Celebrating C.B. Macpherson’s Legacy
By Frank Cunningham
Unquestionably one of the leading political theorists of the 20th Century, C.B. Macpherson joined the Department of Political Economy (when E.J. Urwick was, as they were then called, Head) in 1935, having completed his undergraduate studies there and his graduate work under Harold Laski at the LSE. He retired in 1982, the very year the Department split into Economics and Political Science.
His first book, Democracy in Alberta (1953) remains a touchstone text for students of Albertan Social Credit, and his The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (1962) defended, at the time, heterodox analysis of the views of Hobbes, Locke, and others as expressions of the nascent capitalism of their times. Macpherson’s Massey Lectures, The Real World of Democracy (published in 1965 by the CBC), along with his popularly written, The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy (1977) reached a very large audience during the years of youth activism beginning in the mid 1960’s. Other writings, such as those collected in Democratic Theory (1972) and The Rise and Fall of Economic Justice (1985) critically engaged the views of Isaiah Berlin, Milton Freedman, Robert Dahl, and other central figures, and they articulated a sophisticated theory about the strengths and weaknesses of liberal democracy with respect to Macpherson’s overall project of strengthening the theory and practice of democracy.
Reflecting a resurgence of interest in Macpherson’s work, all these books (except the Massey Lectures) have been reissued in the past two years. Democracy in Alberta is reissued by the U of T Press with an introduction by Nelson Wiseman, the others by Oxford University Press, with introductions by myself.