Analyzing world history from 1946 to 2001, including the September 11 attacks, Demétrio Magnoli and Elaine Senise Barbosa's *Leviathan Challenged* is a comprehensive, revealing, and indispensable investigation of this historical period. In this second volume of the trilogy, the authors continue the discussion of the clash between Liberty and Equality by analyzing the history of postwar political ideas. "The history of political ideas in the 20th century does not serve as proof of any general theory of history, nor does it point to an ineluctable destiny, nor does it attest to the absolute truth of any ideological doctrine. However, it is not useless because, in Kolakowski's words, 'the history of things that really happened, woven from countless singular accidents, is the history of each of us human beings, while belief in the laws of History is a fiction produced by the imagination,'" the authors state. The fall of the Berlin Wall closed the cycle opened by the Russian Revolution, which contained the prophecy of capitalism's replacement by socialism on a global scale. At that moment, the proclaimed "laws of history" were subverted by history: like the hands of a dream clock, the USSR and Eastern Europe transitioned back to capitalism. In the West, throughout the Cold War, social struggles never ceased, but the proletarian revolution never occurred. Social democracy completed its break with the communists, devoting itself to the program of reforming capitalism. A liberal reaction, organized under the banner of the "minimal state," spread from Great Britain and the United States. "There is no such thing as society," exclaimed Margaret Thatcher, shattering a fleeting Western consensus and projecting the ancient tension between freedom and equality into the future. Watch the book trailer Booktrailer 1 / Booktrailer 2
