Ryszard Legutko lived and suffered under communism for decades—and he fought with the Polish ant-communist movement to abolish it. Having lived for two decades under a liberal democracy, however, he has discovered that these two political systems have a lot more in common than one might think. They both stem from the same historical roots in early modernity, and accept similar presuppositions about history, society, religion, politics, culture, and human nature.

In The Demon in Democracy, Legutko explores the shared objectives between these two political systems, and explains how liberal democracy has over time lurched towards the same goals as communism, albeit without Soviet style brutality.

Both systems, says Legutko, reduce human nature to that of the common man, who is led to believe himself liberated from the obligations of the past. Both the communist man and the liberal democratic man refuse to admit that there exists anything of value outside the political systems to which they pledged their loyalty. And both systems refuse to undertake any critical examination of their ideological prejudices.

Ryszard Legutko在共产主义下生活和受苦了几十年--他与波兰反共产主义运动一起为废除共产主义而斗争。然而，在自由民主制度下生活了20年后，他发现这两种政治制度的共同点比人们想象的要多得多。它们都源于早期现代性的相同历史根源，并接受关于历史、社会、宗教、政治、文化和人性的类似预设。

在《民主中的恶魔》中，Legutko探讨了这两种政治制度之间的共同目标，并解释了自由民主如何随着时间的推移朝着与共产主义相同的目标发展，尽管没有苏联式的残暴。

莱古特科说，这两种制度都将人性还原为普通人的本性，而普通人被引导着相信自己已经从过去的义务中解放出来。共产主义的人和自由民主的人都拒绝承认在他们宣誓效忠的政治体系之外存在任何有价值的东西。这两种制度都拒绝对他们的意识形态偏见进行任何批判性审查。