Books – Dean Cook

The Basis of Punishment of Criminals When Reading Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand

The Basis of Punishment of Criminals, Based On My Reading of Ayn Rand’s Theory of Rights and Government

As far as I can tell, Ayn Rand did not discuss the details of government much beyond saying that it would have police, military and courts:

“The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.” (Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, emphasis added, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/government.html)

Since Ayn Rand said that there would be police, and did not give any other definition of what “police” are, we can assume that she generally accepted the role police play in contemporary society today, so long as that role was delimited to protecting rights.

The way police function today is by catching criminals, taking them to court for an adjudication of guilt or innocence, and then incarcerating those found guilty for a period of time. (Leaving aside certain petty crimes that only involve a fine, and assuming the death penalty does not exist.) Presumably Rand thought arrest and incarceration was appropriate, but how exactly does incarceration protect rights, and whose rights does it protect?

It does not appear that Ayn Rand ever explicitly discusses how it is that the police and the incarceration process protects individual rights. She says that the purpose of government is based in the right to self-defense:

“The necessary consequence of man’s right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.” (“The Nature of Government”, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand, emphasis added.)

I can see how an individual can prevent himself from being murdered by using self-defense. If the victim is armed, he can try to outshoot the person trying to murder him, thereby saving his life. If the victim is a quicker draw than the person attacking him, or just a better shot, then he can stop the attacker with a bullet. But, in the case of a person already murdered, he cannot act in self-defense, and the state cannot defend him, because he is already dead. How is the state prosecuting the murderer, after the fact, self-defense? It must be in the sense that every other living person needs to stop the murderer from killing again, and for their own self-defense, rather than the defense of the murder victim, who is beyond help.

Even for lesser crimes, what is the probability that the criminal will re-victimize that particular victim? If a bank robber robs a bank, wouldn’t he be more likely to rob a completely different bank in the future? The bank that was just robbed is more likely to take additional security precautions, so it would be smarter for the criminal to find a new target. Although the government is defending the bank already robbed, it is also protecting other banks that have yet to be robbed.

Also, this still doesn’t explicitly answer the question of exactly how does locking up a person convicted of murder help defend the still living, in the case of a crime like murder? (And, I am just assuming that Ayn Rand would be in favor of incarceration, because I don’t know that she ever explicitly says that this is how criminals should be punished.) I don’t think Ayn Rand explicitly answers the question of “how”, but I think I am able to see logical implications based on her writing. For instance, Ayn Rand said the following:

“If a society provided no organized protection against force, it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door-or to join a protective gang of citizens who would fight other gangs, formed for the same purpose, and thus bring about the degeneration of that society into the chaos of gang rule, i.e., rule by brute force, into the perpetual tribal warfare of prehistorical savages.“ (“The Nature of Government”, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand, emphasis added.)

So, it is “organized protection against force” that is the goal of government. Government is not primarily “organized revenge” or even “organized retaliation”. Government exists for purposes of protection. Only actions by government that protect against force are justified. But, what about the person already murdered? How can he be protected by government? Clearly, the dead cannot be protected, only the currently living. Whatever government does to the murderer is done to protect the currently living, not for the sake of the deceased.

I see only two ways that a government can provide “organized protection against force” in the case of murder, which is generally considered to be the worst crime:

(1) Government establishes a penalty for murder, and that penalty is always imposed, so that everyone is discouraged from committing murder. Government imposes a penalty to protect the currently living from being murdered in the future. The only way that penalty will work is if it is, in fact, imposed whenever a murder is committed. The government is threatening the use of force to protect the currently living. The threat of force by the government is not against any particular individual, but against everyone in society. Another way to look at it is that government promises or declares that anyone who violates individual rights by initiating physical force will be met with force.

(2) Government actually uses force to prohibit future crimes being committed by a specifically identified murderer. Government is actually imposing the force, rather than merely threatening the use of force, to protect the currently living from that particular, identified, murderer.

The first is the “deterrent” or “general deterrence” argument for punishment. The second I’d call the “restraintist” argument for punishment, although I think some legal philosophers might say this is “specific deterrence”.

I should note that I can somewhat see a third basis for how government can provide “organized protection against force”. It would be very understandable that the family and friends of the murdered person would want to enact revenge on the murderer by killing him. I doubt that this feeling is rational, but it is very understandable. It’s also very likely to take place if there is no organized government. By having an organized system of punishment, government can provide friends and family members of the victim with sufficient emotional satisfaction that they might be less inclined to seek revenge. I think this “retributivist” basis might just be a form of “deterrence”, in the sense that it discourages the victim’s friends and family members from seeking revenge against the killer.

Another point to note is that I don’t think the first two, and maybe not even the third, possible bases on which government imposes “organized protection against force”, are necessarily mutually exclusive.

Unfortunately, Rand does not give much in the way of detail about how government, and in particular, the police, will protect individual rights, other than to say that the police represent a delegated and organized use of force in self-defense against criminals. The logical implication seems to be that the police are not just defending the victim, who, in the case of murder, is beyond help, but everyone else in society that could be the criminal’s next victim. A further logical implication is that this organized use of force by police is in the form of incarceration, which serves the purpose of restraining the particular criminal from future crimes, and/or deterring future crime by others.

The Basis of Punishment of Criminals For Murray Rothbard

If my interpretation of the Randian basis for punishment, as lying primarily in “deterrence” and “restraint” is correct, then Murray Rothbard would disagree with Rand. (At the very least, I disagree with Rothbard about the basis of punishment.)

Rothbard explicitly states that retributivism is the basis of punishment of criminals:

“It should be evident that our theory of proportional punishment: that people may be punished by losing their rights to the extent that they have invaded the rights of others, is frankly a retributive theory of punishment, a ‘tooth (or two teeth) for a tooth’ theory.” (The Ethics of Liberty, Murray N. Rothbard, Chapter 13, “Punishment and Proportionality”)

Rothbard does say that the purpose of using force in retaliation is self-defense:

“Many people, when confronted with the libertarian legal system, are concerned with this problem: would somebody be allowed to ‘take the law into his own hands’? Would the victim, or a friend of the victim, be allowed to exact justice personally on the criminal? The answer is, of course, Yes, since all rights of punishment derive from the victim’s right of self-defense.” (The Ethics of Liberty, Murray N. Rothbard, Chapter 13, “Punishment and Proportionality”)

But, in many cases, the principle of “an eye for an eye” does not seem to have anything to do with anyone’s defense, whether that be the victim, or other people that the criminal might victimize in the future. The retributivist focuses on the punishment aspect, rather than the defense of others, and this seems true for Rothbard. For instance, he says that a person who has been assaulted should have the right to beat up his attacker in return:

“In the question of bodily assault, where restitution does not even apply, we can again employ our criterion of proportionate punishment; so that if A has beaten up B in a certain way, then B has the right to beat up A (or have him beaten up by judicial employees) to rather more than the same extent.” (The Ethics of Liberty, Murray N. Rothbard, Chapter 13, “Punishment and Proportionality”)

Although the threat of getting beat up might, to a certain extent, serve a deterrence effect, this is not why Rothbard advocates it. Instead, it is because he thinks the perpetrator of a crime should have the same done to him. (“A tooth for a tooth.”) To me, this seems completely senseless. How does the victim beating the shit out of his attacker, after the fact, help the situation? Also, how would this prevent the victim from being beat up in the future? With incarceration, the attacker is put in jail for a period of time, which better ensures the victim’s safety.

Rothbard does address the “deterrence” viewpoint, and another major modern school of thought, regarding the purpose of incarceration, which is the “rehabilitation” viewpoint. His critique of the “deterrence” viewpoint is that it would involve the use of levels of punishment that most people would regard as inappropriate or unfair. So, for instance, most people would regard shoplifting as a minor crime, and that the punishment should be very light. But, Rothbard says that if shoplifting were legal, then many more people would commit the crime of shoplifting than if the crime of murder were legal. He says this is because more people have “…a far greater built-in inner objection to themselves committing murder than they have to petty shoplifting, and would be far less apt to commit the grosser crime.” (The Ethics of Liberty, Murray N. Rothbard, Chapter 13, “Punishment and Proportionality”)

As far as I can tell, Rothbard provides no evidence that people would be more likely to commit shoplifting than murder if the two were legal. This does seem likely to me too, but I have no basis for saying that, other than I like to think that most people are not prone to commit murder. If there were no laws, isn’t it likely that people would kill or steal when they thought it would suit them? Does it even matter what they’d do if there were no laws? If we have a theory of rights based on the fundamental right to life, like Ayn Rand’s philosophy, then doesn’t that philosophical system say that murder must be worse than shoplifting, precisely because the former is an assault on the fundamental basis of rights? So, wouldn’t that be the basis of a system of proportionality, in which murder is punished more harshly than shoplifting? This would only seem to be a problem for someone with a utilitarian philosophical basis, which is what Rothbard is criticizing when he criticizes the deterrence school:

“Deterrence was the principle put forth by utilitarianism, as part of its aggressive dismissal of principles of justice and natural law, and the replacement of these allegedly metaphysical principles by hard practicality. The practical goal of punishments was then supposed to be to deter further crime, either by the criminal himself or by other members of society. But this criterion of deterrence implies schemas of punishment which almost everyone would consider grossly unjust.” (The Ethics of Liberty, Murray N. Rothbard, Chapter 13, “Punishment and Proportionality”, emphasis added.)

Clearly, Ayn Rand is not a utilitarian, but, as already discussed, her views on rights and the nature of government would suggest that “deterrence” is part of the purpose of incarceration of criminals. Incarceration would be for the purpose of protecting the rights of people living in society, as well as the original victim, if he is still alive.

Rothbard also dismisses the “rehabilitation” viewpoint because it would seem to lead to absurd results, like incarcerating someone for shoplifting for longer than a murderer, if it is determined that the murderer has been successfully rehabilitated and will not commit more crimes:

“…in our case of Smith and Jones, suppose that the mass murderer Smith is, according to our board of ‘experts’, rapidly rehabilitated. He is released in three weeks, to the plaudits of the supposedly successful reformers. In the meanwhile, Jones, the fruit-stealer, persists in being incorrigible and clearly un-rehabilitated, at least in the eyes of the expert board. According to the logic of the principle, he must stay incarcerated indefinitely, perhaps for the rest of his life…”(The Ethics of Liberty, Murray N. Rothbard, Chapter 13, “Punishment and Proportionality”)

Although I cannot find support in Ayn Rand’s writing for this, I believe “rehabilitation” does play a role in the length of incarceration of someone convicted of a crime, but not quite in the way that I think this term is used by philosophers of law. I think that the possibility that the convict can “rehabilitate” himself, due to the possession of a volitional consciousness means that the length of a prison sentence may be less than the convict’s life. Since people possess volition, even a murderer can change his thought patterns and his actions for the better in the future. I disagree that the government or society can “rehabilitate” a convict, but I think that the convict can “rehabilitate” himself. Lesser crimes, besides murder, are therefore likely to carry less than a life sentence, given the fact of human volition. I think the possibility of self-rehabilitation by the convict is a major factor to consider when weighing the proportionality of the punishment in relation to the crime. The fact of volition must be weighed, as much as possible, against the possibility that a person found guilty of a minor crime might go on to commit more serious crimes in the future, while at the same time, recognizing that the commission of a minor crime might be a “fluke” or a one-time event that would not be repeated by the convict. Additionally, someone found guilty of a murder, who is facing a life sentence, is likely to lie to get out of prison early, so making the determination that he is truly rehabilitated is not going to be easy.

Admittedly, unlike the retributivist system of crime and punishment proposed by Rothbard, determining the extent of the punishment in particular circumstances, along the lines I have proposed, would be more difficult. “An eye for an eye” has the advantage of being easy to implement. If someone is beat up, then they get to beat up their attacker, which makes assessing the punishment easy, albeit ridiculous and irrational.

A Comparison and Contrast of Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard On Warfare

Ayn Rand on Warfare

As far as I can tell, Ayn Rand did not write much about when a nation has a right to use organized physical force, on a mass-level, against other nations or other armed groups.

Her essay, “The Roots of War” discusses how Statism is the fundamental source of war in modern times. In that essay, she does not explicitly deal with when, and to what extent, a free or semi-free nation may use its military force. She does make it clear that a free nation should have a military, and that sometimes it should be used:

“Needless to say, unilateral pacifism is merely an invitation to aggression. Just as an individual has the right of self-defense, so has a free country if attacked. But this does not give its government the right to draft men into military service-which is the most blatantly statist violation of a man’s right to his own life. There is no contradiction between the moral and the practical: a volunteer army is the most efficient army, as many military authorities have testified. A free country has never lacked volunteers when attacked by a foreign aggressor. But not many men would volunteer for such ventures as Korea or Vietnam. Without drafted armies, the foreign policies of statist or mixed economies would not be possible.” (“The Roots of War”, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand, emphasis added.)

Determining when an individual can use force in self-defense can be quite difficult by itself. It becomes even more complicated when the issue is “scaled up” to a nation-wide or world-wide level.

Since I cannot find anything from Rand’s explicit writings on the conditions under which a country can use military force, I want to start by looking at her writing on when an individual can use physical force.

One passage that I have found helpful in making the distinction between the use of physical force in an improper way verses the use of physical force in a moral manner comes from her essay “The Objectivist Ethics”. In that essay, she discusses what is the difference between the use of physical force “in retaliation” and the use of physical force as an “initiation”:

“The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. A holdup man seeks to gain a value, wealth, by killing his victim; the victim does not grow richer by killing a holdup man. The principle is: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force.” (The Objectivist Ethics, Ayn Rand)

For Rand, whether force is “retaliatory”, which is moral, or an “initiation”, and therefore immoral, turns on her view of values, and who is entitled to those values. For Rand, a value is that which one acts to gain and or keep, with the ultimate value being “man’s life”:

“The Objectivist ethics holds man’s life as the standard of value- and his own life as the ethical purpose of every individual man.” (The Objectivist Ethics, Ayn Rand)

So, one must hold “man’s life” as the standard, and the purpose of holding that standard for each individual man is his own life. Values are those things which one must have in order to live. Thanks to their rational faculty, human beings can create these values in much greater quantities than they would exist in nature. (For instance, agricultural technology creates much more food per acre of land than would typically be found growing in a similarly sized area of natural land.)

If each man holds his own life as his ethical purpose, then the values he creates, are for himself and for maintaining his own life. In the case of using physical force, whether that force takes the form of a punch, a bullet, or a bomb, it is an “initiation of physical force”, if one is attempting to obtain the values which others have created for their own sustenance. It is “retaliatory force” if one is merely attempting to keep what one has created for oneself.

Something that is not quite captured by the quote from Rand above is the case of someone not trying to gain the values of others, like a bank robber. Some people are simply trying to destroy the values of others, such as a terrorist who kills for some obscure political reason, or a “serial murderer”, who may kill not because they gain any particular value, in any rational sense, from it, but to satisfy some psychological craving. In that case, I think she would still consider this to be an initiation of physical force because they seek to deprive others of their values. So, I think you could expand the concept of an initiation of physical force to include both the use of physical force to gain the values of others, and also to destroy the values of others.

At any rate, Rand’s point is clear. It is not the physical act, the use of physical force, that makes something an “initiation of physical force” versus “retaliatory force”. The action itself may look the same, and the context in which it occurs will determine whether it is “initiation” or “retaliation”. For instance, you cannot merely see a man shoot another man and conclude with certainty that the man who fired the bullet has initiated physical force. You would need to know something about the conditions under which that occurred. For instance, if it was revealed that the person who was shot was wearing a vest of explosives under his jacket, and had just expressed an intention to go detonate it in a crowded movie theater, the shooter is quite probably acting in retaliation against an initiation of physical force. In that case, the man wearing the hidden explosive vest has taken affirmative steps to kill a large number of people by putting together the explosive vest, putting it on, walking towards the movie theater, and expressing an intent to use the bomb. He has initiated the use of physical force. (Although the act is not completed yet.) He has started the use of physical force, and that physical force is directed at the destruction of other people’s values, in this case, their very lives.

For Rand, a nation or a society is nothing but a number of individuals:

“A nation, like any other group, is only a number of individuals and can have no rights other than the rights of its individual citizens.” (“Collectivized ‘Rights’” Ayn Rand, http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-ideas/collectivized-rights.html )

Therefore, a nation and its military has no greater rights than the rights of its individual citizens. What would be an initiation of physical force for an individual would be an initiation for a nation. Similarly, retaliatory force for a nation is physical force that is not aimed at gaining the values of others or depriving others of their values, but at protecting the values of the nation’s citizens.

Murray Rothbard on Warfare

Murray Rothbard seems to hold similar views to those of Rand when it comes to the state as nothing but a collection of individuals.

Additionally, he would hold that all states, insofar as they hold the exclusive right to the use of retaliatory physical force in a given geographic area, are illegitimate, but I am not looking to address his advocacy of “anarcho-capitalism” here. I am instead considering his views on warfare, within the existing framework of nations, as he does in Chapter 25 of his book, The Ethics of Liberty.

