Liberalismul de stânga pe filiera românească. O victimă a politicii memoriei?*

(Left-liberalism along the Romanian Path:
a Victim of the Politics of Memory?)

Victor RIZESCU

Abstract: The article surveys the Romanian pre-communist ideological heritage by taking as a vantage point the various competing stances advanced in the interwar period towards the predicament of shaping an appropriate system of social protection, in relation to both the demands of national development and those of socialist revolution. The contours of the local variety of socially-minded liberalism are disclosed by comparison to the other branches of liberal advocacy featuring in
the public space at the time, all of them being placed in the setting marked by the trends of left-wing and right-wing radicalization. Elaborated on composite theoretical bases, the Romanian embodiment of Left-liberalism emerges retrospectively as a casualty of the politics of historical representations and  collective memory by virtue of the very attitude of sustained moderation that it exposed.

Keywords: liberalism, economic development, welfare policies, socialism, collective memory.