In the second volume of The Open Society, Karl Popper focuses his criticism on Hegel and Marx. Whereas Popper is nicer to Marx, he is just as hateful towards Hegel as he was towards Plato in Volume I. Early on, he writes regarding Hegel, "I do not even think he was talented. He is an indigestible writer. As even his most ardent apologists must admit, his style is 'unquestionably scandalous.' And as far as the content of his writing is concerned, he is supreme only in his outstanding lack of originality. There is nothing in Hegel's writing that has not been said better before him." Wow! Karl Popper must have been a character. Also like his criticism of Plato, Popper starts out by going after Hegel as an individual. Like he identified and criticized Plato's bias as a member of the Athenian aristocracy, Popper criticizes Hegel for his patronage by Prussia's King Frederick William III. Hegel is a historicist who believes that the ideal government is one in which a prince has absolute authority, and Hegel referred to more democratic countries, like England, as being backward. This is of course ironic since within a couple of decades of Hegel's death, the UK was the strongest empire on Earth even though it was the most democratic in Europe in many ways. Popper doesn't go easy on him for that.
Some of the interesting passages in the book deal with the origins of totalitarianism, which Popper traces to Marxism, arguing that in spite of being a reaction to the left and a right-wing movement, Fascism "grew partly out of the spiritual and political breakdown of Marxism." I suppose this may be paralleled in Mussolini's life, as he was a disillusioned socialist, and Hitler's NSDAP, which began as a socialist party that became a fascist party. Popper writes that "modern totalitarianism is only an episode within the perennial revolt against freedom and reason," made possible by the failures of social democracy and other "democratic version[s] of Marxism." When social democracy failed to take a stand against the First World War, it lost all credibility, as it could not solve economic depression or defend itself against fascist aggression. If your ideological system can't provide prosperity or security, then what good is it?
Popper identifies Hegel as the progenitor of all the major ideas that make up totalitarian movements. They include (1) nationalism, (2) the state's need to assert its existence in war, (3) the state's exemption from any moral obligations, (4) the ethical idea of total or collective war, (5) the creative role of the Great Man of deep knowledge and passion, and (6) the ideal of the heroic life as opposed to the shallow mediocrity of the petty bourgeois. There are really interesting points made in these chapters in citing Aurel Kolnai, who writes that "the nationalist attitude... does not imply a desire for perpetual or frequent warfare. It sees in a war a good rather than an evil, even if it be a dangerous good, like an exceedingly heady wine that is best reserved for rare occasions of high festivity." In discussing the nation and race, Kolnai also wrote, "the principle of Race is meant to embody and express the utter negation or human freedom, the denial of equal rights, a challenge in the face of mankind." And racialism "tends to oppose Liberty by Fate, individual consciousness by the compelling urge of the Blood beyond control and argument." And further developing the problem with heroism, Popper clarifies that heroism should be based on the cause of the hero, such as exploration, research in diseases, and medical advances. But the Heroic Man in the fascist form attacks the idea of civil life as shallow and materialistic because it is secure, the fascist Heroic Man values how, not for what one fights. It is an idealization of violence itself with no room for the cause.
There is also some very interesting discussion of the significance of Marx's writing. Popper respects Marx more than Hegel and Plato and credits him with at least some good ideas. One is the analytical method Marx pioneers to understand social development. He compares Marx to John Stuart Mill, who believed the study of society was reducible to psychology and that the laws of historical development would be explicable by human nature. Marx disagreed, and argued that historical development was best explained by sociological laws- legal and economic relationships. This is what Popper says is Marx's greatest achievement. Popper says that many "Vulgar Marxists" as he calls them misunderstand Marx and think that Marx theorized about cabals of big business or imperialists. But in fact, Marx wasn't theorizing about the culpability of conspirators, but rather was interested in the social forces that created the class relationships themselves. The stage of history is set by the social system binding it, so we are all puppets, is Popper's interpretation of Marx. Popper is much more critical of Marx when it comes to Marx's view that politics are impotent and cannot effect the change that is needed.
In this book, Popper puts forth the fundamental difference between left and right-wing politics as either having the point of view that the history of humanity is class struggle or national struggle. Liberals see the world in conflict of classes, conservatives see the world in conflict of nations. There is a similar identification in the book of rationalists and irrationalists that I see playing out today. Rationalists believe in the scientific method, which is really the common sense value. But on the internet I see lots of "return to tradition" types who are well described by Popper, as being those who think "our rationalism much too commonplace for his taste, and who looks out for the latest esoteric intellectual fashion, which he discovers in the admiration of medieval mysticism, is not, one fears, doing his duty by his fellow men. He may think himself and his subtle taste superior to our 'scientific age,' to an 'age of industrialization' which carries its brainless division of labor and its 'mechanization' and 'materialization' even into the field of human thought. But he shows only that he is incapable of appreciating the moral forces inherent in modern science." Those moral forces are the fact that scientific theories can be tested by their own practical consequences, imposing discipline on the search for truth. Whereas the scientist is responsible for what he says and can be distinguished from false prophets, the mystic is intellectually irresponsible, escaping into dreams and "oracular philosophy."
