. 4, 1932 (see especially pp. 6-7). However, it is this early piece, “The Bourgeois State and the Problem of Sovereignty,” published nearly a decade before their in-person encounter, that offers Pashukanis’ most sustained engagement with Laski’s work.
***
The research of the young English political scientist Harold Laski, dedicated to the problem of sovereignty, warrants attention as an attempt to provide a critique of the traditional theory of the state, based upon the political experience of recent decades.[2] Its author is convinced that the task of the science of the state in the present is primarily of a critical nature. “We stand on the threshold,” he declares, “of one of those critical periods in the history of mankind when the most fundamental notions present themselves for analysis.”[3] Elsewhere, Laski establishes the character of the present crisis somewhat more concretely: “In our own time it is in general felt that the result of the democratic process is unsatisfactory;”[4] and, further along, “it is, of course, undeniable that there has been a decline in the parliamentary life of democracies in the last quarter of a century.”[5] Speaking specifically about England, Laski sums up the era of “social” liberalism, which opened with “great promise” in 1906, and concluded, along with the world war, in general “moral and economic dissatisfactions.”[6]
Laski finds that same spirit of dissatisfaction and disappointment with political democracy in both France and the United States. “No single legislative assembly in the world had stood the test of the nineteenth century well enough to make men hopeful. Everywhere the tendency has been more and more towards the development of an invisible bureaucracy, until the state itself had seemed, in the last analysis, no more than what the French call a syndicat des fonctionaires [union of civil/public servants].”[7]
The author does not conceal from himself the causes of this crisis. Political democracy is no more and no less than a fiction so long as power inseparably belongs to capital. “We were simply forced to the realisation,” he writes, “that majority-rule could not be the last word on our problems. So long as political power was divorced from economic power the jury of the nation was in reality packed.”[8] The author repeatedly returns to this basic contradiction between formal democracy and the omnipotence of capital, which he somewhat inaccurately defines as “political power divorced from economic power.”
Thus, when speaking of the United States, he claims that there, political democracy collides with the mightiest economic autocracy that the world has ever seen.[9] The author is forced to draw the conclusion that the political order called democracy is in need of serious changes: “no political democracy can be real,” he states, “that is not as well the reflection of an economic democracy.”[10] We will return to what Laski understands as the regime of “economic democracy” further below; here let us just note that his sympathies are not for “simple formulae of a rigid collectivism,” which demands the “transfer [of] all industrial activities to government.”[11] Here, as in many other matters, he prefers to stop halfway.
Laski is no less clearly aware of the social class that plays the most active role in the crisis experienced by bourgeois democracy. Listing the political difficulties that the British government has had to confront in recent decades–the Irish question, the women’s question, the question of the second chamber, etc.–the author concludes:
“Behind all and beyond all, there loomed the gigantic problem of a labouring class growing ever more self-conscious and ever more determined to control its own destinies. It repudiated the solution of social welfare implied in such a measure as the Insurance Acts. Its strikes revealed a more fierce hostility to the forces of capital than had been manifest since the early years of the Holy Alliance. In the famous Dublin Transport Workers’ strike it showed a solidarity unique in labour history…It was demanding a complete revision of the distribution of wealth…It rejected state-arbitration of its difficulties with capital. It looked with grave suspicion on the use of the army in the maintenance of social order.”[12]
This tirade is noteworthy, among other things, in that it includes an assessment of the contemporary English labor movement from the point of view of someone inclined toward moderation and philistinism. Of course, even here it was hardly without exaggeration; but it is still quite indicative that, over the course of the nineteenth century–that is, even during the Chartist era–our author did not find a more hostile time toward capital among the disposition of the English working masses.
