DOUX COMMERCE? REFLEXIONES SOBRE LA DESPOLITIZACIÓN ECONOMICISTA LIBERAL

This book DOUX COMMERCE? REFLECTIONS ON THE DEPOLITICIZATION OF LIBERAL ECONOMISM, written by Alejandra Martínez Cánchica presents a much-needed, thorough, and historically informed political critique of liberalism. The traditional conservative viewpoints of Hamilton, Burke, and Tocqueville are integrated with the analysis of authors of political realism such as Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca, Carl Schmitt, Julien Freund, and more recently, Spanish scholars such as Dalmacio Negro and Jerónimo Molina Cano. The insights of these contemporary scholars, which the author frequently references, are crucial for comprehending the current landscape. Together with other classical and ordoliberals, they represent an alternative, somber form of liberalism—described by Carlo Gambescia as melancholic or simply non-ridens—that stands in opposition to the depoliticizing forces of liberal economism. Hence, from the political warning articulated by Martínez Cánchica with the seasoned realism that «socialism is not an issue of poor economic education», but rather of the poor political education of liberals, one can deduce an unsurpassable political corollary of brevity and truth: «Liberalism fails because it abandons politics».