Objectivism & Politics, Part 46

Individual Rights 5: Burke contra Rand. Edmund Burke regarded with great suspicion any theory of rights which appeared founded, not on extensive experience, but merely on rationalistic speculation and “metaphysics”:

Government is not made in virtue of natural rights [Burke wrote], which may and do exist in total independence of it, and exist in much greater clearness and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection; but their abstract perfection is their practical defect…. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants [such as protection against force and fraud]. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can only be done by a power out of themselves, and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances and admit to infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them upon that principle.

Here we have a passage that most Objectivists are incapable of understanding. The typical Objectivist will read the passage “Government is a contrivance … to provide for human wants” as a license to provide for any and all wants; but this is not at all what Burke means, as anyone familiar with writings will understand at an instant. Burke is merely reiterating the view, common among the English in the 18th century, that the purpose of the government is to serve the citizens of the community, rather than the citizens serving the government.

Objectivists would also likely misinterpret Burke’s assertion that “the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted” as a license to tyranny. Again, this would be an error. Burke is merely stating a political fact. Human passions cannot be allowed to run wild in a civilized society. As Burke put it: “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there is without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

Burke is here asserting a different view of human nature, one that clashes with Rand’s view that man is a “rational animal.” For Burke, human civilization is a delicate contrivance that, if mismanaged, can easily dissolve into anarchy. This is why Burke favors cautious reform . In politics, it is so easy to make things worse, yet very difficult to make things better.

But the most important statement in the passage is where Burke writes “ as the liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances and admit to infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any abstract rule.” This statement constitutes one of the essential differences between Burke and Rand. Rand believes (at least implicitly) that political and social reality is simple enough to be adequately represented in abstract principles derived from “reason” (i.e., conscious deliberate reasonings guided by “logic”). Burke, as an experienced statesmen, knows that Rand’s view of political and social reality is false: the reality confronting the statesman is simply far too complex to be summed up in a few abstract rules.

With this insight in hand, Burke resumes his disquisition on rights:

The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science, because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate; but that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens: and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions. In states there are often some obscure and almost latent causes, things which appear at first view of little moment, on which a very great part of its prosperity or adversity may most essentially depend. The science of government being therefore so practical in itself and intended for such practical purposes — a matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life, however sagacious and observing he may be — it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or on building it up again without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes.

These metaphysic rights entering into common life, like rays of light which pierce into a dense medium, are by the laws of nature refracted from their straight line. Indeed, in the gross and complicated mass of human passions and concerns the primitive rights of men undergo such a variety of refractions and reflections that it becomes absurd to talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity of their original direction. The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity; and, therefore, no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature or to the quality of his affairs. When I hear the simplicity of contrivance aimed at and boasted of in any new political constitutions, I am at no loss to decide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their trade or totally negligent of their duty. The simple governments are fundamentally defective, to say no worse of them. If you were to contemplate society in but one point of view, all these simple modes of polity are infinitely captivating. In effect each would answer its single end much more perfectly than the more complex is able to attain all its complex purposes. But it is better that the whole should be imperfectly and anomalously answered than that, while some parts are provided for with great exactness, others might be totally neglected or perhaps materially injured by the over-care of a favorite member.

The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes; and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of definition, but not impossible to be discerned. The rights of men in governments are their advantages; and these are often in balances between differences of good, in compromises sometimes between good and evil, and sometimes between evil and evil. Political reason is a computing principle: adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, morally and not metaphysically or mathematically, true moral denominations.

Burke would regard Rand’s politics as merely “metaphysical” (by which he would mean: founded, not on experience, but on rationalistic speculation). Rand’s notion of establishing the state on her very simple concept of individual rights—a concept, moreover, which can never be compromised upon, regardless of the consequences—Burke would find as “fundamentally defective.” And Rand’s implicit confidence in her own reasoning powers, which allowed her to arrive at principles concerning matters that she knew little if anything about, Burke would view with dismay. In contradistinction to the speculative rationalism of Rand’s politics, Burke would assert his most element insight—namely, that the science of government requires extensive (and intensive) experience, “even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life, however sagacious and observing he may be.” This is the key insight that most differentiates the political thinking of Burke, Hayek, Oakeshott, Sowell, Michael Polanyi, and other sophisticated conservatives from Rand and her disciples.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 45

Individual Rights 4: Paper Rights. “Politics,” Otto Von Bismarck tells us, “is the art of the possible.” Since most people who frame theories of politics have no political power and therefore no effective political will, their political speculations remain unchecked by reality. They are merely idle fancies that exist only on paper.

The individual rights advocated by Rand are precisely of the paper variety. They never can nor never will be instituted in reality, because there are too many rooted sentiments and vested interests that stand against them. In a “free” country where people are allowed to develop their own political opinions without fear persecution from the state, wide divergences of political ideology inevitably arise. A democratic nation is an unworkable committee, governed by competing elites of divergent views. The only way to get anything done is through compromise. Hence, no ideological faction can ever expect to get carte blanche: even when they control the legislature and the executive they still won't get everything they want, because the “loyal” opposition can use consititutional protections and the power of vested interests to create a myriad obstacles to any measures involving sweeping change.


What, if anything, can be accomplished towards increasing the “rights” of the individual in the sense of limiting the power of the state to regulate and tax its citizens? There is very little that the average individual can do, since he constitutes, politically speaking, merely one vote among tens of millions. As part of a much larger organization (of, say, a major political party), he may have some effect, particularly if that organization is well led (leadership is absolutely indispensable to get anything done politically). But here’s precisely the rub. An organization, to wield any sort of political influence, must be large. Yet this requires having a “big tent,” i.e., accepting as many people as possible. There is, however, a perplexing trade-off involved in developing a political party that can wield influence and exert a political will: the greater the party, the more compromises that have to be made on ideological grounds to keep it together. The more people you try to appeal to, the more you have to dilute and widen your ideology. But the more you dilute and widen your ideology, the greater chance of your party falling into faction and breaking apart. So there is always a tension between the size of an organization and its cohesiveness. If an organization is ideologically pure, it’s too small to exert a credible influence. If it is too large, it tends to break apart. A political party capable of taking power must find that elusive compromise position between ideological purity and size.

Orthodox Objectivism is one of the most purest ideologies on the current scene. Yet this very purity condemns Objectivism to obscurity and political impotence. The current Objectivist leader, Leonard Peikoff, has rigorously distanced himself from all potential political allies. Indeed, he seems to despise the potential allies far more than he does his ideological enemies. David Kelley’s brand of Objectivism is, politically, nearly identical to Peikoff’s version: yet Peikoff has told Kelley’s followers to get lost (“if you agree with the Branden or Kelley viewpoint or anything resembling it—please drop out of our movement: drop Ayn Rand, leave Objectivism alone,” he wrote). Libertarians, Peikoff insisted on his radio show in nineties, “are worse than communists.” And as for the Republican Party—an organization which, despite its many faults, constitutes the most effective political force aligned against Obamacare—deserves to be either “destroyed” or “severely punished” for the enormous crime of allying itself with evangelical Christians. So those Objectivists who follow Peikoff remain, for the most part, excluded from the political process.

Because of this ideological purity, Objectivists have no effective political will and therefore no sense of responsibility. They can advocate any measure, make any claim, without ever worrying about empirical refutation. Empirical testing, when possible, is always the best way to check the truth of any idea, political or otherwise. When such testing is not possible, the human fancy can reach any conclusion it pleases, without fear of contradiction or embarrassment. This is one reason why fringe political groups with no power often believe the strangest things: they never have to worry about reality refuting their whacky ideas, because those ideas will never be tested.

There is, however, one other crucial side to this. Strangely enough, however irrational an individual’s speculative beliefs may be, normally, they tend to be at least “reality-orientated” when it comes to the business of life. There are Christian fundamentalists, for example, who claim to believe in some rather odd theological speculations that overstep important realities by a wide margin. Yet these odd beliefs do not interfere in their business activities, which often display a high degree of shrewdness and even rationality. The eccentric philosophy professor—to take another instance—who claims that reality doesn’t exist or that knowledge is impossible, nonetheless, when away from the university lecture hall, completely ignores these absurd claims when he’s paying bills, pursuing hobbies, and running his personal household.

The beliefs of theologians and academic philosophers are often mere “paper” beliefs. They are either not meant to be followed or impossible to follow. One interesting characteristic of paper beliefs is that, on one of those rare occasions when an advocate of these beliefs gets a chance to put them in practice, they often “betray” those beliefs. Being placed in a position of responsibility, where one must bear the full burden of failure, often sobers people up. Which leads to the question: would Objectivists be sobered up if they were suddenly thrust into a position of responsibility? Would they really nuke Iran if they had the power to do so? If it became clear that their laissez-faire, no-welfare policies would lead to the death by starvation of 10,000 people, would they really stick to their guns and allow the deaths to occur, even though it would discredit them in the eyes of many and turn people against their ideology? What sort of paper is their beliefs really made from?

Objectivism & Politics, Part 44

Individual Rights 3: Nietzsche weighs in. While re-reading Nietzche’s Twilight of the Idols, I found old Fritz making the same point I’ve been trying to make in recent posts. Consider the following passage:

One chooses dialectic [i.e., logic, “reason”] only when one has no other means. One knows that one arouses mistrust with it, that it is not very persuasive. Nothing is easier to erase than a dialectical effect: the experience of every meeting at which there are speeches proves this. It can only be self-defense for those who no longer have other weapons. One must have to enforce one’s right: until one reaches that point, one makes no use of [dialectic].

Now it’s important not to take this passage out of context. Nietzsche is not attacking logic, but merely the misuse of logic. Logic is a tool of knowledge; it is not a psychological or political force. Anyone who is reduced to arguing for their rights demonstrates merely that they lack the ability to enforce their rights. And rights without force are completely useless.

