Wei Xu: The Poverty of Popper’s Critique of Communism
The renowned philosopher Karl Popper’s skepticism toward communism has been highly influential. In works such as The Poverty of Historicism (1957) and The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), he criticized Marx, stating that "despite his many merits... he was a false prophet," and even declared that "'scientific' Marxism is dead." It is widely held that the title The Poverty of Historicism was an allusion to The Poverty of Philosophy, "attempting to present a programmatic critique of the philosophical methods of Marx’s philosophy of history."
For a long time, the academic community has offered numerous responses to Popper. On one hand, scholars have analyzed the concept of historicism or clarified the principles of the materialist conception of history to correct his misunderstandings of the fundamental tenets of Marxism; on the other hand, they have reaffirmed the arguments for communism. Generally speaking, current academic views on the core ideas of communism fall into two categories: "the abolition of private property and the realization of common ownership of the means of production" or "human liberation and the free and well-rounded development of individuals." These two perspectives emphasize, respectively, the scientific hallmarks and the ideal realm of communism. Popper did not oppose communism as an ideal realm, even suggesting that "its sense of social responsibility and its love of freedom must survive." However, he questioned the historical necessity of communism. If this is not addressed specifically, it is easy to fall into logical ruts or lapse into the embarrassment of talking past one another.
In reality, Popper’s skepticism is itself "impoverished." He criticized communism by treating it as historicism, the latter being founded upon his unique epistemology. However, his insufficiently precise discussion left an "Achilles’ heel." This metaphor comes from Mr. He Zhaowu: "Why is it that the growth of subjective consciousness or knowledge has no objective laws and cannot be predicted? He never provided a self-consistent argument for this, so this question became the Achilles’ heel of his theory." [1] This "Achilles’ heel" lies not only in the argumentation regarding the growth of knowledge but even more so in the discussion of the relationship between the growth of knowledge and the historical process. The following will explore Popper’s theory to reveal this "Achilles’ heel" and subsequently respond to his skepticism regarding Marx’s justification for communism.
I. From the Model of Knowledge Growth to Anti-Historicism
What Popper calls "historicism" refers to "an approach to the social sciences which assumes that historical prediction is their principal aim, and which admits that this aim is attainable by discovering the 'rhythms' or the 'patterns', the 'laws' or the 'trends' that underlie the evolution of history." This concept is actually an "ideal type" [2] he constructed, blending various schools of real-world theory. Generally, it refers to a kind of historical determinism, emphasizing that "society must change, but... it changes along a predetermined path that cannot be changed, through stages predetermined by inexorable necessity." Popper listed five interconnected theses: first, the course of human history is strongly influenced by the growth of human knowledge; second, we cannot predict, by scientific or any other rational methods, the future growth of our scientific knowledge; third, we cannot, therefore, predict the future course of human history; fourth, this means that we cannot have a scientific theory of historical development to serve as a basis for historical prediction; fifth, historicism is therefore fallacious.
Popper emphasized that the "decisive step" lies in the second thesis—that the growth of knowledge cannot be predicted. This thesis concerns his primary academic contribution: "The growth of scientific knowledge does not mean an accumulation of observations, but a repeated overthrow of scientific theories and their replacement by better or more satisfactory ones." Although he spoke here around the specific concept of "scientific knowledge," it can be applied to general knowledge without much modification. The logic of knowledge growth can be demonstrated in four stages: "P1 → TS → EE → P2"—that is, starting from a problem, proposing a tentative theory, proceeding to the elimination of errors, and leading to new problems. Knowledge embodies the human capacity to create history. In Popper’s view, human cognition is permeated from beginning to end by theory; theories "are our own inventions, our own ideas; they are not forced upon us, but are thought-tools of our own making." They can originate from any of one's own experiences or even a kind of innate knowledge. People always first construct hypotheses or systems of theory (conjectures) and then test them against experience through observation and experiment (refutations). Since a theory must undergo testing, it must itself be capable of being "falsified"—that is, tested using repeated observations and experiments to check our conjectures or hypotheses. Of course, not all propositions can be tested by experience; thus, "falsifiability," "testability," and "refutability" constitute the criteria for the demarcation of science. Scientific knowledge is a continuous advancement from theory to theory and from problem to problem, essentially a process of raising and improving existing knowledge. Future knowledge growth can only be discussed under future conditions of knowledge; specifically, for certain fundamental innovations, to predict them in the present would require having knowledge that only appears in the future, which is logically impossible. Meanwhile, since theories as premises are constructed by ourselves, "scientific theories can never be fully justified or verified"; therefore, strictly speaking, ultimate truth does not exist. The process from conjecture to refutation should proceed infinitely: "The objectivity of scientific statements lies in the fact that they can be inter-subjectively tested."
