Objectivism is basically an example of astro-turfing in the philosophy zone. It is to real philosophy what Marxism is to economics. Ayn Rand was a good author, but her philosophy doesn't hold up to even cursory inspection as an ideology. The only reason it is so popular is that its premises are extremely convenient to the selfish, the greedy, and the powerful.
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_intro
Ayn Rand defined her own philosophy:
"At a sales conference at Random House, preceding the publication of Atlas Shrugged, one of the book salesmen asked me whether I could present the essence of my philosophy while standing on one foot. I did as follows":
- 1. "Metaphysics Objective Reality"
- 2. "Epistemology Reason"
- 3. "Ethics Self-interest"
- 4. "Politics Capitalism"
The "one foot" reference is to Hillel, who when asked about Judaism said something similar to Jesus about "Love thy neighbor." (He said: "What is hateful to thee, do not do unto your neighbor. This is the whole Torah and the rest is commentary; go and study it further!" But she consciously teaches the opposite of both.
I don't think that anyone would argue with Objective Reality. That is why the first line of "Objectivism" is the shtick of Objectivity. It identifies itself with objective reality in the same way that her previous faith (Communism) did, but of course as the mirror image of communism.
However, "Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world." Metaphysics is about a lot more than the objective world. There is psychological reality and for many of us there is spiritual reality. Worse our "objective reality" is often problematical. The famous story of the blind men and the elephant is about the fallacy of equating ones view of objective reality with the actuality of objective reality. The reason that religion and metaphysics still exist is because we cannot objectively grasp all the corners, nooks and crannies even of the objective world around us. As the famous Monk in the "Questions of Menander" notes; "faith is the willingness to believe that the river Ganges exists despite not ever having journeyed there." The reality of metaphysics illustrates the absurdity of equating it with objective reality. Objective reality" is so complex that assumptions that simplify objective reality produce absurdity. The result is that she and her disciples confuse their own subjective experience with objective reality.
This can be demonstrated with mathematics. A mathematical system can only be solved if it has less than 4 variables. For any other model to work it has to be simplified. However, most models of reality (economics, weather, etc...) involve more than three variables. For any of those models to work they have to be simplified. Ways have to be found to turn variables into constants. For that to hold, even for a moment the modeler has to generate assumptions and pray those assumptions hold during the run of the model. That is why weather forcasts, economic forecasts, and long term planning in general tend to break down. The mathematics around this is called "chaos theory." Real life systems are chaotic. It is also why her reduction of metaphysics to "objective reality" is so absurd.
I can agree with her that "Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears." However, what that implies is that we need to admit that we are blind men in a room with a metaphysical elephant. The elephant is bigger than any one persons apprehension of this.
She states that her epistemology is based on the use of "reason." Well reason may be able to help us develop a better epistemology, however: epistemology is; "The branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge, its presuppositions and foundations, and its extent and validity." To me that means that epistemology talks about the risks of reason. It reasonably exposes and explains the limits of reason. To make her epistemology "reason" indicates either that she and her disciples aren't interested in the risk of their knowledge, are unwilling to examine assumptions, or are deliberately avoiding actually engaging in epistemology. The thesis of good epistemology is that reason is only as good as the assumptions that go into the reasoning. As she says herself:
Objective reality is something we all have to deal with whether we like it or not, but "reason" depends on premises and prejudices which may be determined by objective reality, but don't always influence or change objective reality. Reason is often driven by assumptions made before circumstances change. She could be right when she says “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed," but nature is like gravity. If it is truly natural one has to obey it like it or not. That doesn't mean that we can't figure out how to make surfaces that let us turn the falling motion into the forward notion. The difference between the Wright Brothers and their predecessessors is that they didn't accept faulty premises, they tested the limits of reality until they were able to find a way to move forward and to even soar. If one makes a decision based on a false premise, or one makes a decision on the basis of changing conditions, the results can be very different from what one expected. Gravity can't be done away with, even the Wright brothers occassionally crashed.
“Wishing won’t make it so.” -- LiKewise, reason following from faulty premises won't make ones precepts reality either.
