Viktoras Bachmetjevas. Is the Idea of the Open Society Dead?

Intellectual historians will someday have to explain why certain philosophical ideas become so popular that their proverbial, popularized forms have little to do with their original versions – and often even turn into their opposites. Consider, for example, what is commonly called the Platonic notion of love, the Machiavellian view of politics, or the “end of history” associated with Francis Fukuyama. Each of these ideas or theories has countless supporters and opponents, fueling many heated debates. What they also share is that when they are discussed, people usually have in mind something quite different from what the thinkers credited with authorship actually meant.

To take the examples already mentioned: it is fairly safe to say that Niccolò Machiavelli did not think deceit, hypocrisy, violence, and cynicism were commendable tools of politics; that Plato did not propagate a notion of love devoid of sexual relations; and that Fukuyama, in his famous “end of history” thesis, did not mean that history had literally ended with the collapse of the socialist bloc. Yet precisely such views are often attributed to them when these “philosophemes” are discussed.

The idea of the open society can confidently be added to this list of notions popularized in distorted form. It is undoubtedly one of today’s most ubiquitous topics in public debate – especially in our region, whose contours, in this context, are still drawn by the former borders of the socialist camp in the second half of the 20th century. Tracing the popularity – or rather, the relevance – of the idea of the open society is not difficult; the story is widely known. As the socialist system began to unravel, the American investor of Hungarian origin George Soros set up Open Society foundations in the countries of the socialist bloc; their task was to promote the idea of the open society. Soros borrowed it from the philosopher Karl Popper, with whom he had once studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In addition – somewhat atypically for a financier – Soros is a prolific writer: among his many books, at least several discuss the open society directly from various angles: at the intersection of socialist and capitalist systems, in the context of global capitalism, and so on. You would think this information is widely known and part of the public discourse; thus, whenever the idea of the open society is defended or attacked – especially with reference to Soros and Popper – you might expect that both pro and contra arguments would be grounded in primary sources. As we shall see, that is exceedingly rare.

Before discussing the content attributed to the open society – whether in praise or blame – let us first do what is typically not done when speaking about it: let us turn to the primary sources, that is, to Popper’s own idea of the open society as presented in The Open Society and Its Enemies. Popper’s starting point, the central premise of his political theory, is a resolute rejection of historicism. By “historicism” he means the view that an individual human being does not matter in history and that “the truly important actors on the Stage of History are the Great Nations and Great Leaders – or perhaps the Great Classes or Great Ideas.” The defining characteristic of historicism, as Popper understands it, is the belief that history has meaning, logic, and laws, which, once uncovered, will allow us to unlock the course of history itself. Writing during the Second World War, Popper is especially concerned with the specific form of historicism he discerns in fascist and Marxist ideologies.

The former, openly racist, proclaims one race – the Aryans – superior to others, “the chosen instrument of destiny,” granting it special powers and rights while denying them to others, and in some cases denying others any right to exist at all. Marxist ideology, in Popper’s view, is class-based: it posits a strictly agonistic economic logic as history’s central law. The struggle of different classes over, first and foremost, economic goods – but also recognition in G. W. F. Hegel’s sense – constitutes the dynamic aspect of history. Popper rejects both ideologies: they are not only historicist, claiming to have discovered the laws of history, but also closed – everything is subordinated to implementing the “discovered” logic of history. Popper’s program is essentially political: to formulate a conception that resists the temptations of historicist thinking. From what has already been said we can sketch what Popper calls an open society: a society open to the idea that history has no laws – no transcendent logic, no higher mind determining what happens. If so, individuals themselves must assume responsibility for what happens in history.

Societies governed by a rigid historicist worldview Popper calls tribal or closed. Their essential feature is the belief in an order not created by human beings themselves. Popper links such belief with magical thinking. The key element of a magical view of society and history is “the absence of any distinction between the customary or conventional rules of social life and the regularities observed in ‘nature.’ Closely connected to this is the conviction that both the rules and regularities are established by a superhuman will.”

Open societies enjoy no such “luxury.” Their essential mark of openness, as noted, is the conviction that there is no universal, superhuman order – meaning that the future awaiting us is not predetermined. It is noteworthy that Popper – somewhat counterintuitively – rejects prognostication altogether. In his view, the social sciences should not engage in prophecy; doing so only distorts the principles of the scientific method. It follows that the very choice between an open and a closed society is arbitrary – devoid of any element of historical predestination.

Still, Popper finds the open society more appealing – not only because, in his opinion, it better reflects the condition of human societies (historicism is mere speculation that cannot be falsified scientifically). Historicist thinking also deprives the individual of what moral philosophy calls agency – in other words, it “interprets them as puppets, a not-very-important instrument of humanity’s universal development.”

As already noted, Popper’s program is, at bottom, political: while the open society is a philosophical concept, Popper undoubtedly believed he was offering something that could – and, in his view, should – be applied in building a stable political system. From here there arises not only the critical, negative element of his theory (represented by the “enemies” of the open society described in his book) but also a positive political program: a set of features essential to an open society. For example, an open society frees human critical thinking. This is not only because, unlike a closed society that supplies ready-made answers, an open society invites us to seek them.

Another feature is the recognition of individual autonomy and freedom: “The magical, tribal, or collectivist society will be called the closed society; and the society in which individuals are confronted with personal decisions will be called the open society.” This follows not only from skepticism toward putative laws of history but also from Popper’s affirmation of fundamental human dignity. In his words, “the unique individual and their unique actions, experiences, and relations with other individuals can never be fully rationalized.” More than that, Popper holds that “it is this irrational realm of unique individuality that gives human relationships their significance.” A third important aspect of the open society is its democratic character.

