Objectivism & Politics, Part 34

Politics of Human Nature 18: Economic interests and “rationality.” The current economic debacle has once and for all refuted the belief in the rational actor model, otherwise known as Homo economicus, and for that at least we can be thankful. That everyone pursues economic interests, and some pursue them to the exclusion of other interests and passions, is well testified by basic facts observed by all; and that some people pursue these economic interests with a modicum of “rationality” and good sense, is also eminently plausible; but the idea that many people either do or can pursue economic interests with the sort of full fledged rationality imagined by economists and preached by Rand and her disciples is no longer tenable. It is only due to the optimist view of human nature, propagated by reality-evading sentimentalists, that this rational actor theory was ever allowed to elude the scorn it deserved. All the best authorities on human nature have stood against it, from Machiavelli to the Founding Fathers; from Pareto to Steven Pinker.


The view of man as a nonrational animal is hardly the invention of Freud or Pareto. It was well known, for example, well before these alleged pioneers of the non-rational, that wishful thinking, rather than reason, plays an enormous part in human affairs, and that man, far from being a “rational animal,” could more accurately be described as “a nonrational rationalizer.” “The passions always seek to justify themselves and persuade us insensibly that we have reason for following them,” wrote Malebranche. “When one loves, hates, fears, desires, one has an imperative wish to have a reason for loving, hating, fearing, desiring … and by the force of one’s wish for it, one imagines that one has found it,” wrote Jean La Placette. Pascal wrote: “I think, not that a thing offends us for the reason which we find afterwards, but that we find the reasons because the thing offends us.” And John Adams wrote: “There is nothing in the science of human nature more curious, or that deserves a critical attention from every man so much, as the principle which moral writers have distinguished by the name of self-deceit.”

What was widely believed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been confirmed by scientific research in recent decades. As psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains:

Whether by choosing information or informants, our ability to cook the facts that we encounter helps us establish views that are both positive and credible…. When Democrats and Republicans see the same presidential debate on television, both sets of viewers claim that the facts clearly show that their candidate was the winner. When pro-Israeli and pro-Arab viewers see identical samples of Middle East coverage, both proponents claim that the facts clearly show that the press was biased against their side….

When facts challenge our favored conclusion, we scrutinize them more carefully and subject them to more rigorous analysis…. Volunteers in one study were asked to evaluate the intelligence of another person, and they required considerable evidence before they were willing to conclude that the person was truly smart. But interestingly, they required more evidence when the person was an unbearable pain in the ass than when the person was funny, kind, and friendly.” [Stumbling on Happiness, 185-186]

So it’s well established that human being’s are prone to rationalizing. There is plenty of evidence for it in everyday life and, if that doesn't suffice, we find even more evidence in countless psychological experiments. Rand herself would not deny the pervasiveness of rationalizing. She would only insist it is not an innate tendency in human nature. Yet given the ubiquity of rationalizing throughout human history, Rand’s view is grossly implausible. She cannot, after all, blame Kant for all this rationalizing, for it existed long before the sage of Königsberg began spinning his pedantic webs.

Now when we combine this insight with the issue of economic interests, we have another potential source of opposition to laissez-faire. Nor is it opposition merely from the usual suspects, such as civil servants, welfare recipients, and socialists. No, the opposition comes from the very class that one might think would be most prone to supporting laissez-faire: the business class.

There’s a long tradition of businesses receiving financial assistance from state and local governments in America. In 2006 the federal government spent $92 billion in direct and indirect subsidies to businesses and private- sector corporations. With the corporate bailouts of 2008 and 2009, this number obviously rises dramatically. Tariffs are another source of economic assistance to business; and while these tariffs have been relatively light in recent decades (despite recent tariffs on steel and tire imports), historically, they have been quite high in the United States, and even constituted a secondary cause of the Civil War. Nor should we forget altogether the efforts made by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury to encourage reckless speculation during the last two decades and exasperate market failures brought on by portfolio theory, over-securitization, and wildcat leveraging.

Now of course we all know that Objectivists oppose all these pro-business interventions as contrary to laissez-faire. “None of this will be a problem under laissez-faire, because it wouldn’t be allowed,” they would be eager to tell us. The problem is, first you have to reach laissez-faire, and how will this be possible when many businessmen are against it on account of economic interests?

If it is argued that these businessmen can be educated, by or through “reason,” to understand that corporate welfare and other government sponsered favors are not in their “real” or “true” economic interest, then I would simply point back to what I presented earlier in this post: human beings are rationalizers and self-deceivers. Whatever irrationality there may be in accepting government assistance, it’s easy to rationalize it away, particularly for those benefiting from it. Rand tried to argue that “rationality” (i.e., agreement with Objectivism) was necessary to life, as if to suggest that anyone who is not rational will simply die. But for better or worse, corporate subsidies in America have not killed anyone who has benefited from them. Nor have they destroyed the economy. At worse, they have made the economy somewhat less efficient and somewhat less prosperous; at best, they may have had a slight beneficial effect. The tariffs in the nineteenth century transferred wealth from farmers, who probably would have spent most of it, to industrialists, who invested most of their protectionist-derived loot in the development of the economy.

The general logic of so-called “corporate welfare” works like this: such transfers of wealth provide large benefits to a small number of people, causing a slight loss to everyone else. To try to convince the few who benefit from these transfers that it is “irrational” and contrary to their “enlightened” self-interest to enrich oneself (or one’s business operations) in this manner is, for all intents and purposes, futile. On the one hand, the benefits of the corporate welfare are obvious, tangible, and immediate; whereas its potential long-range costs are abstract, uncertain, and theoretical. As the old cliche has it, A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. When placed against the power of rationalization, the Objectivist arguments against corporate subsidies and for laissez-faire will likely have no effect. And indeed, that is precisely what we find in the real world. How many businesses (or people in general) turn down subsidies, grants, privileges from the government? Very few. And on those rare instances when government money is rejected, it is usually because of some proviso in the handout that greatly reduces its attractiveness (as when corporations turned down bailout money because they didn’t want the government cutting their salaries).

Thanks to the power of rationalization, even an Objectivist can convince himself that his theoretical commitment to laissez-faire should not be allowed to get in the way of a chance to stick his snout deep into the public trough and begin chomping away. John Allison, the chairman and CEO of BB&T, the largest bank in West Virginia, rationalized the $3 billion he accepted in federal rescue money as follows. "While we feel these proposals are slightly negative for healthy banks like BB&T,” he said shortly before accepting the loot, “we are evaluating the extent to which we will participate. Frankly, it is difficult not to participate when your competitors are benefiting from the program. Consistent with our values and philosophy, we will make the decision that is in the best long-term interest of our shareholders and clients."

If even Objectivists accept corporate welfare and rationalize about it, what hope is there for the rest of us?

National Review's Most Recent Take on Rand

Peter Wehner over at nationalreview.com has written a brief blog post explaining why Rand's philosophy is not compatible with conservatism. Wehner's post is, to tell the truth, not that good—more rhetorical than substantive. He contrasts Objectivism with "social" conservatism, emphazing Rand's apparent indifference to "family values," her lack of "transcendence," and her "incongruity of tone." While Wehner is well within his rights to emphasize the differences between Rand and conservatism, he makes a poor case for his position, as he fails to the point out the most important convergences between the two conflicting visions of the human condition. The most important differences between Objectivism and conservatism involve contrasting views of human nature and cognition.

Conflicting visions of human nature constitute the most important difference between conservatism and Objectivism. It is odd that Wehner never even mentions this issue. As I have pointed out numerous times on this blog, Rand held that there are no innate tendencies of character, that man is a "being of self-made soul," and a man's character is simply the manifestation of his premises, particularly his philosophical premises. For centuries the conservative view was embalmed in the myths and exaggerations of traditional religion; but today it receives its best expression from science. As David Brooks put it:

Over the past 30 years or so [the] belief in natural goodness [of man] has been discarded. It began to lose favor because of the failure of just about every social program that was inspired by it, from the communes to progressive education on up. But the big blow came at the hands of science.

From the content of our genes, the nature of our neurons and the lessons of evolutionary biology, it has become clear that nature is filled with competition and conflicts of interest. Humanity did not come before status contests. Status contests came before humanity, and are embedded deep in human relations. People in hunter-gatherer societies were deadly warriors, not sexually liberated pacifists. As Steven Pinker has put it, Hobbes was more right than Rousseau.

Moreover, human beings are not as pliable as the social engineers [or Ayn Rand] imagined. Human beings operate according to preset epigenetic rules, which dispose people to act in certain ways. We strive for dominance and undermine radical egalitarian dreams. We’re tribal and divide the world into in-groups and out-groups.

This darker if more realistic view of human nature has led to a rediscovery of different moral codes and different political assumptions. Most people today share what Thomas Sowell calls the Constrained Vision, what Pinker calls the Tragic Vision and what E. O. Wilson calls Existential Conservatism. This is based on the idea that there is a universal human nature; that it has nasty, competitive elements; that we don’t understand much about it; and that the conventions and institutions that have evolved to keep us from slitting each other’s throats are valuable and are altered at great peril.