For instance, early in Chapter 25 of his book, Rothbard says:

“To be more concrete, if Jones finds that his property is being stolen by Smith, Jones has the right to repel him and try to catch him; but Jones has no right to repel him by bombing a building and murdering innocent people or to catch him by spraying machine gun fire into an innocent crowd. If he does this, he is as much (or more of) a criminal aggressor as Smith is.” (The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard, Chapter 25, Pg 190)

But, what if Smith deliberately hides in a crowd of people, and fires his gun at Jones? Can Jones fire back? Whose fault is it if Jones accidentally hits a bystander during the course of returning fire on Smith, when Smith deliberately used other people as cover? Rothbard does not address the issue.

Rothbard then “scales up” his individual scenario to a group of individuals:

“The same criteria hold if Smith and Jones each have men on his side, i.e. if ‘war’ breaks out between Smith and his henchmen and Jones and his bodyguards. If Smith and a group of henchmen aggress against Jones, and Jones and his bodyguards pursue the Smith gang to their lair, we may cheer Jones on in his endeavor; and we, and others in society interested in repelling aggression, may contribute financially or personally to Jones’s cause. But Jones and his men have no right, any more than does Smith, to aggress against anyone else in the course of their “just war”: to steal others’ property in order to finance their pursuit, to conscript others into their posse by use of violence, or to kill others in the course of their struggle to capture the Smith forces. If Jones and his men should do any of these things, they become criminals as fully as Smith, and they too become subject to whatever sanctions are meted out against criminality. In fact, if Smith’s crime was theft, and Jones should use conscription to catch him, or should kill innocent people in the pursuit, then Jones becomes more of a criminal than Smith, for such crimes against another person as enslavement and murder are surely far worse than theft.” (The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard, Chapter 25, Pg 190)

Rothbard never seems to want to address, in Chapter 25 of “The Ethics of Liberty”, to what degree, if at all, you can risk the lives of innocent people in defending yourself. If you cannot risk the lives of others at all, then there are very few cases where even clear-cut acts of self-defense are justified. A bullet could always go astray and hit an innocent bystander.

For Rothbard, exactly who has violated rights, if you are forced to defend yourself, shoot an attacker, and, for instance, the bullet goes through your attacker and hits someone behind him? Common law legal systems would likely limit culpability to what is ‘foreseeable’, or some other similar concept. This is the idea that whether you commit a rights violation has something to do with your intent, and/or what you could have expected to be the reasonable probable result of your actions. So, if a bullet goes through your attacker, makes a weird series of ricochets, and hits someone you didn’t even know was behind your attacker, you are probably going to be excused from any sort of legal culpability. (It should go, almost without saying, that nothing I say here should be construed as legal advice.)

My point is, your intentions, your state of mind, to some extent, matters when you use force. Why does your state of mind matter? I think Ayn Rand would say it’s because it points to your purpose in using force. If your purpose in using force is to protect your values, that is different from using force to destroy another person’s values, or to gain another person’s values:

“The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. A holdup man seeks to gain a value, wealth, by killing his victim; the victim does not grow richer by killing a holdup man. The principle is: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force.” (The Objectivist Ethics, Ayn Rand, emphasis added.)

Accidentally shooting a bystander while defending yourself from a robber is not an attempt to obtain values. This is not to say that all such accidental shootings of bystanders should be completely excused by the legal system. Maybe some particularly reckless acts in self-defense should cause some level of criminal liability, but the level of culpability is probably not the same.

When you shoot a hold up man in self-defense, and accidentally shoot someone else, your level of culpability is lesser (although possibly not completely excused). Why? because you were not seeking ‘to gain a value’. You were seeking to protect a value. Your intentions when using force matter.

What does this all have to do with warfare? It gives us guidance on how to look at uses of force by certain countries. If a country is attempting to kill enemy soldiers and accidentally kills civilians in the process, this is not the same level of culpability as intentionally targeting civilians, because the country is not seeking to destroy values. Furthermore, it may even completely excuse the unintentional killing of civilians, in some circumstances.

Go back to the individual level for a moment. Imagine if a criminal shoots at you with a baby strapped to his chest. You have no ability to take cover, and you cannot safely run away without getting shot, so you shoot back and kill the baby in the process of shooting the robber. Have you violated the baby’s rights? I think the answer is very circumstantial, but I can see a set of circumstances where you would have no other choice. (It’s an extreme, ‘lifeboat scenario’, admittedly.) In that case, the fault lies with the person who strapped a baby to his chest and then tried to kill you, leaving you with no other choice but to die, or shoot back.

More fundamentally, how is the risk that you might hit an innocent bystander in an act of self-defense different from the possibility that, for instance, your car might suffer a mechanical breakdown while you’re driving it, go out of control, and hit a pedestrian? Both are actions aimed at enhancing or promoting your life. Both could have unintentional and even unforeseeable, deadly consequences for innocent third parties. I do not think that others have a right to be 100% risk-free from your actions. If that were the case, then things like airplanes would have to be illegal. It’s always possible an airplane will malfunction, fall from the sky, and kill a family in their home. Airline companies, to a certain extent, put us all at risk of death from crashing airplanes.

All other people have a right to is that you will not: (a) intentionally use force to deprive them of values, nor will you: (b) use force in such a way that it would be reasonably foreseeable that the force would deprive them of their values. (Examples of such unreasonable uses of force would be things such as: driving a car at 80 mph through a neighborhood street where children are about, target shooting with your gun in a field that children are playing in, etc.)

Expand the situation of the criminal using a baby strapped to his chest as a human shield to the national level. If an organization of terrorists hides behind civilians, and then fires rockets at your country, can your army shoot back with rockets? Again, it’s going to be very circumstantial. Sometimes, the army might be able to stop the attacks in some other way, such as an anti-missile system. But, sometimes, the army may have to fire missiles back, and, in the process, unintentionally kill civilians. In that case, the fault lies with the terrorists, not with the army. The terrorists are no different than the criminal who tries to murder you while using another person as a human shield. The responsibility for the death of any innocents lies with the terrorists. For Rand, I believe the initiation of physical force, the rights violation, lies with the person who used other people as cover while committing acts of violence.

Rothbard, on the other hand, does not seem to agree with this. For instance, he considers all nuclear weapons to be illegitimate:

“…a particularly libertarian reply is that while the bow and arrow, and even the rifle, can be pinpointed, if the will be there, against actual criminals, that modern nuclear weapons cannot. Here is a crucial difference in kind. Of course, the bow and arrow could be used for aggressive purposes, but it could also be pinpointed to use only against aggressors. Nuclear weapons, even ‘conventional’ aerial bombs, cannot be. These weapons are ipso facto engines of indiscriminate mass destruction. (The only exception would be the extremely rare case where a mass of people who were all criminals inhabited a vast geographical area.) We must, therefore, conclude that the use of nuclear or similar weapons, or the threat thereof, is a crime against humanity for which there can be no justification.” (The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard, Chapter 25, Pg 190, emphasis added.)

First, it must be noted that this seems like a suicidal viewpoint. In a world where countries like China and Russia have nuclear weapons, to say nothing of North Korea and Iran, Rothbard’s apparent call for unilateral nuclear disarmament by freer Western nations would mean we’d be subject to nuclear annihilation at the whim of some dictator. But, more fundamentally, who has initiated physical force here? Is it the United States for threatening to obliterate North Korea should that totalitarian dictatorship attempt to harm our citizens, or is it the madmen (and women) in charge of that country? Does the United States gain a value in destroying North Korea’s ability to wage war against us, or does the United States merely preserve the values of its people -that is their lives, liberty and property?

(As an aside, I think Rothbard also forgets about a use of nuclear weapons that would not involve the death of innocent civilians. Imagine an island nation, in say, the East China Sea, that was being invaded by a much larger nation from the mainland. That invasion force would come in the form of a floating armada of ships. What if the island nation were to use nuclear weapons to obliterate the invasion force while it was still in the water? No civilians would be harmed, and the possession of nuclear weapons by that island nation would serve as a deterrent to invasion.)

Rothbard is also fairly explicit that all modern warfare is illegitimate:

“All State wars, therefore, involve increased aggression against the State’s own taxpayers, and almost all State wars (all, in modern warfare) involve the maximum aggression (murder) against the innocent civilians ruled by the enemy State.” (The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard, Chapter 25, Pg 193)

At root, I think the difference between Rothbard and Rand on the legitimacy of certain acts of warfare by freer nations comes down to Rothbard either misunderstanding, or explicitly rejecting, the fact that the distinction between an “initiation of physical force” and “retaliatory physical force” lies in what values are, and what ultimate purpose they serve. I think Rothbard desired to create a “libertarian” view of Rand’s non-initiation of physical force principle that is severed from Rand’s underlying view of values, and the standard of “man’s life”. I started reading Rothbard’s book, “The Ethics of Liberty” prior to October 7, 2023, but those events caused me to want to write something about his views on warfare in particular. In the future, I will turn back to a comparison and contrast of other features of his book to the ideas of Ayn Rand.

Three Different Methods of Presenting Material In An Introductory Biology Textbook

I have been reading portions of the textbook, Campbell Biology, 12^th Edition, Urry, Cain, Wasserman, Minorsky, Orr, as part of the second semester of a Biology for science majors course I have been taking at the local community college. The textbook has different approaches to presenting different concepts. Three of those approaches are discussed here. (These may not be exhaustive of the methods used to convey ideas in the book -they are just ones that I noticed as I’ve been reading it.)

First Method: Abstract

Some of the material is presented in a very abstract way. For instance, Concept 11.4 “Cellular response: Cell signaling leads to regulation of transcription or cytoplasmic activities” is discussed in the following way:

Note how this section used a lot of complicated jargon. It doesn’t explain how the process it describes could be related to any experiment or physical demonstration to show it working. It just abstractly describes how a cell responds to an extracellular signal that causes a particular gene in the cell’s DNA to start encoding for a particular protein. Your only choice here is basically to memorize the process described, learn the jargon, and then repeat it on a test.

Second Method: Experimental

Some other material in the book is more of a description of the experiments that led to a particular scientific concept. For instance, Figure 15.3, “Inquiry” gives the basic outline of an experiment that was performed to determine that a particular gene for a particular characteristic in fruit flies was located on the X chromosome. (A sex chromosome):

If you follow the explanation presented above, it leads to a very elegant, and easy-to-understand explanation of how they arrived at their conclusion, in my opinion.

Another example of the same approach is seen in a section called “Apoptosis in the Soil Worm Caenohabditis elegans”:

The above discusses an experiment biologists performed on a type of worm to study the phenomena of “apoptosis”, that is, when a cell is programed to self-destruct for the overall benefit of the organism. The above explains that scientists noticed that the “suicide” of cells in this species occurred exactly 131 times during the normal development of this worm. From this, they were able to determine which genes were involved in programing the proteins that cause cell death.

It does not give the specific details of how they determined these were the genes, but it has given a sufficient overall outline, that, for me, the concept was clear: There are certain genes that trigger, after a certain amount of time, and cause the production of proteins that tell particular cells to self-destruct.

Third Method: Historical

The third major method of presenting concepts in the book that I noticed could be described as a “historical” approach. For instance, Chapter 22 “Descent with Modification: A Darwinian View of Life” gives a very historical explanation of Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection.

It starts out by describing the history of biology before Darwin. For instance, it discusses Aristotle’s “scala naturae” by saying:

“Aristotle (384-322 BCE), viewed species as fixed (unchanging). Through his observations of nature, Aristotle recognized certain ‘affinities’ among organisms. He concluded that life-forms could be arranged on a ladder, or scale, of increasing complexity, later called the scala naturae (“scale of nature”). Each form of life, perfect and permanent, had its allotted rung on the ladder.”

It then goes on to describe the classification that Carolous Linneas came up with, which used a binomial, two-part system to name species. It then discusses the ideas of Georges Culvier, one of the first paleontologists. He noted that much of the earth was laid out with strata, or layers of rock. He also noted that more dissimilar life forms were located further down, in the older layers of rock. Then geologists started thinking that the Earth was much older than 2,000 years, which suggested there had been enough time for organisms to change from one form to another gradually over time.

The text then discusses a pre-Darwinian concept of evolution based on the idea that organisms that repeatedly use a particular characteristic make it grow stronger, and then that strengthened character gets passed on to their children. (Lamarckian Evolution) This turned out to be largely incorrect, but it was part of the “idea back drop”, or context, from which Darwin was thinking when he came up with his own ideas.

From there, the text discusses Darwin’s voyages on the Beagle, and how that allowed him to confirm the geological ideas of people like James Hutton and Charles Lyell, as well as Georges Culvier. The book then discusses the finches, with different beaks, that Darwin noticed on the Galapagos Islands, and how these birds were similar to a species of finch found on the mainland. This suggested they had come from the mainland, and had changed over time to adapt to the use of different resources. From all of this, Darwin came up with two general observations:

(1) Members of a population often vary in their inherited traits.

(2) All species can produce more offspring than their environment can support, and many of these offspring fail to survive and reproduce.

The book probably could have spent a little bit more time on describing the ideas of Thomas Malthus, which, it is my understanding, is where Darwin got the idea of resources being scarce, and that organisms reproduce past the “carrying capacity” of a particular environment.

The book then went on to say that, based on these observations, Darwin drew two inferences:

(1) Individuals whose inherited characteristics give them a higher probability of surviving and reproducing in a given environment tend to leave more offspring than do other individuals.

(2) This unequal ability of individuals to survive and reproduce will lead to the accumulation of favorable traits in the population over generations.

My point here is not to critique particular sections of the textbook. (Although my particular preferences in terms of how I think scientific material should be presented probably comes through here.) My point is simply to give illustrative examples of what I think are three different ways this particular Biology textbook presents material to the average Biology student. I am not a scientist or a teacher, so I will leave it to others to decide which of these methods of writing a Biology or science textbook is the best. Perhaps all have their place, but the differences in method of presentation should at least be recognized and considered.

“We The Living” Review – Rand’s Presentation of Life Under Communism

I think I read or heard that Rand wanted to write the “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” for Communism with “We The Living”. That is, a work of fiction that would convince people of the underlying irrationality and injustice of the system of Communism. This would be similar to how it’s said “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” moved people towards the abolitionist position and against slavery.

Ayn Rand certainly portrays the monstrousness of Communism with her novel, but there will always be a certain element of the left that will say that the Soviet Union was a perversion of “true communism”. (Rand had a great retort for that, from her later novel “Atlas Shrugged”. To paraphrase her: Leftists always say their gang will do it better.)

To what extent is what happens in “We The Living”, and what happened in the Soviet Union, a “feature” of Communism rather than a “bug”? In other words, to what extent are the social and personal tragedies that occur in the novel a logical consequence of Marxist/Communist ideas that would happen no matter who was in charge?

Marxist Psychology/Mindset

Throughout the novel, Rand illustrates the “Marxist mindset”. I’ll note two examples of that here. First is the tendency towards a sort of “inconsolable rage” that you often see on the left. An early scene from the novel really resonated with me. It is an attitude you see on college campuses and amongst black “civil rights activists”. It is an unquenchable rage that seems all consuming for these people. They can’t ever let something go, and everything is blown out of proportion:

“The woman in the red kerchief opened a package and produced a piece of dried fish, and said to the upper berth: ‘Kindly take your boots away, citizen. I’m eating.’

The boots did not move. A voice answered: ‘You don’t eat with your nose.’

The woman bit into the fish and her elbow poked furiously into the fur coat of her neighbor, and she said: ‘Sure, no consideration for us proletarians. It’s not like as if I had a fur coat on. Only I wouldn’t be eating dried fish then. I’d be eating white bread.’

‘White bread?’ The lady in the fur coat was frightened.

‘Why citizen, who ever heard of white bread? Why, I have a nephew in the Red Army, citizen, and ….and, why, I wouldn’t dream of white bread!’

‘No? I bet you wouldn’t eat dry fish, though. Want a piece?’

‘Why…why, yes, thank you, citizen. I’m a little hungry and…’

‘So? You are? I know you bourgeois. You’re only too glad to get the last bite out of a toiler’s mouth. But not out of my mouth, you don’t!’” (We The Living, Ayn Rand, Chapter 1, Part 1)

Notice how the woman with the fur coat could do nothing to console or placate the woman with the dried fish. First, her accoster criticizes the woman for having a fur coat. Then she says the woman in the fur coat is too good to eat dried fish like her. Then, when the woman in the fur coat says she will eat some of the dried fish, the proletarian woman becomes enraged for trying to take her dried fish. The lower-class woman is so filled with hatred and vitriol, she is inconsolable. Marxist thinking leaves people without the mental capacity to engage in logical thinking, with nothing but their rage remaining. I could imagine this scene playing out exactly the same between a black person berating a white person today on public transportation, after the left has imposed an egalitarian dictatorship on America -complete with reparations.

In fact, this sort of inconsolable rage is consistently excused and even promoted as a legal defense by the modern left. In 1993, Colin Ferguson, a black, boarded a subway train and killed 6 people and injured 19 with a handgun. His lawyers wanted to use a “black rage” defense, in which Ferguson was supposedly so traumatized by “racism” from society at large, that he was entitled to kill white people with impunity, or with a lesser degree of punishment than if he were white and murdered 6 people. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,980835,00.html

The scene on the train from “We The Living” reminds me of a recording I saw a few years back of Muslim and Marxist-thinking students who expressed the same inconsolable rage towards Chelsey Clinton after a shooting of Muslims in New Zealand. From 2:00 minutes to about 3:12 minutes, you can see this confrontation in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOkpBiINKRU

No matter what Miss Clinton tried to say in this video, the far-leftists berating her continued. Their rage was unquenchable. People like this in any sort of position of authority over the lives of white non-Muslims would be the worst sort of tyrants. Its why they’re willing to strap bombs on their chests and blow up innocent people in public spaces.

