Introduction
In a letter to Weydemeyer dated March 5 1852 Karl Marx wrote
'Long before me, bourgeois historians had described
thehistorical development of the class struggle and bourgeois economists the
economic anatomy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove 1) that
the existence of classes is only bound up with particular, historical phases in
the development of production; 2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to
the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3) that this dictatorship itself only
constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless
society.'
Given Popper's reputation for having buried Marxism, it is disappointing
to read the books and find that most of his arguments are targetted against
helpful rhetorical flourishes which Marx tended to write in prefaces. If I were
writing a learned book which examines the empirical evidence that a train is
coming, I might add a preface which says 'GET OFF THE LINE!'. But Popper would
say, '"Get off the line!" is not a scientific statement', and be run
over by the oncoming train. To take the metaphor too far, I could add that
Marx's train has been regretably delayed due to the wrong kind of history on
the track, but there are no iron rails of history, and the proletarian train driver
has a notoriously subjective sense of direction.
In The Open Society and its Enemies, Popper wrote 'What I
wish to show is that Marx's "materialist interpretation of history", valuable
as it may be, must not be taken too seriously; that we must regard it as
nothing more than a most valuable suggestion to us to consider things in
relation to their economic background'1.
Marxism should have no problem with that. As reality
proceeds through time, we are able to revise our theory in the light ofnew
discoveries. Conversely humanity changes the material world according to the
theoretical knowledge available.
Marx's and Engels's statement that 'The history of all
hitherto existing society is a history of class struggle' receives Popper's
admiration2. Here Popper only warns against its misinterpretation by 'vulgar
Marxists' in the context of World War I.
But according to Popper the economic research of Marx is subservient
to his historical prophecy3. This enables Popper to class Marx alongside Hegel,
or even Hitler, as a historicist.
The trouble is that whereas Marx uses dialectical means to understand
the world's contradictions. Popper refuses to do this and, in What is
Dialectic? states 'A statement consisting of the conjunction of two
contradictory statements must always be rejected as false on purely logical
grounds'4. And elsewhere he writes 'all criticism consists largely in the elimination
of contradictions wherever we find them'5.
In The Poverty of Historicism, Popper sets out to prove that
historicism is a poor method. But Popper's particular historicism has to built
up before he can knock it down. His claim in the introduction to The Poverty of
Historicism is that this will avoid verbal quibbles and build up a position
'really worth attacking'6.
His main problem with historicism is that the future remains unforeseeable irrespective of the data we may
gather from the past. He then puts forward three arguments: generalization, experiment,
and novelty. In the first he states that historicists will allow that in
sociology we cannot rely on similar conditions giving rise to similar results.
His second point is that social experiments can never successfully be isolated
from outside factors and, having been once attempted, can never be repeated in precisely
the same conditions. The novelty argument is just an elaboration on this. An
experiment is only valid if it is entirely new to the subject. With the phrase
'Oedipus Effect' he puts the case that a prediction will tend to alter the expectations
of participants in a social experiment7.
He poses a dichotomy between holistic knowledge and
quantitative mathematical method and places his imaginary historicist on the side
of holism8. Another false dichotomy is given between 'essentialism and
nominalism'. Forced to choose between 'what a thing does' and 'what a thing
is', Popper's historicist picks the former, mainly because Platonic idealism is
among the traits of historicism - although it would be anathema to dialectical materialism9.
An essay may be nominally entitled 'What is Whitehall?' or
be essentially entitled 'What does
Whitehall do?', but it will tend to be the same essay. Whitehall is defined by
what it does. And what it does defines what it is. Marx's materialism stresses
the dialectic between form and essence, but this is too contradictory for
Popper.
Popper asks why revolutions are not as predictable as solar eclipses
- as if Marxism were as mechanistic as Newton's materialism. Astronomy is
introduced here because it is clearly a science in which there is virtually no
scope for experiment10. Popper then points out that social dynamics is very different.