The other important area of convergence involves cognition, or how human beings acquire knowledge. Conservatives distrust any conclusions based on broad, extremely abstract, "metaphysical" principles. Social and political reality is too complex to be adequately conveyed by these abstract principles. To achieve wisdom about politics, society, and the human condition requires the development of a very wide and deep experiential database. In other words, there's no substitute for experience: a statesman who has spent 40 years in government will likely evince far better judgment about politics than an intellectual who gets his knowledge from newspapers and polemical works or a philosopher like Rand who tries to deduce political knowledge from the ethical and metaphysical principles of a philosophy. From the conservative point of view, Objectivism is a species of uncritical rationalism: for its proponents are too often guilty of trying to determine matters of fact by means of logical, moral or rhetorical constructions; and no complex fact is likely to be discovered by such exercises in verbalism.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 33

Politics of Human Nature 17: Vanity and “social metaphysics.” Closely related to the obsession with preeminence and status is vanity. The pervasiveness of this emotion in human nature was satirized to good effect in a bit of amusing doggerel by an unnamed poet as follows:

I am hungry for praise:
I would to God it were not so—
That I must live through all my days
Yearning for what I’ll never know.
I even hope that when I’m dead
The worms won’t find me wholly vicious,
But as they masticate my head
Will smack their lips and cry “delicious!”

The view that vanity is a dominant motive in human nature was fairly common among writers and poets in the 17th and 18th centuries. Pascal is representative in this respect:



Vanity is so anchored in man’s heart that a soldier, a camp-follower, a cook, a porter, boast and wish to have admirers; and the philosophers wish the same; and those who write against the desire for glory, glory in having written well; and those who read it, desire to have glory for having read it; and I who write this have perhaps the same desire; and also those who will read what I write.

While Rand did not address vanity per se, her disciple Nathaniel Branden formulated a concept that dealt with one of the manifestations of vanity, “social metaphysics.” Rand describes social metaphysics as follows:

A social metaphysician is one who regards the consciousness of other men as superior to his own and to the facts of reality. It is to a social metaphysician that the moral appraisal of himself by others is a primary concern which supersedes truth, facts, reason, logic. The disapproval of others is so shatteringly terrifying to him that nothing can withstand its impact within his consciousness; thus he would deny the evidence of his own eyes and invalidate his own consciousness for the sake of any stray charlatan's moral sanction. It is only a social metaphysician who could conceive of such absurdity as hoping to win an intellectual argument by hinting: "But people won't like you!"

Now while some people may be overly concerned with the opinion of others, it is not clear that this concern involves regarding “the consciousness of other men as superior … to the facts of reality.” That is a caricature. Many human beings wish to be admired by others. This may cause them, for example, to try to say things they don’t really believe or pretend to admire things they don’t like. It may even cause them to defer to another persons judgment on particular issues, like Objectivists frequently defer to Rand’s or Peikoff’s judgment. But this merely means the individual trusts another person’s judgment more than his own—a view not at all inconsistent with being an Objectivist, as the facts attest. To describe this trust as invalidating one’s own consciousness or denying the evidence of one’s own eyes is clearly to engage in gross hyperbole.

Yet the exaggerations in the doctrine are not what’s most critical for the current discussion. Even more important is the implication that “social metaphysics”—and indeed any of the manifestations of vanity—are merely the consequences some stray premise that has been integrated in the individual’s subconscious. There is nothing innate about it. The fact that vanity has been a preponderant motive throughout human history is a sheer coincidence. Why so many human beings throughout the ages have held this premise is not explained but is evaded. Apparently, Rand wished to believed that things could be different, that social metaphysics, vanity, the desire for status—that all these troublesome emotions could be abolished; that human beings did not have to be dominated by them. The desire to be rid of these emotions is understandable, particularly for a philosopher advocating laissez-faire capitalism: because these emotions serve as an important obstacle to the implementation of that system.

John Adams, the most psychologically astute of the Founding Fathers, described vanity (which he called the “passion for distinction”) as “the great leading passion of the soul”:

This propensity, in all its branches, is a principal source of the virtues and vices, the happiness and misery of human life; and … the history of mankind is little more than a simple narration of its operation and effects… The desire of esteem is as real a want of nature as hunger; and the neglect and contempt of the world as severe a pain as gout and stone. It sooner and oftener produces despair and detestation of existence… Every personal quality, every blessing of fortune, is cherished in proportion to its capacity of gratifying this universal affection for the esteem, the sympathy, the admiration and congratulations of the public. [Life and Works of John Adams, 232ff]

Now it is often argued by advocates of laissez-faire that one of the chief merits of that system is that it is not a zero-sum game. Peter can get rich without harming Paul. In Objectivism, this characteristic of laissez-faire is exemplified in Rand’s contention that “there are no conflicts of interests between rational men.” But if Pascal, Adams, and most other observers of human nature through history are right about the psychological importance and predominance of vanity, then the obvious retort to Rand’s contention is that most men simply are not rational in the sense meant by Rand. Conflicts of interest between men are ingrained in the very nature of things, because men compete for esteem, status, approbation, fame, etc, and this competition will inevitably breed conflict between various human beings.

Furthermore, these conflicts, as well as the emotions that inspire them, will continue to predispose individuals against laissez-faire. Every form of society tends to favor some abilities at the expense of others. A capitalist society favors those well-endowed with commercial virtues; a military society favors those well-endowed with martial virtues; a monarchal society favors those well-endowed with the gifts of the courtier. Even if it is true, as is not implausible, that individuals short in commercial virtues and the talents necessary to thrive under free market competition will nevertheless be better off, in terms of economic well-being, under a free market system, it doesn’t follow that they can be persuaded to favor that system. For at the end of the day, many individuals will prefer distinction to wealth, and will hence prefer the system in which they expect to gain the most distinction. As Steven Pinker notes, “ People go hungry, risk their lives, and exhaust their wealth in pursuit of bits of ribbon and metal [i.e., for vanity].” Despite attempts to denigrate and caricature these emotions as “social metaphysics,” they nevertheless exist and cannot be changed or eliminated merely by refuting Kant and Plato and preaching Rand.

The Complement of Atlas Shrugged

Over at Shtetl-Optimised, Scott Aaronson hits on a key problem with critically approaching Rand's meisterwerk - and indeed, Rand's philosophy as a whole:

"...how does one review a book that seeks, among other things, to define the standards by which all books should be reviewed?"

His solution is to examine what isn't in Atlas Shrugged - what he calls the novel's complement- and identifies ten striking omissions that throw the novel's failings into sharp relief. While some of the points have been made before, others are box-fresh. It's an outstanding post.

The cultic side of Objectivism has been blamed on individual personalities such as Rand and her young lover/protege Nathaniel Branden. But its persistence beyond these two is, I think, primarily due to the marking-your-own-homework hermeticism that Aaronson nails in the sentence above. This hermeticism is sustained by Objectivism's largely-overlooked reliance on its own language (Rand is widely yet mistakenly credited with writing "clearly and precisely") and its almost-entirely-overlooked reliance on its own version of logic (the actual workings of which we await to be revealed). Thus much of Objectivism - perhaps even most of it - is devoted to blunting the tools by which it might be described and critically evaluated.

The Real Ayn Rand

Over at Inc. magazine Rand biographer Anne Heller gives a striking interview. Like Jennifer Burns, she has quite a positive overall view of Rand and her achievements. However, she pulls no punches in describing the real person, as opposed to the absurdly propagandised outpourings of Objectivism's apparatchiks. For example:

"[Rand] had a habit of exaggerating her own suffering, and she often forgot to credit those whose ideas she borrowed and who helped her in more material ways. She humiliated her husband. She could be narcissistic, shrill, demanding, untidy, even unclean, and her use of amphetamines exacerbated her angry outbursts, unkempt periods, and paranoia."

Heller even ventures some controversial speculations that definitely run contrary to the Official Hagiographic Narrative:

"In my view, Rand engineered the Brandens' disastrous marriage so that she could safely take Nathaniel, then 24, as her lover."

I'm looking forward to reading Heller's book.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 32

Politics of Human Nature 16: Struggle for preeminence. Social darwinists use to argue that within society there existed a brutal “struggle for existence” in which stronger types “eliminate” weaker types. Although we now know this theory to be erroneous, at one time it seemed plausible; and the reason it did so is because there really does exist a kind of struggle or competition in society. This struggle, however, is not a struggle of life and death; it is, rather, a struggle for preeminence. As the Italian political scientist Gaetano Mosca put it:

If we consider … the inner ferment that goes on with the body of every society, we see at once that the struggle for preeminence is far more conspicuous there than the struggle for existence. Competition between individuals of every social unit is focused upon higher position, wealth, authority, control of the means and instruments that enable a person to direct many human activities, many human wills, as he sees fit. The losers, who are of course the majority in that sort of struggle, are not devoured, destroyed or even kept from reproducing their kind, as is basically characteristic of the struggle for life. They merely enjoy fewer material satisfactions and, especially, less freedom and independence. [The Ruling Class, 30]

The tendency in Objectivism is to ascribe the struggle for preeminence as a mere manifestation of “power lust,” which is itself “only a corollary or aspect of dependence.”

