OSE Chapter 19 The Social Revolution (part 1)

This chapter contains six sections, and a lot of arguments are packed into 15 pages. I will not attempt to treat the whole chapter in a single post.

Section I treats the second step of Marx’s prophetic argument, specifically the prediction that the class war will end in a battle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (the last classes standing, as it were).

Section II explores the question, whether the Marxist revolution has to be violent.

Section III compares the radical and moderate Marxist attitudes to revolutionary violence.

Section IV explores the ambiguity of Marxist attitudes towards violence and also political power and the legitimacy of opposition parties.

Section V outlines the various ways that Marxist rhetoric has undermined democracy and Section VI describes how that has tragically played out in practice in recent times, opening the way for fascism.

OSE Chapter 18. The Coming of Socialism

In this chapter and the two that follow, Popper tests the coherence of the chain of predictions that Marx made for the coming of socialism following the revolution. He identified three steps in the argument and his strategy was to start by accepting Marx’s assumptions regarding the first two steps and examine whether the third step followed. In this chapter he concluded that it did not.

SBS Insight

I’m a guest on tonight’s episode of Insight, which goes to air at 7.30pm on SBS.

I’m not sure how much I’ll finish up saying - these things are always vulnerable to editing - but it promises to be interesting. I have a general policy of not watching television shows in which I appear (I dislike being reminded that it makes me look fat), so readers will have to fill me in.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: The show will be repeated on Friday August 25 at 1pm and Monday August 28 at 2pm for those who missed it first time around.