The labor movement not only shakes the foundations of capitalist society and the capitalist state; it forces us to reexamine their corresponding theories. The class struggle of the proletariat is the real fact that rips off from the modern state the deceitful mask of all kinds of theories of the “common good,” “national sovereignty,” and so forth, and reveals its essence as the organized rule [gospodstvo] of one class over another. Laski is forced to admit that if “it is more than three centuries since Harrington enunciated the law that power goes with the ownership of land; and if we extend that concept, in the light of the Industrial Revolution, to capital in its broadest sense.”[13] According to Laski, “it is now a commonplace that political power is the handmaid of economic power;”[14] although, he admits, this truth “tends to be obscured by the mechanisms of the democratic powers.”[15] In this way, on the one hand, Laski attempts to proceed from a conception of the state as an institution pursuing the goal of the common good,[16] while on the other, he admits that “the realisation of its purpose is so inadequate as to render at best dubious the value of such hypotheses.”[17] It turns out that “the state, as we have seen, is in reality the reflexion of what a dominant group or class in a community believes to be political good.”[18] But insofar as “political good is today for the most part defined in economic terms,” the state “mirrors within itself the economic structure of society.”[19] Laski adds, almost in a Marxist vein, “it is relatively unimportant in what fashion we organise the institutions of the state. Practically they will reflect the prevailing economic system; practically also, they will protect it. The opinion of the state, at least in its legislative expressions, will largely reproduce the opinion of those who hold the keys of economic power.”[20] At the same time, Laski explains that bourgeois politicians may not think entirely about their personal benefits when defending capitalists’ class interests; thus for example, John Bright, in opposing the Factory Acts, by no means had the interests of his pocket in mind. But this is not the point of the matter, for as Laski notes, “it was natural even for a humane factory-owner to believe that good conduct consists in maintaining the prosperity of the manufacturing classes.”[21]
Thus, it is not surprising that the working class refuses to accept the unquestionable authority of the modern democratic state, which is the state of capital, for as Laski teaches us, “the only thing of which it can in this context be certain is that the power of the state will be predominantly exerted against its [the working class’ – E.P] interest.”[22] Yet Laski does not draw from this the conclusion that the working class must seize state power and use it for its class interests. However, this is understandable, for if our professor had concluded this, it is doubtful that his book would have been published by Oxford University. On the contrary, Laski is certain of the “fundamental truth” that “the simple weapons of politics are alone powerless to effect any basic redistribution of economic strength.”[23] Thus, he prefers to toy around with syndicalism and preaches the “division of industrial power from economic control,” suggesting that it “removes the main lever by which the worker is prevented from the attainment of self-expression.”[24]
Here we arrive at one of the most interesting questions: how Laski envisions the social order that must replace capitalism. Laski has no doubt that the present order of things is not eternal: “capitalism on the one hand and the present form of parliamentary government on the other are nothing so much as historic categories which disappear when they have served their purposes.”[25] Laski is just as convinced that “between the interest of capital and that of labour it is difficult to see any permanent basis of reconciliation.” “When the utmost that capitalism can concede is measured, it still falls short of what labour demands,” explains our professor. According to Laski, in the end workers attain control over production through their trade-unions, or “democratic self-government in industry.” They strive for trade unions to become “the single cell from which an entirely new industrial order is to be evolved.”[26] Laski is convinced that, sooner or later, the working class will win this control, and having won it, will not let it out of its hands. How capital will relinquish its privileges without a struggle, a revolution, and the seizure of the state by the working class–all this Laski keeps secret. However, it must be noted that neither does Laski, in accordance with his general conception, attach importance to a peaceful transfer of state power to the working class through the winning of a majority. In his view, the minority can attain its goals just as easily, so long as it is well organized and constitutes in itself an economically important part of society: “a state,” he exclaims, “that can not secure such rights as are deemed needful by a minority as important, for example, as organised labour, will sooner or later suffer a change in form and substance.”[27]
