Liberalism and Democracy

This small but very useful book writen by Norberto Bobbio in the early eighties give us a general picture of the relations between the liberal tradition and the defense o democracy as political regime. There is not a justaposition between these two philosophical concepts as we are so many times tempted to make. Both step out different traditions: Bobbio enlighten us that the major philosophers akeen with political liberalism, such as Stuart Mill, Locke, or Alexis de Tocqueville can hardly be named as partisans of democracy. They are liberals in the old and classical way. That's why he defends that the acquisition of democracy in contemporary political philosophy is a recent event and also a on-definitive one. By the time Bobbio write this small essay he saw liberalism and democratic socialism capable of connecting eachother ina liberal-socialism sincretic result, that kept from each vision of the world and society the best os ist contributions: the preserverance of liberty, in the first case; the pursuit of the possible equality, in the second. Time showed that this sinthesis was dispensable because socialism perished along its mistakes and contradictions when te Berlin Wall and the communist empire implode in 1989. That add a major responsability to the liberal field -where Bobbio reviews himself as man of the political left - to match major concerns of social equality and solidarity to the three-century old defense of freedom and political liberties, rule of law and primacy of the market.That's why «Liberalism and Democracy» should be used as a memorandum of liberalism as we see it today. The reading of tis book should be complemented with «Left and Right» and «What Socialism?».