Ayn Rand, Objectivism, Atlas Shrugged, et al.

[Zack]

These are mostly fair criticisms, but, seriously, guys, when did liberals all develop such a raging state-boner? You can act like you're above the lolbertarians, but if they allow you to forget three hundred years of civil libertarianism in a flurry of knee-jerking stateism, then you've already lost.

State is love, state is life.

True, liberals have always viewed the state as a necessary evil. My concern is that some are overemphasising the "necessary" and underemphasising the "evil".

I disagree. The state can be evil, but it is not evil in and of itself. This is my biggest issue with libertarianism, its presupposition that a smaller government is inherently better than a larger one.

 

[Traitorfish]

I disagree. The state can be evil, but it is not evil in and of itself. This is my biggest issue with libertarianism, its presupposition that a smaller government is inherently better than a larger one.

But, I'm contending, that's not libertarianism you're taking issue with, it's liberalism. Twentieth century progressives introduced(/borrowed from socdems) the idea that public services could constitute a positive good, that's true, but not the state itself, which remained only the necessary condition of those services and institutions. Very often they've found themselves defending public services from the state: defending the autonomy of the NHS from government interference, for example, is a big progressive issue in the UK.

 

[Cutlass]

I was talking about police officers killing other people. I'll address everything else later, but I did want to clear this up now.

And remains false. The police are not more, or even as, likely to kill someone as was true in centuries past. Though actual organized and professional police forces is a relatively modern phenomenon, the function is as old as dirt. It was formerly the local lord and his henchmen who did most of it. And they were notoriously unconcerned with whether any evidence supported the guilt of the person they charged.

Historically, the state has functioned as an oppurtunity for power as much as an obstacle to it. It just depends on who we're talking about; a mugger would probably consider it an obstacle, a Wall Street financier an oppurtunity. (A mafia boss might well view it somewhere in between.)

And this is why I favor as inclusive a democracy as can be achieved. The state functions as an opportunity for power the most effectively and efficiently when the fewest number of people have a say in what the state is doing. And the state functions the most poorly as an opportunity for power when the greatest and most inclusive number of people have a say in what the state is doing.

Ironic, then, isn't it that so many of the people claiming to be libertarians are right there with the conservatives in trying to minimize who gets a say in what the state does.

But you see, even now, while affirming your scepticism of the state, you're engaged in a thinly-veiled valorisation of it by juxtaposing it to a chaos of maelovelent "private actors". It's as if civil society doesn't exist! I mean, you say above, "the point of not having a state is power"- that's positively Orwellian. I understand the point you're trying to make, but liberals should be wary of this kind of thinking, deeply wary.

Back when Integral was posting here, and you may remember that he is a very mild natured guy, and more than a little libertarian in his leanings, he said a number of times, the essence of economics is that people respond to incentives.

People respond to incentives. Think about what that means. People always have imperfect information, and some people are always not rational in their decision making process. But, within those limitations, people respond to incentives. That is, if you know what the incentive is, then you can make a pretty fair prediction concerning how the majority of people will behave. So no, it is not Orwellian: It is human nature. Civil society may impose some incentive to not act in ways harmful to others. But there's no way to make the argument that it would prevent all actions of individuals which bring harm to others. For to make that argument, you have to fundamentally ignore all the many ways in which people harm others. What your civil society lacks is any enforcement mechanism to prevent or penalize those whose actions are harmful to others.

 

[Old Hippy]

But, I'm contending, that's not libertarianism you're taking issue with, it's liberalism. Twentieth century progressives introduced(/borrowed from socdems) the idea that public services could constitute a positive good, that's true, but not the state itself, which remained only the necessary condition of those services and institutions. Very often they've found themselves defending public services from the state: defending the autonomy of the NHS from government interference, for example, is a big progressive issue in the UK.

that interesting, I support the state (as a work in progress) because of the idea that public services can constitute a positive good, when you say defending those services from the state, I agree, but would say that libertarianism or its travelling compaions is the driving force behind the state, attacking things like the NHS, or the ABC (our BBC down here) the attacks on the NHS are usually something like the state has no bussiness in it and private opperators can do it better, why should tax payers have to support it, so it always ends up sounding straight out of the libertarian rule book.

at this point in time the state still remains the necessary condition of having this public good so it needs defending, even while changes are made to it, failing to do so does away with the public good aspect of it, and throws the gates open to the barbarians to be non bais about it....

