The Ayn Rand Institute's War Against Reality

The forthcoming Jennifer Burns bio of Rand, "Goddess of the Market" confirms what many have claimed over the years including your ever-skeptical ARCHNblog: that the Ayn Rand Institute has been engaged in a consistent pattern of rewriting history in terms of both Rand's life and even literally her work. This pattern has been obvious for years, with examples ranging from the trivial (Peikoff fibbing about why Rand gave up smoking*) to the bizarre (James Valliant's "The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics). This is hardly surprising, as the ARI, while ostensibly set up to promote a philosophy, is in practice merely an apparatchik organisation with the purpose of sustaining Rand's mythology.

Here's the recent Laissez-Faire Books review that seems to be the first to confirm this practice of rewriting reality is real, and is significant. Key grafs below the jump:

One other area that I found of significant interest is Burns discussion of the various problems surrounding Rand documents made public by the Ayn Rand Institute, Leonard Piekoff’s organization. There has been a great deal of controversy over indications that ARI doctored documents. Some of this doctoring was admitted by ARI, which asserted that they merely made clarifications consistent with what Rand had intended to say. Burns, who has seen the originals, says this is not the case.

She does say that the letters of Rand, that have been released, “have not been altered; they are merely incomplete.” But the same is not true for other works of Rand, including her Journals. Burns writes, “On nearly every page of the published journals an unacknowledged change has been made from Rand’s original writing. In the book’s foreword the editor, David Harriman, defends his practice of eliminating Rand’s words and inserting his own as necessary for greater clarity. In many case, however, his editing serves to significantly alter Rand’s meaning.” She says that sentences are “rewritten to sound stronger and more definite” and that the editing “obscures important shifts and changes in Rand’s thought.” She finds “more alarming” the case that “sentences and proper names present in Rand’s original …have vanished entirely, without any ellipses or brackets to indicate a change.”

The result of this unacknowledged editing is that “they add up to a different Rand. In her original notebooks she is more tentative, historically bounded, and contradictory. The edited diaries have transformed her private space, the hidden realm in which she did her thinking, reaching, and groping, replacing it with a slick manufactured world in which all of her ideas are definite, well formulated, and clear.” She concludes that Rand’s Journals, as released by ARI, “are thus best understood as an interpretation of Rand rather than her own writing. Scholars must use these materials with extreme caution.”

The bad news is that “similar problems plague Ayn Rand Answers (2005), The Art of Fiction (2000), The Art of Non-Fiction (2001), and Objectively Speaking (2009).” Burns says all these works were “derived from archival material but have been significantly rewritten.” Rand scholars have long suspected such manipulation of documents; Burns confirms it with evidence she herself saw.

* We have a forthcoming article by Neil Parille noting some of the odder fibs the ARI have invented about Rand in order to polish the personality cult; stay tuned.

Another Rave Review for "Goddess of the Market"

Richard Baehr over at americanthinker.com has given Jennifer Burns' Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right yet another rave review. Baehr's review is interesting as an example of an attempt to co-opt Rand as a "conservative." "Burns describes these books [The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged] as the 'gateway drug to life on the right"' for young conservatives for decades," writes Baehr. "This is not meant as an attack, but to describe the power of Rand's ideas..." And: "Rand's arguments and beliefs, in particular her defense of capitalism and the free enterprise system ... can be used to shape the political debate for conservatives in the next few years." While it may be true some conservatives were influenced by these novels, it would be an error to regard Rand as a conservative. She was nothing of the sort, as her (and her orthodox followers') hostility toward conservatism easily demonstrates. Whether Rand's arguments for capitalism can be used effectively by conservatives is also debatable. I will have more to say on this subject in later posts, but I suspect Rand over-rated the importance of purely "moral" arguments based on the "evil" of altruism and the virtue of selfishness. These arguments may seem great to Rand's disciples and admirers, but many others find them merely strange and over-the-top. Most people are not very ideologically motivated and tend to be more impressed with pragmatic arguments. They are interested, not in what some philosopher claims is right and good, but with what political policies will work for them and their families.


Baehr's review also criticizes Rand's "purism," which, he says, "brooked no moderation around the edges of the philosophy she developed."

Ayn Rand trusted ideas more than political parties. But for ideas to have impact, movements need to have political power. The Democrats have been better than the Republicans in recent years at selling their message and disguising their identity (Obama as the moderate post-racial candidate who would end the partisan wars in Washington) and expanding their tent, in order to win elections. They have run pro-life candidates, military veterans, and small government types in conservative leaning areas, so as to make characterizations of the statist nature of the Party more difficult. In the debate within the conservative movement, at the moment the purists seem to be winning, driving out those who cannot check off all the ideological boxes. It is, I think, a recipe for intellectual coherence, and continued electoral defeat.

I believe Baehr is largely correct in his criticism. Intellectual purism doesn't work in a democracy, because the voters who decide elections tend to non-ideological and pragmatic in their orientation. Moreover, under a democratic system, compromises must be made in order to reach the consensus necessary to get things done in legislative bodies. Purism, when taken too far, serves merely to insulate and remove its proponents from the political process.

Out of Ideas

With the world in the grip of an unprecedented economic crisis, a barrage of hype from right-leaning media commentariat, and sales of Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" surging in the early part of this year (though it has subsequently dropped out of the Amazon Top 100), one would have thought this would have been the ideal time for the Ayn Rand Institute to undertake some striking new initiative to capture the commanding heights of the public discourse.

Not content with their Atlas Shrugged Pledge on Facebook (only 1762 takers since May, with even Yaron Brook producing a not very impressive 45 out of 68 pledges himself) the ARI is now attempting to raise $2,000,000 with the amazingly original aim of..yes, you guessed it...promoting "Atlas Shrugged".

Yes, it seems that half a century after its publication, it's telling that the only trump card the ARI feel they have remains Atlas Shrugged. Even when its selling in record numbers, the Big Idea for Promoting Objectivism always comes back to...more Atlas Shrugged. And if that doesn't work, throw more, more Atlas Shrugged at the problem.

Someone at ARI HQ needs to do the math. As we at the ARCHNblog have already pointed out, Atlas has already been read by some 18,000,000 people in the USA over the last 50 years, far more than any other allegedly philosophical work (unless you count the Bible). Yet it's produced only a tiny trickle of Objectivists to date - probably less than 100,000. And even that small amount is famous for its inability to agree on much at all. In fact the ARI's Never Ending Atlas Shrugged Initiative is feeling more and more like one of those Big Government projects that is hopelessly ineffective yet continues on for year after year because of the political commitments of the players involved. If the ARI was a commercial business, with a conversion rate of just 0.5% one suspects the Atlas promotion would probably have been cancelled long ago.

The question is why, if Atlas is such an ineffective conversion tool, the ARI stick to trying to flog it as their primary strategy. One can only suspect that far from being all about ideas, it's because they're all out of them.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 20

Politics of Human Nature 5: Men of force. Rand and her disciples wish to abolish the initiation of force. As John Galt puts it, “So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate—do you hear me? no man may start—the use of physical force against others.” Very well. How do you propose to stop the initiation of force, beyond merely haranguing against it?

Rand’s favorite method of dealing with this issue is to try to convince herself and her followers that the men of force don’t constitute that much of a threat. Consider the following argument:

The men who attempt to survive, not by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the method of animals. But just as animals would not be able to survive by attempting the method of plants, by rejecting locomotion and waiting for the soil to feed them —so men cannot survive by attempting the method of animals, by rejecting reason and counting on productive men to serve as their prey. Such looters may achieve their goals for the range of a moment, at the price of destruction: the destruction of their victims and their own. As evidence, I offer you any criminal or any dictatorship.

