The conspiracy theory of society

The 'conspiracy theory of society' is a passage written by Karl Popper in ???

Conjectures and refutations

Popper also discussed the topic in: Conjectures and refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1962). The book has 42 references to the term 'conspiracy'.

The title of this lecture ('On the source of knowledge and of ignorance') is likely, I fear, to offend some critical ears. For although 'Sources of Knowledge' is in order, and 'Sources of Error' would have been in order too, the phrase 'Sources of Ignorance' is another matter. 'Ignorance is something negative: it is the absence of knowledge. But how on earth can the absence of anything have sources?.' This question was put to me by a friend when I confided to him the title I had chosen for this lecture. I was a little shaken by this for I had been, I confess, quite pleased with the title. Hard pressed for a reply I found myself improvising a rationalization, and explaining to my friend that the curious linguistic effect of the title was actually intended. I told him that I hoped to direct attention, through the phrasing of this title, to a number of historically important although unrecorded philosophical doctrines and among them, especially, to a conspiracy theory of ignorance which interprets ignorance not as a mere lack of knowledge but as the work of some mischievous power, the source of impure and evil influences which pervert and poison our minds and instil in us the habit of resistance to knowledge.

In examining the optimistic epistemology inherent in certain ideas of liberalism, I found a cluster of doctrines which, although often accepted implicitly, have not, to my knowledge, been explicitly discussed or even noticed by philosophers or historians. The most fundamental of them is one which I have already mentioned--the doctrine that truth is manifest. The strangest of them is the conspiracy theory of ignorance, which is a curious outgrowth from the doctrine of manifest truth. By the doctrine that truth is manifest I mean, you will recall, the optimistic view that truth, if put before us naked, is always recognizable as truth. Thus truth, if it does not reveal itself, has only to be unveiled, or dis-covered. Once this is done, there is no need for further argument. We have been given eyes to see the truth, and the 'natural light' of reason to see it by.

This doctrine is at the heart of the teaching of both Descartes and Bacon. Descartes based his optimistic epistemology on the important theory of the veracitas dei. What we clearly and distinctly see to be true must indeed be true; for otherwise God would be deceiving us. Thus the truthfulness of God must make truth manifest. In Bacon we have a similar doctrine. It might be described as the doctrine of the veracitas naturae, the truthfulness of Nature. Nature is an open book. He who reads it with a pure mind cannot misread it. Only if his mind is poisoned by prejudice can he fall into error. This last remark shows that the doctrine that truth is manifest creates the need to explain falsehood. Knowledge, the possession of truth, need not be explained. But how can we ever fall into error if truth is manifest? The answer is: through our own sinful refusal to see the manifest truth; or because our minds harbour prejudices inculcated by education and tradition, or other evil influences which have perverted our originally pure and innocent minds.

Ignorance may be the work of powers conspiring to keep us in ignorance, to poison our minds by filling them with falsehood, and to blind our eyes so that they cannot see the manifest truth. Such prejudices and such powers, then, are sources of ignorance.

The conspiracy theory of ignorance is fairly well known in its Marxian form as the conspiracy of a capitalist press that perverts and suppresses truth and fills the workers' minds with false ideologies. Prominent among these, of course, are the doctrines of religion. It is surprising to find how unoriginal this Marxist theory is. The wicked and fraudulent priest who keeps the people in ignorance was a stock figure of the eighteenth century and, I am afraid, one of the inspirations of liberalism. It can be traced back to the protestant belief in the conspiracy of the Roman Church, and also to the beliefs of those dissenters who held similar views about the Established Church. (Elsewhere I have traced the pre-history of this belief back to Plato's uncle Critias; see chapter 8, section ii, of my Open Society.)

This curious belief in a conspiracy is the almost inevitable consequence of the optimistic belief that truth, and therefore goodness, must prevail if only truth is given a fair chance. 'Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?' (Areopagitica). So when Milton's Truth was put to the worse, the necessary inference was that the encounter had not been free and open: if the manifest truth does not prevail, it must have been maliciously suppressed. One can see that an attitude of tolerance which is based upon an optimistic faith in the victory of truth may easily be shaken. For it is liable to turn into a conspiracy theory which would be hard to reconcile with an attitude of tolerance.

