An Essay called "Anarchism as Popperian Conservatism"

Anarchism as Popperian Conservatism

Consider a political doctrine that combines Popperian (literal) conservative ideas with anarchist theory. Let's call it (Popperian) conservative anarchism. It sounds like a paradoxical position, doesn't it? But if you think about it, it's actually quite a rational ideology. Here follows the logic. 

Take as the starting point the clear fact that pre-neoliberal, Western constitutional parliamentary (capitalist) "liberal democracy" was the most just and liberal governing system for a complex society that us humans have yet been able to develop and sustain (essentially Popper's view). Now imagine that you were around in 1975, when the Trilateral Commission Report was written, and the American corporate, financial and intellectual elites starting to worry about the "crisis of democracy", and beginning to 'plan' (word used in high-level abstract sense to, as it were, 'range over' multiple actors, not implying teleology or conspiracy) to rewrite the rules back in their favour. What would be the best way of stopping the moneyed elites and capitalists from wrecking the system, and helping to get installed as President a few years later one of the most destructive, murderous and evil men to have ever walked this earth – Ronald Reagan? 

The same question can be posed in the context of England at that time: what would have been the best way to stop Margaret Thatcher being elected, and thereafter crushing the unions, privatising England's major state assets, slashing taxes for the wealthy, and deregulating the financial markets? 

It seems to me that one of the best answers is: adopting the position of an anarchist or socialist, trying to organise as part of anarchist organisations, and proselytising an anarchist gospel as widely as possible, so as to foster widespread opposition to the concentrations of state and corporate/financial power, and thereby (through protests and the like) placing major pressure on the elites to perpetuate the more equitable, social democratic society.

The thing that Popper missed, I think, is this: all forms of capitalism are inherently unstable in their own way, and the state capitalist social democratic system that characterised the Golden Age was the result of a very delicate balance of popular pressures for democracy (+ the pressure of domestic capital to keep fairly strong domestic, industrial policy) and elite, capitalist-internationalist, financial pressures to just fuck it all up – deregulate, drop capital controls, slash taxes, privatise everything, corporatise everything etc. It was in the late 70s (though many/most contemporary writers on recent economic history put the beginning of the "second phase" of post-war industrial capitalism at Bretton Woods) that this second group of pressures suddenly, cataclysmically triumphed, and thereby began the long process of increasing inequality and massive financialisation which would drastically reduce the amount of real democracy in the West (as Chomsky says, "Inequality is, by its very nature, corrosive to democracy" (empirical validation of this can be found in the work of Thomas Ferguson)). Once you have one increase in inequality, of course, this then creates vicious cycle, because a bigger disparity between rich and power makes it easier for the elites to maintain and strengthen their power through buying elections, regulatory capture, corporate-media propaganda and even the education system. 

In more general terms, what Popper failed to realise is that a strong social democratic system requires that the populace constantly push back against elite powergrabs and attempts at wrecking democracy. That is to say, it requires a constant tug-of-war.
Ultimately, this huge oversight Popper means Popper's political philosophy cannot deal with the following meta-problem (more precisely, meta-collective action problem):
Say lots of people accept Popper's argument: because of their historically unprecedented checks and balances on tyranny, war and chaos – because of their unprecedented capacity to prevent reckless rulers from doing truly major damage – the majority of the population (or even just a large chunk of the population) takes a more Popperian-conservative (literal conservative) view on Western parliamentary democracies. They all say, "Western parliamentary democracy, though imperfect, is the best system us humans have been able to develop and now that we are in one, all we should do is aim for piecemeal change -- after all, history tells us that rapid change and revolutions are highly risky, and things are better than they've ever been." The great irony is that we're now suddenly in trouble. If the populace stops applying democratic pressure on the capitalists (if people stop protesting, and the population starts voting increasingly for the

Tories/Conservatives/Republicans or favouring Right Labour/Labor/Democrat members) – the wealthy elites, the CEOs, the Wall St kings, etc – suddenly have much more freedom to move, buying elections, causing deregulation, tax slashing, privatisation (neoliberal policies).
That's why (Popperian) conservative anarchism is a serious position. We should organise as far leftists, socialists and anarchists – spread radical ideology, try to convince people to protest and stand up to power – not because we are idealists, but because we are conservatives. Because we love the paltry freedoms we have now, and we don't want to see them lost.