Rereading Soros's "Open Society" Inspiration: The Threat of Capitalism (1997)

Translator's note: Since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, it seems that every eight to ten years there has been a wave of public opinion criticizing Soros . Especially in the years after Brexit and Trump's election, by criticizing this "financial tycoon", he criticized the cosmopolitanism and laissez-faire capitalism on which the operation of transnational capital depends. laissez-faire capitalism) , has increasingly become a kind of political correctness.

However, as Soros himself stated in an open letter published in the British Guardian on July 13 this year, shortly after the end of the Cold War, he published the paper " The Capitalist Threat " in The Atlantic Monthly in 1997, In the elaboration of the "open society" initiative, it is pointed out that the so-called "market fundamentalism" (market fundamentalism) that allows capital to determine social development has become a threat to the universal value of maintaining an open democratic society.

In today’s world, the gap between the rich and the poor is widening, class divisions are intensifying, Western populism and anti-globalization ideology is intensifying, the international order established after the Cold War is in jeopardy, and emerging economies upholding the model of state capitalism and power politics are emerging . It’s time Reread Soros's original intention of "open society".

In The Philosophy of History , Hegel presented a disturbing view of historical development—that every civilization has a core principle that gives it a unique identity, and it is this principle The morbidity intensified, eventually leading to the collapse and decline of civilization. While I've made a lot of money in financial markets, I'm now starting to worry that the unbridled intensification of laissez-faire capitalism, and the proliferation of market values in all spheres of life, is jeopardizing our open and democratic societies. In my opinion, the main enemy of an open society is no longer the communists, but the threat of capitalism.

The term "open society" was coined by Henri Bergson in his book The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932), and after the Austrian philosopher Karl Karl Popper's book Open Society and its Enemies (1945) was further refined. Popper points out that totalitarian ideologies like communism and Nazism have one thing in common: they claim to have the ultimate truth. Since ultimate truth is beyond human reach, these ideologies have to resort to oppression in order to impose their "vision" on society. As a contrast to these totalitarian ideologies, Popper lists an alternative view of society in which no one has a monopoly on truth; different people have different views and different interests, and need institutions that allow them to coexist peacefully. These systems protect the rights of citizens and ensure freedom of choice and freedom of expression. Popper called this form of social organization an "open society". Totalitarian ideology is its enemy.

Written during World War II, The Open Society and Its Enemies explains the value of what Western democracies stand for and fight for. This philosophical explanation is highly abstract, and the term "open society" has never been widely recognized. Nonetheless, Popper's analysis is profound, and as a student of the late 1940s, it was a deafening revelation for me as I experienced Nazi and Communist rule in Hungary firsthand.

This drove me to follow Karl Popper's philosophical theories and ask: Why has no one ever attained the ultimate truth? The answer becomes clearer and clearer: We live in a universe we are still trying to understand, and our perceptions also have an impact on the events in which we participate. If our thoughts belong to one universe and the subject beings they affect belong to another, then the truth may be within our grasp: we can formulate arguments against the facts, which will serve as a reliable standard against which Come and see if the argument is true. (Translator's Note: Lenovo "Practice is the only criterion for testing truth")

In one field, there are sufficient conditions for the pursuit of truth, and that is natural science. But in other areas of human progress, the relationship between arguments and facts is less clear-cut. In social and political affairs, the perceptions of participants even influence the formation of reality. In these cases, the facts do not necessarily constitute a reliable criterion for judging the truth of the theory. There is a two-way correlation between thoughts and events—a feedback mechanism that I call "reflexivity." Using reflexivity as a tool, I developed a whole theory of history.

Whether or not this theory is valid, it does benefit me a lot in financial markets. When I made more money than I personally needed, I decided to start a foundation; I started to reflect on what I really cared about. After experiencing Nazi persecution and communist oppression, I have come to the conclusion that the most important thing for me is an open society. Therefore, I called the foundation I founded the "Open Society Fund" (translator's note: then called the Open Society Fund, after the development of the network called Open Society Foundations, abbreviated OSF), and its goal was to promote closed societies. openness, making open societies more viable, and promoting critical thinking. That was 1979.