In Popper’s eyes, a law is simply this kind of scientific theory that has temporarily withstood testing and can be used to explain phenomena or predict the unknown. But whether explaining or predicting, two conditions must be met: first, scientific laws of a universal nature, and second, initial conditions that trigger the law as individual cases. Explaining or predicting is equivalent to using laws and conditions to construct causal relationships, while testing is comparing existing events with existing explanations or predictions. In this sense, to predict history, one only needs to find historical laws and initial conditions. However, at least three interrelated reasons obstruct this possibility. First, any thinking about history always relies on theory; everyone can establish causal links from historical facts based on any theory, and thus the understanding of history is always full of partiality and selectivity. Popper wrote: "The interest of the historian is not so much in the discovery of laws or generalizations as in the interest in actual, singular, or specific events." Second, is it feasible to discover laws through the essence or the whole of history? Popper explicitly opposed the methods of essentialism and holism. For even putting aside whether history has an essence, since knowledge is merely hypothesis, the attempt to grasp an essence is a pseudo-proposition. Moreover, it is impossible to grasp history comprehensively; "the synthesis of all properties or aspects of a thing" is forever unattainable. If this is true for general things, it is all the more absurd to grasp every detail of history. This is the method of the historicists: they "plan not only to study the whole of society by an impossible method, but also to control and reconstruct our society 'as a whole'." Third, is it possible to derive historical laws through conjecture and refutation as one does with general scientific laws? Popper remained opposed, because such propositions are uniformly unfalsifiable. He distinguished between two types of irrefutability: logical or analytical irrefutability, and empirical or synthetic irrefutability. There are many cases of the latter: for example, some things cannot be determined to exist or not, some involve an inability to exhaust all possibilities, and some are testable on the surface but not in practice. These are all regarded as empirically irrefutable. "It is the possibility of empirical refutation that characterizes empirical or scientific theories," but historical events are unique and do not constitute a refutation of a prediction.
Even if a proposition regarding historical laws were truly found, Popper believed historical prophecy would still be impossible because laws require initial conditions to function, and history does not possess such conditions. First, "the historicist does not derive his historical prophecies from conditional scientific predictions"; unconditional historical prophecies can be neither verified nor falsified. Second, making a law function through certain conditions is equivalent to predicting that under certain conditions a certain event will occur, while not excluding the possibility of other events occurring. The past of history is closed to the present, but the future of history is always open; it is impossible to truly calculate all conditions affecting the realization of a prediction. For example, the growth of knowledge is a factor, and the influence of a prophecy itself upon history cannot be accurately predicted, which means self-fulfilling prophecies are impossible. Popper stated: "True, if it were repetitive, we might be able to make some predictions," but modern society is certainly not a stable system; "the most startling aspects of historical development are non-repetitive." In his view, science is concerned precisely with certain unexpected reactions to human activity. Claims regarding the movement, forces, or direction of history are themselves merely the conceptual confusion of historicism. Historical causal relationships, rather than being laws, stem from an interest in specific events and can only be called "historical interpretations."
Up to this point, based on his unique model of knowledge growth, Popper seems to have successfully dispelled the historicist notion of predicting the future. Upon closer inspection, two arguments are particularly important: first, the emphasis that scientific knowledge for predicting history does not exist; second, the emphasis that the growth of knowledge is unpredictable. However, from the latter argument to the conclusion that history is unpredictable, it is clearly not enough merely to show that the growth of knowledge influences the historical process—unless historical development is entirely dominated by human knowledge. As for the first argument, if scientific knowledge for predicting the future truly does not exist, it would seem one must conclude that human knowledge is powerless regarding the future.