 

[RFC_Viceroy]

Complex tools have a way of exerting power over their users, and the state is no exception. It imposes certain logics upon its users which are not always in keeping with liberal values. Liberals historically recognised this even when arguing for the expansion of the state, yet many contemporary liberals, such as yourself, seem so preoccupied with combatting the (faux-)libertarianism of the Reaganist right that they forget it.

@TF- When you say "faux-libertarianism" what do you mean? Do you mean people like Reagan who claimed to be libertarian but were actually just conservatives? Do you consider Rothbardians to be libertarians?

 

[classical_hero]

that interesting, I support the state (as a work in progress) because of the idea that public services can constitute a positive good, when you say defending those services from the state, I agree, but would say that libertarianism or its travelling compaions is the driving force behind the state, attacking things like the NHS, or the ABC (our BBC down here) the attacks on the NHS are usually something like the state has no bussiness in it and private opperators can do it better, why should tax payers have to support it, so it always ends up sounding straight out of the libertarian rule book.

I have never understood why the government should be funding the media in the first place. The media should be a brake to the government, not an arm of it.

 

[Cutlass]

I have never understood why the government should be funding the media in the first place. The media should be a brake to the government, not an arm of it.

Ironically, the publicly funded media does a better job of that than the privately funded media....

 

[KMRblue1027]

I have never understood why the government should be funding the media in the first place. The media should be a brake to the government, not an arm of it.

Because privatized media isn't required to be factually accurate? BBC and NPR are objectively superior to the likes of CNN, Fox or MSNBC.

 

[Truronian]

I have never understood why the government should be funding the media in the first place. The media should be a brake to the government, not an arm of it.

The trick is government funded and not government run. Government funded media is great; such tends to fairly unbiased in Western countries a it answers to the public rather than individuals.

 

[Tahuti]

Ironically, the publicly funded media does a better job of that than the privately funded media....

Because privatized media isn't required to be factually accurate? BBC and NPR are objectively superior to the likes of CNN, Fox or MSNBC.

I wouldn't say superior in the content, though definitely superior in the quality in how it is brought. Publicly funded media are free from braindead commercial pressures, so it is naturally going to be more hi-brow. However, using better language, more details doesn't change that fundamental challenge to the prevailing dogma is NOT offered. In fact, all news media in general is going to condition us to think inside the boundaries of liberal democratic thought, though it is collectively our fault for buying this stuff.

 

[Bootstoots]

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[Cutlass]

We need to get some of those 'connected to reality' ones in here, because this is so easy it isn't even any fun.

Thinking about this, the person somewhat active on OT these days who could probably make the most articulate case for liberty is IglooDude. So you could try to talk to him.

 

[Diavolo Rosso]

I found objectivism through Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series (which I love, but his recent stuff that came after is a little disappointing). If I were to just take objectivism as what I found in his books, I would be a proponent of it. But after picking up Fountainhead and researching Ayn Rand herself I find her unlikable and an extremist. I like the ideas through the lens of the Sword of Truth, though, and have trouble reconciling the two. So what I'm putting forward is this, is there a way to have a coherent philosophy of objectivist ideas without taking it to some of its negative extremes?

 

[jackelgull]

You learned objectivism through the Sword of Truth and you liked it? You actually liked the series, when I doubt there was one sentence put together that had thought or creativity behind it? Where a character makes a statue of himself being awesome and inspires a revolution in perhaps one of the stupidest plot twists in literary history? Where a chicken is the incarnation of evil? Where the main character is a bully and a sociopath, and not only to the people who refuse to kiss his feet, but even to those loyal to him-I mean he basically abandoned his army because he thought they didn't value the freedom they were fighting for enough?

The Sword of Truth had all of Ayn Rand's faults with none of her strengths mixed in with Goodkind's own brand of bile inducing hatred against the poor.

On another less important note, disliking an ideology, not because it disagrees with your values, but because you dislike those who are its face is not very smart. I mean, I don't like Osama bin Laden, but I am a Muslim. You just have to interpret the ideology with your own spin.

 

[Diavolo Rosso]

In Goodkind's world, the situations are constructed, and have to be taken in that context. So you can't say that Goodkind hates poor people, but you could say that Goodkind portrayed in Faith of the Fallen a poor populace whose majority believed they were not intrinsically valuable and that the state was to provide all their needs. You can't apply that to real people in poverty, as each person's life is a different situation that would be difficult to fully understand the causes and effects, and I think full understanding of a situation is necessary to judging it.