My first major job was chosen in South Africa, but it didn't work out. The apartheid system was so ingrained that no matter what I tried, it would only be assimilated as part of the system rather than facilitate its change. Then I turned my attention to Central Europe; here my work is even more successful. Initially, I supported the Charter 77 movement in Czechoslovakia in 1980 and Solidarity in Poland in 1981. I then established several independent foundations in my home country Hungary (1984), in China (1986), in the Soviet Union (1987), and in Poland (1988). As the Soviet system collapsed, so did my work. So far (Translator's Note: This article was written in 1997, today's OSF branch has covered 37 countries), I have established a network of foundations in more than 25 countries (excluding China, in 1989 we institutions based there were closed).

When operating under a communist regime, I never had to explain to others what an "open society" meant; those who supported the foundation's goals, while not good at words, knew better than I did what an "open society" meant. For example, the goal of my foundation in Hungary is to help with alternative activities. I am well aware that the prevailing communist dogma is wrong because it is just dogma, and once exposed to other options, it cannot be sustained. Facts have proved that this method is effective. The foundation became a major source of support for the Hungarian civil society, which, as civil society flourished, faded away from the influence of the Communist regime.

After the collapse of communism, the mission of the Foundation Network changed. Recognize that an open society is a more advanced and complex form of social organization than a closed society ( because in a closed society there is only one blueprint for development imposed on society as a whole, in an open society each citizen is not only allowed, It is also required to have the ability to think independently ), the foundation has shifted from the original subversive task to the constructive task - when the believers of the open society have become accustomed to subversive activities, this is not an easy task. Most of the foundations under my command are doing well, but unfortunately, they are weak. The open society in the West does not have a strong desire to promote an open society in the ruins of the former Soviet Union. On the contrary, the mainstream view is that "everyone sweeps the snow in front of the door, and leaves no one else's frost on the roof". The end of the Cold War brought a very different response from the end of World War II. The idea of a new Marshall Plan didn't even have room for discussion. I was even laughed at when I presented the idea at a conference in Potsdam (then still part of East Germany) in the spring of 1989.

The collapse of communism laid the foundations for a universally open society, but Western democracies failed to take on the big role. The new regimes built on the ruins of the former Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia bear little resemblance to open societies. The Western Alliance seems to have lost its sense of mission, as if without the threat of communism, it has lost its identity. Neither has the West shown any sign of helping those who defend the notion of an open society in Bosnia or anywhere else. As for people living in ex-communist countries, when they endured oppression in the past, they may have longed for an open society, but when the communist system collapsed, they exhausted all their energy just to survive. After the failure of communism, there was a general disillusionment with the concept of the universal, of which the open society was part.

These events forced me to re-examine my beliefs in open societies. In the five or six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I devoted almost all of my energy to the transformation of the pre-communist world. Only recently have I turned my attention back to our own society. The networks of foundations I have created have always done their job; however, I feel there is an urgent need to revisit the conceptual frameworks that motivated me to build them in the first place. Such a reassessment leads me to conclude that the concept of an open society has not lost its utility. Quite the contrary, the open society has never been more important in the sense of understanding the stage of history we are in and providing a practical guide to political action than it is in the days of Karl Popper's book-but it requires A complete rethink and rebuild. If the open society is an ideal worth pursuing, it can no longer be defined by the threat of communism. It has to be given a more positive content.

The New Enemy

Popper points out that while one constitutes the far right and the other the far left, fascism and communism have much in common because both rely on the power of the state to suppress individual liberties. I would like to add to his argument. I think open societies can also be threatened in the opposite direction - from excessive individualism. Too much competition and too little cooperation can lead to intolerable unfairness and instability.

Our society today is dominated by a belief in the magic of markets. The doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism holds that the public interest is best served by the unfettered pursuit of self-interest. However. If this excessively individualistic orientation is not moderated by acknowledging that certain public interests are superior to particular ones, our current system—however imperfect, yet still considered a qualified open society—will be very difficult to achieve. Easily broken.

But I want to stress that I don't put laissez-faire capitalism in the same category as Nazism or communism. Totalitarian ideology deliberately undermines the open society; laissez-faire policies may pose a danger to it, but this is built up unintentionally. Friedrich Hayek was one of the apostles of laissez-faire and a passionate proponent of the open society. Even so, with communism and even socialism already bankrupt, I think the current threat of laissez-faire is more terrifying than the threat of totalitarian ideology. We are enjoying a truly global market economy with free movement of goods, services, capital and even people, but we fail to realize the need to maintain the values and institutions of an open society.