Popper, of course, would not think so; he was actually quite willing to acknowledge human foresight and the room for free action. He emphasized that he was "not denying the possibility of all social prediction; on the contrary, it is perfectly compatible with the possibility of testing social theories—for example, economic theories (as opposed to 'historical theories')—by deriving from them predictions that certain developments will occur under certain conditions." First, regarding the falsification of social science propositions: Popper believed that whether or not scientific methods are consciously applied, experimental methods are being put to use at every moment in social life—for example, the relationship between supply and demand or the consequences of a certain policy are carried out through trial and error. However, this seems to imply that the "unique" historical process does not interfere with testing. Second, to obtain these propositions, one must inevitably propose conjectures about the laws of social development; how then do these differ from historicism? Popper’s response was vague; he believed one should focus on "piecemeal" [3] aspects rather than the social whole, stating in a lecture: "I believe that philosophers should continue to discuss the correct goals of social policy based on the experience of the past fifty years." However, this seems to imply that scientific prediction is possible as long as it targets certain aspects of social development rather than the historical process itself. Third, he did not entirely exclude efforts to study society as a whole, believing there is a "Gestalt" [4] totality that "discusses certain specific properties or aspects of things—that is, those properties or aspects that cause it to appear as an organized structure rather than a mere conglomerate," which can be studied by science. As some scholars have commented, it is possible to learn the influence of certain factors on results through research, and it is possible to analyze the influence of one variable while many factors are changing. However, this seems to imply that grasping the "totality" of history remains feasible. Fourth, Popper also hinted that historical development can be predicted through trends, noting that "the existence of trends is beyond doubt" and that "our difficult task is to explain them as best we can, i.e., to determine as precisely as possible the conditions under which they persist." However, this seems to imply that predicting the historical process can also be aided by trends.
This series of defenses opened up the theoretical space for Popper to propose his own "piecemeal engineering," yet it also sowed the seeds of poverty within his meticulously constructed anti-historicist theory. As the name suggests, "piecemeal engineering" is a method of social transformation focused on cautious repair, which on the surface aligns well with his critique of historicism. On one hand, since the historical process is influenced by the progress of knowledge, and because there is neither knowledge of historical laws nor a way to predict the growth of human knowledge, it is impossible to issue a "weather forecast" for history. On the other hand, if one focuses on the piecemeal, the local, and the tentative, it becomes possible to discover laws among social phenomena and, to a certain extent, forecast the future based on trends; thus, a technical transformation of society is not out of the question. The problem lies in the actual relationship between the growth of knowledge and the historical process. The former aspect seems to completely sever the illusions of historicism, but the latter seems to open a Pandora's box: if social scientific laws are possible, historical trends are possible, and conditional predictions are possible, this implies that even if scientific knowledge cannot be predicted, there is still much that humanity can do regarding the prediction of the future. The blind spot in Popper's theory causes him to "inevitably fall into a logical and theoretical chaos that is difficult to justify."
II. The "Achilles' Heel" of Popper's Theory
Popper attempts to show that people cannot predict historical development, yet he refuses to admit that it is truly and completely unpredictable. This simultaneously affirmative and negative attitude makes many of his conclusions appear ambiguous, exposing the poverty of his theory. For instance: under what conditions are trends reliable? In what sense are prophecies unconditional? Which causal relationships between variables can constitute a law? How high a degree of testability is required to be refutable? What duration of reform qualifies as piecemeal? What scope of a whole is studyable? Which social science laws are not historical interpretations? And so on. Of course, these questions regarding history are indeed difficult to answer; however, since the arguments employ universal propositions, they should provide clear demonstrations. Yet Popper's arguments are not only far from thorough, but are even somewhat vague. Take, for example, his understanding of trends. He admits that trends are useful for prediction, but he simply does not believe that trends are sustainable, and the reason he provides is merely an empirical observation: "A trend... which has persisted for hundreds or even thousands of years, may change within a decade, or even more rapidly." Furthermore, the functioning of a trend depends on initial conditions, and the "central mistake of historicism" lies in ignoring initial conditions, being so impoverished as to be unable to imagine changes in trends. However, if one could provide a guarantee for the reliability of a trend, the aforementioned reasons would appear weak and powerless.
