THE POLITICS OF DEMOCRACY
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traces back to classical Greece and to the first and greatest opponent of
the open society, the source of all later totalitarianism-Plato.
Expanding the indictment which Richard Crossman made a few
years back in
Plato Today,
Popper launches a sharp and merciless
polemic ag3inst Plato. He ends by convicting Plato of belief in most of
the essentials of modern totalitarianism: the strict division between mass
and elite; the identification of the state with the ruling class; the
omnipresence of indoctrination and censorship.
The Republic
was a
tract for the times, written to combat rising democratic sentiment in
Athens; Plato, Popper surmises, was his own candidate for Philosopher–
King.
Popper plainly regards Plato as an adversary worth his mettle; but
he finds Hegel, the chief modern prophet of historicism, beneath con–
tempt. "The Hegelian ·farce has done enough harm," he cries. "We
must stop it. We must speak-even at the price of soiling ourselves by
touching this scandalous thing." From Hegel Popper moves mercilessly
on, his saber dripping with philosophical gore, to the modern varieties
of Hegelianism-the Hegelian right wing, which became fascism, and
the left wing, which became Communism.
His account of Marxism is ,intelligent and discriminating. "Marx's
faith, I believe," he writes, "was fundamentally a faitP in the open
society"; and,
if "
'scientific' Marxism is dead," yet "its feelings of social
responsibility and its love for freedom must survive." But Marxism,
Dr. Popper continues, is also "the purest, the most developed and the
most dangerous form of historicism." This is the essential reason for its
failure. Believing that history would create the concrete forms of the
new society, Marx discouraged research in social technology. For all
his professed dislike of utopianism, Marx stood for "utopian engineer–
ing," which plans the means in terms of an absolute end, sacrificing the
present to a putative future. "The Utopian attempt to realize an ideal
state, using a blueprint of society as a whole," Popper points out, "is one
which demands a strong centralized rule of a few."
In place of utopian engineering, Popper calls for "piecemeal en–
gineering"-the pragmatic application of the methods of science to the
immediate problems of social reform. Where utopian engineering
fights
fOT
an alleged "final good" of society, piecemeal engineering turns
its energies
against the
greatest and most visible evils. Where the Marxist
indulges in romantic fallacies about the omnipotence of economic
power, the piecemeal engineer regards political power as fundamental:
it can control economic power; it can limit exploitation, redistribute in–
come, achieve economic stability-so long as the assurance of political
democracy means some institutional control of the rulers by ruled.