Nietzsche also warned against the use of high-level abstractions:

The other idiosyncrasy of philosophers is no less dangerous; it consists of confusing the last and the first. They place that which comes at the end—unfortunately, for it ought not to come at all—namely, the “highest concepts,” which means the most general, the emptiest concepts, the last smoke of evaporating reality, in the beginning, as the beginning.

The “last smoke of evaporating reality” indeed! When you build arguments out of such broad abstractions, you end up missing important details. This is precisely what happens when Objectivists argue about rights. One Objectivist, recently quoted in the comments section of my last post, insisted that a denial of individual rights “usually leads to suffering, and yes, often to death, alas.” Now this statement is clearly an exaggeration. A complete denial of rights (e.g. complete and abject slavery) may lead to an increased mortality rate, but that is little different than saying it leads “often” to death. But even if the statement were true, it still does not make for a convincing argument, because it fails to distinguish between those who are enslaved and die and those who gain by the slavery and live. The question is: how does one convince those who gain by the slavery that what they are doing is immoral? What persuasive reasons can there be? That the enslavers would be “better off” if they didn’t enslave people? Well, unfortunately, that’s not necessarily the case. History is replete with examples of individuals who benefited from slavery over a long life. A rather horrible version of slavery existed under the Roman Republic and later under the Roman Empire; yet Rome, in both its republic and imperial incarnations, lasted for centuries; and many a Roman slave holder lived to a ripe old age. If one were to argue that political orders based on slavery eventually disintegrate into anarchy and bloodshed, well, that is true of all political orders, whether based on slavery or not. If, taking a different tack, one argues that society as a whole, including the slave-holders, will be “better off,” economically, without slavery, again this argument is too abstract to be convincing. In the first place, there is no guarantee that each particular slave-holder will in fact be economically “better off.” If you are slave-holder and living high off the hog, wouldn’t it be safer to keep things as they are? But even more to the point, what if the slave holder is not interested in being “better off” economically? What if he likes nothing more than to boss people around? There are people like that. Such people can’t be changed through logic and arguments. What does Objectivism propose to do about these people, when they dominate within the ruling elite (as they often do)? Go on strike? Good luck with that.

The power hungry individual, the man who gets his jollies from forcing other people to obey and respect him, constitutes one of the great obstacles to creating a stable, long-lasting free society. Objectivism tries to minimize the threat of this individual by caricaturizing him as weak or dependent, like the villains of Atlas Shrugged. Objectivists accuse such people of living like animals. Such men are “evil”; their way of life, Objectivism implies, leads to death. But again, Objectivists are arguing on the basis of abstractions that are too broad, and hence miss important details. Let us assume for argument’s sake that the power hungry individual who wishes to dominate other people will likely not live as long as individuals who respect the rights of others and who have no interest in power. If this assumption is true, would this justify Rand’s contentions that dictators are evil?

Not necessarily. Consider the following moral test. Suppose an individual has two choices: (1) he can live until he is 80 as an unimportant individual under a free and prosperous social order; or (2) he can live until he is 40 as a dictator enjoying nearly anything he wants, including wealth, women, power, etc. Now it’s mere sophistry to suggest that anyone who chooses (2) is choosing death. They are not choosing death at all: they are choosing a shorter life that enables them to achieve their values. For hardly anyone regards life as an ultimate value, but merely as a means of achieving what they in fact value. Rand’s attempt to base morality on life is a mere rationalization.

For better or worse, there are people out there who would gladly sacrifice forty years of their lives in order to live high off the hog, bossing people around and having access to the most attractive women. To say that such people are choosing “death,” or “living like animals” is merely to engage in impotent name calling. The Stalins, the Hitlers, and the hordes of other dictators and rights violaters are not going to vanish because Rand and her followers call them names.

Is Ayn Rand Bad For The Market?

So ponders the Wall Street Journal.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 43

Individual Rights 2: Rand’s theory examined. Rand introduces her theory of individual rights as follows:

The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man’s rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.

Rand gets off to rather poor start in her argument. She claims that the source of rights is “the law of identity.” “A is A—and Man is Man.” She might as well have just said The source of rights is the way things are, for that’s what all this pretentious talk about rights stemming from the law of identity amounts to in the end. Rand here commits the error of begging the question. What we need is compelling evidence that man’s rights do in fact stem from the way things are, not merely the assertion that this is so!

Next we are confronted with an even more mystifying assertion: “Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival.” Now what could Rand possibly mean by this? She comes perilously close to suggesting that rights are requisites of man’s survival, but she evades this palpably absurd conclusion by specifying merely that rights are necessary for a “proper” survival. Now what is this “proper” survival, and how is it distinguished from an improper survival? She intentionally says nothing about this, leaving plenty of wiggle room so that she can easily use the ambiguity to equivocate to any conclusion she pleases.

In the next sentence, Rand merely repeats what she said before, except now she has placed it in a conditional: if man is to live on earth, then, she claims, it is right for him to use his mind, act on his free judgment, work for his values, and keep the product of his work. Yet again, this is not an argument, it’s a merely a vague assertion. Even worse, Rand is once again implying the absurd conclusion that rights are necessary to life.

She offers a second conditional which again implies an absurdity: “if life is man’s purpose,” she argues, “he has a right to live as rational being.” The argument, among other things, seems (perhaps unwittingly) to suggest that a purpose bestows a right. It is not clear at all how this can be so. The fact that I have a purpose in no way grants me a right. Not in the least; I only have those rights which have arisen in the society I live in, regardless of what I might wish or purpose. Most individuals, taken on their own resources alone, have no control over the legal structures that exist where they are born. If you are born in North Korea, you have no rights, regardless of what purposes you might have.

Although Rand’s rhetoric is confusing, what she seems to be attempting to argue is something along the following lines: (1) that in order to live, men must be “rational”; (2) that rights are necessary in order to be rational; (3) that, therefore, rights are necessary in order to live.

If by rationality we mean deliberate, conscious thinking guided by “logic,” premise (1) is almost certainly false. Human beings, as cognitive science has shown, are governed to a considerable extent by the cognitive unconscious, which can hardly be described as “rational.” Premise (2) is deeply problematic. The rationale behind it is the idea that, unless an individual is free, he cannot follow the dictates of his mind. But this assumes that the political alternatives facing mankind are either a complete and total subjugation of the individual on the one side or a complete freedom on the other side. In the real world, it doesn’t work like that. Even a slave has some room for initiative and rationality, and a citizen in a welfare state has a great deal more. So Rand’s argument breaks down completely, which is just as well, because the conclusion is, as I have already noted, absurd. Sorry, but rights are not necessary for life. If men could not survive without rights, the human race would have disappeared long ago.

We next find Rand repeating her oft-stated maxim that “nature forbids [man] the irrational.” What does Rand mean by the “irrational.” Can any Objectivist describe what she means without begging the question? For it clearly won’t do to say: “the irrational is anything contrary reason,” because that just leaves us with the difficulty of describing what “reason” is. To the extent that any empirical meaning can be drawn from this statement at all, it appears to be, at the very best, an exaggeration. If by “irrational” we include “non-logical conduct,” the statement is clearly false, as human beings have been practicing non-logical conduct for centuries without Dame Nature once stepping in to forbid it. Indeed, it would be impossible to bring every aspect of human existence under the exclusive domain of logical conduct, since logic breaks down whenever faced with any great complexity or uncertainty. In a pinch, intuition or trial and error or following an established usage may prove more useful than “reason.”

Rand concludes by asserting, again without offering a shred of evidence or proof, that any group that denies man’s rights “is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.” Once more, we are confronted with a frustrating vagueness in which Rand seems to equivocate between saying something that is clearly contrary to the facts or that is banal. Does she really want us to believe that a denial of “man’s rights” leads to death? Throughout most of human history, most human beings have had virtually no rights at all. Many have been little better than slaves or peasants. Yet somehow the human race has managed to survive, in the very teeth of Rand’s anathema. So what does Rand mean by claiming that a denial of rights is anti-life? She means only this: that she doesn’t like it! Sorry, but that’s not a good argument. Even if you could (per impossible) change society through argumentation, you would never get anywhere with arguments as bad as these!

Objectivism & Politics, Part 42

Individual Rights 1: Theory and practice. Rand tells us, in her usual ex cathedra manner, that “the right to life is the source of all rights” Let us ignore the obvious question What is the source of the right to life? and instead focus on the practical side of this question. What is the practical source of rights? where do they come from in practice? This is a distinction conveniently ignored by Objectivists, who live in a land of idle fancy where things can come into existence merely by wishing them to exist. Wouldn’t it be nice, the Objectivist thinks to himself, if people didn’t commit acts of aggression against one another? Of course it would be nice. So, like magic, Rand’s individual rights strut upon the stage, dressed up in Rand’s wonderfully vague and hollow rationalizations, expecting to be realized without any real blood, sweat, or tears being shed for them!

When we turn our heads back to the real world, we see no such individual rights: at best, we see weak approximations of these rights, limping about with all kinds of wounds and sores on them. Worse, we notice, on the other side of the scale, something more ominous. Consider what the historian Thomas Carlyle noted when scanning the French Revolution: “With endless debating , we get the Rights of Man written down and promulgated: true paper basis of all paper Constitutions. Neglecting, cry the opponents, to declare the Duties of Man! Forgetting, answer we, to ascertain the Mights of Man;—one of the fatallest omissions!”

Where in all of Objectivism is this question of Might ever approached in a non-wishful-thinking, adult manner? It is the easiest thing in the world to talk about rights or scribble about rights on a piece of paper or build castles-in-the-air about rights in society. But to make such rights actually exist in the world of fact, so that individuals universally abide by them, that is a much more difficult task, and all the talking and scribbling and arial castle building in the world won’t ever surmount the difficulties involved.