Basically, the power-luster holds the premise that men live either by ruling or by being ruled. The dictator is just as dependent, just as unsure, as his followers; he merely chooses a variant—and, in fact, a lower—mode of expressing it. When you find a great many power-lusters in a nation, the explanation is still the psychology of dependence, and the philosophy that gives rise to it. [Leonard Peikoff, “Philosophy and Psychology in History”]

In other words, the struggle for preeminence, which has characterized every society known to history, is brought about by a “psychology of dependence” and “the philosophy that gives rise to it,” particularly the premises “that men live either by ruling or being ruled.” Here we have the typical strategy deployed by orthodox Objectivists whenever they find themselves confronted by an unpleasant fact: they seek to evade the fact by making it appear weak and pathetic. It may be comforting to think of Hitler and Stalin and Mao as suffering from a “psychology of dependence”; but it is not clear that such “dependence,” whether “psychological” or not, accounts for what is objectionable in these mass murderers. Nearly all human beings depend on other human beings to some extent. The businessman depends on his customers; the stay-at-home wife on her husband; children depend on their parents, etc. etc. A ruler depends on his sources of power: his army, his police, his supporters among the elite; but why this dependence constitutes a “psychology of dependence” is not explained and seems to be a product of wishful thinking. It’s a rationalization aimed at making evil appear less threatening, and therefore easier to accept and live with. It ignores the real issue, however: the fact, for example, that the worst “power lusters,” the most dangerous men who struggle for preeminence, are those who use terror to achieve their dominance. It also, and even more critically, ignores the pervasiveness of this struggle through history: the fact that it involves not merely blood soaked dictators, but even ordinary folks, who, although they don’t necessarily lust for political power, nonetheless experience an obsession with status that leads to irrational outcomes and threatens the achievement of Rand’s laissez-faire. Consider Steven Pinker’s summary of the work done by economist Robert Frank on this issue:

Frank has appealed to the evolutionary psychology of status to point out … shortcomings of the rational-actor theory and, by extension, laissez-faire economics. Rational actors should eschew not only forced retirement savings but other policies that ostensibly protect them, such as mandatory health benefits, workplace safety regulations, unemployment insurance, and union dues. All of these cost money that would otherwise go into their paychecks, and workers could decide for themselves whether to take a pay cut to work for a company with the most paternalistic policies or go for the biggest salary and take higher risks on the job….

The rub, Frank points out, is that people are endowed with a craving for status. Their first impulse is to spend money in ways that put themselves ahead of the Joneses (houses, cars, clothing, prestigious educations), rather than in ways that only they know about (health care, job safety, retirement savings). Unfortunately, status is a zero-sum game, so when everyone has more money to spend on cars and houses, the houses and cars get bigger but people are no happier than they were before. [Blank Slate, 303]

The inborn craving for status doesn’t merely cause people to behave irrationally in the economic realm, it makes them ripe targets for the politics of envy. In an earlier post, I have discussed Rand’s take on egalitarian envy: she saw envy as a manifestation of nihilism arising out of the influence of Immanual Kant. But a far more plausible explanation for this envy is the craving for status, which inspires various individuals to act against their economic self-interest in order to inflict an injury on those who have attained a higher position in the social scale than themselves. Since this obsession with status is at least partially influenced by innate factors, it cannot be cured or gotten rid of through refuting the premises through which this obsession is expressed. People don’t crave status because they have accepted this or that premise; rather, the craving predisposes these individuals to accept premises which encourage hostility toward free market outcomes.

Jennifer Burns and Anne Heller Speak at Cato

Wednesday Nite Whim-Worshipping

This seemed somehow apropos.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 31

Politics of Human Nature 15: Sociology of the Intellectual. In the essay “For the New Intellectual,” we find Rand insisting that “the need for intellectual leadership was never as great as now.” Where is this “intellectual” leadership to come from? Rand imagines a “New Intellectual” who “will be the man who lives up to the exact meaning of his title: a man who is guided by his intellect.” The “New Intellectual,” Rand promises, will end “the rule of Attila and the Witch Doctor.” How will intellectuals do this? According to Rand, they have to do a number of things, such as: (1) Adopt a philosophy of “reason”; (2) reunite and become a champion of businessmen; (3) understand the nature and the function of the free market; (4) discover the theory and the actual history of capitalism; (5) prove and accept two principles: a.”that emotions are not tools of cognition”; and b. “that no man has the right to initiate the use of physical force against others.” [FNI, 59-64]

Now anyone who understands human motivation will recognize immediately that Rand’s views about the power of intellectuals are little more than wishful thinking. For the purposes of this post, however, I’m not interested in analyzing that side of Rand’s view. I would prefer, instead, to focus on Rand’s assumption that any significant number of intellectuals can be expected to do the things Rand wants them to do. Those of us who understand the “sociology of the intellectual,” as Joseph Schumpeter described it, regard intellectuals as one of the very last groups in society which we would wish to trust our fortunes to. "Beware intellectuals," warned historian Paul Johnson in his incendiary exposé, Intellectuals (Harper Perennial, 1990). "Not only should they be kept well away from the levers of power, they should also be objects of particular suspicion when they seek to offer collective advice."

Let us now examine the “sociology of the intellectual,” as limned by Joseph Schumpeter:

Intellectuals are in fact people who wield the power of the spoken and the written word, and one of the touches that distinguish them from other people who do the same is the absence of direct responsibility for practical affairs. This touch in general accounts for another—the absence of first-hand knowledge of them which only actual experience can give. The critical attitude, arising no less from the intellectual’s situation as an onlooker—in most cases also as an outsider—than from the fact that his main chance of asserting himself lies in his actual or potential nuisance value, should add a third touch.

Note particularly Schumpeter’s remark about “absence of direct responsibility.” When discussing intellectuals, this is critical in several senses. As I have stated in previous posts (for example, here), there are some domains of knowledge that can only be mastered by intensive experience. Intellectuals often have little, if any, appreciation for this fact. They often think they can attain mastery in a subject merely through reading or rationalistic speculation (i.e., “reason”), when, as a matter of fact, nothing less than experience will do. And since most intellectuals lack the requisite experience, they are not in a position, nor are they in the least qualified, to judge on matters relating to politics, social policy, and economics.

But there is another potentially serious problem: what happens when society produces too many intellectuals? What happens to all the intellectuals who cannot earn a living through their intellectual skills? As Schumpeter explains:

The man who has gone through a college or university easily becomes psychically unemployable in manual occupations without necessarily acquiring employability in, say, professional work. His failure to do so may be due either to lack of natural ability—perfectly compatible with passing academic tests—or to inadequate teaching; and both cases will, absolutely and relatively, occur more frequently as ever larger numbers are drafted into higher education and as the required amount of teaching increase irrespective of how many teachers and scholars nature chooses to turn out. The results of neglecting this and acting on the theory that schools, colleges, and universities are just a matter of money, are too obvious to insist upon….

All those who are unemployable or unsatisfactorily employed or unemployable drift into the vocations in which standards are least definite or in which aptitudes and acquirements of a different order count. They swell the host of intellectuals in the strict sense of the term whose numbers hence increase disproportionately. They enter it in a thoroughly discontented frame of mind. Discontent breeds resentment. And it often rationalizes itself into social criticism which as we have seen before is in any case the intellectual spectator’s typical attitude toward men, classes, and institutions… Well, here we have numbers; a well-defined group situation of proletarian hue; and a group interest shaping a group attitude that will much more realistically account for hostility to the capitalist order than could the theory—itself a rationalization in the psychological sense—according to which the intellectual’s righteous indignation about the wrongs of capitalism simply represents the logical inference from outrageous facts and which is no better than the theory of lovers that their feelings represent nothing but the logical inference from the virtues of the beloved. [Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 147-153]

There are other considerations that also have to be broached. If you examine the works of intellectuals through history, the results are not always terribly edifying. Indeed, the more an individual devotes himself exclusively to an intellectual life, the greater the chances that he will champion ideas based on irresponsible speculation and wishful thinking. Plato, one of the earliest men to devote himself almost exclusively to intellectual pursuits, is typical in this respect. We also see something along these lines in the Pythagorean cult, in the mania for abstruse theology among the Christians, in the pre-Kantian rationalist philosophers (particularly Leibniz and Wolff), in the idealist and Hegelian philosophers, and in the deconstructionists. Whole forests have been destroyed to promulgate views contrary to good sense and the facts of life.

Rand wished to place the lion’s share of the blame for all this rationalistic wishful thinking on Plato and Kant. Yet even if it were true that Plato and Kant are the primary culprits, we would still have to ask ourselves why so many intellectuals are attracted to rationalistic, wishful thinking. Could it be that the very type of individual most attracted to an intellectual life is, generally speaking, also the type of individual most alienated towards reality? Or could it be that the intellectual life tends to attract weak people, who look at a life of irresponsible speculation as a convenient escape from the rigors of a more active existence? Realism about the world requires strength; yet strength cannot be acquired merely by thinking. Strength is not, as the logic of Objectivism implies, a product of an individual’s premise. Changing a person’s premises will not transform the coward into a hero. The life of the mind may prove a poor and shoddy breeding ground for developing strong individuals. Perhaps only the exceptional individual can develop both strength and intellect, so that the number of strong, reality-orientated intellectuals will be too small to count in any significant way. If so, then Rand’s hopes for a new intellectual appear doomed from the start. The intellectual, by his lack of experience and practical responsibilty, by his unemployability and rationalized resentment, and by his tendency toward weakness and wishful thinking, will tend, by the very nature of his vocation, to entertain an intractable bias against capitalism; and no amount of arguments or premises can alter this fact.