He accepts that typhoons may be predicted, but although meterorolgy and
astronomy have to be excepted, he distinguishes between technological
predictions and what he calls historical prophecy11.
At this point he is able to say that prophecy based on
historical observations is unreliable because 'History shows that the social reality
is quite different12'. This is paradoxical because he relies on the evidence of
history to show that we cannot rely on the evidence of history.
Because the future must bring changes which are unforeseen,
it is clear to Popper that all social engineering is unscientific – and here he
includes economics. Popper says it is not the business of science to encourage
an activity, although it may discourage an activity. Surely the difference between
encouraging one action and discouraging its opposite is simply a matter of viewpoint.
Nevertheless this sophistry allows Popper to take exception with the activism
of Marx who stated that 'Thephilosophers have only interpreted the world in
various ways: the point, however, is to change it.' 13
Another 'all or nothing' argument brings forward the
specious paradox that on the one hand, the historicists want us to submit to
history, but on the other, to change it. This difficulty only arises because of
Popper's definition of what is science and what is historicism. He objects to
science having a moral dimension, and yet approves of Kant's idea that 'It is
wisdom that has the merit of selecting, from among the innumerable problems
which present themselves, those whose selection is important to mankind.'14
What is this selection if not a moral agenda?
The term 'social technology' is coined in order to be
divided into piecemeal and holistic technology. Although Popper favours the
piecemeal over the holistic, it can be seen to be yet another false dichotomy
given the impossibility of a revolutionary force achieving a truly holistic
vision from 'year zero' and the implausibility of a piecemeal reformer having
no vision of the holistic implications of his tinkering. Popper's imaginary historicist
favours total holism and stands convicted of Utopianism.
His discussion of social engineering in The Poverty of Historicism
may be an accurate assessment of Stalin's Soviet Union where an attempt at
holistic centralisation was stymied by an inability to centralise all the
necessary knowledge. Popper quotes Neils Bohr but you don't have to be a rocket
scientist to recognise that the loss of personal freedom in the Soviet Union served
to destroy knowledge. The Poverty of Historicism was first published in 1957
following the year that Soviet repression in Hungary had prompted thousands of
Marxists to resign from the CPGB. There were also plenty of Trotskyists who
would claim Stalin was no Marxist. But Popper can blame Marx's ideas although Marx's
future, like anybody's, was unforeseeable.
According to the preface, The Poverty of Historicism shows
that historicism is a poor method but does not refute it. Popper then gives, in
five steps, his refutation - which is simply that the future course of human
history cannot be predicted. Popper's historicism, however, is not Marx's
method.
In The Open Society and its Enemies he goes to town on
another of Marx's phrases as if it were the embodiment of Marx's method. In a
preface to 'A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy' Marx had
written 'It is not the consciousness of man that determines his
existence--rather, it is his social existence that determines his
consciousness'.15 In the context of the rest of Marx's work this epigram can be
seen to be a little one sided. Man's consciousness also, to some extent,
determines his existence. Marx can be seen to have emphasised one side of the equation
in opposition to idealism. Popper however goes bull-headed into the human nature
debate citing Mill, Hegel, and Rousseau in what he claims to be a development
of Marx's view in a debate against Mill.
When he looks at Marx's theory of the state, Popper infers
that politics is therefore impotent. But of course bourgeois politics are not
revolutionary - so of course they are impotent as far as goes the emancipation
of the working class, because its interests are antagonistic to those of the
ruling class. Popper, however chooses to find a paradox in the way Marxist
movements have stimulated an interest in politics16.
Here again, Popper's apparently academic arguments say
nothing further than his own dislike for revolution. He doesn't see the need,
given that the circumstances of the working class would appear to have improved
so much since Marx's time17. But Popper was writing in a time when trade
unionism in Britain and America was a force to be reckoned with, and the ruling
classes of those countries were competing with the USSR to deliver their own approximation
of a fair and just society.