In the real world, matters stand as Pareto describes them in The Mind and Society:

So as between the various social classes no principle of right can be found to regulate the division of social advantage. The classes that have the greater strength, intelligence, ability, shrewdness, take the lion’s share. It is not clear how any other principles of division could be logically established and even less clear how once they were established logically they could be enforced or applied in concrete. Every individual certainly has his own principle for a division that would seem ideal to him. But such a principle is nothing more than an expression of individual sentiments and interest which he comes to conceive as a “right.” [§1509]

The key point in Pareto’s disquisition concerns the difficulties of enforcing or applying any theory of rights in practice. To enforce such a theory requires the threat (and perhaps use) of violence. More than that, it requires greater force than is applied on behalf of other theories regulating the division of social advantage. Given everything we know from history about human nature, there are no compelling reasons to believe that Rand’s notions about individual rights will ever be applied in the practical affairs of men. It is a theory concocted by intellecutals who have no practical experience in the real world of politics and who therefore have no clue how to apply their theories in practice.

Rand herself focuses nearly all her attention on the theoretical side of the question, as she operates under the illusion that, if she merely provides the best rationalization possible for her theory, the practical side will take care of itself. This demonstrates a lack of judgment about human affairs that is appalling in someone as intelligent as Rand. Yet this is not the worst of it. Not only did Rand fail to provide any solution to the practical side of the problem; her theoretical solution, as I shall demonstrate in future posts, is itself riddled with gaping logical holes.

Objectivism Contra Logic

"'Standard logic' this may be; Objectivism, I submit, it ain't."

- Lindsay Perigo, The Free Radical Online

Objectivism makes a great play of its commitment to logic. "The fundamental concept of method, the one on which all the others depend, is logic", Rand intones in her scanty "Introduction To Objectivist Epistemology". But it turns out that like so much of Objectivism, this purported commitment to an objective standard of argument turns out to be fake; yet another shell-game played with words. All she and her followers are really committing to is her own peculiar definition of logic, which she calls "the art of non-contradictory identification." What this means when the rubber hits the road of a syllogism, and how it fits or does not fit with the rules of standard bi-valent logic as they've evolved over the centuries, Rand chose to never explain.

This deliberate obscurity has given her followers license to posture as if they're defenders of the great rational tradition, when in fact they discard it whenever they see fit. This rejection of common standards of logic is naturally not so trumpeted; when speaking from two sides of your mouth, usually one side is sotto voce. But it is nonetheless clearly discernable. For example, prominent Objectivist Harry Binswanger claims Objecto-logic is a "new, improved" version of standard bi-valent logic. "New"? How so? Improved in what way? Binswanger only offers a few unhelpful obscurities by way of explanation. Objectivist Lindsay Perigo goes even further. When discussing a perfectly valid syllogism, he simply rejects it wholesale: "'Standard logic' this may be; Objectivism, I submit, it ain't." Rarely do we get such clear-cut statements of how Objectivism's arguments are basically incompatible with the logical standards Rand claimed to uphold.

Usually Objectivists conceal their rejection of standard logic more evasively. For example, when trying to claim that Rand "derived" "ought" from "is" - they either suddenly equivocate and pretend that they didn't mean "derive" in a logical sense - in which case Rand has brilliantly solved a non-existent problem - or even more amusingly, when pressed simply refuse to produce the "derivation" in question. (You get the same equivocation when debating Rand's comment about "So much for the issue of the relation between 'is' and 'ought.' - "Oh, she didn't mean the logical relation" comes the reply!)

This double standard regarding classical logic fuels Objectivism's underlying cultist and irrationalist bent. In short: where logic clashes with Rand's pronouncements, it is logic that must be rejected. That, when examined, Objectivism's arguments can only survive by appealing to a special, conveniently obscure Objecto-logic in conjunction with a special Objecto-language tells us pretty clearly what's really going on here.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 41

Self-interest and the Welfare State. Although David Kelley’s brand of Objectivism tends to be several notches above what we find over at ARI, being saddled with some of Rand’s less defensible notions can lead even Kelley astray. Consider what Kelley wrote about altruism and welfare state in the 1998 article “State of the Culture”: "The primary political expression of sacrificial altruism today is the welfare state. And one of the primary foundations of the welfare state is the idea: 'We're all in this together. We should sacrifice to each other and help out those who are in need.'"

Is it really true that the “primary political expression of sacrificial altruism” is the welfare state? Do we have a welfare state primarily because people have bought into altruistic rationalizations? If people could convinced that self-interest is good, would they immediately abandon the welfare state and embrace laissez-faire?

No, of course they wouldn’t, because the primary motivation for the welfare state is self-interest. The welfare state provides: (1) social security to supplement one’s retirement income; (2) supplemental income to cover medical costs for the aged; (3) income for disabled persons; (4) unemployment insurance to help those who have lost their jobs. All these provisions appeal to the self-interest of middle-class individuals. Indeed, the American welfare state is largely orientated towards the needs of the middle class. It is, hence, a middle-class welfare state appealing to the self-interest of the broad electorate.

In the nineties, President Clinton passed the “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act,” which reformed that section of the welfare state that dealt, not with the Middle Class, but with the poor. This is a rather curious phenomenon. Americans have no trouble reforming welfare to the poor, even if it means cutting or placing restrictions on benefits. But no attempt has been made to cut or limit benefits to the middle class. On the contrary, welfare benefits to the middle class, if they are changed at all, are increased, as they were under President Bush’s Medicare drug benefit plan.

Now the only way to explain this is to assume that middle class voters are primarily motivated by self-interest, not by altruism. Rand’s claim, that from America’s start, she “was torn by the clash of her political system with the altruist morality,” is clearly a gross exaggeration. Generally speaking, in politics, altruistic motivations are dwarfed by self-interest motivations. So condemning altruism is nothing to the purpose. People, of course, like to pretend to be “altruistic”; and they sometimes are “altruistic” in the sense that they give to charity or support (relatively modest) government support for the poor. But hardly anyone follows Rand’s version of altruism to the letter. Self-sacrificial altruism is largely a rhetorical pose used by sentimentalists to make themselves feel good. It’s not an important determinant of the political structure of the nation. Inveighing against it is waste of time.

Precisely because people tend to be more interested in the welfare of themselves and their loved one’s than in the welfare of strangers, appeals to self-interest tend to be more persuasive than appeals to altruistic sentiments. (Best of all are arguments that appeal to both self-interest with altruism, since people tend to like nothing more than to think that by pursuing their own interest, they are helping others.) If the welfare state really was, as David Kelley argued, the “primary political expression of sacrificial altruism,” one could make persuasive arguments against it. But since, in reality, the welfare state is primarily an expression of self-interest, arguing against it on the basis of self-interest is counter-productive. Nor is making the distinction between “rational” self-interest and other varieties going to be of much help, since it is not clear what “rational” means in this context. Why is desiring to live under a safety net any less “rational” than being prey to misfortune?

Once we have unmasked the hollowness of Rand’s attempt to base laissez-faire on “self-interest,” we can appreciate how ineffective her arguments are for capitalism. Rand’s mistake was to take the bad arguments for socialism (i.e., arguments that appeal to altruistic sentiments) far too seriously. Hardly any one is convinced by such arguments nowadays. So trying to refute them in the heavy-handed, Randian manner serves no purpose at all.

Ayn Rand's Amazing Achievements, Pt 137

One of the most obvious signs of cultism in Objectivism is the desire for Objectivists to believe Ayn Rand was somehow a sui generis, all-purpose genius with a list of Amazing Achievements on a par with, as one commenter here has noted, Paul Bunyan creating the Grand Canyon by merely dragging his axe behind him. It is simply not acceptable to the cultist that she was a merely important historical figure, or a popular novelist, or a particularly clever and charismatic woman. This is so inadequate as to be insulting. No, they really want to believe that she is the greatest thinker since Aristotle, and that she solved all the major philosophical, economic, aesthetic, and political problems of the past two thousand years, as well plus a host more that no-one even knew about, all without the help of any other thinker since the Big A himself.

Of course anyone who's not a True Believer this is L. Ron Hubbard territory. We've already noted a recent example of this bizarre overestimation of Rand here. More recently, we spotted another example here, in a review at the Fun With Gravity blog of the New Criterion piece we linked to ourselves. The author, one mtnrunner2, seemed to think the following:

One would be challenged to find the historical sources for the following selected ideas that Rand originated:

- The sanction of the victim, i.e. the idea that only the moral permission of oppressed producers makes their exploitation possible
- The observation that Kant regarded the mind as ineffective precisely because it has an identifiable nature, which is in fact the source of the mind's efficacy for the living organism
- The derivation of the concept of moral value from the nature and requirements of life
- The idea that concept formation involves the retention of similarities and the dropping of specific measurements
- The idea of art as a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's "metaphysical value judgments"
- Her presentation of the axiomatic concepts underlying philosophy
- The insight that focusing the mind, not choosing, is the essence of free will
- The definition of "value" as that which one actually acts to gain and/or keep (not merely what one claims to value)

Um...actually its not very "challenging" at all to debunk this. I did so in comments, which I now reproduce here.

The problem is that Rand's ideas are both good and original in the sense of the old joke: those that are good are not original and those that are original are not good. With that in mind, let's take up your challenge, point by point:

1)The sanction of the victim, i.e. the idea that only the moral permission of oppressed producers makes their exploitation possible

One of the recurring problems with philosophy in general, and Objectivism in particular, is verbalism: a fondness for high-sounding gobbledygook that appears impressive, but is actually either empty, or merely masks a commonplace. So let's unpack what you're trying to say here, which seems to be simply that people who produce things, and are oppressed, shouldn't put up with it. Now, there are any number of people who have said this sort of thing, from Spartacus to Karl Marx. How you can think this is some sort of historically unique insight on Rand's part is quite remarkable. So this is hardly original. Rand does add a twist, however, in that in her novels the "oppressed" are businessmen, architects, and inventors. Is this twist any good? Are they seriously"oppressed"? Well, speaking as a businessman myself, While I sometimes feel oppressed by many things, including the government. But even in that case, in a democratic society I can lobby politicians, vote, and change things. Further, most businessmen I know enjoy a as much if not more freedom than government officials or the workers they employ. Thus considering myself very much more "oppressed" than others seems to be either a rhetorical fantasy or a species of self pity, neither of which seems much of an argument. So, Not Original, and Not particularly Good.