"Howard Roark in New Delhi"

Jennifer Burns writes for Foreign Policy about the surprising popularity of Rand's "The Fountainhead." Rand's popularity in India has been visible for a while - check out the Google search figures - and it's understandable why. One of the positive uses of Rand is that she's useful to people who are looking for a way out of an oppressive religion. Anecdotally, I've noticed a lot of people on Objectivist fora are ex-Christian fundys or similar, and who for whom Rand is a liberating force. This is a good thing, obviously, though it sometimes also has the effect of jumping out of the frying pan into a frying pan that's on "simmer"... Anyway, enjoy.

Jennifer Burns on Jon Stewart

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Jennifer Burns
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Following up on Greg's review of "Ayn Rand: Goddess of the Market" below, here's Burns interviewed by Jon Stewart. My review is in the pipeline, but in short this book surely deserves the major play it's getting.

Review of Burn’s "Goddess of the Market"

Jennifer Burns' book focuses on Rand’s development as a thinker and philosopher and connects this development with the broader conservative and libertarian movements. Using her unprecedented access to Rand’s private papers and the unedited versions of Rand’s journal, Burns uncovers a wealth of fascinating evidence on the influences that shaped Rand’s Objectivist philosophy. Goddess of the Market is now the most impressive work of scholarship on Rand to date, besting even Sciabarra’s Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical.

This book is notable (among other things) for the impartiality of its author. As far as I can tell, Burns is the first non-Objectivist scholar to have been granted full access to Rand’s papers. Since she harbors no perceivable agenda beyond relating the important facts about Rand’s life and thought, Goddess of the Market becomes the most “objective” (in the non-Randian sense of the word) account of Rand. Unlike works on Rand published through ARI or by the Brandens, the conclusions of Goddess cannot be questioned on the grounds of bias. “I am less concerned with judgment than with analysis,” Burns writes in her introduction, “a choice Rand would certainly condemn,” she adds with muted irony. I would describe her book as even-handed: wherever Rand conflicted with friends and associates, Burns goes out of her way to give both sides, basing her analysis on the relevant documentary evidence (rather than just on mere speculation or bias). The intellectual conflict Rand had with Rose Wilder Lane, for instance, is fleshed out not merely with reference to letters between the two right-wing individualists, but even with a letter that Lane wrote to a third person describing her final showdown with Rand.


The most interesting revelation in Goddess may very well be the extent to which Isabel Paterson influenced Rand’s philosophy. Rand was still working her way through her Nietzsche phase when she met Paterson in 1941. Paterson reinforced Rand’s growing commitment to “reason” and Aristotle. It is likely that Paterson introduced Rand to the banal phrase “A is A,” which later became such an important mantra within the Objectivist philosophy. Paterson also appears to be the original source of Rand’s detestation of Kant (which would later be reinforced by what she learned from Leonard Peikoff). Paterson may even have been the chief inspiration for Rand’s later fierce moral condemnation of using emotions as a tool of cognition. Paterson, famous for being “difficult” (W. F. Buckley would later describe her as “obstinately vindictive”), once, in Rand’s presence, screamed over the phone at Rose Wilder Lane, because Lane had confessed being led by her feelings, rather than by “reason.” Rand found Paterson’s arguments to Lane “marvelous and unanswerable," and her anger understandable, even honorable. Paterson was providing Rand with a model the younger woman would later imitate, to horrendous effect.

Rand emerges from Burns' book as a talented, energetic, sometimes even brilliant woman torn by paradoxical traits in her character. Rand was a “rationalist philosopher who wrote romantic fiction. For all her fealty to reason, Rand was a woman subject to powerful, even overwhelming emotion…. Her dual career as a novelist and a philosopher let Rand express both her deep-seated need for control and her genuine belief in individualism and independence.” Rand’s life, driven by a “clash between [the] romantic and rational sides” of her character, makes the story of her life “not a tale of triumph, but a tragedy of sorts.”

This book will not please the orthodox champions of Rand who have turned Objectivism into a personality cult. It confirms most of the controversial claims made by Barbara Branden in The Passion of Ayn Rand, including Frank O'Conner's alcoholism, Rand's increasing mental rigidity during her Objectivist period, her difficulties with intellectual interchange, the contempt which Rand periodically felt for her fans, and the catastrophic consequences of her split with the Brandens for the Objectivist movement as a whole. It provides even more light on the possible role which Rand's habitual use of Benzedrine may have had on Rand. Paterson had warned Rand to "Stop taking that Benzedrine, you idiot," but Rand, stubborn and self-willed as usual, refused to listen. It was not unusual for Rand to work on Atlas during the day and then stay up all night talking philosophy with the "Collective" [i.e., the inner circle around Rand, let by the Brandens]. As Burns relates:

The Collective marveled at how the opportunity to talk philosophy rejuvenated [Rand] even after a long day of writing. The obvious was also the unthinkable. To keep up with her younger followers, Rand fed herself a steady stream of amphetamines. [148]

This opens up the possibility that what some of us find objectionable in Atlas Shrugged—namely, the work's blistering disdain towards anyone who might be so horrid as to disagree with its author, coupled with the book's piercing tendentiousness—may have been influenced by her repeated exposure to these drugs, which can lead to aggression, over-confidence, feelings of superiority, and even paranoia. Following the publication of The Fountainhead, Rand's personal life slowly dissolved into personal tragedy, as she became increasingly difficult and insular. That a woman who would devise an entire philosophy around the notion that human beings are self-creators via "reason" should have relied so heavily on amphetamines is in itself a kind of refutation of her view of human nature.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 30

Politics of Human Nature 14: Egalitarian Envy. In an earlier “Objectivism and Politics” post, we found Rand using the phrase “ hatred of the good for being the good” to describe nihilism. But she had also used to the phrase to describe “envy.” And in her essay “Age of Envy,” she illustrated her notions in relation to egalitarianism.

Egalitarianism means the belief in the equality of all men. “Equality,” in a human context, is a political term: it means equality before the law… But this is not the meaning that the altruists ascribe to the word “equality.” They turn the word into an anti-concept: they use it to mean, not political, but metaphysical equality—the equality of personal attributes and virtues, regardless of natural endowment or individual choice, performance and character. It is not man-made institutions, but nature, i.e., reality, that they propose to fight—by means of man-made institutions.

Since nature does not endow all men with equal beauty or equal intelligence, and the faculty of volition leads men to make different choices, the egalitarians propose to abolish the “unfairness” of nature and of volition, and to establish universal equality in fact—in defiance of facts. Since the Law of Identity is impervious to human manipulation, it is the Law of Causality that they struggle to abrogate. Since personal attributes or virtues cannot be “redistributed,” they seek to deprive men of their consequences—of the rewards, the benefits, the achievements created by personal attributes and virtues. It is not equality before the law that they seek, but inequality: the establishment of an inverted social pyramid, with a new aristocracy on top—the aristocracy of non-value.

While many of us could do without the over-charged rhetoric, what Rand is saying in so many words is that “altruists” (i.e., socialists, humanitarians, leftists, etc.) seek real, as opposed to merely political equality, and that such equality is impossible. Fair enough. Where Rand gets into trouble is when she tries to analyze where this egalitarian “hatred of the good for being good” comes from. She ventures upon a psychological explanation:

The hater’s mental functioning remains on the level of childhood. Nothing is fully real to him except the concrete, the perceptually given, i.e., the immediate moment without past or future. He has learned to speak, but has never grasped the process of conceptualization…. [How does she know this? Where is her evidence?]

How does a human being descend to such a state? There are different psychological reasons, but—in pattern—the process of self-stultification is initiated by the child who lies too often and gets away with it. In his early, formative years, when he needs to learn the mental processes required to grasp the great unknown surrounding him, reality, he learns the opposite. He learns, in effect, that he can get whatever he wants not by observing facts, but by inventing them and by cheating, begging, threatening (throwing tantrums), i.e., by manipulating the adults…. Reality does not obey him, it frustrates his wishes, it is impervious to his feelings, it does not respond to him as the adults do; but, he feels ... he has the power to defeat [reality] by means of nothing but his own imagination, which commands the mysterious omnipotent adults who can do what he is unable to do…

Gradually, these subconscious conclusions are automatized in his mind, in the form of a habitual, ambivalent feeling: a sneaky sense of triumph—and a sense of inferiority, since he is helpless when he is left on his own. He counteracts it by telling himself that he is superior, since he can deceive anyone; and, seeking reassurance, he multiplies the practice deception. Wordlessly, as an implicit premise, he acquires the belief that his means of survival is his ability to manipulate others. At a certain stage of his development, he acquires the only authentic and permanent emotion he will ever be able to experience: fear.

Again, one wonders: how on earth does she know all this? It seems all very speculative, and some of it isn’t even plausible. Perhaps there might be something in Rand’s assertion that children who lie and get away with it can easily become manipulators who, as adults, will attempt to live off others, as parasites. But it is also possible that the principle danger of the child who gets away with lying (as well as other things) is that he becomes a spoiled child who ends up, as the conservative philosopher Richard Weaver once put it, failing “to see the relationship between effort and reward,” which causes him in turn to regard “payment as an imposition or as an expression of malice by those who withhold [him from] it.” In other words, Rand’s best speculations about egalitarian envy, while plausible, are not necessarily true. And her worst speculations seem merely expressions of a moralistic spleen trying to vent itself against an imaginary target. She claims, for instance, that the only “authentic” emotion the envious hater is capable of is “fear.” If an individual is so good at manipulating others that this can be a means of survival, why should he be afraid? If he has found a method of survival that works, why should he worry any more than the rest of us? Is it because of his dependence on others? Many people who don’t live by manipulating others nonetheless are dependent, in many important respects, on others. Why should dependence, in and of itself, be a cause of fear? Are human beings, by and large, really that undependable? And where does Rand get the odd notion that “haters” are incapable of “conceptualization”? Since anyone who uses language must understand the conceptualizations behind language, this view appears contrary to obvious facts.

