Ayn Rand versus Conservatives

Posted by $ MikeMarotta 10 years, 7 months ago to Culture
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 10 years, 7 months ago
    From Atlas Shrugged, I got the idea that Rand was critical of labor unions. The most memorable part of the book for me was the story of the factory where everyone focused on their sob stories instead of getting things done and that evil woman got off on listening to sob stories and generously dolling out the workers' money based on her judgment. I thought Rand was saying that was the inevitable result of labor unions. Was she just talking about certain types?
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    • Posted by $ 10 years, 6 months ago
      As you can see from her own words, she was not against unions per se. If business people can have a Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers, surely electricians and plumbers can have their own organizations as well. Granted, no one should be compelled to associate. The fact remains that in a complex industrial environment, experts in law and technology make a difference in production and safety.

      And in Atlas Shrugged, remember that Hank Rearden was on good terms with the head of his company's own labor union. The two men agreed that they had no conflicts, that their common enemies were Orren Boyle and Fred Kinnan.

      In Atlas Shrugged, Fred Kinnan is like an "unsaved" Gail Wynand. When the looters are talking themselves into Directive 10-289, he loses patience with Dr. Pritchett and Jim Taggart as they dialectically collude on the non-existence of consequences, saying "I know what I am talking about because I never went to college." He is a pure power looter, who says that for his own survival, he has to deliver the goods even to the lowest wharf rat. Not the best of cases, but among the looters and moochers he is perhaps the only one with a creditable backstory.

      (The story you are thinking of is Ivy Starnes of the 20th Century Motor Company. Read the book a couple of more times and you will have them memorized.)
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 10 years, 6 months ago
        I am planning to read it again. All of this means there are a bunch of reasonable, intelligent liberals out there who would love Ayn Rand. They wrongly believe the claims that Ayn Rand stood for rightwing politics, selfishness, and greed. There is a little rightwing politics in the two books I've read, but it's mostly against selfishness and greed. It's for having an open mind. It's against large institutions that insist things be done a certain way because that's how they've always been done. Liberals should like it every bit as much as conservatives.
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        • Posted by $ 10 years, 6 months ago
          I see this from another perspective.

          "Pursuit of Happiness" is not an idle phrase, but few modern liberals (progressives) can get over the intellectual challenges within Ayn Rand's works, which do, indeed, praise selfishness and greed (properly defined).

          My point is that -conservatives- misunderstand Ayn Rand. They see Atlas Shrugged the movie and maybe read the book but see it as a political statement. They do not understand the metaphysics and epistemology upon which morality and ethics necessarily depend.

          Conservatives are defined by FAITH and TRADITION, both of which Ayn Rand declaimed against.

          I do not know what you mean by "rightwing politics." To me it means taking control of every woman's reproduction, allowing (i.e. requiring) prayer in public schools, penalizing and then criminalizing households on the basis of sex and gender, giving tax breaks to corporations in return for "jobs", and benign racism.

          Take the last point first. Objectivism is a _moral_ philosophy and that morality rests on metaphysics. Describing the steel mill, Rand said that every girder was placed in answer to one question: "right or wrong?" Right and wrong are moral terms.

          You surely do have a _political_ right to become a heroin addict, but you will not find that defended anywhere in Objectivism. It would be irrational; and the irrational is immoral because it is anti-life. So is racism.

          But "right wing politics" includes decrying both "black racism" and "affirmative action" as "reverse discrimination" which is like arguing that alcohol is worse than marijuana (which it may well be); and so not only should pot be legal (agreed), but that we should all smoke it. Or that you have a political right to form or join a voluntary communist farming collective - which you do. So, if some people want to form such collectives, we should take up the cudgels on their behalf.

          Instead, according to Objectivist morality, a person committed to reality and reason would view racial discrimination like smoking pot and being in a commune. You would not associate with anyone who did those.

          You are 100% correct that Ayn Rand hinted at but did not deeply delve into the sociology of complex organizations. Corporations are just free market socialism, if you want to think of it that way.Commercial insurance is wonderful, but "group health plans" even if privately funded always rewarded people for sitting in doctors' offices at the expense of those who actually showed up to work. So, this fundamental collectivism that may come with our simian genes is a whole other kind of discussion. Ayn Rand's _The Fountainhead_ tells that as a story, but no explicit prescriptions followed.
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  • Posted by khalling 10 years, 7 months ago
    I was mulling over the gun control argument and wondered about Rand's opinion on a couple of things. Do you know if she ever wrote regarding the French Resistance in WWII? Also, how would she have felt, if alive, about the fall of communism in East Germany and Eastern Europe? The dichotomy of a tyrannical government and people who have defense is a clear argument for the Second Amendment.
    I am thinking about the private ownership of cannons and its partial ban in 1934. I have no idea what the taxes on owning a black powder cannon (which I think you can still own).
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    • Posted by $ 10 years, 6 months ago
      I know no references by Ayn Rand to the so-called "French resistance." She did say in interviews that fighting for your country against an invader could be an act of selfishness.

      I think that she pretty much predicted the fall of communism. We were propping them up, of course. More fundamentally, looter societies cannot prosper and so must collapse. The "muscle mystics" believe that possession of industrial tools gives them the power to produce. Of course, it does not.

      Note that she also cautioned against an armed revolt as not very practical. In fact, the failure of Shays's Rebellion and the success of Col. Hamilton against the Whiskey Rebellion pretty much made the Second Amendment moot. No revolt against the federal government has succeeded. In the War Between the States, the South had better commanders, morally committed troops, fighting a defensive war on home ground -- and they lost.

      The real battle is philosophical Win that one and the other is unnecessary.

      The American Revolution had a lot of support in Britain. We only wanted our rights as Englishmen. We did not see how we lost them when we colonized the New World. Two British generals refused commissions to put down the rebellion, one resigned from the Army completely rather than fight. William Pitt was not alone in Parliament. It is conceivable that short of independence, eventually, something like a Commonwealth could have been created, a truly global government based on rights. Parliament hired the king. They could fire him. Heck, they beheaded one. Just to say, work on the philosophy of Reality and Reason; the rest will follow.
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  • Posted by khalling 10 years, 7 months ago
    I enjoyed the article. I have a question:
    "Ayn Rand did not cite Max Weber or John Stuart Mill when she said that the government holds a legal monopoly on force."
    Can you explain this? It seemed a little out of the blue to me. Why would Rand cite either?
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    • Posted by $ 10 years, 6 months ago
      Well, Ayn Rand seldom cited her sources. She was more interested in developing a complete and integrated philosophy, rather that borrowing bits and pieces from others. Also, the citations she did offer were not always correct. ("A is A" came from Leibniz, not Aristotle.) But the fact remains that in the historical development of political science, after the invention of police departments in 1829, first Mill, then Weber, saw the monopoly on (retaliatory) force as the justification for government. It is a subtle point, somewhat different from the theories of Locke and Hobbs. Even Aristotle assumed that peace among persons is the goal of government, but for Aristotle that came about as a union among families.
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