The concept of falsification is a really good one, and we should apply it and other scientifically rigorous tests to our materialist analyses of history, and tactics. Marxism is a science, dedicated to uplifting the working class, and we should take inspiration from scientific concepts and methods to acheive that aim.
But hilariously Popper was so completely blinded by western-supremacy and cold-war propaganda, that you can ignore and easily debunk everything he says about socialism and the USSR. Pretty much every major Marxist tenet (class struggle, surplus value, TRPF) is falsifiable, so he has to do some incredible logic-twisting to get around that fact. Goes to show that even very smart people can be blinded by ideology.
Tangentially related, but I also recently watched a documentary about Oppenheimer called “the day after trinity”. Oppenheimer, despite being politically literate (he read das Kapital, as well as everything Lenin ever wrote), still thought that the US regime wouldn’t use weapons in a nefarious way, and thought he could use his scientific status and brilliance to influence US leaders to change the system from the inside. That also had to take some incredible logic-twisting to reach that conclusion given the US’s history, which he wasn’t ignorant of.
He got a dose of reality when he learned after the fact that they used the labor of him and hundreds of others to murder a bunch of innocent civilians.
The concept of falsification is a really good one, and we should apply it and other scientifically rigorous tests to our materialist analyses of history, and tactics. Marxism is a science, dedicated to uplifting the working class, and we should take inspiration from scientific concepts and methods to acheive that aim.
But hilariously Popper was so completely blinded by western-supremacy and cold-war propaganda, that you can ignore and easily debunk everything he says about socialism and the USSR. Pretty much every major Marxist tenet (class struggle, surplus value, TRPF) is falsifiable, so he has to do some incredible logic-twisting to get around that fact. Goes to show that even very smart people can be blinded by ideology.
Tangentially related, but I also recently watched a documentary about Oppenheimer called “the day after trinity”. Oppenheimer, despite being politically literate (he read das Kapital, as well as everything Lenin ever wrote), still thought that the US regime wouldn’t use weapons in a nefarious way, and thought he could use his scientific status and brilliance to influence US leaders to change the system from the inside. That also had to take some incredible logic-twisting to reach that conclusion given the US’s history, which he wasn’t ignorant of.
He got a dose of reality when he learned after the fact that they used the labor of him and hundreds of others to murder a bunch of innocent civilians.