This is a typical appeal-to-sentiment argument, no different, in form, then what one would find in a religious sermon or a humanitarian tract. Rand suggests, without explicitly saying so, that men of force can only achieve their goals “for the range of a moment, at the price of [their] destruction.” Yet what exactly is she saying? That marauders only succeed for a few moments and then die? But that clearly isn’t so. And what are we to make of Rand’s “evidence” of “any criminal or any dictatorship”? Since there are many examples of criminals and dictators who succeeded for decades (can a decade qualify as “range of the moment”?), Rand’s evidence, far from proving her case, in fact undermines it.

Another favorite ploy of Rand in relation issue is her notion of the “sanction of the victim,” “The ‘sanction of the victim’ is the willingness of the good to suffer at the hands of the evil, to accept the role of sacrificial victim for the ‘sin’ of creating values,” writes Peikoff. “If some men attempt to survive by means of brute force or fraud, by looting, robbing, cheating or enslaving the men who produce, it still remains true that their survival is made possible only by their victims, only by the men who choose to think and to produce the goods which they, the looters, are seizing,” wrote Rand. An underlying implication of this view is that the one of the reasons why men of force have succeeded throughout history in looting the producing class is because producers have “sanctioned” the looting (by accepting the premises of altruism). If the producers would only withdraw this sanction and “fight” for their values, things could be different.

However, it matters little whether the producers condemn looting if they are not also good at fighting for their property. Unfortunately, the skills that go to making an excellent businessmen tend to be different from the skills that go into making an excellent warrior. Businessmen tend to be foxes, not lions; and as a business-driven society becomes wealthier and wealthier, manners soften and the will to fight weakens. Rand’s so-called “sanction of the victim” may be little more than a rationalization of cowardice made by individuals lacking the stomach or the ability to fight for what is theirs.

Another tendency in Rand’s thought regarding this issue is her view that these men of force are mere bullies who “feed on appeasement” and would “retreat placatingly at the first sound of firm opposition.” (Los Angeles Times, Nov. 11, 1962) While it is true that men of force “feed on appeasement,” it is not true that they can be counted on to retreat if they are firmly opposed. Neither Hitler nor Saddam Hussein retreated at the first sound of firm opposition, but kept fighting to the bitter end, even when the odds were greatly against them. Some of these men of force are obsessed with saving face, and would rather die then back down. This may not be a problem if these individuals can be conquered and defeated by overwhelming force; but what happens when this is no longer the case? What happens when these violent men with a mania for saving face get their hands of WMDs? What then?

The man of force cannot be so easily dismissed or explained away as he is by Rand. His collection of personality traits constitute a direct threat to Rand’s political ideals. Rand and her followers have not only failed to present a solution to the problem of man of force, they don’t seem to fully comprehend the seriousness of the threat.

Early Review of Heller Bio: It's A Rave

Sounds like Anne Heller's new biography is a must-read:

"What’s great about Heller’s book isn’t that it reveals more facts than Barbara Branden’s biography—although it does; there are many interesting new details—or that it is so well written; it’s that Ayn Rand And The World She Made is so honest, so, in a word, objective. Rand is a real person to Anne Heller—a brilliant, clever, sometimes over-the-top writer; an astonishingly original thinker with, alas, too little education in the history of philosophy; a passionate, intense, idealist who, sadly, imposed such a weird rigor on herself and others as to leave her dark and alone at the end; a woman who believed—and rightly so—in the indomitability of the mind and its capacity for greatness, but who was capable of breaking long friendships over trivialities, fudging the nature of her marriage, and watching hours of game shows and Charlie’s Angels. None of this detracts from her greatness; none of it detracts from her ideas. What it does is to take Ayn Rand gently down from the pedestal—not as a vandal, or as a worshipper would, but as one would who recognizes that she’s not a God, but a human being. And to Ayn Rand, “human being” was never an insult."

(hat tip Neil Parille)

Rand on Donahue 2

Somewhat less interesting segment, with Rand providing cheerful yet pro-forma replies to Donahue's limp economic arguments and an equally by-the-numbers discussion re: the existence of God. Worth a watch, though, for Rand's sudden burst of something like joie de vivre on the glory of life (as opposed to the afterlife). One gets a glimpse of the positive vision that charges the best moments of her work, and what must have made her so compelling as a personality in real life - as opposed to the feeble arguments, grating negativity and generalised megalomania that too often typifies the writing she left behind. In moments like this, one can see what optimistic thinkers like the Englishman Colin Wilson originally saw in her. Yet behind this flash of positivity there is still a dour drumbeat; the presumption of bad faith against anyone who disagrees with her:

"I don't give a damn about my critics...because I have not heard a good one...someone who would be honest and discuss the issues without misrepresentation."

This, coming from Rand, is rather rich.

The rest I will pass over to readers to comment as they see fit.

Rand on Donahue

Here's Ayn Rand in the first part of one of her two Donahue interviews. She leads off with what seems to me to be a perennially confused ethical position, namely that helping people is "fine", so long as you choose to do it yourself, but it's emphatically not a moral virtue.

Well what is it then? Is it a vice? That seems to be the implication of her following rhetoric (eg" cannabilism"). But she never comes out and says it directly, so it's hard to tell. Is it neutral or "arbitrary"? In which case how can it be "fine"? How can one pass any kind of judgement on it at all then? After all, in contrast to "cannabilism" she still is happy to use traditional terms such as "kindness" or benevolence to describe unforced charity which are undeniably positive. Or is this whole problem simply a "blank out" on Rand's part that she is verbally fudging her way through? It's a shame Donahue's line of questioning lacks precision.

Further, Rand's framing of the problem contains a vast omission - that is, the counterparty to the ethical situation, the recipient of the charity. Surely they would consider such charitable acts to be virtues? Surely they wouldn't of necessity consider them vices, or even neutral (though of course it is possible and even common to resent charity). And I'm still not clear how "arbitrary" or neutral moral settings sit with Rand's general "Either/Or" approach and insistence on uncompromising judgement at all times etc etc.

This issue, and the rest, I throw over to readers for comment.

PS: It's also worth noting her strong denial of Donahue's claim that he has "innate" tendencies. This denial is very much in keeping with Greg's thesis in ARCHN.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 19

Politics of Human Nature 4: Lions and Attila. In For the New Intellectual, Rand introduce the archetype of Attila, whom she describes in the following terms:

The man who lives by brute force, at the whim and mercy of the moment, lives on a narrow island suspended in a fog of the unknown, where invisible threats and unpredictable disasters can descend upon him any morning. He is willing to surrender his consciousness to the man who offers him protection against those intangible questions which he does not wish to consider yet dreads. [14-15]

In addition, Rand claims that Attila fears reality, that he holds his consciousness “on a subhuman level and method of functioning,” that his “brain is a jumble of concretes unintegrated by abstractions, that he is motivated, “not by thoughts, but by feelings and whims, and that he feels “secretly inadequate to the task of dealing with existence.”

By forming her archetype of Attila, Rand at least can be given credit for recognizing the problem posed by men of violence. But her description of this archetype, particularly in comparison to Machiavelli and Pareto, strikes one as a hopelessly distorted caricature—a product, not of honest reflection on the facts of history, but of mere wishful thinking and moral indignation.

Although Rand is guilty of grossly distorting and exaggerating the defects of the lion, of the man of force, this does not mean that men who correspond to this ideal type aren’t generously endowed with problematic characteristics.

Here’s a list of characteristics which often go hand-in-hand with the willingness and ability to use violence: (1) Faith and religion; (2) Obssession with “honor” and “saving face”; (3) Intolerance; (4) Willingness to use force to maintain various uniformities, such as customs and other “prejudices”; (5) Neophobia; (6) Belief in hierarchical domination (i.e., caste system); (7) Dogmatic adherence to “non-contextual” absolutes.

