Ayn Rand/Criticism
or Why libertarians are not Randians (we’re much better)
Epistemology
Failing to apply methodological individualism where it is needed…
Ayn Rand did not draw all the apodictic conclusions of methodological individualism. For example, she took collectivism seriously:
- Collectivism holds that man has no rights; that his work, his body and his personality belong to the group; that the group can do with him as it pleases, in any manner it pleases, for the sake of whatever it decides to be its own welfare. Therefore, each man exists only by the permission of the group and for the sake of the group.
- Ayn Rand, Textbook of Americanism
Yet a group has no interests or welfare of its own, and makes no decisions at all.[2] Ludwig von Mises correctly identified this kind of fallacy in his book on epistemology as reification. Ayn Rand did understand this,[3] [4] but unfortunately failed to draw all its implications, leading to various errors:
- undue respect for socialist ideologies, as though they were coherent philosophies, rather than mere ad hoc pretexts devised by power-hungry individuals in the context of cultural Marxism (as though their possible coherence were a virtue in the first place);
- characters in her novels who lash out at “society” (rather in the manner of Peter Punk), as though it had opinions and values of its own: “I will live in the world as it is, in the manner of life it demands. Not halfway, but completely. Not pleading and running from it, but walking out to meet it, beating it to the pain and the ugliness, being first to choose the worst it can do to me.” (Atlas Shrugged);
- a theory of “objective value”, as though value were not subjective, and therefore individual, by definition (the same error appears among environmentalists with their “intrinsic value”, an error criticized, among others, by George Reisman in Capitalism[5]). Ayn Rand partly understood this (“The concept ‘value’ is not a primary; it presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what?”[6]), but did not draw all its implications;[7]
- respect for established states, regardless of historical considerations, as though they really did reflect a “collective will”;
- and, naturally, her minarchism, as though “collective” decision-making over an arbitrary territory were possible (an amusing coincidence: it was for the RAND think tank that Kenneth Arrow demonstrated its absurdity[8]); as though a non-individual delegation of rights were possible; as though a state could emerge, or had emerged historically, while respecting individual rights; and so on and so forth.
…and applying individual rationality where it is inappropriate
Ayn Rand also failed to understand the limits of individual rationality, known at least since Darwin and explored further through evolutionary psychology[9] (which Hayek, for example, was already interested in at the time,[10] and which libertarians and Austrian economists have followed closely ever since[11]). Some behaviors cannot be explained by individual reasoning, but by the logic of natural and sexual selection. She explicitly refers to the “tabula rasa” theory, whose falsity has been extensively demonstrated.[12] (For a good overview of actual human motivations — of which rationality is only one part — see, for example, Robert Anton Wilson’s Prometheus Rising.[13])
She thus fell straight into what Harry Browne (a candidate of the much-despised Libertarian Party) correctly identified as “the intellectual trap”:[14] trying to rationalize emotions, desires, and so forth that do not arise from conscious, rational decisions, but from psychological factors (genetic programming, “imprints”, etc.). Ayn Rand adopts a position of extreme rationalization, as though falling in love (the verb is telling) or even having a particular sexual orientation were conscious choices.
The discerning reader will therefore find chapter 4 of The Virtue of Selfishness (“The ‘Conflicts’ of Men’s Interests”) particularly silly: she purports to demonstrate that there are no conflicts of interest between people (rational people, needless to say).
The reader will thus learn that:
- Thus, when a rational man pursues a goal in a free society, he does not place himself at the mercy of whims, the favors or the prejudices of others; he depends on nothing but his own effort: directly, by doing objectively valuable work—indirectly, through the objective evaluation of his work by others.
A producer who suddenly finds that his products have gone out of fashion will be reassured to learn that their “objective value” has changed.
For a somewhat more serious treatment of the subject, see this article — or this one.
Just as socialists fail to understand positive-sum games,[15] Ayn Rand seems not to understand zero-sum games (let alone negative-sum games, which experimental economics shows people often choose), scarcity (of essential importance to economics and property rights), or even the importance of chance (on which, aesthetically, other writers are preferable[16]). Nor, quite simply, does she seem to understand the subjectivity of preferences (see Rothbard[17]). We do not “decide” to prefer red to purple or Bordeaux to Beaujolais. There is nothing objective, rational, or ethical about either preference, and nothing moral, just, or meritocratic about the resulting success of the producer of one or the other. This is simply the reality of differences in individual preferences, which exist and do not have to be “rational” to deserve respect.