I thought the series was entertaining, and the characters of Richard, Kahlan, and Zed to be relatable and inspirational in most cases. I did not find any of them to be bullies or sociopaths. The part about abandoning his army is another fictional situation. It's constructed, not full of real people with differing lives and beliefs. In the story, the army was not composed of people who believed in freedom, but people who believed in another form of Ayn Rand's definition of altruism. They believed they had to fight and sacrifice for Richard's life and his vision, not for their own.

The statue in Faith of the Fallen was not a pure representation of Richard. There are even lines where it shows Richard studying other people's physiques so he could accurately recreate it in the statue. The inspiration for the revolution wasn't Richard, but the beauty of a noble human being, with the definition of having nobility being that one must live for themselves and aspire to a fulfilling life. The chicken was kind of dumb, but it wasn't an incarnation of evil, it was possessed by an evil spirit using an innocuous chicken to spy on Richard.

What I meant by not liking Ayn Rand is that she takes some of her founding principles and takes them to extremes which make Objectivism contradictory at times as she gives harsh judgements to people or situations, which if put into practice are out of line with the concept of negative liberty.

 

[jackelgull]

My biggest indictment against Goodkind isn't truly his ideology though which sucks, but because his prose is cringe worthy and makes me forget that I like books.

I find Richard and Kahlan to be a*******, a fact conveniently hidden because the bad guys are even bigger a*******.

Kahlan's half-sister, the Queen of Galea, has a breakdown (following a gratuitous gang-rape) and temporarily hands over the queenship to Kahlan, who promptly annexes Galea to Richard's empire. When their half-brother Harold comes to tell Kahlan they are not happy about this annexation, and that Galea wishes to remain neutral in the war, Kahlan vows to destroy Galea, murder all its citizens and send her sister back to the rapists. Harold is then murdered by one of the wizards and this is treated as a good thing.
While being tortured by the enemy, Richard used his magic power to kick an (evil) 8-year-old girl in the jaw in a convoluted escape plot; the phrase used by Goodkind to describe this power is "Richard's thing rose up in him".
In one book, Goodkind creates a nation of pacifists (led by a small boy) as a strawman argument to display why Pacifism is Wrong. The pacifists stage a peaceful demostration to stop Richard from going to war; Richard slaughters the protestors, who are "armed only with their hatred for moral clarity." Richard also kills unarmed council members.
[Sandstorm Reviews /QUOTE]
But this is getting slightly off topic, so I rest my case.

 

[aelf]

Everyone seems to talk about the state as if it were one monolithic entity with a will of its own. States are made up by people for the purpose of pooling together labor, resources and wealth and organizing their expenditure. So a state is made up of the interactions of its actors and thus magnifies their strengths, as well as their stupidity. 1984 will never happen, because mankind will never be smart enough to set up a perfect machine of oppression like that. This kind of reminds of Kurt vonnegut's book the Cat's Cradle because it is not evil that destroys the world, but human greed and stupidity along with selfishness mixed in.

That's not really what the genealogy of the state tells us, though. What you say is true if we see the state in historically abstract terms, as though people (or more, correctly, modern people) gathered together spontaneously and created the state. The modern state evolved out of older forms that were typically organised expressly for the purpose of asserting the dominance of a section of society (and still often is) - hence the preponderance of military spending in pre-modern state budgets, for one. Pre-modern societies that did not evolve modern states on their own had those transplanted in the forms of colonial governments and imitations of the modern European state.

I don't believe the state has an inherently noble purpose. What makes me not an anarchist is the fact that I believe there's no feasible way to effect significant change without working within the context of the modern state.

 

[brennan]

The modern state evolved out of older forms that were typically organised expressly for the purpose of asserting the dominance of a section of society

I'd call that flagrant revisionism. If you could go back in time and suggest such an idea to most historical rulers I suspect they'd think you were crazy.

 

[Flying Pig]

This is probably more a question for Traitorfish, but what precisely differentiates a 'proto-state' from just a state? At what point to chiefdoms and informal plutocracies actually become states?

 

[El_Machinae]

Another great piece of Objectivist sci-fi is John C. Wright's Golden Age trilogy. It's actually quite cool, since the hero is obviously a Randroid and ultimately succeeds, the author is forced to have the hero violate his own rules to succeed. It might seem pro-Rand on shallow reading, but is actually a subtle critique. (I'm not even sure the author realizes it's a critique)

Plus, it very excellently shows how accessing justice needs to be nearly free for the libertarian system to approach its ideal. Plus, IMO, a great and very imaginative story. One of my favourites.