The Open Society and Its Enemies

Popper moves on from Marx’s methodology to evaluate his historical prophecy (333). Herein lies Popper’s fundamental disagreement with Marx, since he has been critical of using history as destiny throughout this entire book. Marx’s historicism is economic in nature and is used to assess sweeping social changes (343).

Marx sought to achieve two goals when writing Capital. The first goal was to locate those forces that he believed would destroy capitalism in the evolution of the material means of production (345). Marx also believed that these forces leave a significant impact on the relationship between the classes as well as key institutions in society (345). His second goal was to challenge the defenders of capitalism as a system of social relations (346).

Popper provides a detailed breakdown of Marx’s two-part historicist prophecy. First, the growing class consciousness of the working class is to eventually lead to a social revolution as a result of the increase in misery created by the capitalist mode of production. Capitalist production relies on the growth of productivity due to technological innovation and the “increasing accumulation of the means of production” (346). In other words, fewer and fewer people control more and more wealth as well as the means of production.