There exists no necessity, no heavy-hand of determinism, that forces these characteristics to go together; yet, because they are in many respects complementary, if you find two or three of these traits in an individual, you’ll probably find two or three more. There are probably profound evolutionary reasons at the bottom of this. During the long period when human beings foraged for food and chased animals with spears, tribes fought among each other for access to resources and women. The anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, who studied the fierce and violent Yanomamo people of the Amazon rainforest, documented that in their frequent warfare and raiding, men who had participated in a killing had more wives and offspring than those who had not. The initiation of violence, when pursued strategically by a disciplined, unified army of warriors, brings with it a genetic payoff that would be selected over evolutionary time. But note: it’s not just any type of violence that is selected. Random violence by lone individuals, or chaotic violence by random collections of individuals, will likely be put down by any group united in strong sentimental bonds. What might these bonds consist of? Religious and tribalistic sentiments, mainly. Tribes would be united by ancestor worship and filial and tribal bonds. Their willingness to fight would be buttressed by strong notions of honor and self-sacrifice. In short, here we see the evolutionary roots of Pareto’s group-persistence residue. All these characteristics—tribal bonds, mania for personal honor, ancestor worship (or worship of gods associated with tribe), discipline, submission to tribal ideals, and the willingness to fight and kill and die for the tribe—would provide an evolutionary advantage to those tribes that were strong in them, so that over time these characteristics would become conjoined and reinforced by natural selection.

Now fast forward to the modern era, when a new type of survival strategy has become prominent: the strategy of intelligence and innovation. It was difficult for intelligence to break free from the thralldom of taboo and violence, but once cunning individuals succeeded, through alliances of convenience with violent leaders, to build strong political and social communities, out of which the seeds of civilization could sprout and grow, intelligence became more and more important, until, in our modern, technological world, it has become paramount, the surest path to wealth and status. But even so, there still exist many individuals who have inherited the a genetic endowment fashioned by hundreds of thousands of years of violence and tribalistic, group-persistence sentiments. Many of these individuals won’t respond to “reason” or any other attempts at civilized persuasion. They resent the modern world and its emphasis on change and innovation. Lacking the intelligence and emotional make-up necessary to flourish in this world, they find themselves condemned to occupy a lower position in society while individuals less courageous, less religious, less “honorable” than themselves rise above them in the social scale.

How, then, does Rand propose to deal with these individuals? After all, it’s not as if she denies their existence: her archetype of Attila, distorted as it may be, shows that she nevertheless recognized that this ideal type posed a threat to her political ideals. In my next post I will discuss how she proposed to deal with the man of force and intimidation whom she derided as "Attila."

Objectivism & Politics, Part 18

Politics of Human Nature 3: Lions and foxes. Machiavelli, in The Prince, makes the following observation:

You must understand that there are two ways of contending, by Law, and by force: The first is proper to men; the second to beasts; but because many times the first is insufficient, recourse must be had to the second…. Seeing, therefore, it is of such importance to a Prince to take upon him the nature and disposition of a beast, of all the whole flock, he ought to imitate the Lion and the Fox; for the Lion is in danger of toils and snares, and the Fox of the Wolf: so that he must be a Fox to find the snares, and a Lion to fright away the Wolves…

Machiavelli’s archetype of the fox (roughly) corresponds to Pareto’s combination-instinct residue; while the archetype of the lion (roughly) corresponds to Pareto’s group-persistence residue. What Pareto adds to Machiavelli’s archetypes (besides more accurate delineation of the archetypes) is an important insight alluded to in the last post. Machiavelli’s ideal is that the Prince combine the cunning of the fox with the strength (i.e., the ability and willingness to use force) of the lion. “But such a happy combination occurs only for a few individuals,” notes Pareto. “In the majority of cases people who rely on their wits are or become less fitted to use violence, and vice versa.” In other words, people (particularly rulers) tend to be either lions or foxes.

Pareto developed this theory from his extensive knowledge of history. Particularly influential was the conflict between Athens and Sparta during the Peloponnesian War. Athens is a typical example of a state governed by foxes, while Sparta is a typical example of a state governed largely by lions. The cultural and political elite of Athens were remarkably individualistic and innovative; indeed, it was these attributes that helped make this city state the cradle of Western civilization—the birthplace of European literature, philosophy, and political theory. Sparta, on the other hand, was a cultural backwater. Innovation in Sparta was a crime. The individual counted for very little, his initiative strangled in a web of custom and religion. Yet in the Peloponnesian war, Sparta conquered Athens.

Pareto’s view of “instinct-combination” and “group-persistence” residues was partly devised to try to explain how a sophisticated, cultured, individualistic “advanced” society like Athens could ever lose a war to a “tribalistic,” uncultured, “primitive” society such as Sparta (or Macedonia and Rome, which also conquered Athens). It seems rather counter-intuitive that the more advanced polity should ever lose to the less advanced. Yet history is replete with examples of the less advanced conquering the more advanced in war. Here’s merely a short list thrown together at the spur of the moment:

1. Sparta over Athens
2. Macedonia over Athens
3. Rome over Athens
4. Rome over Carthage
5. Barbarians over Rome
6. Mongols over China
7. England over France (100 years war)
8. Spain, Austria, France over Renaissance Italy
9. Roundheads over Cavaliers (English Civil War)
10. French Revolutionists over Old Regime
11. Prussia over France (Franco-Prussian War)

The fact that there are many counter examples in the other direction is of no relevance to the point at issue. After all, one would expect the more advanced nation to prevail in nearly all cases. What is surprising (and in need of explanation) is how the less advanced ever prevails.

How would Objectivism explain the victory of the less advanced over the more advanced nation, of the lion over the fox? Objectivism would probably attribute it to bad philosophical ideas in the fox. Yet this is not convincing, because in most cases, the less advanced nation, governed by lions (i.e., group-persistence residues) will cherish even worse philosophical notions. The ideas predominant in Periclean Athens, whatever flaws or “contradictions” they may have exhibited, were clearly superior to the “tribalistic” and “superstitious” notions prevailing in Sparta. Athens was much more individualistic and “rational” (at least in its philosophy) than Sparta. So how did Sparta defeat Athens?

Pareto gives a couple reasons:

It is plain enough that what was lacking in Athens was such a balance between the combination instincts and the residues of group-persistence that while the combination-instincts encouraged adventure, the group-persistences would supplement them with perseverance and firmness of resolve required for success in the schemes imagined...

Athens had generals of the greatest ability at that time, but she could neither keep them nor take advantage of them…. Where sentiments of group-persistence are not very strong, people readily surrender to the momentary impulse without giving adequate thought to the future, forgetting the larger interests of the community under the sway of uncontrolled appetites. The Athenians cared little for their generals. They tormented them, persecuted them, condemned them, lost them through fault of their own. The lessons taught by past experience are of no avail for the future, there being no sense of group-persistence.

A third prominent reason for Sparta’s victory over Athens is the individualism prevailing in Athens (an indication of a weakening of group-persistences) eroded discipline and the stability of command (as is evinced by how the Athenians treated their generals). Discipline, hierarchy, willingness to serve a leader are qualities advantageous in battle (and which are strengthened by group-persistence sentiments).

A fourth prominent reason for Sparta’s victory stems from the courage and staunchness in battle provided by group-persistence residues. While the Athenians were capable of displaying courage in battle, no one fought as bravely or as with as much determination as the Spartans, who placed honor above all other considerations, including those of self-preservation. Pareto repeatedly identified group-persistence residues with the willingness and the ability to use violence. Where group-persistence residues are intense, people have a “living” faith: that is, they have ideals they are willing to die for (rather than just argue about).

In Pareto’s vision of human nature, rationality doesn’t have much to do with conduct, “for human beings are guided primarily by sentiment.” Therefore, in order to motivate human beings to defend their country and avoid the disastrous effects of pursuing self-interest in a non-rational way, some type of sentiment is required to spur “human beings to the required activities.” In this respect, “the chief utility of the sentiments of group-persistence is the resistance they offer to harmful inclinations of individual interest and to the impetuous sweep of passions.” But the very utility provided by group-persistence residues is itself problematic, since the group-persistence residues have produce other effects that Objectivists (among others) will deplore. These other effects be the subject of my next post.

