Y’know I quite enjoyed reading Karl Popper. Sure, he thought Marxism was pseudoscience, but he also thought that about climatology (and later recanted). The central Popperian idea that a scientific theory must produce falsifiable predictions is a good one though imo, and can actually be a useful vector of attack against liberal doctrine. They will often fall back on this chaotic, atomized model that you describe because they believe it is ‘truer’ in the sense that it has a higher resolution, but good science isn’t about ‘truth’ — it’s about predictive power, and in practice that means you often have to be ‘reductive’. Put another way, they’re using quantum physics to describe the flight of a football.
I agree, Popper is one of the primary liberals I’ve read whose critiques of the socialist project don’t feel made in bad faith (probably because he was also a socialist when he was younger). I think the critique of falsifiability is an important one for any analytical framework that claims to be scientific. But even then, falsifiability is itself very difficult in a lot of modern scientific fields (social science, biology, economics) where causality is so complex even having truly testable hypotheses gets very difficult.
Like you said though, the test of the liberal analytical framework vs. the Marxist one ultimately comes down to the ability to predict and more importantly act on those predictions. For instance, American liberals don’t seem to understand that the success of their project a la the New Deal was never just “good people” doing “good things,” it was because there were organized, populist masses who could leverage their ability to extract concessions from a willing ruling structure. This blindness is what makes them so ineffective in moments like the one we’re in now.
Also, I think Popper’s theory of the “Paradox of Tolerance” is very useful when it comes to engaging with fascists. It’s a shame modern liberals don’t seem to have the dawg in them to take that seriously anymore.
Y’know I quite enjoyed reading Karl Popper. Sure, he thought Marxism was pseudoscience, but he also thought that about climatology (and later recanted). The central Popperian idea that a scientific theory must produce falsifiable predictions is a good one though imo, and can actually be a useful vector of attack against liberal doctrine. They will often fall back on this chaotic, atomized model that you describe because they believe it is ‘truer’ in the sense that it has a higher resolution, but good science isn’t about ‘truth’ — it’s about predictive power, and in practice that means you often have to be ‘reductive’. Put another way, they’re using quantum physics to describe the flight of a football.
I agree, Popper is one of the primary liberals I’ve read whose critiques of the socialist project don’t feel made in bad faith (probably because he was also a socialist when he was younger). I think the critique of falsifiability is an important one for any analytical framework that claims to be scientific. But even then, falsifiability is itself very difficult in a lot of modern scientific fields (social science, biology, economics) where causality is so complex even having truly testable hypotheses gets very difficult.
Like you said though, the test of the liberal analytical framework vs. the Marxist one ultimately comes down to the ability to predict and more importantly act on those predictions. For instance, American liberals don’t seem to understand that the success of their project a la the New Deal was never just “good people” doing “good things,” it was because there were organized, populist masses who could leverage their ability to extract concessions from a willing ruling structure. This blindness is what makes them so ineffective in moments like the one we’re in now.
Also, I think Popper’s theory of the “Paradox of Tolerance” is very useful when it comes to engaging with fascists. It’s a shame modern liberals don’t seem to have the dawg in them to take that seriously anymore.