What does user think of Karl Popper? Specifically, his critique of "utopian" social engineering (AKA socialism, anarchism, fascism too) as something that always results in "closed societies" and thus totalitarianism due to the control needed to implement said changes. He also said that these attempts all necessarily ended in failure because the planners would never be able to predict the exact kind of engineering that was needed and the reactions to their actions.
What about his argument that piecemeal reform is the only truly scientific method for arriving at the optimal social arrangement?
As someone who considers themself a scientist before all else, I am having trouble reconciling my socialism after recent readings.
All I know is that the guy likes lots of falsifications in his science. I occassionally hear about him but I have no grip on his actual intellectual contributions
In all seriousness you can use a market-esque model to distribute consumer goods in a planned economy. All a corporation does is respond to orders from retailers, who make orders based on market research and data. Stores under socialism could do the same thing, essentially translating the market as a distribution mechanism in a planned economy. You could even have competition, attaching R&D departments to various factories/producers and rewarding them for creating more popular consumer goods. As long as profit isn't made on the goods themselves (the sale of them is just used to fund the operation of the factories) then you still have an economy based on utility and production for use.
Xavier Howard
Small piecemeal experiments building the slightest amount possible upon past research so as to isolate the question being asked are indeed the bread and butter of scientific inquiry and theory refinement. However, sometimes there are questions that cannot be answered by sticking so rigidly within the boundaries of established practice. Attacking the systemic root of capitalism's contradictions is one such experiment that cannot be undertaken in any piecemeal fashion. And, in fact, the last 50 years have shown us that if you don't attempt to do so the force that is capitalism will work to undermine all the other experimental piecemeal reforms of liberal democracy.
Jose Campbell
There isn't anyone on the planet more naive than the types who claim their political philosophy is peaceful and genuinely believes it. Every breath any kind of being takes is an apology for violence, and all apologies for capitalism are inevitably also apologies for American statism. The capitalist MoP was built on the corpses of all who dared to resist it, it was constructed by a class to be used against all other classes. So to is the case for us.
If such shallow apologies for Western democracy/totalitarianism can actually shake your faith in socialism I'd suggest you drop politics forever so as to save our movement any future embarrassment.
The best single world to describe this argument is stale. Endlessly-parroted yet rarely having any real content. The centralization of property into state ownership has already shown itself to be the most effective and egalitarian form of economy in the real world. The Keynesian West's abysmal failure to reach anything on the level of the Soviet worker's high opinion of their economy is under-reported but still true, and no degree of Russian bureaucratism will change that.
Thomas Wood
lol, is that why it bred corruption and then ate itself? Is that why all the new oligarchs that emerged out of its collapse were previously state officials?
Gavin Garcia
Kudos. Mainly for explaining it so well, I had the same thoughts but I can't write for shit.
Bentley Wilson
Popper was mostly a moron. Falsification isn't a good criterion for the validity of a scientific theory, if it was then we should dump most of quantum physics and evolution (yes I know Karl Popper eventually said he appreciated evolution - it still can't be falsified in the sense he advocated for). Also, his "rationality principle" was more or less
Keep in mind, Popper was good friends with Mises and Hayek - who were more or less jokes. He was an ideologue and apologist when it came to politics, and inadequate when it came to philosophy.
Joseph Green
*more or less victim to the same faults he accused dialectical materialism of succumbing to.
Juan Baker
Did Popper actually critique anarchism? I thought he was one of Chomsky's favorite philosophers.
Jack Young
Here are my enlightening comments based on skimming an article.
First of all, Popper was an Austrian exile. Anyone of those is bound to have quite an inherent bias towards anything Utopian.
He appearently Plato and his holism, essential-ism and historicism. I don't think I necessarily disagree with him too much here.
By skimming the summary of his politics in the third post I didn't see too much of it. Lots of his arguments against totalitarianism seem perfectly reasonable from the stand point someone slightly libertarian
Perhaps OP is rather questioning his belief in totalitarian communism and the dictatorship of the proletariat? Also we're not fascist sheep, continually questioning your own ideology is healthy comrade
good comment, I agree
Lucas Phillips
Let's pretend this was ironic
Brandon Bennett
Another braindead post. I've been reminded of the USSR's failure hundreds of times, you have added nothing that countless others before you haven't said already. The breakup of the USSR doesn't make your defense of Americanism any more meaningful. It won't change the fact that the Russian Revolution itself was an imperfect attempt of the proletariat to undo the damage made by people like yourself.