The social situation at the turn of the century can be compared to the present. It was a golden age of capitalism, characterized by the principles of laissez-faire; it is the same now. Society at the time was even more stable in some respects: as an imperialist power, Britain sent gunboats to distant colonies, and as the main beneficiary of the international system at the time, it spared no effort to keep the system working; the United States today, and Don't want to be the police of the world. There was still a gold standard back then; today's major currencies are squeezing each other in foreign exchange markets like continental drift. However, the free market system that prevailed a hundred years ago was finally destroyed in the First World War; totalitarian ideology waited for the opportunity to rise, and by the end of the Second World War, the flow of capital between countries was almost cut off. The current system is more likely to be broken unless we learn from the hard lessons!

While laissez-faire doctrines are not in direct contradiction to open society principles like Marxism-Leninism or Nazi racial purity programs, all of these doctrines have one important feature in common: they all seek to demonstrate, by appealing to science, that they possess the ultimate truth claim. As far as totalitarian theory is concerned, this claim is easily falsified. One of Popper's achievements was to point out that a theory like Marxist economics could not be counted as a science at all. When discussing laissez-faire, this claim is even more difficult to argue because it is based on economic theory, one of the most prestigious disciplines in the social sciences. One cannot simply equate market economics with Marxist economics. However, I believe that the ideology of laissez-faire, like Marxism-Leninism, is a perversion of the so-called scientific truth.

The main scientific basis of laissez-faire ideology is the theory that market supply and demand will reach equilibrium through free competition, thereby ensuring optimal resource allocation. This is widely accepted as an eternal truth, and in a sense it is. Economic theory is a system of axioms: as long as the underlying assumptions hold, the conclusions follow. But when we took a closer look at these assumptions, we found that they didn't hold true in the real world. As stated in its initial argument, the theory of perfect competition—that is, the natural equilibrium between supply and demand—is based on the premise of perfect knowledge. information), a homogeneous and easily divisible product, and a sufficient number of market participants so that no single participant can influence the market price. The assumption of perfect information proved unsustainable, and so was subtly swapped: supply and demand were both treated as given independent conditions. This is no longer an assumption, but a methodological requirement. Some argue that economic theory studies supply and demand, so both must be considered given conditions.

As I have stated elsewhere, treating supply and demand as independently given conditions is not realistic, at least in financial markets - which play a crucial role in resource allocation. The future of transactions between buyers and sellers in financial markets is influenced by their own decisions. The supply and demand curves no longer follow a given shape here, because they both contain expectations about the future, and future events themselves are shaped by these expectations. There is a two-way feedback mechanism between the thinking of market participants and the situation they are thinking - "reflexivity". It explains the participants' incomplete understanding of the market (a recognition that this is fundamental to the idea of an open society) and the uncertainty of the process they are involved in.

If supply and demand curves are not independently given, how are market prices determined? If we look at the behavior of financial markets, we see that prices do not tend to equilibrium levels, but continue to fluctuate relative to the expectations of buyers and sellers. Prices stay farther away from the theoretical equilibrium level for much longer. When it finally showed a return trend, the equilibrium level had already changed from before. Even so, the concept of equilibrium is enduring. It's easy to understand: without it, economics has no way of explaining how prices are determined.

Without the concept of equilibrium, the argument that the free market promotes optimal allocation of resources loses its argument. The so-called scientific theory used to verify it will also be proved to be an axiomatic structure, and its conclusions and assumptions are self-evidential and not necessarily supported by empirical evidence. In this respect, laissez-faire is so eerily similar to Marxism, which claims that science reflects the objective laws of social development.

I am not implying that economic theory distorts reality deliberately for political purposes. But in trying to imitate (and gain prestige) the achievements of the natural sciences, economic theory tries impossible taboos. There is a reflexive relationship between social science theories and the existence of the subjects they discuss; that is, they can affect real-world events in ways that natural science theories do not. Heisenberg's famous uncertainty principle implies that the act of observation itself may interfere with the state of a quantum particle; but it is the observation that causes this effect, not the uncertainty principle itself. In the social realm, theories have the power to change the existence of the subjects they deal with. Economic theory deliberately excludes reflexivity from consideration. In doing so, it distorts its own thematic existence, allowing laissez-faire ideology to take advantage.

