Crawford Brough Macpherson, an extremely influential writer and teacher and Canada's pre-eminent political theorist, won an international reputation for his controversial interpretation of liberalism. In the first book to examine the entire range of Macpherson's writings, William Leiss seeks to place that interpretation of liberalism within the overall framework of Macpherson's intellectual development.

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.

A new preface by the author reviews books and articles on Macpherson published in the period since this book first appeared in 1988.