Because of the complext nature of reality her philosophy that "Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival" is not entirely true. We actually perceive reality with our senses, and these senses are as much an emotional reaction as a reasoned one. Because the true nature of reality is complex, what seems "reasonable" at one moment under one circumstance, may prove to have been monstrously mistaken later. The problem objectivists have is that they confuse the "reason" they have based on faulty premises with "reality" when their arguments are mostly wishful thinking.
And this is the worst of her arguments. I could argue, agreeing in part with her, the point where we demonstrate that our true self interest is also identified with altruistic behavior and giving. But she doesn't argue that. She argues that:
"Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life."
This is the ugliness at the heart of objectism. Ethics is defined in some dictionaries as follows:
"The science of human duty; the body of rules of duty drawn from this science; a particular system of principles and rules concerning duty, whether true or false; rules of practice in respect to a single class of human actions; as, political or social ethics; medical ethics."
It is also defined as follows:
What these agree on is that ethics is about our moral duty to others. Ethics is like liberty. It is easiest to illustrate it by negation. "unethical" is defined as a synonym with "wrong;" "contrary to conscience or morality or law; "it is wrong for the rich to take advantage of the poor"; "cheating is wrong"; "it is wrong to lie." Lying is not an expedient justified by it being a "white lie." People tell lies because they believe, like Ayn Rand Objectivists, that it is wrong to "sacrifice oneself" to others and so they tell lies rather than suffer the consequences of their behavior. It is in people's self interest to lie, cheat, steal, distort reality. Any philosophy that justifies self interest ultimately ends up justifying unethical behavior, and Randian identification of ethics and self interest is the ultimate corruption of concept. There has to be a balance between self interest and common interest for a system of thought to be genuinely ethical.
On the contrary ethics is tied to metaphysics. Just as our perception of reality is contingent on the conditions of the moment and our own operating state and "rolled up assumptions" so our reality is bounded by ethics. Ethical considerations are the boundaries we impose on ourselves, or expect others to follow. People get joy out of helping others. There is a profound happiness in solidarity. The evil of collective enterprises like War or political movements, comes from the joy of a common purpose. Animals, humans, even single cells don't get their joy from mere survival they get their bliss from living for a higher cause than their own mere self satisfactions. Cancers live like Libertarians. The don't do anything for others, and they ultimately end up killing themselves.
Moreover, most ethical decisions don't give one the option of opting out. We have to make choices that involve harm to ourselves or harm to others. Randian ethics too often gives license to "harm to others" by giving people the pretense that their decision to stand on the sidelines is justified.
Since self interest is at the root of most unethical behavior, self interest as an ethic gives license to unethical behavior, and there is no justification for altruism, giving, common interest or any other ethical consideration besides self interest, in these arguments -- Randian ethics is at best a contradiction in terms. Randian "ethics" is at best amoral and at worst unethical and even immoral. This is ironic, since Rand and other "libertarians" were combatting an ethics that held that the end justifies the means. In the case of Randian Ethics not even the end has to be justified. All that it takes to justify unethical behavior among most Libertarians I observe, is that it be in their particular and selfish self interest. Ethics is the observation of (usually self imposed) boundaries. While Ayn Rand and her followers avoid right to say "sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself," it doesn't follow that it is ethical for each person to be "an end to himself." On the contrary we are at our best when we follow some higher light, and at our worst when we claim that it is somehow ethical to behave like a cad.
This final syllogism isn't as destructive as her immoral = ethical argument in the third title, but it is worse logically. Up until her time capitalism wasn't even considered a political ideology. It was a way to organize business. The world saw democracy, monarchy and various forms of republics, but it never saw a capitalist government. And because the conception is absurd it never will.
Someone wrote about this that Ayn Rand's reasoning was defective, but natural given her growing up a Communist and coming to a "Capitalist" society. Marxist-Leninist Communism was both an ideology, an economic, political and a social system. Capitalism is defined, at most expansive as a economic-social system. Because Marxism is all three plus ideology, the author says she must have assumed that "capitalism" ought to be all three plus ideology. Hence she is the genius behind libertarianism and the resurgence of modern capitalism as a kind of strange ideology. Others might say the same thing, but she said it so well and with such beautiful fiction. However, Capitalism is basically a system founded on the use of capital.
