Popper did have the idea of combating communism's claim of being a science or scientific materialism. And that's a pretty noble goal in my mind. His heart was in the right place.

I don't think Popper was going for that soft falsifiability - but if you modify his theory to do that, say it has to make some predictions, and only require that it should be falsifiable on the basis of it's predictions, you let in a lot of stuff in that obvious isn't science.

To take the obvious example of using exactly what Popper was trying to oppose. the current Chinese communist party's claim that capitalism will eventually transition into socialism once a certain level of development is achieved, it is a prediction, it will be falsifiable later. Clearly it is still not science.

But even if we give Popper the falsifiability angle and imagine there is some workable version of falsifiability, I still don't thik his theory works, it's just not a good reflection of day to day science and scientists.