There isn't anything else I need to address as you haven't even attempted to explain why economic planning is inefficient or necessarily leads to aristocracy. As far as I can tell you seem incapable of anything more than mindlessly repeating the standard pro-Western Cold War line.
Alexander Howard
Bump
Owen Turner
I sometimes wonder if George Soros is legit autistic and misinterpreted Popper's work, and even more so Hegel's.
Jacob Adams
Why do you say that?
Camden Green
Just stay away from socialism a bit and try getting into other ideologies. Social democracy and classical liberalism should be of interest to you as of now.
Jack Long
Popper was a fucking idiot. I mean his thoughts are at an elementary level OK but the fact that he misvalued Marx, Freud and Darwin, which is in my POV the most effectfull theories in everyday human life is a single and clear statement that portrais how much of a fuck up he is.
Camden Reyes
How did he "misvalue" Darwin?
Jack Perez
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Jace Rogers
Communists are spooked by reformism because they want "to see change in muh lifetimes." That is why so many dustbins wanted Hillary to win.
Julian Myers
The best Liberal.
Still a Liberal, though.
Matthew Bell
Well too bad reals, are indeed, of far more import than any such generic feeling about what theories are "important".
inb4:
Sebastian Phillips
Huge hypocrite. He founded the Mont Perelin Society with, among others, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises. Hayek and Mises were explicitly anti-empirical economists, the ultimate pseudoscientists according to Popper's own philosophy of science, yet he never criticized them. He was also quite silent regarding Friedman & Hayek's support for authoritarian capitalist regimes.
His argument for piecemeal reform is invalidated by the hegemony of the established mode of production- the small reforms made in a better direction tend to be crushed if they oppose ruling interests. See the history of social pollicies in the US and their decline for a clear example. Essentially, Popper fails to realize that we already live in a closed society, and the only thing that can open our society is the possibility of revolution.
Ryder Rivera
Popper is a buffoon, I know of few people less deserving of the title of philosopher. He couldn't even explain Marxism to you if he tried
Jacob Sullivan
Hayek and Mises were not pseudo scientists, they just argued science couldn't be applied to economics (instead of pretending that they were doing science like the case for Freud was). You are right their ideas don't get along well with Popper's, but I that doesn't mean he's being an hypocrite.
Right, it's a shame their methodology was absolute dogshit. It's not like "purposeful human action by those who are not mentally ill" is apriori, it's aposteriori and can only be deduced as an axiom by reference to vast amounts of empirical evidence in order to define: a what unconscious behaviour is. and b. what constitutes an action as purposeful in the first place. Mises's entire premise for praxeology fails from the outset, and then he goes on to write thousands of pages of drivel based on it.
Michael Lopez
Wow, didn't know that about the guy.
Gabriel Howard
Do you even know who Strauss is?
Daniel Taylor
Wow, it's almost as if politics aren't a fucking science to begin with.
Popper was a hack and everyone knows it.
Jace Richardson
Can't have it both ways. It's either the total organizing principle of society as in DiaMat/Bordigism/etc. or it's just one explanatory/descriptive framework subject to interpretation and supplementary to others that cannot and should not be elevated to State Worldview
Samuel Thompson
Did I fucking say otherwise?
William Roberts
He's Edmund Burke for liberals
Jeremiah Scott
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Cooper Ramirez
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Nolan Hill
Sure, I was only pointing out where the poster above was wrong.
Xavier Turner
Some of quantum physics has indeed been criticized as philosophical in recent years. Not sure why you attack evolution though.
Dominic Evans
His argument was that it was tautological, and it's not really a bad argument, though not technically correct from my understanding. People are mad about it because creationists make the same argument.
Jace Flores
Feels like a strawman but I can't articulate a clear criticism. Evolution is the theory underpinning gradual change of organisms over time. It is a theory that is successfully tested every time a microbe develops resistance due to incomplete (fully lethal) application of antibiotics or failure to double dose.