For Popper, the fundamental question of politics is not, as the classics thought, “Who should rule?” but rather “How can we organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers would be prevented from doing too much damage?” The nature of democracy is that it allows us to replace bad rulers with others. This self-correcting mechanism – dictated by the same anti-historicist stance – leads to another key principle of the open society: piecemeal social engineering. A closed society, convinced it knows where history is headed, engages in utopian engineering: categorical blueprints for society often pursued by brutal, coercive means. Adherents of the open society do not presume to know where society ought to end up; therefore, they avoid such utopian approaches. Instead, they “will seek methods by which they can detect the greatest and most urgent evils of society, and to fight them, rather than search for, and fight for, the greatest ultimate good.” Thus the open society views social “programming” and social construction in a cautious and skeptical way – aiming not to impose a predetermined ideal but rather to eliminate what is widely recognized as evil.

Finally, having renounced any single “true” social doctrine, the open society is pluralistic by nature, which entails a special importance for tolerance. In Western Europe, tolerance emerged in the context of the wars of religion: at first it spread, with the onset of modernity, as the notion that people of different faiths would no longer be forced to convert. In Popper’s theory, the scope of tolerance is greatly expanded – tolerance of other opinions becomes one of the cornerstones of social life. Of course, one can – and indeed should – ask about the limits of tolerance: Popper’s famous “paradox of tolerance” (“unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance”) is one of the consequences of the open society that must be addressed both conceptually and practically. It is important to note that Popper himself formulates this paradox. Though the idea of the open society has political implications, The Open Society and Its Enemies is not a party pamphlet but an invitation to reflect together on the kind of society we wish to build.

To summarize this brief overview of Popper’s conception: the open society is characterized by skepticism toward “laws of history”; by critical rationalism; by respect for individual autonomy; by a democratic order; by piecemeal or modest social engineering; and by tolerance and pluralism. All these features are interconnected and mutually reinforcing. It is, in short, a complex – indeed, holistic – approach.

Having reviewed Popper’s views, we can look at some insights offered by commentators on the open society in Lithuania. Vytautas Radžvilas, one of its most consistent critics, writes in one essay that “the attempt to create a new human being of the future was an absolutely essential element of building communism.” Popper himself would certainly agree. Radžvilas continues, however: “But this attempt [to create a new human being] is by no means alien to the builders of the open civil society. […] The true and decisive factor that ‘creates and guarantees’ openness – the very essence of this society – lies in its architects’ ambition to transform without restraint the ‘plastic’ human material, so as to produce a somewhat different kind of person – the ‘improved,’ and therefore ‘more perfect,’ twin of the failed communist man.” Unfortunately, Radžvilas provides neither examples nor arguments, making it difficult to determine what exactly he means in claiming that the idea of the open society is to create a new human being. As we have seen, this is a strictly anti-Popperian notion. Radžvilas himself notes as much in a later text, where he refers to Popper’s idea of piecemeal social engineering – though he neglects to mention that Popper elaborates it precisely as an alternative to the utopian social engineering typical of Marxism.

Radžvilas is, of course, not only a philosopher but also a politician; perhaps it is natural that his comments contain distortions and purely rhetorical flights. Yet he is not alone in oddly ignoring Popper’s own ideas and fighting a foe of his own invention. For example, in a text published a decade ago, Alvydas Jokubaitis also criticizes the idea of the open society, but unlike Radžvilas, what bothers him is the very notion of openness. In an essay tellingly titled “A Completely Open Society Is Doomed to Collapse from Its Openness,” Jokubaitis writes: “Today we must rethink the idea of the open society. Seen from a 25-year perspective, it is clear that the very term ‘Open Lithuania’ encoded a contradiction.”  Jokubaitis’ chief target is openness itself. Although he mentions Popper several times, he uses the term “openness” in a sense entirely different from Popper’s. For Jokubaitis, openness means, rather, dissolution into a global identity. He writes: “Lithuanians can be open to the world, but if they want to remain Lithuanians, they must have something other nations and societies do not have. That ‘something’ inevitably distinguishes, limits, and closes them off.” As our brief review showed Popper’s openness has nothing to do with “openness to the world”: for him it signifies, above all, openness to (social and political) uncertainty. It is not an identity question at all but an epistemological one: recognizing that I do not know the laws of history, I am prepared to listen to other rationally grounded opinions (critical thinking and pluralism), to proceed cautiously (piecemeal social engineering), and to correct my own and my government’s mistakes (a democratic order).

Jokubaitis does not address these aspects – his “open society” is something else. He links it to moral relativism and the admission of the other: “If the Swedes cared only about the idea of the open society, they should forget that they are Swedes and send all their means of transport to Africa and other continents to bring in poor immigrants.” This is, of course, untrue – at least if we understand the open society as Popper proposes it. It seems Jokubaitis is battling an image of a radically borderless society that does not know its own limits – what Povilas Aleksandravičius aptly dubbed “the leaky society.” As Aleksandravičius writes, “the leaky mode of experiencing identity […] tends to deny the value of identity’s content altogether.” But obviously this has very little to do with Popper’s idea of the open society: as we have seen, one of Popper’s premises is the postulate of the individual’s unique value.

More such examples could be gathered. In a sense, Popper has been unlucky: his theory found a person with sufficient financial means and imagination to ensure it could no longer be ignored – and that inevitably provokes a backlash. In Popper’s spirit, I would say that this very backlash – criticism of the idea of the open society – should be welcomed, especially when it proceeds by rational argument and serious engagement with one’s opponent, rather than by constructing a straw man argument. Indeed, the very fact that the idea of the open society elicits so many reactions is probably the best sign that it is alive, relevant, and timely.