But Rand is not done with her psychological speculations. She proceeds by suggesting that there are two possible “roads” open to the envious haters: to either “seek safety in stagnation” or become an intellectual “who believes that ideas are tools of deception.” Her comments on the intellectual “hater” are worth reproducing, if only for purposes of comic relief:



Psychologists have observed a phenomenon called “the idiot-savant,” a man who has the mentality of a moron, but, for some as yet undiscovered reason, is able to perform a prodigy’s feats of arithmetical calculation. The hater of the good becomes a similar phenomenon: “the idiot philosopher,” a man who is unable to grasp the relation of ideas to reality, but devotes his life to the manufacture, propagation and manipulation of ideas…

And who are these “idiot philosophers” Rand is speaking of? Is there anyone she might wish to name? Thankfully, she grants at least one name: “On the basis of his works, I offer Immanuel Kant in evidence, as the archetype of this species.” [The New Left, 164-181]

The notion of Kant as an “idiot philosopher” “unable to grasp the relation of ideas to reality” is absurd, and easily refutable. Much of Kant’s philosophy may be overly pedantic and speculative, but this does not mean his mind was detached from reality, as Rand suggests. On the contrary, Kant, in his scientific speculations, was actually quite shrewd. He not only figured out, long before anyone else did, that the frictional resistance against tidal currents on the earth's surface must cause a diminution of the earth's rotational speed, he also helped popularize the Nebular hypothesis, in which he deduced that the Solar System was originally formed from a large cloud of gas. Kant also correctly speculated that the Milky Way was a large disk of stars, formed from a (much larger) spinning cloud of gas. As Wikipedia puts it: “These postulations opened new horizons for astronomy: for the first time extending astronomy beyond the solar system to galactic and extragalactic realms.”

Rand, as is often the case, relies too much on speculation unguided by empirical evidence; indeed, if her speculations are guided by anything, it is merely her own personal prejudices, particularly her prejudice against any innate influence or tendency in human behavior. There are probably many causes of egalitarian envy, some which may have a partial origin in innate proclivities prominent in certain strains of human nature. Egalitarian envy may, for instance, arise from concerns over status. As I will explain in more detail in a later post, many human beings desire status and respect, and feel envious of those who, they imagine, have attained a higher position in the socio-political pecking order. Nor is it necessarily true that these envious persons are always incompetent or lazy or mere manipulators of others. In all human societies, there exist status-rivalries, which easily can be the source of an envious hatred, particularly when one rival triumphs over another. The defeated rival may be an individual of estimable talent characterized by a strong work ethic. But if he happens to be a sore loser into the bargain, one can easily see this individual being attracted to egalitarianism. It is not necessarily the envy of the third-, fourth-, and fifth-rate that is the most malicious and dangerous. Why should it be? Incompetent individuals are likely to be incompetent even in their envious revenge. But the envy of the second-rate individual—of the man who is a notch or two below greatness and who boils with frustration at being so close to the top without reaching it—the envy of such an individual can lead to great mischief. The Nazis were not a party of incompetent, fifth-rate men, incapable of conceptualization. They were second-rate men who wished to be seen as first-rate men, and this gave rise, in at least some of them, to sentiments of envy, which focused much of its resentment and rage on Jews, partly because in Germany, the Jews, as a social group, were rising in society. It is difficult enough for the status-obsessed second-rate individual to tolerate being bested by people in his own ethnicity or race; but to bested by individuals in another ethnicity and race, particularly one that has for centuries been despised, that was more than Hitler and his genocidal fraternity could bear.

Rand’s tendency to equate “evil” with incompetence, impotence, and idiocy leads her speculations concerning envy astray. She seems to be trying to evade two important facts: (1) that not all envious people are incompetent idiots, but some are dangerous individuals with real capabilities; and (2) that the envy that provides emotional sustenance to egalitarianism is not the product of a mere premise which can be combatted with “reason” and moral condemnation. On the contrary, the envious, like the poor, will always be with us: the battle against envy is never-ending. It is part of the battle for civilization, which is also of the never-ending variety.

How Ayn Rand Made Her World

From the previews of the forthcoming bio by Anne Heller, "Ayn Rand And The World She Made" the basic thesis seems to be that Rand gradually invented her own reality; that she came to live in a kind of solipsistic world of her own.

If this is the case, I would agree. This solipsism is a natural consequence of her theories combining egoism and introspection, despite the lipservice Objectivism pays to attending to reality. What's interesting is tracking down some of the mechanisms by which she gradually erodes the real world and replaces it with one of her own making, as this replacement of reality with a novelised fantasy as a superior reality is one of what I've dubbed the "cultic incitements" in her work.

Here's one very subtle, but very telling example, from her second interview with Phil Donahue. At about 1:58 in the clip above he quizzes her about what she means by a "sacrifice" and here's what she says:

Rand: What I mean by "sacrifice"... and what is generally meant (DB emphasis)...is to give up some value that is important to you for something else that is a lesser value...or a non-value...

Now, ARCHNblog readers may be familiar with our Understanding Objectivist Jargon series, where we explain the odd and often highly twisted meanings that Rand attached to many common terms. In fact, Rand's version of "sacrifice" is the exact opposite of the general meaning of "sacrifice", which is giving up some lesser value for a greater value.

Yet in the version of reality Rand lived in her own, invented meaning was the one that was "generally meant".

Like her crucial falsification of the dictionary definition of "selfishness" in her introduction to "The Virtue of Selfishness", Rand seems to be not so much dishonest as semi-delusional. Like a kind of postmodernist, the words make up her world.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 29

Politics of Human Nature 13: Canaille. John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, wrote that "there is a natural Aristocracy among men; the grounds of which are Virtue and Talents." There exists also a kind of natural Chandela or rabble, the grounds of which are vice and incompetence. Of course, in a society besotted with egalitarian sentiments , no one wants to admit such a thing. But it is true nonetheless. There exists a type of person who seems congenitally dysfunctional and incapable of living even a life of genteel and honorable poverty. One may pity such people as much as one wishes—for they really are pitiful—but one should not sentimentalize them. They may be unfortunate, unlucky, entirely blameless for what they have become. Their dysfunction may be cause by mental illness or some other congenital or acquired defect, such as injury to the fore brain or an innate chemical imbalance. Or it may be that these individuals (or at least some of them) are entirely or largely to blame for their sorry plight. Their dysfunction may be an expression of a narcissistic craving to avoid work, or an irresponsible preference for wiling away one’s time in a drunken stupor. Whatever the cause, the fact is that there will always exist some individuals who either can’t or won’t take care of themselves and who therefore cause problems for the rest of us. What is to be done about such people?

We know what Rand opposed in terms of “solutions” to this problem. She opposed any public financed welfare state or “safety net” that might take care of these people and get them off the streets. From Rand’s perspective, it is immoral to take money from the productive and give it to the unproductive. Very well. Then what is to be done? It simply will not do to say: “Leave them alone: let ‘reality’ or ‘nature’ take care of them.” Reality and nature won’t take care of them without first causing great inconvenience for the rest of us. I live in an area which attracts vagrants like a corpse attracts flies. These vagrants cause all kinds of problems for local businesses, from driving away customers through aggressive panhandling to defecating on the sidewalks and on the street.

An Objectivist might (and probably would) argue that these activities are (or ought to be) crimes and that the offenders should be arrested, convicted and punished. Yet, given the costs of convicting and then incarcerating vagrants, we would still find ourselves taking money from the productive to support the unproductive. Indeed, it would probably be cheaper to set up tents and a soup kitchen a few miles outside of town and try to draw the homeless hither. But how many Objectivists could bring themselves to accept such a solution, given their horror of anything that smacks of “welfare” or state assistance? In other words, they are not serious about the problem: they merely wish to repeat their various laissez-faire mantras and slogans. They do not wish to be bothered with the practical challenges that vagrancy poses to society. Instead, they bury these details under the vagueness and obscurity of their abstract doctrines.