As a term I'm not even sure that capitalist invented it to describe themselves. I think Marx invented the term. "Das Capital" was about how Capital was used by elite businessmen, first to create a system based around banking and finance, that would reuse the "means of production" ot increase their wealth. According to Marx these people would figuratively eat each other until the world would be dominated by a corrupt oligarchy at which point workers would somehow get the message they were oppressed and rise up and create a paradise. The Marxian fairytale gave credit to capitalism as a means for creating wealth, but it saw the paradise in its eventual demise and the eventual anarchic "withering away of the state" at the base of the Communist vision.
Obviously capitalists took to the term capitalist, since you don't see them running from that term like they did in former times. They seem to have bought into half of Marxes vision, the part he saw as dystopic.
But capital is just another term for a very basic, venerable and ancient concept. Civilization started when people started saving things for reuse or trade. For example the neolithic period started when people started saving seeds and replanting them. This allowed some people to settle down and develop towns. We find towns everywhere where people could settle down and trade. There are two kinds of capital according to the usual formula. [I'm big on the 5 kinds of Capital formulation created by the Forum for the Future and earlier thinkers]. These two kinds are:
Now you'll note that capital according to the first definition actually kind of excludes money. But effectively capitalists are monied people because money is extremely good at creating more money, hence it fits the second definition. To have capitalism as a political system how would it be ruled? Well, to use the method of reductio ad absurdum, obviously capitalism as a political system means a system ruled by money. By that definition the overt system could be Democratic Republican, Oligarchic Republican, or even a Monarchy, and still be capitalist. However, if capitalism is going to be a political system it will be an oligarchic one. The whole premise of libertarianism is that there is neither need nor rationale for a fair or equal society.
When you hear her or any other libertarian, arguing for the merits of capitalism, you see self referents to the ethics of unethical behavior, the objectivity of the merchants view of economics, and the reasonableness of selfish behavior. These argument feed into each other, except when there has been a spectacular financial or ethical failure on the part of some adherent -- in which case you'll hear arguments that self interest doesn't indicate the ethics of hurting other people. Yet if there is no negative injunction at hurting other people, and consequences and the law of unintended consequences are not considered, then hurt to others is pretty much guaranteed.
Nobody much argues with the premises of "production" captital, it is the misuse of financial capital to make money from money that causes inequality, disfunction and failure. But that is not an ethical or logical argument, that is an economic one so its outside the scope of this essay.
If Capitalism actually equated with Liberty I wouldn't be thinking of Holerith cards and their relationship to the Holocaust right this moment. For some reason that pops in my head along with the recently stolen sign from Auschwitz. "Work Makes freedom." -- Sure if you are a guard.
The rest of her essay sounds very different once ones done a little diggind and thinking about her premises. I kind of like her as a person. I just think this is destructive philosophy. To quote the rest of her article (some of which is also cited in the text of this essay):
"If you want this translated into simple language, it would read:"
- “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed” or
- “Wishing won’t make it so.”
- “You can’t eat your cake and have it, too.”
- “Man is an end in himself.”
- “Give me liberty or give me death.”
Each of her list except "man is an end in himself" is a trite thing, that sounds good in a sales conference, but as ideology or as a system of thought and ethics could be replaced by something wiser and more consistent. To me the problem with Objectivism, is that the ideology is so convenient and amoral bordering on immoral, that it is extremely easy to follow it and still be a crook, a pirate or a bad architect.
"If you held these concepts with total consistency, as the base of your convictions, you would have a full philosophical system to guide the course of your life. But to hold them with total consistency—to understand, to define, to prove and to apply them—requires volumes of thought. Which is why philosophy cannot be discussed while standing on one foot—nor while standing on two feet on both sides of every fence. This last is the predominant philosophical position today, particularly in the field of politics."
The problem is that capitalism as a political philosophy is as absurd as marxism. The only way to understand capitalism that makes sense is with a bit of nuance. There is nothing wrong with one foot being in the realm of capital accumulation and investment as the way to better and more productive systems, and believing in ideological political systems like, say Democracy.
