The «surrending» of liberal culture

Abstract

The theory of the double aspect of the liberal State (liberties and democracy, on one side; elitism and authoritarianism, on the other side) and of its «reflexes» in the liberal ideas is the analytical background, established in this article as the starting-point for a longer text (to be published in one of the coming issues of Análise Social), in which the author will interpret what he considers to be the
paradoxes of the first ideological programme of the founding group of the Portuguese review Seara Nova (1921-1926): a conjunction of elements with a democratic character and with a antidemocratic character. A question supposed to be for from having had a satisfactory answer in the few studies dedicated to a group with on intellectual level scarcely found in Portugal. So this work tries to establish succeedingly: that the liberal, pre-democratic or démocratique State has in itself elements of elitism and authoritarianism permanently; that the «pure» liberal political ideas - classic or neo-liberal (first half of the twentieth century) - «reflect», in different ways and trying to legitimate them, those elitist and authoritarian elemens; that, mainly in those capitalist social formations in which the authoritarianism becomes indispensable, it is possible to happen a «surrending» of liberal ideas, according to formulations that, even if they are not exactly an adhesion to fascism, they nevertheless are opposed to some basic aspects of liberal ideas.