Why should the idea of public assistance be so very dreadful to a reasonable person? Even from the point of view of the most callous self-interest, it is better to get the homeless off the street and into shelters, if only to keep them from spreading disease and being a nuisance to the rest of us. There is, after all, no cheaper solution to the problem, short of declaring open season on the poor wretches and exterminating them. Rand claims that the moral is the practical; but in this case, Objectivists have taken their moral principles to impractical conclusions.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 28

Politics of Human Nature 12: Humanitarianism and nihilism. Humanitarianism, when it becomes extreme, desperate, belligerently utopian, and revolutionary, begins to merge into nihilism. A clear example of this is the revolutionary version of Marxism. As the economist Frank Knight wrote:

The [Marxian] doctrine itself—that all that need be done in order to awake the next morning in, or on the way toward, an idealistic Utopia is to destroy the admittedly crude and imperfect civilization which the race has developed through history thus far, by destroying its institutions and power relations and turning over all power to the promoters of the destruction for the purposes of reconstruction—has an evident if mysterious appeal to elemental human nature. How such propaganda and the romantic appeal of destruction in general, is to be effectively combated, is perhaps the most serious of practical social problems. And the most serious as well as the most puzzling phase of this situation is that in their manners and conscious intentions the promoters are for the most part “nice people,” and “honorable men,” and will readily, and often artistically, “with reasons answer you.” Not only that; they are morally earnest, even to a fault—in fact, to a degree which makes it a serious ethical problem whether moral earnestness can be assumed a virtue at all [a statement that can be applied to Objectivism as well]. For in plain factual appraisal, what they are doing is more catastrophically evil than treason, or poisoning wells, or other acts commonly placed at the head of the list of crimes. The moralisation of destruction, and of combat with a view to destruction, goes with the kind of hero-worship that merges into devil-worship. [Freedom and Reform, 118-119]

Knight’s phrase “moralisation of destruction” goes to the very heart of the nihilistic pathology. On a superficial level, Rand’s view is not necessarily all that different. Nihilism, for Rand, is “hatred of the good for being good.” Okay, someone who hates the good for being good will probably be attracted to destruction, so Rand's speculation here at least has plausibility on its side, if not truth. Where Rand goes seriously off the reservation is when she speculates about the source of this hatred. Consider Rand’s analysis of the infamous streaker at the academy awards as related by Peikoff:

Having grasped the streaker’s nihilism … [Rand] was eager to point out some different examples of the same attitude. [Peikoff goes on to relate how Rand observes the presence of nihilism in modern literature, progressive education, and “avant-garde physics.”] That streaker, in short, was the very opposite of an isolated phenomenon. He was a microcosm of the principle ruling modern culture, a fleeting representative of that corrupt motivation which Ayn Rand has described so eloquently as “hatred of the good for being the good.” And what accounts for such widespread hatred? she asked at the end. Her answer brings us back to the philosophy [Rand opposed], the one that attacks reason and reality wholesale and thus makes all values impossible: the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. [Voice of Reason, 344]

Here is a good example of Rand’s typical mode of proceeding on such questions. She starts out promising enough by identifying the streaker with nihilism. That’s a bit over the top, but interesting nonetheless. She goes on to relate the streaker’s attitude to modern literature, progressive education, and “avant-garde physics” (what on earth could that be?). Again, it’s over the top; and Rand also leaves herself open to accusations of painting with too broad a brush. Still, with a bit of overly generous interpretation, we might be able to extract something resembling plausibility out of it. The very worst aspects of modern literature and progressive education do have a strong nihilistic stench to them. And Rand’s phrase “hatred of the good for being good” also shows promise as a fascinating conjecture. Of course, it may also be possible that nihilists simply have a different idea of the good; still, it’s an eloquent phrase and Rand may really be on to something. But having gotten this far without making any serious blunders, she could not, alas, leave well enough alone, but has to reduce her entire analysis to raving absurdity by bringing up her long-established bête noire, the old wizened pedant of Königsberg, Herr Kant. It appears that Kant’s philosophy is the source and cause of nihilism! If only Kant had been smothered in his cradle, we would have been spared the combined horrors of James Joyce’s Ulysses and the Look-Say method of pedagogy!

Rand’s philosophy of history (like her view of human nature upon which it is based) is a millstone around the neck of her social and political views. It drains her social analysis of whatever aura of plausibility her skill as a propagandist can attach to it, and renders her political objectives unreal and impractical.

Hoisted From Comments: A Reminiscence of the NBI

In comments, tenaj gives us this intriguing personal snapshot of the Nathaniel Branden Institute, and an alternative view to the one currently propogated by the Ayn Rand Institute regarding Branden's influence on Rand.

I'll skip when I first came across Rand and save it for later maybe. In August of 1960 I was reading Atlas Shrugged and going through a behavioral quit smoking program. One of the instructions was not smoking one hour before going to bed (to sleep I presume)and so I would have my last cigarette and read some more of Atlas. Then I would be in a place where I didn't want to stop, so I would light up another cigarette. And so on. I loved the book, had recently gotten a divorce, was teaching first grade and now considering it as a real career instead of something to do until I had children. So as I was finishing with Atlas and with cigarettes my mother saw an ad in the Sunday Inquirer that Objectivist Lectures-NBI- on Rand were coming to Philadelphia. And I immediately decided to go. BB [Barbara Branden] gave the lectures and the rest was history for me, as I took it very seriously.

I had decided to quit smoking because I could feel what it was doing to me. I felt that I could not change things in my life until I quit. How's that for Neuro Linguistic Programming. So I entered a world where all the players smoked, ritualistically with holders no less. And I was not tempted because I was happy I no longer wanted to smoke. So it created a boundary for me in my identification with BB. She was quite lovely and I thought at the time, very intelligent. So it was possible to be a woman and be both was the message I got. NB, AR, AG and LP [Nathaniel Branden, Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan, Leonard Peikoff] gave guest lectures over the two years I went. I attended LP's philosophical lectures on the history of philosophy in New York the summer of 62 and Mary Ann Sures on art in the summer of 61. I never asked a question because I had read Atlas carefully and felt I knew the answer as soon as anyone asked a Q. Then I would compare what I thought to the answer from on high. I loved it when Rand was impatient with a Q. You see now I know the difference between the content of a question and the intent. Rand could pick up on the intent and often responded to it. BB and NB always responded to the content as I remember. An important distinction for anyone to know who goes before groups for Q & A.

But all the while unbeknown to me I was observing all sorts of things and storing them in my data base unfiled. So yes I have lots of visual memories of all of it. I can tell you how BB wore her hair, what clothes she wore, her verbal mannerisms, NB's gestures and many things about LP and Rand as they lectured and presented. But my dots were not connected until many years later.

The most important thing was that I found my own mind that I had lost in school. And I began a journey.

I will say that had NBI not existed, I would have been under the spell of Atlas for awhile but would never -and I mean never- have explored her philosophy, become an Objectivist and been able to begin to apply it to my life. Without NBI Rand's ideas would have entered the ether. This is Nathaniel Branden's great contribution. I c an personally attest it is true. He gave her so much that she could never have achieved on her own, with or without LP or any of the rest of them. I never knew him in those days, so the hateful things I have read don't mean anything real to me. I do know that he was generous to a fault. He gave her so much and she threw it away because of her desire to possess another human being. Everything that Objectivism is today comes from the root of NBI. No one would consider her in the field of philosophy (and maybe no one should)if not for NB. I have not considered here the fact that NB gave her his youth, his mind, his sex, his labor and all the while he was her muse. He brought her all his relatives and friends from Canada and without all that he laid at her feet she would never have finished Atlas and/or it would not have been the book it is. (Please don't think I still love it, but I do not deny its impact on our culture.)

And no one ever even comes close to mentioning the elephant in the room which I hope to go into somewhere. When I do they will truly want to kill me.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 27

Politics of Human Nature 11: Humanitarianism and tribalism. In an earlier post, I quoted Rand characterizing “ the morality of altruism” as ”a tribal phenomenon.” Here we find an example of Rand being right for the wrong reasons. Yes, it is likely that the altruist-humanitarian syndrome has its roots in our tribal process; but it is not, as Rand suggests, a “psycho-epistemological” issue deriving from “self-arrested, perceptual mentality.” On the contrary, it is probably an evolutionary phenomenon. Those beliefs that Rand associates with “altruism” (e.g., socialism, collectivism, tribalism, coercive humanitarianism) were nurtured in the crucible of evolution, in that long period when human beings foraged and hunted for food in small bands of warring tribes. As Hayek, in The Fatal Conceit puts it:

… man’s instincts … were not made for the kind of surroundings, and for the numbers, in which he now lives. They were adapted to life in the small roving bands or troops in which the human race and its immediate ancestors evolved during the few million years while the biological constitution of homo sapiens was formed. These genetically inherited instincts served to to steer the cooperation of the members of the troop, a cooperation that was, necessarily, a narrowly circumscribed interaction of fellows known to and trusted by one another…

Although longer experience may have lent some older members of these bands some authority, it was mainly shared aims and perceptions that coordinated the activities of their members. These modes of coordination depended decisively on instincts of solidarity and altruism… The members of these small groups could thus exist only as such: an isolated man would soon have been a dead man. [11-12]

Now if, as nearly all of science concedes, human beings are largely (if not entirely) the product of evolution, Hayek’s view would seem to be, at the very least, highly probable. In any case, it explains a great deal of what we find in the altruist-humanitarian complex of motivations that animating much of the non-revolutionary left. Combine Hayek’s insight with those of Pareto and Sowell, and we can begin to form a psychopathology of left-wing humanitarianism. This psychopathology provides a far more convincing explanation of the “democratic” forms of socialism, collectivism, and leftist “progressivism” than Rand provides us, with her emphasis on philosophical premises and other will-of-the-wisp abstractions that are too topical to mean anything definite.

Rand seems to have sensed the danger that an evolutionary explanation of social attitudes posed to her philosophy, for she created several rather inept strategies to combat it. Her favorite was her rather absurd definition of “instinct.” Rand held that instincts are an unerring and automatic form of knowledge. This is obviously a definition Rand invented for the purposes of debate. No natural scientist has ever defined instinct in that way. Instincts can refer to any unlearned behavior or emotional propensity, whether in animals or human beings. The assumption that human beings don’t have any such instincts, that their minds are “blank slates” at birth, is not supported by science. Nor does the evidence support Rand’s notion that emotions are the product of ideas. Ideas may influence emotions, but they don’t produce them, as anyone familiar with the most basis psychological evidence regarding infants knows. Human beings do in fact have innate tendencies. The strength and intensity of these tendencies may differ between individuals. But the fact of these tendencies soon becomes obvious to anyone who observes human behavior.