Ethics
In The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand develops a theory of what she calls “ethics”, synonymous with “morality”:
- What is morality, or ethics? It is a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life. Ethics, as a science, deals with discovering and defining such a code.
A purely individual matter, then:
- Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil.[18]
But how are we to determine what is “proper” and what is not? Blank out — as she would say. In fact, this is a kind of anti-concept, like “human dignity” (“what is worthy of a human being”).
Fortunately, she gives us an example:
- I like to think of fire held in a man’s hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind—and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression.
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
In other words, it is proper for a thinking, and therefore rational, person to destroy his lungs. And it is “moral” to encourage others to do the same:[19]
- Ayn Rand’s personal life was consistent with her philosophy of not giving a shit about anybody but herself. Rand was an ardent two-pack-a-day smoker, and when questioned about the dangers of smoking, she loved to light up with a defiant flourish and then scold her young questioners on the “unscientific and irrational nature of the statistical evidence.” After an x-ray showed that she had lung cancer, Rand quit smoking and had surgery for her cancer. Collective members explained to her that many people still smoked because they respected her and her assessment of the evidence; and that since she no longer smoked, she ought to tell them. They told her that she needn’t mention her lung cancer, that she could simply say she had reconsidered the evidence. Rand refused.
(Rand herself said: “My personal life is a postscript to my novels; it consists of the sentence: ‘And I mean it.’”)
The other problem is the circular nature of the definition:
- Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil.[20]
Thus, what enables a person to survive is reason, so surviving is reasonable… But precisely because reason is an individual instrument, how can an outsider judge whether choices are “rational”, beyond the mere criterion of survival? Here we find a kind of contempt for other people’s rationality — and here, too, a little healthy Hayekian humility would have done her a world of good. (See also Law as Natural Law.)
The morality of sexual orientation
Rand thus considered behaviors that she would not have chosen to be immoral — homosexuality, for example.[21] [22] With what rational, objective justification? Does homosexuality prevent people from living, surviving, living rationally, or even reproducing? Ayn Rand never took the trouble to explain, beyond this:
- It involves psychological flaws, corruptions, errors, or unfortunate premises.... Therefore I regard it as immoral ... And more than that, if you want my really sincere opinion. It’s disgusting. [23]
An argument of such intellectual depth, such objectivity, that Uganda’s president repeated it verbatim in 2014.[24] A brilliant Objectivist intellectual without knowing it!
Indeed:
- And openly gay Arthur Silber who currently writes the engaging “Light of Reason” weblog, summed it up to Sciabarra, “Rand did have an extremely unfortunate tendency to moralize in areas where moral judgments were irrelevant and unjustified. ... especially in ... aesthetics and sexuality.” [25]
Ayn Rand, unlike the Ugandan president, admittedly did not commit the non sequitur of deriving legal persecution from her preferences. What is problematic, however, is her ex post rationalization of her own subjective preferences within a philosophy she otherwise claims is integrated, objective, and, above all, rationally justifiable from A to Z.
The morality of prostitution
- Q: Should dope peddling, bootlegging, gambling, and prostitution be forbidden by law? ...
- A: ... No, they should not be forbidden. Some of these practices are improper. Prostitution is evil by almost any standard of morality.
- Ayn Rand Answers, p. 13
Prostitution arouses Rand’s indignation, as it does that of her followers (see Schwartz below), but they never take the trouble to explain what they actually object to according to their own theory of morality. Their criticism never rises above crude contempt for other people’s rationality.
For Ayn Rand, what is immoral is irrational, and vice versa. Thus, it would supposedly be immoral and irrational for a woman to want to be a prostitute — just as it would be for her to want to become president of the United States (see below).
The morality of marriage
- Q: What is your view of laws prohibiting homosexuality and bigamy?
- A: All laws against homosexual acts should be repealed. I do not approve of such practices or regard them as necessarily moral, but it is improper for the law to interfere with a relationship between consenting adults. Laws against corrupting the morals of minors are proper, but adults should be completely free.
