Meditations on Karl
Popper
Michael A. Cramer,
Ph.D.
September 20, 2017.
In a typical FaceBook
fight with Robert Esteves, in which we were discussing whether or not it was appropriate
to for the New Yorker magazine, to disinvite Steve Bannon from it’s ideas
conference this fall, we naturally got into a discussion of Popper’s Paradox of
Tollerence. This led me to go back and read Popper in detail. I’d read
excerpts, but mostly those centering around the paradox itself. What I
discovered shocked me, so I decided I’d have to write it up. Below is a
discussion of Popper’s work. All references are to the following edition:
Popper, K. The
open society and its enemies, Volume 1: The spell of Plato. London. Geroge
Routledge & Sons, 1945. Reprinted 1947.
The principle is introduced
in note 6 to chapter 5, in a discussion of the principles of humanitarian and equalitarian
rule in which Popper declares the first principle to be, “Tolerance towards all
who are not intolerant and who do not propagate intolerance.” (205) This
clearly implies that we should not tolerate the intolerant. The full
description of the paradox comes in a discussion of three paradoxes, the other
two being the paradox of freedom (too
much freedom can lead to the loss of freedom) and the paradox of democracy (the demos could elect a tyrant). The full
description of the paradox of tolerance
reads as follows:
Less well known 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 even to suppress them, 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
anything as deceptive as rational argument, and teach them to answer arguments
by the use of their fists. 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, exactly as we should
consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping ; or as we should consider
incitement to the revival of the slave trade. (226)
“The movement preaching intolerance
places itself outside the law” is the clearest statement of the principle in
this note. If incitements to intolerance and persecutions are criminal, then in
Popper’s formulation the very existence of New-Nazi groups, or the KKK, should
be illegal, and they should have no public forum. This is the bases for laws in
Europe banning NAZI symbols and hate speech, which go far beyond those we have
in the U.S. Popper died in 1994, so he had time to comment on the ACLU’s
arguments in Skokie. I wonder what he would say. (an internet search is useless
since, by some odd coincidence, Popper’s American publisher is headquartered in
Skokie).
The paragraph to which the
note refers is this one:
Apart from these empirical arguments against the general
theory of sovereignty, there is also a kind of logical argument which can be
used to show the inconsistency of any of the particular forms of the theory of
sovereignty ; more precisely, the logical argument can be given different but
analogous forms to combat the theory that the wisest should rule, or else the
theories that the ruler should be the best, or the law, or the majority, etc.
One particular form of this logical argument that is directed against a too
naive version of liberalism, of democracy, and of the principle that the
majority should rule, is somewhat similar to the well-known ' paradox of freedom
'. It has been used first, and with success, by Plato. In his criticism of
democracy, and in his story of the rise of the tyrant, Plato raises implicitly
the following question : What if it is the will of the people that they should
not rule, but a tyrant instead ? The free man, Plato suggests, may exercise his
absolute freedom, first by defying the laws and ultimately by defying freedom
itself, and by clamouring for a tyrant 4 . This is not just a
far-fetched possibility ; it has happened a number of times ; and every time it
happens, it puts those democrats who adopt the principle of majority rule or a
similar form of the principle of sovereignty as the ultimate basis of their
political creed in a hopeless intellectual position. On the one hand, their principle
induces them to oppose any but the majority rule, and therefore the new tyranny
; on the other hand, the same principle induces them to accept any decision of
the majority, and thus the rule of the new tyrant. The inconsistency of their
theory must, of course, paralyse their actions.5 We democrats who
demand the institutional control of the rulers by the public, including the
right of dismissing the government by majority vote, must therefore base these
demands upon better grounds than a self-contradictory theory of sovereignty.
(And, indeed, it is not difficult to formulate a consistent theory of
democratic control.)” (108-9) (note 5 simply states that further remarks are to
be found in Chapter 19).
This is a fascinating statement,
since it brings us full circle to President Trump. He has made no attempt to
hide is authoritarian tendencies and desires—his love of strong leaders, his
attacks on a free press and the judiciary, his suggestion that the rule of law
is inconvenient, his suggestion that maybe one day the US will have a president
for life—the list is well known and seemingly endless. He is a textbook tyrant
and, like others, he was elected by the people in the paradox Plato identified
and Popper discusses here. He
notes that Plato was responding to a real crisis—the rise of an open society
and the anxiety that created. He notes that superstition and fear, time and
again, will lead people to seek out an irrational, closed society because it
feels safer, they will long to return to an idealized time of greatness. This
was Plato’s goal with the republic. However, as Popper points out, Plato’s fear
of tyranny (whether of the masses or the dictator) leads him to another form of
tyranny. Popper’s solution is not to flee from the open society but to
embrace it. Knowing full well that all forms of sovereignty are fallible, Popper
throws in with Democracy as by far the best.