The Pretenders: The Strange Case of "The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics" Continues

A few weeks back we reported on the strange case of one "IP160", the most prolific editor of Ayn Rand's Wikipedia entry with a record 1300 edits and a seemingly boundless enthusiasm for promoting James Valliant's fantastically weird book The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics (henceforth PARC). Due to a range of Wiki-violations including edit-warring, being "rude, uncivil and disruptive", and repeatedly removing verifiable content and replacing it with references to the above tome, "IP60" got themselves a 6 month ban from editing Rand's page, along with Valliant's PARC being removed on the basis of being unreliable. Yet no sooner had "IP160" been banned when there suddenly appeared a mysterious "Pelagius1", who also showed let's just say a special interest in the work of James Valliant and PARC. The ARCHNblog soon revealed that - surprise, surprise - "IP160" had the exact same IP address as the author of PARC, James Valliant. Those familiar with a sockpuppet/meatpuppet unmasking will know what comes next: under question at Wikipedia, "Pelagius1" then revealed that they "lived in the same house" as Valliant, that Valliant was one of their "expert advisers", and that Valliant "uses this account too. But never about himself". Why, heaven forbid!

The plot then thickens - actually "thickens" is far too mild a description. "Convulses into a typically Objectivist melange of evasiveness, dissembling, and intra-tribal politics" might be more accurate.

Following "IP160"/"Pelagius1"'s unmasking, a person as yet unnamed began spreading rumours via email that, rather than the Wikipedia ban on "IP160" and PARC being the result of a number of Wiki editors merely acting according to Wiki policy on sock/meatpuppetry, net nuisances, and conflict of interest, it was in fact being secretly orchestrated behind the scenes by a single evil mastermind: Barbara Branden. Quite how an aging woman with apparently limited internet skills was supposed to pull off this complex feat is unclear; but then as Russell Kirk once noted, if you believe selfishness is a virtue, you'll believe anything. One also recalls that the underlying thesis of Valliant's nutty book is precisely that Barbara and Nathaniel Branden do indeed possess such evil super-genius capabilities. This rumour somehow reached the ears of none other than Ayn Rand Institute founder and Branden arch-enemy, the equally aging Leonard Peikoff - also, by amazing coincidence, a friend of one James Valliant. Peikoff then wrote a personal letter to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales - also an Objectivist - echoing these accusations and trying to get the PARC ban reversed. He posted this, along with an odd kind of "fly-my-pretties" appeal to his fellow Objectivists to somehow help "reverse Wikipedia's decision in this issue." Jimmy quite rightly told Peikoff to go jump, and Peikoff shortly afterward removed the letter from his site without comment. Strangely, in addition to his obvious ignorance as to how the Wiki works, Peikoff seemed to not know that the antics of "IP160" were the cause of PARC's removal, and that Barbara Branden by her own testimony and that of the Wiki editors involved, had nothing whatsoever to do with this. One can only wonder who might have deliberately misinformed the hapless Dr Peikoff in order to have him attempt to have the anti-PARC ruling reversed.

Meanwhile, back in the Wiki talk pages, "Pelagius1" was, ahem, valliantly attempting to have PARC reinstated as a reference - no, more than reinstated. "Pelagius1" was now weirdly demanding that it was such an important book that every reference to a book by one of the Brandens at the Wiki should be matched with a counter-reference to the Valliant tome. To which the Wiki replied, um, "No." "Pelagius1" also rather desperately attempted to deny any conflict of interest, describing themselves as a mere "editor...someone who makes no money on the book". Finally, after some three weeks of such dissembling protestations, Pelagius1 finally 'fessed up - though oddly on Wiki editor RL0919's personal page rather than the main discussion pages - as being "someone related to the author"...wait for it..." (his wife)." It seems with the Valliants the truth literally is the last thing you get; ever since that final sheepish ellipsis, "Pelagius1" has fallen silent on the Wiki, contributing nothing more. No surprise there: now she's identified, Wikipedia Conflict of Interest rules surely apply, and she can hardly "avidly and shamelessly promote him." Simultaneously with his wife's somewhat obscure confession, Valliant himself reappeared on an Objectivist forum thread to make the same announcement, claiming it was all a terrible misunderstanding and that he knew nothing, nothing about it all...(It's also worth noting that the forum post that began this thread concerned the supposedly poor quality of Wikipedia entries on Rand, and was posted by Valliant on the very same day "IP160" was banned. Another amazing coincidence). Now, it could be that Valliant, who apparently has a chronic illness which prevents him from working, knew nothing of his wife's relentless promotion of his work under multiple pseudonyms over the preceding months under his own IP address resulting in the removal of his work etc. It seems to us at best highly unlikely.

But wait: just when you thought it was over, there's more. One of the long term questions that has hung over Valliant's book, and became an issue during the Wiki fracas, was whether PARC was a pay-to-publish deal or not. And while James Valliant has consistently denied this, as has his wife Holly/"Pelagius1", some time ago ARCHNblog commenter Michael Prescott uncovered evidence ("Vanity, Thy Name is Durban") that suggests PARC's publisher, the obscure Durban House, did indeed work on a pay-to-publish basis. Furthermore, the "Writer Beware!" blog, the purpose of which is to "shine a light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and pitfalls", has put Durban House on its "Two Big Thumbs Down" list. So clearly Durban is very far from the respectable publishing outfit the Valliants have tried to portray it as. Now the "IP160/Pelagius1" debacle has brought even more peculiarities about the relationship between Durban House and the Valliants to light. James Valliant's wife is one Holly Valliant, nee Holly White. Ms White runs a PR firm in San Diego, Holly White & Associates. It turns out that Holly White has been doing PR for both Durban House authors and Ayn Rand Institute types for some years, both before and after her husband's book coming out in 2005. But what's really unusual is that as early as 2002 she seems to have been reviewing books and commenting on Amazon under the pseudonym "Durban House Publishing." This is most clearly indicated by the fact Holly Valliant's email address is the distinctive marcusantonius1[at]cox.net, and the Amazon "Durban House Publishing" entity's nickname is marcusantonius12. The dustjacket on PARC also tells us one of the Valliant's dogs is named Marcus Antonius. Why does someone who is allegedly is not directly involved in Durban House nonetheless choose to review on Amazon under that pseudonym? Durban House's actual status as a functioning company seems also in doubt, with Holly Valliant/"Pelagius1" mentioning it is now defunct. And while James Valliant has insisted that PARC was objectively and "carefully" edited by Durban prior to publication, he declined to elaborate on who that editor actually was. He has asserted** that he "paid nothing" to have PARC published. However, this can nonetheless get engineered via vanity press fairly easily. For example, if a well-funded bookstore connected with the author was prepared to stock and order sufficient quantities of a certain item in advance, the author could be "paid" by the publisher from this pre-sale. But in this - purely hypothetical of course - case, the "payment" would simply be a money-go-round, not a typically commercial deal between publisher and author. And certainly Durban House appears to be no typical publishing house.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with self-publishing. "Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature" is itself a self-published book. However, being self published is an altogether different thing from being self-published and pretending that you're not. And if there's one thing that's evident in the ongoing strange and twisted saga of the Valliants and The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics, it's that there's been a whole lot of pretending going on.

*Apologies, for some reason some of the comment links on the Solopassion forum no longer link to the particular comment but just to the thread instead. Valliant reappears on p3, sorting by latest first.
**For the same reason, here I have quoted from a Solopassion post that quotes Valliant, but that I can link to directly.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 17

Politics of Human Nature 2: Residues. In my posts on Pareto I have introduced the concept of residue, which is the stable or common element in social conduct corresponding to some fairly permanent human impulse or sentiment. Pareto lists six types (or “classes”) of residues, but I will confine the analysis in this post to only two of them: (1) Instinct for combinations; and (2) Group-persistences.