I do not assert that there was never a grain of truth in this conspiracy theory. But in the main it was a myth, just as the theory of manifest truth from which it grew was a myth. For the simple truth is that truth is often hard to come by, and that once found it may easily be lost again. Erroneous beliefs may have an astonishing power to survive, for thousands of years, in defiance of experience, and without the

aid of any conspiracy. The history of science, and especially of medicine, could furnish us with a number of good examples. One example is, indeed, the general conspiracy theory itself. I mean the erroneous view that whenever something evil happens it must be due to the evil will of an evil power. Various forms of this view have survived down to our own day.

Now I come to a brief outline of the task of a theory of tradition. A theory of tradition must be a sociological theory, because tradition is obviously a social phenomenon. I mention this because I wish briefly to discuss with you the task of the theoretical social sciences. This has often been misunderstood. In order to explain what is, I think, the central task of social science, I should like to begin by describing a theory which is held by very many rationalists a theory which I think implies exactly the opposite of the true aim of the social sciences. I shall call this theory the 'conspiracy theory of society'. This theory, which is more primitive than most forms of theism, is akin to Homer's theory of society. Homer conceived the power of the gods in such a way that whatever happened on the plain before Troy was only a reflection of the various conspiracies on Olympus. The conspiracy theory of society is just a version of this theism, of a belief in gods whose whims and wills rule everything. It comes from abandoning God and then asking: 'Who is in his place?' His place is then filled by various powerful men and groups--sinister pressure groups, who are to be blamed for having planned the great depression and all the evils from which we suffer.

The conspiracy theory of society is very widespread, and has very little truth in it. Only when conspiracy theoreticians come into power does it become something like a theory which accounts for things which actually happen (a case of what I have called the 'Oedipus Effect'). For example, when Hitler came into power, believing in the conspiracy myth of the Learned Elders of Zion, he tried to outdo their conspiracy with his own counterconspiracy. But the interesting thing is that such a conspiracy never--or 'hardly ever'--turns out in the way that is intended.

This remark can be taken as a clue to what is the true task of a social theory. Hitler, I said, made a conspiracy that failed. Why did it fail? Not just because other people conspired against Hitler. It failed, simply, because it is one of the striking things about social life that nothing ever comes off exactly as intended. Things always turn out a little bit differently. We hardly ever produce in social life precisely the effect that we wish to produce, and we usually get things that we do not want into the bargain. Of course, we act with certain aims in mind; but apart from the question of these aims (which we may or may not really achieve) there are always certain unwanted consequences of our actions; and usually these unwanted consequences cannot be eliminated. I will give you a very simple example. Let us say that a man in a small village must sell his house. Not long before there was a man who bought a house in that village because he needed one urgently. Now there is a seller. He will find that, under normal conditions, he will not get nearly as much for his house as the buyer had to pay when he wanted to buy a similar one. That is to say, the very fact that somebody wants to sell his house lowers the market price. And this is generally so. Whoever wants to sell something always depresses the market value of what he wants to sell; whoever wants to buy something raises the market value of what he wants to buy. This is true, of course, only for small free markets. I do not say that the economic system of free markets cannot be replaced by another one. But in a market economy this is what happens. You will agree with me that there is no need to prove that the man who wants to sell something has usually no intention of lowering the market price, and that the man who wants to buy something has no intention of raising it. We have here a typical instance of unwanted consequences. The situation described is typical of the social situation. In all social situations we have individuals who do things; who want things; who have certain aims. In so far as they act in the way in which they want to act, and realize the aims which they intend to realize, no problem arises for the social sciences (except the problem whether their wants and aims can perhaps be socially explained, for example by certain traditions). The characteristic problems of the social sciences arise only out of our wish to know the unintended consequences, and more especially the unwanted consequences which may arise if we do certain things. We wish to foresee not only the direct consequences but also these unwanted indirect consequences. Why should we wish to foresee them? Either because of our scientific curiosity, or because we want to be prepared for them; we may wish, if possible, to meet them and prevent them from becoming too important. (This means, again, action, and with it the creation of further unwanted consequences.)

