William Leiss 
C.B. Macpherson [PDF ebook] 
Dilemmas of Liberalism and Socialism

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.