James Burnham in his book The Machiavellians summarizes these two residues as follows:

Instinct for combinations. This is the tendency which leads human beings to combine or manipulate various elements taken arbitrarily from experience. Many magical practices are a result of its operation: the manipulations to control weather and disease, to bring good luck, the supposed efficacy assigned to certain numbers … and so on. Supposed connections are established between certain events, formulas, prayers, or words, and good or bad luck, happiness or terror or sorrow. At a complex level it is this residue that leads restless individuals to large-scale financial manipulations, merging and combining and re-combining of various economic enterprises, efforts to entangle and disentangle political units, to make and remake empires.

[These residues] also impel men to “system-making”—that is, to elaborate logical or rather pseudo-logical combinations of ideas and mental elements in general, to theologies and metaphysics and ideologies of all sorts. Thus it is this class of residue that chiefly accounts for “derivations,” expressing man’s need to make his own behavior seem rational.

Group-Persistences. When once any combination has been formed, forces come into play to keep that combination sustained and persisting. These are, one might say, “conservative” forces, present among animals as well as human beings, and sometimes referred to as “social inertia.” They express themselves, for instance, in the powerful feeling that the family or the tribe or the city or the nation is a permanent and objective entity. So strong are they that the dead and the not-yet-living are included in the supposedly persisting unit, and we thus have all the many forms of ancestor-worship, belief in immortality, and social provisions made for a posterity that will not exist until all living persons are long dead. “Family pride,” “class solidarity,” patriotism, religious zeal are all quite direct modes of these residues.

They account also for the feeling that “property” becomes a permanent part of a man’s being, so much so that certain objects are even placed with the dead body in the grave, or for the “love of the native soil.” In another direction, they give persisting life to abstractions and personifications. Gods and heroes and Platonic Forms and “natural law” and “progress” and “the state” and “the moral will” and many other creatures of the dynamic human imagination [such as Rand’s “logic”] are endowed with substance and enduring reality.

These [group-persistence] residues, as Pareto describes them, are usually accompanied by a willingness to use force in order to maintain the solidity and persistence of the entities in question—to “save the nation,” or the “true faith,” for example. [209-211]

It is important to keep in mind a few caveats when dealing with these two classes of residues. First, they neither apply to everyone nor explain everything people do. They are, however, important in understanding certain social phenomenon, particularly the tendency in society for ingenuity and innovation to conflict with faith and force. And second, these residues apply in varying degrees to different people. While most human beings manifest these two classes of residues in some degree, the tendency is for individuals to manifest more of one than the other. And finally, a word of warning: one should not get caught up with the phrases Pareto sometimes uses to identify these residues. When Pareto calls “Class 1” residues the “instinct for combination,” he is not introducing any kind of theory of instincts. He is merely noting that very many human beings throughout history behave as if there were such an instinct. Pareto is not terribly interested in the cause or origin of the conduct: only with the conduct itself.

There is one psychological assumption, however, that Pareto does make about his residues: namely, that they have a non-rational origin. Residues are ultimately the manifestations in conduct of motives, and all motives, as I explained in my last post, are and must be non-rational in origin. This does not mean that residues can’t motivate rational activity. The combination-instinct residue helps motivate scientific activity and business enterprise, both of which Pareto would regard as rational. But it also motivates alchemy, astrology, magic, and “metaphysics,” all of which Pareto would classify as non-rational.

The most important clash between Pareto’s theory of residues and Rand’s vision of human nature arises from the notion that these residues have alternating strengths and weaknesses that make them better fit for dealing with certain types of problems rather than others. Individuals, for example, who are strong in combination-instinct residue tend to be good at using their wits and are thus better fit in dealing with problems requiring intelligence. Individuals strong in the group-persistence residue tend to be good at using force and thus are better fit in dealing with problems requiring violence.

Rand, when inventing her heroes, ignored this notion that there trade-offs between various traits of character. She gave her heroes every trait that she admired regardless of whether they went well together or not. Thus her heroes are not only immensely intelligent, but, when called upon, they are courageous and (or so we would assume) good at applying force (one them, after all, is a pirate). Thus, her heroes can handle any situation, because they can always draw upon the requisite characteristic.

In the real world, however, it is rare for individuals to be good at everything. Just as there exists a division of labor in society, there exists a division of talents and capabilities. To reach distinction in the use of one’s wits, one must devote most of one’s time to cultivating one’s practical intelligence and judgment. To reach, on the other hand, distinction in applying force, one must devote most of one’s time cultivating one’s talents in developing skills appropriate for intimidation and violence. Now individuals will tend to cultivate their innate strengths, so that if an individual is born with a high IQ, he will tend to favor intellectual skills at the expense of athletic or military endeavors, while those who are innately athletic and courageous will tend to develop such skills related to bullying, intimidation, fighting, sports, etc. Individuals tend to develop those innate abilities and talents by which they can distinguish themselves among their peers and thus enhance their status.

The division of talents and capabilities plays an important role in the determination of the social order. A society requires a ruling elite that can draw upon a wide array of skills and abilities. Unfortunately, the tendency in societies is for elites to become increasingly dominated by the skill sets associated with either the instinct for combinations or group-persistence residues, rather than the skill sets for both.

Jennifer Burns on Ayn Rand and Economic Collapse

Professor Jennifer Burns, historian and author of the forthcoming "Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right", talks about the economic crisis and the current surge of interest in Rand.

(hat tip Neil Parille)

Objectivism & Politics, Part 16

Politics of Human Nature 1: human rationality. The achievement of Objectivism’s political goals rest on the assumption that most human beings are at least potentially “rational.” Nor is it enough for them to be rational merely about the means they wish to achieve; they must also be rational about the ends as well. Rand and her followers are somewhat confused on this point. Rand never explains precisely how one arrives at a rational end and even suggests that her ultimate end is (or is based on) a conditional! However, all of that is of little importance for the issue at hand. For the fact remains that, whether her followers recognize it or not, a substantive rationality (i.e., a rationality of ends) is necessary in order for her politics to work. In order to implement the Objectivist politics, it’s not enough that individuals become rational about the means by which they attain their goals: they must also be able resolve problems that arise from conflicting ends; and if there exists no such thing as a rational end, then there exists no rational means of resolving conflict, because rationality about ends is psychologically impossible. Faction becomes unavoidable and laissez-faire unattainable.

So is there such a thing as a rational end? We have covered this issue elsewhere; but since it is so important, it bears repeating. Can human beings pursue rational ends? Or is it, as Hume asserted, psychologically impossible for reason to generate rational ends?