In a key portion of the book, Popper discusses the paradox of freedom, which is that when freedom is unlimited, it defeats itself. Unlimited freedom means that a strong man is free to bully and rob a weak man, who then becomes unfree. The purpose of the protectionist state is to restrict the freedom of the strong to bully the weak. But Popper points out that this should go beyond restricting physical aggression. Economic aggression can be even more harmful if left unchecked. Economic power may render the majority of people slaves beholden to the rich, and there can only be a political remedy to restrict that power. We must give up the principle of non-intervention in the economic system and demand that capitalism give way to economic intervention by the state, which is exactly what began in the 19th century. People saw what unrestrained economic power could do to unsafe work conditions, child labor, and slavery, and they said no more. Moreover, we pass laws insuring workers against disability, and we can continue to pass laws solving the economic problem with politics. Because of this capacity, Popper criticizes Marx for underestimating the danger of the political power of the state, which can be used for bad or for good, whereas Marx focuses too much on the economic power. In this way, writes Popper, "The way to its understanding is blocked to the followers of Plato, Hegel, and Marx. They will never see that the old question 'Who shall be the rulers?" must be superseded by the more real one 'How can we tame them?'"
Further developing his ideas on economic power, Popper argues that the modern economic system worldwide (as of 1945) is one of economic interventionism, adopted in all countries regardless of whether they are nominally capitalist or communist or in between. The reality, he argues, is that by the end of WWII, no country can survive without economic intervention. This means that the system that Marx initially criticized doesn't exist anymore because it completely changed. Popper points out that many of Marx's recommendations, such as a progressive income tax, increasing state ownership of industry, free public education, and the abolition of child labor have been implemented and are largely uncontroversial today. Other points Marx made like the abolition of inheritance, have been accomplished by most states in part through taxation. It is only his most radical aims, such as abolition of all property in land and seizure of assets from emigrants and rebels, which have not been implemented. So we are no longer living in the capitalist system of Marx's day, and, in fact, we are all living in something more or less like the world Marx supported according to Popper. Even if the modern world isn't completely "Marxist," it is just as close to Marxism as it is to unrestrained capitalism.
I think Popper is most interesting when he is discussing how to preserve democracy against forces of totalitarianism or fascism or other ideologies that are anti-democratic. Popper gives seven good principles that democratic leadership must support for the state to survive. He writes that democracies can only work if the main parties believe that (1) democracy is not rule of the majority but a system in which elections can peacefully transfer power, (2) anything without peaceable transfer of power is tyranny, (3) the democracy's constitution should only exclude change that would endanger the state's economic character, (4) full protection of the law should extend to minorities, but not to those that violate the law or incite others to overthrow democracy, (5) institutions should be created to safeguard democracy with the assumption that there may always be latent anti-democratic tendencies among the rulers and the ruled, (6) if democracy is destroyed, all rights should be destroyed so that no one may benefit from the destruction of democracy, and (7) the entire society should advance understanding of the principles of democracy so as to preserve it. I think number four is the most interesting since it deals with the conflict between democracy and freedom of speech. Our conception of freedom of speech in the USA today protects the vast majority of freedom of speech and deals mainly in time/place/manner restrictions so as to permit the most speech. So we don't ban Nazi slogans or racist speech like Germany does. Popper would say that we should ban that speech so far as it is an incitement to overthrow democracy. I think this makes sense as a formulation so that it includes only speech meant to actively overthrow democracy, not mere idle comments against democracy, but I'm not sure how it avoids the problem of euphemisms. I think it would be very difficult to deal with statements like "woke," when racists just mean to say "black people." And I also think it doesn't necessarily solve the problem of racist speech, which I think is anti-democracy in a multi-racial country.
In his final statement on historicism, Popper says historicists substitute the seemingly factual but irrational question of "Which way are we going?/What is the part that history has destined us to play?" for the rational question of "What are we going to choose as our most urgent problems, how did they arise, and along what roads may we proceed to solve them?" Because Popper believes history has no meaning, he wants to focus on the impact of the human role, whereas historicists see humanity as being taken through time by sociological forces beyond our control. Only at the end does Popper say what he means by "history," creating similar confusion to laypeople like Fukuyama in discussing the "end of history." Popper clarifies that by history, he means the traditional history of political power, elevated as the history of the world by which there were the Babylonians, then the Persians, then the Greeks, and so on. This is the history beloved by nationalists because it is a history of nations and peoples in conflict. It gains primacy because power affects us all, because we are inclined to worship power, and because the powerful are those that write history. And it is "theistic." The history of power politics give historians and theologians a way to say that Gods will is reflected in who rises and falls by the mandate of heaven. But for Popper this is blasphemy. If the history of power politics is a play, then it was "written not by God, but, under the supervision of generals and dictators, by the professors of history." So by the traditional and historicist view, we are on a path destined by God to go in some direction. But Popper assigns us all agency and says that God would not create dictators and evil.
Miscellaneous Facts:
- I also discovered while I was reading this volume that Popper's writings on the paradox of tolerance, which was the inspiration for me reading this book, was actually in an endnote in Volume I that I missed. Oops. This is all he had to say on the matter:
Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
- Popper says that Marx improved upon Hegel and Kant by identifying reality with the material world and appearance with the world of thoughts and ideas- in contrast to Plato.
- Popper writes a good principle for what a public education system should be: do no harm, and therefore "give the young what they urgently need, in order to become independent of us, and to be able to choose for themselves."
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