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p Popper’s criticism of “historicism” as a methodology which allegedly arose in ancient times is merely an introduction to his critique of Marxist historism. Marxism, he claims, is “the purest form of historicism" and leads to the gravest errors and the most serious practical consequences. And “Marx is responsible for the devastating influence of the historicist method of thought".  [100•1 

p In order to understand the strange logic behind these accusations, it is necessary to consider, albeit briefly, the philosophico-historical conception set out in his two-volume work The Open Society and Its Enemies.

p According to Popper, civilisation arises in the struggle with collectivism, the initial historical form of which is tribalism. In its subsequent historical development civilisation continues to struggle against new historical forms of collectivism, such as racism, nationalism, fascism and ... socialism.

p Popper regards the individual and the collective as being absolute opposites and proceeds from this to deduce that collectivism is incompatible with democracy and is essentially... totalitarianism. Thus, by emasculating the real historical content of totalitarianism as the special form of the dictatorship of monopoly capital and metaphysically contrasting collectivism and freedom as absolute opposites, Popper condemns socialism and its ideology. With the aim of substantiating the anti-communist thesis which equates collectivism, fascism and communism, Popper tries to prove that all the historical forms of totalitarianism or collectivism listed by him are based on “historicism”. Whereas the basis of primitive tribalism was spontaneously formed by mythological ideas, taboos, prejudice, customs and rites, the basis of the “new tribalism”, or totalitarianism, is formed, 101 according to Popper, by definite, consciously developed philosophical and sociological doctrines. These doctrines, from Heraclitus and Plato up to and including Hegel and Marx, for all their differences, have the same methodological essence which Popper calls “historicism”. Thus, the main point in Popper’s critique of “historicism” is its, as it were, moral and political criticism.

p From this it is clear why Popper calls “historicism” “the most powerful of these philosophies”,  [101•1  and why he adds that “historicism is futile and worse than that”,  [101•2  trying to persuade the reader that historism by its very nature is hostile to reason and freedom, and is, therefore, the eternal enemy of civilisation. In order to lend his criticism of Marxist historism the appearance of scientific objectivity, Popper begins by admitting: “One cannot do justice to Marx without recognising his sincerity.... His sincerity in his search for truth and his intellectual honesty distinguish him, I believe, from many of his followers".  [101•3  However, this sincerity and intellectual honesty do not change the real content of his teaching, for Marx was an “historicist” and consequently, in spite of all his merits, “a false prophet".  [101•4 

p Popper poses the question of whether there is a difference between Marx’s historical method and preceding historism. And he attempts to answer it without analysing dialectical materialism and the materialist interpretation of history. Ignoring the qualitative difference between Marxism and the preceding doctrines, Popper concludes that Marx’s “ historicism" was merely more consistent, “pure” and “radical” than all preceding forms of “historicism”.

p Historism is the fundamental, essential feature of the Marxist-Leninist world outlook. The substance of this scientific principle may be briefly summarised as follows: 1) recognition of the universality and importance of change and development, the study of the objective necessity, laws and specific forms of this process; 2) recognition of the necessary connection not only between phenomena and events co-existing or existing simultaneously (or in a short space of time), but also between the past and the present, the present and the 102 future; 3) the concrete, historical examination of phenomena and events from the viewpoint of the historically transient conditions which have determined them and given them the specific form of the given historical period; 4) recognition of the possibility of scientifically forecasting events in the immediate or more or less distant future on the basis of studying the laws determining their recurrence or re-emergence.

p The scientific principle of historism, which is the application of dialectical materialism to the study of the process of development, has played a vast role in the development of both natural and social sciences. Creating scientific communism, theoretically substantiating the necessity of the revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism and communism, and proving the historically transient character of private ownership, the class structure of society, social inequality, and the state—all this was possible thanks to the concrete, historical study of human history, the discovery of specific, qualitatively different epochs in world history (socio-economic formations), the study of their historical necessity and the objective law of transition from one formation to the next.