The philosopher Arthur Lovejoy explored the issue in his excellent Reflections on Human Nature, where he comments on Hume’s discovery:

Hume’s fundamental thesis must have shocked some of his contemporaries… For while they had declared that the Reason seldom if ever does in fact control the passions, they had still assumed, in accord with the long dominant tradition, that it should do so, that control was the function for which it was intended… But Hume challenged the great tradition of moral philosophy, and asserted that it is a psychological impossibility for the Reason to influence volition…. Hume does not … mean by this to deny that the understanding has an instrumental use in the determination of conduct. Given a desire for some end, a reasoned knowledge of the relations of cause and effect may show how to satisfy it by adopting the means without which the end cannot be attained. What he is asserting is that “reason,” the knowledge of any kind of truth, is not a passion or desire, is not the same psychological phenomenon as liking or wanting something; and that a thing can become an end only by being desired. The role of reason consists in judging of propositions as true or false, as in “agreement or disagreement” with the matters of fact to which they refer. “Whatever is not susceptible of this agreement or disagreement, is incapable of being true or false, and can never be an object of our reason.” But “our passions, volitions and acts” are “original facts and realities, compleat in themselves… ‘Tis impossible, therefore, that they can be either true or false, and be either contrary or conformable to reason.” And since reason neither is nor can produce a desire, it cannot even tell us what we should desire, it cannot even evaluate desires; or if it professes to do so, it will only the more clearly reveal its irrelevance and impotence. You either have a desire or you do not; unless you have one, you will never act at all; and a desire can be combatted or overcome, not by reason, but only by another desire. [181-183]

Now the importance of this insight into human nature is that it emphasizes the role that motivation plays in human conduct. All human conduct is motivated by non-rational sources—that is, by desires, sentiments, emotions, call them what you will. In Objectivism, there exists a tendency to make light of motives. The issue, for the denizen of Rand, is not what motivates the individual, but why a person should choose one motive rather than another. Objectivism goes so far as to deny that man’s most basic choices can be explained at all. “Why he chooses one or another [motive]… cannot be further explained,” contends Peikoff. “That is what it means to say that man has choice and is not determined. A volitional choice is a fundamental beneath which you cannot get.” [“Philosophy and Psychology in History”]

This extreme view of volition is tantamount to a denial of human nature. For it challenges the view, shared by all those who have a “constrained” vision of the human condition, that most human beings are strongly influenced by innate tendencies and that if you understand the pathology of those innate tendencies, you can make educated guesses as to the likelihood of various types of social conduct and the probability (or impossibility) of various social and political ideals.

I have discussed the issue of innate tendencies in previous posts (such as here). Outside of Ayn Rand and left-wing social science, nearly everyone believes in their existence. In the last half century, behavioral science has further strengthened the case for these tendencies. Indeed, to deny them is to be guilty of a kind of scientific illiteracy, not very different from denying the theory of relativity or the experimental success of quantum mechanics.

Once we have established the reality of innate tendencies, the next step is to investigate what those tendencies are and how they effect the social and political order. That will be the subject of the next half dozen or so “Objectivism and Politics” posts.

Charlie's Atlas

Ayn Rand was well known to be a fan of '70s TV show Charlie's Angels. But what's lesser known was that she approached the show's main attraction, the late Farrah Fawcett Majors, for the role of Dagny Taggart in a proposed mini-series of her novel Atlas Shrugged. Makes a strange kind of sense; Rand had a thing for critically underrated blondes, and the disembodied voice of John Galt finds a distinct echo in the speakerphone commands of the mysterious Charlie. Anyway, one thing's for sure: Farrah would have been a way cooler choice than Angelina Jolie.

Ayn Rand Contra Evolutionary Dynamics

Writer and philosopher Stefan Pernar (from www.jame5.com and www.rationalmorality.info) believes he has found a serious flaw in Rand's ethics. I will let Mr. Pernar explain his point of view in his own words:

When I started to research Objectivism, I was very excited. Ayn Rand’s philosophy seemed to be founded on axioms that are very similar to mine — namely the axiom of existence in the form of “existence exists” from which Rand derives life as the ultimate value (from Wikipedia):

According to Rand, “it is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible,” and, “the fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do.” She writes: “there is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or non-existence—and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action… It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death…” The survival of the organism is the ultimate value to which all of the organism’s activities are aimed, the end served by all of its lesser values.

She continues to argue as following:

As with any other organism, human survival cannot be achieved randomly. The requirements of man’s life first must be discovered and then consciously adhered to by means of principles. This is why human beings require a science of ethics. The purpose of a moral code, Rand held, is to provide the principles by reference to which man can achieve the values his survival requires. Rand summarizes:

“If [man] chooses to live, a rational ethics will tell him what principles of action are required to implement his choice. If he does not choose to live, nature will take its course. Reality confronts a man with a great many ‘must’s,’ but all of them are conditional: the formula of realistic necessity is: ‘you must, if -’ and the if stands for man’s choice: ‘if you want to achieve a certain goal’”

So far so good. However, it is the next step that leads her to advocate selfishness in achieving the goal of existence where she loses me. In this context I would like to put forward the following key quotes of hers to illustrate the Objectivist perspective.:

“Man knows that he has to be right. To be wrong in action means danger to his life. To be wrong in person - to be evil - means to be unfit for existence.” (source)

The second one is a quote that epitomizes Objectivist Ethics and the proclaimed Virtue of Selfishness:

“I swear — by my life and my love of it — that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” — John Galt, Atlas Shrugged

It is not surprising that since these postulates contradict my own concepts of morality as well as the centrality of compassion in it, I was keen to disprove selfishness as virtue using a third party, an ‘independent’ concept if you will. Well, meet the Price equation and how it applies to the evolution of altruism.

In this context altruism is defined as the genetic predisposition to any behavior which decreases individual fitness while increasing the average fitness of the group to which the individual belongs. Or in other words: a group with sufficient altruists will out-compete a group of egoists.

A similar example would be kin selection; and without wanting to get into too much details J.B.S. Haldane had full grasp of the basic quantities and considerations that play a role in kin selection when he famously said that:

“I would lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins”

However you slice it, the question remains how the Objectivist ideal of selfishness as a virtue holds up against these insights in evolutionary dynamics? In short: it doesn’t. Egoists can only exist as parasites in groups of altruists—period. Fully selfish groups would be out-competed over the course of evolution because they are simply “unfit for existence” to use Rand’s own words.

Valentin Turchin probably put it best when he wrote:

“Let us think about the results of following different ethical teachings in the evolving universe. [...] No one can act against the laws of nature. Thus, ethical teachings which contradict the plan of evolution [...] will be erased from the memory of the world. [...] Thus, only those [ethical] teachings which promote realization of the plan of evolution have a chance of success.” — Valentin Turchin, The Phenomenon of Science, Ethics and Evolution

Sorry folks — the math says Objectivist Ethics is not one of them.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 15

The Objectivist cure for faction. In Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Rand equates political faction (i.e., "Lobbying") with a mixed economy:

“Lobbying” is the activity of attempting to influence legislation by privately influencing the legislators. It is the result and creation of a mixed economy—of government by pressure groups. Its methods range from mere social courtesies and cocktail-party or luncheon “friendships” to favors, threats, bribes, blackmail. [168]

Rand, however, appears go beyond merely equating a mixed economy with government by pressure groups. She seems to have believed that a mixed economy is the cause of warring pressure groups; that, in other words, there would exist no pressure groups, no political faction, no competing political interests under laissez-faire capitalism, so that the problem of faction could be cured merely (per impossible) by instituting laissez faire.

What is wrong with this point of view? The main error is one of mistaking the effect for the cause. Faction (Rand’s “government by pressure groups”) is not the inevitable byproduct of a mixed economy; rather, a “mixed economy” is the inevitable byproduct of faction. As James Madison put it: “Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires.”

Rand’s cure for faction is no cure at all, but on the contrary, is the very cause of faction. Indeed, for Madison, there exists no cure for faction, because faction is “sown in the nature of man.” Madison therefore concludes that, since “the causes of faction cannot be removed, … relief is to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.”

What reasons are there to believe that Madison, rather than Rand, is right on this issue? Well, besides the testimony of history, we have the evidence of the science. As Steven Pinker explains in The Blank Slate:

Liberal and conservative political attitudes are largely, though far from completely, heritable. When identical twins who were separated at birth are tested in adulthood, their political attitudes turn out to be similar, with a correlation coefficient of .62… Liberal and conservative attitudes are heritable not, of course, because attitudes are synthesized directly from DNA but because they come naturally to people with different temperaments… But whatever its immediate source, the heritability of political attitudes can explain some of the sparks that fly when liberals and conservatives meet. When it comes to attitudes that are heritable, people react more quickly and emotionally, are less likely to change their minds, and are more attracted to like-minded people. [283]

In other words, political divisions are built-in: they part of the hardware of human nature and cannot be abolished by merely changing people's premises. There exists an ingrained psychopathology behind the phenomenon of faction that we will expore in the following "Objectivism & Politics" posts, which will cover the politics of human nature. It is on the issue of human nature that Rand’s politics goes awry. Human beings are not constituted so that they are likely to ever fully accept Rand’s political ideals. This is why her politics, in the final analysis, must be reckoned as “utopian.”

