Subject: (10) from THE RADICALS AND NONVIOLENCE
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KARL POPPER, LIBERAL AND NONVIOLENT
by Marco Pannella
[...] We have come to the end of the century, and to the time for
reckoning. One man who is as old as the century is Karl Popper (1), whose
main work, "Open Society and its Enemies", remained unpublished in Italy
for almost 50 years, until 1974.
Five years ago I read Popper's apology for the Anglo-Saxon majority
electoral system. I have also discovered that this ultra-liberal is also a
passionate student of nonviolence and of Gandhi. I remember, on the
contrary, the shock I felt when Ralph Dahrendorf (2) told me frankly that
he had never thought there was a distinction between nonviolence and
pacifism.
The reading of pacifism is univocal, and the consequences are evident: the
catastrophes and the horrors of the century which have weighed tragically
in favour of dictators and against the oppressed; to the advantage of the
militarist totalitarian states and against the democracies in the process
of rearmament; it was an influential psychological factor in the Munich
policy, and in the aversion to the West. It has been the vehicle of
Messianic and irenical attitudes. Gandhi was quite different. In an article
by Gandhi, I found the statement that violence for a just cause is more
praiseworthy than a cowardly adherence to injustice.
(1) Karl Popper: an eminent exponent of contemporary liberal thought.
(2) Ralph Dahrendorf: political scientist, former director of the London
School of Economics.
