[1] I am not in all cases and under all circumstances against a violent revolution. I believe with some medieval and Renaissance Christian thinkers who taught the admissibility of tyrannicide that there may indeed, under a tyranny, be no other possibility, and that a violent revolution may be justified. But I also believe that any such revolution should have as its only aim the establishment of a democracy; and by a democracy I do not mean something as vague as ‘the rule of the people’ or ‘the rule of the majority’, but a set of institutions (among them especially general elections, i.e. the right of the people to dismiss their government) which permit public control of the rulers and their dismissal by the ruled, and which make it possible for the ruled to obtain reforms without using violence, even against the will of the rulers. In other words, the use of violence is justified only under a tyranny which makes reforms without violence impossible, and it should have only one aim, that is, to bring about a state of affairs which makes reforms without violence possible.
[2] I do not believe that we should ever attempt to achieve more than that by violent means. For I believe that such an attempt would involve the risk of destroying all prospects of reasonable reform. The prolonged use of violence may lead in the end to the loss of freedom, since it is liable to bring about not a dispassionate rule of reason, but the rule of the strong man. A violent revolution which tries to attempt more than the destruction of tyranny is at least as likely to bring about another tyranny as it is likely to achieve its real aims.
[3] There is only one further use of violence in political quarrels which I should consider justified. I mean the resistance, once democracy has been attained, to any attack (whether from within or without the state) against the democratic constitution and the use of democratic methods. Any such attack, especially if it comes from the government in power, or if it is tolerated by it, should be resisted by all loyal citizens, even to the use of violence. In fact, the working of democracy rests largely upon the understanding that a government which attempts to misuse its powers and to establish itself as a tyranny (or which tolerates the establishment of a tyranny by anybody else) outlaws itself, and that the citizens have not only a right but also a duty to consider the action of such a government as a crime, and its members as a dangerous gang of criminals. But I hold that such violent resistance to attempts to overthrow democracy should be unambiguously defensive. No shadow of doubt must be left that the only aim of the resistance is to save democracy. A threat of making use of the situation for the establishment of a counter-tyranny is just as criminal as the original attempt to introduce a tyranny; the use of such a threat, even if made with the candid intention of saving democracy by deterring its enemies, would therefore be a very bad method of defending democracy; indeed, such a threat would confuse the ranks of its defenders in an hour of peril, and would therefore be likely to help the enemy.--Karl Popper (1945 [1994] The Open Society and Its Enemies, 360-361 [emphases and paragraph numbers added to facilitate discussion.]
The quoted passage is, in context, an aside on Popper's analysis of the political drawbacks of Marxist prophecy of violent revolution. In order to understand his remarks we need to be reminded that for Popper it is constitutive of democracy that "it permits reform without violence" (369; there is more to Popper's idea of democracy.) One of the bad-making, constitutive features of tyranny is that "it makes reforms without violence impossible." Popper does not define violence, but let's stipulate it's clear he means something like the use of physical force, maiming, torture, killing, murder, etc. More problematically, Popper does not define any of the legitimate limits on reform or a sense of proportionality about the conditions that count as 'tyrannical.'*
As we see in paragraphs [1]&[3],Popper does not rule out political violence categorically. In the first paragraph Popper embraces the idea of legitimacy of tyrannicide. Strikingly, he does not refer to republican writings (Cicero, Seneca, etc.) or to Locke, but to folk we now might associate with the Monarchomachs, perhaps even Aquinas. Tyrannicide is justified only if (a) the rule is tyrannical (and so relies on force); (b) "reforms without violence impossible," and it aims for a democratic polity, that is, one "which makes reforms without violence possible."
In fact, Popper has an expansive understanding of tyranny. He does not limit it to the rule of one or a small group. He thinks democratic majorities can be tyrannical (368). If a minority risks being a permanent minority and as a consequence has to bear disproportionate burdens (Popper offers an example of unfair tax burdens), Popper views the majority as tyrannical. In such circumstances, the minority would be justified to use violence.
Popper is clear [2] that he views legitimate (even if illegal) political assassination as an exception. Because once assassination becomes an instrument of policy he thinks it is foreseeable that it leads to new (generally somewhat fascist) tyranny. Popper's argument here is a mixture of empirical prediction and consequentialism. But in larger context, he is relying on a plausible analysis of the tactics of social democrats, marxists, reactionaries and fascists.
The most striking paragraph here is the third one.** Here Popper confronts the possibility of a democratically elected government, or its extra-governmental allies, undermining the democratic character of the state. Popper is, of course, not responding to a hypothetical case. He personally experienced this in Austria, and the phenomenon is, alas, not a limited one.
Popper is explicit that only a kind of defensive violence is permitted, in order and only in order to restore democracy. In fact, Popper isn't just claiming it is permitted, he thinks it is obliged ("duty")! Even if the letter of the law rules against such assassination, one follows then a higher political law. From the perspective of one's democratic conscience, the state and its functionaries ought to be viewed as outlawed. To be clear, Popper does not view this as a general right to resist unjust government. It's a special duty limited to the abolition of tyrants and would be tyrants.
But one may well think he is vague about under what conditions violent resistance against a democratically elected state becomes legitimate. This is especially so in circumstances where the state pretends to abide by democratic rules and pretends to be outraged at and wishes to punish (some, but not all) use of political violence or election fraud.
So, given Popper's general aversion to political violence, one might think that for Popper one should err here on the side of caution and not view, say, unsavory political opponents as would be tyrants. Yet, Popper also warns against "attempts to overthrow democracy" by governments. Popper's special right and duty to resist the undermining of democracy is, thus, expansive. Once governments take action to prevent or insulate themselves from being removed they are, on his view, already de facto outlaw and one is qua citizen obliged to take action. While there is no procedure to settle the matter beyond a doubt, on Popper's view, they have it coming.
There is a recurring temptation to treat and dismiss Popper's Open Society as a book of the cold war. But for all its evident limitations, the problems it tackles have not gone away.
*For example, imagine a constitutional monarchy where the queen has only symbolic acts to perform. (Such constitutions exist now.) But where the constitution has made abolition of the monarchy impossible. Here there is no hope for violent-free change. Yet. it seems disproportionate to the relatively minor evil to permit killing in the name of changing such a constitution.
**Bastiaan Rijpkema has recently called renewed attention to the significance of Popper to so-called militant democracy. I don't recall him discussing this passage, but my treatment is indebted to him.
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