I think that the people who approach the social sciences with a ready-made conspiracy theory thereby deny themselves the possibility of ever understanding what the task of the social sciences is, for they assume that we can explain practically everything in society by asking who wanted it, whereas the real task of the social sciences is to explain those things which nobody wants--such as, for example, a war, or a depression. (Lenin's revolution, and especially Hitler's revolution and Hitler's war are, I think, exceptions. These were indeed conspiracies. But they were consequences of the fact that conspiracy theoreticians came into power--who, most significantly, failed to consummate their conspiracies.) It is the task of social theory to explain how the unintended consequences of our intentions and actions arise, and what kind of consequences arise if people do this that or the other in a certain social situation. And it is, especially, the task of the social sciences to analyse in this way the existence and the functioning of institutions (such as police forces or insurance companies or schools or governments) and of social collectives (such as states or nations or classes or other social groups). The conspiracy theorist will believe that institutions can be understood completely as the result of conscious design; and as to collectives, he usually ascribes to them a kind of group personality, treating them as conspiring agents, just as if they were individual men. As opposed to this view, the social theorist should recognize that the persistence of institutions and collectives creates a problem to be solved in terms of an analysis of individual social actions and their unintended (and often unwanted) social consequences, as well as their intended ones. The task of a theory of tradition must be viewed in a similar light. It is only very rarely that people consciously wish to create a tradition; and even in these cases they are not likely to succeed. On the other hand, people who never dreamt of creating a tradition may nevertheless do so, without having any such intention. Thus we arrive at one of the problems of the theory of tradition: how do traditions arise--and, more important, how do they persist--as the (possibly unintended) consequences of people's actions?

A second and more important problem is this: what is the function of tradition in social life? Has it any function which is rationally understandable, in the way in which we can give an account of the function of schools, or of the police force, or of a grocer's shop, the Stock Exchange, or other such social institutions? Can we analyse the functions of traditions? That is perhaps the main task of a theory of tradition. My way of approaching this task will be to analyse a particular tradition--the rational or scientific tradition--as an example, and I intend later to make use of this analysis for various purposes.

What then is the task of the social sciences, and how can they be useful? In order to answer this question, I shall first briefly mention two naïve theories of society which must be disposed of before we can understand the function of the social sciences. The first is the theory that the social sciences study the behaviour of social wholes, such as groups, nations, classes, societies, civilizations, etc. These social wholes are conceived as the empirical objects which the social sciences study in the same way in which biology studies animals or plants. This view must be rejected as naïve. It completely overlooks the fact that these so-called social wholes are very largely postulates of popular social theories rather than empirical objects; and that while there are, admittedly, such empirical objects as the crowd of people here assembled, it is quite untrue that names like 'the middle-class' stand for any such empirical groups. What they stand for is a kind of ideal object whose existence depends upon theoretical assumptions. Accordingly, the belief in the empirical existence of social wholes or collectives, which may be described as naïve collectivism, has to be replaced by the demand that social phenomena, including collectives, should be analysed in terms of individuals and their actions and relations. But this demand may easily give rise to another mistaken view, the second and more important of the two views to be disposed of. It may be described as the conspiracy theory of society. It is the view that whatever happens in society--including things which people as a rule dislike, such as war, unemployment, poverty, shortages--are the results of direct design by some powerful individuals or groups. This view is very widespread, although it is, I have no doubt, a somewhat primitive kind of superstition. It is older than historicism (which may even be said to be a derivative of the conspiracy theory); and in its modern form, it is the typical result of the secularization of religious superstitions. The belief in the Homeric gods whose conspiracies were responsible for the vicissitudes of the Trojan War is gone. But the place of the gods on Homer's Olympus is now taken by the Learned Elders of Zion, or by the monopolists, or the capitalists, or the imperialists. Against the conspiracy theory of society I do not, of course, assert that conspiracies never happen. But I assert two things. First, they are not very frequent, and do not change the character of social life. Assuming that conspiracies were to cease, we should still be faced with fundamentally the same problems which have always faced us. Secondly, I assert that conspiracies are very rarely successful. The results achieved differ widely, as a rule, from the results aimed at. (Consider the Nazi conspiracy.) Why do the results achieved by a conspiracy as a rule differ widely from the results aimed at? Because this is what usually happens in social life, conspiracy or no conspiracy. And this remark gives us an opportunity to formulate the main task of the theoretical social sciences. It is to trace the unintended social repercussions of intentional human actions. I may give a simple example. If a man wishes urgently to buy a house in a certain district, we can safely assume that he does not wish to raise the market price of houses in that district. But the very fact that he appears on the market as a buyer will tend to raise market prices. And analogous remarks hold for the seller. Or to take an example from a very different field, if a man decides to insure his life, he is unlikely to have the intention of encouraging other people to invest their money in insurance shares. But he will do so nevertheless. We see here clearly that not all consequences of our actions are intended consequences; and accordingly, that the conspiracy theory of society cannot be true because it amounts to the assertion that all events, even those which at first sight do not seem to be intended by anybody, are the intended results of the actions of people who are interested in these results. It should be mentioned in this connection that Karl Marx himself was one of the first to emphasize the importance, for the social sciences, of these unintended consequences. In his more mature utterances, he says that we are all caught in the net of the social system. The capitalist is not a demoniac conspirator, but a man who is forced by circumstances to act as he does; he is no more responsible for the state of affairs than is the proletarian. This view of Marx's has been abandoned--perhaps for propagandist reasons, perhaps because people did not understand it--and a Vulgar Marxist Conspiracy theory has very largely replaced it. It is a come-down-the come-down from Marx to Goebbels. But it is clear that the adoption of the conspiracy theory can hardly be avoided by those who believe that they know how to make heaven on earth. The only explanation for their failure to produce this heaven is the malevolence of the devil who has a vested interest in hell.