As we see, Laski accepts the syndicalist theory of “direct action” and their doctrine concerning the role of the “active minority.” Yet again this shows us that the ostensibly revolutionary principles of syndicalism can be superbly used by bourgeois professors to tear an organized part of the working class away from the rest of the masses, to cultivate in it the psychology of the privileged minority, and to lead it further away from the path of an actual direct–that is, political–attack on capitalism. By industrial democracy, Laski understands a system in which the procedures for the hiring and firing of workers, wages, the duration of the working day, the internal affairs of enterprises, etc. are determined by the organized workers themselves. Laski does not explain to us how such an organization of industry can be realized without a decisive encroachment upon the right of capitalist property, and by what means the modern state, being a capitalist state, allows for this. Instead, completely unexpectedly, he discovers a new–now absolutely non-class–function of the state; namely, that of the representative of consumer interests. It turns out that the state “is not interested in the processes of production as such; it concerns itself in securing due provision from industry for the needs of society. It deals with men in the capacity that is common to all. It regards them as the users of certain goods.”[28]
From this, Laski draws the conclusion that if the interests of labor and capital are directly opposed and thus irreconcilable, then it is always quite possible to reach some kind of agreement between labor and the state as the organization of consumers. Laski explains this roughly in the following way. In the event of a strike on some railroad line, the corresponding trade union makes its goal some “redistribution of economic power.” The railroad company resists this. Laski considers this redistribution of economic power on its own a matter of indifference to the state. The state is only interested in resuming the rail service. Therefore, Laski concludes, it is possible “that some adjustment will be slowly made between the groups which represent the interests of producers and the state, in all its constituent local parts, as representing the consumer.”[29] Laski paints the following picture: “However the productive process is in the future arranged within itself provision must be made for some central authority not less representative of production as a whole than the state would represent consumption. Therein are postulated two bodies similar in character to a national legislature.”[30] Laski proposes that laws concerning production would be issued by the supreme legislature of the producers, while the organizations of consumers would be in charge of the problems of supply. General issues would have to be resolved jointly. The organization of producers is naturally broken up by industries: mining, the textile industry, transport. The organization of consumers is divided by territorial sub-units: municipalities, counties, regions. Agreements between the producers and consumers would take the form of various collective contracts. Special tribunals would adjudicate controversies that arise. Laski is satisfied to side with Duguit, who, as it is known, found that “jurisprudence will occupy an important place in the federalist society towards which we are moving.”[31]
There is hardly a point to substantially critiquing the venerable professor’s quite preposterous utopia. Take even just the counterposing of “producers” and “consumers” as two independent collectivities! It is as though every worker is not at the same time a producer and consumer. It is enough to just note that Laski has not shown much originality in his presentation of the future society. We find here a colorful combination of all the elements of petty bourgeois pseudo-socialism, the spiritual father of which we can consider Proudhon. As for the notion of combining the class representation of workers with a national representation, it looks far too much like the proposal advanced in their time by the German independents [the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) – Ed.]: to incorporate the soviets into one system with the constituent assembly.
Two conclusions follow from what has been said. First, that the crusade against the state announced by the syndicalists ceases to inspire fear in those more far-sighted bourgeois politicians who do not think of suppressing the labor movement by force, but try to redirect it onto the path least dangerous to capitalism. Laski’s sympathies to French syndicalism are very, very typical. Second, that the smarter bourgeois politicians, in leaving it to the heroes of the Second International to sing the sacred principles of pure democracy, know very well themselves how much this form of the rule of capital has been exposed, how much its prestige has fallen and continues to fall in the eyes of the masses, and how necessary are new and subtle means of keeping these masses in submission. Notions of the “will of the majority,” the “will of the nation,” and so forth, cease to have their hypnotic effect. It requires searching for those intermediary forms that would appear to recognize the class interests of the proletariat, while in fact subjecting them to “national”–that is, bourgeois–interests. It seems that Laski has taken upon himself the task of that search.
***
Such are the recipes offered by Laski for resolving the social question. Let us now turn to the theoretical conclusions concerning the nature of state sovereignty which he draws on the basis of recent decades.