The then prevailing consensus of liberalism in the west
permits Popper idealistically to call
for a state which will enforce social institutions 'for the protection of the
weak from the economically strong'18. Interventionism would seem to have done away
with the need for Marxism. It seems to Popper that the state can be run on
rational lines and make laws to limit exploitation, but he sees such reforms in
isolation from the level of organized working class power in his society during
the post war boom. As Marx would have it 'The struggle between class and class
is a political struggle.'
But Popper writes as if liberal democracy could guarantee
justice in 'the free world' and as if it were the necessary antidote to totalitarianism
of 'the communist world'. If Popper's life had been two years longer, he would
have heard the current debate about the possible abolition of Britain's
employment laws for small businesses. Popper accuses Marx of idealism here 19
but it is Popper that is being Utopian.
Popper's piecemeal positivist analysis misses the holistic picture.
When he enumerates Marx's 10 point plan 20 he cannot have imagined that 'a
heavy progressive or graduated income tax' would be reformed. He assumed that
inheritance of capital would be ended by death duties - since repealed.
Centralised communication and transport were taken for granted prior to the privatisation
of British Telecom, the railways, and the bus services. He doubted that an
increase in the number of factories would be a good idea, but subsequent
decades saw the closure of British industries - a bad idea. The provision of
free education for all is under ever more serious threat in 1990's Britain, and
the employment of child labour is on the increase - especially in South America
and Asia. Where Popper claims Marx to be a bad guide to the future 21he shows
himself to be worse, and with a much shorter shelf life.
It may be true that the future holds more options than
simply more capitalism or some kind of socialism. It depends how you define
your terms. The rise of Islam occasionally looks as if it threatens a new kind
of feudalism. But it is Marx who said that 'history cannot be planned on
paper'22 and the task remains for science to interpret new data and revise the
theory appropriately. Popper was simply serving the short term interest of his
class by portraying Marx as a historicist.
When Popper gloats over Marx's 'wrong' assumption that
capitalism would lead to an increase of wealth and misery 23 he was again speaking
too soon - like a fly on the Mona Lisa he seems too close to his own era to see
the full picture. There is ample empirical evidence to show the tendency of revolutionized
production to cast workers into unemployment. Such evidence is falsifiable in
the positivist sense, and it is demonstrably unfalsified sufficient to satisfy
a positivist. Even bourgeois economists such as Hutton can see the social
problems that have arisen from over accumulation of wealth by certain sections
of the capital class in recent decades24.
Whether or not capitalism is succeeded by socialism must to
some extent depend on whether the working class will find the consciousness to
bring it about. Waiting for an capitalism to come to an end is quite rightly
parodied by Popper's anecdote of the doctor - 'if the patient did not die, then
it was not yet the "fatal malady"'. But it is surely more ridiculous,
and less scientific, to propose that capitalism can live forever25.
Popper speaks for his class and his generation when he
opposes violent revolution. He sees no reason why a compromise is not possible
between capital and labour and he therefore sees Marx's 'prophecy' is
untenable26. From here it is easy for him to complain that a Marxist revolution
would do away with liberal democracy. He can point to some disagreements
between comrades in the United States and then invoke the Oedipus Effect to
blame Marxism for the apparent self proving hypothesis that armed insurrection
is inevitable27.
In a seven point manifesto for liberal democracy, Popper
imagines that legislative reform has a future independent of any social force
to drive it28. The flipside of this idealism is his phobic hatred of socialism
which is coloured by his knowledge of the Soviet Union - as if a socialist
revolution in an advanced capitalist country could take such a backward form.
This again demonstrates the problems of taking a piecemeal view of the world while
making certain assumptions about the future on the basis of the past - a sin he
would happily ascribe to so-called historicist Marxists.
A similar oversimplification allows Popper to blame German communists
for the phenomenon of Hitler's Nazi Party. He quotes Einstein's praise for a
section of the German church29 while elsewhere remaining at odds with
Einstein's famous proposition that everything is connected to everything else.
