★★★★★ 5
A brilliant reassessment of Western intellectual history
Format: Kindle
"Liberalism: A Counter History" by Domenico Losurdo offers a brilliant reassessment of Western intellectual history. Dr. Losurdo is a leading Italian intellectual who has taught at university for many decades. Dr. Losurdo's book will interest readers desiring bold, thoughtful and compelling perspectives on U.S. and European history; with insights that may be very useful to us today.
More than anything else, Dr. Losurdo's work articulates a highly original and powerful critique of the ideology of capitalist property relations. Diving into the writings of John Locke, Adam Smith, Bernard de Mandeville and other influential Enlightenment thinkers, Dr. Losurdo explains that the principle goal of liberalism (used here in the European sense of the word) was to secure the rights of property holders over the poor; without the meddlesome interference of church and monarchy.
Readers who are accustomed to viewing U.S. history through rose-colored glasses will find their views severely challenged here. Dr. Losurdo persuasively argues that Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and other revolutionaries enthusiastically embraced liberal ideology in order to help institutionalize its brutal slave economy. Put another way, it seems that Independence was ultimately about the prerogatives of the elite class who comprised the "community of the free" to buy, sell and own slaves. Dr. Losurdo goes on to explain how Americans put philosophy into service to justify Anglo-Saxon racial superiority and the violent dispossession of native peoples' lands.
Dr. Losurdo discusses how liberalism has influenced world history since the American Revolution. Through Dr. Losurdo's scholarship, we gain appreciation for the inherent tension that exists between liberalism's `emancipation' of the people who are privileged by virtue of their race and class; versus the `dis-emancipation' of the working class and poor who are comprised mostly of people of color. So, while liberals' greatest proponents have tended to use violence to lock in elite privilege (colonialism, the U.S. Civil War, the two World Wars), radicals have often struggled in the name of freedom for the people (the Haitian Revolution and the French Revolution).
Importantly, Dr. Losurdo challenges us to rethink the idea that progress is a natural by-product of liberalism. It is probably more accurate to say that liberals would be content to have the people live in misery; and that freedoms have been gained by ordinary people through struggle and collective action. The importance of this insight cannot be overstated. By compelling us to think anew about the liberal legacy, we can more easily detect the liberal apologists who pander for the one percent; while empowering the 99 percent of us to speak truth to power.
I highly recommend this outstanding book to everyone.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2014
