Reciprocal Tolerance

by James Lindsay

In a footnote in his famous (or infamous) The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper relates a famous (and famously misunderstood) idea called the Paradox of Tolerance. It is, as it turns out, one of the most important concepts that any free society much reckon with—and solve.

Popper only devotes a single paragraph to this fundamental paradox of freedom, which can be summarized as “being tolerant of intolerance eventually results in an intolerant society, but being intolerant of intolerance is already a feature of an intolerant society.” In that paragraph, he outlines a solution, though he’s thin on the details. Here’s how he phrases it, in full:

Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

Radicals on both the Left and the Right have run with this famous paradox of free societies in various ways. For example, it is popular on the Left to present only Popper’s conclusion about claiming the right to suppress intolerance without expressing his rather strict criteria for that suppression. On the (radical) Right, on the other hand, this formulation has been criticized (e.g., by R.R. Reno in Return of the Strong Gods) as planting a dialectical seed that turns tolerance into totalitarian intolerance over time

In these analyses, the Left is dishonest, and the Right is simply wrong, as is their wont in each case. The Left desires, like their Nazi pseudo-nemesis Carl Schmitt, to have the power to declare the intolerant enemy and have him destroyed without acknowledging how seriously Popper takes the conditions of such action. The Right simply fails to recognize that the devil is in the details for working with such a situation in reality. Of course, by way of its error, the Right also desires, like their Nazi semi-hero Carl Schmitt, to have the power to declare the enemy and have him destroyed.

Though Popper doesn’t develop the idea further, and though the devil will remain in the details, he does lay out criteria by which intolerance of the intolerant might be acted on wisely, as opposed to unwisely, to borrow from his own phrasing. This is where the rubber meets the road for the Paradox of Tolerance, to quote the relevant section again

…for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

What Popper is proposing here, though thin on the details, is a theory of tolerance in free society. He is saying we must retain the right to suppress intolerance that might answer our tolerance with a combination of irrationalism, intolerance, and violence. He clearly states we should regard such militant and subversive intolerance as a kind of incitement and refuse to protect it as free expression.

In practice, this is trickier than can be contained in a footnote. It is not sufficient to invoke legal intolerance against views that are merely irrational, anti-rational, that denounce argument, or that forbid followers from listening to rational arguments because they are allegedly deceptive. The law already has some mechanisms for dealing with intolerance that looks to answer arguments with fists and pistols, imperfect as those might be. Further, these are not the central part of the problem of overreaching tolerance.

Popper seems to miss the most essential characteristic for finding a strong solution to his paradox. This essential characteristic is located in the fact of the paradox itself: the intolerant will not reciprocate tolerance, given the opportunity. In essence, what he is looking for, but does not find, is a Golden Rule for the issue of tolerance.

We might call such a strong solution Reciprocal Tolerance. In short, Reciprocal Tolerance would be a doctrine like: we, the people of a free society, should extend tolerance only to any who, given power over us, would also extend tolerance to us in return. That is, we will treat others as we can reasonably expect they would treat us, as determined from their own words, deeds, charters, relationships, and organizational principles.

This principle of Reciprocal Tolerance is not reversible like through some postmodernist trick or psychopathic “DARVO” because it is applied from a free society. In full generality, it is that free societies are perfectly free to be intolerant of any politically intolerant political organization.

This principle is also not a principle regarding speech. People are free to say whatever intolerant, hateful, or bigoted thing they want, even in their group settings. It would apply to any political group and its members or leadership that organize a faction with the expressed intention of acquiring political power at least in part in order to revoke tolerance from others who, absent the case of such intolerance, would not revoke tolerance from them.

Free societies live or eventually die based on their solution to the Paradox of Tolerance. Tolerance cannot be unlimited or it will be exploited and taken advantage of, but it also must be broad enough to keep society free

The solution is toleration in the bounds of good-faith, Reciprocal Tolerance. We are under no obligation socially to tolerate subversives who operate in bad faith, nor are we under any obligation legally to tolerate any demand for tolerance that would not be reciprocated if the people making the demand themselves got their hands on the levers of power. While the first of these may only be a social convention unless people are illegally deceived and defrauded, the latter certainly falls within the range of legally actionable responses to intolerance we could enforce well within the boundaries of the Constitution, which we are seeking to protect and preserve.

Once either of these fouls against a free society is detected and verified, some generally acceptable and legally narrow mechanism of intolerance against them must be able to be employed. Practically speaking, at a minimum, there is no reason to extend tax-exempt status to nonprofit organizations that explicitly espouse agendas to amass power to abolish the existing tolerant political order in favor of intolerant ones that would, if successful, revoke tolerance of those who allowed their growth. Further, entities that espouse or articulate such beliefs that receive funding from foreign sources should not be tolerated.

A principle of Reciprocal Tolerance could therefore serve as a solid basis for both social norms and legal activity to better navigate the Paradox of Tolerance that lies at the heart of every society that wants to be free. Organized intolerance ought not to be tolerated for precisely the reason that it would withdraw tolerance from those it seeks to rule.