- Bigamy is a different issue. If a man wants a relationship with two women, he does not need the law to sanction it. But the state should have standards about what it considers a legal marriage. The law should be uniform, and there are good reasons why in most civilized countries marriage is a monogamous institution. If a man wants a wife and another woman, he doesn’t need the legality of bigamy if he’s open about it. Bigamy laws concern cases in which a man has two legal wives in two different cities, and leads a double life. Here there are good grounds, legally and morally, to prosecute him. (Freedom Hall Forum, 1968, Ayn Rand Answers, p. 18)
We thus discover a new sovereign function of the Randian “limited” state: legislating on marriage.[26]
And once again, we encounter the consequences of her confused definition of morality. There are two possibilities:
- either morality really is rational and objective, as she claims, in which case she needs to provide better arguments than what she approves of or considers moral;
- or morality is subjective and personal, in which case she is free to hold her convictions, but should spare us the attempt to mix them[27] [28] with a philosophy meant to apply universally.
One therefore wonders what she can possibly mean by “corrupting the morals of minors” — according to her definition of morality:
- The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live[29].
And what would those legal grounds for criminalizing polygamy be? Worse, what is this anti-concept of having moral grounds (therefore distinct from Law) for criminally convicting someone? Once again, we find the classic confusion between personal preferences, self-development, morality, and — most seriously — Law.[30] [31] [32]
On the other hand, adultery did not seem to present her with any particular moral problem.[33] We can better understand why, for her, “morality” would be more useful on a desert island than in society.
The value of work
Work seems to be an absolute value, particularly “a job well done”:
- there’s nothing of any importance in life—except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It’s the only measure of human value. All the codes of ethics they’ll try to ram down your throat are just so much paper money put out by swindlers to fleece people of their virtues. The code of competence is the only system of morality that’s on a gold standard. When you grow up, you’ll know what I mean.
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Choosing work that respects Law? Secondary… (See doing one’s job and easy money.) Again, this is apparent in the main characters of her novels, taken to its extreme by Roark, whose moral philosophy seems to amount to that of a hedonistic workaholic[34] who asks no questions as long as he can do what he happens to enjoy — his work, architecture. (Here, too, need it be said? The fact that he enjoys his work — a particular kind of work — is simply an emotion, innate or acquired by chance, rather than the result of a conscious, rational decision with moral value.) He does not, for example, ask whether his work serves projects that respect Law and are financed without theft (Cortlandt), or even whether his clients are remotely moral people (Wynand). He does not even care whether his work serves his own rational long-term interests (which would at least be consistent with Randian pseudo-morality), still less whether it contributes to a better society in general or reflects choices that could be universalized.
We might even wonder what objection Rand could have to the Keynesian theory of creating employment by digging holes and filling them in — provided that the holes were well dug.
Egoism
- You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island—it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today—and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.[35]
Ethics or morality is thus confused with a mixture of metaphysics (which she nevertheless correctly identifies as a distinct branch of philosophy[36] — see Philosophy: Who Needs It) and mere self-development or lifestyle choices. What about morality in our relations with others? A mystery — after all, “morality” is more useful on a desert island than in a city!
In fact, the entire question of moral relations between actual, partly rational human beings is swept aside simply by proclaiming that there are “no conflicts of interest between people”, since they are all rational. Yet rationality is not binary, and it certainly does not preclude conflicts of interest. The very purpose of ethics is to ask how to distinguish between people’s actions, according to whether they are moral, rather than whether they are rational.
Law
Ayn Rand advocated a “minimal” state, voluntarily financed, yet coercive through its monopoly over a given territory.[37] She never explained:
- how that territory would be determined;[38]
- how decisions would be made by the state ruling over that territory, or what magic would circumvent Arrow’s theorem (after all, is the point not to be objective? How is one to decide “objectively” on an electoral system[39] or electoral districts,[40] for example?);
- how a monopoly could exist without violating rights.
Her justification of the state thus never rose above a crude barking-cat fallacy in theory and an inverted straw man in practice (no existing state meets her criteria, yet she did not reject them on that account; see Proper government).
Worse, for a minarchist — an American one at that — she seemed entirely oblivious to the essential question of how to prevent a government from exceeding its core functions. The history of the United States, surely one of the states founded on the most explicitly minarchist principles, and the manifest failure of that attempt, did not seem to interest her particularly.
