ABSTRACT
Einaudi’s Roosevelt Revolution bears the special mark of original intent: it was planned and executed as “a book aimed at those Europeans who think and worry about modern America and are confused about its meaning.” His goal was a large and ambitious one: that “the Roosevelt Revolution should become more fully part of the remembered experience of the western world . . . [and] that only a balanced and reasoned understanding of the respective grounds upon which they stand can provide [Europeans and Americans] an authentic basis for the solidarity so needed in their future relationships.” Europeans, in Einaudi’s view, have “often forgotten that if America is paying a price for its present way of life, this is because America has dared to identify and accept some of the unavoidable conditions for the survival of a democratic community in the 20th century.” In effect, the New Deal saved capitalism, as most Europeans do appreciate. But the New Deal did something more, which most Europeans have not appreciated: it saved democracy. In Einaudi’s book, The Roosevelt Revolution is seen, in the first place, as an effort to reestablish the sense of community in a free industrial society and to come to terms with its requirements, and, in the second place, as the most important attempt in the 20th century to affirm the validity and central role of the political instruments of democracy. . . . While democracy was being routed all over the world by the totalitarians and the technicians, it triumphed in the United States. Those who proclaim their attachment to democracy ought to consider how this was done.1