p Marxist historism is the scientific interpretation of history in which we distinguish the past, present and future. The study of the past, the reconstruction of the true picture of past events, their concrete historical assessment, are, without a doubt, among the most important tasks of the historical science. An even more important task for the materialist interpretation of history is the scientific analysis of the present in relation to the past and in its motion revealing the trends of future development. The main point in the Marxist historical method is the demand “not to forget the underlying historical connection, to examine every question from the standpoint of how the given phenomenon arose in history and what were the principal stages in its development, and, from the standpoint of its development, to examine what it has become today".  [102•1 

p From the Marxist point of view, predicting the future is possible only if it is based on analysing trends existing and developing in the present, Marx and Engels always criticised the Utopians for their attempts to anticipate everything, 103 to give a detailed description of future society, etc. They emphasised that scientific prediction of the future is limited by the factual data the researcher has at his disposal. These basic features of Marxist historism, of the Marxist theory of development, were also classically defined by Lenin in his works.

p For a long time bourgeois critics of Marxism and Marxist historism have been attempting to prove that this scientific theory is nothing but a sort of prophecy and thus to accuse it of being unscientific. Popper follows this well-trodden path. Marxist historism, he says, is more radical than all preceding “historicist” theories, because it believes that people’s consciousness, their conscious activity, is determined by material conditions independent of their consciousness and will.

p In Marxist theory, Popper maintains, the individual is entirely determined by “society”, “economics”, “progress” and other, to his mind, essentialist concepts. The basis of this fatalistic conception ascribed to Marx is rooted, according to Popper, in tribalism. He states outright that the main proposition of the materialist interpretation of history “holds most emphatically for the more ancient periods of social development, i.e. for the closed society.... To-day, things may begin to be different ... and one day, men may become the conscious creators of an open society, and thereby of a greater part of their own fate."  [103•1  Marx (even Popper does not deny this, as we shall see later) certainly does not consider that man cannot become the conscious creator of social relations. Marx’s proposition that the essence of the individual is the sum total of social relations refers simply to the unity of the individual and the social. It certainly does not mean that social relations enslave the individual. On the contrary, historical materialism theoretically substantiates the regularity of the transition from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom. In practice communism destroys the social relations which engender a fatalistic world outlook. This active essence of the Marxist-Leninist world outlook is entirely ignored by Popper, who asserts that Marx’s “radical”, i.e., extremely fatalistic “historicism” is linked with the Hegelian conception of the socio-historical 104 process. Marx, he writes, was influenced by “Hegel’s platonising collectivism, his theory that the state and the nation is more ‘real’ than the individual".  [104•1 

p Here too Popper is over-simplifying Marx’s attitude to Hegel in the extreme. For the German idealist, society is the embodiment of the “absolute spirit”, and the state is the “earthly-divine essence" as a result of which the social essence of man, the unity of the individual and society is interpreted mystically as the manifestation of the identity of being and thinking, earthly and divine, i.e., in the final analysis, in the spirit of religious fatalism. There is not and cannot be anything of the sort in the case of Marx, who gives a materialist interpretation to the social nature of the individual and sees society not as the embodiment of the “ absolute spirit”, but as the product of human interaction, the material conditions of which have been created by people themselves throughout the course of social history.

p Popper, it is true, does not object to Marx’s proposition that society is the product of human interaction. He is even ready to agree with him, but only if it is accepted that people choose (create) arbitrarily the form of this interaction, that is, the form of society. And since Marx stresses the opposite, namely, that people are not free in their choice of this or that social form, the existence of which is conditioned by the given level of development of productive forces, Popper ascribes an extreme fatalism to the founder of scientific socialist ideology.

p As Popper sees it, the materialist solution of the fundamental philosophical question relating to social life (that social life determines social consciousness) condemns man to adjust himself slavishly to circumstances and deprives him of spiritual freedom. Here too Popper sees the same terrible fatalism, tribalistic myth, fettering man’s hands and feet. In fact, however, a careful reading of the Marxist propositions quoted by Popper shows clearly that they not only do not lead to fatalism, but that they scientifically demolish this anti-scientific conception.

p If the consciousness of people reflects objective reality, this makes it a real force in their conscious and purposeful activity. This reflection of reality is the indispensable 105 condition for their freedom. This important aspect may be ignored only by a subjective idealist who regards the very recognition of objective reality and its reflection in man’s consciousness as a suppression of the individual.