Prior to the shooting in New Zealand, Chelsea Clinton had criticized US Congress person Ilhan Omar for anti-Semitic remarks. The Muslim female in the video thought this meant Chelsea Clinton was somehow responsible for encouraging the shooting of Muslims that occurred in New Zealand. (Oddly, this Muslim female berating her doesn’t seem particularly devout. She’s not covering her head, which makes me think she’s more neo-Marxist than Muslim.)

I find this incident particularly notable because this was Chelsea Clinton, who presumably holds the same left-wing politics as her parents. The Clintons and their kind have done nothing but encourage the destruction of Western Civilization, but apparently not fast enough for the likes of the students in this video.

It’s not like these student activists were confronting someone like me. I actually think Muslims should stop being Muslim, and embrace secularism. I don’t view them as a racial group, since religion is chosen. Muslims merit discrimination by me for embracing an irrational philosophy. (Although I don’t advocate the use of physical force against someone merely for holding a particular set of ideas.)

Both the Muslim female verbally excoriating Chelsea Clinton and the proletarian woman eating the dried fish in “We The Living” harken back to the character of Madame Defarge from Charles Dicken’s novel “A Tale of Two Cities”. It’s someone who has emptied their soul of anything but a sense of grievance and rage at the “oppressor class”, that supposedly has caused all the ills and problems of their life. All that is left for such a person is a desire for score-settling for, mostly-imagined, slights.

Another illustration of the “Marxist Mindset” illustrated in “We the Living” is the Marxist view of ideas and truth. Marxists do not believe in objectivity. “Objective thought” is just the thinking of those who are in power.

For Marx, at least when it comes to normative concepts like “law”, “morality” and “government”, there is no such thing as “objectivity” -of “true” and “false”. All ideas are just a product of one’s “material conditions”:

“But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, &c. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.” (Communist Manifesto; https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/marx-manifesto; emphasis added.)

Recognizing this feature of communism, Rand included a subplot in which Marisha Lavrova comes and takes over one of the two rooms in Kira’s and Leo’s apartment. According to the law, since Kira and Leo aren’t married, they are each entitled to a room. However, Marisha is a member of the Communist Party, and her father was a factory worker before the revolution. When Kira and Leo take Marisha to court the following scene occurs:

“Kira and Leo appealed the case to the People’s Court. They sat in a bare room that smelt of sweat and of an unswept floor. Lenin and Karl Marx, without frames, bigger than life-size, looked at them from the wall….

The president magistrate yawned and asked Kira: ‘What’s your social position, citizen?’

‘Student.’

‘Employed?’

‘No.’

‘Member of a Trade Union?’

‘No.’

The Upravdom testified that although Citizen Argounova and Citizen Kovalensky were not in the state of legal matrimony, their relations were those of ‘sexual intimacy’…

‘Who was your father, Citizen Argounova?’

‘Alexandar Argounov.’

‘The former textile manufacturer and factory owner?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see. Who was your father, Citizen Kovalensky?’

‘Admiral Kovalensky.’

‘Executed for counter-revolutionary activities?’

‘Executed -yes.’

‘Who was your father, Citzen Lavrova?’ [Marisha’s father]

‘Factory worker, Comrade Judge. Exiled to Siberia by the Czar in 1913. My mother’s a peasant, from the plow.’

‘It is the verdict of the People’s Court that the room in question rightfully belongs to Citizen Lavrova.’

‘Is this a court of justice or a musical comedy?’ Leo asked.

The presiding magistrate turned to him solemnly: ‘So-called impartial justice, citizen, is a bourgeois prejudice. This is a court of class justice. It is our official attitude and platform. Next case!’” (We The Living, Ayn Rand, Chapter 14, Part 1)

Substitute “class justice” in the above quote with “social justice”, and I think this is where our own legal system is headed. It won’t be long now before being black, or gay, or a member of some other “oppressed group” is more important than any written law. (See my discussion of the use of “black rage” as a defense above.)

Rand had the judge in this scene acting strictly in accordance with the ideas of Marx, as discussed in the passage above from the “Communist Manifesto”.

Marx views the contents of the human mind, our ideas, as nothing but a sort of rationalization for advancing our class. For instance, when addressing some of the criticisms of communism, Marx notes that:

“The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.” (Communist Manifesto; https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/marx-manifesto)

Why does Marx dismiss philosophical and “ideological” criticisms of his viewpoint? Because all philosophy and ideology is nothing but rationalization for him. There is no such thing as “objectivity” for Marx and Engels:

“Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?” (Communist Manifesto; https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/marx-manifesto)

The predominate ideas of a society are nothing but the “ideas of the ruling class”:

“What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.” (Communist Manifesto; https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/marx-manifesto, emphasis added.)

Education of children is premised on the idea that some ideas are true, while others are false. It is also based in the belief that some concepts will help you to live your life better. You learn how to read because literacy is better than being illiterate. It allows for greater communication and easier learning. You learn arithmetic to keep a budget of your spending, and to determine quantities more quickly than you could through simple counting. You learn calculus to be able to determine the instantaneous velocity of a rocket to put satellites into orbit for tracking the weather. Etc., etc. But for Marx, all education is nothing but a perpetuation of the system of exploitation by the “bourgeoisie”:

“And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.” (Communist Manifesto; https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/marx-manifesto; emphasis added.)

Rand recognized that the Soviets viewed education as nothing but another means of propaganda because “truth”, as such, does not exist. She includes a scene where the new, Soviet education system is discussed. Kira’s mother has begun working at a Soviet public school (which are the only schools). She discusses how children are being taught under the Soviets:

“…what did they do in the old days? The children had to memorize mechanically so many dry, disjointed subjects -history, physics, arithmetic -with no connection between them at all. What do we do now? We have the complex method. Take last week ,for instance. Our subject was Factory. So every teacher had to build his course around that central subject. In the history class they taught the growth and development of factories; in the physics class they taught all about machinery; the arithmetic teacher gave them problems about production and consumption; in the art class they drew factory interiors. And in my class -we made overalls and blouses. Don’t you see the advantage of the method? The indelible impression it will leave in the children’s minds? Overalls and blouses -practical, concrete, instead of teaching them a lot of dry, theoretical seams and stitches.” (We The Living, Ayn Rand, Chapter 3, Part 2)

Schools under the control of Marxists no longer teach concepts and abstract thinking. The goal of education becomes the destruction of the “oppressor class”, however that is defined. Since all past thinking and ideas are “infected” with “counter-revolutionary” ideas to the Marxist, all thinking should stop.

Injustice To The Individual

The biggest injustice perpetrated by the Soviet state in the novel seems to be this: Attributing to children the status of their parents.

For instance, Kira and Leo were kicked out of school because of who their parents were. About halfway through the novel, all college students had to fill out a questionnaire:

“Newspapers roared over the country like trumpets: ‘Science is a weapon of the class struggle! Proletarian schools are for the Proletariat! We shall not educate our class enemies!’

There were those who were careful not to let these trumpets be heard too loudly across the border.

Kira received her questionnaire at the Institute, and Leo -his at the University. They sat silently at their dinner table, filling out the answers. They did not each [sic] much dinner that night. When they signed the questionnaires, they knew they had signed the death warrant of their future; but they did not say it aloud and they did not look at each other.

The main questions were:

Who were your parents?

What was your father’s occupation prior to the year 1917?

What was your father’s occupation from the year 1917 to the year 1921?

What is your father’s occupation now?

What is your mother’s occupation?

What did you do during the civil war?

What did your father do during the civil war?

Are you a Trade Union member?

Are you a member of the All-Union Communist Party?

Any attempt to give a false answer was futile: the answers were to be investigated by the Purging Committee and the G.P.U. A false answer was to be punished by arrest, imprisonment or any penalty up to the supreme one.” (We The Living, Ayn Rand, Chapter 16, Part 1)

Let’s assume, just for a moment, and purely for the sake of argument, that the Communists were correct about needing to institute socialism in Russia. The children of former “class enemies” had nothing to do with the previous system. Children were being punished for nothing more than who their parents were. This “sins of the father visited on the son” attitude is at odds with fundamental concepts of justice in the Western world.

Discrimination against particular, individual, persons simply because they come from a particular class or group will strike almost everyone as unfair.

We see this again when it comes to Leo being unable to get medical treatment under socialized medicine in the novel. In response to Kira begging for medical treatment for Leo, a commissar responds with: “’One hundred thousand workers died in the civil war. Why -in the face of the Union of Socialists Soviet Republics- can’t one aristocrat die?’” (We The Living, Ayn Rand, Chapter 16, Part 1)

Some might respond that while this treatment of the children of the bourgeoisie was unfair under the Soviet Union, “their gang would do better”. I disagree. I think this is a necessary consequence of this system.

Specifically, I think the refusal to provide education or medical care under a Marxist/Communist state like the Soviet Union is a necessary consequence of a socialist economy. Basic Economic theory teaches that if all goods and services are made free, then demand will exceed supply. (Effectively, making medical care or education free is a price ceiling set at zero, which causes shortages. https://fee.org/articles/price-controls-and-shortages/)

Since demand exceeds supply, rationing is necessary. How would a Marxist/Communist state decide who gets what? For instance, there is limited medical care, so who would it make sense to give that medical care to, according to a Marxist? Obviously, supporters of the Marxist/Communist state would get preference. The people in whose name they fight, the proletariat, would get preference. Former aristocrats/bourgeois and their children would be left to die.

Another fundamental feature of a Marxist/Communist state illustrated in “We The Living” is the refusal to let dissenters leave. Why is this? Why not just let Kira and Leo leave, as they try to do at the beginning of the novel?

A mass exodus of their “class enemies” would also be unacceptable to the leaders of a Communist state because, at a minimum, they would say bad things about where they had left. This would undermine support and legitimacy abroad, at a minimum, and might even lead to invasion and military conflict.

So, the Marxist/Communist state cannot let their “class enemies” live within their system, because that would be a threat to the system, and they cannot let them leave, because that would also be a threat to the system. Slowly killing off dissenters through things like denying healthcare to the bourgeoisie would be the, not entirely intentional, but logical, solution. Turning the entire country into a death camp for those against the revolution becomes the Communist ‘final solution’, almost by default.

This can be seen a couple of times with actual historical events after revolutions. For instance, during the French revolution, the nobles had to be systematically murdered by guillotine en masse because they might lead a counter-revolution, whether from within France, or from abroad.

In July of 1918, the former Tsar and his family, including children, were murdered by Bolsheviks and members of the Soviet Secret Police. There is not 100% agreement on why the order to murder them was given, but some historians believe Soviet officials were concerned that if the Romanovs were allowed to go to England, as was suggested at one point, they might serve as a rallying point for counter-revolution. The Bolsheviks couldn’t let them stay in Russia for the same reasons. The only answer was to murder the Tsar and his whole family. That was a logical consequence of Marxist/Communist ideology.

Rand Believed The Soviet Union Would Ultimately Fail

For Rand, society is nothing but a number of individuals. Therefore, if the individual is destroyed under Communism, then that will mean any Communist society would ultimately fail.

Rand recognized at least as far back as when she wrote “We The Living” that the Soviet Union would not last. This is evident in several scenes in her novel. For instance, when Kira hears the “Internationale” being sung she says the following:

“Everyone had to rise when the ‘Internationale’ was played.

Kira stood smiling at the music. ‘This is the first beautiful thing I’ve noticed about the revolution.’ she said to her neighbor.

‘Be careful,’ the freckled girl whispered, glancing around nervously, ‘someone will hear you.’

‘When this is all over,’ said Kira. ‘when the traces of their republic are disinfected from history -what a glorious funeral march this will make!‘” (We The Living, Ayn Rand)

Rand did not see the Soviet Union as a real threat to the West:

“‘They’re not very close, and they can’t see very well. They see a big shadow rising. They think it’s a huge beast. They’re too far to see that its soft and brownish and fuzzy. You know, fuzzy, a glistening sort of fuzz. They don’t know that it’s made of cockroaches. Little, glossy, brown cockroaches, packed tight, one on the other, into a huge wall. Little cockroaches that keep silent and wiggle their whiskers….

’…don’t let them know that yours is not an army of heroes, nor even of fiends, but of shriveled bookkeepers with a rupture who’ve learned to be arrogant. Don’t let them know that you’re not to be shot, but to be disinfected. Don’t let them know that you’re not to be fought with cannons, but with carbolic acid!’” (Pg. 373, We The Living, Ayn Rand, Comrade Stepan Timoshenko.)

Did Ayn Rand See Her Escape From Russia as a “Fluke”?

Given how all of the protagonists from “We The Living” are ultimately killed, in one way or another, an interesting question has arisen in my mind.

Rand believed that fiction writing, and art in general, was a “…selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments.” (“Art and Cognition”, The Romantic Manifesto, Rand http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/art.html)

When she showed Kira, Andrei, and Leo being killed either physically or spiritually in the novel, it reflects her belief that anyone who wants to live cannot do so under Communism. They will ultimately be destroyed. Kira has to die in the end of the novel because that is the logical end of communism.

However, Rand did, in fact, escape the Soviet Union. She applied for a visa, and was granted permission to leave Russia in her early twenties. She came to the United States, and never returned.

The conclusion I draw from what happened in her own personal life, versus what happens to the characters in her novel, is that Ayn Rand must have viewed her own escape as a pure fluke. Random luck that you cannot count on with any kind of regularity. Rand thought that the vast majority of people like her would die, either physically like Kira and Andrei, or “spiritually”, like Leo.

How did this affect Ayn Rand’s actions during the rest of her life in America? She was passionately, and tirelessly devoted to opposing collectivism throughout her life. Was this at least partly a function of wanting to speak for the countless others who were permanently silenced by the Soviet Union?

Sex and Romance in “We The Living”

The sexual relationships in We The Living primarily revolve around those between Kira and Leo and Kira and Andrei. (Although there are subplots concerning sexual relationships with other characters, such as that between Irina and Sasha and Pavel Syerov and Comrade Sonia.) Here I will go over those two major relationships in the novel.

Kira meets Leo randomly after she left her cousin Victor on a park bench. Victor had made his own sexual advance on Kira in the park, which she had rebuffed. I’m assuming first cousin marriage was not considered incest or taboo in this time and place. Being from the Southern United States, this is also not unheard of in my own culture, although the science seems to indicate this is not a good idea. http://gap.med.miami.edu/learn-about-genetics/have-questions-about-genetics/if-cousins-get-married-are-they-at-risk-of-having-children-with-genetic-con

For no good reason that I can discern, Kira had gone on a carriage ride with Victor, even though she clearly dislikes him. I found this a little perplexing, since I don’t know what would motivate Kira to do this. She clearly doesn’t care about pleasing her family. All I can guess is that she went out of sheer boredom at spending another evening with her family. Kira and Victor eventually end up at a park.

Kira is making her way home after Victor’s failed romantic overture at the park when she accidentally wanders through the section of town where women in the local sex industry are on the street looking for customers. Leo has gone there looking to hire a sex worker, and mistakes Kira for one. Kira experiences “love at first sight” when she sees Leo. She goes with him, apparently intending to have sex with Leo:

“’Why are you looking at me like that?’ he asked. But she did not answer. He said: ‘I’m afraid I’m not a very cheerful companion tonight.’

‘Can I help you?’

‘Well, that’s what you’re here for.’ He stopped suddenly. ‘What’s the price?’ he asked. ‘I haven’t much.’

Kira looked at him and understood why he had approached her. She stood looking silently into his eyes. When she spoke, her voice had lost its tremulous reverence; it was calm and firm. She said: ‘It won’t be much.’

‘Where do we go?’

‘I passed a little garden around the corner. Let’s go there first -for a while.’” (Pg. 61)

Sex for money, or for other reasons besides sexual pleasure, comes up several times in the novel. Later in the story, Kira offers herself to a random wealthy man for money to get Leo medical care. When she tells him how much she needs, he tells her other sex workers don’t make that much in an entire career. (Pg. 226) In the end, Leo becomes a gigolo. A major subplot is the relationship of Kira’s cousin Victor to Marisha, Kira’s communist neighbor. Marisha is in love with Victor because she was a lower-class person before the civil war, but remembers how her mother used to clean the house of an aristocrat with a good looking son that she fell in love with. Victor reminds her of that good looking aristocratic son. Victor pretends to be in love with Marisha so that he can marry her for status in the communist party. This is a sort of parallel to Kira pretending to love Andrei. In the case of Kira, her actions would generally be regarded as noble, or at least, excusable under the circumstances. In the case of Victor, his actions would generally be seen as ignoble.

