Mick Hartley

An interesting article at Quillette from Matt Johnson – The Open Society and Its New Enemies – on the legacy of Karl Popper, in defence of Francis Fukuyama, the dangers of Trump and his threats to democracy, and other related stuff. Also, some optimism amid the gloom.

You wouldn’t know it by looking at the opinion polls in mature democracies like the United States, but peace and prosperity are exactly what democracy has delivered over the past eighty years. Great power conflict in Western Europe ended with World War II. It is now taken for granted that a war between, say, Germany and France is inconceivable, but this is among the greatest political achievements in the history of the continent. Despite the horrors of the Cold War, the Soviet Union collapsed without a fight. Former Soviet states lined up to join the West, while Russia has only managed to maintain its sphere of influence with force and coercion.

Although the war in Ukraine is the largest conflict on European soil since World War II, Western powers have helped Kyiv defend itself from Russian aggression without deploying any NATO forces on the battlefield. China is a rapidly rising power, but the militaries of the United States and its European and East Asian allies are far more powerful. There is anxious talk of a “new authoritarian axis” comprising China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. But NATO defence spending is three times higher than this axis, and it has surged since the invasion of Ukraine. NATO has also continued to expand with the recent accession of Finland and Sweden.

Democracies have created historically unprecedented economic prosperity. Marxists assumed that conditions for a growing majority of workers would inevitably get worse while a shrinking capitalist class would get richer and richer—a status quo that would eventually spark revolution. Instead, there has been vast wealth creation at all levels of society in democratic countries.

It may seem like the main threats to the open society today are authoritarian foes like Russia and China, but a much greater threat is the crisis of confidence in democratic institutions. The leaders in Moscow and Beijing may purport to offer an alternative to liberal democracy, but we aren’t in the middle of an ideological Cold War. Vladimir Putin has imperial ambitions, but he’s well aware that his decaying petro-autocracy isn’t some bold new political idea that could take root elsewhere. Xi Jinping is a nationalist who believes China deserves to be a great power, but China’s unique blend of totalitarianism and economic growth can’t be replicated. Third-rate dictatorships like Venezuela or North Korea don’t even pretend to care about anything beyond personal power and corruption, while the ideology of antique theocracies like Iran will never win a mass following around the world. […]

Although The Open Society and Its Enemies is a powerful indictment of historicism, we no longer live in an era dominated by historicist fantasies like Marxism. We live in an era of political nihilism—an era in which the gravest threat to democracy isn’t a rival ideology like communism; it’s the collapsing faith in democracy among citizens of open societies. As Fukuyama explained, the success of liberal democracy isn’t just material—it’s in the “realm of consciousness or ideas.” This is the battlefield for the open society today, and it’s why Popper’s most important contribution goes beyond his attack on historicism.

I seem to recall that Popper used to be regarded as on the Right: as someone not fully in step with the great progressive improvement projects of recent times. I suppose that was back in the day when being on the Left meant having at least some warm feelings towards Marxism, or at least Trotskyism as a kind of fantasy Marxism without all the nasty Soviet/gulag/Maoist/Pol Pot bits. How it could have been if it wasn't for that nasty Stalin. But surely we're past that now.

Anyway, yes – worth a read.