It is the assumption of perfect information that turns economic theory into an ideology hostile to the open society —first through the public statement of that assumption, and then in disguise as a methodological component. Market mechanisms do have strong supporting arguments, but not because they are perfect; it is because we live in a world dominated by incomplete understanding, and markets provide an effective set of feedback mechanisms for evaluating a Human decision-making results and correcting mistakes.

Regardless of the form, the assertion of perfect information contradicts the concept of an open society, an admission that our understanding of our own situation is inherently imperfect. This is an abstract statement, and I will illustrate in concrete ways how laissez-faire ideology poses a threat to open societies. I'll focus on three issues: economic stability, social justice, and international relations.

Economic Stability

Economic theory has managed to create an artificial world in which the preferences of participants and the opportunities faced by participants are independent of each other, and prices tend to move towards equilibrium levels that bring the two forces into balance. But in financial markets, prices are not just passive reflections of given independent conditions of supply and demand; they also play an active role in shaping those preferences and opportunities. This reflexive interaction makes financial markets inherently unstable. Laissez-faire ideology denies this instability and opposes any form of government intervention aimed at maintaining stability. History shows that financial markets do crash, leading to economic depression and social unrest. These collapses have contributed to the evolution of central banking and other forms of regulation. Laissez-faire theorists argue that the market collapse was caused by flawed regulation, not market instability. Their arguments have some validity, because if our understanding is inherently imperfect, then regulation must also be flawed. Yet their argument is hollow, as it fails to explain why the regulation was enforced in the first place. It sidesteps the issue with another argument, which goes like this: Unregulated markets are perfect because regulation is flawed.

This argument rests on the assumption of complete information: if a solution is wrong, its opposite must be right. However, in the absence of complete information, both free markets and regulations are flawed. Stability can only be maintained with deliberate effort. Even so, markets still crash because public policy is often flawed. If the flaws are severe enough, the collapse of the market could lead to the rise of totalitarian regimes. (Translator's Note: See also the bankruptcy of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazi Empire after the Great Depression of 1929)

Instability goes well beyond financial markets: it also affects the values that guide people's behavior. Economic theory treats value as a given condition. At the time of the birth of economic theory, in the days of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Alfred Marshall, this was a reasonable assumption because the fact The above people have indeed established firm values. Adam Smith himself combined moral philosophy with his economic theory. Beneath the personal preferences expressed in market behavior, people are guided by a set of moral principles that in turn are expressed in behavior outside the scope of market mechanisms. These principles, while deeply rooted in tradition, religion and culture, are not necessarily rational and not the most self-conscious when faced with alternatives. In fact, these principles are easily abandoned when faced with alternatives. Market values are an alternative to demeaning traditional values.

There has always been a conflict between market values and other more traditional value systems, which has inspired strong emotions and confrontations. As market mechanisms develop, the appearance of acting according to a specific set of non-market values becomes increasingly difficult to maintain. Advertising, marketing, and even product packaging, are designed to reshape people's preferences, not just respond to people's preferences, as laissez-faire theory suggests. People who are unsure of where they stand are increasingly relying on money as a yardstick for their values. More expensive things are seen as better. The value of a work of art can be judged by its auction price. People deserve respect and admiration for their wealth. What was once merely a medium of exchange has usurped the place of fundamental values and reversed the relationships presupposed by economic theory. What was once professionalism has given way to business demands. The cult of success replaces the belief in principles. Society has lost its anchor.

Social Darwinism

By taking supply and demand as a given and declaring government intervention the ultimate evil, the ideology of laissez-faire effectively outlaws the redistribution of income or wealth. I agree with the claim that all attempts at redistribution interfere with market efficiency, but that doesn't mean any attempts should be abandoned. The laissez-faire argument relies on the same paranoid quest for perfection as communism; it claims that if redistribution leads to inefficiencies and economic distortions, then the problem should be solved by eliminating redistribution—a contrast to communist claims that competing The duplication of output is a waste of resources, so we should adopt a centrally planned economic model. But perfection is impossible. Wealth does accumulate in the hands of its owners, but without redistribution mechanisms, injustice becomes intolerable. "Money is like manure, it is useful only when it gets out." Francis Bacon, who left this famous quote, is an insightful economist.