The view that it is the task of the theoretical sciences to discover the unintended consequences of our actions brings

these sciences very close to the -342- experimental natural sciences. The analogy cannot here be developed in detail, but it may be remarked that both lead us to the formulation of practical technological rules stating what we cannot do. The second law of thermodynamics can be expressed as the technological warning, 'You cannot build a machine which is 100 per cent efficient'. A similar rule of the social sciences would be, 'You cannot, without increasing productivity, raise the real income of the working population' and 'You cannot equalize real incomes and at the same time raise productivity'. An example of a promising hypothesis in this field which is by no means generally accepted-- or, in other words, a problem that is still open--is the following: 'You cannot have a full employment policy without inflation.' These examples may show the way in which the social sciences are practically important. They do not allow us to make historical prophecies, but they may give us an idea of what can, and what cannot, be done in the political field. We have seen that the historicist doctrine is untenable, but this fact does not lead us to lose faith in science or in reason. On the contrary, we now see that it gives rise to a clearer insight into the role of science in social life. Its practical role is the modest one of helping us to understand even the more remote consequences of possible actions, and thus of helping us to choose our actions more wisely. X The elimination of the historicist doctrine destroys Marxism completely as far as its scientific pretensions go. But it does not yet destroy the more technical or political claims of Marxism--that only a social revolution, a complete recasting of our social system, can produce social conditions fit for men to live in. I shall not here discuss the problem of the humanitarian aims of Marxism. I find that there is a very great deal in these aims which I can accept. The hope of reducing misery and violence, and of increasing freedom, is one, I believe, which inspired Marx and many of his followers; it is a hope which inspires most of us. But I am convinced that these aims cannot be realized by revolutionary methods. On the contrary, I am convinced that revolutionary methods can only make things worse--that they will increase unnecessary suffering; that they will lead to more and more violence; and that they must destroy freedom. This becomes clear when we realize that a revolution always destroys the institutional and traditional framework of society. It must thereby endanger the very set of values for the realization of which it has been undertaken. Indeed, a set of values can have social significance only in so far as there exists a social tradition which upholds them. This is true of the aims of a revolution as much as of any other values. But if you begin to revolutionize society and to eradicate its traditions, you cannot stop this process if and when you please. In a revolution, everything is questioned, including the aims of the well-meaning revolutionaries; aims -343- which grow from, and which were necessarily a part of, the society which the revolution destroys. Some people say that they do not mind this; that it is their greatest wish to clean the canvas thoroughly--to create a social tabula rasa, and to begin afresh by painting on it a brand new social system. But they should not be surprised if they find that once they destroy tradition, civilization disappears with it. They will find that mankind have returned to the position in which Adam and Eve began--or, using less biblical language, that they have returned to the beasts. All that these revolutionary progressivists will then be able to do is to begin the slow process of human evolution again (and so to arrive in a few thousand years perhaps at another capitalist period, which will lead them to another sweeping revolution, followed by another return to the beasts, and so on, for ever and ever). In other words, there is no earthly reason why a society whose traditional set of values has been destroyed should, of its own accord, become a better society (unless you believe in political miracles, 3 or hope that once the conspiracy of the devilish capitalists is broken up, society will naturally tend to become beautiful and good). Marxists, of course, will not admit this. But the Marxist view, that is to say, the view that the social revolution will lead to a better world, is only understandable on the historicist assumptions of Marxism. If you know, on the basis of historical prophecy, what the result of the social revolution must be, and if you know that the result is all that we hope for, then, but only then, can you consider the revolution with its untold suffering as