The existence of theoretical blind spots reflects Popper’s ambiguous attitude and conservative stance, for it is difficult to imagine how he arrives at piecemeal engineering rather than some form of determinism without the aid of a certain ideology. Popper called himself a critical rationalist. Unlike Bacon, Descartes, and others who believed that humans could ultimately possess absolutely certain knowledge, he admired Socrates because "Socrates suspected human knowledge and wisdom, and remained firm in rejecting any claimed knowledge or wisdom." He went a step further than Hume, believing that reason alone could serve as the source of knowledge; but he took a step back from Kant, not believing that human a priori knowledge is absolutely reliable. In other words, he believed that human reason, as a source of knowledge, possesses no authority: "origin or pedigree has nothing to do with truth in any case." Piecemeal engineering communicates precisely this critical rationalism. He was unable to accurately define—and perhaps never intended to define—its distinction from historicist methods. He stated: "In answering this question, I do not wish to draw a sharp line of demarcation between these two methods." Hayek, who exerted an obvious influence on Popper, once said that "liberalism is essentially a skeptic" and "requires a certain degree of lack of self-confidence so as to let others pursue happiness in their own way." Popper truly believed in his heart that humanity is necessarily ignorant: "various new ways of happiness are theoretical, unreal things, and it is difficult to form an opinion about them," and even if attained, they would not be realized as predicted. It is evident that piecemeal engineering was proposed from a conservative stance and a cautious attitude; its benefit lies not in how much welfare it adds to the future, but in its pragmatic repair of suffering, which facilitates rapid correction even if proven wrong by experience. In this sense, rather than saying Popper proved historicism to be false, it is better to say he merely proved it to be unreliable; rather than saying Popper refuted historicism, it is better to say his fundamental stance was utterly incompatible with it.
Discarding this critical rationalist stance to re-examine Popper's unique view of knowledge, it is clearly insufficient to provide adequate grounds for refuting historicism and determinism. The poverty of the theory becomes an "Achilles' heel" because his view of knowledge is unconcerned with the truth or falsehood of propositions. While believing that knowledge originates from hypotheses and testing is not surprising—Marxism also holds that "as long as natural science employs thought, its form of development is the hypothesis... further observational material leads to the purification of these hypotheses"—Popper issued a verdict on all human knowledge a priori. He believed knowledge could be objective, but that "there can be no ultimate statements in science." It is nothing more than continuous trial and error. All that can be done is to use the criterion of falsifiability to draw a boundary: inside is empirical science, and outside are the infinite other forms of knowledge such as mathematics, logic, and metaphysics. The problem is that no matter how precise the boundary, it remains "demarcation" and has no relation to the meaning or truth of the proposition. For example, under the criterion of demarcation, many propositions—such as philosophical ones regarding the human mind, historical ones regarding social situations, or psychological ones regarding the id—are excluded from science from the very beginning, yet they may still be both meaningful and true. Popper also admitted that some metaphysical propositions could be viewed as answers to problems, and thus their truth or falsehood could be critically discussed. Therefore, one can say that it is only based on the logic of the demarcation of knowledge that conclusions—such as that the historical process has no scientific laws, that no scientific laws can forecast history, and that scientific knowledge grows through trial and error—can be supported. After all, "science" has already been specifically defined.
In fact, Popper admitted long ago: "I do not wish to refute determinism, which I consider irrefutable; I hope to refute what I call 'scientific' determinism." But to refute historicism, is demarcation enough? Those historicist propositions he criticized—such as to what extent a historical trend is reliable or whether a certain historical prediction is correct—cannot have their truth or falsehood determined solely by asserting whether they are scientific or not. There are always blind spots hidden between his conclusions and his arguments. For instance, to deny the existence of scientific laws regarding historical movement, he argues instead that these propositions are not scientific enough; to deny the significance of historical trends for prophesying the future, he argues instead that the conditions for the trends to function are difficult to satisfy; to deny the prediction of knowledge growth, he argues instead for the unique way knowledge grows, yet fails to prove that the historical process is entirely subject to the mode of knowledge growth. In this regard, Popper's "five-point thesis" is inadequate for the thorough elimination of historicism. He expended great effort on the second point—the way knowledge grows—yet the seeds of poverty were sowed as early as the first: while the historical process is certainly deeply influenced by human knowledge, this does not mean it is entirely impossible for certain laws or trends within history to exist that do not shift according to the growth of knowledge.