The laissez-faire argument against income redistribution is essentially a doctrine of survival of the fittest. The most powerful counterattack against this theory is that wealth can be passed on through inheritance; and the second generation of inheriting wealth is rarely as "optimal" as the first generation of wealth-creating generation.

In any case, making survival of the fittest the guiding principle of a civilized society is problematic. This social Darwinism is based on outdated evolutionary theory, just as equilibrium theory in economics takes inspiration from Newtonian physics. Modern physics has long gone beyond the scope of the former). The principle that guides the evolution of species is mutation, and mutation works in more complex ways. There is interaction between species and the environment in which they live, and a species is also an integral part of the environment in which other species live. This feedback mechanism is similar to the reflexivity of history, except that historical evolution is not driven by mutation, but by wrong ideas. I mention this because Social Darwinism is one of the misconceptions driving human affairs today. The main point I want to make is that cooperation, like competition, are part of a social system, and the slogan "survival of the fittest" distorts this fact.

International RelationsInternational Relations

(Translator's Note: The "states" in the following are all states, that is, sovereign states, which refer to coercive political groups under a single governmental organization that monopolizes the legal use of violence, different from states in other senses, such as nation-states) Laissez-faire The ideology of ideology also has some of the shortcomings of another "pseudo" scientific geopolitics. Geopolitical scholars believe that there are no principles before the state, only interests, and these interests are determined by geographical location and other fundamental factors. This deterministic approach to research, rooted in outdated nineteenth-century scientific methodology, suffers from at least two glaring flaws, although it does not fully apply to laissez-faire economics. One is that it treats the state as an indivisible unit of analysis, just as economics treats the individual. It is self-contradictory to use the state as the supreme source of authority in international relations while stripping it of the economy. Leaving this point aside, there is a more pressing and practical side to this flaw: what happens when a state collapses? Geopolitical realists were caught off guard, as happened with the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Another flaw of geopolitics is that it does not recognize public interests beyond national interests.

With the demise of communism, the current situation, however imperfect, can be described as a globally open society. It is not threatened by the outside world, nor by some totalitarian ideology seeking to dominate the world. Threats come from within, from tyrants seeking to build internal dominance through external conflict. This can also happen in countries that have democratic institutions but trample on the public interest by overly pursuing their own sovereign interests. The greatest enemy an open international community faces may be itself.

The Cold War was an extremely stable arrangement. Two power blocs representing diametrically opposed ideas of social organization, trying to achieve supremacy, but they must respect each other's core interests, as each has the ability to destroy the other in total war. The strategic concept of "mutually assured destruction" that promotes a balance through nuclear deterrence). This strictly limits the intensity of the conflict between the two sides; and all regional conflicts are included in this overall situation. This extremely stable world order has come to an end due to the internal disintegration of a superpower. There is no new world order to take its place; we have entered a period of disorder.

The ideology of laissez-faire does not help us meet this challenge. It does not recognize the need for a world order. It hopes that a new order will be born from the pursuit of self-interest by various countries. But guided by the principle of survival of the fittest, countries are increasingly focusing on their own competitiveness rather than making any sacrifices for the public good.

There is no need to make any dire predictions about the eventual collapse of the global trading system to show that laissez-faire ideology is incompatible with the concept of an open society. The fact that the free world failed to reach out to local societies after the collapse of communism speaks volumes. The oligarchic capitalist system entrenched in Russia is so unfair that one might fall for a charismatic leader who promises national revival at the expense of civil liberties.

If there is any lesson to be learned from it, it is that the collapse of oppressive regimes does not automatically lead to the creation of open societies. An open society is not just about outlawing government interference and oppression. It is a complex, mature framework that requires tireless efforts to implement it. Because it is more complex than the system it replaces, a quick transition requires outside assistance. But the combination of laissez-faire ideology, social Darwinism and geopolitical realism prevailing in the United States and Britain has thwarted any hope of Russia becoming an open society. If the leaders of these countries take a different view of the world than the above, they can lay a solid foundation for a global open society.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was an opportunity for the United Nations to function as it was designed. Mikhail Gorbachev visited the United Nations in 1988 and outlined his vision for the two superpowers working together to bring peace and security to the world. Since then, the opportunity is gone. The United Nations has completely lost its credibility as a peacekeeping agency. The current state of affairs in Bosnia affects the UN in the same way that the events in Albania in 1936 affected the League of Nations.

