A Tale of Three Karls: Marx, Popper, Polanyi and Post-Socialist Europe

Summary

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning… [O]ne of the games to which it most attached is called… ‘Cheat the Prophet’. [The prophets] took something or other that was certainly going on in their time, and then said it would go on more and more until something extraordinary happened. … The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else.

(G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill)

In part it is due to a genuine misunderstanding of the philosophical implications of the natural sciences, the great prestige of which has been misappropriated by many a fool and imposter since their earliest triumphs. But principally it seems to me to spring from a desire to resign our responsibility, to cease from judging provided we be not judged ourselves and, above all, are not compelled to judge ourselves – from a desire to flee for refuge to some vast, amoral, impersonal, monolithic whole – nature, or history, or class, or race, or the irresistible evolution of the social structure … which it is senseless to evaluate or criticise, and which we resist to our certain doom. […]