Focusing on two key themes — property and the state — Leiss tracks Macpherson's analysis of the contradictions of liberal-democracy through all of his writings, beginning with his 1935 M.A. thesis supervised by Harold Laski at LSE. His concluding chapter critically examines the core of Macpherson's political philosophy — the distinction between extractive and developmental powers — against the background of social change in the democracies of the West in the period since the end of the Second World War.
