[Vision2020] The Philosopher's Zone: Karl Popper and the Logic of the Market

[Ted Moffett]

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2008/2397055.htm#transcript

Karl Popper and the logic of the market

Karl Popper was one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century
and a great advocate of scientific rationality, but what happened when he
turned his attention to the more disorderly world of politics and economics?
This week, we look at Popper and the free market.
 Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot
guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and
occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

*Alan Saunders: *Hello, and welcome to *The Philosopher's Zone*; I'm Alan
Saunders.

This week, we turn to the political thought of one of the greatest
philosopher's of the 20th century, Karl Popper. Born in Vienna in 1902, died
in London in 1944, Popper was renowned for his contribution to the
philosophy of science. But while working in New Zealand during World War II,
he produced a great work on political philosophy, *The Open Society and its
Enemies*.

Well, *After the Open Society - Selected Social and Political Writings* is
the title of a new collection of Popper's work from the period after the
publication of this book. The joint editor is Jeremy Shearmur, Reader in
Philosophy at the Australian National University and for eight years,
Popper's Research Assistant.

*Jeremy Shearmur: *As a very young man, he became a Marxist, but he worked
as a volunteer in the headquarters of the Austrian Communist Party, so he
was at that point, a kind of down-the-line Communist. He has often recounted
that he was led to a kind of crisis of confidence when a demonstration that
they'd organised led to the deaths of some working people, and this then led
Popper to start to worry about the claims of Marxism to scientific status
and it eventually led to his work on the philosophy of science, although the
path has been argued recently with some textual evidence, not to be quite as
clear-cut as Popper has suggested in some of his own memoirs.

He remained a Socialist and he worked in the Social Democrat Party's
Education outfit, the Kinderfreunder. He was impressed by the high-minded
character of this and was very dedicated to it, but in later reflections on
it, he thought that it had a somewhat totalitarian character to the
organisation. He was also concerned about problems concerning the influence
of the Marxism in the Social Democrat party on its political tactics, and in
fact you get a certain amount of this coming through in his *The Open
Society*. He's worried about the way in which the background entertaining of
the possibility of violent revolution and disparagement of formal democracy
and so on, really that meant that when people on the right moved against
democracy and were critical of it, and were willing to have recourse to
violence, it was very difficult for the Social Democrats to say anything
much back. And I think he was also very worried about the historicist views
that they had about Fascism, I mean this notion really that Fascism was
possibly the last death throes of Capitalism, that in a way it could be seen
as heralding positive developments and all of this, he felt, meant that the
Social Democrats really couldn't be an effective opposition to the clerical
Fascists, and then subsequently to the Nazis. At the same time I think that
he felt that these were the only possibility, I mean there just weren't
other political possibilities.

In terms of his concerns about socialism, these I think really came about by
way of a sort of dual concern relating to bureaucracy. He had I think, a
quite unfortunate experience when he was involved in the supervising of some
kids; someone had fell off a piece of apparatus that he'd been complaining
about, and he was then going to get the blame for this, and I think that he
was very struck that one had a rather wooden approach and an unyielding
approach on the part of the bureaucracy, but I think he also then became
much more genuinely concerned about the extent to which socialism would be
likely to lead to bureaucracy, and it just didn't seem to him that there was
any very effective response to this on the part of socialists of the day, or
his socialist colleagues.

When he was writing his *The Open Society*, it's rather difficult to tell
where he stood. But I think you can say a number of things. I mean he
remained morally sympathetic with Marxist criticism of capitalism, but he
thought at the same time that the character of capitalism had changed since
Marx wrote, and in ways that clearly indicated that reform was possible. He
was critical of what he took to be the details of Marxist theory, and as far
as I know, and in some ways rather oddly, I don't think any Marxist has
engaged in detail with the rather detailed criticism of Marxist ideas that
he offers in his *The Open Society*.

*Alan Saunders: *We should say, by the way, that *The Open Society* is
considerably later than Popper's formative years; he's writing in the '40s,
during the War, in New Zealand.

*Jeremy Shearmur: *Yes, that's right. That's right. But I think that in
order to get a picture of where he's going in this, I mean my understanding
of the situation was really the following, but he had these really quite
dramatic experiences when he was young. He was then involved in this
education movement, he seems gradually to become critical of the Social
Democratic party, but for example when immediately after the Second World
War, he's corresponding with Carnap, Carnap, the Vienna Circle -

*Alan Saunders: *This is Rudolf Carnap the great German philosopher, yes.

