With Romneys VP pick being a catholic, who also at least outrightly rejects Ayn Rans views in total, i expect some Rand bashing in the media soon. It seems that to many she is some kind of “antichrist” philosophically embodying all the evil capitalism stands for. But having read “Atlas Shrugged” and a lot of negative writing about Rand, i am still empty handed in trying to formulate what exactly is immoral about her ideas in these respects.
So i am asking here whether anyone can explain what is morally wrong with the socioeconomic part of her views.
I myself had read Ayn Rand for years and found much that was appealing in her philosophy. Ironically, my appreciation for her was largely apolitical and personal. In the Fountainhead, for example, there was an idealism of the “Dead Poets Society” sort – individualism in the spirit of Emerson, Thoreau, or the Transcendentalists. One domain in which individualism is hardest to cry down, I think, is in the arts, and Howard Roark of the Fountainhead is indeed an artist (specifically, an architect). There is that adherence to one’s personal vision that is something I’ve observed in many kinds of artists – a Van Gogh, for example, whose style is not understood or is not popular, but he needs to “be true to himself” (or to whatever
it is that seems to want to come out of him). There is something irreducibly individualistic about the creative artist, with a personal vision or “style” that is uniquely his own (albeit with influences). Nietzsche once compared it to the selfishness of the pregnant (to protect that which is growing within them, which–in a sense–transcends mere selfishness).
But back to Rand’s politics. I think she offers a wonderful, “humanitistic” or libertarian criticism of the “evils” that arose from communist dictatorships. She identified the danger that
can be engendered when one’s invocation of the “Common Good” becomes an abstraction, a “moral blank check” (as she would put it) for any behavior that is said to be in defense of the “common good.” A case in point would be the utter abstraction that was the “Committee of Public Safety” during the reign of terror. What is the “public”? How does one define it? For Rand, concrete reality was composed only of individuals, and “society” or “the public” had reality only insofar as it was the sum total of all individuals. Thus, her approach to the common good–which I do believe was important to her, at least on some level–was through the approach of individual rights. And her cardinal position regarding individual rights, as you may have read, is that “no one has the right to
inititiate the use of physical force against anyone else.” This was the maxim which she observed the Soviet Communists had violated,
in the name of the Common Good. Their conception of the “Common Good” justified their
sacrifice of one segment of society (the bourgeois) for the benefit of another segment of society (the proletariat or, more realistically, the elite ruling class). She found any invocation of the Common Good to be dangerous, because she observed that virtually anything could be done in its name, unless it were
also grounded in individual rights. If individuals have rights, you cannot sacrifice a minority for the “good” of the majority. If individuals do not have rights, and only the “collective” does, then individuals can be sacrificed in the name of the common good. In the case of Soviet Communism, I think she was correct in this assessment.
Nonetheless, it was almost shocking to me to realize that there was one value that did not exist in her vocabulary or view of the world – sympathy, compassion. She was passionately against the initiation of physical force, whether from a poor individual against a rich individual
or vice versa. She abhorred slavery and would have abhorred any doctrine of violence expropriation of the poor
by the rich (not just the rich by the poor). Liquidation of or physical violence against the poor would have been abhorrent to her. In this, she was passionately committed to her own ideals of justice and individual rights. What she didn’t acknowledge, however, is that there are other kinds of violence that can be done to the human person. Extreme poverty leading to starvation, for example, is a de facto form of violence. For Rand, because you did not
murder a starving child with your own hands, it was not your responsibility. And what she detested, to your dying breath, was an advocate of the “common good” who would have expropriated your money or your property by force–on pain of imprisonment, for example–in order to redistribute the wealth. She felt that you got the money and property through voluntary exchange, whether in the marketplace or through a family member (and even the latter, in her mind, was a voluntary exchange of wealth or material goods, a non-coerced changing of hands). She detested
force in relationships, which for her was ultimately violent in nature. But, again, she didn’t perceive more indirect forms of violence – the starvation of that individual that you are not being “forced” to help, even if that individual was a child.
Compassion or sympathy were not values in her morality. She didn’t even dare say that you
ought to feel compassion for the starving child, for example (even in our modern U.S., a hungry or a homeless child would be unacceptable to the average American; a moral outrage). For Rand, it was not
your responsibility that the starving child or adult was in the condition they were in. The feeding of that starving child or adult was not justification for the use of force or violence against your person, just because you have something that they need. She carried that through to its most extreme, libertarian conclusion – your neighbor could die, for all she cared, so long as it was not
you who killed them directly.
So compassion and mercy were not values in her morality; justice, as she understood it, was, and justice meant that no individual or group of individuals has the right to
initiate the use of physical force against any other individual. So many things, however, fall through the cracks with that definition – in principle, you have no obligation to be a Good Samaritan; to help someone who is in distress. You can remain
hands off and no one can tell you to be “hands on,” nor can they lay their own hands on you to get you to do so.
It’s a philosophy without love of neighbor, though it does involve a steadfast respect for the “freedom” of others, at least in the technical sense of the word. Just so, no one is compelled at gunpoint to work in a sweatshop. But, if their bargaining power is compromised severely enough, or if they are desperately enough in need, they will
consent to work in the sweatshop, voluntarily. Rand excoriated the first scenario (putting a gun to someone’s head, to get them to work in your factory) but had nothing to say about the second.
As if this were not enough, she was contemptuous of charity. She felt that charity had something immoral about it, because it was
unearned. She confessed, in her personal journal (and probably elsewhere), that she had no respect for those who dedicated their lives to “helping” others. That’s where I was genuinely puzzled, since it was their
choice
to help others and no one forced them to it. I suppose it’s a bit puzzling because even a libertarian, in principle, would have no problem with voluntary charity. Rand felt it was downright immoral, a violation of the “natural law”–or the law of “reason”, as she put it–whereby one was primarily responsible for surviving by one’s own efforts, just as no one can breathe for you, eat for you, or think for you.
I have been provoked, thoughtfully, on many occassions by concepts which he has raised which I have never thought of before - and his debating skills are simply top notch. I have only crossed him once before in a discussion, on Sufism, and while I still hold to my opinions over his, I believe that he argued his and stood his ground far more effectively than me.