It is not difficult to imagine that when Popper strained to use his theory to attack Marx's communism, his "Achilles' heel" appeared even more fragile. Popper noted the uniqueness of Marx's theory, considering it on one hand "economistic," emphasizing the fundamental nature of human material needs and the foundational role of the economy in social development. He admitted this "represented an extremely valuable progress" and did not deny the scientificity of economism, but merely used empirical counterexamples to argue that "emphasizing the economic background as the ultimate basis of any kind of development... is in fact untenable," and that "in certain cases the influence of ideas (perhaps supported by propaganda) might outweigh and supersede economic forces." On the other hand, he believed Marx's theory was historicist—"a theory aimed at predicting the future course of economic and political development, especially the future course of revolutions." He believed the reason for Marx's failure "lay entirely in the poverty of historicism." What is meant by "poverty"? He explained: "it lies in the simple fact that, even if we observe the historical trends or tendencies manifested today, we cannot know whether they will manifest in the same way tomorrow." Undoubtedly, these views of Popper are mixed with too many misunderstandings.
It should be stated that this article does not intend to discuss historicism, nor to defend it. Indeed, Marx would roughly agree with many of the points Popper used to criticize historicism. For example, Marx also opposed predicting specific actions for the future; he pointed out: "what should be done at any specific moment in the future, what should be done immediately, depends entirely on the given historical environment in which one will have to act." However, the difference is that Marx "viewed social movement as a process of natural history governed by certain laws." He believed in the laws and trends of history and once remarked: "Due to a certain blindness of judgment, even the most eminent figures can completely fail to see things before their eyes. Later, at a certain time, people are surprised to find that what was previously not seen now leaves its traces everywhere." A scholar once commented: "Generally speaking, Marx had less interest in designing Utopian blueprints; he preferred to utilize the development of capitalism itself and make inferences from it." In fact, Marx did not possess the kind of historicist mania Popper accused him of; he never attempted to be omniscient regarding history. Engels pointed out: "It is impossible for us, as for all ages, to form a precise conceptual image of the world system in which we find ourselves." Lenin also noted: "Man cannot completely grasp = reflect = depict nature as a whole, its 'immediate totality'; man can only eternally approach this by creating abstractions, concepts, laws, a scientific world-picture, etc." But as Lukács said, "the opposition between the description of one aspect of history and the description of history as a unified process" is "an opposition of method" and "an opposition of perspective." In reality, Marx replaced common-sense views of the real world with the "process view" and "relational view" of dialectics. On one hand, he scientifically abstracted decisive factors from a chaotic and changing array of social phenomena; on the other hand, he emphasized that "the relations of production in every society form a unified whole," studying historical movement through the total structure of society, thereby proposing communism as a natural historical process. Lenin refined this summary, stating that the materialist conception of history "segregated the economic sphere from the various spheres of social life, and the relations of production from all social relations," and further "reduced relations of production to the level of the productive forces," thereby "viewing the development of socio-economic formations as a process of natural history." These interactions culminate in the well-known law of the materialist conception of history: productive forces determine the relations of production, and the economic base determines the superstructure.
III. Clarification of Historical Laws and the Inevitability of Communism
Marx's argumentation for communism strikes exactly at the "Achilles' heel" of Popper's theory. Popper believes that scientific knowledge regarding the historical process does not exist; yet the laws of the historical materialist conception of history are precisely such scientific knowledge. These laws study the total structure of society and are "generalizations of the most general results, abstracted from the examination of the development of human history," demonstrating the natural necessity of the historical process. Such a historical process is not so much a unilinear evolution of some generic subject as it is a process of human society continuously undergoing structural transformations; "evolution is manifested in those structures constituted according to a rationally formed pattern, which are constantly replaced by more comprehensive structures." The laws of historical materialism do not probe the specifics of different historical periods but explore the direction of the decisive factors concerning the historical process. Far from weakening the openness of the future to human beings, this must unfold within actual human activity and is by no means a "recipe or schema... for trimming the epochs of history." The laws of historical materialism are essential; the laws themselves are not identical to concrete phenomena. For example, the economy may not always be the sole or immediate influential factor in the historical process, but it is merely the "most powerful," "most original," and "most decisive." In short, while Popper believes the historical process is unpredictable due to the way knowledge grows, Marx demonstrates that the natural-historical process does not shift according to the growth of human knowledge, but fundamentally depends on the movement of the productive forces. However, it should be noted that: first, there remains a deterministic relationship within the expression of the laws of historical materialism: "productive forces are the cause, relations of production are the effect; the economic base is the cause, the superstructure is the effect." Second, the operation of these laws is not unconditional; the aforementioned deterministic relationship exhibits initial conditions—for instance, the condition for the economic base determining the superstructure is a specific movement of the productive forces. Third, Marx also emphasized that the functioning of laws or trends is "conditioned by various premises" of the reality of each era, but it can be proven that the operation of these laws is "not the result of artificial efforts determined by human ends and will."
