Great book. Not always a coherent narrative but goes through a lot of key points relating to liberalism' s consistent racism and authoritarianism outside the self declared freemen. Shows how the most murderous episodes in colonialism were justified and applauded by key liberal figures. Has problems defining liberalism exactly, but as he says this is down to its incredible flexibility and the conflict between the space of freemen where liberal ideals hold and the space outside where freemen are justified in any action up to genocide. points out many liberal advances were only done under pressure from outside and resisted - highlights the key role of the Haitian revolution and the implacable opposition from many liberals. Like i say it's not always a perfectly coherent narrative but the stuff it covers is so important and presented well so it deserves 5 stars imo.

Will put you off citing 17th/18th/19th century liberals for life. Reveals the ways liberalism's supposed commitment to freedom has been qualified to justify keeping a large portion of the population in slavery or servitude - with very few speaking out against slavery, seeing it as simply people disposing freely of their property. Shows how quite a few liberals at the time hated the French Revolution for going too far in empowering too many people, instead of following the example of England and restricting power to a privileged few.

Also notes how the defence of slavery required clearly "anti-liberal" policies - the maintenance of slavery was more important than, for example, white people's rights to distribute abolitionist pamphlets or even speak about it, and interesting also more important than slave owner's rights to give their slaves an education. This isn't meant as a "poor slaveowners!" thing, just showing that even the "liberty" defence of slavery was really just a fudge and maintenance of the economic order of slavery was the key priority above all else. It's a useful example to think about with other systems of domination that seemingly restrict the powerful's "freedom" but only in order to better dominate the oppressed.

I'll quote one astonishingly vile thing Losurdo mentions, I'm spoiler tagging it because it's one of the most racist things I've ever read Sieyès envisaged a similarly ‘gentle’ revolution, and likewise for the purposes of producing a class or race of labourers as docile as possible. Like Bentham, the French liberal indulged in a eugenicist utopia (or dystopia). He imagined a ‘cross’ (croisement) between monkeys and ‘blacks’ for creating domesticated beings adapted to servile work: ‘the new race of anthropomorphic monkeys’.
In this way, whites, who remained at the top of the social hierarchy as directors of production, could dispose of blacks as auxiliary instruments of production, or slaves proper, who would precisely be the anthropomorphic monkeys: However extraordinary, however immoral this idea might seem at first sight, I have reflected on it at length, and can find no other way in a great nation, especially in countries that are very hot or very cold, to reconcile the directors of works with the simple instruments of labour.

(halfway through) He seems to be suggesting a key difference between liberalism and radicalism, even when liberals seem to have some sort of radical view, is that radicalism completely legitimises the actions of the oppressed from below while liberalism can only ever see change coming from above.

I don't like that the translator regularly uses the term "redskins" even outside of quoted/paraphrased stuff - like it's a kind of offensive term and even if you're trying to show the horrifying white supremacist attitudes of the time it's not necessary outside of direct quotes... just seems a pretty big misstep imo, which is a shame. ( )

Por meio de uma surpreendente metodologia de pesquisa, manejada com maestria, e uma investigação histórica e filosófica inédita e corajosa, o professor Losurdo vira ao avesso a história do liberalismo convencionalmente divulgada e ensinada. Os resultados que o leitor poderá verificar neste lançamento são impactantes e polêmicos. Domenico Losurdo é professor titular de História da Filosofia na Universidade de Urbino (Itália), reconhecidamente um dos grandes pensadores mundiais da atualidade. Autor de mais de 20 livros e de mais de uma centena de outras participações como coordenador de livros e artigos, sempre com grande repercussão em toda a Europa e agora também no Brasil.Dentre seus livros traduzidos em vários idiomas, temos: La comunità, la morte, l`Occidente: Heidegger e l`ideologia della guerra (Torino 2001); Hegel e la libertà dei moderni (Roma 1999); Democracia ou bonapartismo (Torino 1993, já traduzido no Brasil); Nietzche, il ribelle aristocrático (Torino 2004), dentre outros.