Our global open society lacks the institutions and mechanisms necessary to maintain it, without the political will to achieve them. I rebuke the prevailing attitude that the unhindered pursuit of self-interest will bring about the ultimate international balance. I believe this unwarranted confidence is wrong. I think the concept of an open society can provide a better guide for action, protected by a supporting system. In fact, it doesn't take much imagination to recognize the undercurrents that underlie the prevailing global open society.

The Promise of Fallibility

Giving a positive meaning to an open society is a bit more difficult than identifying its enemies. Without this positive meaning, an open society will be slaughtered by the enemy. Bringing communities together must rely on the common good, but open societies are not communities in the traditional sense. This is an abstract concept, a universal concept. There is no doubt that there is now a global community; there are public interests on a global scale, such as protecting the environment and preventing war. But these public interests are relatively weak compared to specific interests. In a world of sovereign states, they have few voices of support. Furthermore, the open society as a universal concept transcends all boundaries. Society derives its cohesion from shared values rooted in culture, religion, history and tradition. When societies no longer have boundaries, what are the shared values? I believe there is only one possible source: the concept of an open society itself.

To play this role, the concept of an open society needs to be redefined. I think an open society is not a binary choice between open and closed, but rather occupies the middle ground, holding societies together through shared values while individual rights are guaranteed. This middle ground is threatened by all parties. At one extreme, the doctrines of communism and nationalism will lead to a rampage of state power. At the other extreme, laissez-faire capitalism can lead to great instability and eventual collapse. There are, of course, other variants; Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew has proposed a so-called "Asian model" that combines a market economy with an oppressive state. In many parts of the world, control of the state is closely linked to the creation of private wealth , and one might think of oligarchic capitalism or the "gangster state" as the new threat to open societies.

I think an open society is a society that can be continuously improved. We begin by recognizing our own fallibility , which extends not only to our psychological structures, but also to the institutions upon which we live. Imperfections can be improved through a process of trial and error; open societies not only allow this process, but actually encourage it by upholding free speech and protecting dissent. Open societies offer limitless prospects for progress. In this regard, it is closely linked to the scientific method. But science has objective criteria—the facts by which the process can be judged. Unfortunately, in human affairs, facts do not provide a reliable standard of truth, but we need some universally agreed standard by which to judge by trial and error. All cultures and religions provide such standards; an open society cannot do without them. The innovation of an open society is that most cultures and religions consider their values to be absolute, and an open society that embraces many cultures and religions must see its shared values as an issue for debate and choice. For the debate to be possible, there must be at least agreement on the following: an open society is an ideal form of social organization. People must think and act freely, limited only by the public interest. Limitations must also be determined by trial and error.

The Declaration of Independence can be seen as a good approximation of the principles of the open society, but we should not claim that these principles are self-evident, we should treat them equally with our fallibility. Does acknowledging our incomplete understanding of the world help establish the open society as an ideal form of social organization? I believe it can, despite the enormous difficulties in achieving it. We must promote awareness of our own fallibility, and even give fallibility to beliefs that are often ultimate truths. But since ultimate truth cannot be achieved, how can we accept our own fallibility as ultimate truth?

This is an obvious paradox, but it can be resolved. The first proposition, that our understanding is imperfect, is consistent with the second: the first proposition must first be accepted as our creed. It is precisely because our understanding is imperfect that it is necessary to treat it as a creed. If we enjoy complete information, why should we believe? Accepting the above inferences, however, requires profound changes in our understanding of belief and its role.

Historically, beliefs have helped to justify specific codes of conduct. Fallibility should foster a very different attitude to life among us. Faith is supposed to help shape our lives, not make us follow a set of rules. If we recognize that our beliefs are an expression of self-choice, rather than an expression of ultimate truth, we are more likely to tolerate other beliefs and revise our beliefs based on lived experience. But that's not how most people approach their beliefs. They tend to identify their beliefs with ultimate truth. In fact, this identification is often used to define their own identity. If their experience of living in an open society forces them to abandon their claim to ultimate truth, they will feel lost.