2) The observation that Kant regarded the mind as ineffective precisely because it has an identifiable nature, which is in fact the source of the mind's efficacy for the living organism

This is a bad piece of gobbledygook. I will attempt to translate: Kant didn't believe man's brain worked, hence he was an irrationalist. Now this is potentially a wide debate, as Kant is a controversial figure, so I'll just note that this view, even if it is Good, which is doubtful, it is certainly Not Original to Rand.

3) The derivation of the concept of moral value from the nature and requirements of life

Actually, Rand produced no such "derivation" - if you mean logically, that is, and of course this is the only "derivation" that matters. If you think she did, please produce it, with formally labelled premises and conclusion. Or, produce your own version of what you think she was "deriving". I don't think you will succeed. So the issue here is not the quality or originality of Rand's insight, but simply its non-existence.

4)The idea that concept formation involves the retention of similarities and the dropping of specific measurements

Well, let's break this down. "Concept formation" is aimed at solving the so-called problem of universals, which in itself can be summarised in a non-gobbledygook way as the problem of why different things are similar. As such we immediately see why "the retention of similarities" is of no help whatsoever in this - it is about as good as saying things are similar because they have similarities. As for measurement omission, this is for once is Original. Here Merlin Jetton explains why it is Not Good.

5) The idea of art as a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's "metaphysical value judgments"

Again, let's strip away the pretentious verbiage and see what this theory actually amounts to. "Selective recreation of reality" seems to simply mean an artist chooses a subject. Not exactly an amazing insight. But why does he choose it? Because of his "metaphysical value judgements", apparently. Once again, this seems to be padded with verbiage like "metaphysical" in an effort to make it sound more intellectual. We might just as well say "value judgements" or even "values". So we then see Rand's theory as: an artist chooses a subject according to his values. So a gloomy artist will choose gloomy subjects, and recreate them in a gloomy way, a happy artist will choose happy subjects and recreate them in a happy way, etc etc. Childish as it sounds, that's all this amazing theory predicts. Not exactly Original, certainly Not Good.

6) Her presentation of the axiomatic concepts underlying philosophy

It is true that Rand's axiomatic concepts are original. What is lacking is arguments as to why they are good. They are in fact so vague that they can fit just about anything you like. For example, Bertrand Russell presented "Existence exists" to one of the British Idealists - I think F H Bradley - and he had no difficulty accepting it. So: Not Good, at least as a refutation of what Objectivism opposes.

7) The insight that focusing the mind, not choosing, is the essence of free will

Funnily enough, one has to choose to focus the mind, creating something of a problem for this "insight." Not Good.

8) The definition of "value" as that which one actually acts to gain and/or keep (not merely what one claims to value)

Let's see. I pull out Von Mises' "Human Action" and what do I find?: "It is customary to say that acting man has a scale of wants or values in his mind when he arranges his actions. On the basis of such a scale he satisfies what is of higher value...and leaves unsatisfied what is of lower value..."(p94) So not only can we find it in Mises for starters, please note the phrase "It is customary...". In other words, it's merely a commonplace observation. So, Not Original in the least.

So in summary, it is quite easy to answer your challenge. I know that wild claims regarding Rand's brilliance and originality are widely promulgated by her followers, such as the Institute that bears her name. But what is remarkable to a non-Objectivist such as myself is how uncritically you've accepted them. Hopefully my passing comments will give you some pause for thought.

And how did mtnrunner2 react to someone actually taking up his awesome "challenge" ? He simply asked me not to post there again.

Hat tip: Neil Parille

Ayn Rand: Engineer of Souls

Over at The New Criterion, Anthony Daniels fingers Rand as the "Chernyshevsky of individualism." His thoughtful critique touches on a number of telling points:

Rand’s hero-worship is also Nietzschean in inspiration. It is deeply unpleasant. She entirely lacks the literary ability to convey anything admirable, or even minimally attractive, about her heroes, who are the kind of people one would not cross the road to meet, though one might well cross it to avoid them. They partake fully of her humorless monomania and have all the human warmth of a praying mantis. We are told that they are geniuses, but their genius seems mainly to consist of an unswerving adherence to their own ideas.

Howard Roark is the architect-hero of The Fountainhead, but there is abundant evidence in the book that he is not a very good architect: his ideas are totally derivative and, furthermore, derivative of ideas that are themselves not merely worthless, but monstrous. Like his creator, he claims an originality that he does not have. Here he describes how a house may have what he calls “integrity”:

Every piece of it is there because the house needs it—and for no other reason. The relation of masses was determined by the distribution of space within. The ornament was determined by the method of construction, an emphasis of the principle that makes it stand.

This is pure, unadulterated Le Corbusier. Indeed, it could have been written by him. (Roark also praises Le Corbusier’s favourite thing in all the world, reinforced concrete.) We all know what Le Corbusier led to; the very idea that a house “needs” things while the desires of human beings can be disregarded is one that would occur only to someone with a reptilian mind.

It is not altogether surprising that Roark lacks taste; Rand herself did, too. She called Bach and Mozart “pre-musical,” preferring Tchaikovsky and even Lehár. She thought that Victor Hugo was the greatest novelist who ever lived. She ridiculed Rembrandt’s “visual distortions.” These judgments show her to have been seriously deficient in sensibility and discrimination across a wide range of important human activities: in fact, I cannot think of any field in which she showed proper aesthetic or intellectual judgment.

Hat tip to Anon in comments.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 40

Altruism’s influence on politics. In Objectivism, “altruism” is serves as the primary ideological scapegoat for the ills of American political and economic policy. "From her start, America was torn by the clash of her political system with the altruist morality,” Rand insisted. “Capitalism and altruism are incompatible.”

This viewpoint would seem to go against the more commonly held view (at least among political realists) that “altruism” does not figure prominently in either the motivations of politicians or in the voting public. Politicians and voters give lip service to altruism, but their primary motivation is usually some form of self-interest.

This view was well expressed by Pareto in the following observation:

A politician is inspired to champion the theory of "solidarity" [a 19th century variant of altruism] by an ambition to obtain money, power, distinctions. Analysis of that theory would reveal but scant trace of his motives, which are, after all, the motives of virtually all politicians, whether they preach white or black. [Politicians make use of principles] that are effective in influencing others. If the politician were to say, "Believe in solidarity because if you do it means money for me," they would get many laughs and few votes. He therefore has to take his stand on principles that are acceptable to his prospective constituents…. [Mind and Society, §854]

In other words, politicians say what they think their listeners want to hear. So they speak in vague generalities that are calculated to appeal to common sentiments. They talk of “change,” of “service” to one’s country, of need for “accountability.” Sometimes they are even, on a conscious level, sincere. They may believe in the vague ideologies that these expressions represent superficially—that is, they may have a sentimental connection to the rhetoric in which these ideologies are expressed. But their behavior is primarily motivated by concerns of self-interest (particularly status concerns). After all, politics is a rough, competitive sport; if the politician doesn’t look after his interests, he will lose his position to a less scrupulous rival. Political survival, in most (though not all) instances, easily trumps any “altruistic” principles that the politician may harbor.

What about the supporters of the politician? If, in order to get elected, the politician must appeal to the altruistic sentiments of the electorate, doesn’t this suggest that altruism still plays a major role in the political farce? Again, we must be careful not to be taken in by superficial appearances. As I will explain in more detail in the next post, the primary motivation for the electoral class in a democracy usually revolves around self-interest. Individuals may wax eloquent about altruism and service to strangers all they like; but at the end of the day, their own needs, along with the needs of their loved ones, are going to occupy most of their attention. Admiration of “altruism” is, in most people, a kind of literary indulgence. One admires it in others and occasionally puts it in practice in the form of a bit of charity toward others; but the sort of "self-sacrificial," live-entirely-for-others" behavior denounced by Rand and her disciples is an exceptional occurrence. Rand is denouncing what is almost a phantom.

The Objectivist scapegoating of altruism is connected to another strange doctrine: what could be called the “transperancy of motives” principle:

[The motives that drive history] are not hidden; they scream out at you [writes Peikoff]. People do not disguise their actions, not in essence and not on a historical scale; rather, in a real sense, people have integrity: nations practice what they preach. In this sense, I do not believe that hypocrisy is a factor in history. [“Philosophy and Psychology in History”]

Peikoff, however, in his contributions to this subject, is guilty of confirmation bias. He focuses solely on those instances in which politicians appeal to altruistic sentiments, while ignoring the very many appeals politicians make to self-interest. This is so obvious that one wonders how it is that Objectivists don’t notice it. Politicians are constantly promising things: more jobs, lower inflation, lower taxes, less corruption in government, assistance for those in need, bailouts for wealthy investors, subsidies for the medical care of the elderly, etc. etc. Appeals to altruism are merely added to these appeals to self-interest in order to make the whole business seem less sordid and mercenary. It is odd that Objectivists seem incapable of understanding this.

Why Ayn Rand?

In an excellent essay, Michael Huemer, one of the most rigorous critics of the Objectivist ethics, offers some alternative answers for the ongoing interest in Rand, and suggests why her purported "science" of ethics is likely to have perverse consequences:

"There are two major reasons why the best hope for political freedom is not to connect it ideologically with Rand’s ethical and metaethical theories. The first is that those theories are utterly unconvincing to almost everyone—even less convincing than libertarianism. Connecting the two together serves only to discredit the cause of freedom and individual rights. It plays into the hands of those who say that the only opposition to socialism derives from greed and selfishness."

