Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 08:03:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Chris M. Sciabarra" <sciabrrc-AT-is2.NYU.EDU>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Popper's critique of Marxism (fwd)


On Thu, 29 May 1997, Rob Schaap wrote:
> About that wily bastard Popper.  The bit where he rabbits on about Hegel's
> implicit 'totalitarianism' (in *TOSAIE*) because of phrases such as "The
> State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth ... We must therefore
> worship the State as the manifestation of the Divine on earth ... The State
> ... blah ... blah "
> Well, in a lovely little book (*Hegel*), Peter Singer reckons:
> "Popper's case is not as strong as it seems.  First, his quotations nearly
> all come not from Hegel's own writings, but from [edited/rewritten
> students'] lecture notes.  Second, at least one of these resonant
> utterances is a mistranslation.  Where Popper quotes 'The State is the
> march of God through the world', a more accurate translation would be: 'It
> is the way of God with the world, that the State exists.'  This amounts to
> no more than the claim that the existence of States is in some sense part
> of a divine plan.  Third, for Hegel 'State' does not mean simply 'the
> government' but refers to all social life.  Thus he is not glorifying the
> government against the people, but referring to the community as a whole. 
> Fourth, these quotations need to be balanced by others, for Hegel presents
> one aspect of a subject in an extreme form before balancing it against
> another ... [eg.] "the right of subjective freedom is the pivot and centre
> of the difference between antiquity and modern times ..."
> And Hayek can go and get stuffed too.
> Cheers,
> Rob.
	Now, now.  Actually, I agree that Popper gets a lot wrong, most
particularly his charges against "dialectic" in his essay "What is
Dialectic?"  But I do think he has very valid things to say about
historicism and such; whether or not Hegel or Marx ARE historicists is a
matter of contention.  I think if read as a critique of a synoptic vantage
point on history, Popper's discussion has little in it that any
dialectical social theorist would disagree with.  
	And Hayek, of course, makes many of the same points -- though he
is, perhaps, even more based on notions of internal relations than Popper.
So, we do have something to learn from these guys.
						- Chris -
==========================================Chris Matthew Sciabarra, Ph.D.
Visiting Scholar
New York University Department of Politics
715 Broadway
New York, New York  10003-6806
Email:      sciabrrc-AT-is2.nyu.edu
Website:    http://pages.nyu.edu/~sciabrrc
==========================================



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