a means to the end of untold happiness. But with the elimination of the historicist doctrine, the theory of revolution becomes completely untenable. The view that it will be the task of the revolution to rid us of the capitalist conspiracy, and with it, of opposition to social reform, is widely held; but it is untenable, even if we assume for a moment that such a conspiracy exists. For a revolution is liable to replace old masters by new ones, and who guarantees that the new ones will be better? The theory of revolution overlooks the most important aspect of social life--that what we need is not so much good men as good institutions. Even the best man may be corrupted by power; but institutions which permit the ruled to exert some effective control over the rulers will force even bad rulers to do what the ruled consider to be in their interests. Or to put it another way, we should like to have good rulers, but historical experience shows us that we are not likely to get them. This is why it is of such importance to design institutions which prevent even bad rulers from causing too much damage. There are only two kinds of governmental institutions, those which provide for a change of the government without bloodshed, and those which do not. But if the government cannot be changed without bloodshed, it cannot, in most cases, be removed at all. We need not quarrel about words, and about such pseudo-problems as the true or essential meaning of the word 'democracy'. You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of govern____________________ 3The phrase is due to Julius Kraft. -344- ment. I personally prefer to call the type of government which can be removed without violence 'democracy', and the other 'tyranny'. But, as I said, this is not a quarrel about words, but an important distinction between two types of institutions. Marxists have been taught to think in terms not of institutions but of classes. Classes, however, never rule, any more than nations. The rulers are always certain persons. And, whatever class they may once have belonged to, once they are rulers they belong to the ruling class. Marxists nowadays do not think in terms of institutions; they put their faith in certain personalities, or perhaps in the fact that certain persons were once proletarians--a result of their belief in the overruling importance of classes and class loyalties. Rationalists, on the contrary, are more inclined to rely on institutions for controlling men. This is the main difference. XI But what ought the rulers to do? In opposition to most historicists, I believe that this question is far from vain; it is one which we ought to discuss. For in a democracy, the rulers will be compelled by the threat of dismissal to do what public opinion wants them to do. And public opinion is a thing which all can influence, and especially philosophers. In democracies, the ideas of philosophers have often influenced future developments--with a very considerable time-lag, to be sure. British social policy is now that of Bentham, and of John Stuart Mill who summed up its aim as that of 'securing full employment at high wages for the whole labouring population'. I believe that philosophers should continue to discuss the proper aims of social policy in the light of the experience of the last fifty years. Instead of confining themselves to discussing the 'nature' of ethics, or of the greatest good, etc., they should think about such fundamental and difficult ethical and political questions as are raised by the fact that political freedom is impossible without some principle of equality before the law; that, since absolute freedom is impossible, we must, with Kant, demand in its stead equality with respect to those limitations of freedom which are the unavoidable consequences of social life; and that, on the other hand, the pursuit of equality, especially in its economic sense, much as it is desirable in itself, may become a threat to freedom. And similarly, they should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle of the Utilitarians can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship, and the proposal that we should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle--the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.

This modified Utilitarianism could, I believe, lead much more easily to agreement on social reform. For new ways of happiness are theoretical, unreal things, about which it may be difficult to form an opinion. But misery is with us, here and now, and it will be with us for a long time to come. We all know it from experience. Let us make it our task to impress on public opinion the simple thought that it is wise to combat the most urgent and real social evils one by one, here and now, instead of sacrificing generations for a distant and perhaps forever unrealizable greatest good.