More specifically, the essential question (for a minarchist!) of constitutional law, closely studied by libertarians, did not seem to concern her: the importance of the Tenth Amendment (the principle of subsidiarity), the First Amendment (freedom of speech), and, above all, the Second Amendment (the right to keep and bear arms). Neither the importance of respecting constitutions (see the constitutionalist illusion) nor their limitations seem to have concerned her.
The right to bear arms
- Q: What is your opinion of gun control laws?
- A: I do not know enough about it to have an opinion, except to say that it is not of primary importance. Forbidding guns or registering them is not going to stop criminals from having them; nor is it a great threat to the private, non-criminal citizen if he has to register the fact that he has a gun. It is not an important issue, unless you’re ready to begin a private uprising right now, which isn’t very practical. [Ford Hall Forum, 1971]
- Q: What’s your attitude toward gun control?
- A: It is a complex, technical issue in the philosophy of law. Handguns are instruments for killing people — they are not carried for hunting animals — and you have no right to kill people. You do have the right to self-defense, however. I don’t know how the issue is going to be resolved to protect you without giving you the privilege to kill people at whim. [Ford Hall Forum, 1973] (Ayn Rand Answers, p. 19, “Gun control”. See also the comments at [41]).
Well, no: this is not a complicated technical issue. It is a simple matter of Law,[42] and one of crucial political importance at that.[43] An American has no excuse for ignoring it.[44]
Conscription
- Q: Should amnesty be granted to draft dodgers or deserters?
- A: It is improper to discuss this issue while there’s a war going on. It’s a complex issue. But when men are dying in a war, you cannot promise amnesty to those who refused to fight. I don’t blame those who refuse to be drafted, however, if they did so out of genuine convictions (not necessarily religious). If someone opposed the state’s right to draft him, he’d be right, and would go to jail. (Ford Hall Forum, 1972, Ayn Rand Answers, p. 91).
Note the amusing fact that an “Objectivist” concerns herself with someone’s personal motivations for exercising his rights.
Here, too, this is not remotely a complex issue, but a simple matter of Law: everyone is free to use his time as he wishes, for reasons that are his own business, and anyone who forcibly prevents him from doing so is a criminal.
As the liberal Benjamin Constant wrote in his definition of liberty, 150 years before her:
- For each person, it is the right to express his opinion, to choose and practice his occupation, to dispose of his property, even to abuse it; to come and go without seeking permission, and without having to account for his motives or actions.
- Benjamin Constant, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns (translated from French)
Here again, Rand understood this in theory (see “Draft” in The Ayn Rand Lexicon, pp. 127–129), but did not draw all the necessary practical conclusions. If conscription violates Law, then everyone is within his rights to refuse it; anyone who carries it out is a criminal; and a state that does so consequently fails to meet her definition of a “good” government that respects Law.
Moreover, war is not decided upon by a country, but by certain individuals who decide to send other individuals — in this case against their will — to fight and risk their lives. Once again, we encounter the consequences of the inverted straw man: a refusal to draw the implications of reality. Does the United States have a government that respects Law in Rand’s sense, or does it not?
Law versus criminal law
Ayn Rand seemed to have no objection[45] [46] to criminal law.
Pseudo-intellectual property
Ayn Rand supported pseudo-intellectual property at the expense of genuine property rights.[47]
Politics
As we have seen, Ayn Rand understood many things in political philosophy, but struggled to draw the obvious practical conclusions. She thus seemed to harbor a particular, entirely irrational hatred for the libertarians who did understand them — another paradox for someone who defined Objectivism as “a philosophy for living on earth”.
Above all, the moral imperative to contribute to a world in which Law is better respected (fewer innocent people in prison, fewer unpunished crimes, and so on), and to support efforts that actually move in that direction, did not seem to touch her. Admittedly, that does not necessarily fit her definition of morality.