Cavewight's Objectivism Criticism

A belated shoutout to the blog Objectivism Criticism run by regular ARCHNBlog commenter Cavewight. This blog is of particular interest as Cavewight explains, he was "a one-time Randroid, and I was Leonard Peikoff's "number one fan" up to around 1998. I already knew, at that time, that Rand and co. were wrong about Kant (and about most other philosophers), but it took some more time for me to realize that they were just plain wrong about almost everything." His aim is to keep his critique of Objectivism focussed as much as possible on "facts and logic." Sounds good, we've added it to our sidebar.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 14

Interests and spoliation. In many of the previous “Objectivism and Politics” posts, I have slowly been building the case against Peikoff’s assertion that “Philosophy shapes a nation’s political system.” The main pillars of my argument are: (1) The influence of non-rational factors, such as Pareto’s residues, on political conduct; and (2) the inability to determine political ends via rational means (i.e., Hume’s is-ought gap). Yet we must consider one other major factor in the determination of political conduct: interests.

In society, the interests of men often conflict. The interests, for example, of members of the ruling elite often conflict with the interests of ruled masses. Since there exists no absolute harmony of interests, divisions exist within society that cannot be resolved by “reason.”

Few political thinkers have understood the fact of conflicting interests in society better than America’s founding fathers. As James Madison wrote in The Federalist:

The latent causes of faction are … sown in the nature of man…So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interest forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.

According to Madison, factions based on sentiments and interests are part of the human condition. There is nothing that can be done to make them vanish. They will always exist in society.

Objectivism attempts to counter Madison’s view of the inevitably of faction with the assertion “that there are no conflicts of interest between rational men.” [OPAR, 236] Now on the face of it, this seems like a hopelessly naive view. If you are an auto worker making $70,000 a year working in a GM plant, isn’t it in your interest for the government to bail this company out and allow you to continue making your handsome salary until you retire? If so, then your interest conflicts with taxpayers and consumers of automobiles. If you are a company specializing in environmental products, isn’t it in your interest to have the government support legislation which, in effect, forces businesses to become buy your products? If so, then your interest conflicts with consumers, who now have to pay more for products that fall under environmental regulation. If you are unable to afford health care, isn’t it in your interest to have the state force medical facilities to treat you if you are ill? If so, then your interest conflicts with taxpayers and with other consumers of medical goods.

So how does Objectivism deal with such conflicts of interest? By the very simple but controversial strategy of claiming that such interests are not “rational.” According to the implied logic of the Objectivist position, it is not rational for a GM autoworker to support the bailout of the company he works for, even if the only viable alternative for him is to take a low paying service job; nor is it rational for a company specializing an environmental products to support environmental legislation, even though, in the absence of such legislation, the company will almost certainly go out of business and its stockholders will come away empty handed; nor is it even rational for a poor person unable to afford health care to desire forced medical care on his behalf, even if the alternative means death. Consequences are of little importance in determining the rationality of interest. What is important is that individuals do no violate the political and social ideals of Objectivism.

One of the most critical assumptions behind the Objectivist denial of conflicting interests between “rational” men is the notion that it is not in the interest for one individual to exploit or despoil another because, sooner or later, this will lead to a complete despoiling of the productive classes, resulting in impoverishment for every one. While there is always a danger of the despoilers killing the goose that lays the golden egg, there is no guarantee that this will happen. All human societies, past and present, have featured a certain amount of spoliation of the many by the few; yet some of these societies have flourished for hundreds of years.

How is this possible? How can spoliation occur without wiping out wealth altogether? The main reason for this stems from a kind of asymmetry of motivation that exists between the despoilers and the despoiled. As Pareto explains: 


It is a curious circumstance, and one meriting attention, that men are often observed to act with much more energy in appropriating the property of others than in defending their own. As we have noted elsewhere, if, in a nation of thirty million, it is proposed to levy one franc per annum on each citizen and to distribute the total to thirty individuals, these latter will work night and day for the success of this proposal, while it will be difficult to get the others to bestir themselves sufficiently to oppose the proposal, because, after all, it is only one franc! Another example: it is proposed to establish a ‘minimum salary’ for the employees of public administration. The people who in consequence of this measure will receive an increase of salary are perfectly aware of the advantage this proposal has for them. They and their friends will exert themselves all they can for the success of the candidates who promise to provide them with this manna. As for the people who are going to have to pay for this salary increase, each of them has great difficulties in working out what this is going to cost him in tax, and if he manages to access it, the amount seems of small significance. In most cases, he doesn’t even think about it…. One of the hardest things to get tax payers to understand is that ten times one franc makes ten francs. Provided the tax increases occur gradually, they can reach a total amount which would have provoked explosions of wrath had they been levied at one swoop.

Spoliation therefore seldom meets with a really effective resistance from the despoiled…. Rules for the distribution of goods … have to be applied by human beings, and their conduct will reflect their qualities and defects. If today there are arbiters who always decide against persons belonging to a certain class and in favor of persons belonging to certain other classes, there will very likely be ‘distributors’ in this society of tomorrow who will share out the loaf in such a way as to give a very little piece to A and a very big piece to B. [Les Systèmes Socialistes, Vol 1, ch 2]

Now while Objectivists may, if they wish, denounce those who engage in spoliation as “irrational,” such condemnations are not likely to prevent the spoliation from taking place. The term “irrational” in this context is merely an epithet of abuse. Objectivists, when using it, are clearly involved in an argumentum ad hominem. If an individual is given the opportunity to enrich himself at the expense of more productive individuals, why is it rational for him to abstain? If selfishness is a virtue, shouldn’t an individual seek to enrich himself in any way he can? As long as runs no great risk of retribution, his self-interest would appear to demand the use of every means at his disposal.

Once we grasp the motivational and situational logic of spoliation in society, it becomes clear that, as Madison warned us, “the latent causes of faction” are in fact “sown” in the nature of man and society. Rand’s assertion that no conflicts exist between rational men is irrelevant nonsense. Because of the asymmetry of interests between the despoilers and the despoiled, it is idle to denounce spoliation as “irrational.” Whether irrational or not, those who benefit from it are not going to give up their ill gotten gains without a fight. This means that in every society there will always exist powerful vested interests that will use every means at their command to support spoliation (and oppose Rand's "laissez-faire"). In short, there will always be factions, including, most ominous of all, factions in support of spoliation. Nor will these vested interests go away merely because Rand claimed she solved the problem of universals. Reality doesn’t work like that.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 13

An Objectivist fairy tale. In previous posts, I have brought forth compelling evidence for the the view that neither "reason" nor abstract thought plays much of a role in politics. Leonard Peikoff's contention that “philosophy shapes a nation’s political system” must therefore be regarded as a gross exaggeration. Yet Objectivism has one more arrow in its quiver. In Peikoff’s Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, we find the following extraordinary assertion:

As long as men remain ignorant of their basic mental process, they have no answer to the charge, leveled by mysticism and skepticism alike, that their mental content is some form of revelation or invention detached from reality. This kind of viewpoint can go into remission for a while,…however if it is not burned out of men’s souls completely by an explicit philosophical theory, it becomes the most virulent of cancers; it metastasizes to every branch of philosophy and every department of culture, as is now evident throughout the world. Then the best among men become paralyzed by doubt; while the others turn into mindless hordes that march in any irrationalist era looking for someone to rule them. [88]

In other words, the reason why people allow themselves to be directed by their sentiments and interests, rather than by “reason” and “reality,” is because they are ignorant of their basic mental processes. In particular, they are ignorant of a “full answer to the problem [of universals].” “Most philosophers did not intend to invalidate conceptual knowledge,” contended Rand, “but its defenders did more to destroy it than did its enemies. They were unable to offer a solution to the ‘problem of universals,’ that is: to define the nature and source of abstractions, to determine the relationship of concepts to perceptual data—and to prove the validity of scientific induction.” [FTNI, 30]

So our knowledge, according to Rand, must be “validated.” We must actually know how we know. Our beliefs, our knowledge claims must have a foundation or justification. And not just any kind of justification will do. We can’t just assume that we are right, on the basis of a kind of pragmatic feeling or intuitive sense, based on experience and tradition. We must know the precise reasons why we know what we know. Nothing less will do.