Leo eventually realizes Kira is not a sex worker, but he is as fascinated by her as she is by him. They agree to meet again at the same location in a month. The month passes and they meet for the second time. Leo kisses the palm of her hand, and they agree to another meeting in a month. Leo then unexpectedly shows up at Kira’s school a few days or weeks later, and they have a more intimate encounter under a bridge, by a river. They agree to meet in a week, and when that rendezvous occurs, Leo tells Kira he is leaving the country by boat. Kira agrees to go with him, and they have sex for the first time on the boat. The boat is stopped by a military patrol led by Stepan Timoshenko, one of the good communists in the novel. Timoshenko lets Kira go, and also manages to get Leo released a few days later. Soon after that, Kira’s family finds out she’s been sleeping with a man out of wedlock and kicks her out of the house. (Although Kira intended to live with Leo, regardless.)

Around that time in the novel, background is given on Leo’s childhood and adolescence. We learn that his first sexual encounter was at sixteen with an older, married woman. Leo had numerous other sexual relations with women in his late teenage years. The end of the flashback to Leo’s backstory ends with what I thought was a rather curious description of him:

“The revolution found Admiral Kovalensky [Leo’s father] with black glasses over his unseeing eyes and St. George’s ribbon in his lapel; it found Leo Kovalensky with a slow, contemptuous smile, and a swift gait, and in his hand a lost whip he had been born to carry.”(Pg. 139)

In my previous blog entry on We The Living, I noted this “rulers and ruled” idea running through the novel, and this is another example of it. Rand does not seem to present this attitude of Leo in a negative light. She seems to present it as desirable or virtuous, which, again, seems incongruous in comparison to her later works. Also note that this aspect of Leo’s personality plays into Kira’s earlier interest in a fictional young overseer in a play who is whipping the serfs. (Pg. 47-48) Kira likes men who use a certain level of physical force on others, and Leo is the type who likes to use that physical force.

At this point I will note my own evaluation of Leo, which is that I do not care for him. He sounds like he was a womanizer before he met Kira. He never asks Kira to marry him, while Andrei asks her to marry him the first time they have sex. In the end, he becomes a gigolo and gives up Kira for a life of being a male sex worker. The whole point of “We The Living” is that life is unbearable under Communism, but I don’t consider Leo’s way out of a corrupt system to be particularly noble. Andrei had the right idea when he put a bullet in his own brain.

If I knew a woman in real life who was in love with a guy like Leo, I’d have to ask the question: “Why?” What did he have going for him, other than his looks? He’s a womanizer, an alcoholic, and believes he has a right to order his social inferiors around. I have to think Leo would end up cheating on Kira under capitalism, as much as communism. Kira seemed to think she could “save” Leo, like he was her “project boyfriend”. Near the end, when it is clear that Leo is dead in spirit, if not in his actual physical body, Kira has the following thoughts:

“He had left home often and she had never asked him where he went. He had been drinking too often and too much, and she had not said whether she noticed it. When they had been alone together, they had sat silently, and the silence had spoken to her, louder than any words, of something which was an end. He had been spending the last of their money and she had not questioned him about the future. She had not questioned him about anything, for she had been afraid of the answer she knew: that her fight was lost.” (Pg 439)

Soon after that, during their breakup scene, Kira says the following:

“She turned and looked at him calmly, and answered: ‘Only this, Leo: it was I against a hundred and fifty million people. I lost.” (Pg. 443)

These scenes present strong evidence that Kira believed that her love could save Leo. The desire to fix men is a common attitude of women, especially young women. I also think it’s a mistake. With that said, a reader needs to keep in mind that both of these people are about eighteen years old, so there is possibly a “maturity factor” at play here, for both of them. Although, even at eighteen, I was not a hard-drinking, womanizer with a desire to dominate others, so is it just a matter of immaturity?

The other major sexual relationship in the novel is between Kira and Andrei. With one exception, I like everything about Andrei, on a personal level. He lives in spartan living quarters. (I’m a fan of minimalism and living on as little money as possible.) He’s studying to be an engineer. He tries to eliminate “sentiment” and just be his work. (That can be taken too far, but it’s better than the hordes of teenagers who sit around playing X-Box and smoking pot all day.) To me, this character is a sort of “proto-Hank Reardon”. Even though he has a somewhat “monkish” exterior, when Andrei falls for Kira, he falls hard. Unlike Leo, Andrei knows how much he loves Kira, and isn’t afraid to say it:

“‘Because, no matter what happens, I still have you. Because, no matter what human wreckage I see around me, I still have you. And -in you- I still know what a human being can be.’

‘Andrei,’ she whispered, ‘are you sure you know me?’

He whispered, his lips in her hand so that she heard the words as if she were gathering them, one by one, in the hollow of her palm: ‘Kira, the highest thing in a man is not his god. It’s that in him which knows the reverence due a god. And you, Kira, are my highest reverence…’” (Pg. 335)

This scene happens in the last third of the novel, when Andrei is beginning to doubt what he has believed. The doubt comes from what he sees as the corruption of the other communists around him, like Pavel Syerov, but it also comes from his affair with Kira. For the first time in his life, he is in love with a woman, and it is someone that he knows opposes communism. He is honest enough to express a level of vulnerability and doubt that most people would lack the self-confidence to do. Like I said, there is a lot to like here, but he’s also a communist and a member of the secret police. (That’s a pretty big “but”.)

Ayn Rand did everything she could to make this character sympathetic, and she succeeded for me. At one point, Rand describes the following scene, soon after Andrei and Kira have sex for the first time:

“The street light beyond the window made a white square and a black cross on the wall above the bed. Against the white square, she could see his [Andrei’s] face on the pillow; he did not move. Her arm, stretched limply against his naked body, felt no movement but the beating of his heart.” (Pg 233)

For Rand, nothing is an accident. The symbol of a cross on the wall above the bed seems like a reference to the crucifixion story in the Bible. Andrei is almost “Christ-like”. When I say that, I mean in the sense of total devotion to someone or something, even at great cost, which is what I think the story in the Bible means to the modern mind. Near the end, after Andrei learns why Kira was really with him, and he has saved Leo from being shot as an illegal speculator, Leo says he isn’t happy that Andrei saved him. Andrei asks “Why?”, and Leo says the following to Andrei:

“Do you suppose Lazarus was grateful when Christ brought him back from the grave -if He did? No more than I am to you, I think.” (Pg. 421)

Again, an explicit reference to Andrei as Christ in the Bible.

Andrei gives every penny he earns to Kira after they start their affair. (He believes she’s using it to support her family, but she’s actually using it for medical treatments for Leo. This is why Kira is pretending to be in love with Andrei.) Later in the novel, after Andrei learns the truth, he risks everything to save Leo out of love for Kira. This is reminiscent of Sydney Carton from “A Tale of Two Cities”, who goes to the guillotine during the French Revolution to save the husband of the woman he loves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Carton

Kira’s relationship with Andrei is interesting. She initially encounters him at her engineering school, where Andrei is a student, and also an officer of the branch of the GPU at the university. She is at a meeting of students to elect student council members. During the course of that, the “Internationale” is sung:

“For the first time in Petrograd, Kira heard the ‘Internationale.’ She tried not to listen to its words. The words spoke of the damned, the hungry, the slaves, of those who had been nothing and shall be all; in the magnificent goblet of the music, the words were not intoxicating as wine; they were not terrifying as blood; they were gray as dish water.

But the music was like the marching of thousands of feet measured and steady, like drums beaten by unvarying, unhurried hands. The music was like the feet of soldiers marching into the dawn that is to see their battle and their victory; as if the song rose from under the soldiers’ feet, with the dust of the road, as if the soldiers’ feet played it upon the earth.

The tune sang of a promise, calmly, with the calm of an immeasurable strength, and then, tense with a restrained, but uncontrollable ecstasy, the notes rose, trembling, repeating themselves, too rapt to be held still, like arms raised and waiving in the sweep of banners.

It was a hymn with the force of a march, a march with the majesty of a hymn. It was the song of soldiers bearing sacred banners and of priests carrying swords. It was an anthem to the sanctity of strength.

Everyone had to rise when the ‘Internationale’ was played.

Kira stood smiling at the music. ‘This is the first beautiful thing I’ve noticed about the revolution.’ she said to her neighbor.

‘Be careful,’ the freckled girl whispered, glancing around nervously, ‘someone will hear you.’

‘When this is all over,’ said Kira. ‘when the traces of their republic are disinfected from history -what a glorious funeral march this will make!’

‘You little fool! What are you talking about?’

A young man’s hand grasped Kira’s wrist and wheeled her around.

She stared up into two gray eyes that looked like the eyes of a tamed tiger; but she was not quite sure whether it was tamed or not. There were four straight lines on his face: two eyebrows, a mouth, and a scar on his right temple.

For one short second, they looked at each other, silent, hostile, startled by each other’s eyes.

‘How much,’ asked Kira, ‘are you paid for snooping around?’

She tried to disengage her wrist. He held it: ‘Do you know the place for little girls like you?’

‘Yes -where men like you wouldn’t be let in through the back door.’

‘You must be new here. I’d advise you to be careful.’

‘Our stairs are slippery and there are four floors to climb, so be careful when you come to arrest me.’

He dropped her wrist. She looked at his silent mouth; it spoke of many past battles louder than the scar on his forehead; it also spoke of many more to come.

The ‘Internationale’ rang like soldiers’ feet beating the earth.

‘Are you exceedingly brave?’ he asked. ‘Or just stupid?’

‘I’ll let you find that out.’

He shrugged, turned and walked away. He was tall and young. He wore a cap and a leather jacket. He walked like a soldier, his steps deliberate and very confident.

Students sang the ‘Internationale,’ its ecstatic notes rising, trembling, repeating themselves.

‘Comrade,’ the freckled girl whispered, ‘what have you done?’” (Pg. 73-75)

Through the course of the novel, their friendship grows, then Andrei suddenly starts avoiding Kira, and she cannot figure out why. As she grows more desperate to obtain medical care for Leo, she eventually seeks out Andrei, with the intention of asking him for money for Leo. (Andrei is unaware of Kira’s involvement with Leo.) When she goes to his apartment, Andrei confesses his love for her, and tells her he had to stop seeing her because he knew he had the power to force her to have sex against her will. As a member of the secret police, Andrei knew he could go to Kira’s house with his men, take her away, and rape her with impunity.

This actually happened in the Soviet Union. Lavrentiy Beria, head of Stalin’s Secret Police, would pick up women against their will, drive them to his house, and rape them. Women who refused were arrested and imprisoned. Women would also agree to sex to free family members. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria

Andrei also knew that Kira would despise him after that, which he couldn’t stand the thought of. To avoid the temptation, he decided to stop seeing her, and avoid her altogether. Andrei tells Kira he’d give her everything he has if he thought it would make Kira love him, but he knows she doesn’t because she hates everything he stands for. Kira realizes that if she pretends to be in love with Andrei she can get the money she needs to save Leo, so she lies and tells Andrei she is, in fact, in love with him, and they sleep together:

“’I can! I love you.’

She wondered how strange it was to feel a man’s lips that were not Leo’s.

She was saying: ‘Yes…for a long time…but I didn’t know that you, too…’ and she felt his hands and his mouth, and she wondered whether this was joy or torture to him and how strong his arms were. She hoped it would be quick.”(Pg. 233)

The exact nature of the relationship between Kira and Andrei eludes me in certain respects. She did feel affection and friendship for Andrei before she pretended to be in love with him. For instance, she worries about his welfare when he tells her he just got back from putting down a peasant rebellion in the countryside. Andrei says three Communists were killed by peasants, and Kira says:

“‘Andrei! I hope you got them!’

He could not restrain a smile: ‘Why, Kira! Are you saying that about men who fight Communism?’

‘But… but they could have done it to you.’” (Pg. 165)

It makes me wonder about how much she enjoyed sex with Andrei? Did she have orgasms with Andrei? There are scenes that seem to indicate she does not:

“His [Andrei’s] hands closed slowly, softly over her shoulders, so softly that she could not feel his hands, only their strength, their will holding her, bending her backward; but his lips on hers were brutal, uncontrollable. His eyes were closed; hers were open, looking indifferently up at the ceiling.” (Pg. 244)

But, later, when Kira is going to see Andrei, there is the implication that she likes the sex with him:

“…Her body felt pure and hallowed: her feet were slowing down to retard her progress toward that which seemed a sacrilege because she did desire it and did not wish to desire it tonight.” (Pg. 381)

What I got from this passage was that Kira did have orgasms from sex with Andrei, and even looked forward to it on occasion, but she felt guilty about it.

Also mixed in with Kira’s feelings towards Andrei appears to be a desire to punish him, or make him a sort of “stand-in” for the whole communist system that Kira, and those she loves, have suffered under. For instance, the first time Kira takes money from Andrei she seems to feel a bit of guilt:

“She wondered dimly how simple and easy it was to lie.

To Andrei, she had mentioned her starving family. She did not have to ask: he gave her his whole monthly salary and told her to leave him only what she could spare. She had expected it, but it was not an easy moment when she saw the bills in her hand…” (Pg. 235)

But, that moment of guilt quickly passes, as this passage goes on to say:

“…;then, she remembered the comrade commissar and why one aristocrat could die in the face of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics -and she kept most of the money, with a hard, bright smile.” (Pg. 235)

(The comrade commissar was an official in an earlier scene who refused to give Leo medical treatment, and mentioned something about how so many had died, so what was one aristocrat to the Soviet Union.)

In this scene, its like Kira felt momentary remorse at taking Andrei’s money under false pretenses, then she remembers that he has helped to bring about that system under which Leo and others would die, and she takes almost all of his money, as a sort of passive-aggressive punishment against him, as representative of the whole system.

It seems that Kira enjoys making Andrei suffer a little, as punishment, but it is a sort of cruelty, with occasional bursts of compassion. In one scene, Andrei is complaining about not being able to see Kira much. She has also told him never to come to her parent’s house, where he thinks that she lives, ostensibly because her family is uncomfortable with communists, but really so that he will not discover Leo:

“But he was smiling again: ‘Why don’t you want me to think of you? Remember last time you were here, you told me about that book you read with a hero called Andrei and you said you thought of me? I’ve been repeating it to myself ever since, and I bought the book. I know it isn’t much, Kira, but…well…you don’t say them often, things like that.’

She leaned back, her hands crossed behind her head, mocking and irresistible: ‘Oh, I think of you so seldom I’ve forgotten your last name. Hope I read it in a book. Why, I’ve even forgotten that scar, right there, over your eye.’ Her finger was following the line of the scar, sliding down his forehead, erasing his frown; she was laughing, ignoring the plea she had understood.”

Later in the same scene, Kira explains that she has come to see Andrei early because she cannot see him that night, as initially promised. Andrei is unhappy about it, thinking he will not get to have sex with her:

“ He was whispering, his lips on her breast: ‘Oh, Kira, Kira, I wanted you -here- tonight…’

She leaned back, her face dark, challenging, pitiless, her voice low: ‘I’m here -now.’

‘But…’

‘Why not?’

‘If you don’t…’

‘I do. That’s why I came.’

And as he tried to rise, her arms pulled him down imperiously. She whispered: ‘Don’t bother to undress. I haven’t the time.’” (Pg. 249)

A woman punishing a man with this sort of “passive aggressive behavior”, and/or cruel words that she knows will hurt him is fairly common in life. Women don’t typically use violence to get vengeance. They use manipulation combined with male sexual desire to give a man his comeuppance (real or perceived). For most men, there’s nothing more painful than a woman you’re in love with not responding to your love, or spurning your signs of affection with cruel words or actions. This behavior also shows up in a later novel of Ayn Rand’s very prominently. In “The Fountainhead”, the character of Dominique Francon pretty much makes a career out of using her beauty and the power of her sexuality to make men miserable, namely Peter Keeting and Gail Wynand, although they’ve both done things that merit disapproval. https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/fountainhead/character/dominique-francon/

Andrei and Kira’s sexual relationship is one of the few times I can think of that Rand shows sex from a male perspective. There are only two times that I can think of where she “gets in inside the head” of a male character, concerning sex. One time is Reardon in “Atlas Shrugged”. Reardon thinks about how he wanted to have sex with Dagny Taggart the first time he saw her on the train tracks. I think there were also some other times he thinks about sex with Dagny, but I cannot find the relevant passages now. (Something about how he felt when he would leave her body after an orgasm.) Andrei’s perspective on sex with Kira is also presented:

“He could forgive her the words, for he had forgotten them, when he saw her exhausted, breathing jerkily, her eyes closed, her head limp in the curve of his arm. He was grateful to her for the pleasure he had given her.” (Pg. 249)

In response to a papal declaration, “Humanae Vitae”, Rand delivered a speech called “Of Living Death”. The Pope’s encyclical concerned sex and procreation, and how good Catholics should view sex. During the course of the written version of her speech, Rand responded to a portion of the Pope’s encyclical that if a man viewed a woman as a mere instrument of his selfish enjoyment, instead of as a means for reproduction, then he would no longer love and respect her. In response to this, Rand said:

“I cannot conceive of a rational woman who does not want to be precisely an instrument of her husband’s selfish enjoyment. I cannot conceive of what would have to be the mental state of a woman who could desire or accept the position of having a husband who does not derive any selfish enjoyment from sleeping with her. I cannot conceive of anyone, male or female, capable of believing that sexual enjoyment would destroy a husband’s love and respect for his wife -but regarding her as a brood mare and himself as a stud, would cause him to love and respect her.” (“Of Living Death”, Ayn Rand, The Voice of Reason: Essays In Objectivist Thought)

I was curious about how Ayn Rand viewed the male perspective on this. As a woman, it was going to be easier for Rand to present a female perspective, which is why I assume she usually did present sex from the female character’s viewpoint. Did she think that a rational man would want to be an instrument of his wife’s selfish enjoyment? Based on what is presented here about Andrei’s perspective on sex with Kira, specifically, his feeling grateful that he had given Kira pleasure, I think this must be what she thought was the rational male perspective. (This would make sense given her views on the “trader principle” of justice.)