From the outside, these conclusions appear quite daring for a bourgeois political scientist. Laski proposes to simply do away with the very concept of sovereignty as antiquated and practically useless. His criticism follows the pragmatic method of William James and reasons roughly in the following way: there was a time when the idea of the absolute authority and sovereignty of the power of the state was beneficial for social development; that was also the time when the idea had theoretical value. But that time had passed, as had the “divine right of kings.”[32] The sovereignty of the state is an instrument, which at a particular time served a particular purpose, a “sword forged in one of the mightiest of political conflicts. It has been a victorious sword but it must be replaced by newer weapons.”[33]
In Laski’s view, there is no sense in insisting that the state “can theoretically secure obedience to all its acts, because we know that practically to be absurd.”[34] It exists at the same time with and alongside other organizations, which also issue commands and even, by various means, obtain obedience. From the point of view of legal theory, the power realized by the state carries some particular trait, which in principle distinguishes it from the power of, say, a church organization or a trade union. But practically, in both cases, the point is that some people issue orders while others obey them. The practical significance lies in the difference between those orders that are more successful and those that are less successful in achieving this goal. But this difference does not in itself mean anything in principle. Laski comes to the conclusion that “on this view, when Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, when a Church issues a new doctrinal order, when a trade union proclaims a strike, all are exercising a power that differs only in degree, not in kind, from that of the State.”[35]
We can easily imagine a situation where the demands of some organization existing within the state diverge from what the state demands from those same members as its subjects. In such cases the doctrine postulates the absolute superiority of the commands of state power. But Laski is not satisfied with this postulate. For him, the matter is to be resolved in practice, and in practice the state often finds itself powerless and must make concessions.[36]
“The history of societies,” Laski claims, “fatally contradicts the view that in a crisis only the State will have the power of compulsion.”[37] For example, in the case of a conflict between the state and a professional organization, the worker “might even urge that the new equilibrium at which he is aiming is worth more to the community than the fulfilment of what the state at present regards as its duties”[38]
Naturally, it was not very difficult for Laski to bring up a whole series of examples, when the sovereign power of the state, so to speak, falls short in its ability to guarantee obedience to itself. During the war, coal miners went on strike in Wales despite the prohibition under the Munitions’ Act. Despite its theoretical sovereignty, the government of Great Britain could not prevent the South African Parliament from prohibiting the immigration of Indians into Transvaal; just as it could not at another time compel the obedience of the suffragists who were systematically violating state laws. Before the war, the Unionists in Ulster rebelled against the Home Rule Bill; and most interestingly, the famous jurist Dicey, the theorist of the sovereign power of “king in parliament,” joined the Ulsters in their protest, and, consequently, expressed a readiness to resist that authority which, according to his very teaching, is supreme and absolute. “He would surely not resist unless he had some hope of success,” adds Laski, not without acrimony.[39]
Such is Laski’s realistic and practical approach to the problem of sovereignty. The sovereignty of the state is an illusion beyond its realization in practice; in every given moment it exists and does not exist; it belongs to the realm of the possible, but not of the absolutely certain. The state does not possess some special unlimited force, distinguishing it from some other organization. “The sovereignty of the State does not in reality differ from the power exercised by a Church or a trade union…The force of a command from the State is not bound to triumph, and no theory is of value which would make it so.”[40]
The limit of the state’s might is determined by the possibility of resistance on the part of individuals and organizations. In the final instance, the “reserve power of revolution” against the state always remains.[41] Laski does not merely assert this “pluralism” of social life, which breaks up the monistic constructs of the theorists of state sovereignty–he is also persuaded of its positive value. He welcomes the struggle of forces within and against the state as the only guarantee of progress and freedom. “Sometimes wills, whether individual or corporate, conflict, and only submission or trial of strength can decide which is superior.”[42] “The price of liberty is exactly divergence of opinion on fundamental questions.”[43]
Laski goes so far in his “free thinking” as to be ready to accept even the right to strike by state employees (he dedicates a separate chapter to the history of this issue in France.) His reasoning is quite simple: if there was an end to those abuses against which the civil servants’ unions fight–unequal pay, protectionism, arbitrariness, persecution for political views–then there would be no need for strikes. On the other hand, if these reasons were to remain, then strikes will happen regardless of whether they are prohibited. “The history of the last few years has notably demonstrated the powerlessness of statute in the face of great popular movements.”[44]
Dwelling upon the persecution of teachers for propagandizing pacifist ideas in France, Laski wonders why the spreading of pacifist ideas by some teachers is considered less permissible, than Beaconsfield’s [Benjamin Disraeli’s – Ed.] epigrams directed against Darwin. It is a pity that Laski does not share his view on the question of whether state employees have the right to propagandize communist ideas. It would have been quite interesting to know whether he would liken this activity to composing anti-Darwin epigrams–or whether he would react to it more severely.
