Economic historicism is the method applied by Marx to an analysis of the impending changes in our society. According to Marx, every particular social system must destroy itself, simply because it must create the forces which produce the next historical period. A sufficiently penetrating analysis of the feudal system, undertaken shortly before the industrial revolution, might have led to the detection of the forces which were about to destroy feudalism, and to the prediction of the most important characteristics of the coming period, capitalism. Similarly, an analysis of the development of capitalism might enable us to detect the forces which work for its destruction, and to predict the most important characteristics of the new historical period which lies ahead of us. For there is surely no reason to believe that capitalism, of all social systems, will last for ever. On the contrary, the material conditions of production, and with them, the ways of human life, have never changed so quickly as they have done under capitalism.
By changing its own foundations in this way, capitalism is bound to transform itself, and to produce a new period in the history of mankind. According to Marx’s method, the principles of which have been discussed above, the fundamental or essential 1 forces which will destroy or transform capitalism must be searched for in the evolution of the material means of production. Once these fundamental forces have been discovered, it is possible to trace their influence upon the social relationships between classes as well as upon the juridical and political systems. The analysis of the fundamental economic forces and the suicidal historical tendencies of the period which he called ‘ capitalism ’ was undertaken by Marx in Capital, the great work of his life. The historical period and the economic system he dealt with was that of western Europe and especially England, from about the middle of the eighteenth century to 1867...
Now Popper was not a Marxist by his own admission, and this presentation was a discussion critical of Marx in his long work on the Open Society. It was reflective, however, of the belief that there may be a "scientific" progression in society which was inevitable. Yet when one looks backward in society for the trends which are used as inevitable looking forward one makes the very mistakes that Marx inevitably does.
Marxism as transformed in Russia to communism, assumed rigid laws which allegedly were found by Marx predicting the flow of society. The argument that Socialism is inevitable and then a communistic state have already been shown in error. Moreover the very definition of socialism is rant with distortions so no clear end point is ascertainable.
However it is worth reading Popper and then ask how his acolyte is interpreting his words.
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