Beginning with the new worlds of the Renaissance and the Reformation, this book traces the growth of liberal doctrine through the advent of the French Revolution. It shows the relationship of liberalism to the emerging economic system of capitalism, and the impact of this relationship upon science, philosophy, and literature. Laski explains how the same causes which produced the socially active aspect of liberalism also inspired the growth of socialism. The contributions of men like Machiavelli, Locke, and Voltaire, the influence of the voyages of discovery, and the effect of the Puritan Rebellion are among the special topics discussed. The Rise of European Liberalism is a historical survey of the development of liberal thought, from its earliest whispers in early Protestantism to its significance in the "Red Decade" of the 1930s. Laski argues that liberalism as a philosophy came into existence with the rise of capitalism and thus functions primarily as an ideological defense of private property in a business civilization. Hence, liberalism's progressive side is doomed to defeat because, throughout its history, the bourgeois nature of the ideology has always prevailed. In the new introduction, John Stanley traces the history and influences of Laski's thought and provides a detailed analysis of Laski's work. The essay provides a coherent study in itself of why Laski is better remembered than widely read. The Rise of European Liberalism is a classic text that deserves rediscovery for historians, philosophers, sociologists, and political scientists of the present day.

Selected writings from one of the most important commentators of our generation covering the wreckage of Labour's 10 year love affair with the Right BY THE SUMMER of 2007, Britain was close to crashing. A few onlookers realised the danger, but Britain's political leaders were not among them. Politicians and civil servants boasted that the City's economy was booming because of their 'light-touch regulation' of workers in financial services whose number included potential frauds. Curiously, they never argued that the inner-city economy might boom if there was 'light touch regulation' of workers in the ghettos whose number included potential drug dealers. And artists produced works to match the times. On the same day that Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, the genial Damien Hirst auctioned at Sotheby's pieces he admitted had been mass produced in his studios and buyers still gave him £100 million. Even the critics did not pretend to be interested in what message, if any, Hirst had for his audience, but reported the sale like business reporters covering a soaring stock. For 10 years New Labour stood cross-eyed in admiration as London was turned into the centre of the financial universe. From the sand bags Nick Cohen has watched as they turned their back on the working class, once the object of Utopian hopes on the Left and unreasonable fears on the Right, and lovingly embraced the upper class, once the object of surly contempt on the Left. In Waiting for the Etonians are gathered his selected writings that cover the span of Labour's love affair with the Right and the moral hazard that it has culminated in. It is a romance which has not only broken its traditional bond with the working classes and undermined the very values on which the party was founded, but has now left it with little more to do than warm the seat for the next Conservative Prime Minister.