How, then, do these laws and trends support the argument for communism? A common view holds that communism is "determined by the basic contradictions of capitalism" and takes "historical materialism and the theory of surplus value as its grounding." These views contain two propositions worth distinguishing, and Marx's texts should support a two-step argument: first, to show that communism is a natural-historical process; second, as some scholars have put it, "Marx sought not only to show how capitalism works but also why it is a transitory mode of production, and what the nature of the society that follows it might be"—that is, to show why capitalism must necessarily transition toward communism.
To reach the conclusion that communism possesses historical necessity, it is neither possible nor necessary to have omniscience of history; the method employed by historical materialism is actually to grasp certain decisive factors concerning the historical process. In other words, by scientifically abstracting the total structure of society, communism occurs within the changes of that social structure. On one hand, the process of history is reduced to the movement of the productive forces. The subject of history is humanity, and material production occupies a foundational position in human life: "What [individuals] are... coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce," and the total state of society adapts to the economic base. At the same time, as Marx pointed out, "Productive forces and social relations—these are two different sides of the development of the social individual." Productive forces embody material reproductive capacity and "in fact only determine the efficiency of purposeful productive activity within a certain time"; meanwhile, when people produce, they inevitably enter into certain mutual relations, namely the relations of production, and "the form of these relations necessarily changes with the change and development of these productive forces." Relations of production have specific forms; when they can no longer accommodate the productive forces, a transformation occurs. A certain state of the productive forces is the cause that gives rise to a certain type of relations of production.
On the other hand, communism is envisioned from the changes in the relations of production. Some scholars distinguish relations of production into "material" and "social" types—the former referring to labor relations and the latter involving the command over people and the means of production. Others express this as "technical relations" and "power relations," arguing that Marx usually uses the concept of relations of production in the latter sense. The study of relations of production primarily explores the combination of laborers with the conditions of production and a series of mutual relationships. Its core lies in the question of property ownership, i.e., the system of ownership. Marx pointed out: "These social relations into which the producers enter, the conditions under which they exchange their activities and participate in the whole act of production, will naturally vary according to the character of the means of production." He also believed that "all production is an appropriation of nature on the part of an individual within and through a specific form of society," and stated that "to define bourgeois property is nothing else than to give an exposition of all the social relations of bourgeois production." However, "property is merely a relationship of consciously regarding the conditions of production as one's own," and since "these conditions actually become the conditions of the subject's activity," there inevitably arises a difference between common ownership and private ownership. Division of labor is closely related to the system of ownership: "The various stages of development in the division of labor are just so many different forms of ownership; i.e., the existing stage in the division of labor determines also the relations of individuals to one another with reference to the material, instrument, and product of labor." Ultimately, socialized large-scale production will inevitably drive the conditions of production to be held in common by the producers; public ownership is the hallmark of communism. Engels explicitly pointed out: "Its decisive difference from the existing system consists, of course, in the organization of production on the basis of common ownership (initially by the state) of all means of production." Lenin also stated: "since the means of production become common property, the word 'communism' is also applicable here."
Through the laws of historical materialism, all the complex and concrete phenomena of social life—including ideological concepts and institutional systems—are scientifically abstracted into the dialectical relationships between superstructure and economic base, and between relations of production and productive forces. It can be said that while Popper was still lamenting the chaos of the historical whole and the complexity of social phenomena, Marx had already grasped the total structure of society through scientific methods. While Popper was still struggling with the idea that historical prophecy cannot avoid being disturbed by human knowledge, Marx had long since soberly realized that there was no need to waste effort issuing "weather forecasts" for the historical process—the growth of human knowledge certainly deeply influences the concrete course of history, yet it does not negate the laws governing the transformation of the total social structure. Within these interlocking deterministic relationships, the productive forces are the most fundamental factor: "the sum of productive forces accessible to men determines the condition of society." The relations of production adapt to the movement of the productive forces by reverting to public ownership, and what follows is communism. Importantly, this law of historical materialism is scientific because it meets Popper's "demarcation" criteria (i.e., it is falsifiable, possesses a logical structure from which predictions can be derived, and these predictions consist of basic propositions) and conforms to empirical confirmation. Lenin praised: "Since the appearance of Capital, the materialist conception of history is no longer a hypothesis, but a scientifically proven principle." As some scholars have emphasized: "Marx and Engels admitted that their theoretical principles were both verifiable and falsifiable."