*Jeremy Shearmur: *Yes, that's right. Well Carnap himself had known Popper
in Vienna. He was a Socialist, took Popper to be a Socialist, and was really
kind of quite interested to see whether Popper was still a Socialist, and in
fact in the course of the correspondence he asked Popper about this
directly. I think though that you really don't get much writing on Popper's
part about political matters until he gets to New Zealand. I mean he really
was concerned with issues in Vienna, in issues in psychology; he became very
interested in philosophical issues coming out of this, and in issues to do
with physics and probability. And it was really the opportunity to have to
teach moral and political philosophy in New Zealand but also to be a kind of
spectator to the war, got him into writing *The Open Society* as part of his
war work.

There is though one other quite interesting twist, and that is that one
chapter of *The Open Society* offers a critique of Plato's ideas about
leadership, but it turns out that this was all actually about Leonard
Nelson, and Nelson was a kind of Kantian philosopher who'd been responsible
for reviving the ideas of the 19th century philosopher Fries, and this had
had an important impact on Popper's epistemology. In his *Logic of
Scientific Discovery* he talks about Freis's trilemma and so on, and there
was also in Nelson political work, and in this, he really developed a kind
of updating of Plato as a critique of contemporary democracy, and he really
said, 'Look, if you're interested in justice, then you can't be a democrat,
because if you're a democrat, you're committed to going along with whatever
it is the majority of the population favour.

So Nelson himself favoured the idea there should be set up an organisation
which promoted, on the basis of internal dedication to the furthering of its
ideals, and he gave as parallels to this, the Catholic Church or the Army.
And Nelson actually set up such an organisation himself and a good friend of
Popper's, Julius Croft was a member of this, and there was a formal attempt
to recruit Popper into this and his critical reflections on leadership in
the *The Open Society* were actually his repudiation of this Nelsonian
approach to democracy.

But these kinds of things were going on but it's really in the *The Open
Society* where Popper's ideas come out, and I think one can see in many
respects, and this is something that Malachi Hacohen has brought out, the
degree to which what's going on in *The Open Society* is in many ways
critical reflection on various of the things that have been happening in
inter-war Vienna.

*Alan Saunders: *Malachi Hacohen of course is the author of a biographer of
Popper, or a biography of the first half of Popper's life, which was the
most interesting half in many respects. One of the things that Hacohen talks
about is the fact that Popper was Jewish. I mean he didn't think of himself
as Jewish, but the Nazis would certainly have thought of him as Jewish, and
as a lot of assimilated Jews did in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he admired
the Empire because the alternative to the Empire was ethnic nationalism,
which was obviously going to be bad news if you were Jewish. To what extent
do you think his being a Jewish citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire feeds
into his political thought?

*Jeremy Shearmur: *That is a very interesting question. I mean first of all,
I think Popper didn't identify himself as Jewish, and indeed I recall (I'm
just trying to think if he's written this or if it's something that he said)
but he was in a way affronted by the fact that a Jewish identity was in a
way imposed upon him as part of the Nazis. Popper clearly identified with
the anti-nationalism of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and at the same time, I
think it also has to be said that in political terms, he was very much a
kind of progressive reformer, rather than someone who would have any
particular attachment to empires or the kind of flummery which went with the
thing. I think that Hacohen in his treatment is understandably interested in
the Jewish angles in Popper's thought. I mean it would be wrong to say that
he was anti-Semitic; certainly he was quite critical of Israel. He was I
think not someone who responded particularly well to elements of Jewish
identity.

*Alan Saunders: *Let's look at another aspect of his political thought,
which is his relationship to his philosophy of science. Now his view of the
philosophy of science is all about criticism, it's about testing ideas, it's
about critical feedback. Does this relate to his philosophy of politics?

*Jeremy Shearmur: *Yes. I think it plays a really important point. I mean
there are two issues I think that are particularly important here. First of
all, Popper's general fallibilism means that from his perspective, nobody,
no expert, is beyond criticism and then more particularly, Popper stresses
very much the significance of the unintended consequences of human action.
His own politics emphasises really the State as playing quite an active role
in being engaged in various kinds of problem solving, but he sees this as
typically giving rise to unintended consequences and really looks to the
significance of criticism in principle from any citizen as being valuable
and as being important in identifying and helping to correct these sorts of
mistakes. He talked about the theme of the rational unity of mankind,
rationality for Popper in fact becomes in many ways identified with
criticism, and what this means is that he's keen on the notion that anyone
should be able to point out where things are going wrong, where things are
leading to problems which hadn't been expected.