In general it must be noted that although Laski’s books appeared in 1917 and 1919, and although they mention Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, there is nothing to be found here concerning the communist movement, the October revolution, or the soviets. Perhaps this is explained by our professor not having enough materials on these questions, although the preface to the second book is dated to April 1919–that is, written already after the October Revolution. Or perhaps, and this is far more likely, the ignoring of such phenomena as Bolshevism, the October Revolution, and the communist movement stems from the general political conception held by our author. It’s not for nothing that Laski, in all the wealth of his references, does not point to a single Marxist work in his books. The very name of Marx he only mentions once, and that in connection with the categorical claim that “Proudhon has displaced Marx as the guiding genius of French labour.”[45]
At the same time, one cannot say that Laski was wholly stingy with references and disinterested in the history of political thought. On the contrary, the substantive part of his book is made up of historico-critical studies dedicated to various political theories and schools, beginning with the theorists of the restoration (De Maistre, Bonald) and ending with the reactionaries of the Third Republic (Bourget, Bruntiere). But Marx and revolutionary Marxism, apparently, are not deserving of the venerable professor’s attention. This circumstance forces one to reevaluate Laski’s extraordinary freethinking, as shown by his attitude to the sanctity of state sovereignty. Indeed, if one is to ignore the more consequential theory of proletarian class struggle and bypass the more revolutionary manifestations of this struggle, as Laski does, then one can wholly hand over the bourgeois state to all of its enemies with complete peace of mind–for the simple reason that these “enemies” do not actually stand for anything frightening. If this is taken into account, then the quite daring and almost revolutionary conclusions of the professor from London turn out to be so only on the face of them, while his fight against the sovereignty of the state–that which the Germans call Scheingefecht–is a struggle to deflect attention. The abundance of facts which he brings in to show the alleged powerlessness of the bourgeois state only prove that nothing can seriously threaten this state save for the proletarian communist revolution. Thus, for example, Laski understands perfectly that the factual might of the modern state makes the claims of its erstwhile serious rivals such as the church illusory. Nevertheless, for his evidence of the weakness of the state, he takes facts and historical examples primarily from the conflicts that arose in the nineteenth century on the grounds of the relationship between state and church. His first book is almost entirely dedicated to this topic; here one finds the schism of the Scottish Presbyterians, the English government’s fight against Catholicism, the so-called Oxford Movement in the Church of England, and Bismarck’s Kulturkampf.
Perhaps such an abundance of religious-ecclesiastical problems makes Laski’s book more acceptable for the devout English public, but to a significant extent it also deprives it of much of its general interest. Who truly needs to know, what the honorable Mr. Chalmers declared in 1843 on the subject of the interference of the English government in the affairs of the Scottish church, or what the no-less honorable Tractarians thought, and–most importantly–what these events mean for the contemporary crisis of bourgeois democracy? Delving into the minutest of details of these church-state squabbles, Laski thinks, or wishes for us to think, that he has shown the powerlessness of the state in its encroachments on the “inner life of the church.” In reality he has shown how the factual might of the modern capitalist state has grown without bounds, as compared to that era when secular authority fought with the spiritual, and when, say, the English king could seriously fear that his Catholic subjects would rise up against him.
Today, the state has subordinated its former competitor, the church, and has placed it at its service, no matter which name the latter bears. Laski understands this well. Writing about the dread fueled by Gladstone concerning the anti-state influence of Catholicism in the era of the proclamation of papal infallibility, Laski observes that in 1916, he likely would have been of a different opinion. Indeed, it turns out that one can be an adherent of the dogma of papal infallibility and humbly lay one’s head down on the battlefield for the interests of English capital. Two “higher authorities” and two “duties of obedience” get along with each other superbly. Pluralism turns out to be a completely harmless principle. Laski sympathetically cites Sidney Smith, who had already written in the first half of the nineteenth century: “Suppose these same Catholics are foolish enough to be governed by a set of Chinese moralists in their diet, this would be a third allegiance; and if they were regulated by Brahmins in their dress, this would be a fourth allegiance; and if they received the directions of the Patriarchs of the Greek Church in educating their children, here is another allegiance; and as long as they fought and paid taxes, and kept clear of the Quarter-Sessions and Assizes, what matter how many fanciful supremacies and frivolous allegiances they choose to manufacture or accumulate for themselves?”[46]
Proceeding from the same reasons, Laski calmly allows the duty of obedience even to the socialist international; for he is convinced that the authority of the latter will only turn out to be an additional resource for the internal politics of the countries of the Entente. For this reason he is even ready to shed a tear for the sad fate of the Second International: “The very difficulty which caused the breakdown of the policy of international socialism in 1914 was its failure to give to its recognised representatives in the belligerent countries the authority needed to make the German state halt before its policy of aggression.”[47] Thus, Laski is firmly convinced that the authority of the socialist brahmins of the Second International not only is incapable of harming the politics of the victorious Entente imperialism, but on the contrary, is able to render it a quite useful service.
