Karl Popper and the crisis of democracy in Latin America

Abstract

The famous author of Open Societies and Their Enemies, Karl Popper, allows us, with the theoretical postulates of his critical rationalism, to analyze the tendencies of economic, sociological and political thought that try to implement a “neo corporatism, doubtfully democratic”, in the era of globalization, contrary to one of the theses of the Viennese thinker to maintain and strengthen democracies as a central feature of open societies. This in the context of the new world circumstances created by globalizing hegemony, such as: the fall of real socialism, the crisis of ideologies, the weakness of left-wing policies, the demobilization of unionism and great enthusiasm, although decimated, for neoliberal agendas around the free market. Popper's great importance lies in properly articulating his epistemological conception with the course of politics and its contradictions between the democratic and totalitarian tendencies of the contemporary world. In this dialectical course, the intellectuals, if they are democrats, it is their responsibility to defend the essence of democracy that is nothing other than the "sovereignty or sovereign power of the people", bearing all the difficulties and inconveniences that derive from their actions in political life. In this sense, despite its criticisms of partisan oligarchization and the intellectual tendency to reject and attack the parties, it is convenient, precise, to support them due to the necessity of their existence for democracy. You may or may not agree with Popper, but his approaches at the scientific and political level are of singular importance today to understand and understand the complexities of the scientific and political world.