Friedrich August von Hayek, Democracy in Europe (1952)

Hayek’s periodical book review of Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s Liberty or Equality: The Challenge of our Time combines appreciation of its historical learning with resistance to its monarchist conclusions. Addressing American readers, Hayek recommends the book as a corrective to inherited political assumptions, especially the identification of democracy with personal liberty. Its value lies in the evidence and arguments it brings into view, not in securing agreement with its thesis:

I neither expect nor wish that he should be convinced by its main thesis.

This reservation governs the review. Hayek presents Kuehnelt-Leddihn as an Austrian Catholic monarchist whose cosmopolitan experience, learning, and intellectual courtesy make an unfamiliar position worth examining. He describes the reviewed book as a series of related historical and political essays, followed by a short concluding chapter, rather than a systematic argument. His assessment moves from its critique of democracy to its treatment of Catholic political culture and, finally, the relationship between German Protestantism and National Socialism.

Hayek accepts the force of the book’s first major contention: democracy does not necessarily protect liberty and can itself threaten it. He also welcomes criticism of treating democracy as an ultimate political good. His own defense of democratic institutions is functional rather than unconditional:

The direct critique of democracy which follows also makes some very strong points against those who regard democracy as an end in itself rather than as the only tolerably successful device for peaceful change which man has yet discovered.

The distinction is between a method of changing governments peacefully and the substantive purposes those governments pursue. Hayek questions whether the defects Kuehnelt-Leddihn attributes to democracy actually arise from democratic government, or instead from beliefs about governmental aims that would be equally destructive under autocracy or aristocracy. This is the review’s central conceptual move: a criticism of democratic power does not by itself establish the superiority of authoritarian power.

That objection becomes sharper in Hayek’s discussion of economics. He finds Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s remarks about capitalism and its supposed resemblance to socialism inadequate to explain the source of totalitarian danger. If expanding governmental control of economic life is taken as inevitable, the case for authoritarian administration might appear strong. But changing the political regime leaves the dangers of those economic policies unresolved:

But while we are now familiar with the dangers which increased government control of economic activity produces under a democratic system, it has yet to be shown that, given the present economic policies, they would be smaller under any other.

Hayek thus asks for a comparison that holds economic policy constant, rather than assuming that abandoning democracy would remove the threat to freedom.

The review then turns to the book’s account of why democracy has generally prospered in Protestant countries and encountered difficulties in Catholic ones. Hayek praises the author’s candor and detachment, judging the resulting picture of Catholic European political culture important, if unflattering. Yet he questions an explanation centered too heavily on moral atmosphere. The different forms in which democratic ideas arrived may also matter: Catholic societies received an ideal shaped by Rousseau rather than its Anglo-Saxon counterpart. Religious culture alone therefore cannot settle the explanation.

Finally, Hayek finds the analysis of German Protestantism and National Socialism instructive, particularly maps showing a strong negative geographical correlation between Catholic population and Nazi voting. He reports this evidence without developing it into an independent causal argument. The review ends with the book’s practical usefulness for Americans interpreting European affairs. Its relevance lies in combining openness to an unconventional historical perspective with a demand to distinguish liberty, democratic procedure, political culture, and economic control before drawing conclusions about the best form of government.