Herbert Marcuse
NOTES ON THE PROBLEM
OF HISTORICAL LAWS
Karl R. Popper's
The Poverty of Historicism
1
is dedicated
to the "memory of the countless men and women of all creeds or na–
tions or races who fell victim to the fascist and communist belief in
Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny."
The concern with the role of political violence, expressed
in
this
Dedication, appears in Popper's book in the framework of a discussion
of historical and social theory.
In
the course of the discussion, certain
theories emerge to which the tendency to violence seems to be germane,
namely, those which believe in inexorable and predictable laws of his–
tory. Some of these theories-Popper calls them "holist"-couple this
belief with the notion that the State, Society, or the Nation are "to–
talities" over, above, and other than the mere sum total of their com–
ponent parts, governed by laws of their own, to which the individuals
are subordinated. The notion of totality in turn implies, in these theor–
ies, the possibility of totalitarian control over all individual relation–
ships, specific events, institutions, etc. Popper thus stipulates a connec–
tion between methodological and political totalitarianism: the former
provides, as it were, the logical and philosophical justification for the
latter. Consequently, a logical refutation of the former would prove
the factual impossibility of the latter. Political totalitarianism would
then be shown as "Utopian"-and this is indeed the result of Popper's
argument-an argument which, as we shaIl see, does not involve much
ingenuity. As an antidote against totalitarianism, Popper recommends
a pluralistic, gradualistic, and "piecemeal" approach to history and so–
ciety, which refrains from "holist" notions so conducive to holist poli–
cies and holist sacrifices to "historical destiny."
Before examining Popper's argument further, I wish to discuss
briefly the context in which it appears.
It
is a philosophical, more exactly,
1.
Beacon Press, $4.00.