Philosophical naïveté
Ayn Rand reduced everything to philosophy and wanted to explain everything through philosophy. In politics, this produced a naïve tendency to take politicians’ statements at face value.[48]
More generally, Ayn Rand seemed to ignore the insights of both evolutionary psychology and the Public Choice school. As we have also seen, history — the historical emergence of the state, for example — did not particularly interest her. She thus failed to understand that “philosophies”, “moralities”, “religions”, and even “economic theories”[49] are often ex post rationalizations of particular interests and existing situations. The various lobbies, trade unions, and so forth are driven neither by ideologies nor by philosophical principles, but simply by the defense of their interests. A civil servant whose job consists of drafting new laws, for example, will not want to lose his job. Cui bono:
- If you ever wonder why people around you are behaving strangely, or believing and doing seemingly irrational things, you can find the answer by asking the question: what’s in it for them? It’s remarkable the extent to which people craft their own opinions and decisions around their own desires and interests, regardless of considerations of truth, evidence, or logic.
This also applies to collectivism. Under which regimes do certain individuals have the most power? With the greatest personality cults, the almost mystical celebration of a few selfish individuals by millions of people? The supposedly collectivist regimes. It is therefore not an ideological struggle: the world’s central conflict is not (as in Textbook of Americanism) between two coherent, opposing philosophies, such that, once the advocates of one have convinced those of the other, the former will be accepted and implemented throughout society.[50]
No, it is much more a struggle between producers and thieves. The goal is not to convince thieves that they are wrong, but to make them stop stealing from us:
- Which brings me to the essential: the goal is not to convince statists that we are right and they are wrong. The goal is to win. The goal is for statists to be powerless, not to acknowledge their powerlessness.
- We are not the student who comes questioning the master about some doubt he has about the rightness of his system. We are free people who don’t give a damn about the looters. Our goal is not to convince criminals, including statists, that they are wrong. Our goal is to have a society where all criminals, including statists, are rightfully defended against and made to pay for their crimes.
Naturally, that may involve “convincing thieves” that stealing is wrong. It may also involve agorism (and bitcoin is indisputably the greatest advance for freedom in recent decades, achieved without having to convince a single statist). And it may involve purely pragmatic political alliances.
Ayn Rand and libertarians
Ayn Rand was extremely critical of libertarians.[51] On Milton Friedman, for example:
- I saw five minutes of it [Free to Choose]; that was enough for me, because I know [Milton] Friedman’s ideas. He is not for capitalism; he’s a miserable eclectic. He’s an enemy of Objectivism, and his objection is that I bring morality into economists, which he thinks should be amoral. I don’t always like what public television puts on, but they have better programs than ‘Free to Choose’ – the circus, for instance.
On libertarians in general:
- They’re not defenders of capitalism. They’re a group of publicity seekers who rush into politics prematurely, because they allegedly want to educate people through a political campaign, which can’t be done. Further, their leadership consists of men of every persuasion, from religious conservatives to anarchists. Most of them are my enemies: they spend their time denouncing me, while plagiarizing my ideas. Now it’s a bad sign for an allegedly pro-capitalist party [Libertarian Party] to start by stealing ideas.
- I don’t think plagiarists are effective. I’ve read nothing by libertarians (when I read them, in the early years) that wasn’t my ideas badly mishandled – that is, the teeth pulled out of them – with no credit given. I didn’t know whether to be glad that no credit was given, or disgusted. I felt both. They are perhaps the worst political group today, because they can do the most harm to capitalism, by making it disreputable. I’ll take Jane Fonda over them.
Ayn Rand and presidential candidates
Although she professed to favor a minimal, voluntarily financed state, Ayn Rand seemed to have no problem voting for various more or less socialist candidates (starting with FDR), all of whom increased the power of the American state during her lifetime. Over the half-century she lived in the United States, the size of government tripled, from about 11% to 33% of GDP…[52] This flagrantly contradicted not only libertarian Law, but even any Randian notion of a state confined to enforcing Law, and indeed any remotely conservative notion of a constitutionally limited state.[53] [54]
The 1972 election
- Question: Have you heard of the Libertarian Party and would you consider endorsing John Hospers and Tonie Nathan as presidential candidates?