However, although the argument thus far has envisioned communism through the laws of historical materialism, it has still not shown why capitalism is a transitory form. Popper insisted that the operation of laws or trends requires initial conditions, and he misunderstood communism as an unconditional historical prophecy. In fact, the expression of the aforementioned laws has already made it very clear: the superstructure adapts to the economic base, and the initial condition should be the factor that causes the economic base to change; since the economic base involves the relations of production and productive forces, and the relations of production in turn adapt to the state of the productive forces, the initial condition for the operation of the entire law lies in ensuring the movement of the productive forces. Therefore, the key lies in: first, the productive forces have a cumulative trend—only with the continuous progress of productive forces is the transformation of the relations of production possible; second, the capitalist system of private ownership has an inevitable trend toward negating itself, and communism is precisely the negation of private ownership.
Regarding the continuous cumulative trend of the productive forces, Marx believed that "the capitalist mode of production contains a tendency toward the absolute development of the productive forces" and that "at all stages of economic development a certain amount of wealth is accumulated." Why, then, do productive forces continuously accumulate? In recent years, some scholars have argued that "the self-revolutionizing nature of the productive forces is rooted in the subjective initiative of human practice to seek survival and development," or believe the secret is the "human needs, desires, rationality, and passion hidden behind the productive forces." Here, we should avoid falling into a logical trap. In fact, Popper also admitted that "the trends of accumulation and concentration of wealth observed by Marx can hardly be questioned. His theory of increasing productivity is also in the main unassailable," but he believed that "the human factor is the ultimately uncertain and wayward element in social life and in all social institutions."
In fact, explaining the cumulative trend of productive forces requires returning to practice. Marx once pointed out that "productive force is naturally always the productive force of useful, concrete labor," and is thus always the sensuous objective activity of human beings. Some scholars have found that "practice appears both as labor and as self-expression; it appears both as material reproduction and as social reproduction." From this, three reasons for the trend of progress in productive forces can be derived: First, productive activity accompanies humanity throughout. Marx wrote vividly: "Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilized man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production." Continuously producing to maintain existence means that the productive forces and the entire society are in constant motion: "the growth of productive forces, the destruction of social relations, the formation of ideas are in constant motion; only the abstraction of motion—'mors immortalis' [11]—is stagnant." Second, practice is creative and irreversible. Production is essentially the metabolism between man and nature, which "not only effects a change of form in the materials of nature, but also realizes his own purpose in those materials." This process is not a circular repetition but a contradictory interaction between needs and production—producing to satisfy higher needs, and in turn advancing productive forces through the satisfaction of those needs. Thus, this process is "creative, irreversible, and non-reducible," and different stages are "always preparing the premises for a higher upward movement and accumulating energy." Third, productive forces accumulate within social development. Marx pointed out: "Man, who is the constant premise of human history, is also its constant product and result." Productive forces represent to each generation a gift, the product of previous activity. While specific productive forces may indeed be destroyed or stagnate, with the expansion of intercourse, it becomes increasingly unlikely that "whether the productive forces, especially inventions, created in a particular locality are lost for later development depends entirely on the extension of intercourse." This trend implies that the entire social structure will inevitably be in a state of flux.
The "natural-process necessity" of capitalist private ownership negating itself can be explained through the contradiction between the social division of labor and private ownership. Division of labor and cooperation represent the organizational relationship of labor in production, signifying both the fixation of each individual's role and the transformation of production into a factual "joint activity," even though "joint activity itself is not voluntary but natural." The division of labor reflects the state of the productive forces. As productive forces continuously develop, the scale of the division of labor expands to the point that it triggers a severe antagonism: on one hand, production increasingly appears as the "joint activity" of different people across a vast scope; on the other hand, the means of production upon which this "joint activity" relies are held in the hands of a few, such that the "social connection of production appears only as a natural law overriding individual caprice." The only solution to this antagonism is to let the laborers hold the means of production commonly, just as in their "joint activity"—in other words, the transformation of private ownership into public ownership.