p Lenin, in his criticism of Nikolai Mikhailovsky’s sociological idealism, pointed out that “one of the favourite hobbyhorses of the subjective philosopher is the idea of the conflict between determinism and morality, between historical necessity and the significance of the individual".  [105•1  These words are perfectly applicable to Popper, who assumes that recognition of historical determinism is incompatible with recognition of personal responsibility and, consequently, morality.

p Popper credits Marx with the indisputable service of having freed sociology from the psychologism prevalent in preceding sociological doctrines, and of bringing to the forefront the study of the economic conditions of people’s lives and material production.  [105•2 

p But here too, in Popper’s opinion, Marx’s sense of proportion betrayed him, because he turned economics into the basis of social development, the determining motive force and source of social transformations. Popper regards economics, the study of economic relations, production and material values, as only one of the factors determining human behaviour. Thus, he reproaches Marx for not adopting the viewpoint of the “theory of factors”, i.e., that eclectic and ultimately idealistic position which Marx brilliantly refuted.

p Popper states that “there is an interaction between economic conditions and ideas, and not simply a unilateral dependence of the latter on the former".  [105•3 

p There is no need to show that Marxism fundamentally rejects the conception of “unilateral dependence" ascribed to it by Popper. It more than recognises, it makes a special study of the interaction between the economic basis and its political, legal and ideological superstructure. But Marxism does not confine itself to examining this interaction. It reveals its basis, the source in which ideas and political institutions are rooted. Marx’s teaching, far from dooming people to passivity, summons the working people to fight, arms them with a definite programme, an ideological weapon of struggle. 106 Therefore, Popper declares that as well as fatalism there is another, contradictory element inherent in Marxism, namely, “activism”. From this he deduces that Marx’s teaching contains an insoluble contradiction which is so essential that without it Marxism simply cannot be understood. “In my opinion,” writes Popper, “Marxism and its influence cannot be appreciated unless we recognise this dualism."  [106•1  Thus, on the one hand, Popper tries to prove that Marx “had practically forbidden all social technology which he denounced as Utopian" and, on the other hand, he ascribes to Marxism “Utopian social engineering" which is basically incompatible, to quote Popper, with the materialist interpretation of history. In this connection he notes: “Marx’s vision of the ’ kingdom of freedom’, i.e. of a partial but equitable liberation of men from the bondage of their material nature, might rather be described as idealistic."  [106•2 

p So it transpires that Marx is a materialist only to the extent to which he regards the history of mankind as the development of the “kingdom of necessity”. But as soon as he goes over to the “kingdom of freedom" he is, in Popper’s opinion, renouncing the materialist interpretation of history and turning to idealism. This idealism, holds Marx’s critic, is rooted in the Marxist solution to the fundamental problem of philosophy, because Marx does not reject the reality of the ideal, the spiritual. “Although, theoretically, mind was to Marx apparently only another form (or another aspect...) of matter, in practice it is different from matter, since it is another form of it."  [106•3 

p This statement of Popper’s clearly illustrates his oversimplified interpretation of the essence of materialism. He assumes that materialism is the rejection of the existence of mind. He attempts to ascribe to all materialism the mistake of vulgar materialism. And on discovering that Marx regards mind as separate from matter, as the non-material product of matter, its reflection, Popper promptly exclaims that this is dualism. Yet dualism consists not in recognising the existence of mind, but in accepting its independence of matter. This is obvious to anyone who has studied the history of philosophy.

