Abstract
Autore:
Focher Ferruccio
Titolo:
"Tra progressi liberistici e regressi liberali"
In recent years liberalism has made important ethical and cultural conquests, but has had worrying setbacks in practical terms. It has been successful in the field of economic and social ideas, as is shown by the rehabilitation of the authors of the Austrian School (Menger, Mises, Hayek and others) and by the new attitude of the Catholic Church to questions regarding businesses, profit-making and the free market; and it has had disappointments in the sphere of real economic-financial relationships, and in that of justice. On the one hand, the so-called globalization of the economy and of finance has made it ever more difficult to avoid the consequences of decisions taken by subjects who not only do not belong to the national communities affected, but have also received no express authorisation. On the other hand, a structural historical crisis of the political order has transfered an excess of power to the judicial order, which has as a result undermined the basis of the rule of law. This essay analyses these new and contrasting phenomena, emphasising the urgent need for a come-back of the irreplacable role of the political, which, being intimately connected with liberty, ultimately determines its fate. However, it also points out the difficulties encountered in re-establishing a correct balance of power: first and foremost that of the ethical and psychological torpor which, in the long term, as Tocqueville noted, creeps fatally into democratic societies, leading them to lose their feel and appetite for liberty.