*Alan Saunders: *Let's turn now to Republicanism. Republicanism, which means
more than just being against monarchs, as being big in political theory over
the past couple of decades, but what would it have meant to Popper?

*Jeremy Shearmur: *Well I don't think that Popper talked about Republicanism
as such, but there is a rather distinctive theme in his work, namely, that
in his view, someone wouldn't be free if their freedom just depended on the
good will of others, and he talks about even if you live in a society of
angels, you wouldn't really be free unless your freedom was guaranteed by
the law. And this relates back in Popper's work to the theme of so-called
protectionism in his *Open Society*, in which he emphasises on the one side,
various kinds of concerns that liberals have often had, but also the notion
of people's needing to be protected against economic exploitation, and he
sees really the State, and the State operating through a system of the Rule
of Law, as having to play a key role in this.

*Alan Saunders: *What about Popper's relationship to conservatism? You
mention the role of the law in moderating the market and the Common Law is a
very significant feature of English conservative thought. Can we call Popper
a conservative?

*Jeremy Shearmur: *I wouldn't think so. In *The Open Society* he's very
critical of aspects of conservatism, of ideas about the superiority of
rulers, defensive privilege and so on. And there's certain respects in which
they're echoes in his treatment of both Heroclytus and Plato of a kind of
Marxist reading where one sort of exposes this grand thought as politically
unprogressive. I think in certain respects change a bit, in part because
Popper's stress on fallibility and humanitarianism means really that for him
while he's passionately concerned with reform, he is very critical of
wholesale attempts to re-cast society on the basis of a certain kind of
ideal, and I think Popper's view is Well there are problems really with
trying to reform society in the light of an ideal, just on the grounds that
you may not have got the ideal quite right or as things change over time you
might find that things that had looked attractive, don't now look quite as
attractive, and so on.

So he emphasises in his own approach very strongly, the importance of making
reforms on the basis of what there can be agreement, is a problem or defect
about society. And this means that while in many respects Popper could be
seen as lined up with a kind of humanitarian enlightenment reformist, he's
critical of what he thinks is the epistemological over-optimism that is
characteristic of the enlightenment.

In addition, he's written at various points particularly after *The Open
Society*, on tradition. He got on to this in response to Oakeshott, and he
recognises the significance of tradition, he says there are certain
parallels between the role that tradition plays in politics and that myth
plays in relation to science and this when it's taken on board, then
actually means that one has to be a little less radical I think, than Popper
was initially.

Final twist on this, and that's the following: Popper in response I think
particularly to the New Left, while he still emphasised reform, also was
critical of what he felt was a disparagement of what had been positively
achieved in Western-style societies. And in this respect, you might say oh
he then kind of lines up on the conservative side, as opposed to the
radicalism of the New Left, but at the same time, and there's much that
stays unchanged in Popper, and one even finds for example in I think 1974,
he's writing to his old friend Bryan Magee, when he became an MP, suggesting
that possibly the government should take a 55% control over all companies.
So there are quite a lot of sort of unconservative things in Popper, but
it's also the case that his own fallibilism and his own concern with
operating in a piecemeal manner, and the later stress on tradition, makes
him share for example, certain things in common with the kind of non-market
side of Friedrich Hayek.

*Alan Saunders: *Rudolf Carnap, who today is probably thought of as a
philosopher of science, was a Socialist, as indeed were many members of the
Vienna Circle. What did Popper have to say to Carnap about his own views on
Socialism?

*Jeremy Shearmur: *This really is very interesting, because Popper and
Carnap had corresponded while Popper was in New Zealand. Some of this was
about logic, and Popper gave Carnap detailed critical responses to some of
Carnap's developing work. But they also got round to social topics, and in
the end, Carnap asked Popper, Well you're all in favour of the rapprochement
between non-totalitarian socialists and liberals, but which are you? And
Popper really says, Well I've come to the view that to discuss politics in
terms of just straightforward ideologies of this sort really isn't any good.
He says, Well look, I agree with Socialists that there is need for much
greater equalisation of incomes, that we need bold but critical
experimentation in politics that this could include the socialisation of the
means of production, but only if the dangers of this are understood and met,
and that it isn't seen as a cure-all.