This clearly tells us that the “destructive” theories of the London professor in practice mask an unshakeable certainty in the stability of the foundation of the modern state system; a certainty that the forces hostile to it will, in time, be tamed, coaxed, and corrupted by compromise; a certainty that a skillful manipulation of public opinion will always provide the necessary results for the bourgeoisie without the need for the “hypnosis of sovereignty.” Thus, for example, Laski repeatedly returns to the idea that the actions of the state are subject to each individual’s conscientious judgment from the point of view of “morality and law.” In all, as befits an English professor, he flavors his realism and pragmatism with a solid dose of virtuous sanctimony at every step. He is outraged that Germans sacrificed their freedom of moral judgment during the war by firmly standing on the side of their government and approving of it even in such instances as the violation of Belgian neutrality and the sinking of the Lusitania. (Of course, Laski prefers to forget that the saying “my country, right or wrong” was invented in England.) But the meaning of this indignation becomes clear when Laski, referring once again to the last war, argues that the “mechanical obstinacy” with which the soldiers of “autocratic” Germany fought, could not compare with the “intensity of a conviction derived from the process of free thought” that distinguished the soldiers of democratic England.[48] The freedom of moral judgment turns out not only to be a harmless thing, but even beneficial for that state which cloaks adequately enough the imperialistic aims of its politics with “lofty principles of morality and law.” Why be cynical and openly proclaim Machiavellian principles, risking only to fan the flames of resistance, when the same goals could be reached while also proving one’s “moral superiority” over the opponent. For this reason, one must suppose that Laski’s works, in which he strives to deal a final and deathly blow to Machiavellism, will find a very sympathetic attitude among all admirers of the Treaty of Versailles. In general, Laski can be recognized, in many respects, as one of the prophets of the newest (after Versailles) “democratic pacifism,” which now stands under the herald of the “plan of the experts.”
Laski’s congeniality toward precisely this historical period comes through even in how he situates individual countries within the general picture. As is to be expected, his first place is taken by the three champions of civilization and freedom: England, France, and the United States. Our author dedicates his exceptional attention to these states; here he traces those processes whose further development must lead to “true freedom.” All other states Laski passes by in complete silence. Neither the Soviet republics (as mentioned above), nor the awakening countries of the East exist for him. In his conception, evidently, the fates of the political progress of all humankind are decided only by contemporary England, France, and the United States; while other states are doomed to that role assigned to them at the post-Versailles conferences–that is, the part of passive spectators or the accused. It goes without saying that Germany figures last for Laski, as a state that has “proclaimed force as the highest law” and has subordinated “the general criteria of morality and law to the principle of state necessity.”[49]
According to Laski, the world war was a deserved punishment for Germany, for that deadly sin whose roots our professor naturally finds already present in Hegelian philosophy. This also gives him the opportunity to glorify the world war as a “fight for freedom,” and in the spirit of a Sunday sermon, recall the “ghostly legions” of contemporaries who fell on the battlefields, and of their bequest to “spread the victory that was won across all spheres of social life.”[50] Most wonderful of all is that this repulsive phrasing is found in the same book where the reader is informed that “the connection of great financial concerns with foreign policy is a problem old enough to have its importance recognised by every fair-minded observer.”[51] In this same connection Laski recalls the Russo-Japanese War, the ventures of Cecil Rhodes, and of how certain German firms made use of the support of their state to receive concessions. But we will not find in Laski fresher historical examples for illuminating the above mentioned “old enough problem.” On the contrary, he completely unexpectedly gives us the revelation that “in the external relationships of the state it is clear that the Machiavellian epoch is drawing to a close. The application of ethical standards to the foreign policy of nations is a demand that has secured the acceptance of all who are concerned for the future of civilization.”[52] After such a categorical assurance, the reader only has to calm down and wonder through what inscrutable way has modern democracy–by Laski’s admission, suffering from countless internal defects–has discovered in itself the magical force for transforming its foreign policy into a triumph of virtue.