In some people, these tendencies cause them to wish to see their altruistic instincts writ on society at large. Recall what the good people over altruists.org wrote: “We believe that [altruistic modes of behavior] can represent a more stable, sustainable solution than the money-focused, model of competitive capitalism.” Why do altruists, humanitarians, and other so-called do-gooders believe in such a thing? It is neither a rational nor an evidence-based conviction. All logic and fact point to the inescapable conclusion, as Hayek puts it, that to follow the altruist-socialist path “would destroy much of present humankind and impoverish much of the rest.” So it should be obvious that these altruists, these humanitarians, these socialists (call them what you will: the name’s not important, only the thing in reality that the name represents) are animated by a non-rational source—that is, by (again to quote Hayek) “an atavistic longing after the life of the noble savage”—a life which is, after all, more more gratifying to innate human instincts and tendencies. These instincts and tendencies are not implanted in the minds of men by intellectuals following the pedant of Königsberg. Thousands of years of evolution put them there. Bad arguments against Kant in the manner of Rand will do little to mitigate their pernicious influence.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 26

Politics of Human Nature 10: Humanitarianism and cowardice. For Rand and her followers, it is quite obvious why altruism is counter-productive and harmful:

Observe what this beneficiary-criterion of [the altruist] morality does to a man’s life. The first thing he learns is that morality is his enemy: he has nothing to gain from it, he can only lose; self-inflicted loss, self-inflicted pain and the gray, debilitating pall of an incomprehensible duty is all that he can expect. He may hope that others might occasionally sacrifice themselves for his benefit, as he grudgingly sacrifices himself for theirs, but he knows that the relationship will bring mutual resentment, not pleasure-and that, morally, their pursuit of values will be like an exchange of unwanted, unchosen Christmas presents, which neither is morally permitted to buy for himself. Apart from such times as he manages to perform some act of self-sacrifice, he possesses no moral significance: morality takes no cognizance of him and has nothing to say to him for guidance in the crucial issues of his life; it is only his own personal, private, “selfish” life and, as such, it is regarded either as evil or, at best, amoral.

In Rand’s analysis, the practical effects of altruism are logically derived from her rather extreme definition of the term (i.e., that altruism means “ man has no right to exist for his own sake”). Since (as I noted in the previous post) few if any humanitarian/altruists would accept Rand’s definition, her analysis is of little value. It tries to determine matters of fact almost exclusively on the basis of logical deductions from principles hardly anyone holds, and which very few ever follow in practice. A more detailed examination of the actual facts will show that the practical effects of altruistic and other so-called “humanitarian” doctrines tend to run along somewhat different lines. If we examine what happens in the real world of fact when humanitarians dominate the ruling class of a society, we discover that the principle danger of humanitarianism arises, not necessarily from the “self-sacrificial” rationalizations expressed in extreme forms of the doctrine, but often from the cowardice of the typical humanitarian. For it would appear that humanitarianism holds a particular appeal to the pusillanimous type of individual. Humanitarian doctrines serve as a kind of cover or fig leaf for cowardice, as if the humanitarian is trying to convince himself and others that he appeases violent criminals and his nation’s most dangerous enemies not out of cowardice, but out of love and pity for mankind.

Pareto explains how these humanitarian sentiments can lead to violent overthrow of a ruling class:

Let us imagine a country where the governing class, A, is inclining more and more in the direction of humanitarianism…. Such a country is on its way to utter ruin. But lo, the subject class, B, revolts against the class A. In fighting A it uses the humanitarian derivations so dear to the A’s, but underlying them are quite different sentiments, and they soon find expression in deeds. The B’s apply force on a far-reaching scale, and not only overthrow the A’s but kill large numbers of them—and, in so doing, to tell the truth, they are performing a useful public service, something like ridding the country of a baneful animal pest…. The country is saved from ruin and is reborn to a new life….

If the class governing in France [under Louis XVI] had had the faith that counsels use of force and the will to use force, it would never have been overthrown [in the French Revolution]…. Had Louis XVI not been a man of little sense and less courage, letting himself be floored without fighting, and preferring to lose his head on the guillotine to dying weapon in hand like a man of sinew, he might have been the one to do the destroying. If the victims of the September massacres, their kinsman and their friends, had not for the most part been spineless humanitarians without a particle of courage or energy, they would have annihilated their enemies instead of waiting to be annihilated themselves. [§2191]

While Pareto might be criticized for seeming a bit too eager to see humanitarians exterminated, this does little to effect his main point. Nor should we let Pareto’s focus on revolutions cause us to think that the cowardice of humanitarians does not pose a threat to the West. In America there is little chance of a violent revolution. But this does not mean that the dominance of humanitarians in America’s ruling elite does not pose a threat to the social order. For external threats still exist and must be faced resolutely. And humanitarianism, even when it doesn’t completely oppose defending the country against its enemies, nevertheless cannot help undermining and demoralizing the will to fight.

In her political writings, Rand tended to focus almost exclusively on the “social legislation” effects of the humanitarian/altruist sensibility. While there exists an obvious and significant nuisance value to much of the laws and social programs favored by our dear humanitarians, the more serious threat stems from the squeamishness many of these humanitarians experience when it comes to using force to defend the social order from enemies both foreign and domestic. As James Burnham put it:

Most liberals [i.e., humanitarians] … are foxes rather than lions. They belong to the types, professions and classes who seek their ends by shrewdness, manipulations and verbal skills. What tends to happen, therefore, when liberals become influential or dominant in the conduct of a nation’s affairs, is that the government tries to handle the difficulties, dangers, issues and threats it faces by those same methods … and to shy away as much as possible and as long as possible from the use of force. In fact, liberals tend to employ the social agencies of force—police and army—as above all instruments of bluff. Their actual use of force, which will always be necessary no matter what the theory, becomes erratic and unpredictable, the result not of a prudent estimate of the objective situation but of their own impatience, panic or despair. [Suicide of the West, 293]

Now while Objectivists such as Peikoff seem to share Burnham’s disdain of the liberal humanitarian’s squeamishness about using force, Rand’s conviction that all social pathologies stem from abstract “premises” once again darkens rather than enlightening the understanding. Believing that liberal humanitarianism is caused by the acceptance of the premise of altruism (as defined by Rand), Objectivists think they can combat its pernicious effects by demonstrating the absurd and immoral consequences of the premise of extreme self-sacrifice. Unfortunately, humanitarian cowardice is not caused by the premise of self-sacrifice. On the contrary, cowardice, to the extent that it is not innate, is primarily caused by soft living. Cowardice can only be cured, if it can be cured at all, by strenuous discipline and experience in battle. Trying to change it by arguing against it’s so-called premises is silly and a waste of time.

It's Still Real To James Valliant, Dammit!

"[I]f Ms. Heller's private comments -- and asking me to read the galleys of her new biography -- are any measure -- PARC has forever changed the field of Rand biography.”
- The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics author James Valliant

Unlike James Valliant, we here at ARCHNblog have not seen the galleys of the new biography of Ayn Rand by Anne Heller (Ayn Rand and the World She Made), but from the early reviews it doesn’t appear that it is going to take the Valliant/Peikoff line that Rand’s one character flaw was her occasional anger. In fact, it seems that Ms. Heller’s portrayal of Rand will confirm the accounts of Nathaniel and Barbara Branden. Mr. Valliant’s opus has now joined the ranks of the Hitler Diaries, I Rigoberta Menchu and the Sokal Hoax in the annals of journalistic and literary embarrassments. This, combined with the growing scandal of the tampering at the Ayn Rand Archives, which another recent Rand biographer Jennifer Burns has revealed (here, and here for the story so far), and Valliant's own dubious adventures in tampering with the Wikipedia, his Peikoff-endorsed tome is looking like the crank apparatchik fantasia that we always said it was.

Here's a sample from a couple of recent reviews for a flavour:

Heller shows how frequently Rand lied, explicitly and implicitly, directly and indirectly, to others and to herself. Do we all lie? Sure. But your lie about the artistic ability of your friend’s 6-year-old is nothing like the lies that Rand communicated and believed. She made a profession out of lying to herself about the artistic and intellectual incapacity of 99% of the literary world, so she could feel at home in her own, increasingly isolated domain. And, as Heller’s work shows, there were many worse lies, and worse failures, than literary ones. Rand’s injustice and ingratitude, her intransigent emotional demands, her gross one-sidedness on countless emotional and intellectual occasions, appear in larger dimensions than ever before. All of it testifies to her desire to create the world she wanted to have, even when the evidence was all against her, even when she had to lie to herself and everyone else in order to do so. -Stephen Cox, Liberty Magazine, October 2009.

Valliant tried to present the Brandens as vicious attackers of Rand, seeking to distort facts in order to ruin her reputation. But, Heller’s biography, which I have read, doesn’t contradict the Brandens on any major statement of fact.
What struck me about Heller’s biography, is that while it reveals new details, and more information, there simply was nothing there that indicated the Brandens had been deceptive. -Classically Liberal

- Neil Parille

Objectivism & Politics, Part 25

Politics of Human Nature 9: Psychological source of humanitarianism’s failures. Over at YahooAnswers.com, someone calling himself “Mr. Blueberry” wants to know why Rand doesn’t tackle “true” altruism:

I just finished reading Atlas Shrugged and I couldn't help but notice something. Rand speaks out against altruism and uses various people in the book to represent them. The thing is, through Galt's speech and various revelations in the story, it seems as if these people never even legitimately cared for anyone else…. The characters in her story ... just seem like a bunch of vindictive parasites rather than the common definition of an altruist…. Granted, people like this do exist in the world, but they aren't really altruists.