He thinks that certain business interests may interfere in a dangerous way
with politics and should be controlled if necessary by socialisation and
also that monopolies should be broken up or socialised, but, he wanted to
say, there isn't a cure-all in politics. Under Socialism there could be
bigger differences in income and worse exploitation, more interference by
the powerful, and more control of thought, and what he really wanted to say
was, Look, if you're going to advocate Socialism, in the sense that the
socialisation means of production, you need to have solutions to some of
these problems, rather than just thinking that it'll work automatically.

And as an alternative to it, he favoured that people should have a
guaranteed income out of taxes. So at that point, he was really pretty
radical. Although differentiating between himself and Socialism, later on I
think he became to the conclusion that there were problems about equality
and liberty and how these things fit together and if he has to choose, he
wants to choose liberty, but certainly at this point, while he wouldn't have
counted himself a Socialist, he could make a lot of gestures in that
direction.

*Alan Saunders: *So you couldn't say that like his friend Friedrich von
Hayek he was an apostle of the free market?

*Jeremy Shearmur: *No. No. Popper stressed the significance of markets, but
I think that he simply didn't have the kind of confidence in markets as a
system, that really inspires Hayek's work. And for Popper, you need a set of
institutions where the government protects people's liberties, but also
secures them against economic exploitation, but the main themes in Popper's
politics, then become a program of piecemeal experimental policy conducted
by government, with critical feedback from citizens. What this meant though
was, that Popper coming from this direction, developed a critique of ideals
about social planning, which were common both to the right and the left at
the time at which he was writing his *Open Society*, and oddly, he made a
good number of criticisms which quite paralleled those which Hayek was
making, coming from a very different direction in Hayek's *Road to Serfdom*.
And both of them were quite interestingly sort of each thought of them as a
possible, slightly inferior ally to themselves, and as possibly useful as a
kind of spokesman for their own ideas, I mean they're almost parallel
judgments that they make on either side of it.

I think there was a lot of disagreement. I mean Popper really I think
thought that Hayek's criticisms of social justice just were hopeless, and
also that they would be politically devastating, and Popper's big concern
especially just after the Second World War, was to try to see whether he
could get an alliance together between non-totalitarian socialists and
liberals, and in this context wrote when he was invited to join Hayek's Mont
Perelin Society which became over the years kind of hardline economic
liberalism, he wrote suggesting the name of a whole lot of Socialists who
Hayek should get to become members on the grounds that otherwise, to set up
such a society would make a split in exactly this group that he thought it
was so important to try and keep co-operating.

*Alan Saunders: *Do you come down on either side as between Popper and
Hayek?

*Jeremy Shearmur: *I would say yes. In terms of philosophy I'm all on
Popper's side rather than Hayek's. In terms of politics, I am more
sympathetic to Hayek. I think for me in some ways, the big problem about
Popper is that while the picture that he offers looks very attractive, I
just can't see how you can actually get modern democratic politics to do
what Popper wants it to do.

I mean I got a young graduate student from Turkey who's working on Popper's
thought at the moment, and he said and I think he's dead right about this,
that for Popper you really need an approach to politics which emphasises
problem-solving and critical feedback and so on, but we're typically in a
situation in which politics tends to be dominated by issues of interest and
identity. I mean people pursuing their different particular sorts of
financial interest or whatever, and I think there's also the problem that
how politics is geared up really means that you can seldom get politicians
actually to take criticism and to admit that they were wrong about anything
because their opponents would endlessly use it against them, whereas I think
in Australia the big problem is the role that's played by the Public Service
and its ideas, which really are never exposed to criticism at all.

*Alan Saunders: *Jeremy Shearmur, and you can find details of his collection
of Popper's writings *After the Open Society - Selected Social and Political
Writings*, on our website.

The show is produced by Kyla Slaven with technical production by Charlie
McKune. I'm Alan Saunders, I'll be back next week with another *Philosopher's
Zone*.



 Guests

*Dr Jeremy Shearmur*
Reader in Philosophy
Department of Philosophy
Australian National University

 Publications

Title: *After The Open Society - Selected Social and Political Writings*
Author: Edited by Jeremy Shearmur & Piers Norris Turner
Publisher: Routledge 2008

Title: *Hayek and After*
Author: Jeremy Shearmur
Publisher: Routledge (1996)

Title: *The Political Thought of Karl Popper*
Author: Jeremy Shearmur
Routledge (1996)

Title: *The Open Society and its Enemies (2 volume centenary edition)*
Author: Karl Popper
Publisher: Routledge (2008)
Presenter

Alan Saunders
Producer

Kyla Slaven

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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