Authoritarian Liberalisms - Liberalismos autoritarios

The concept of authoritarian liberalism, formulated by Hermann Heller during the final years of the Weimar Republic, highlights a significant transformation: it is not, as he sarcastically described, the “miracles wrought by a dictatorship,” but rather what precedes it – the undermining of democratic achievements by liberals. The state intervenes in the economy to address crises attributed to “democratic disorder” and elevates the democratic boundary to an indispensable precondition for the liberal economy. This article, on the one hand, seeks to demonstrate the relevance of the concept, particularly by considering the possible existence of an authoritarian European liberalism. On the other hand, it aims to show that repression restricting individual freedoms is not a necessary element of this concept: for liberalism to be considered authoritarian, it is sufficient that it removes the sphere of economic freedoms from the scope of democratic deliberation.