The relationship between Kira and Leo and Kira and Andrei proved to be both entertaining, and enlightening. I recommend that you read the novel yourself, if you haven’t already.

First Review Post For Ayn Rand’s “We The Living”

Earlier in 2022, I re-read Ayn Rand’s novel, “We the Living”. I was motivated, in part, by the war in Ukraine. I thought the novel might provide some insight into the Russian mind.

While reading it, I took fairly extensive notes on my phone, and by writing in the margins of the paper-back copy of the novel. Over time, I’d like to write a series of blog posts on various topics about it.

This first blog post is about several things that seemed slightly incongruous with Ayn Rand’s later writing and novels. Whether these can be reconciled with her later writing is an open question in my mind. Certainly, someone can change their mind on various issues, and I do not consider these things to be glaring contradictions with the fundamentals of her philosophy. It’s more like, when I re-read these things in “We The Living” this year, my “eyebrows went up” a bit.

Before I begin the current post, I want to put in a bit of a disclaimer: It’s entirely possible I’m misinterpreting what she is saying in various parts of the novel. In the context of a work of fiction or art, I believe “artistic license” can be proper, and that can explain some, or all, of this.

Any References to page numbers are to The Signet paper back, 1996 edition of “We The Living”, ISBN number 0-451-18784-9

“Rulers and Ruled”

At points in “We The Living”, I got the impression that Rand almost thought that there were “rulers” and “ruled” in the world. In other words, the sort of idea that there are people who are there to initiate physical force in order to keep other people in line. This would certainly be contrary to her later writings, especially in “Atlas Shrugged”, but also in such essays as “Man’s Rights” and “The Nature of Government”.

The best example of this is early in the novel, when some background information about the female protagonist, Kira is being given. There is some narrative and brief flashbacks giving an explanation of how Kira would have reactions to things and situations that her family regarded as “strange” or “abnormal”. For instance, it says that she “…seldom visited museums…” (Pg. 47), but when she would see construction, particularly of bridges she “…was certain to stop and stand watching, for hours…”(Pg. 47) Another such “incongruous feeling” Kira had is the following:

“When Galina Petrovna took her children to see a sad play depicting the sorrow of the serfs whom Czar Alexander II had magnanimously freed, Lydia [Kira’s very religious sister] sobbed over the plight of the humble kindly peasants cringing under a whip, while Kira sat tense, erect, eyes dark in ecstasy, watching the whip cracking expertly in the hand of a tall, young overseer.” (Pg. 47-48)

The scene involves Kira going with her family to see a play about the suffering of the serfs. These were people tied to the land, and required to work. They were little better than slaves. The only real difference being that the serfs could not be sold to another master, they belonged to whoever owned the land. Russia was one of the last countries to free the serfs, in 1861 under Tsar Alexander II. https://www.historytoday.com/archive/emancipation-russian-serfs-1861

Kira seems to have a sexual reaction to seeing this scene in the play. First, it’s noted that the person handling the whip is a “…tall, young overseer…”, who is presumably male. Additionally, Rand uses the word “ecstasy” to describe Kira’s reaction to this scene. Technically, I think “ecstasy” just means great happiness, but the use of that word combined with the fact that we are talking about a teenage girl watching a tall, young man, suggests sexual attraction to me. More specifically, it seems like she is sexually attracted to not just the young man, but his actions -in watching the whip crack expertly.

I think this scene could be interpreted in one of two ways. First, it could be seen as Kira likes the idea that the serfs were being kept in line with physical force, the whip, by a good-looking young man. Second, it could just be that she is sexually attracted to the display of skill by the young man, in using the whip, not necessarily what he is using the whip on. (In this case, people.) This second interpretation takes into account the early scenes described just before it, in which Kira liked to watch road and bridge construction, and (presumably) liked watching the men displaying skill at construction, too. This second interpretation lines up better with Rand’s overall views on the role of productivity in life, as shown in her later writing. That said, I’m not 100% sure from the context that Ayn Rand didn’t mean my first interpretation: that Kira seems to believe that the serfs were not capable of following rules or law without being kept in line without some physical force being initiated against them, such as a whip. That is, that there are some people who are meant to be ruled.

Another example of this “rulers and ruled” attitude is when Rand describes Kira’s attitude about physical labor:

“From somewhere in the aristocratic Middle Ages, Kira had inherited the conviction that labor and effort were ignoble.” (Pg. 49)

First, I thought this was an interesting way to phrase this. How, exactly, does one “inherit” a conviction? Does Rand mean she got this idea from her parents? It doesn’t seem so, because the earlier discussion of Kira’s background seems to show that she is very different from her family, and misunderstood by them. Is Rand speaking of genetic determinism here? Did Kira somehow get this attitude or idea from her genes? Or, is this just a way of saying Kira had, at some point, adopted an attitude from the Middle Ages that was still common, especially in Russia at that time? Second, how, exactly, does Kira think that labor and effort are “ignoble”, and how does that comport with Rand’s later views on productivity? I think what is meant here is that Kira thought that manual labor is ignoble, since the novel goes on from that scene to say that “…she had chosen a future of the hardest work and most demanding effort…” by choosing to be an engineer. (Pg. 50) Clearly, this idea, as understood by Rand’s later writings, would not be correct. Even very intellectually simplistic labor requires some degree of mental effort.

This attitude on work seems almost “Platonic” to me:

“…the ideally just city outlined in the Republic, Plato proposed a system of labor specialization, according to which individuals are assigned to one of three economic strata, based on their inborn abilities: the laboring or mercantile class, a class of auxiliaries charged with keeping the peace and defending the city, or the ruling class of ‘philosopher-kings’.” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/work-labor/

My understanding of Plato, and the Ancient Greeks in general, is they believed that there were some people born to do the manual labor, usually slaves, while there were others who were born to do the thinking. These are Plato’s “philosopher-kings”. Rand clearly and explicitly repudiated this notion in her later writings. See, for instance, the story of Robert Stadler, in Atlas Shrugged. This is why, like I said earlier, my “eyebrows went up”, metaphorically speaking , when I read this.

Abortion in “We The Living”

Perhaps because of what was going on in the courts and politically in 2022, I noted that the subject of abortion comes up a couple of times in “We The Living”. As far as I can remember, the topic never comes up in either “The Fountainhead” or “Atlas Shrugged”. The context in which she brought it up in “We The Living” left me wondering why Ayn Rand included this in the novel. For Ayn Rand, nothing in her fiction is an accident:

“Since art is a selective re-creation and since events are the building blocks of a novel, a writer who fails to exercise selectivity in regard to events defaults on the most important aspect of his art.

…A plot is a purposeful progression of logically connected events leading to the resolution of a climax. The word ‘purposeful’ in this definition has two applications: it applies to the author and to the characters of a novel. It demands that the author devise a logical structure of events….a sequence in which nothing is irrelevant, arbitrary or accidental…” (“Basic Principles of Literature”, The Romantic Manifesto, Ayn Rand)

Operating on the above quote, I assume that having abortion come up in the novel is not “arbitrary” or “accidental” on the part of Rand. She had a purpose there.

There are two ways abortion comes into the novel. (I’m not sure which occurs first now.) First, Kira and Leo get a neighbor living in their house assigned to them. This is a girl about Kira’s age, who is attending another local university. Her name is Marina Lavrova, and she is introduced at Page 177 in the book I was reading. (Signet paperback, 1996 edition of “We The Living”, ISBN number 0-451-18784-9 )

Marina Lavrova’s nickname is “Marisha”, and that is how she is described throughout the rest of the book. She would go on to marry Kira’s cousin, Victor. Marisha is a card-carrying member of the Communist youth group, the Komsomol. Furthermore, her father has good “working class credentials”, having been a factory worker before the revolution, and having served time in the Tsar’s prison system for political agitation. Victor, Kira’s cousin had noticed that Kira and Leo had two rooms, and had told Marisha about it. At that time, Victor is trying to get into the Communist Party, and uses Marisha as a stepping-stone to that end. (Which is also why he marries her.) Although the law allowed Kira and Leo to have two rooms because they are not married, Marisha uses her Communist party card to overrule the law, and moves into the extra room.

Since they are living in such close proximity to one another, Kira knows some fairly intimate details about Marisha’s life. For instance, Kira notes that young men are staying overnight with Marisha, and that she is presumably sleeping with them. After some time passes, Marisha comes to Kira and asks her about how to get an abortion:

“Marisha came in when Kira was alone. Her little pouting mouth was swollen: ‘Citizen Argounova, what do you use to keep from having children?’

Kira looked at her, startled.

‘I’m afraid I’m in trouble,’ Marisha wailed. ‘It’s that damn louse Aleshka Ralenko. Said I’d be bourgeois if I didn’t let him…Said he’d be careful. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?’

Kira said she didn’t know.” (Pg. 183)

A couple of pages later, a scene occurs in which Kira tells a sick Marisha to clean the bathroom, indicating that she must have taken some sort of medication to induce abortion, or has otherwise obtained an abortion:

“’Citizen Lavrova, will you please clean the bathroom? There’s blood all over the floor.’

‘Leave me alone. I’m sick. Clean it yourself, if you’re so damn bourgeois about your bathroom.’

Marisha slammed the door, then opened it again, cautiously: ‘Citizen Argounova, you won’t tell your cousin [Victor] on me, will you? He doesn’t know about…my trouble. He’s -a gentleman.” (Pg. 185)

The second way abortion is brought up in “We The Living” is through the character of Vava Milovskaia, specifically, her father. Vava is introduced at Page 79, when she comes to visit Kira’s cousins and their parents, Vasili Ivanovich Dunaev and Maria Petrova. (Kira’s Aunt and Uncle, by way of her mother, who is the sister of Maria.) Kira is also visiting the Dunaev’s when Vava arrives to see Victor, who she is in love with. Unlike everyone else, Vava is wearing expensive clothing, and jewelry. Although Vava’s family is not in the Communist Party, her father is a medical doctor. It is explained in the book that, at that time, Doctors were still allowed to operate privately, and make money because a doctor was not viewed as “exploiting labor”. Basically, doctors can do their work without the need of any employees, and they are making money only through their own labor, and not by directing the work of others. (Don’t bother trying to make sense out of Marxist ideas.)

At Chapter 12, starting on Page 151, Kira goes to a party thrown by Vava at her parent’s house. During the course of the party, it is noted that Vava lives in (comparative) opulence. How was this possible?

“He was a doctor who specialized in gynecology. He had not been successful before the revolution; after the revolution, two facts had helped his rise: the fact that, as a doctor, he belonged to the ‘Free Professions’ and was not considered an exploiter, and the fact that he performed certain not strictly legal operations. Within a couple of years he had found himself suddenly the most prosperous member of his former circle and of many circles above.” (Pg. 158)

Since he’s a gynecologist, I’m certain the “not strictly legal operations” are abortions. Abortions were legalized in 1920 in Russia. The novel starts in 1922, so abortion was legal by then. However, Stalin again made abortion illegal in 1936. (https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-01-04/stalins-abortion-ban-soviet-union ) I would assume that Rand meant that Vava’s father had performed the “not strictly legal” abortions prior to legalization in 1920. This makes sense in light of the last sentence in the above quote, which implies that at least “a couple of years” had passed since he started performing illegal abortions, and that he had passed other people in wealth, over the years, as a result.

In both of these situations, abortion seems to be presented in a somewhat negative light.

Take the story of Marisha and her abortion. For Rand, all choices in a work of art have a purpose. Nothing is without a reason in a novel. So what was her reason for having Marisha get pregnant accidentally and then have to get an abortion? She didn’t have Kira, the protagonist, get pregnant, although Kira was also living with and having sex with Leo by this point on, presumably, a regular basis.

Was Rand saying here that communism encourages abortion/promiscuity? This seems like a possibility, since Marisha was pressured into having sex when she wasn’t ready. Aleshka Ralenko, the guy Marisha was sleeping with, said she’d be “bourgeois” if she didn’t let him penetrate her vaginally. Maybe Rand just wanted to show how someone uses Marxist rhetoric to rationalize getting what they want, such as convincing a girl to have sex when she isn’t ready?

I would assume the difference between Kira and Marisha is that the former was ready for sex and took responsibility for it. (This also raises another interesting question. There was no birth control pill at that time, so what were Kira and Leo using for birth control? Condoms? Diaphragm? Pull out method?) Marisha, on the other hand, was not ready for sex, and wasn’t using anything to prevent Aleshka from ejaculating into her.

It’s also possible Ayn Rand included the story of Marisha’s abortion to give some background information on her, since she eventually marries Victor, who doesn’t really love her, and she has an unhappy marriage. I could also see the scene between Kira and Marisha as just a way to have the two women grow closer together. Initially they do not like each other, but after this, Marisha and Kira seem on friendlier terms. By page 250 (Chapter 1 of Part II), the two young women smoke cigarettes together and enjoy friendly chit-chat. Marisha is one of only three Communists in the novel that Ayn Rand portrays in a fairly sympathetic manner -the other two being Andrei and Stepan Timoshinko. Also, interestingly, all three are either dead or miserable by the end. (Marisha survives, but is in a loveless marriage and very unhappy.)

I cannot help but get the impression that Ayn Rand is saying with the story of Marisha and the story of Vava’s gynecologist father that communism causes abortion. Given her later, express views on abortion, this seems incongruous. Is it possible Ayn Rand changed her view on abortion from the time that she wrote “We The Living?” The situations in which abortion come up in the novel seem to me, morally ambiguous at best. For instance, Vava’s father seems to take a certain joy in being able to “lord it over” the people who used to be wealthier and of a better social status than him. At the party Kira attends at Vava’s house, the point of view switches to the doctor’s perspective:

“…he relished the feeling of a patron and benefactor to the children of those before whom he had bowed in the old days, the children of the industrial magnate Argounov [Kira’s father], of Admiral Kovalensky [Leo’s father]. He made a mental note to donate some more to the Red Air Fleet in the morning.” (Pg. 158)

These are not good or admirable feelings he is having. (Or, at least, they are very mixed.) He isn’t just enjoying his success. He’s enjoying the fact that people that were once above him are now below him. Furthermore, he is going to donate money to the Soviet state, which he regards as having brought him into his new position and power. He not only benefited from the Bolshevik revolution, but he is glad it happened, and supports the system.

In summary, the way this issue is presented in “We The Living” leaves a “question mark” in my mind, that I do not currently know the answer to.

Kira’s Speech About Andrei, Life, and Atheism

The final “incongruity” that I noted in “We the Living” was Kira’s speech to Andrei about atheism and life:

“Do you believe in God, Andrei?”

“No.”

“Neither do I. But that’s a favorite question of mine. An upside-down question, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if I asked people whether they believed in life, they’d never understand what I meant. It’s a bad question. It can mean so much that it really means nothing. So I ask them if they believe in God. And if they say they do -then, I know they don’t believe in life.”

“Why?”

“Because, you see, God -whatever anyone chooses to call God -is one’s highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It’s a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it.”

“You’re a strange girl.”

“You see, you and I, we believe in life. But you want to fight for it, to kill for it, even to die -for life. I only want to live it.” (Pg. 117)

Most of this quote is “spot on” with the rest of Ayn Rand’s later, express philosophy. The last two sentences seem more difficult to reconcile. Here, Kira is speaking of Andrei, who is the “good communist” in the novel. (Incidentally, Andrei is my favorite character from the novel. I can completely relate to the unrequited love he suffers from, as most men probably can.) Rand thought communism, and the people who preached it, were anti-life:

“‘You who are innocent enough to believe that the forces let loose in your world today are moved by greed for material plunder—the mystics’ scramble for spoils is only a screen to conceal from their mind the nature of their motive. Wealth is a means of human life, and they clamor for wealth in imitation of living beings, to pretend to themselves that they desire to live, but their swinish indulgence in plundered luxury is not enjoyment, it is escape.’ …‘You who’ve never grasped the nature of evil, you who describe them as ‘misguided idealists’—may the God you invented forgive you!—they are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.’… ‘Death is the premise at the root of their theories, death is the goal of their actions in practice….’” (Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, emphasis added.)

I heard a recording of Ayn Rand where she said there was no such thing as an “honest communist”, and in answering a follow up question, that she “stretched the truth” with Andrei in “We The Living” for purposes of fiction. (I think this is fine, since I believe in “artistic license”, as I said.) She said something about Andrei growing up poor and in a backwards country, which somewhat excused it, but basically didn’t think such a person could exist in real life.