However, how do the capitalist private relations of production transform into their opposite? The response to this question is undoubtedly one of the most captivating parts of Marxism. Lenin once noted: "What Marx and Engels insisted on most in their writings was dialectical materialism, not dialectical materialism, and they insisted most of all on historical materialism, not historical materialism." [12] Viewed through dialectics, the apex of private property is the return of public ownership; the shift toward communist public ownership possesses an inherent necessity. From a concrete historical perspective, the contradictory movement between capitalist productive forces and relations of production will reach a certain point where "capital, i.e., wage labor, will stand in the same relation to the development of social wealth and productive forces as the guild system, serfdom, and slavery stood to that development, and will necessarily be cast off as a fetter." [13] Fundamentally, this is resolved through class struggle. Engels pointed out: "All revolutions up to now have been revolutions for the protection of one kind of property against another kind of property." The investigation of West European society also confirms this logic: initially, there was primitive society, containing different types of public ownership; subsequently, society entered private ownership, which was accompanied by three types of class antagonism—between slave owners and slaves, feudal lords and peasants, and the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Ultimately, class struggle "will end with the abolition of capitalism, with the return of modern society to a higher form of an archaic type, to collective production and collective appropriation."
Capital logically outlines the process of capitalist private property from its establishment to its decline. Since "the forms of private property change depending on whether these private individuals are laborers or non-laborers," private property undergoes two "negations" and exhibits three concrete expressions in this process. During the "pre-history of capital," private property is "private property based on one's own labor." With the progress of primitive accumulation [14], "capitalist private property" is formed—that is, "private ownership based on the exploitation of the labor of others, who are, however, formally free." This can be called the first negation. Marx discussed two laws of capitalist ownership: "The first is the identity of labor and ownership; the second is that labor appears as negated ownership, or rather, ownership appears as the negation of the alien character of the labor of others." As capitalism continues to develop, even small capitalists will be expropriated, and private property moves increasingly toward "capitalist monopoly," constituting the negation of "capitalist private property"—the negation of the negation. This precisely demonstrates that "the centralization of the means of production and the socialization of labor reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument." This negation also implies that the shift toward communism is nothing other than the inevitable prospect for capitalism, nothing other than a process of natural history.
Conclusion
Popper’s critique of communism contains an "Achilles' heel" [15] rooted in his use of research on the growth of human knowledge as a thesis against historicism, which exposes a poverty of theory. In fact, whether the growth of knowledge can be predicted does not mean that the historical process is untraceable. Marx pointed out precisely that communism is nothing other than a process of natural history. On the one hand, based on scientific abstraction of historical experience, he derived the laws of historical materialism and discovered the dialectical relationship between the economic base and the superstructure, and between the productive forces and relations of production. On the other hand, based on the concept of practice, he pointed out that the continuous movement of productive forces and capitalist production possess a tendency toward self-negation, revealing the historical necessity of communism. This interlocking argumentation strikes at the "Achilles' heel" of Popper’s theory: it neither relies on historical omniscience or historical essence, nor does it exclude the openness of the future to humanity. It is grounded in the laws of historical materialism and reliable historical trends, aiming to structurally explore the direction of fundamental determining factors concerning the historical process. To apply Popper’s demarcation of knowledge: if historical materialism can be called a "law" because it possesses falsifiability, then the progress of productive forces and the shift toward public ownership can be called "trends." After all, "historical progress is a philosophical proposition and a product of dialectical thinking; according to the logic of positivistic thinking and the means of empirical science, such a proposition can neither be verified nor falsified." Understanding this trend requires dialectical and historical thinking. As some scholars have stated: "Communism, as the ultimate goal of history, is not so much a goal of prophecy and outlook as it is a product of a dialectical way of historical thinking; it comes from the influence of Hegelian dialectics on Marx."
Marx’s revelation of communism combines "laws" and "trends." Like any beautiful theory, it has a very concise expression. While it is true that "its timing and institutional design cannot yet be determined," it at least "brings reasons for optimism." Looking at the present, the international communist movement is glowing with vitality. Communism, as a noble ideal of humanity, increasingly demonstrates its rational brilliance and practical charm. One of the most persuasive examples is the great cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Since the founding of the Communist Party of China over a century ago and the founding of New China over seventy years ago, the Party first gradually realized the public ownership of the means of production, then explored and constructed the socialist market economy system and a series of socio-political institutions, continuously promoting the great liberation of productive forces and great social development, carving out a path of Chinese-path modernization. It can be said that it is precisely in the pursuit of communism that the Chinese people have achieved the historical leap from standing up and becoming prosperous to becoming strong [16]. The path of Chinese-path modernization is also providing empirical evidence for the historical necessity of communism.