Content provided in partnership with

Popper's return engagement: The open society in an era of globalization

National Interest, The, Spring, 2002 by Neil McInnes

<< Page 1 Continued from page 2. Previous | Next

What can happen, said Popper, is that the privileged, educated strata of the old order (not the common people, who are merely uncomfortable with the new ways) can seek to arrest the opening up of a society they have been used to rule. They will resort to violence, impose tyranny, begin a reign of terror against the innovators. They will seek the support, including even the armed intervention, of any other closed society that has managed to arrest modernizing trends. They will attack prominent symbols of the open society wherever they find them. Although their slogan is "back to the society of our fathers", they themselves are "morally rotten"; nihilism is common among them. And they will try to wrap the whole business in "a hypocritical and even cynical exploitation of religious sentiments." Although educated themselves, they will lead what soon becomes a "revolt against reason and freedom." Such reflections are surely relevant to the question that Daniel Pipes recently posed in these pages--Does poverty caus e militant Islam? Popper, too, would probably say no; it is the insecurity of a challenged privileged class that is the more likely source of violent reaction.

Most Popular Articles in Business: Research and Markets : Tesco Plc - SWOT Framework Analysis; Do Us a Flavor - Ben & Jerry's Issues a Call for Euphoric New Flavors; eBay made easy: ready to start an eBay business? These 5 simple steps will ...; Katrina's lawsuit surge: a legal battle to force insurers to pay for flood ...; Wal-Mart's newest distribution center opened last month near the southwest ...; More »

Despite the ferocity of this counterattack, the defense of the closed society fails, for there can be no turning back. We can never return to the

alleged innocence and beauty of the closed society.... The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, the more surely we arrive at the Inquisition, at the Secret Police, and at a romanticized gangsterism.... [W]e must end with the most brutal and violent destruction of all that is human. There is no return to a harmonious state of nature. If we turn back, then we must go the whole way--we must return to the beasts. (Popper's italics.)

Popper's Plato

IT IS OBVIOUS that the passion behind this eloquence stems from a horror of Nazism, and yet one cannot help being struck by the relevance of much of it to the irruption of anti-modern violence, notably in Islamic societies, in our own time. So one is tempted to ask what Popper's eloquence is worth as sociology: Where are the historical cases of a closed society cracking up in this way, under what Popper calls "the stain of civilization", on the path to the open society? He himself produces only one case--Greece in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE--but he treats it in such depth that it fills his first volume, "The Spell of Plato", entirely.

The Greeks, Popper says, were the first to take the step from tribalism to launch the "great revolution" that is the transition from the closed to the open society. This particular transition started with overpopulation among the Athenian ruling class of landed proprietors. They sought to relieve the pressure by ritual colonization, the foundation of "daughter societies" overseas. The consequent seafaring, foreign trade and imperialism threatened to dissolve the old ways of life; by the 6th century BCE, revolt and reaction had begun, emulating the resistance put up by threatened tribalism in Sparta. "The strain of civilization was beginning to be felt", stressed Popper. The oligarchs, the privileged or formerly privileged ruling class of Athens, led the charge against what they saw as one complex: democracy, monetary commercialism and naval policy. They sought the intervention of "the arrested oligarchic tribalism of Sparta"; the educated men led this betrayal, which became the Peloponnesian War. After the fa ll of Athens, the Spartans installed their puppets, the Thirty Tyrants, who began a reign of terror that in just eight months claimed as many lives as had ten years of war. Yet ultimately the reign of terror failed.

Popper's return engagement: The open society in an era of globalization

National Interest, The, Spring, 2002 by Neil McInnes

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: Arts

Most Popular Articles in Business

Most Popular Publications in Business