It’s possible Kira was just talking about Andrei, in particular, and not communists in general, but that could be misconstrued, pretty easily, to seem to say something positive about communism. I will say that in the wider context of the novel, that is not what was meant. For instance, Rand also has the following earlier exchange between Kira and Andrei:

“I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say, as so many of our enemies do, that you admire our ideals, but loathe our methods.” (Andrei)

“I loathe your ideals.” (Kira) (Pg. 89)

Ayn Rand already had deep, philosophical, disagreements with the fundamental morality of communism, and not just with some of its nastier practices. She clearly already understood that the issue was deeper than politics, and reached down to morality. Nonetheless, given Rand’s staunch anticommunism, I wonder if she ever regretted including a description of a communist as “believing in life”, as Kira claimed in the above quote?

These were the three things that raised questions in my mind because they are not obviously reconcilable, to me, with some things that Rand wrote later. But, keep in mind that I’m just some guy on the Internet, with no special knowledge of literature, Ayn Rand, or of fiction writing, so I’d love to hear from someone else who has thought about any of this.

The Ideas of William James Compared and Contrasted With Those of Ayn Rand

William James’ attempt to defend religious faith leads him to several conclusions regarding morality and reason that are contrary to Ayn Rand’s life-centered view of morality. This, in turn, causes James to attempt to confine the methods of observation and logic to science, while saying it is inapplicable in the realm of morality. James makes this distinction between science and morality by saying both are ultimately expressions of nothing but “will”. James’ view has consequences in the areas of human social relations and politics.

This paper will compare and contrast Rand’s philosophy with that of James by looking at some of his essays from his book, The Will to Believe And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, Copyright 1896) (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/26659/26659-h/26659-h.htm.)

For Starters: William James Wants to Defend Religion

I was surprised when I discovered that much of William James’ work seemed aimed at defending religious belief. In the preface to his book, James says:

“The first four essays are largely concerned with defending the legitimacy of religious faith.” (Preface)

“…academic audiences, fed already on science, have a very different need. Paralysis of their native capacity for faith and timorous abulia in the religious field are their special forms of mental weakness, brought about by the notion, carefully instilled, that there is something called scientific evidence by waiting upon which they shall escape all danger of shipwreck in regard to truth. But there is really no scientific or other method by which men can steer safely between the opposite dangers of believing too little or of believing too much.” (Preface, emphasis added.)

“I do not think that any one can accuse me of preaching reckless faith. I have preached the right of the individual to indulge his personal faith at his personal risk. I have discussed the kinds of risk; I have contended that none of us escape all of them; and I have only pleaded that it is better to face them open-eyed than to act as if we did not know them to be there.” (Preface)

How Does William James Go About Defending Religion?
James’ defense of religious belief rests in his premise that certain things we hold to be true are based in our “passional and volitional nature”:

“The next matter to consider is the actual psychology of human opinion. When we look at certain facts, it seems as if our passional and volitional nature lay at the root of all our convictions. When we look at others, it seems as if they could do nothing when the intellect had once said its say. Let us take the latter facts up first.” (THE WILL TO BELIEVE, William James)

In other words, there are certain things, according to James, that we want to be true, and there is no further basis for the belief than that. The desire to be scientific is just a manifestation of an “inner need”:

“Hardly a law has been established in science, hardly a fact ascertained, which was not first sought after, often with sweat and blood, to gratify an inner need.” (IS LIFE WORTH LIVING?, William James, emphasis added.)

He makes no distinction between the “inner need” that some feel to be scientific, and the “inner need” that others feel to be religious. Both such “inner needs” cannot be analyzed any further:

The fact that science is based on observed facts, and religion is not, doesn’t matter to James. What matters is the satisfaction of these ineffable “inner needs”:

“And if needs of ours outrun the visible universe, why may not that be a sign that an invisible universe is there? What, in short, has authority to debar us from trusting our religious demands?” (IS LIFE WORTH LIVING?, William James, emphasis added.)

The desire to be scientific is no better or worse than the desire to believe on the basis of faith:

“Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not; and the agnostic ‘thou shalt not believe without coercive sensible evidence’ is simply an expression (free to any one to make) of private personal appetite for evidence of a certain peculiar kind.” (IS LIFE WORTH LIVING?, William James, emphasis added.)

What James Calls “Matters of Fact”
Does William James want to throw out all facts and science? No. He just wants to “carve out” a subset of ideas that will be immune from facts and science. To accomplish this, he starts by agreeing that there are certain “matters of fact” that no one can deny, no matter how much they want them to be otherwise:

“Does it not seem preposterous on the very face of it to talk of our opinions being modifiable at will? Can our will either help or hinder our intellect in its perceptions of truth? Can we, by just willing it, believe that Abraham Lincoln’s existence is a myth, {5} and that the portraits of him in McClure’s Magazine are all of some one else? Can we, by any effort of our will, or by any strength of wish that it were true, believe ourselves well and about when we are roaring with rheumatism in bed, or feel certain that the sum of the two one-dollar bills in our pocket must be a hundred dollars? We can say any of these things, but we are absolutely impotent to believe them; and of just such things is the whole fabric of the truths that we do believe in made up,—matters of fact, immediate or remote, as Hume said, and relations between ideas, which are either there or not there for us if we see them so, and which if not there cannot be put there by any action of our own.” (THE WILL TO BELIEVE, William James, emphasis added.)

To James, Knowledge is Conditioned By Our Acceptance Of What Others Tell Us, So It is Not Solely Based in Logic or Even Experience -Knowledge Contains An Element of “Will” or “Simple Wishing”
There are, for James, other areas of human belief where our knowledge is conditioned by an “act of will”, and not by mere observation of facts and the application of logic. James calls this “simple wishing”:

“Free-will and simple wishing do seem, in the matter of our credences, to be only fifth wheels to the coach. Yet if any one should thereupon assume that intellectual insight is what remains after wish and will and sentimental preference have taken wing, or that pure reason is what then settles our opinions, he would fly quite as directly in the teeth of the facts.” (THE WILL TO BELIEVE, William James, emphasis added.)

For James, the method of logic, and the scientific method seem to be things that are just “socially accepted”, and have no further justification:

“Our faith is faith in some one else’s faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case. Our belief in truth itself, for instance, that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other,—what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social system backs us up? We want to have a truth; we want to believe that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it; and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives. But if a pyrrhonistic sceptic asks us how we know all this, can our logic find a reply? No! certainly it cannot. It is just one volition against another,—we willing to go in for life upon a trust or assumption which he, for his part, does not care to make.” (THE WILL TO BELIEVE, William James, emphasis added.)

James concludes that our “non-intellectual nature” influences our convictions. We have “passional tendencies and volitions” which are unavoidable in coming to conclusions:

“Evidently, then, our non-intellectual nature does influence our convictions. There are passional tendencies and volitions which run before and others which come after belief, and it is only the latter that are too late for the fair; and they are not too late when the previous passional work has been already in their own direction.” (THE WILL TO BELIEVE, William James, emphasis added.)

In a certain context, I think this is true. Many of our needs as living organisms come from the time we are born, and can be said, in that sense, to be “pre-conceptual”. A young child starts out as a perceptual being, similar to an animal, that learns to use his mind to promote his life. You could call that “our non-intellectual nature”, but, William James isn’t talking about this. In the previous quote, he is talking about our convictions based in the authority of what others have told us.

In reality, we don’t look for food because our parents told us to. We look for food because even the most simple-minded person, with a functioning brain, recognizes it is necessary -if one desires to live. (Although that desire may be implicit rather than explicit.) Feeling that you are hungry, “simply wishing” to satiate it, and using your reason to satisfy that “simple wish” by hunting for food, or growing food, by following observed cause and effect relationships, is one thing. It is not the same as having a “simple wish” that what your elders tell you, or your preacher tells you, is right without your own investigation of the facts. The feeling of hunger is based in observed facts regarding your body’s need for food. The feeling of the existence of an afterlife is not based on any such observed facts.

Of course, I think James will say that the desire to operate in accordance with observed facts is, itself, nothing but a “feeling” with no basis in anything observed. But, if I “simply wish” to live, then adopting the method of observation of facts and the use of logic is necessary. All reason is based in the “simple wish” to live. Reason isn’t necessary for those who do not desire to live, according to Ayn Rand. But, if you “simply wish” to live, then you must reject ideas that would be contrary to that “simple wish” because reality is what it is, and your body is what it is.

To Ayn Rand, anything in the bible that runs contrary to the dictates of reality must be discarded, if you want to live. The idea of god must be held as an arbitrary assertion, without basis in observed facts, and discarded -if you want to live.

Rand’s atheism is based in the “simple wish” -by which I mean, a realistically obtainable desire- to live, combined with the observation that existence exists.

James Starts With the Cartesian “Prior-Certainty of Consciousness”
For James, on the other hand, there is no acknowledgement that existence exists. He starts from what Rand calls “the prior certainty of consciousness”:

“There is but one indefectibly certain truth, and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing,—the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists.” (THE WILL TO BELIEVE, William James, emphasis added.)

There is no objectivity because he will not acknowledge “the primacy of existence”:

“No concrete test of what is really true has ever been agreed upon. Some make the criterion external to the moment of perception, putting it either in revelation, the consensus gentium, the instincts of the heart, or the systematized experience of the race.” (THE WILL TO BELIEVE, William James.)

Rand starts from the standpoint of looking outward, and then recognizing that consciousness is that which perceives reality:

“The primacy of existence (of reality) is the axiom that existence exists, i.e., that the universe exists independent of consciousness (of any consciousness), that things are what they are, that they possess a specific nature, an identity. The epistemological corollary is the axiom that consciousness is the faculty of perceiving that which exists—and that man gains knowledge of reality by looking outward. The rejection of these axioms represents a reversal: the primacy of consciousness—the notion that the universe has no independent existence, that it is the product of a consciousness (either human or divine or both). The epistemological corollary is the notion that man gains knowledge of reality by looking inward (either at his own consciousness or at the revelations it receives from another, superior consciousness).” (Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It, “The Metaphysical Versus The Man-Made”)

Now it is apparent why William James regards the “need” to be scientific and the “need” to be religious as two unanalyzable facts. All that is truly real for him is consciousness. Our senses cannot be trusted, and therefore we cannot be certain there is any reality. There can be no observation of facts that, combined with our desire to live, make rationality and science necessary. His previously quoted discussion of science and religion as serving “inner needs” now makes perfect sense, given William James’ philosophic starting points:

“Whence such needs come from we do not know; we find them in us, and biological psychology so far only classes them with Darwin’s ‘accidental variations.’ But the inner need of believing that this world of nature is a sign of something more spiritual and eternal than itself is just as strong and authoritative in those who feel it, as the inner need of uniform laws of causation ever can be in a professionally scientific head. The toil of many generations has proved the latter need prophetic. Why may not the former one be prophetic, too? And if needs of ours outrun the visible universe, why may not that be a sign that an invisible universe is there? What, in short, has authority to debar us from trusting our religious demands? Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not; and the agnostic ‘thou shalt not believe without coercive sensible evidence’ is simply an expression (free to any one to make) of private personal appetite for evidence of a certain peculiar kind.” (IS LIFE WORTH LIVING?, William James, emphasis added.)

William James Thinks “Belief In Something”, Even If Wrong, Is Better Than, What He Views, As “Constant Uncertainty”
James believes that “belief in something” is better than the “constant uncertainty” that he thinks philosophy, and a reality-oriented approach leads to:

“Believe truth! Shun error!—these, we see, are two materially different laws; and by choosing between them we may end by coloring differently our whole intellectual life.” (THE WILL TO BELIEVE, William James.)

“We may regard the chase for truth as paramount, and the avoidance of error as secondary; or we may, on the other hand, treat the avoidance of error as more imperative, and let truth take its chance. Clifford, in the instructive passage which I have quoted, exhorts us to the latter course. Believe nothing, he tells us, keep your mind in suspense forever, rather than by closing it on insufficient evidence incur the awful risk of believing lies.” (THE WILL TO BELIEVE, William James.)

If you still doubt him, James reminds you that our desire for truth over error is nothing but an “expression of passional life”, so it is no better or worse than the “passion” of those who choose to believe the bible, despite evidence to the contrary:

“I myself find it impossible to go with Clifford. We must remember that these feelings of our duty about either truth or error are in any case only expressions of our passional life. Biologically considered, our minds are as ready to grind out falsehood as veracity…” (THE WILL TO BELIEVE, William James, emphasis added.)

The above quote draws out a sharp distinction between Ayn Rand and William James. He sees no connection between truth and the choice to live. (Which, for Rand, is a choice, not a commandment.) He views the search for truth, and the avoiding of error as a “duty”, which is an expression of “our passional life”.

Rand, on the other hand, says that if you want to live, then you must recognize that reality is what it is, and operate in accordance with immutable cause and effect. Only the “man-made” is “contingent” for Ayn Rand. Nature, apart from human action, is “necessary’ and “had to be”. According to Rand, you judge the man-made, and accept the “metaphysically given”. (Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It, “The Metaphysical Versus The Man-Made”)

Placed in a certain context of knowledge, I think Rand would believe it is true that reason does depend on our “passional life”, if by that expression, one means the desire to live. It’s only the choice to live that makes observing the facts, and drawing inferences and conclusions from them, necessary. William James doesn’t mean that, however.

When James speaks of our “passional life”, he means things we want to believe because they satisfy some emotional whim that may or may not enhance one’s life and well-being. His expressed goal is to justify belief in the supernatural. In practice, this means belief in what your mother, father, and minister told you as a child, based on nothing but their authority in your mind. Even more fundamentally, this represents a desire to continue to believe anything despite the fact that it is: (a) contrary to the facts, and (b) therefore contrary to your needs as a living being (and anti-life).

For instance, imagine you are dating an abusive romantic partner who beats you up. Your emotions tell you that you want to stay with them because of some neurotic need. (The origins of that need may depend on the particular individual, and are for mental health professionals to determine.) For James, this desire, or “expression of our passional life”, is no different than the desire to live, and the consequent need to observe facts and act according to them.
Another example: You have an extreme “passion” for doing heroin. (Once again, the origins of that desire may vary between people, and are for a medical professional/scientist to diagnose.) Your feelings tell you that you need to shoot up. Your rational mind tells you that if you keep this up, it will adversely affect your health, and will likely cause your untimely death. To William James, the “passion” to shoot up heroin is the same as the “passion” to follow the laws of logic or mathematics. This is because, at root, for him, reason has no connection to the “passion to live”.

In stark contrast Rand says:

“My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists—and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these.” (Ayn Rand, For The New Intellectual, Galt’s Speech. )

Ayn Rand’s “passion” is the desire to live, and this desire, combined with the immutable laws of nature, creates the need for a moral code based in reason.

William James’ Methodological Distinction in Natural Sciences versus In The Realm of Morality
James doesn’t want to throw science out entirely. So, he distinguishes between committing to a particular belief, versus remaining uncommitted, because you don’t have enough evidence, in different areas of life:

“Wherever the option between losing truth and gaining it is not momentous, we can throw the chance of gaining truth away, and at any rate save ourselves from any chance of believing falsehood, by not making up our minds at all till objective evidence has come.” (THE WILL TO BELIEVE, William James.)

“In scientific questions, this is almost always the case; and even in human affairs in general, the need of acting is seldom so urgent that a false belief to act on is better than no belief at all.” (THE WILL TO BELIEVE, William James.)

I think he is saying that in the natural sciences, we can often remain uncommitted to a particular scientific theory because there is no great rush to decide. For instance, the theory of evolution has less immediate impact on our personal lives than, say, whether someone we know has committed a serious crime. Knowing that someone is a murderer, and is to be shunned, to avoid being killed oneself, is of greater immediate concern to most people than whether Darwinian evolution or Lamarckian evolution is correct.

James distinguishes many scientific issues, like the theory of evolution, from a court case:

“Law courts, indeed, have to decide on the best evidence attainable for the moment, because a judge’s duty is to make law as well as to ascertain it, and (as a learned judge once said to me) few cases are worth spending much time over: the great thing is to have them decided on any acceptable principle, and got out of the way. But in our dealings with objective nature we obviously are recorders, not makers, of the truth; and decisions for the mere sake of deciding promptly and getting on to the next business would be wholly out of place.” (THE WILL TO BELIEVE, William James, emphasis added.)

I take James as meaning that sometimes, what is needed is a quick, and decisive opinion by the judge, not necessarily the “optimal” choice. A decision, one way or the other, is what is needed, rather than waiting to get more data.

As a legal professional, I’m not sure I 100% agree with his example here. In a death penalty case, a “prompt” decision is not better than the “optimal” decision of determining whether the defendant is actually guilty. The possibility of a mistake in a criminal case is unacceptable. In certain breach of contract disputes, he probably does have a better point. (And, this is why criminal cases require a higher burden of proof.) At any rate, it is true that sometimes you must make a quick decision because waiting is less optimal than either decision you could make. When an out of control truck is about to run you down on the street, you may not have time to decide whether jumping right or jumping left is better. You’ve got to jump, immediately, so less analysis goes into the decision than would be the case with more time. (The stakes are very high, but the time to decide creates a less than optimal analysis -but more optimal than waiting.)

