The work of the Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper constitutes an important source of inspiration for liberalism. While being a Jewish student in philosophy, mathematics and psychology, he grew up in a social restless Vienna. As a student, he was a convinced Marxist but this belief changed very rapidly. At the end of the 1930’s, he fled the Nazi threat, turned against every form of totalitarism and rejected the communist ideology. With his book “The Open Society and Its Enemies” he became an ardent advocate for a liberal and democratic ‘open society’. A society of free civilians who are able to assess the policy, change it and dismiss their governors without shedding blood. He turned against prophets like Plato, Hegel and Marx who defend a static society which inevitably results in oppression of possible changes. According to Popper, progress in society and the growth of knowledge are based on free discussion and a step by step reformation of society. It is a clear liberal point of view which the controversial philosopher emphasised. ‘I am a liberal’, he stated in one of his most recent interviews .

Although the totalitarian state is not good, unlimited freedom for every individual, according to Poper, isn’t either. He reasons as follows: freedom means being free to do whatever you want. Who is free to do whatever he wants, is free to take the freedom of other individuals. Thus, unlimited freedom results into slavery. To protect freedom, freedom should be restrained . Actually Popper turns against every form of dogmatism and thus against absolute enunciations like certainty, truth and unlimited ness. To him, all thesis and views are nothing but hypotheses. A thesis stands firm as long as it’s not countered by its counterevidence. The thesis that all swans are white stands firm until a black one arises. Here lies the basis for his falsification theory which is applicable to political philosophy as well. That’s why Popper is suspicious towards people who claim they’re convinced of anything “beyond all doubts”. In this way Francis Fukuyama was completely wrong in his book “the end of history” when he considered liberalism to be the sole and final victor on the ideological front. In an interview with Der Spiegel in 1992, Popper filed Fukuyamas statements as follows: “These are but senseless statements” .

Popper rejected every political and philosophical thought that started from its own infallibility. Leaders of totalitarian and fundamentalistic systems based themselves on absolute certainty concerning their thoughts and actions. Think about communist party presidents like Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. Think about fascist rulers like Mussolini and Hitler, about ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and even about the pope in the Vatican. The latter even got his infallible status literally at the first Vatican Council in 1870. Infallibility most commonly consist within closed societies where criticism isn’t allowed for the greater good and where people live without freedom of speech, without freedom of (dis)belief and without freedom of association. Fundamentalism and alleged infallbility walk hand in hand without paying attention to the misfortune this brings to numerous people. Popper warned that those who promise paradise on earth didn’t bring forth anything but hell itself. Criticism is to Popper the most important way to replace established beliefs with new ones. It is not the guarantee to establishing the perfect society but it is the key to detecting and abolishing social misfortunes.

The aversion to infallibility would have brought Popper up to arms today against the reigning market fundamentalism. Alleged neo liberals and libertarians ‘believe’ that a free market, absolute freedom and inviolable property will always lead to a better result for mankind. Realty proved them wrong. ‘A free market without intervention does not and cannot exist’ Popper claims . Unconditional belief in freedom and a free market often lead to indifference towards people who can’t perform in society due to sickness or old age. It even leads to corrosion of the free market due to monopolies. A strong government is required to guard the free market from monopolies, oligopolies, trusts and price agreements. A strong government is required to defend the constitutional state and to guarantee the safety and freedom of its civilians. A strong government is required to establish redistribution in order to help the sick, seniors ad handicapped and to give children the educational opportunities to develop their own talents. Popper strived for the necessary connection between individual and collective interests.

In his lecture ‘The History of Our Time: An Optimist’s View’, Popper held on October 12th, 1995 at the University of Bristol, he gave a list of essential misfortunes which had to be solved primary. He gave in this specific order: poverty, unemployment and other forms of social insecurity, sickness and pain, cruelty in penal law, slavery and other forms of dependency, religious discrimination and racism, lack of educational opportunities, rigorous class separation and war . We must construct social institutions, enforced by the power of the state, for the protection of the economically weak from the economically strong’, Popper wrote . He clearly indicated that the basis of a democratic constitutional state contains both freedom and equity. A thesis, later more developed by liberal thinkers like John Rawls, Marty Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Popper was very critical towards any government who claimed to hold the one and only truth. That was one of the reasons he fled the upcoming Nazi violence in Austria and travelled to New Zealand. Nevertheless, he didn’t turn against the necessity of an efficient government.

His book, The Poverty of Historicism is an important contribution to liberalism as well . With full force, he turns against the theory that history develops in accordance with established and firm laws, discovered towards a certain final situation, like Marxism represents to. With this thesis he went against philosophers and politicians like Antonio Gramsci, Jean-Paul Sartre and Marcus Bakker. According to Popper, historicism leads to an uprising against reason and in this way he turned against revolutions as well. ‘The pursuit for happiness for mankind is very dangerous whenever a number of people agree to the way this should happen’ he says. ‘If we don’t want to bring misfortune to the world again, we have to give up on our dreams about making the world happy. Nevertheless we have to remain world improvers but in a modest way. We have to be satisfied with the never-ending task to decrease suffering, fight evitable evil, clean up abuses; in this we have to keep vigilant to the inevitable unwanted consequences of our intervention which we can’t completely foresee and which turn our balance of improvements to passive too often’. Mankind can learn from its mistakes. For this reason – solely for the readiness to trial and error – our knowledge grows, science advances, Popper says. He dedicated his book ‘for the memory of numerous men and women of all beliefs, nations and people who became the victim of fascist and communist belief in the Inexorable Laws, which would determine the course of history’.

This insight is very important. The ‘critical rationalism’, Popper preaches, turns against every undemocratic and uncritical thinking like we have seen it in the previous century under communism, fascism and narrow nationalism. Today, it would turn against religious fanatism and against market fundamentalism. Popper recognised that the future can not be predicted. ‘The future depends on what we do. We bear every responsibility. It’s our moral duty, not to predict evil but to fight for a better world’. This doesn’t mean he was despondent, on the contrary. ‘Optimism is a moral duty’, his motto was. He meant that the future is open, we are all together responsible and we can do something about it together. ‘So we have a duty instead of predicting something bad, to support the things that may lead to a better future’, he stated in 1992 . Anyone who strives for more freedom and equity in this world should read Poppers books. He never said his ideas were to give or take. For that he was too critical and when he died he hoped his ideas would be subjected to the most criticism as possible. This happened by now and by many occasions but still his hypothesis that the ‘open society’ is best for everyone stands firm.

Dirk Verhofstadt