Popper and the establishment

The central thesis of Karl Popper's philosophy is that intellectual and political progress are best achieved by not deferring to dogmatic authority. His philosophy of science is a plea for the replacement of classic dogmatic methodology with critical debate. His philosophy of politics, similarly, is a plea for replacing utopian social and political engineering with a more fallibilist, piecemeal variety. Many confuse his anti-dogmatism with relativism, and his anti-authoritarianism with Cold War conservatism or even with libertarian politics. Not so: he showed a clear preference for the ideal of truth over relativist complacency, for cosmopolitanism over nationalism, and for democratic control over unbridled capitalism.