James Probably makes the distinction between Morality (“oughts”) on the one hand, and scientific questions (“Is-statements”) on the other because of the “Is-Ought problem”:

“The question next arises: Are there not somewhere forced options in our speculative questions, and can we (as men who may be interested at least as much in positively gaining truth as in merely escaping dupery) always wait with impunity till the coercive evidence shall have arrived? It seems a priori improbable that the truth should be so nicely adjusted to our needs and powers as that.”

“Moral questions immediately present themselves as questions whose solution cannot wait for sensible proof. A moral question is a question not of what sensibly exists, but of what is good, or would be good if it did exist. Science can tell us what exists; but to compare the worths, both of what exists and of what does not exist, we must consult not science, but what Pascal calls our heart.” (THE WILL TO BELIEVE, William James, emphasis added.)

For James, as for David Hume, morality, that which one “ought to do”, is not something that can be derived from observing “what sensibly exists”. Morality is based in “our heart”, by which he means some feeling other than what we can see.

I do not think that Ayn Rand’s response to this would be to say that the mere observation of facts creates any kind of “moral commandment” or “duty” to live. Observation of facts will demonstrate that life is conditional, and that it is not guaranteed to us. Observation of facts will also lead to the conclusion that certain actions must be taken to maintain one’s life. Observation will also lead you to understand that a certain methodology maximizes the probability of living. However, the choice to live, for Rand, is a choice. (A “basic” choice) :

“Life or death is man’s only fundamental alternative. To live is his basic act of choice. If he 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.” (Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It, “Causality versus Duty”)

As a teenager or young adult, possibly younger, most of us have a “background knowledge” we have gained from observation, school, and our elders. Some of it is right, and some of it is not. Also, by the time we’re in our teenage years, most of us are able to have some conception of our own lives, and to recognize that living is conditional on our actions. With this “cognitive context”, we then make that choice to live, over and over, throughout our lives. To the extent that we recognize, implicitly or explicitly, that rationality is necessary for our survival, we can then reform, and adapt some of our ideas, or flatly reject, others.

I think the difference between Rand on the one hand, and William James, and David Hume, on the other, is that Rand would say something like this:

Why do you need science at all? Why do you need to reason at all?

For Rand, it is only the “basic choice” to live, combined with the axiom “existence exists”, that demands you observe facts and make logical conclusions based on those observations. From this basis, Rand develops a morality based in the virtue of rationality, aimed at pursuing the cardinal values of Reason, Purpose, and Self-esteem. These three components constitute the essence of “man’s life” for Rand.

Rand does base morality in what “sensibly exists”, which is the nature of existence, and the choice to live. Does one have to live according to Rand? No, it is a choice. But for those who choose life, there is no other option but the virtue of rationality.

The difference between Rand and William James is that he is not recognizing why we need morality at all. He wants to find some basis for holding “traditional morality”, which, for Western Man, is some variant of the Judeo-Christian system of morality. To that end, James is willing to equate the passion of the scientific search for the truth with the “passion” to believe what your parents and ministers told you as a child. In the process, he disregards the “reason that we reason”, which is the enhancement and promotion of human life. Once the choice to live is jettisoned as conditioning our quest for knowledge, the entire endeavor of science becomes, psychologically, and existentially, pointless. Religion, or any other irrationalism, is then just as meaningful. (Or equally lacking in meaning.)

Since James rejects life as the standard of value in favor of Judeo-Christian morality, he is left with nothing but skepticism with respect to all knowledge:

“If we had an infallible intellect with its objective certitudes, we might feel ourselves disloyal to such a perfect organ of knowledge in not trusting to it exclusively, in not waiting for its releasing word. But if we are empiricists, if we believe that no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp, then it seems a piece of idle fantasticality to preach so solemnly our duty of waiting for the bell.” (THE WILL TO BELIEVE, William James, emphasis added.)

The “bell that tolls in us” when it comes to the certainty of our knowledge is the concept of man’s life:

“Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue.” (Ayn Rand, For The New Intellectual, Galt’s Speech.)

“Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue—and happiness is the goal and the reward of life.” (Ayn Rand, For The New Intellectual, Galt’s Speech. )

For William James, Certain Types of Facts Can Be Created By Enough People Feeling that It Is So
Social organization and the relations among men are ultimately based in a moral code. Both Rand and William James would agree on this point.

In the case of James, his moral system is ultimately based in a faith that he believes is no different than the “faith in science”:

“There are, then, cases where a fact cannot come at all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming. And where faith in a fact can help create the fact, that would be an insane logic which should say that faith running ahead of scientific evidence is the ‘lowest kind of immorality’ into which a thinking being can fall. Yet such is the logic by which our scientific absolutists pretend to regulate our lives!” (THE WILL TO BELIEVE, William James.)

James’ morality is based in faith, or more specifically, the “will to believe” in faith. Therefore, all social systems are also based in “the will to believe” for him:

“A social organism of any sort whatever, large or small, is what it is because each member proceeds to his own duty with a trust that the other members will simultaneously do theirs. Wherever a desired result is achieved by the co-operation of many independent persons, its existence as a fact is a pure consequence of the precursive faith in one another of those immediately concerned. A government, an army, a commercial system, a ship, a college, an athletic team, all exist on this condition, without which not only is nothing achieved, but nothing is even attempted.” (THE WILL TO BELIEVE, William James.)

James’ belief that social systems are based in nothing but “the will to believe” has an interesting logical consequence in practice. When a society fails, it is based in the lack of sufficient “will”. He gives the example of the robbery of a train:

“A whole train of passengers (individually brave enough) will be looted by a few highwaymen, simply because the latter can count on one another, while each passenger fears that if he makes a movement of resistance, he will be shot before any one else backs him up. If we believed that the whole car-full would rise at once with us, we should each severally rise, and train-robbing would never even be attempted.” (THE WILL TO BELIEVE, William James.)

While James leaves the realm of science to evidence and logic, the area ultimately governing human behavior, morality, is left to “will” or “passion”. For him, any social system can “work” if enough people believe it. This is because you cannot derive “ought statements” from “is statements”, an idea he got from David Hume, and, also because of what I think is an additional part, which is in bold here:

“Moral questions immediately present themselves as questions whose solution cannot wait for sensible proof. A moral question is a question not of what sensibly exists, but of what is good, or would be good if it did exist.” (THE WILL TO BELIEVE, William James, emphasis added.)

A social system is good because enough people believe it “should exist”, or because it “should work”. In other words, because enough people feel that it is so, then it is so, according to William James.

Rand denies that any social system can “work” if enough people believe it. For her, reality is what it is. Capitalism leads to prosperity and communism leads to its opposite, no matter how many people sincerely want collectivism to “work”.

Rand says that if enough people want to live, and consistently understand that choice to live, then certain social systems are better than others in achieving that goal. For Rand, individuals must be free to pursue their own rational self-interest. If they all do so, within a system of government that protects and respects rights to private property, then such a system is practical. Free market capitalism will be the social result.

Rand denies that all it takes is enough people “believing” in socialism for it to lead to prosperity. It denies the existence of the individual, whose own life is important to him, because he chooses to live. (Those who don’t choose to live need no morality, social system, or system of government.) Since there is no “social organism”, and “society” is just a number of individuals, the ultimate result of any socialist system is the war of all against all, and the destruction of the society:

“The alleged goals of socialism were: the abolition of poverty, the achievement of general prosperity, progress, peace and human brotherhood. The results have been a terrifying failure—terrifying, that is, if one’s motive is men’s welfare.
Instead of prosperity, socialism has brought economic paralysis and/or collapse to every country that tried it. The degree of socialization has been the degree of disaster. The consequences have varied accordingly.” (Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, “The Monument Builders”.)

The ideas of William James and other late 19th-Century American Philosophers are known as “Pragmatism”. This is premised in their supposed “practicality”. But, as we have seen, James banishes science into a sort of “intellectual ghetto” by saying the “will” to pursue science is based in nothing but the same “will” to believe what the Bible says. James makes observation and scientific knowledge ultimately purposeless. In contrast, Rand, says we must practice observation and the method of logic, no matter how strongly we “want to believe” in their contraries, because it is the only way to practice the art of living.

A Historical Example of Attila And The Witch Doctor – Medieval Europe

In her essay For the New Intellectual, Ayn Rand describes two “philosophical archetypes”, and implies that they can be seen in history:

“…’it was always the animal’s attributes, not man’s, that humanity worshiped: the idol of instinct and the idol of force -the mystics and the kings…the kings, who ruled by means of claws and muscles, with conquest as their method and looting as their aim…The defenders of man’s soul were concerned with his feelings, and the defenders of man’s body were concerned with his stomach-but both were united against his mind’ [Quoting Atlas Shrugged, Rand]

These two figures -the man of faith and the man of force -are philosophical archetypes, psychological symbols and historical reality…Attila, the man who rules by brute force…the Witch Doctor…escapes into his emotions, into visions of some mystic realm…” (Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual, Rand, emphasis added.)

What are some historical examples of these two “philosophical archetypes”? The Middle Ages provide the best example. There were essentially two important institutions in this era: The Nobility and the Clergy.

The Nobility

Feudalism is the term used to describe the social, economic, and political system of the Middle Ages. Feudalism was characterized by: (1) Absolute power over the lives and property of all people in the state by a monarch:

“…the monarch claimed sovereignty over the whole state, even though his actual power was limited by the extent of his personal landholdings…most of the land was held by dukes, counts, archbishops, abbots, and warrior nobles of lesser degree, who owed certain obligations to the king as their overlord.” (“A Brief History of Western Man”, 3d Ed., Greer, Thomas, 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Chapter 5: “The Creation of Europe: Political and Social Foundations”, Pg. 175)

(2) A system of doling out land and human beings (“fiefs” and “serfs”) to the king’s servants (vassals) who then had absolute authority over the lives and property of people in their fiefdoms in exchange for military service to the king; and (3) raw physical force and violence as the essence of the king’s power and the power of his vassals:

“…feudal relationship was extremely vague, consisting essentially of an unwritten bond that was subject to a wide range of interpretations. By the eleventh century, however, the feudal contract had evolved into a fairly standard form prescribing the exchange of property for personal service. The king or the duke -whoever granted property to another- stood in the position of ‘lord’: the recipient of the property was his ‘vassal.’ Property in the Middle Ages nearly always meant real estate, for land was the main source of wealth…since only professional warriors could provide physical protection and undertake the obligations of fief-holding, political and economic power remained in the hands of a military aristocracy (the nobility).” (“A Brief History of Western Man”, 3d Ed., Greer, Thomas, 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Chapter 5: “The Creation of Europe: Political and Social Foundations”, Pg. 175-176, emphasis added.)

The Clergy

In essence, the Church stood for the following: First, selflessness in the here and now for eternal happiness after you die:

“…medieval men and women were more concerned with what lies beyond this world; they looked toward life eternal. And since the central role of the Church was to guide souls to everlasting salvation, the Church was regarded as the primary institution in society. So widespread was the Christian faith, and so confident the expectation of a better life after death, that the era is often called the Age of Faith.” (“A Brief History of Western Man”, 3d Ed., Greer, Thomas, 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Chapter6: “The Flowering of Medieval Culture”, Pg. 189.)

What did the Clergy consider to be the ideal?: Asceticism. One of the earliest philosophers of Christianity set the tone. Augustine:

“…saw the struggle within himself as categorical: his love of worldly things versus his love of the Lord…Augustine concluded that bodily appetites…distract people from the contemplation of God. He denounced as sinful, therefore, even the simplest of physical pleasures…Their only hope for salvation is to pray for God’s help in bringing them to repentance and self-denial. Augustine gave up wife and child and lived like a monk.” (“A Brief History of Western Man”, 3d Ed., Greer, Thomas, 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Chapter 4: “New Roots of Faith: Christianity”, Pg. 137.)

In essence, the Christians denied any values that could be obtained in this life as vice, and regarded them as a distraction from the infinitely better value the virtuous would supposedly receive after they died.

The second essential feature of the Medieval Church was belief in the impossibility of ever being totally virtuous in this life because of your “bodily appetites”:

“The holy life, in the Christian view, is not easily attained. It requires above all, self-discipline -strict control over the natural self and appetites. The very term ‘ascetic’ is derived from the Greek word for exercise practiced by a trained athlete…the ‘perfect’ Christian must gain control over his or her entire body and mind…No mortal can expect to succeed in emulating Jesus…to suffer, even as Christ suffered.” (“A Brief History of Western Man”, 3d Ed., Greer, Thomas, 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Chapter 4: “New Roots of Faith: Christianity”, Pg. 139-140.)

The third and final essential moral and philosophic tenant of the Church was the need for a whole system of forgiveness so that you can still get into heaven when you die, given your “imperfect” existence:

“A general theory of the sacraments…had emerged by the eleventh century. It ran as follows: Adam’s (and Eve’s) Original Sin against God’s will has stained all human beings with guilt. Although this guilt can be washed away through the rite of baptism, men and women, by their sinful nature, continue to fall into disobedience and unseemly acts….the Lord in his goodness has created the sacraments as the means for transmitting that grace. Priests alone can administer the sacraments…” (“A Brief History of Western Man”, 3d Ed., Greer, Thomas, 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Chapter6: “The Flowering of Medieval Culture”, Pg. 190.)

In essence, the Church created a centuries-wide “con game”, in which people were convinced they would either get eternal happiness or eternal suffering, but no one can be assured of that because of the need to give up everything necessary for living to achieve it. According to Church doctrine, achieving perfection on Earth is impossible without dying, since everything you need to do to live leads to “sin”. They then provided dispensation to those who wanted to live, which was almost everyone, in exchange for obedience to the Church and the dictates of its leadership.

What of the Producers In Medieval Europe?

What of the people who actually produced the food and other necessities for living in the Medieval Europe? This group had the least power, and was often tied to the land as serfs, which was a legal status just slightly better than slavery:

“In medieval society, the clergy, as guardians of people’s souls, were regarded as constituting the ‘first estate’ (class). The nobility, as protectors of life and property, were ranked as members of the ‘second estate’. All other men fell into the ‘third estate’ and were considered ‘commoners’. Though they made up about 90 percent of the population of Europe, these commoners had little political voice and even less social prestige.” (“A Brief History of Western Man”, 3d Ed., Greer, Thomas, 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Chapter 5: “The Creation of Europe: Political and Social Foundations”, Pg. 178)

This is not to say that all nobles and priests were, in practice, 100% parasitic. They could farm the land too, and they did, but, to that extent, they weren’t Attila’s or Witch Doctors, they were producers. Keep in mind, these are philosophic archetypes, and few people are 100% “pure”. Additionally, we are talking more about institutions, the Church and the Nobility, rather than particular members of those institutions.

Attila Needs The Witch Doctor For Legitimacy With the Population He Subjugates

An obvious question is this: Why did the monarch and his vassals need the Church at all? They’ve got the weapons, don’t they? Couldn’t they force everyone into submission and take what they want?

Attila has a dilemma. He wants to rule over other people and extract material values from them rather than being productive himself. But, why him? Why not some other guy? If he rules purely on the basis of physical force, serfs will escape the first chance they get. No one will obey when his soldiers aren’t around. He’ll be assassinated by someone who thinks they should rule instead. He’ll risk being deposed by someone with a bigger army. He’d prefer to have the majority of people give a certain level of sanction or consent to his rule, so that their compliance is more voluntary. Attila wants the relationship with his subjects to be less involuntary than an outright hostage situation, where you’d constantly have to keep a weapon trained on your victims to keep them from running away.

Attila can’t say: “I should rule because I protect you better from the looters.” Does he want people thinking about his provision of an actual value to their lives? What if they decide someone else does that better and for cheaper? What if they start thinking about holding an election to decide who will hold political power? (Democracy had occurred prior to the Middle Ages.)

In early medieval history, there were often succession fights when a monarch died. His sons would vie for power, and the society would descend into chaos, and possibly be attacked from outside. For instance, when Charlemagne’s son, Louis the Pious died, he divided the kingdom of the Carolingian Empire between his three sons, and it disintegrated as dukes, counts, and other lords of the Empire usurped royal prerogatives. (“A Brief History of Western Man”, 3d Ed., Greer, Thomas, 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Chapter 5: “The Creation of Europe: Political and Social Foundations”, Pg. 173) Attila needs a way of ensuring succession of his children when he dies.

The Church could provide the sanction, or legitimacy, the Nobles needed:

“Attila feels that the Witch Doctor can give him what he lacks: a long-range view, an insurance against the dark unknown of tomorrow or next week or next year, a code of moral values to sanction his actions and to disarm his victims.” (For the New Intellectual, Ayn Rand, emphasis added.)

Examples of How the Medieval Church Controlled The Nobility

But, in exchange for the legitimacy that the Church provided to the Nobility, the Nobility of Europe were somewhat beholden to the Church. They had to take into account Church opinion when setting domestic and foreign policy.

The vast majority of people in Europe took Christianity very seriously in this time. They believed that they could only be assured of getting into heaven, and not going to hell, through the Church.

As a result, the Church could control the nobility through the power of excommunication, which involved denying persons the sacraments, such as baptism, marriage, and penance. Especially without the last of these, there could be no forgiveness of sins. Every Christian believed that sin was inevitable, so without forgiveness through the Church they were certain to go to hell.