And note, democracy is absent from her arguments. I've heard her talk approvingly of Monarchy, but never of democracy. Wonder why that was? I'll get to that in my final remarks.
"My philosophy, Objectivism, holds that:"
- "Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears."
- "Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.
- Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life."
- "The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church."
Copyright © 1962 by Times-Mirror Co.
The final thing to note is that Ayn Rand is anti-democratic -- and quite explictly. She insists that America is not a Democracy and that it is a republic because:
"The American system is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. A democracy, if you attach meaning to terms, is a system of unlimited majority rule; the classic example is ancient Athens. And the symbol of it is the fate of Socrates, who was put to death legally, because the majority didn’t like what he was saying, although he had initiated no force and had violated no one’s rights."
Okay, Touche. The Greeks put Socrates to death for corrupting the morals of minors. According to Plato he was innocent of this, but who knows, maybe the guy was a pedophile? They made a mistake, and his successors got even by blaming democracy for every evil that happened to any Country subsequently. Besides Athens was an oligarchic democracy. Do you really think the Athenians let their slaves (or their women) vote? Democracy is a value and a goal, and democratic republics are a system that involves majority rule and checks and balances. She miscasts what Athenian Democracy was about. She is right that direct democracy is unworkable at any level larger than a Township. She is also right that the "demos" or the people can be manipulated. However, that is an empty proposition. Capitalists are as good as Nazis or Communists at manipulating people. Why do you think she was lecturing an Advertising convention? How do you think they make their money?
Okay bad enough, but she doesn't stop there.
Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom . . . .
This is not true. She confuses the concept of democracy with collectivism largely because Marxism sold its collectivisations as something democratic, but also as someone who grew up under totalitarian regimes she has no idea what the concept of democracy is about. If the only choices are between arbitrary majority rule and arbitrary oligarchy rule, personally I'd have neither, but it is the height of absurdity to identify democracy with collectivism and totalitarianism. Yes, they may start out democratic. But democracy is more than votes and majority rule. It is the people ruling themselves.
However, oligarchy has every bit as much potential for authoritarianism and even totalitarianism. The communist party may have run itself as a democracy internally, but it had a monarch for a supreme ruler, and oligarchs in the form of the Communist party running the country. "Democracy" was a sham. And yes, the Athenians killed Socrates. They even made a few other more serious mistakes with their democracy -- such as trying to turn Athenian Democracy into an oligarchic imperialism on other countries. That doesn't invalidate the principle. On the contrary all the arguments she uses can also be used to validate the principle of democracy. There is no freedom without it. People need balance. But she doesn't offer this as the alternative. Instead she wants a Capitalist Republic where oligarchy rules. And since "free enterprise" is conflated in her mind with "capitalism" she somehow thinks that if financial capitalists are given free reign they'll all turn into Hank Rearden rather than looting the commons.
If oligarchy and elitism were somehow superior to democracy she might have a point. Sure the Athenians killed Socrates, but oligarchies have been killing quality people with a lot of regularity since the Romans killed Ceasar. Oligarchic republics are famous for, like the Venetians did, killing people in their sleep and blotting out their memory. If democracy has often been subverted to create its opposite, that opposite has always either been oligarchy or the final result of all the fighting that oligarchy always creates -- Monarchy. The farm animals revolt, the pigs make themselves more equal among equal and then the pigs morph into farmers.
Her hatred of democracy is without foundation because she confuses cause with effect. Totalitarianism is the effect of a system that lacks a balance between freedom, liberty and respect for the boundaries of other people; respect for property, law, justice. But it is a parody of self-rule, not the real thing.
I find these words chilling, almost frightening. And what is worse is that I hear them parroted by well meaning people who have no idea what they are saying -- but think they do.
Anyway that is it for this post. It's obvious to me that this woman had a few loose screws. If you find her words convincing, my advice is to see a psychologist. I hope I kept it simple. I have all sorts of digressions on this subject in the back of my head including one that compares her arguments to my latest understanding of Kierkegaard. I hope I don't forget them....
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_intro
And for more on her philosophy:
"http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/democracy.html"
Posted by cholte at December 21, 2009 07:58 PM