By portraying altruists as “vindictive” parasites, Rand winds up caricaturing the altruistic or humanitarian type. While these individuals may have a vindictive, worm-eaten side to their characters, it would be unfair to paint them all black. Consider how altruism is defined over at altruism.org:

Altruism is a system in which everyone tries to think of others and care for them just as they care for themselves. It has been used since time immemorial within families, close friends and religious communities etc. but has rarely been conceived as applicable on a larger scale. We believe however, that it can represent a more stable, sustainable solution than the money-focused, model of competitive capitalism.

Now there is no reason not to believe that at least some altruists (in the sense of the word provided by altruists.org) are more sincere than not. At least some of these people genuinely wish to do good to others. As Pareto noted, “The intent of sincere humanitarians is to do good to society, just as the intent of the child who kills a bird by too much fondling is to do good to the bird.” Yet despite the best intentions in the world, the altruist, the humanitarian often does more harm than good. How are we to explain this?

We know how Rand explains this. She merely defines altruism in the most extreme way (i.e., “ man has no right to exist for his own sake”), and then attempts to draw the necessary conclusions from her definition. But since few, if any, altruists would actually accept Rand’s definition, her explanation of why altruism/humanitarism often harms the very people it sets out to help seems implausible. Altruists say they wish to help people. Why isn’t it possible for them to succeed in this aim? After all, one can certainly imagine an individual who, in his desire to help others, applies intelligence and the lessons of experience to the task and manages to attain his end. Yet so often we find the altruist, the humanitarian failing miserably to achieve his stated goal.

Those of a more cynical cast of mind explain this odd phenomenon by questioning whether there is such a thing as altruism:

Actually altruism simply does not exist on earth, at least in our present glorious age [wrote H. L. Mencken]. Even the most devoted nun, laboring all her life in the hospitals, is sustained by the promise of a stupendous reward—in brief, billions of centuries of undescribable bliss for a few years of unpleasant but certainly not unendurable drudgery and privation. What passes for altruism among lesser practitioners is even less praiseworthy; in most cases, indeed, it is too obviously selfish and even hoggish. In the case of the American reformer, in his average incarnation, the motive seldom gets beyond a yearning for power, the desire to boss things, the itch to annoy his neighbors. [Minority Report, 114]

Given the refusal by many of our altruistic humanitarians to own up to their failures, there is something to be said for Mencken’s analysis. There is often a self-indulgent, even a narcissistic quality to the altruists’ passion to do good to others. We see this clearly in the refusal of many humanitarians to accept criticism or acknowledge failure. Indeed, many of these people exhibit a kind of priggish self-righteousness that is as distasteful as it is counter-productive. The altruist’s emotional pathologies prevent him from pursuing his objective to help others in a rational way. This being the case, it would seem as if it were these pathologies that are the prime source of the harm caused by humanitarianism, not any abstract theory of altruism, as Rand proposes. Far too many self-professed altruists care more about preserving their inflated view of themselves than they do about the people they imagine they are helping. It is the narcissism, the self-indulgence, the vanity of the humanitarian that leads him astray; not any doctrine of the moral necessity of “self-sacrifice.”

The Objectivist Party vs "Toxic Randroid Cultists"

"Unfortunately, your movement has spawned Toxic Randroid Cultists who reject reason in the application of your philosophy and who treat your every word on every topic as if it were biblical truth" - Dr Tom Stevens, founder of and Presidential candidate for the Objectivist Party in a speech at Ayn Rand's grave in April 2009

The Objectivist Party is an interesting recent development (official website here). Founded in 2008 on February 2 (Ayn Rand's birthday) by lawyer Dr Tom Stevens (who sounds like an interesting fellow) The Objectivist Party is a would-be political force not only unaffiliated with the main players in Objectivism such as the Ayn Rand Institute or their arch enemies The Atlas Society, but, judging by the quote above, apparently openly rejecting them (Stevens' quote above is surely aimed at the ARI at least).

Typically, the party seems heavy on principle but light on policy. And how The Objectivist Party's interpretation of Randian doctrine actually differs from the "Toxic Randroid Cultists" version is not immediately clear - in fact, it is hard to see how anyone can avoid the deep-rooted cultic incitements built into Objectivism by its founder without ending up avoiding Objectivism itself. But perhaps The Objectivist Party's USP will emerge over time. You can follow Dr Tom Stevens' blog here.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 24

Politics of Human Nature 8: Asceticism. At one point in his Mind and Society, Pareto notes that the “principles from which the humanitarian doctrine is logically derived … express in objective form a subjective sentiment of asceticism.” And indeed, for Pareto, asceticism constitutes another important aspect in the humanitarian sickness which afflicts many individuals in modern society. But what, precisely, is this asceticism? Is it a theory or premises, as it is according to Objectivism, that has been absorbed into an individual’s subconscious, where it wreaks havoc on the individual’s "psycho-epistemology"? No, it’s nothing of the sort. Pareto describes asceticism as “sentiments that prompt the human being to seek sufferings or abstain from pleasures without design of personal advantage, to go counter to the instinct that impels living creatures to seek pleasurable things and avoid painful things.” Does this asceticism arise, as implied in Objectivism, from accepting the premise of altruism and self-sacrifice? Again no. Pareto regards asceticism as an offshoot of the residues of sociality.

Acts of asceticism are quite largely acts originating in residues related to living in society that continue functioning when they have ceased to have any utility and acquire an intensity which carries them beyond the point where they might be useful. The residue of asceticism must, in other words, be classified with residues of sociality, and frequently represents a hypertrophy of sentiments of sociality….

All [the] varieties of asceticism, when exacerbated by their [derivations], and when efforts are made to enforce them upon others, are the source of huge amounts of suffering that have afflicted, and continue to afflict, the human race. The fact that people tolerate such suffering, and sometimes even accept them voluntarily instead of rejecting them and stamping on those who promote them as on poisonous snakes, shows conclusively how powerful the sentiments corresponding to them are. Really they are perversions of the instinct of sociality, and without that instinct human society could not exist.

Now while an Objectivist can at least agree with Pareto’s negative assessment of these sentiments of asceticism, Pareto’s attitude toward their existence is very different from that of Rand and the partisans of her philosophy. Pareto sees these sentiments as part of a certain type of human nature. Most people have sentiments of sociality. Such sentiments are necessary to the social order. But unfortunately, in some people, these sentiments are perverted. Even worse, in many other individuals, there exists a kind of sympathy for such sentiments, so that instead of rigorously opposing the baneful practices that arise as a consequence of this asceticism, people tolerate them, sometimes even praise them. Since all of this is rooted in sentiment, rather than in theory, it cannot be eradicated by arguing with it. Indeed, like stupidity and mendacity, asceticism, along with sympathy for ascetic practices, has existed throughout human history and probably will always exist. It’s simply part of the human condition; and while sensible people will fight it the best they can, it would be foolish to believe that much progress can ever be made against this congenital disease of human psycho-pathology.

Now there may be some congenital optimists out there who are under the illusion that, because the ascetic practices of the pre-modern times have long ago disappeared in the West, that there actually has been progress against this sentiment. This is, however, a very superficial way of regarding the issue. The old practices of asceticism, it is true, have, thankfully, disappeared. But they have given way to new practices which, although not nearly as intense, are in some respects worse. The Christian ascetics were primarily inner-directed. They voluntarily chose to whip themselves or reside for years on the summits of pillars or engage in other equally senseless practices. Modern ascetics tend to be far more outer-directed. They wish to inflict their urge for self-sacrifice on others. This we see quite clearly, for example, in the countless follies of radical environmentalism, particularly in relation to the global warming hysteria, which is being used by our modern ascetics as a pretext for forcing pointless sacrifices on the leading nations of the West. One can hardly imagine a more silly, stupid, and senseless piece of legislation than Obama’s cap and trade plan. It would be much better for society if, instead of trying to pass such legislation, our modern ascetics, like the ascetics of old, preferred self-flagellation and years on top of columns.

Rand would have us believe that she provided the solution to this problem of asceticism and “self-sacrifice” in her arguments for egoism and against altruism. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Although Rand’s strictures against altruism, when they include the baneful types of asceticism and humanitarianism noted by Pareto, are largely justified, Rand is not content with confining her denunciations solely to the most palpable abuses. By polarizing the entire issue as a conflict between egoism on the one side and the most extreme and horrid form of altruism on the other, she denies (at least by implication) the more reasonable positions that flourish between these two extremes. Since most human beings are not capable of the sort of “rational” or “enlightened” selfishness advocated by Rand, the advocacy of egoism, to the extent that it has any influence at all, will likely cause more harm than good. A society that was either destitute or weak in such sentiments of sociality as charity and concern for the feelings of others would not be a pleasant place in which to live. Concern for others, desire for the approbation of others, admiration for charitable acts all serve as useful counterweights to the more selfish passions of mankind. Belittling or making light of these sentiments of sociality hardly helps advance the cause against the abuses of asceticism and “self-sacrifice.”