SOURCE: "The Corruption of Liberal Thought: Harold Laski," in Dilemmas of Politics, The University of Chicago Press, 1958, pp. 343-49.

In the following excerpt, Morgenthau takes a critical look at Laski's shift from liberalism to socialism.

The decline of the political philosophy of liberalism is due to the defects of its general philosophy, which contemporary developments have brought to the fore. What liberalism had to say about the nature of man, society, and politics is at odds with what we have experienced. More specifically, it has been unable to reconcile its original libertarian assumptions and postulates with its latter-day philosophy of the administrative and welfare state. Professor Laski, the most brilliant, erudite, and prolific exponent of the last stage of liberalism, exemplifies the philosophic insufficiency and political confusion of liberal thought. He also exemplifies the intellectual corruption that follows inevitably from an attempt to square the disparate elements of...