The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies

by Ryszard Legutko

That was a masquerade, the licence of the Carnival season, after which was soon to follow the Lent of slavery.

Professor Legutko is both a prominent Polish and European statesman and a distinguished philosopher who, in addition to more conventional credentials, was once the editor of Solidarity’s underground philosophy journal—

that liberal democracy, as it has developed in recent decades, shares a number of alarming features with communism.

utopian and look forward to “an end of history”

Both are historicist and insist that history is inevitably moving...

require that all social institutions—family, churches, private associations—must conform to liberal-democratic rul...

short, like Marxism before it, liberal democracy is becoming an all-encompassing ideology that, behind a veil of tolerance, brooks little or no disagreement.

That was essentially majoritarian democracy resting on constitutional liberal guarantees of free speech, free association, free media, and other liberties needed to ensure that debate was real and elections fair.

Liberal democracy is a set of rules designed to ensure that government rests on the consent of the governed.

Liberal-democracy, however, has policies and prohibitions built into its ideological structure.

It increasingly restricts their freedom to maneuver on anything from parental rights to national sovereignty.

It is even hostile to some fundamental values of liberalism such as free speech.

difference between liberal democracy and liberal-democracy

To my unpleasant surprise, I discovered that many of my friends who consciously classified themselves as devoted supporters of liberal democracy—of a multiparty system, human rights, pluralism, and everything that every liberal democrat proudly listed as his acts of faith—displayed extraordinary meekness and empathy toward communism.

For a while I thought that this anti-anticommunism, which was characterized by a lenient stance toward communists and a hard one against anticommunists, stemmed from the fear of the Soviets’ power,

did not fully explain the raw anti-anticommunist rage

hypothesis came to my mind that both attitudes—the communist and the liberal-democratic—are linked by something more profound, some common principles and ideals.

We treated the procommunist sympathies in Western societies as an accident rather than a fundamental defect.

Anti-anticommunism was activated simultaneously with the rise of the new liberal-democratic system (although

Those who were anticommunists were a threat to liberal

yet every negative word one uttered about them was not only stigmatized as villainy, but actually viewed as an attack on the best of the political systems to which we were humble newcomers.

The newly created Polish political elite embraced the communists

following some slight touch-ups and finding themselves in new circumstances, the communists would become loyal and enthusiastic players in the liberal-democratic game.

the former members of the Communist Party adapted themselves perfectly to liberal democracy, its mechanisms,

The communists who transformed themselves into the liberal democrats

Communism and liberal democracy proved to be all-unifying entities compelling their followers how to think, what to do, how to evaluate events, what to dream, and what language to use. They both had their orthodoxies and their models of an ideal citizen.

Liberal democracy is a powerful unifying mechanism, blurring differences between people and imposing uniformity of views, behavior, and language.

feel a stifling atmosphere typical of a political monopoly,

the destruction of language turning into a new form of Newspeak,

uncompromising hostility against all dissidents,

this association with communism

all these bad things half-jokingly referred to as Sovietlike will not intensify rather than disappear.

Because the liberal

democrats are so fond of warning against all sorts of dangers that might undermine their political order, even if these are only suspected and felt rather than actually perceived (xenophobia, nationalism, intolerance, bigotry), one wonders why these same people completely ignore dangers that are easy to spot, namely, the increasing presence of developments similar to those that existed in the communist societies.

trumpeting thousands of other dangers that are indiscernible even to ...

there is some interplay between liberal democrac...

Both communism and liberal democracy are regimes whose intent is to change ...

modernization p...

The meaning of modernization in today’s world goes far beyond technology

“Modernization” also implies experiencing something refreshing and invigorating in human relations

When we look at communism and liberal democracy from this point of view, we can see that they are both fuelled by the idea of modernization.

cult of technology

acceptance of social e...

Siberia’s rivers, in the other, a formation of alternative family models;

Although today’s ideology of environmentalism fashioned idolatrous reverence for the earth and its fauna and flora, it did not change the enthusiasm for treating human nature and society in a dangerously technological manner.

Both regimes clearly distance themselves from the past. Both embrace the idea of progress with all its consequences, being a natural offshoot of the belief in the power of technê.

the dustbin of history

This was a reason why the former communists, who for so many decades had been fighting for progress against the forces of backwardness, so quickly found allies in liberal democracy,

sense of liberation from the old bonds.

By becoming a member of a communist and liberal-democratic society, man rejects a vast share of loyalties and commitments that