Laski's Consideration on ‘Two Totalitarianisms’ and Reflection on the Liberal Democracy

Abstract

The early 20th century was marked by the advent of both communism and fascism, and their challenges against the traditional western civilization. This paper examines the historical dynamism shown by those political struggles in the early 20th through the works of Laski. In the 1920s, Laski considered both communism and fascism as the negation of the legacies of western civilization. However, the political turmoil in the 1930s had led Laski to distinguish Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and he thought Soviet communism as a “new civilization” which had been overcoming capitalist societies. But Laski's appreciation of Soviet communism was different from other British socialists in that Laski evaluated social welfare in Soviet Union as long as it served as the basis for individual freedom. This paper concludes that those Laski's ideas contain an actual potentiality in making contemporary criticism to liberal democracy after the collapse of Soviet communism.