Hat tip: Neil Parille

Objectivism & Politics, Part 39

Moral argument for capitalism. In The Mind and Society, Pareto makes the following observation:


Theories of “natural law” and the “law of nations” are another excellent example of discussions destitute of all exactness. Many thinkers have more or less vaguely expressed their sentiments under those terms, and have then exerted themselves to link their sentiments with practical ends that they desired to attain. As usual, they have derived great advantage in such efforts from using indefinite words that correspond not to things, but only to sentiments… “Natural law” is simply that law of which the person using the phrase approves; but the cards cannot be so ingenuously laid on the table in any such terms; it is wiser to put the thing a little less bluntly, supplement it by more or less argument. [§401]

What Pareto says about “natural law” applies, by analogy, to Rand’s “moral argument for capitalism,” which is merely a series of loose assertions expressing Rand’s political preferences. It proves nothing beyond Rand’s emotional attachment to certain political convictions. It is rationalization through and through, with the vagueness of lofty abstractions used to carry forth what fact and logic could never have supplied.

Let us take a look at Rand’s argument:

The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual: everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort. Production is the application of reason to the problem of survival . . . .

Since knowledge, thinking, and rational action are properties of the individual, since the choice to exercise his rational faculty or not depends on the individual, man’s survival requires that those who think be free of the interference of those who don’t. Since men are neither omniscient nor infallible, they must be free to agree or disagree, to cooperate or to pursue their own independent course, each according to his own rational judgment. Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man’s mind.

Rand begins with the usual vague truisms: human life, she insists rather sententiously, "depends" on the mind. Very well. She belabors the obvious, but that's okay. It's preferable to what she does next, when she declares, without clarifying what on earth she is talking about, that “production is the application of reason to the problem of survival.” Uncritical people fall for this kind of rhetoric; they fail to notice the egregious vagueness of the term reason. What, after all, is this “reason” that Rand and her disciples pontificate about ad nauseum? How does one distinguish between an individual allegedly using Rand’s “reason” and an individual using some other cognitive method, such as intuition or the scientific method? Objectivists still haven’t gotten around to providing a detailed, empirically testable description of this obscure faculty. Instead, the most they provide is vague descriptions in which reason is defined in terms of other indistinct words, such as their claim that reason “integrates man’s perceptions by means of forming abstractions or conceptions” and “the method ... reason employs ... is logic.” None of these descriptions tell us how reason integrates perceptions, or what Rand means by “logic”; nor do they allow us how to empirically test Rand’s assertions about “reason.” They are little more than a series of arbitrary claims, their dubiety masked by their inexactness.

Yet the difficulties embedded in Rand’s vague concept of reason pale in comparison to the much worse difficulties that confront us when we examine the next step in her argument, where she argues that “freedom is the fundamental requirement of man’s mind.” Here, again, we run into the problem of vagueness. What does Rand mean by the term “freedom”? Her disciples would probably say: “She means laissez-faire capitalism.” Very well. Why didn’t she just say so right from the start? The answer, again, is fairly simple: she used the more generic (and vague) term freedom because if she claimed that laissez-faire is “a fundamental requirement of man’s mind,” her argument would clearly go against obvious facts known by nearly everyone. As Rand and her followers are the first to admit, pure “laissez-faire” capitalism has never existed; yet this has not prevented all kinds of amazing scientific and technological advances, all of which can be vaguely attributed to the human mind (though not necessarily to “reason,” as we shall see). So it turns out that laissez-faire is not a “fundamental” requirement of man’s mind”: any sort of free enterprise, even one as “heavily” regulated as the American version, will do.

Rand’s argument has yet another glaring weakness. If we identify Rand’s “reason” with some type of formalized thinking (and after all, Rand invites us to make such identification with her claim that “logic” is the “method employed by reason”), then we have to reject Rand’s claim that “production is the application of reason to the problem of survival.” In point of fact, processes of production require a great deal more cognitive skills than can be encompassed by merely formalized thinking. Indeed, it is debatable whether formalized thinking plays much of a role in in most of the decisions involved in directing the processes of production—i.e., decisions involved in allocation of capital, where entrepreneurship comes into play. Business decisions require facing uncertainties that cannot be resolved by formal “reason.” As economist Frank Knight pointed out in Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit: “The powers and attributes of [economic] leadership form the most mysterious as well as the most vital endowment which fits the human species for civilized or organized life, transcending even that power of perceiving and associating qualities and relations which is the true nature of what we call reasoning.” The uncertainties and complexities facing the entrepreneur are so daunting that logic and reason break down: the entrepreneur must rely on his “intuition.” Market processes are therefore not merely “an application of reason to the problem of survival”; they also rely heavily on “intuition” and “trial and error.” As Knight explained:



...when we try to decide what to expect in a certain situation, and how to behave ourselves accordingly, we are likely to do a lot of irrelevant mental rambling, and the first thing we know we find that we have made up our minds, that our course of action is settled. There seems to be very little meaning in what has gone on in our minds, and certainly little kinship with the formal processes of logic which the scientist uses in an investigation. We contrast the two processes by recognizing that the former is not reasoned knowledge, but "judgment," "common sense," or "intuition." There is doubtless some analysis of a crude type involved, but in the main it seems that we "infer" largely from our experience of the past as a whole, somewhat in the same way that we deal with intrinsically simple (unanalyzable) problems like estimating distances, weights, or other physical magnitudes, when measuring instruments are not at hand.

To sum up: Rand’s “moral” argument for capitalism, to the extent that we can decipher any kind of distinct empirical content in at all, oversteps obvious facts. Rand in her argument appears to be guilty of conflating “freedom” with laissez-faire capitalism; in any case, her implication that survival requires freedom from “interference” (i.e., laissez-faire) is obviously contradicted by facts known to everyone (i.e, by the fact that, despite the absence of laissez-faire, we’re still alive). Nor is Rand’s assertions about “reason” empirically sound; for, in practical matters, men rely far more on “intuition”; nor is it clear, given the uncertainties and complexities faced in ordinary business, that it could be otherwise, since formalized systems of thought can’t handle great complexity and uncertainty.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 38

Natural disasters and state assistance. Does the government have a role in helping people whose homes have been destroyed or severly damaged in a natural disaster? I was reminded of this issue by a 6.5 earthquake that hit this last weekend just twenty miles from where I live, knocking over bookshelves and CD racks. As natural disasters go, this one was very minor—hardly even worth troubling about. But it could easily have been much worse. Forty miles to the south three massive plates come together, creating tensions that could spill over into moster quakes. Twenty years ago the area generated a 7.0 quake; yet it is fully capable of generating quakes comparable to the Anchorage and Indian Ocean quakes.

The destructive capacity of nature is immense. Whether it's earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, floods, these events can devestate entire communities. Yet oddly, Rand and her disciples have very little to say about these "Black Swan" events (to borrow Nassim Taleb's terminology). One could imagine Rand criticizing the mere mention of them as evincing a "malevolent" sense of life. After all, they don't happen all that often: so why dwell on them?


Although they are not an everyday occurence (at least in any given locality), nonetheless they do happen; and most people have a fairly strong conviction that the government has a role in assisting the victims of catastrophic natural disasters. Claiming the state has no role is a hard sell. Why should the state do nothing? It is precisely in a catastrophic disaster that collective action governed by strong leadership becomes advantageous. To oppose such action appears to be mere obstinacy, with neither wisdom nor good sense in support of it.

It is here that Rand's principle-centric approach gets her into trouble. Principles, for Rand, are invioble "absolutes." Only an individual suffering from an "anti-conceptual mentality" would approve of violating a principle. Yet this view of things presupposes an orderly, linear, "logical" universe; it assumes that the non-linear, the disorderly, the non-logical either doesn't exist or is "non-essential." Such assumptions, however, go against facts that confront us in everyday life and in history. As Nassim Taleb reminds us, "the world is more nonlinear than we think, [or] than scientists [and Rand] would like to think.... Linear relationships are truly the exception; we only focus on them in classrooms and textbooks because they are easier to understand." Principles that work fine under ordinary circumstances often break down under exceptional circumstances. Hence wisdom counsels flexibility. When confronted by a rare, extremely impactful event, the individual may need to improvise. Obstinacy on behalf of one's principles, far from being a mark of intelligence and "rationality," merely demonstrates an inability to adapt to new circumstances.

What Objectivists Believe

Over at Amazon in comments on Jennifer Burns' bio we find this useful summation of how realistically Objectivists view Rand's achievements:

"[Ayn Rand was] A woman who was able to define new paradigms in metaphysics (the man-made vs. the metaphysical, the ontological status of the laws of logic, the derivation of causality from the law of identity), in epistemology (measurement omission as the connection between similarity in objects perceived and concepts formed from them, perception as being "the given" in a form, the identification of the "fundamental" and the "essential", the way in which definitions can be true or false, the complete undermining of the stultifying idea of the analytic-sythetic dichotomy. the inclusion of value concepts in the demonstration of measurement-omission, the standard of objectivity), in ethical theory (the meta-ethical connection between life and value that once-and-for-all answers the question what end-in-itself is served by values, the difference between standard and purpose, the fact that all elements of value theory apply to the individual living being, the refutation of deontological value theory and hedonism [two forms of subjectivism], the development from this of peaceful principles of social relations, the development from this of a value-grounded view of individual rights), in political philosophy (the grounding of freedom as a basic human need, the foundation of Capitalism on value theory, the delineation of the role of government, the rejection of forcible taxation and a moral method for financing government, racism as a particular kind of evil, the identification of self-interest as applying to the foreign policy of the government of a free society), in esthetics (the definition of sense of life, its relation to art and philosophy and psychology, the criteria for exemplars of the different branches of art, the definition of art itself)...all flow from a mind that was so original, one can honestly say she looked at reality first-hand and asked what was there...and clearly understood the methods and arguments and conclusions of all other Western philosophies, so as to not repeat their mistaken by-paths. Rand was not a second-hander, seeking a way to fit into niches of difference so that her philosophy would be unique among the others. That is a task that is utterly impossible, if one starts that way. She started by looking fresh and new, with a well-developed rationality, at reality itself, so that hers accurately describes what really is."

