(MIG Tournament) In Defense of "An Open Society and it's Enemies" Vol. 2

C1: Critique of Historicism Testability (Dropped/Conceded) Before I go onto the specifics of my opponent’s refutation I must point out that SPinko dropped a key argument in his last round, which I believe is sufficient reason to affirm regardless of any other argument including falsifiability and the tyranny argument, though I will explain those later on. The argument he dropped was an explanation of predicting human or societal action. I wrote, “The problem with this is that one cannot go from the empirical studies to analytic laws because one cannot control the environment or control the variables on a macro-societal level as opposed to say a dissection of a frog. Societies are interacting in ways that cannot be evaluated by human observations and to come to an analytic law is impossible. SPinko made the response that well its general laws that can be deduced from observations…As Popper mentions in The Poverty of Historicism and An Open Society Marx was contained by only his viewpoint of capitalism which involved mass exploitation and an impotent government. However, one can easily criticize Marx’s methodology since it used limited amounts of knowledge to create a whole law. The levels of exploitation and impotent legislatures has diminished much since Marx’s time and thus the variables have changed drastically as well.” SPinko does not respond to this and thus it is a concession for the round. Why is this important? Remember, the debate is over the validity of Popper’s various criticisms of Marx and one major criticism is that Marx’s “scientific” methodology lacks any type of actual scientific testing. There are two important points derived from this argument: first is that past societal behavior cannot be measured scientifically since it is void of any control, lacks an environment proper for testing and has too many variables which are unable to be completely isolated or even understood within the context of the human mind. The second is that unlike an actual scientific test Marx could not alter the environment around him thus being unable to prevent against the cloud of presentism. Marx at the time could only see mass exploitation of workers and impotent governments which he concluded is the natural end of capitalism. Thus, since SPinko concedes these two arguments there is a clear reason to vote Pro. But I will continue anyway. Analytic Laws and Trends SPinko makes the argument that Marx did not just use empirical trends but also used reasoning which is known as economism – the idea that economies are the driving superstructure for sustenance, etc. I concede this, though it doesn’t make a strategic difference. Since I have clearly extended testability then we can also conclude that Marx’s empirical analysis is majorly flawed in its methodology. Thus, even if I grant that he used analytics to support his claim he loses ground on empirics. Falsifiability My opponent grants the validity of my argument that certain claims, especially posterior or synthetic claims should be falsifiable. However SPinko makes a very strategic move in shifting the argument away from the methodological critic to a subsuming critic. In other words he is arguing that he can link into my argument by proving that Marx’s claims are indeed falsifiable. I would argue to the contrary that his empirical claims and his predictions are non-falsifiable, and actually all claims of history are non-falsifiable. His past empirical claims are non-falsifiable because we are bound only to the knowledge left to us. Certain people write history and not all events are written or kept on the books. We cannot go back in history and re-live events in order to falsify them. As opposed to a physics lab we cannot falsify what has already happened. But more importantly Popper is criticizing Marx’s predictions as non-falsifiable because it either happens or it doesn’t and the Marxists use ad hoc justifications as to why it hasn’t happened yet. An example of this is what my opponent does in his argument against tyranny – he argued that the time was not ripe for the revolution and thereby can escape the criticism by saying well the real revolution hasn’t happened yet. C2: Historicism, Marxism and Tyranny SPinko concedes the pragmatism card in his last round, and strategically shifts the argument to the Oedipus effect. So pragmatism can be used as a mini-standard (framework) in evaluating this contention. Thus, as judges you must ask yourself: does Marxist-historicism make sense on a pragmatic level? SPinko makes the argument against the Oedipus Effect that even if it might be true that Marx led to the creation of premature revolutions in order to determine the validity of the argument we must look to the principle. My first response to this is that it ignores the mini-standard of pragmatism which my opponent concedes when he drops the Popper card. As such, we are evaluating this contention based on the results rather than the intentions behind those results. So even though those Marxist revolutions were based on classlessness and “let’s all hold hands and sing around the bonfire as comrades” the result has been the slaughter of hundreds of millions of people worldwide all for the sake of a classless utopia. This is exactly the danger Popper points out about historicist prophecies – it makes horrific crimes against humanity occur for something as abstract as a classless utopia. Second, the harms by Marxism vastly outweigh the harms of democratic revolutions. The number of people killed by Marxist revolutions number in the hundreds of millions as opposed to tens of thousands killed during the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Third, SPinko drops the important analysis I provide in the last round which tells us that in response to the premature revolutions Marx essentially sealed the fate of a classless utopia. I write, “Moreover, not only did the prematurity lead to hundreds of millions of deaths of innocent people but has eroded the very superstructure Marx needed in order to be the right time for a revolution. In other words, the violent and premature revolutions have created major political and activist backlashes against Marxism and anarchist socialism preventing its future institution. Whereas the transition from feudalism to capitalism was sparked by the Industrial Revolution (a natural process of history), the right time for Marxism cannot effectively occur because of Marx bringing it about in an artificial way.” Thus, even if Marx might have had good intentions the backlash against Marxism cannot be outweighed and the prospect of Marxism is negligible at best. My opponent tries to respond to the power analysis but unfortunately you must ignore the argument he made in the previous round because he already dropped it from Rd. 1. I write, “The thing Marx misses in his analysis is the relationship of power on these historical trends. For Marx, institutionalized power is an effect not a cause of the ills which exist in each period of history – the ever evolving superstructure is and everything built on top acts in accordance with this structure. Even granting truth value to this statement Marx doesn’t fully anticipate the effects on the individual or collective conscience and how they react to the structure itself.” But even if you want to grant him slight benefit of the doubt his argument directly links into my analysis because what Marx planned is different than what has actually happened. My argument is that Marx missed the effect of power on the mind of the people in the transition stage. But that is irrelevant, it was already conceded from Rd. 1 I believe I have sufficiently upheld Popper’s arguments in three areas: first, testability; second, falsifiability; and third, the tyranny analysis and as such Marxism shooting itself in the foot. Remember, no new arguments in the last round. Thanks to SPinko for another great debate round as usual! :D