ABSTRACT
In his 1925 book, The Grammar Of Politics, Harold Laski laid down the basic theme of his political ideology that would prevail until he embraced Marxism in 1931. The priority that Laski assigned to individual rights was a product of his immersion in the liberal views of the eighteenth-century French philosophes. In a 1928 essay, Laski examined the American political system for Harper's. "No political system has ever been so vehemently assailed as that of the United States," he wrote, nor was there any "upon which criticism has produced so small an effect." The American presidency, he observed, was "the most powerful lever of authority there is in the modern world," but its occupant was chosen in a "haphazard way." The "new America" had "mistaken the fluidity of classes which constitutes social equality there for political equality," but the latter was possible only in the presence of "an active interest by the many in affairs of state.".