The writer apparently holds a Masters of Philosophy. A later commenter sees this somewhat otherwise:

"...your interminable encomium to her philosophical breakthroughs resembles the tall tales attributed to a mythological hero or saint, rather than a description of any bona fide towering intellect (Goethe, Newton, Darwin, Einstein)The main difference between saying that Paul Bunyan's giant axe carved the Grand Canyon, and saying that Ayn Rand invented a revolutionary epistemology, or bridged the "is-ought gap", or successfully grounded capitalism in ethics, is that at least the Grand Canyon is really there."

Objectivism & Politics, Part 37

Politics of Human Nature 21: Conclusion. What can be gathered from this long series of posts on politics and human nature? Mainly, three major points: (1) Human nature is heterogeneous, that is to say, the innate propensities influencing political behavior vary from individual to individual; (2) An individual's vocation often accentuates these propensities, so that, for example, an individual with innate talents for using force will become even better at using force if he joins the military, an individual with an innate talent for manipulation will become even better at manipulation if he becomes a politician, etc. etc.; (3) These innate differences and the intensification that comes about through the division of labor in society accentuates a tendency towards faction.


Why is faction important? Because the presence of faction in political society will effectively prevent Objectivist political ideals from ever being implemented under a representative system of government. What I have sought to show in the "Politics of Human Nature" series of posts is how various psychological, vocational, and social types are biased against laissez-faire, so that they could never be counted on to support such a policy. They may be biased by reason of innate personal inclination, by reason of vocational interests and sentiments, or by reason of social interests and proclivities. This rooted bias against laissez-faire is widespread, intractable, and incurable. The overwhelming majority in both the ruling elite and the masses don't want laissez-faire—they have no use for it. Nor does there appear any convincing evidence that this can change without a prior change in human nature. Having a government that interferes in economic affairs, sometimes less so, sometimes more so, is merely part of the human condition.

Objectivism seeks to attain its political goals through persuasion. Let's see how this is likely to work in practice. In order to for Rand's political ideals to be implemented as part of public policy, it is not enough that the 50%+1 of the nation support laissez-faire. To have any chance of having "real" or "legitimate" laissez-faire, Rand's so-called "separation of the state and economics" would have to be written into the Constitution, via amendments. (Even this would not be enough, but we will ignore what else would be needed for the time being.) Now getting a Constitutional amendment passed is very difficult. It would require very large majorities--at least as high as 80%. There will be powerful, entrenched interests (i.e., all those who have a stake in the present "mixed-economy" system) that will fight any movement toward laissez-faire with every means at their considerable disposal. This being so, where are you going to get your 80%? Which psychological type, which social type, which vocational type would likely support laissez-faire in large numbers? We know which types will oppose it in large numbers: bureaucrats, intellectuals, welfare recipients, the homeless, the uncreative, the unfortunate, the poor, the incompetent, etc. This group is probably large enough by itself to prevent the political implementation of laissez-faire. But when we look at other types, at other factions in society, the prospect becomes even bleaker. Will military personnel likely support laissez-faire? Not likely. There might be a few exceptions, but these are people who get paychecks from the government and live by force. Why would Objectivism’s variant of laissez-faire, with its moralistic disapproval of the initiation of force (including the force required for the taxation necessary to support a military), ever appeal to the typical militaristic mind-set? What about religious people? Well, Rand regarded such people as enemies to her political ideals (because religion is "irrational"); even if Rand were wrong about why religion people are enemies of her political ideals (the fact that someone is irrational about religion doesn’t necessitate that they will be irrational in other spheres of life), she is probably correct about the final result—i.e., the majority of religious people will likely oppose laissez-faire. What about businessmen--entrepreneurs and capitalists? Here is one class in which Objectivists could hope to find allies. But even among businessmen, there will be significant opposition (for reasons explicated in an earlier post). In short, by the time one goes through all of society, one would be lucky to find 10% of the population amenable to persuasion on the issue of laissez-faire. The biases against it run deep, into the very core of human nature and the institutional incentives embedded in society.

Back in the early sixties, Rand wrote to a fan: "We will only have to wait decades [for Objectivism to win] " [AR Letters, 596] Those words were penned almost 50 years ago. What has happened in the interval? Has Objectivism won? Not even close. Support for laissez-faire remains a fringe phenomenon. While there are many supporters of market Capitalism, few believe in the extreme version of Capitalism preached by Rand. They recognize it as being political unfeasible, legally incoherent, and economically undesirable. To desire it and think it the "ideal" system is to lapse into utopianism.

Objectivism Vs Empirical Reality

If Objectivism is correct, shouldn't the lines on this graph go in the opposite direction?
Hat tip: Angry Bear

Objectivism versus Western Civilization

For nearly every critic of Objectivism there is usually one or two things in Rand’s philosophy that he finds particularly objectionable. For some, it is Rand’s attack against altruism; for others it is her uncompromising defense of laissez-faire; for still others it may be Rand’s essentialism and the empirical irresponsibility that follows in its train. For my stead, what I find most objectionable is the view, held by at least one prominent Objectivist, that some ideas are not merely wrong and unsound, but, even worse, are dangerous: they represent a threat to one’s “psycho-epistemology.” Harry Binswanger expresses this position quite well in his recent post about Jennifer Burns’ Goddess of the Market:

I advise you to stay away from [Burns' book], for the reason I gave in an earlier post: it is almost impossible to keep all the false and slanted "facts" out of your subconscious "file folders." Not only would reading it, quite unjustly, tend to diminish your admiration for Ayn Rand, you are very likely, years later, to treat as fact that which is false or arbitrary.

This view is entirely consistent with the Rand’s view of human nature as exemplified in the Objectivist “Philosophy of History.” If the view contradicts the Objectivist take on volition and rationality, well, that is a contradiction that exists in the philosophy itself. Between Rand’s extreme view of free will (human beings as self-creators) and her view of history (where most human beings are seen as pawns in a philosophical, history-determining “duel” between Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Rand) there exists in obvious tension, little appreciated by the Objectivist brethren. Human beings are seen as the mere products or manifestations of their “premises.” Objectivism tacitly assumes that human beings tend to be influenced by the premises they are exposed to. Hence Binswanger’s view that it is “almost impossible to keep all the false and slanted ‘facts’ out of your subconscious ‘file folders.’” This “almost” impossibility necessitates avoiding any works that contain “false” or “slanted” facts. In other words, the Objectivist is well advised to stay clear of works that are deemed “hostile” to Objectivism.

What evidence Binswanger and other Objectivists have for believing this extraordinary doctrine? The answer to this question is simple: Binswanger provides no evidence.

There is a very good reason for this: no such evidence exists. Human beings are not the products of their premises; nor is it, as Binswanger suggests, “almost impossible” for human beings to avoid being influenced by the premises (or “false facts”) they are exposed to. The only danger that Objectivists who read Burns’ book face is the possibility that the evidence Burns presents may change their minds. But that is something different than having one’s subconscious file folders contaminated.

There is, however, a more sinister aspect to this belief that bad premises and "false" and "slanted" facts can somehow seep into one’s subconscious when one is not looking and corrupt one’s psycho-epistemology. It serves as a convenient rationalization for avoiding any book or idea or fact that challenges one’s beliefs. Even worse, it prevents Objectivists from learning from that vast array of knowledge and wisdom stored in the works of thinkers, writers, intellectuals, scientists, philosophers whom Objectivism condemns or ignores. Since this group contains most of the major thinkers making up the literary, scientific, and philosophic canon of Western Civilization, Binswanger’s view, at least by implication, encourages his readers to shut their minds to the lion’s share of what passes for Western Culture. And indeed, we get further confirmation that this is what Binswanger has in mind when we read the various assessments that he and other Objectivists (including Rand herself) have made of important figures in Western Culture. With a few exceptions (e.g., Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, the Founding Fathers), this assessment is overwhelmingly negative. Objectivists are on record as despising Hume, Kant, Burke, Schopenhauer, J. S. Mill Tolstoy, Nietzsche, William James, Thomas Mann, Frank Knight, and Friedrich Hayek; and that list undoubtedly would be much longer if Objectivists were better read.

Now if, as Matthew Arnold once suggested, the aim of culture is “to know ourselves and the world,” then one of the necessary means of attaining that knowledge is (again to quote Arnold) “to know the best which has been thought and said in the world.” Objectivists (at least by implication) believe that knowing Rand is equivalent to knowing the best that has been thought and said. But how can they know this to be true if they have neither read nor understood the great thinkers of Western Civilization? If, following the implications embedded in Binswanger’s advice, they avoid all those thinkers who might corrupt their subconsious file folders, then they clearly are in no position to judge. They are merely taking the Objectivist view of Western Culture on faith.

No one thinker could possibly have all (or even most) of the answers. To think such a thing is to betray a naivete about the world that makes most children seem masters of sapience in comparison. Intimate familiarity with “the best that has been thought and said” is therefore necessary for the development of a cultured intelligence. Anyone who therefore discourages, either explicitly or implicitly, such familiarity, is an enemy of both culture and intelligence.

Binswanger’s conviction that it’s “almost impossible” to keep “false” facts (and, presumably, “corrupt” premises) out of one’s subconscious is, to the extent that it is acted upon, a pernicious notion. How is one to know whether an alleged fact is “false” or a given premise is corrupt unless one has confronted, grappled with it, and tested it? “He that wrestles with us,” wrote Burke, “sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.” Burke’s view is foreign to Objectivism, which believes instead that he who wrestles with us imperils our psycho-epistemology by exposing our subconscious to "false facts" and corrupt or "evil" premises!