What we are confronted with here is a particularly extreme and intense version of foundationalism, coupled with an equally extreme version of justificationism. All beliefs must be “validated” (which in Objectivism seems to mean: justified on the basis of “self-evident” axioms). Everything not proved is dismissed as “arbitrary”; and any protests that this demand is itself arbitrary are dismissed as the most hateful and nihilistic skepticism.

Ayn Rand is not alone in having this mania for proving impossible and unnecessary contentions. Many other philosophers throughout civilized human history (most of them, thankfully, forgotten) have been afflicted by various forms of this sickness. Charles Augustus Strong, an American philosopher (remembered today, if he is remembered at all, as the son-in-law of the great monopolist, John D. Rockerfeller), was obsessed with demonstrating how consciousness could originate within an unconscious world, and made himself unpleasant to anyone who, like his friend George Santayana, were never troubled by such trivialities. Another obscure philosopher, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, once famous for formulating the “principle of least action,” was obsessed with explaining the darker mysteries of Motion. The historian Thomas Carlyle has some trenchant criticisms to make concerning Maupertuis’ unfortunate obsession with Motion:

It is well known there have been, to the metaphysical head, difficulties almost insuperable as to How, in the System of Nature, Motion is? How, in the name of wonder, it can be; and even, Whether it is at all? Difficulties to the metaphysical head, sticking its nose into the gutter there;—not difficult to my readers and me, who can at all times walk across the room, and triumphantly get over them. But stick your nose into any gutter, entity, or object, this of Motion or another, with obstinacy,—you will easily drown, if that be your determination!

Carlyle here gets it exactly right. It is not in the least important for us to “solve” the metaphysical or epistemological difficulties presented by these so-call “problems,” whether of Maupertuis’ motion, Strong’s origin of consciousness, or Rand’s universals. Each and every one of us triumphs over the problem of motion when we go to the bathroom; we triumph over the problem of the origin of consciousness when we wake up in the morning; and we triumph over the problem of universals every time we use a general term to cover multiple instances. These problems, in short, are entirely contrived and artificial, arising out of false ideals concerning knowledge and propagated by philosophers suffering from being far too anal about trivial matters.

Yet in Rand, it is even worse. She is attempting to use the problem of universals as a kind of scapegoat to blame everything she dislikes in the world. I suppose we can give Rand credit for not choosing a race or an ethnicity or a religious culture for her scapegoat. This shows in improvement and refinement in scapegoat theorizing, just as rearing of domestic animals is an improvement and refinement on hunting wild animals. But that’s all that can be said for it. For in the end, Rand’s contention that most of the moral, political, and social problems of the world ultimately stem from the failure to solve the problem of universals is mere wishful thinking on an epic scale. It places Rand in the role of the great heroine who, in the words of Peikoff, “overturn[s] the reign of the evil and save[s] the world.” Anyone who could actually believe such a fairy tale clearly has no head for reality.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 12

Influence of sentiment on thinking In the last several “Objectivism and Politics” posts, compelling reasons have been provided for regarding most philosophical theories as mere derivations from sentiments. In this post, we are going to examine some of the scientific evidence supporting Pareto’s contention that it is not theories (i.e., derivations) but sentiments (i.e., residues) that are the primary determinant of ethical and political beliefs.

According to research in cognitive science,

most human beings earn a failing grade in elementary logic. But we’re not just frequently incompetent, we’re also willfully and skillfully illogical. When a piece of deductive reasoning leads to a conclusion we don’t like, we often rebut it with irrelevancies and sophistries of which, instead of being ashamed, we act proud. Recently, a new mortality study … reported that … the death rate among smokers was twice as high as that among nonsmokers. That night on television … a reporter was shown asking various smokers what they thought of the findings: one man sarcastically replied, “So nonsmokers don’t die, right?”—and looked immensely pleased with himself; a young woman, with equal self-satisfaction, said, “Nobody lives forever, anyway.” Such rebuttals are not at all unusual; many psychological studies have shown that smokers tend to reject logical inferences about smoking by means of various distortions and rationalizations. They may assert that the evidence is incomplete or biased, or cite the case of someone they knew who smoked heavily and lived to be ninety, or, like the man and woman on television, rebut conclusions other than the one that was actually drawn.

Similarly, most people are little influenced by the reasoning, however cogent, of campaigners, organizers, and other public persuaders. Jeanne B. Herman of the Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University has studied the reactions of people subjected to company and union arguments prior to voting on some issue, and found that few of them change their attitudes as a result of such exposure. By a variety of nonlogical cognitive techniques they “insulate” themselves from the reasoning they are exposed to unless it confirms their preexisting attitudes. To be sure, some part of every voting population changes its views in the course of a campaign, but the cause of shifts are factors such as personalities of the campaigners, changing economic conditions, threats or promises, and so on; the noble ideal of persuasion by means of the clash of ideas in the marketplace has little to do with it.

Even within the ranks of foreign-policy decision makers, rationality is the ideal but rarely the reality. The classic theory of high-level decision making views it as a process in which the theoretical rational man weighs costs against benefits and inexorably comes to the optimal decision, but many recent studies find that this is rarely the case. Political scientists Ole R. Holsti of Duke University and Alexander George of Stanford University have analyzed various examples of such decision making and found that only when a problem is trivial do foreign-policy decision makers behave rationally; far more often, such factors as stress, the complexity of the problem, and their own conflicting motives cause them to make decisions by irrational processes...

If we need any final piece of evidence that even fine minds are not so much let by logic as prone to bend logic to their own conclusions, look at the output of the United States Supreme Court…. The justices interpret the language of the Constitution in their own ways, so as to derive from it justification for their own social values. As [former] Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes said to William O. Douglas, when Douglas was new to the Supreme Court, “You must remember one thing. At the constitutional level where we work, ninety percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections.”

Thus there is yet another paradox about the human ability to reason deductively: those who are best at logical reasoning often use it—as the rest of us use illogic—to get where they want to go, rather than where reason would naturally lead them. [Morton Hunt, The Universe Within, 128-130]

What cognitive science has discovered in research accords with the experience of everyday life. Anyone who attempts to change people’s minds on any issue that is important to them will quickly find how difficult it is. The reason for this is quite simple: most people make up their minds based on their sentiments, and so they are impervious to logic. It is Pareto’s “residues” that are critical in determining belief and conduct, not the theories of philosophers and social thinkers, which are mere “derivations.” As Pareto himself puts it:

Theologians, metaphysicists, philosophers, theorists of politics, law, and ethics, do not ordinarily accept the order indicated [of residues being more important than derivations]. They are inclined to assign first place to derivations. What we call residues are in their eyes axioms or dogmas, and the purpose is just the conclusion of logical reasoning. But since they are not as a rule in any agreement on the derivation, they argue about it till they are blue in the face and think that they can change social conditions by proving a derivation fallacious. That is an illusion on their part. They fail to realize that their hagglings never reach the majority of men, who could not make head or tail to them anyhow, and who in fact disregard them save as articles of faith to which they assent in deference to certain residues. [Mind and Society, §1415]