With this we conclude our analysis of Laski’s works. If during the time of the restoration it was said of the French aristocrats that they “forgot nothing and learned nothing,” then the same cannot be said for the bourgeoisie of the advanced capitalist countries. Their politicians learned something and are trying to forget something. If, for example, England’s traditional parliamentary system, whose mechanism was based on the rotation in power of two bourgeois parties, now functions in the presence of a third, non-bourgeois party–but on the condition that precisely this third party form a government [This article was written prior to the fall of the Macdonald cabinet – E.P.]–this demonstrates a certain degree of flexibility and adaptability. New theories must correspond to new relationships. If the sovereignty of the “king in parliament” in reality is realized by way of a complex transmission mechanism, where an essential role is played by the tamed leadership of the trade unions, then the classical teaching of Dicey must give way to the more flexible doctrine of Harold Laski. If some fifteen years ago the English ruling class decided in the House of Lords the question of whether trade unions have the right to engage in political activism (the Osborne decision), while today the political organization created by the trade unions–that is, the Labour Party–in a sense holds the governing power in its hands, then understanding this evolution requires some corresponding ideological work. Laski’s works reflect this new need. They are representative of our era, which has disrupted the old, prewar relation of forces between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. They show us that the capitalist state can no longer be maintained by the ideological positions of untouchable, non-class sovereignty; that it is forced to search for new means of corrupting and bribing certain layers of the proletariat, just as during its decline the Roman Empire sought to delay its inevitable ruin by hiring ever newer German tribes to guard its borders.
[1] Originally published under the same title in Vestnik Kommunisticheskoi Akademii [Bulletin of the Communist Academy], No. 10, 1925, pp. 300-312. Whenever possible, English translations of quoted passages have been referenced for the convenience of readers. Our editorial interventions are designated using square brackets and/or “Ed”. We would like to express our gratitude to the editorial team at Kritika Prava for transcribing this essay and making it available in Russian on their website.
[2] Harold J. Laski, Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty (Yale University Press, 1917); Harold J. Laski, Authority in the Modern State (Yale University Press, 1919).
[3] Laski, Authority, p. 109.
[4] Ibid., p. 52.
[5] Ibid., p. 184.
[6] Ibid., p.110.
[7] Ibid., p. 112.
[8] Ibid., p. 113.
[9] Ibid., p.116.
[10] Ibid., p. 38.
[11] Ibid., p. 37.
[12] Ibid., p. 111-112.
[13] Ibid., p. 38.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid., p. 39.
[16] “The state, we broadly say, exists to promote the good life, however variously defined; and we give government the power to act for the promotion of that life.” Laski, Authority, p. 28.
[17] Ibid., p. 119.
[18] Ibid., p. 81.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid., p. 38.
[22] Ibid., p. 87.
[23] Ibid., p. 82.
[24] Ibid., p. 91.
[25] Ibid., p. 185.
[26] Ibid., p. 87.
[27] Ibid., p. 119.
[28] Ibid., p. 83.
[29] Ibid., p. 88.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Ibid., p. 89.
[32] Laski, Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty, p. 208.
[33] Ibid., p. 209.
[34] Ibid., p. 270.
[35] Ibid., p. 270.
[36] Laski actually considers the coerciveness of the state’s decrees to be rather arbitrary: “there is never in the state an a priori certainty that a government act will be obeyed. The possibility of anarchy is theoretically at every moment present” (Authority, p. 30). From this, Laski concludes that “an adequate theory of the state must examine not so much the claims of authority but their actual validation in terms of practice” (Authority, p. 31).
[37] Studies, p. 12.
[38] Authority, p. 86.
[39] Studies, p. 274.
[40] Ibid., p. 270.
[41] Authority, p. 44.
[42] Studies, p. 270.
[43] Ibid., p. 274.
[44] Authority, p. 379.
[45] Ibid., p. 114.
[46] Studies, p. 127.
[47] Authority, p. 93.
[48] Ibid.
[49] Studies, p. 22. [Ed: the actual passage is as follows: “Is it not claimed in Germany that an act is justified when State necessity compels it, and that without reference to the accepted criteria of moral action?].
[50] Authority, p. 122. [Ed: the actual passage is as follows: “We have sacrificed the youth of half the world to maintain our liberty against its encroachments. Surely the freedom we win must remain unmeaning unless it is made consistently effective in every sphere of social life.”]
[51] Ibid., p. 48.
[52] Authority, p. 122.
