Must Read - Liberalism : a counter-history by Domenico Losurdo

[Nikos]

Great book. An absolute must read! Who are the Liberals and what is Liberalism?

http://www.amazon.com/Liberalism-A-C.../dp/1844676935

This is the page of the contents.



From the Amazon site : "One of Europe's leading intellectual historians deconstructs liberalism's dark side.

In this definitive historical investigation, Italian author and philosopher Domenico Losurdo argues that from the outset liberalism, as a philosophical position and ideology, has been bound up with the most illiberal of policies: slavery, colonialism, genocide, racism and snobbery.
Narrating an intellectual history running from the eighteenth through to the twentieth centuries, Losurdo examines the thought of preeminent liberal writers such as Locke, Burke, Tocqueville, Constant, Bentham, and Sieyès, revealing the inner contradictions of an intellectual position that has exercised a formative influence on today’s politics. Among the dominant strains of liberalism, he discerns the counter-currents of more radical positions, lost in the constitution of the modern world order."

Review of the book:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...11.00949.x/pdf

I have read only the last chapter but I definitely recommend this book. It is great. It explains a lot about liberalism and its relation with the exploitation of the workers, a habit that modern liberals still have.

[blindpig]

I shall have to see if I can find it at the local library, it is possible as the title might fool the jerks who choose the books into thinking it is another right wing diatribe. They never saw one they didn't inflict upon the citizenry.

That was one hell of a review.

[Dhalgren]

I've already checked - my library doesn't have it. Going to have to look for it!

[Kid of the Black Hole]

I've already checked - my library doesn't have it. Going to have to look for it!

BP posted al link where you can find the pdf of it. I read the first bit so far, it starts out with John C Calhoun as the consummate liberal, so you know its good!

[Dhalgren]

BP posted al link where you can find the pdf of it. I read the first bit so far, it starts out with John C Calhoun as the consummate liberal, so you know its good!

I am trying to download it now. Damned slow DSL...

[Dhalgren]

BP posted al link where you can find the pdf of it. I read the first bit so far, it starts out with John C Calhoun as the consummate liberal, so you know its good!

Just read the first ten pages or so. It is pretty good. The guy is hitting all the marks.

[Kid of the Black Hole]

I am trying to download it now. Damned slow DSL...

Yeah, I have DSL too it can get annoying

[blindpig]

BP posted al link where you can find the pdf of it. I read the first bit so far, it starts out with John C Calhoun as the consummate liberal, so you know its good!

They will burn Losurdo in effigy in Charleston when this gets out. In fact, I should tell them, should be good for a few strokes.

[blindpig]

Are ya'll reading this? Over a hundred pages in, getting a little thick but good, the guy is thorough. It would have been great to have had this back when we were analyzing the liberals.

I had never read Locke though his name is constantly invoked by the 'defenders of liberty'. What a completely odious piece of shit. I doubt that most who invoke him have either, to do so with knowledge puts one in league with monsters. Or maybe they have....

[Dhalgren]

Yeah, i am reading it, maybe not as far along as you are (I'm trying to read that crazy "Super Rich" book you posted in the other thread, too). The thing, I think, that is so glaring is the edited and selective history and social studies that schools impart to working class folks. Every time you turn over a rock, the shady space is full of lies and omissions - and you know that going in, but it still astonishes. Current-day Liberals (of the working class) know nothing, almost literally, nothing. They don't know history, they don't know economics, they don't know social science, they don't understand global relationships, national social relationships or almost anything that would help them make any kind of determination on practically anything. And the worst thing is, they don't want to know. These Liberals think they are not working class - that is beneath them - so they don't want any revelations or understanding that might change their view of themselves...
Sorry for the rant. I would volunteer for work at an education camp...

[blindpig]

How could they think of themselves as working class when the term has been virtually erased from the vocabulary? A little aspect of the Red Scare no doubt and perhaps a result of the blacklistings and the fear they engendered.

The term was unavailable to me in my youth in the early-mid sixties, I remember trying to figure of the differences of how I lived and the lifestyle of those TV families, Ozzie & Harriett and all that dreck. We weren't poor, I knew that cause there was always meat on the table. We certainly weren't rich. But we sure as hell didn't live the lives of those purportedly average folks on the box. The old man didn't wear a suit to work, we lived in a row house, there was no summer camp, etc. I had to settle for 'lower middle class', it was all that was available.