The
lesson which we thus should learn from Plato is the exact opposite of what he
tries to teach us. It is a lesson which must not be forgotten. Excellent as
Plato's sociological diagnosis was, his own development of it proves that the
therapy he recommended is worse than the evil he tried to combat. Arresting
political change is not the remedy ; it cannot bring happiness. We can never return
to the alleged innocence and beauty of the closed society. (176)
But there is
another way that Delving into Popper has revealed something about the Trump
administration. I had known from reading excerpts of Popper that Volume I of The open society and its enemies was primarily
a refutation of Plato’s Republic,
which Popper considers to be the first major text advocating totalitarianism.
Popper’s work is well known to be an attack on both left-wing totalitarianism
(Socialism) and right-wing totalitarianism (Fascism). (if you, erroneously,
consider them to be the same thing it doesn’t matter in this case—Popper’s work
repudiates totalitarianism, not just its various forms). However, what I never
realized until reading further, was that it is also a full-throated repudiation
of Thucydides. He sees Thucydides
and Plato as having worked in concert to undermine Athenian democracy. Popper writes:
Much evidence of this development can be found in
Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, or rather, of the two great wars
of 431-421 and 419-403 B.C., between Athenian democracy and the arrested
oligarchic tribalism of Sparta. When reading Thucydides we must never forget
that his heart was not with Athens, his native city. Although he apparently did
not belong to the extreme wing of the Athenian oligarchic clubs who conspired
throughout the war with the enemy, he was certainly a member of the oligarchic
party, and a friend neither of the Athenian people, the demos, who had exiled
him, nor of its imperialist policy. (155)
Like Plato, Thucydides saw democracy as the thing that had led to Athens’
defeat in the Peloponnesian War. “The history of the Peloponnesian war and the fall of Athens.”
He writes “is still often told, under the influence of Thucydides' authority,
in such a way that the defeat of Athens appears as the ultimate proof of the
dangerous weaknesses of the democratic system.” (168). This is of course, a travesty
in Popper’s eyes. He believes that, by clinging to Plato’s Republic and Thucydides'
history, modern thinkers and philosophers, whether inadvertently or
intentionally, re-inscribe the what Popper calls the “closed society”—tribal, tyrannical,
oligarchic, totalitarian, whether ruled by a Plutocracy, a Dictator, or the
educated elite.
This chapter of Popper’s book
jolted me, because it reminded me of an article I’d read in Politico in 2017, titled
“Why the White House is reading Greek history: The Trump team is obsessing over
Thucydides, author of a seminal tract on war.”
(available from
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/21/why-the-white-house-is-reading-greek-history-215287
) In it the author, Michael Crowley, writes about how several people within the
Trump administration, particularly Matis and (at the time) Bannon and
McMasters, were keen students of Thucydides, and looked at the U.S.
relationship with China through the prism of the Peloponnesian war.
Thucydides is especially
beloved by the two most influential figures on Trump’s foreign policy team.
National security adviser H.R. McMaster has called Thucydides’ work an
“essential” military text, taught it to students and quoted from it in speeches
and op-eds. Defense Secretary James Mattis is also fluent in Thucydides’ work:
“If you say to him, ‘OK, how about the Melian Dialogue?’ he could tell you
exactly what it is,” Allison says—referring to one particularly famous passage.
When former Defense Secretary William Cohen introduced him at his confirmation
hearing, Cohen said Mattis was likely the only person present “who can hear the
words ‘Thucydides Trap’ and not have to go to Wikipedia to find out what it
means.”
The article goes on to note
…another Peloponnesian War
aficionado can be found in the office of chief strategist Steve Bannon. A
history buff fascinated with grand conflict, Bannon once even used “Sparta”—one
of the most militarized societies history has known—as a computer password.
(“He talked a lot about Sparta,” his former Hollywood writing partner,
Julia Jones, told The Daily Beast. An unnamed former colleague recalled for the New Yorker Bannon’s
“long diatribes” about the Peloponnesian War.)
This I found to be incredible. The article made clear that
the architects of Trump’s foreign policy themselves embraced the very logic
that Popper so eloquently disputes. The Politico article makes clear that, not
only Bannon, but the Trump team in general embrace the closed society of Sparta
over the open society of Athens. They buy into the myth Popper identifies—that efete,
humanistic, democratic Athens was no match for the authoritarian, austere and
war-like Sparta; that the open society should be abandoned for the closed one.
We’ve seen it in Bannon’s writings, and heard it in Trump’s speeches, and we’ve
heard it’s rebuttal among democrat’s and foreign leaders, but I did not expect
to find it distilled to its essence in discussions of a 2,500 year old war
between Athens and Sparta. It turns out that, in addition to being an argument in favor of an open society, Popper’s book is also an explicit condemnation of
Trumpism.
