A lot of people have never read Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies, yet they energetically cite one ambiguous note from it about the “paradox of tolerance” to enlist him as an advocate of censorship. I’m not going to waste more words on those idiots, but rather will comment on the substance of what he wrote.

It’s fashionable to say that what “dead white people” wrote doesn’t matter, but the philosophy of past centuries has shaped where we are today. The effects of European philosophy aren’t limited to white people.

The Open Society and Its Enemies is a two-volume work. The first, which I’ll cover here, is about Plato. The second is subtitled “Hegel and Marx.” While no one follows Plato’s ideas in their original form, his vision of an authoritarian, collectivist state is still highly influential. Some look to his Republic (which is anything but a republic in the modern sense) as an ideal of social stability. The idea of the “philosopher-king” still sounds noble to some. The idea that “justice” means whatever serves the state keeps coming back. The battle for freedom is still largely a battle against Plato. Brave New World, which I wrote about a few weeks ago, is an updated, technologically advanced version of the Republic.

The Star Trek episode “Plato’s Stepchildren” presents a planet whose society is supposedly modeled on the Republic. Its few inhabitants style themselves philosopher-kings, have psychokinetic powers, and act like bullies. Spock claims they aren’t really following Plato, because he wanted “truth and beauty and, above all, justice.” He doesn’t talk about what that idea of justice consisted of.

In Popper’s terms, “the magical or tribal or collectivist society will also be called the closed society, and the society in which individuals are confronted with personal decisions, the open society.” (Italics in the original.) By “magical” he means that no distinction is drawn between the natural and the supernatural in “the customary or conventional regularities of social life.” What is, is decreed. What is decreed must be. Star Trek‘s Platonians are true to that view, except that they don’t need a working class because of their powers.

This view is related to what Popper calls historicism, the idea that the events of the world are ordained by a great historical process. He declares, “The future depends on ourselves, and we do not depend on any historical necessity.” Historicism isn’t found just in tribal societies. It’s the premise of Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. Hari Seldon claims to establish science that will foretell the future of the galaxy. (It’s not entirely successful.) It also lies behind Marx’s dialectical materialism, but this gets into the second book of the set.

Historicism, he argues, is consistently associated with tribalism and collectivism. The view that individuals are significant is hard to square with historical destiny; if each person is an independent variable, it’s impossible to predict their long-term course. If nations are the primary actors, there’s more of a chance of analyzing their actions. But the course of nations depends on the choices of individuals, so the problem is still beyond analysis.

Popper considers Plato a historicist with regard to political philosophy. Plato saw most historical progress as degeneration. His ideal was the Spartan state before his time. Sparta dominated Greece until 371 BC, when Plato was in his fifties. It was a militaristic, undemocratic, socialist state, and he admired much of its political and social structure.

Plato suggests three classes in his best state: the guardians, their armed auxiliaries or warriors, and the working class. But actually there are only two castes — the armed and educated rulers — and the unarmed and uneducated ruled, the human sheep; for the guardians are no separate caste, but merely old and wise warriors who have been promoted from the ranks of the auxiliaries.

Three castes: thinkers, warriors, and workers. Does this sound familiar to anyone? A bit like the Minbari on Babylon 5, perhaps? J. Michael Straczynski used many literary sources for the show. Plato could have been one of them.

Popper relates Plato’s political philosophy to his doctrine of Forms. According to this idea, everything that we name has a non-material archetype which is the perfect instance of it. There is a Form for a house, a horse, a rock, a disease, everything. Physical things are imperfect derivatives of their Forms. In general, Plato thought everything was in a state of deterioration. He would have loved the Second Law of Thermodynamics if he had known about it. The one kind of change he thought was good was reversion to an earlier state.

Following this mode of thinking, he thought that political systems had been in a state of decline from an earlier state of perfection. Greek mythology presents a similar idea, with a decline from a past Golden Age to the contemporary Iron Age. Today we generally think of history as progress rather than regression, even when we have doubts about particular trends. We know that there was no Golden Age, but instead the hard life of the Stone Age. It’s hard to comprehend Plato’s view today. But on a shorter scale, many of us look back on earlier times with longing. Trump’s slogan “Make America great again” resonated with his supporters, and now Biden is telling us “America is back.” Both are slogans of reversion.

Popper wrote his book during World War II, when the dangers of totalitarianism were at their most obvious. He aimed to connect the philosophy of the past with the threats of his time. It was widely claimed that authoritarian government, either Marxist or Nazi, was the inevitable development of the future, and he aimed to show it wasn’t. In his earlier years he was a socialist, and he was never a libertarian in the strict sense, but he took a limited-government position:

But I demand that the fundamental purpose of the state should not be lost sight of; I mean, the protection of that freedom which does not harm other citizens. Thus I demand that the state limit the freedom of the citizens as equally as possible, and not beyond what is necessary for achieving an equal limitation of freedom.

With regard to free speech, he formulated one of Plato’s key principles in this way:

There must be a censorship of all intellectual activities of the ruling class, and a continual propaganda aiming at moulding and unifying their minds. All innovation in education, legislation, and religion must be prevented or suppressed.

Popper did not approve of that principle; he called it totalitarian.

There are points where I disagree with Popper. He claims “collectivism is not opposed to egoism” and talks about “group egoism” or “class egoism,” But the only self is the individual one, and collectivism demands that people surrender their personal values and interests to the group. He talks about “Plato’s Myth of Blood and Soil,” implying a link to the Nazis, but doesn’t make it clear that the expression is a paraphrase rather than a quotation.

But it isn’t necessary to agree with everything to find his analysis valuable. I recommend reading some Plato before getting into his book; knowing an author only from someone else’s criticism is never a great idea. Popper’s value is in focusing on the authoritarian aspects of Plato’s philosophy and showing how they fit into the context of his times and echo in ours.