[PinkoCommie]

What's the "super rich" book?

[blindpig]

What's the "super rich" book?

here ya go:

http://www.thebellforum.com/showthread.php?t=37599

[anaxarchos]

I have read only the last chapter but I definitely recommend this book. It is great. It explains a lot about liberalism and its relation with the exploitation of the workers, a habit that modern liberals still have.

Losurdo is interesting. In addition to Liberalism, he took a shot at deconstructing Fascism in a non-cartoonish way as well. I can't say I buy 100% of what he writes but it is all interesting.

losurdo.jpg

[Kid of the Black Hole]

Losurdo is interesting. In addition to Liberalism, he took a shot at deconstructing Fascism in a non-cartoonish way as well. I can't say I buy 100% of what he writes but it is all interesting.

losurdo.jpg

I'm seeing a good dose of the weirdo jazz in him that peppers the thought of pretty much all of the Italian Marxists.

[Dhalgren]

The idea that fascism arose as a counterweight to communism strikes me as much more materialist than all that 'blood and leader' crap. As early as Action Francaise there are clear counter-revolutionary elements in the development of fascism. How "organic" it is is another matter - there are so many facets to the thing. Antisemitism, chauvinism, anti-intellectualism, militarism, even monarchism. Each outbreak of fascism in the past has been its own little explosion and has not followed any kind of economic or social theory - it is no more an example of the "leadership principle" than any gang or mob organization or any monarchy for that matter. Yet, the strict hierarchy stemming from "the boss" down is always present, as is property and the profit motive. Il Duce himself said fascism was a merger of the military with capitalism, but then old Benito would say pretty much anything that popped into his head...

[Kid of the Black Hole]

The idea that fascism arose as a counterweight to communism strikes me as much more materialist than all that 'blood and leader' crap. As early as Action Francaise there are clear counter-revolutionary elements in the development of fascism. How "organic" it is is another matter - there are so many facets to the thing. Antisemitism, chauvinism, anti-intellectualism, militarism, even monarchism. Each outbreak of fascism in the past has been its own little explosion and has not followed any kind of economic or social theory - it is no more an example of the "leadership principle" than any gang or mob organization or any monarchy for that matter. Yet, the strict hierarchy stemming from "the boss" down is always present, as is property and the profit motive. Il Duce himself said fascism was a merger of the military with capitalism, but then old Benito would say pretty much anything that popped into his head...

I've been looking at his stuff on fascism a little bit and I think the same thing. He is trying to "universalize" fascism or something (there's a little of that kooky talk I was talking about)

[Dhalgren]

I've been looking at his stuff on fascism a little bit and I think the same thing. He is trying to "universalize" fascism or something (there's a little of that kooky talk I was talking about)

Right. i agree that it appears as a counter to communism almost every time it has appeared, but that is about as far as you can go with "fascism is always..."

[Kid of the Black Hole]

Right. i agree that it appears as a counter to communism almost every time it has appeared, but that is about as far as you can go with "fascism is always..."

Well, I think that a systematic study of fascism would be very useful but as Marx showed in practice, our abstractions (or objects of thought if you will) have to be concrete. That rules out things like "the Will to Power" and also rules out "universals".

[Dhalgren]

Well, I think that a systematic study of fascism would be very useful but as Marx showed in practice, our abstractions (or objects of thought if you will) have to be concrete. That rules out things like "the Will to Power" and also rules out "universals".

The "ideas" behind fascism and its periodic appearances is probably no more mysterious than cops shooting down strikers in South Africa. The bourgeois power structure will combat any working class aggressive action in any way it can or wants to. i suppose the only aspect of fascism that would be worthwhile to pursue is the nature of its variable nature. There has been no fascist organization that has survived its leader, that seems to be a serious shortcoming (as an ideology), but may be the greatest proof of the total lack of any ideology, at all. And without an ideological framework, what is it? Is it little more than a mob with a uniform fetish? A sort of "wrong-side-out" Cosa Nostra?