- Rand: Look, I would rather vote for Bob Hope or the Marx brothers, if they still exist, or Jerry Lewis — I don’t know who is the funniest today, rather than something like professor Hospers and the Libertarian Party. Look, I don’t think Henry Wallace is a great thinker but even he — he’s pretty much of a demagogue, though with some courage — even he had the good sense to stay home this time if he wanted to some extent — if he had one ounce of sincerity and wanted some freedom for his country. To choose this year to start after personal publicity — and if Hospers and whoever the rest are get ten votes away from Nixon, which I doubt, but if they do it is a moral crime. [Ford Hall Forum, 1972]
Rand did, in fact, support Nixon (see [55]…). Note, incidentally, the objectively manifest failure of her entire political involvement: by campaigning for opposing candidates from one election to the next, she necessarily canceled out her own previous efforts. Here, too, had she understood the conclusions of libertarian Law, or even the bare minimum about politicians’ actual psychological motivations — power, rather than any particular philosophy — she would have refrained.
Nixon, then, the instigator of the war on drugs: a criminal activity of the American federal government (and an entirely unconstitutional one, quite apart from its actual motivations[56]). It gave the United States the dubious distinction of having the world’s largest prison population, both in relative and absolute terms. Some have even compared the incarceration rate to that of the USSR under Stalin.[57] It also caused incalculable human and economic damage.[58] Yet Rand did not seem to consider this important enough to prefer another candidate — the Libertarian Party’s, for example.
The 1976 election
During a question-and-answer session, an audience member asked her what she thought of the American Libertarian Party’s candidate, Roger MacBride.
Her answer:
- Now, why would I be opposed to [libertarians]? Because I have been saying (...) the same thing in everything I’ve spoken or written: that the trouble in the world today is philosophical; that only the right philosophy can save us. And here is a party which plagiarizes some of my ideas, mixes it with the exact opposite – with religionists, with anarchists, with just about every intellectual misfit and scum that they can find – and they call themselves ‘libertarian’ and run for office. Just let me add: I dislike Mr. Reagan. I dislike Mr. Carter. And I’m not too enthusiastic about the other candidates. I would say the worst of them are giants compared to anybody who would attempt anything so unphilosophical, so low, and so pragmatic, as this libertarian party because it’s the last insult to the idea of ideas, and to philosophical consistency. [59] (Q&A @5:30-7:00)
The other candidates,[60] besides the “Democrat” and the “Republican”, were:
- Eugene McCarthy, a former Democratic Senator from Minnesota, ran as an independent candidate.
- Ben Bubar, Prohibition Party nominee.
- Frank Zeidler, former mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, ran as the nominee of Socialist Party USA, which was founded in a split with Socialist Party of America.
In other words, Rand regarded a socialist and a prohibitionist as “giants” (sic), preferable to an actual libertarian candidate.
What, then, was the libertarian’s platform?
- a free market system, a return to the gold standard, the abolition of the Federal Reserve, an end to corporate welfare, the abolition of the FCC, a foreign policy of non-interventionism, and abolishing all victimless crimes.[61]
Readers can judge for themselves what Rand could possibly have found so terrifying about it.
Women candidates
- I do not think that a rational woman can want to be president. Observe that I did not say she would be unable to do the job; I said that she could not want it. It is not a matter of her ability, but of her values.
- Ayn Rand, “About a Woman President”, in The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought, 1988.
Rand’s argument was that a woman’s role is to admire men[62] (sic), which would be difficult for her in so high an office… But what about a lesbian president? Ah, no — she would be irrational anyway, since homosexuality is immoral and therefore irrational for Rand (sic).
Note, too, that on questions like this, as on so many others, we are deep in the proper-government fallacy. If the United States is not a state that conforms to Randian principles, why would a rational person want to become president except to reform the state radically? And why, then, concern oneself with that person’s sex, chatting away as though nothing were wrong and the situation were perfectly normal, rather than recognizing the urgent need to end the abuses of a state that does not correspond to Rand’s legitimate state?
Cult-like tendencies
Followers
Rand’s followers generally confine themselves to repeating the same (non-)arguments — literally, without even rephrasing them — and thus make the same mistakes.
Leonard Peikoff
Peter Schwartz
Peter Schwartz, “Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty”, in The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought, 1988.
His only correct criticism concerns Murray Rothbard’s foreign-policy views, which of course contradict his own (correct) theory of the state. Since it is a gang of criminals:
- it does not particularly ask our opinion about the conflicts it conducts with other gangs (we are not obliged to have an opinion on the subject);
- in its struggles with other gangs, some are worse than others — but we still have to establish which ones;
- this cannot be determined a priori or proved definitively (see Murray Rothbard’s isolationist fallacies).