The idea that we are embodying the ultimate truth in some form is deeply ingrained in the human mind. We may be endowed with critical abilities, but we are inextricably linked to ourselves. We may have discovered truth and morality, but most importantly, we must represent our own interests and the existence of our "self". So if things like truth and justice exist—and we come to believe that they do exist—then we want to have them. In the past we sought truth from religious beliefs, and more recently we have turned to science. It must be admitted that a belief in our own fallibility would be a poor substitute by comparison. It's a very complex concept, and it's harder to accept than primitive sources of motivation like "my country" (or my company, my family), whether they're right or wrong.

Since we have difficulty understanding and accepting our own fallibility, what is its appeal? The strongest argument for fallibility should be found in the results it produces. Open societies tend to be more prosperous, more creative, and more stimulating to human development than closed societies. But there is of course a risk in having a successful outcome as the only basis for belief, because if my theory of reflexivity is valid, then "success" and "right" are not the same concepts. In the natural sciences, arguments must be correct (the predictions they produce, and even interpretations of meaning corresponding to the facts) in order to work (that is, to produce useful predictions and interpretations). But in the social realm, because of the reflexive connection between thought and reality, what works is not necessarily the same as what is right. As I have suggested earlier, the cult of "success" can be a source of instability in open societies because it can undermine our notions of right and wrong. This is what is happening in our society today. Our preoccupation with success—measured in monetary terms—threatens our notion of right and wrong: how easy it is to make money as long as it gets away with it.

If success is the only criterion, open societies will ultimately lose out to totalitarian ideologies - there are many examples to prove it. It is much easier to justify one's own interests than the whole abstract logical process of deriving from fallibility to the concept of an open society.

The concept of an open society needs to be stronger. There must be a determination to build an open society, because that is the right form of social organization. Such determination is invaluable today.

I believe in an open society because it better fulfills our potential than a social system that claims to have the ultimate truth. Accepting the unattainable nature of truth is better than denying it the prospect of freedom and prosperity. But I recognize a problem here: I'm fully committed to the pursuit of truth and to finding a convincing case for an open society, but I'm not sure others will agree with me. Given the reflexive link between thought and reality, the pursuit of truth is not essential to success. Particular ends may be achieved by distorting or denying truth, and people may be more interested in achieving their specific goals than in pursuing truth. Only when we reach the highest level of abstraction, when we consider the meaning of life, does truth matter. Even at this point, deception may still be easier to accept than fact, because life is bound to die, and death is clearly unacceptable. In fact one could argue that an open society is the best form of social organization for the full value of life, while a closed society is the best form to accept death. In the ultimate analysis, belief in an open society is really a matter of choice, not logical necessity.

That's not all. Even if the concept of an open society is generally accepted, it will not be enough to ensure that freedom and prosperity prevail. An open society simply provides a framework within which differing views on social and political issues can be reconciled; it does not provide a firm position on society-wide goals. Given such a position, it is no longer an open society. This means that people must have other beliefs in addition to their belief in an open society. Only in a closed society can the concept of an open society itself provide a sufficient basis for political activity; in an open society it is not enough to be a democrat; one must be a liberal democrat or a social democrat or Christian democrats or other types of democrats. A shared belief in an open society is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for freedom and prosperity, and indeed all the good things that an open society should bring.

As can be seen, the concept of an open society seems to be an endless source of trouble. This is to be expected; after all, the foundation of an open society is the recognition of our fallibility. In fact, we can even take it for granted that the ideal of an open society is unattainable; the idea of "mastering the blueprint for an open society" is itself a contradiction. This does not mean that we should give up our efforts. In science, ultimate truth is unattainable; look at the progress we have made in pursuing it. And an open society can bring more or less the same benefits to human beings.

Examining political and social agendas from philosophical, epistemological arguments may seem like a hopeless undertaking; but it can be done, and there is historical precedent. The Enlightenment was a tribute to the power of reason that inspired the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. In the French Revolution, belief in reason was overkill, with unpleasant side effects; however, this was the beginning of modernity. We now have 200 years of experience with the Age of Reason, and as rational people, we should realize that reason has its limits. The time is ripe for a conceptual framework based on our fallibility. Where rationality fails, fallibility succeeds. (Soros famous quote, "Where reason has failed, fallibility may yet succeed.")

Source: Soros, George, The Capitalist Threat , The Atlantic Monthly - February 1997; Volume 279, No. 2, pages 45-58.