In regard to 'the tendency towards centralisation of capital
in fewer and fewer hands', Popper admits, 'Undoubtedly, there is a tendency in
that direction, and we may grant that under an unrestrained capitalist system
there are few counteracting forces. Not much can be said against this part of
Marx's analysis as a description of an unrestrained capitalism. But considered
as a prophecy, it is less tenable. For we now know that there are many means by
which legislation can intervene.' Here again Popper reveals that all he has to
offer the working class in place of Marxism is a naive faith in continuing
reforms without any consistently interested social force having the will to
deliver them.
When Popper gets around to looking at the labour theory of
value, he makes the common error of assuming that value equals price whereas
commodities generally change hands for a sum greater or less than their
value30. Of course workers who are paid less than their value have difficulty
reproducing their labour. Popper would have it that labour's value is
subsistence level whereas the reproduction of skilled labour in a developed
capitalist country demands tickets to the cup final and new trainers for the kids.
How else could the employer expect any continuity in his labour force?
Supply and demand may suffice to explain prices, but surplus
value remains the source of profit, even if it suits Popper and other
pragmatists to claim that value is a metaphysical concept. If the supply of
labour outstrips local demand there is simply a 'surplus population'31. Is he
leaving social engineering to Adam Smith's invisible hand? Popper does not appear embarassed to be
caught looking down the wrong end of the telescope as if society must serve
production rather than the other way round.
Shorter working hours and improved standards of living are regarded
by Popper as permanent gains, whereas the empirical evidence shows that they
only last until new technology permits the de-skilling of jobs, or the export
of capital enables the employer to recruit workers in developing countries
where labour reproduction costs are lower.
In his ivory tower, Popper can claim value to be a vestige of a Platonic
essence.32
Left with a doctrine of surplus population and the law of
supply and demand it is easy for Popper to claim that Marx's prophesy of greater
misery is proven false is refuted by the facts. He retains his notion of an
impartial state, presumes a continued recognition of collective bargaining, and
prophesies (from historical data?) that trade unions will continue to prevent
the existence of a reserve army of labour from forcing wages down. 'And this
means that the asumptions on which Marx's analysis is based must disappear.'33
Popper has no problem with accepting that capitalism goes
through cycles of boom and bust 'But I wish to assert most emphatically that
the belief that it is impossible to abolish unemployment by piecemeal measures
is on the same plane of dogmatism as the numerous physical proofs (offered by
men who lived even later than Marx) that the problems of aviation would always
remain insoluble.'34 This is a remarkable assertion, and given the trend of the
last four decades we might suppose that if state intervention were ever going
to come to the aid, it should have kicked in before UK nemployment reached 3 million. Popper insists
that Marx's theories were only true at a time of unrestrained capitalism but,
in a global recession, a state which intervenes with Swedish-style counter
cycle policy has problems retaining investment, let alone keeping up its
commitment to the provision of unemployment insurance. It was the Popperian Chancellor,
Dennis Healey, who had to explain himself to the IMF, without measures for full
employment even being on the agenda.
Despite his pretension for intellectual rigour, Popper's economics is rooted in the clouds. Given the
tendency for the rate of profit to fall, he admits that 'Those capitalists who speculate
on the assumption of a constant or rising rate of profit may get into trouble;
and things such as these may indeed contribute to the trade cycle, accentuating
the depression. But this has little to do with the sweeping consequences which
Marx prophesied.' This hardly resembles a scientific appreciation of the
behaviour of international capital.35 It is little more than wishful thinking.
Conclusion Marx has been dead for 113 years: Popper for
nearly two. Marx had an idiosyncratic definition of history that remains influential
today. Popper and a circle of Popperian positivists shared a view of science
which is already obscure.
In a mere half century Popper's confident refutation already
has a threadbare parochial look. His post war optimism appears to lack a
material base. His faith in intervention is as quaint as a Bakelite wireless.
Despite the fall of the USSR, and despite the organised working class being in
an appalling condition, anybody persuaded away from Marxism by Popper, was
never really a Marxist in the first place.
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