For the rest, Schwartz offers the usual repetition of Randian non-arguments, made up of straw men, invective, and — let us be charitable — gross bad faith. For example:
- In fact, there is no essential distinction between dictatorship and Libertarianism. The totalitarian maintains that the state may do whatever it wishes, without any restraints; the Libertarian insists that the individual may do whatever he wishes, without any restraints. Both agree that man is to be ruled by whim, and differ only on whether private whim or government whim takes precedence.
Randians alternately reproach libertarianism for confining itself to the non-aggression principle — and for advocating unlimited aggression. As for their theory of the state, we are still waiting… Again and again, we encounter the same fallacies and elementary errors: a state has no “whim”; only human beings do. A libertarian thus insists on his right to act on his whims, provided that he respects other people’s property, and recognizes the same right in others: let them do as they please, provided that they respect his property. Is that so hard to understand?
The “totalitarian” wants himself to be able to do as he pleases, including committing aggression, while everyone else is subject to rules — chiefly, of course, the rule against committing aggression against him.
Yaron Brook
For Yaron Brook’s criticism of Ron Paul, see ARI Watch.
Gregory Salmieri
Conclusion: the fundamental difference between Randianism and libertarianism
- Libertarianism is concerned with the use of violence in society. That is all. It is not anything else. It is not feminism. It is not egalitarianism (except in a functional sense: everyone equally lacks the authority to aggress against anyone else). It has nothing to say about aesthetics. It has nothing to say about religion or race or nationality or sexual orientation. It has nothing to do with left-wing campaigns against “white privilege,” unless that privilege is state-supplied.
Randianism (“Objectivism”) presents itself as a complete philosophy, extending to precepts on aesthetics (art), personal goals in life, sexuality, and so forth. Above all, it places rationality — or rather, what Rand considered rational — above everything else, with the complete acceptance of her philosophy as the primary goal.
As we have seen, practical political considerations — reducing state injustice — thus take second place. Political measures and candidates moving in the right direction are rejected as soon as they are deemed “philosophically inconsistent”.
Alliances[63] (or even personal relationships![64]) with Christian conservatives, for example, are therefore rejected.
Libertarians, on the other hand, have a much more modest goal: to uphold Law — in other words, to reduce injustice and unpunished crime in the world:
- Libertarian progresses throughout history have not been about changing peoples’ religions, they have been about ending state religions. Not about ending racism, but about ending slavery. Not about ending homophobia, but about ending sodomy laws. Our first job as libertarians is not changing people’s opinions and preferences, but convincing people to not use aggression so lightly.
The existence of different religions, opinions, preferences, and ways of life, whether rational or not (in whose eyes, for that matter?), is no problem at all for libertarianism — provided that everyone respects Law.
The libertarian program is therefore very simple: laissez-faire, or “live and let live”, or even “let life live”.[65] The infamous libertarian conspiracy: prohibit aggression and leave everyone alone in every other respect.
Libertarianism can, moreover, be justified in different ways. For many libertarians, this respect for Law is consistent with Christianity, for example.[66] Others observe that a society which respects libertarian Law will be the most prosperous, with the highest standard of living, the longest life expectancy, the lowest infant mortality,[67] and so forth — and that this is more than enough reason to adopt it. Others consider libertarian Law an inescapable logical imperative,[68] or simply the only alternative to nihilism, the only coherent and universalizable Law:[69] a straightforward application of logic and the principle of estoppel:
- In other words, you can’t treat others like savages, i.e. violate their property rights, and then expect to have your own dignity respected in return. This is different than saying you shouldn’t treat others like savages, or you ought not violate other’s property. It’s more like saying, you shouldn’t treat others like savages, provided that you do not want to be treated like a savage yourself.
Everyone can thus find an interest in libertarianism, or already implicitly accepts it, even without understanding every aspect of it. And everyone can practice libertarianism — respect Law — without being a professional philosopher or even understanding its deeper reasons. Does this diversity, this harmony, this tolerance exasperate the self-styled “Objectivists”? Too bad for them. The world advances, and continues to advance, toward greater respect for libertarian Law — with them, without them, or even against them.
See also
- David King, A guide to the philosophy of objectivism
- Greg Nyquist, Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature
- Wikibéral: Objectivisme — libertarian criticisms (in French)