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p Marxism, as we know, regards the material life of society as the basis of the spiritual life of society. Here again Popper “discovers” idealism in the fact that Marx attached great importance to the spiritual life of society, to the intellectual development of the individual. Marx, he says, “cherished the spiritual world, the ’kingdom of freedom’ and the spiritual side of ’human nature’, as much as any Christian dualist.... With Hegel he thinks that freedom is the aim of historical development. With Hegel he identifies the kingdom of freedom with that of man’s mental life. But he recognises that we are not purely spiritual beings; that we are not fully free.... This, I believe, is the central idea of Marx’s ’view of life’."  [107•1 

p This quotation shows that Popper does not simply set out Marx’s teaching, but immediately distorts it. He not only presents Marx’s materialist propositions as being dualist and idealist. Independently of any philosophical assessment of Marx’s teaching, Popper exhibits a chronic inability to provide an objective, factual exposition of the ideas which he is criticising. This is why the propositions of Marx and Engels concerning the relationship between the kingdom of necessity and the kingdom of freedom appear, in Popper’s exposition, to bear witness to an attempt by Marxism to combine materialism with idealism.

p Here too, as elsewhere, it is obvious that Popper is fundamentally distorting the dialectical relationship between freedom and necessity and, in particular, their dialectic in the history of mankind. Engels showed that each step in the progressive development of society is also a step forward in man’s mastery of nature. But in an antagonistic society man’s mastery of man and man’s mastery of nature are two sides of one and the same process, because here exploitation is the historically necessary social form of the development of productive forces. Therefore, alongside the liberation of man from the elemental forces of nature there is a constant (as long as private ownership of the means of production exists) enslavement of man by the forces of social development. It was in this sense that in Anti-Dtihring Engels called antagonistic societies the “kingdom of necessity".  [107•2 

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p The communist reconstruction of society puts an end to the enslavement of people by the elemental forces of social development, to the exploitation of man by man, and the sway of social relations over people. It was in this sense that Engels called communism the “kingdom of freedom”. Only an outright falsifier of Marxism who ignores the Marxist proposition that freedom does not eliminate necessity, could regard the concept of the kingdom of freedom as a rejection of the materialist interpretation of history. Engels also emphasised that freedom does not mean man’s independence of nature, of objective regularity or necessity. It means understanding the laws of nature and social development and practical mastery of those laws.

p Let us now sum up. Popper took on a task beyond his capabilities, the task of criticising the Marxist theory of social development without understanding the principles of Marxist philosophy and without mastering the Marxist interpretation of such basic concepts as materialism, dialectics, economics, etc. At first he accuses Marx of reducing historical study to prophecy and gloomy fatalism. Then he is forced to admit that Marx’s teaching is a theoretical justification of revolutionary activity. And here he declares Marxist theory to be dualistic.

p Popper knows full well that an understanding of the laws of nature enables people to master its elemental forces. But he categorically refuses to admit that the laws of social development and an understanding of them are the basis of purposeful social activity. This contradiction in Popper’s views (a contradiction which he ascribes to Marx, however) is rooted in the distinction he draws between the natural and social sciences which he borrowed from the neo– Kantians and made one of the main points of departure in his critique of historical materialism and scientific communism. At the basis of this distinction lies the unfounded view that the concepts of laws and necessity are applicable only in the natural sciences. The application of these categories in the social sciences is called anti-scientific and, what is more, conducive to fatalism. However, on closer inspection the source of fatalism, according to Popper, turns out to be not so much “historicism”, the attempt to predict the future or the conviction that certain social processes are necessary, as the recognition of the objective conditionality of human 109 actions, which in turn proceeds from the application of determinism and causality to history. It is no accident, therefore, that Popper in effect dismisses the principle of causality.  [109•1 

p Popper’s struggle against historism which turns directly into struggle against Marxism is, in the last analysis, the struggle against the scientific interpretation of the development of society, its past history and the prospects for human development. Renouncing the progressive ideological traditions of bourgeois thinkers in the past, Popper attempts to establish a militant agnosticism closing the way to the future in place of Marx and his ideological predecessors (whom Popper calls the enemies of civilisation and the theoreticians of totalitarianism).

It goes without saying that Popper is not the only opponent of historism in the camp of modern bourgeois ideologists. The time has passed when bourgeois ideologists tried to develop an historical approach to the phenomena of social life. Today the overwhelming majority of them reject or distort historism, because it is indissolubly linked with recognition of the law-governed, progressive development of society, undermining the idea of perpetual capitalism and helping to explain the historical necessity of socialism. Popper’s struggle against historism expresses the profound crisis in bourgeois ideology, which in turn is a reflection of the general crisis of modern capitalism.