Objectivism & Politics, Part 36

Politics of Human Nature 20: Grievance Politics. In any advanced society there will likely be a number of individuals whose political beliefs are strongly influenced by grievances, either real or imagined, against various groups or institutions. We see this on the left with identity politics and anti-capitalist hysteria and on the right among rabble-rousing conspiracy theorists and those who fear expanding government. Grievance politics is an important factor in the socio-political equation; and grievances against “capitalism,” “globalism,” “markets” serve as an important stumbling block to the political ideals of Objectivism. And even more to the point, grievances against the free market seem to be part and parcel of capitalism itself. As Schumpeter explained in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy:

There are the daily troubles and expectations of trouble everyone has to struggle with in any social system — the frictions and disappointments, the greater and smaller unpleasant events that hurt, annoy, and thwart. I suppose that every one of us is more or less in the habit of attributing them wholly to that part of reality which lies without his skin, and emotional attachment to the social order — i.e., the very thing capitalism is constitutionally unable to produce — is necessary in order to overcome the hostile impulse by which we react to them.… Secular improvement that is taken for granted and coupled with individual insecurity that is acutely resented is of course the best recipe for breeding social unrest.

We see these grievances in full regalia in the recent global-warming orgies at Copenhagen Summit. Although ostensibly held to save the world from imminent environmental catastrophe, the most prominent and real motive of the global-warming hysteria is hatred and grievance against capitalism. We saw that quite clearly during an anti-capitalist tirade by the Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. When Chavez said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening. When he concluded by saying “socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell….let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us,” he received a standing ovation. Many global warming advocates are merely disappointed socialists nursing grievances against capitalism and making use of environmentalism as a pretext for sabotaging the free market. With the recent exposure of emails from leading climate “scientists” at East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, the fraudulent nature of the Global Warming movement is beyond a reasonable doubt. Yet the exposure of the fraud has exercised no effect on the vast majority of global warming hysterics—which proves the power of their real motivations, which stem, at least in part, from grievances against capitalism and the West.

So we have this powerful force fueled by grievances against capitalism. What about grievances operating in the opposite direction? Could they be used by Objectivists and other advocates of “laissez-faire” to counter-balance the grievances on the other side?

While such “pro-market” (actually anti-government) grievances obviously exist, whether they can be used to cancel out the anti-capitalist grievances is unlikely. There are two forces that operate against them. First, it should be noted that if these grievances actually managed to move the country away from big government and toward freer markets, this very effect would tend to undermine itself over time. As grievances against big government push society closer to the ideal of laissez-faire, this very movement toward freer markets and less government will at the same time lessen the grievance level against government interference in markets; for as the role of government is lessened in people’s life, government will become less of a target for grievances, since people tend to focus their grievances against those institutions that most directly affect their lives. As the government’s role shrinks in people's lives, the role of other institutions, such as corporations and unions, will increase, thus making them a riper target for grievance. So built into the institutional structure of society is a kind of mechanism which serves as a brake of any movement toward laissez-faire. As a country moves toward socialism, grievances against government increase until the movement is reversed. But the same thing happens as the market gains in strength.

In addition to this, there’s another type of grievance that has to be taken into account: the grievance that arises when a government service is abolished. Since Obama’s election and the dominance of the left-wing of the Democratic Party in Congress, there has been growing resentment against the expansion of government in America. This, in combination with the government's gross fiscal irresponsibility, could lead to a reduction in government when changes in the political climate work their way through the political system. Yet if any government services end up being curtailed, this itself would be a potential cause of widespread grievances. The American public may not like taxes or big government, but they are rather fond of government services like social security and medicare. Here, then, is another source of grievance which would act as a brake toward the Objectivist political ideals.

Socialistic and capitalistic movements in society tend to be cyclical, as the trend toward either tendency fuels opposition. Before Objectivism could achieve its social and political goals, it would have to attain ideological supremacy. But all the empirical evidence at our disposal strongly suggests that this would be impossible. Many human beings nurse grievances against dominant institutions. That is just the in the nature of things: nothing to be done for it.

A Convenient Untruth

Jennifer Burns’ taut, perfectly judged new Rand bio is good news for American intellectual history and bad news for the cult wing of Objectivism.

In June, 1968, as the seismic shocks from Ayn Rand’s break with Nathaniel Branden ripped apart the world he’d lived in since adolescence, Leonard Peikoff made his choice the only way he knew how: he wondered, incredulously, how anyone “could possibly believe the author of Atlas Shrugged had done anything fundamentally wrong.” More than 40 years later, this almost touching belief in his mentor as some kind of infallible guide to ultimate truth, with a work of fiction the only evidence he ever needed, is finally being confronted by reality.

Jennifer Burns’ new biography, Ayn Rand: Goddess of the Market is a genuine event: the first independent, scholarly biography of one of the 20th century’s most widely read novelists and thinkers, arriving right in the middle of her biggest revival in decades. Goddess has been acclaimed from the mainstream of Time magazine to the margins of Mises.org, and been plugged from the left of The Daily Show to the right of the Economist. But there’s one place where it literally doesn’t seem to exist: over at the organization Leonard Peikoff founded in 1985, three years after Rand’s death, the Ayn Rand Institute. Searching their website turns up only some fine-print references to it in relation to the Ayn Rand Archives; officially the ARI has not even mentioned it, let alone promoted it.

A Convenient Untruth

The reason for this is simple. The Ayn Rand Institute’s mission is not to further intellectual enquiry but instead to perpetuate the jejune cult of personality that surrounded the writer, and that Rand herself endorsed from its earliest beginnings. The Rand personality cult portrays her as the greatest human being who has ever lived, her novel Atlas Shrugged as the greatest human achievement in history, and the adoption of her philosophical system, Objectivism, as essential for mankind’s continued survival on earth. This cult of personality was in part driven by the charisma of Rand and her lover Nathaniel Branden, but also was a logical consequence of her philosophical system which made philosophy the master discipline controlling all intellectual, ethical, aesthetic and even sexual life. With philosophy as the ultimate discipline, and Objectivism as the ultimate philosophy, its inventor could only be, therefore, the ultimate philosopher – and with all the intellectual, ethical, aesthetic and even sexual qualities that that entails (Not for nothing did Joey Rothbard crack that one of Rand’s main philosophical tenets is that “she is the most sexually desirable person in the world”). While this personality cult had plenty of upside in terms of money, media coverage, and influence – at least for a while - the long term downside is that Rand, as the centre of the edifice*, must be flawless in order for it to hold. Thus a convenient untruth was required: a stylized, fantasized, even flat-out idolatrous version of Rand that not only her followers, but Rand herself believed in and encouraged. It is this convenient untruth which sustains the official Objectivist movement today.

Burns’ terrific, toughminded new book, whilst broadly sympathetic to Rand, nonetheless paints an often unflattering picture of the novelist-philosopher, summarizing her life as “a tragedy of sorts.” Faced with the inconvenient facts, delivered by an independent historian with no pre-existing agenda and whose evenhandedness is evident on every page, the Ayn Rand Institute and their fellow travelling True Believers' response has been to simply pretend it doesn’t exist: a state of denial Rand called a “blank out.”

Ayn Rand: Goddess of the Market is not the large-scale biography that Anne Heller’s new Ayn Rand and the World She Made (which I haven’t read yet) apparently aims at. However due to Burns’ masterful control and economical, highly readable style both Rand and the times she lived through leap from the page: Burns’ reach easily outstrips the book’s stated scope.

A Tragedy of Sorts

Goddess of the Market is gripping from the git-go, dropping the reader straight into the drama of post-Revolution Russia, with Red Guard soldiers pounding on the door to seize the Rosenbaum’s chemist shop as the young Alisa (Rand’s real name) watches, outraged. Burns whirls us from this formative misery of early Soviet Russia to the seedy glamour of early Hollywood in a handful of pages, and by the beginning of the second chapter Rand is already in her mid-30s and about to write “The Fountainhead”. Yet the story somehow doesn’t feel rushed, and telling historical and psychological moments are present and correct. From there, Burns deftly exposes the political, intellectual, and personal sinews that held the American laissez-faire movement of the first half of the 20th century together. This is really The Education of Ayn Rand; where the oddball immigrant, simmering with equal parts talent, ambition, and resentment, absorbs the basic political program she was to later do so much to promote. Much of it was a revival of the ideas that had dominated the late 19th century – such as Herbert Spencer - by a cast of equally misfit personalities such as Albert Jay Nock and Isabel Paterson, with Paterson in particular becoming an important mentor, tutor, and friend to Rand.

So far, Rand’s story seems full of promise – The Fountainhead is a surprise hit, and Ayn and her husband Frank O’Connor are suddenly wealthy and bona-fide celebrities. Yet as Goddess moves on the writing of Atlas Shrugged, and the formation of the Objectivist movement, we see Rand’s latent tendency to hubris come to full flood. She becomes surrounded by young, uncritical groupies, and drifts away from the more pragmatic political and social currents of the preceding years into what was to become her own peculiar brand of American Idolatry. Nemesis in various shades is just upriver. In a fashion entirely typical of such cults, Rand, as the leader, and an ambitious young groupie, the 25-years-younger Nathaniel Branden, enter into a concubine arrangement, with scheduled weekly sexual appointments. As both were already married, they insisted that both her husband Frank and his wife Barbara accede to this “rational” arrangement whilst also keep it secret from the rest of the movement. (Frank, handsome yet bland, already seemed to fulfill a concubine role to the domineering Rand. Burns poignantly records that at one point Rand makes him wear bells on his shoes around the house so she would know his whereabouts). Inevitably this conveniently untruthful relationship ends in tears when more than a decade later and at the height of their fame Branden confesses to the by-then 63 year old Rand that he’s taken up with a luscious young cookie named Patrecia. Rand, in a fit of woman-scorned fury, then dynamites their relationship and their whole, multi-million dollar EST-like Objectivism franchise with it.

