A Free Left Blog

This is the third part of a four-part essay applying the ideas of Karl Popper to ideologies that have secured particular social power in our contemporary world. Part I presents a context in which Popper has been widely misappropriated by the right, and argues that he should be reclaimed by the liberal-left – not least because he was liberal and of the left . Part II builds up the substance of his critique of Hegelian and Marxist ideologies and explores how contemporary political Islamism is largely based on these theories. Part III here explores the rise of ideological feminism, with a particular focus on Laurie Penny’s writings and the strong feminist movement within the Labour Party. As Islamism takes the Muslim, feminism takes the woman as a centre of importance and basis for political action. There is nothing wrong with this; indeed there is nothing necessarily wrong with politicising any identity group. It is clearly necessary in situations where we...

This is the second part of a four-part essay applying the ideas of Karl Popper to the ideologies that have secured particular social power in our contemporary world . Part I preceding this introduced the context, in which Popper has been widely misappropriated by the right, and neglected by the left - wrongly, because he was liberal, and his sympathies were with the left. This second part of the essay gets into his critique of Hegelian and Marxist ideologies and explores how contemporary political Islamism is largely based on these theories. ‘Historicism’ is the term under which Karl Popper lumped all ideologies of history, from those of Plato and Aristotle through to Hegel and Marx, political communism and Nazism. For Popper, historicist social theories were those that claimed to understand the progression of history, and thereby reliably predict the future. What Marx did wrong in his view was not to make predictions that turned out to be wrong, but to claim scien...

In a survey last year by Netmums , just one in seven of the British women questioned described themselves as ‘feminist’. The report concluded, “modern women feel traditional Feminism is no longer a label they feel proud to wear - it is seen as aggressive, divisive and doesn't take into account their personal circumstances”. Meanwhile, over at Huff Post UK, Lucy Sheriff has said: “ As much as I hate to admit, this is still a man's world. But I don't think feminism is going to change it . “ It's no longer a dirty word, it's the punchline of a joke .” What Lucy described as ‘feminism’ is surely more a reflection of what I called in Part 1 : “ the particularly strident, strict and aggressive brand of feminist politics that has taken over: almost exclusively confined to the Left of course ”. Feminism is much broader and richer than this, but as with most things, those people who get the best hearing tend to be those who shout the loudest and offer the m...