monopoly stage of capitalism. Lenin’s successor, Josef Stalin, was content to
see his task as the preservation of socialism in one country, and the power
of the communist elite was sustained and preserved by the patriotic fervour
of the nation’s struggle against Nazi Germany from 1941–5.
Neither Hitler’s Germany nor Mussolini’s Italy produced any lasting
work of political philosophy. It is a mistake, however, to class the two
ideologies together under the heading ‘Fascism’. True, both Hitler and
Mussolini were nationalist dictators who believed in a totalitarian state, but
the leading idea of Nazism was racism, while the corporati sm that was a
central doctrine of Italian Fascism had nothing to do with race. Corporat-
ism was intended to be a vocational organization of society in which
individuals were grouped for purposes of representation according to
their social functions. The corporate state would regulate relations be-
tween capitalists, workers, the professions, and the Church in such a way as
to avoid the conflicts between classes that led to revolution. This was a
different kind of political creed from the idea that one race was superior to
all others and should dominate or eliminate them. Of course, Hitler and
Mussolini were wartime allies; but so were Stalin and Churchill.
The Second World War did, however, produce one classic of political
philosophy: The Open Society and its Enemies, by the Austrian exile Karl Popper.
If a political organization is to flourish, Popper maintained in this book, its
institutions must leave maximum room for self-correction. Just as science
progresses by the constant correction of inadequate hypotheses, so society
will only progress if policies are treated as experiments that can be evalu-
ated and discontinued. Two things , therefore, are important: that the ruled
should have ample freedom to discuss and criticize policies proposed by
their rulers; and that it should be possible without violence or bloodshed to
change the rulers, if they failed to promote their citizens’ welfare. These are
the central features of an open society, and they are more important
elements of democracy than the mere election of a government by a
majority. An open society is at the opposite extreme from the centrally
controlled polities of wartime Germany, Italy, and Russia.
Popper did not rule out, however, all forms of government intervention.
Unbounded tolerance could lead to intolerance, and unrestrained capital-
ism could lead to unacceptable levels of poverty. Incitement to intolerance
should therefore be c onsidered as criminal, and the state must protect the
economically weak from the economically strong.
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
287