Marx, Meet Seldon

Marx, Meet Seldon

 

When the capitalist class takes seriously Marx’s predictions of mass immiseration and political unrest, then they enact mixed-economy reforms that stabilize the middle class. That’s insurance. It’s an investment that pays off, for when the reforms work, Marx’s predictions are falsified.

This is an instance of Seldon’s Paradox: that accurate psychohistorical predictions, once made known, set into motion psychohistorical forces that falsify the prediction.

But the Paradox has more work to do. When Marx’s predictions fail, then the capitalist class stops taking those predictions seriously. Therefore they stop supporting semi-socialism, and the reforms unravel. This tends to result in mass immiseration and political unrest, as Marx predicted.

So to the capitalist class, Marx is as true a prophet as he is false.

Likewise for the Seldonian psychohistorian: the prediction sets into motion forces that deny it; yet when the prediction is denied, the forces against it abate, and it tends to come true. Therefore to the society, the psychohistorical prediction is as confirmed as it is denied.

So expect psychohistorical predictions, such as Marx’s, to oscillate in truth value, with a period of two generations; or else to reach a paradoxical compromise between true and false.