From there, Goddess describes the light going out, spark by irreplaceable spark. The movement dwindles. Rand becomes frail and isolated, able to work only sporadically. Frank, who unsurprisingly seems to have been drinking heavily for many years, falls into dementia. And Leonard Peikoff, long considered the runt of the New Intellectual litter, becomes Rand’s “intellectual heir” through unquestioning loyalty and obedience rather than any distinctive philosophical contribution.

Burns spends little time on analyzing Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism itself, although it is clear she has an excellent grasp of the main points. This in itself is quite an achievement, for beneath a superficially clear prose style in fact Rand was a confused and contradictory thinker, who had a garbled misunderstanding of the important philosophical problems she claimed to have solved and depended on her own obscure, pseudo-intellectual jargon – not to mention her sheer chutzpah - to conceal her lack of comprehension from both her followers and herself. (In a deadly accurate bon mot, David Ramsay Steele described Objectivist doctrine as little more than “bluff, buttressed by abuse of all critics”). Happily, Burns also provides firm support for some of the main contentions of this blog’s eponymous book Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature; for example, that Objectivism was driven by Rand’s idealised romantic feelings of “man worship”, and that Rand’s absurdly rationalistic tabula rasa view of the human mind really does deny the existence of natural talents. She also clearly understands the unpleasant implications of Randian doctrines such as “social metaphysics” and the incitements to cultism her philosophy contains:

"The presence of Rand, a charismatic personality, was enough to tip Objectivism into quasi-religious territory, but Objectivism was also easy to abuse because of its very totalizing structure. There were elements deep within the philosophy that encouraged its dogmatic and coercive tendencies." [Goddess, Chapter 8, pg 237.]

These “totalizing” and “absolutising” elements are of course not unique to Objectivism; we find them to some degree in most belief systems. But in Objectivism they are writ particularly large, with both bizarre and genuinely tragic personal consequences.

Rand Via Kafka

There's no doubt Rand's life and times are one hell of a story, and its truthful telling is of major importance to American intellectual history. But of course the truth is anathema to the cult-wing of Objectivism. Following Rand as in all things, Peikoff’s official Objectivism has dutifully continued her practice of falsifying of her personal history to erase her influences and present herself as a millennial, sui generis genius. For example, Goddess gives us good cause to believe that Rand’s emphasis on the paramount importance reason is due to Isabel Paterson’s teachings, whereas Rand would have us believe the fundamentals of her philosophy were formed when she was two and a half years old. Burns’ research has also revealed a burgeoning scandal at the Ayn Rand Archives, where swathes of Rand’s unpublished writing and speeches have been stealthily rewritten to banish all uncertainties and contradictory thoughts, and keep the convenient untruth of Rand's immaculate conceptions alive.

Already the difference between the reaction of the wider literary and intellectual world and Objecti-World is telling. Where Burns’ book has been widely anticipated and gathered enthusiastic reviews, within Objecti-World (and particularly among the orthodox) the reaction has been muted at best. Not a whisper of the book’s existence can officially be heard from the Ayn Rand Institute, despite it being the first independent biography of their heroine. ARI true-believer Ari Armstrong, seemingly holding Goddess with tongs, got only as far as reviewing the introduction of Goddess before crossing himself with a few catechistic criticisms and averting his eyes. Blogger Diana Hsieh, caught between her loyalty to Official Objectivism and her academic credibility simply republished Armstrong’s review and disingenuously fluttered about ever finding time to fit Goddess into her busy reading schedule. Best of all, the Ayn Rand Institute’s Ed Cline, a T-1000 version Randroid, declared that he was in “total agreement” with Armstrong’s negative remarks, despite the slight problem that he had not even read the introduction that Armstrong had not made it past. Intellectual standards at the ARI clearly owe as much to Franz Kafka as Ayn Rand.

Indeed True Believer Objectivist writing has an institutionalized, Kafkaesque quality to it, particularly in response to non-Objectivist criticism. The template is worth examining. First, they begin with the pro forma objection that the critic is "biased" against Rand, and “doesn’t understand Objectivism”, despite the fact that it is far from clear who, if anyone, actually does understand Rand’s rambling and ramshackle construction. (For example, Leonard Peikoff himself once announced that any Objectivist who votes Republican “does not understand the philosophy of Objectivism”, instantly wrong-footing a legion of followers who’d spent years loyally forking out for ARI conferences and 26-hour tape lectures and the like only to find out they were not really part of the cognoscenti after all).

Second, True Believer Objectivists invoke what I’ve dubbed the Objectivist Double Standard. This means that when Rand makes a wild, evidence-free claim or uses the most malicious, unsympathetic interpretation possible of another thinker’s work - where she had even bothered to acquaint herself with it - this is ok because with her millennial genius she is in fact grasping the “essentials” of her opponents’ arguments. On the other hand, anyone who criticizes Rand must have read everything she ever wrote or said about anything, and allow her any concession and sympathetic interpretation demanded, no matter how obscure or unlikely.

The final True Believer tactic is to simply limn the piece in question for various Thought Crimes such as “determinism”, “pragmatism” or “subjectivism” - terms so conveniently vague that it’s possible to convict just about anyone. For example, The Objective Standard’s Robert Mayhew and Shaving Leviathan’s Jeff Perren lead the New Intellectual pack by at least making it all the way to the end of Goddess before issuing their ritual denunciations. Just how trivial Mayhew and Perren must get in order disparage Burns says it all. Mayhew rails against Goddess’ entirely ordinary suggestion that Rand’s background or the people she met influenced her intellectual development, claiming this means Burns is supposedly a "determinist". Meanwhile Perren's review consists of flailing efforts to reveal Burns' subjectivist and pragmatist "tinges." In a closely fought match, the prize for pompous inanity goes to Perren, who informs us that “people, not philosophies, have tendencies”, regardless of the fact that dogs tend to chase thrown sticks, Harley Davidsons tend to leak oil, and that Objectivist essays tend to contain amusingly pseudo–intellectual pronouncements designed to imply the author’s superiority with quite the reverse effect. Watching Mayhew and Perren trying to fisk Burns is like watching two ducks trying to nibble someone to death.

Largely trivial as it is, Perren’s critique is unintentionally instructive in that it gives voice to the underlying sentiments of those who prefer their Convenient Untruth about Rand to the real story as it emerges, warts and all. Most telling is Perren’s wistful suggestion that the basic problem with Burns’ book is that it is “not…the biography Rand fans could wish for” - as if a Rand biography should be like a Star Trek movie, written primarily to please ageing fanboys. Such is his longing for a fans-only biography, he even takes a passage from Burns’ book and rewrites it as “someone more inclined to admire Rand might…” It’s a genuinely pathetic sight.

Blank Out

And that is pretty much the response to a major event like Goddess from the outlying satellites of True Believerdom. From the central darkness of Planet Peikoff itself, only a few, faint, on-the-fritz radio signals have been detected. The first is from Harry Binswanger who has issued his remote-controlled repudiation of Burns from the hermetic safety of his loyalty-oath-requiring e-list but which is now available to the collectivist anti-mind of the general public via samizdat here. The second is from Peikoff himself in a brief comment (transcribed here) on one of his weekly podcasts. I reproduce it in full below:

Q: Do you plan to read either of the new Ayn Rand biographies?
Peikoff:NO! I won’t read any of them, EVER!
Q: Do you have any advice in this regard for others?
Peikoff: Yes, do the same. I have had enough experience in my years of what these people write, uh, I’ve authorized one, um, biography, and its in the works and some day hopefully, uh, will be done, but my experience has been SO HORRENDOUS, with so many people interested in doing a biography that I just stay away from it entirely. Uh, the dishonesty of the people, you know they start with an interview and in the old days I interviewed then I quickly stopped. But now, this is the kind of thing I get, um, somebody wrote with one of these biographies, and we wrote back a form letter saying, hiss hiss, the Estate of Ayn Rand has no, uh you know what, dealings, er, or correspondence with any biographer. That’s it, a form letter, better worded than that. And the book came out, in the acknowledgements, thanked the Estate of Ayn Rand for its correspondence. So, ha ha. Here’s another one, the archives of the institute, I think this is one of the current ones, have, are, are open to anybody in the universe. They’re not restricted to Objectivists, eh, so anybody can get in. So somebody apparently, one of these biographers has in her blog, either thank you or I don’t know, Dr. Peikoff has approved my access to the archives. So, the whole thing is too disgusting to be imagined. That’s my view. This is not even to say, oh I’ll take it back, I don’t even want to start with it.

Such is life on the planet Ayn Rand made. For the rest of us living here on earth, Burns's book is a blessing as until now anyone who’s wanted to know more about Rand's life has had to rely on mostly pap. It’s been either Facets of Ayn Rand, by pliant drones Charles and Mary Sures - a book with all the literary qualities of an infomercial - or The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics by bug-eyed laughingstock James Valliant, which is to a serious intellectual history roughly what Plan 9 From Outer Space is to astrophysics. Even Barbara Branden’s bestselling memoir The Passion of Ayn Rand which was at least prepared to break the silence around the Rand-Branden affair, was too marbled by personal tensions to be fully credible. And of course, despite the fact this was published 20 years ago, Leonard Peikoff still claims to never have read it.

The simultaneous publication of both Burns's and Heller's books is also a sign that Rand is finally entering the serious intellectual mainstream and breaking out of her own peculiar mix of populism and cultism. This is to be celebrated, because it's only by close examination and searching criticism that the long term value of her work will be able to be assessed. The fact that, to date, the energies of her faithful have been entirely devoted to keeping the Convenient Untruth alive rather than undertaking such a critical examination does not bode well.

*In strict Objectivist terms, Ayn Rand is and can be the only true Objectivist, and everyone else is merely a student of Objectivism.