“If excommunication did not bring a ruler to his knees, the pope could resort to interdict. This was an order closing the churches and suspending the sacraments in a particular area or realm. A ruler, no matter what his own religious convictions, could scarcely ignore the interdict. For the faithful, fearing that their own souls were in jeopardy, would press the ruler to yield so that the churches might be reopened. Moreover, with the appearance of any sign of royal revolt the pope could supplement the interdict by declaring the ruler deposed, and releasing his subjects from obedience.” (“A Brief History of Western Man”, 3d Ed., Greer, Thomas, 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Chapter6: “The Flowering of Medieval Culture”, Pg. 198.)

Why was excommunication and interdict by the Church so effective? Because the King’s secular authority flowed from the appearance in the public’s mind that he was chosen by god, through the Church, to be their ruler. Additionally, since the whole point of life was to prepare for the hereafter, the state, any state, was viewed as relatively unimportant if it threatened the faithful’s entrance into heaven.

The Witch Doctor Needs Attila To Provide Him With (Looted) Material Values to Survive

The Witch Doctor has his own dilemma. He believes in a “higher good”, and says that the production of the things necessary for living distract you form this “higher good”. He convinces others of this, in part, through his devotion to asceticism. The Church separated itself from the rest of society through monasteries and other institutions. Additionally, since Church leaders are acting on nothing but their feelings, they have no recourse to reason when other people say their feelings tell them something different. The Church needed to eliminate anyone who might tell their flock someone besides them holds the key to eternal salvation. Rational debate is not possible, since it’s all a matter of faith. The Witch Doctor refuses to produce material values on his own, so he is dependent on the producers for survival. He needs someone to plunder producers who refuse to feel guilty, and he also needs an enforcer to keep the faithful from straying from the “true word of god” -as only the Witch Doctor knows it.

Maintaining the Church’s flock is essential because, without it, the institution will perish. The Church membership could start producing material goods of their own. In fact, this would occur in the Middle Ages with some regularity. In A Brief History of Western Man, Greer notes that different monastic orders would regularly go through a cycle. They’d start out as institutions dedicated to asceticism and living a life free of “materialism”. Over time, a monastery like the house of Benedict would then acquire large land holdings, and become more and more involved in the affairs of the state and the world:

“The head of a monastery -the abbot- held the monastery’s property as a fief from some overlord, and he had the usual military, financial, and political responsibilities of a vassal. He met his obligations, in part, by granting some of the monastery’s lands to knights, who, as vassals of the abbot, performed the required military duties. From the ninth to the twelfth century, military contingents from monastic fiefs were important components of feudal armies.” (“A Brief History of Western Man”, 3d Ed., Greer, Thomas, 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Chapter6: “The Flowering of Medieval Culture”, Pg. 194.)

There would then be a cycle of reform, in which a new monastic order would come about, rededicated to asceticism and staying out of “worldly affairs”. For instance, the Burgundian monastery of Cluny, founded in 910, placed itself under the direct authority of the pope. Simony, which was the selling of ecclesiastical services or offices, was reduced, and priestly celibacy was more strictly enforced. By the twelfth century, however: “…the monks of Cluny slipped into the ways of material ease.” (“A Brief History of Western Man”, 3d Ed., Greer, Thomas, 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Chapter6: “The Flowering of Medieval Culture”, Pg. 196.)

This pattern of increased Church involvement in “worldly affairs” occurred in the realm of politics as well. Several popes tried to bring the Church into a position of secular supremacy over the Nobility, and not just “spiritual supremacy”. Pope Gregory VII:

“…linked the battle against simony and for clerical celibacy—chief characteristics of 11th-century ecclesiastical reform—with a marked emphasis on the papal primacy… Papal primacy included the subordination of all secular governments to papal authority…” (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Gregory-VII/Pontificate )

In 1202, Pope , Innocent III became involved in a conflict between King Philip II Augustus of France and King John of England. Philip had stripped John of his holdings in France, starting a war:

“The pope responded in a decretal letter, Novit ille (“He Knows”), in which he refused to condemn Philip but stated that he could intervene in secular matters by ratio peccati (“reason of sin”). Novit ille became a part of canon law and justified papal and ecclesiastical interference in secular affairs for centuries.” (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Innocent-III-pope )

In the early Fourteenth Century, Pope Boniface VIII came into conflict with King Philip IV of France over the state’s taxation of Church property and other issues that eventually resulted in Philip capturing the Pope before he could publicly excommunicate the King. (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Boniface-VIII/ )

The taxation issue illustrates an example of the Church’s probable loss of legitimacy due to its increased “materialism”. I hypothesize that by the 1300’s the church would have acquired large sums of wealth. (This would require more historical research to confirm.) I base this hypothesis on economic principles. If the Medieval policy wasn’t to tax church wealth, then, in effect, this would have created a massive tax shelter for acquiring and accumulating fortunes:

“Over the centuries the religious houses became large landholders, and, though the monks themselves were bound by vows of poverty, the corporate wealth of the monasteries rose steadily.” (“A Brief History of Western Man”, 3d Ed., Greer, Thomas, 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Chapter6: “The Flowering of Medieval Culture”, Pg. 194.)

The Church’s legitimacy lay in its assertion that the matters of this world were unimportant and that poverty and self-denial were the ideal. Most people would see the opulence of Monasteries and the interference of popes in affairs of state as hypocritical. If the Church became too independent in the production of its own wealth, then that would tend to undercut its professed purpose. The Church couldn’t become a secular producer of wealth without undercutting its reason for existence as a saver of souls from worldly sin. The internal logic of its own doctrine required that the Church remain dependent on Attila, the Nobility, for its existence.

The Church and Monarchy Had an Uneasy Alliance

The only way for the Church and Nobility to maintain their respective monopolies on morality and the use of physical force was for each to provide support for the other, but this alliance was always uneasy. The conflicts between the monarchy and Popes Gregory, Innocent, and Boniface discussed previously illustrate this fact. Ayn Rand described it this way:

“…the alliance of the two rulers is precarious: it is based on mutual fear and mutual contempt. Attila is an extrovert, resentful of any concern with consciousness -the Witch Doctor is an introvert, resentful of any concern with physical existence. Attila professes scorn for values, ideals, principles, theories, abstractions -the Witch Doctor professes scorn for material property, for wealth, for man’s body, for this earth. Attila considers the Witch Doctor impractical -the Witch Doctor considers Attila immoral. But, secretly, each of them believes that the other possesses a mysterious faculty he lacks, that the other is the true master of reality, the true exponent of the power to deal with existence. In terms, not of thought, but of chronic anxiety, it is the Witch Doctor who believes that brute force rules the world -and it is Attila who believes in the supernatural; his name for it is ‘fate’ or ‘luck’.” (Rand, For the New Intellectual)

Conclusion

The alliance between the Nobility and the Church lasted for about a thousand years. The system would eventually break down as new ideas entered the European scene. Thinkers began to question both the Church’s monopoly on morality, and also the fundamental philosophical underpinnings of that morality:

“Growing contact with Constantinople and the Muslim world prompted Latin translations, from Greek Arabic, or Hebrew, of many of the works of Aristotle as well as books of Hellenistic science, mathematics, and medicine…The stimulus from the East lifted the intellectual life of Europe beyond the level of earlier monastic and cathedral education.” (“A Brief History of Western Man”, 3d Ed., Greer, Thomas, 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Chapter6: “The Flowering of Medieval Culture”, Pg. 214.)

The social system was transformed by increased trade and production:

“The relatively static, agrarian economy of the Middle Ages steadily gave way to a more dynamic, commercial economy, and this economic change produced social change. New social ranks appeared; serfdom grew obsolete; the entire class structure became more fluid….freedom of the individual was enhanced….ethical and philosophical views were bound to alter…medieval ideals of asceticism, poverty, and humility were thrust aside by the ‘modern’ aspirations for pleasure, money, and status.” (“A Brief History of Western Man”, 3d Ed., Greer, Thomas, 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Chapter 7: “Transformation and Expansion of Europe”, Pg. 233-234.)

Initially, monarchs became less dependent on the Church for legitimacy, and often became more despotic in the short-run:

“…monarchs found that they could exercise a larger measure of direct authority over their kingdoms. Feudal regimes gradually gave way to despotic national states.” (“A Brief History of Western Man”, 3d Ed., Greer, Thomas, 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Chapter 7: “Transformation and Expansion of Europe”, Pg. 234.)

But, without the Church to provide the monarchs with legitimacy, they needed some other basis for justifying their existence. There was an intellectual turn to the secular, earthly benefits the state could produce. Machiavelli’s work, The Prince, rejected a heavenly basis for the state:

“The state, he thought, does not rest on any supernatural sanction. It provides its own justification, and it operates according to rules that have grown out of the ‘facts’ of human nature. He thereby removed politics from Christian ideology and placed it on a purely secular level.” (“A Brief History of Western Man”, 3d Ed., Greer, Thomas, 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Chapter 7: “Transformation and Expansion of Europe”, Pg. 254.)

In essence, the State became just another institution among men, serving purely secular needs. It was not much different from the newly emerging corporations and other capitalist institutions. The state served the people’s interests.

The logic of these ideas would eventually suggest that if government wasn’t performing its function, it could be reformed or abolished. After the Renaissance, the Medieval version of Attila, the Nobility, was living on borrowed time. Complete fruition of these ideas came with the American Revolution of 1765, when Attila and the Witch Doctor were banished from the State in favor of rule of law and freedom of conscience, as embodied in the US Constitution.

The COVID-19 Crisis, Collectivism, and Capitalism

The military, police, and medical professions often train for emergency situations. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/choke/201005/want-success-under-stress-close-the-gap-between-practice-and-competition) First responders and military try to create a system of steps that are to be taken in situations that are not likely to occur on a daily basis. It’s widely recognized that high stress is going to make thinking harder, not easier. Success in an emergency situations depends on thinking ahead of time about what steps need to be taken, and then training before the emergency occurs.

I suspect emergency responders train because the human mind needs a set of guiding principles to deal with the overwhelming sensory information that is presented to it. A person often does not have the time to sit down and evaluate each situation individually and determine what the best course of action is. Action is called for, especially in an emergency.

Concepts are a means of categorizing sensory-perceptual data in a systematic manner to improve one’s chances of living a successful and happy life. (How We Know: Epistemology on An Objectivist Foundation”, Binswanger,2014, TOF Publications, pg. 135; see, also, “The Virtue of Selfishness: The Objectivist Ethics”, Rand, “Man’s actions and survival require the guidance of conceptual values derived from conceptual knowledge.”)

A “principle” is a sort of aphorism or mental statement, made up of simpler concepts. It describes a particular cause-and-effect relationship one must implement to increase the chances of living. (How We Know: Epistemology on An Objectivist Foundation”, Binswanger,2014, TOF Publications, Pg 306.) For instance, a person might adopt the principle of: “When dealing with others, treat them fairly, and in a win-win manner.” This is a principle guiding how one deals with other people socially and in business. This principle of justice is a recognition that just as you want to live, so too, do most other people want to live. You must provide them with a benefit to keep them dealing with you. It is a recognition of a particular cause -giving positive incentives for other people- that will bring about a particular effect -the benefits of trade. A boss pays his workers, the cause, in exchange for their labor, an effect, that he wants. A person listens to his friend describe his fantastic new job, and congratulates him, because he wants his friend to offer him positive reinforcement when something good happens in his own life. Husbands don’t cheat on their wives (the cause), because their wives agree to live with them and have sex only with them (the effect).

Problems can arise from the human mind’s need for principles to live in at least two way: (1) Some principles adopted by people are either false, or are false in a particular context; and (2) Not everyone agrees that the purpose of principles is to improve your life and well-being. Dogma is an example of “principles” that are aimed at some purpose other than living. (For instance, a religious instruction that tells people not to eat certain foods, not because of any health reasons, but simply because it is forbidden by some sort of supernatural authority.)

A feature of the human mind is a tendency to “fall to the level of your training” rather than “rise to the occasion” during a national emergency. People are going to tend to take whatever pre-existing ideas they may have about human nature, society, and the good life, and apply them. If they haven’t thought too deeply about the implications of these ideas, then there can be negative consequences.

Political systems and social systems tend to operate on a sort of “inertia”, in which our cultural institutions are based on long-standing ideas and traditions. As a result, our political systems may last longer than the ideas that created them. In the past hundred and fifty years, the ideas that created American culture and institutions have largely been discarded by academics and intellectuals in exchange for other notions. Our institutions and social mores have changed more slowly, because of “cultural inertia”. Our court systems, political institutions, and some social customs, are based in a better era. They exemplify the “pursuit of happiness” expounded by Enlightenment philosophers, like John Locke and Aristotle. Academics have long since rejected those ideas in favor of the collectivism of Marx and the duty of Kant. (See “Explaining Post Modernism: Skepticism and Socialism From Rousseau to Foucault”, Hicks, 2018)

I am not a historian, but what I think happens in a national emergency or social crisis is that the old institutions need adjustment to the current context, but since academics, lawyers, politicians, and other cultural elites don’t really understand or accept the ideas on which those old institutions were formed, they are unable to offer any sort of adjustment or modification of those institutions. All they have available in their conceptual “toolbox” are the newer ideas, which have never been fully implemented, due to the “cultural inertia” I discussed. As a result, during a social crisis, there is a strong possibility of a sudden overthrow of the old institutions in favor of contrary, newer ideas. The contradiction between the new ideas and the old institutions suddenly becomes unsustainable, and there is a quick shift.

The tendency of old institutions to be overthrown in favor of a new system, representing current ideas, during a crisis is not necessarily bad. It depends on what those newer ideas are, and what the new system consists of. It’s possible the new ideas are better than the ideas that formed the basis of the old regime. It is theorized by some historians that the Black Death in Europe, between 1348 and 1350, helped shatter the old Feudal order:

“What’s often missing from this story, however, is the wider context and the lasting impact of the Black Death. This is a story not only of unfathomable tragedy, but also of transformation and rebirth. The plague, in combination with a host of other related and overlapping crises, delivered a death blow to Medieval Europe, ushering in a new age — the Renaissance and the rise of so-called agrarian capitalism — and ultimately setting the stage for the Industrial Revolution and the modern world.” (“The Black Death led to the demise of feudalism. Could this pandemic have a similar effect?”, Adam McBride, in April 26, 2020 ed. of “Salon”, emphasis added, online at: https://www.salon.com/2020/04/26/the-black-death-led-to-the-demise-of-feudalism-could-this-pandemic-have-a-similar-effect/ )

(Note: I do not agree with the proposed political and policy solutions in the last several paragraphs of this article, but I do agree with the historical account of the Black Death as an immediate cause of the end of the Middle Ages.)

The reason the Black Death could be socially and politically transformative, giving rise to the Renaissance, is because there were underlying ideas that had been circulating in the European culture for some time. The Renaissance was a “rebirth” of Ancient Greek ideas:

“The argument [amongst medieval scholastics] paralleled the classical one between Plato and the Sophists. Plato believed that Ideas (Forms) had a perfect and independent existence, while the Sophists thought that only particular things existed. In the Middle Ages, those who held that ‘universals’ were real were called ‘realists’; those who declared that they were just names (nomina) were called ‘nominalists’. The argument was (and is) of critical importance to one’s philosophical outlook. The extreme realists attached little importance to individual things and sought through sheer logic or divine revelation to approach the universals. The extreme nominalists, by contrast, perceived only discrete objects and refused to admit the existence of unifying relationships among the infinitude of particulars. The realists tended to ignore the observed world; the nominalists could scarcely comprehend it. Most schoolmen took a middle position on this question. Among the moderates, [Peter] Abelard…held that only particular things have an existence in and of themselves. The universals, however, are more than mere names. They exist as concepts in individual minds -keys to an understanding of the interrelatedness of things…By means of many such concepts, inferred from individual observations, we can make the world (to a degree) comprehensible, manageable, and predictable…Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the scholastic philosophers, was a moderate realist…Following the lead of…Abelard…Aquinas set a high value on the faculty of reason. By this time the full impact of Aristotle and the new learning from the East had struck the schools and universities of Europe, and Christian dogmas were being challenged by pagan, Muslim, and Jewish logicians…Aquinas adopted Aristotelian logic and turned it to the defense of his faith….Both faith and reason, he argued, were created by God, and it is illogical to hold that God could contradict himself.” (“A Brief History of Western Man”, 3d Ed., Greer, Thomas, 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Chapter 6: “The Flowering of Medieval Culture, Pg. 214-215)

Thomas Aquinas had brought Aristotelian thought back to Europe, in the sense of giving those ideas institutional respectability in the Catholic church. Most cultural and academic elites of that time were in the Church. By adopting Aristotle to fit with Church doctrine, at least for a while, Aquinas lay the groundwork for the Renaissance. He predated the Black Death, with published works between the 1240’s and the 1280’s. ( https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christianity/Aristotle-and-Aquinas ) A reemergence of the ideas of Aristotle took the focus of intellectuals away from a hard, “Platonic realism”, which focused on alleged revelations from another word. Aristotelianism moved European thinking towards greater observation of particulars in the world of our senses, which is essential to scientific and modern thinking.

This history of the Black Death, the reemergence of Aristotelianism in the late Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, suggests a theory concerning how historical change occurs: A crisis can accelerate what is already occurring in a society. Newer ideas that have been circulating in the culture for some time can quickly and drastically transform social and political institutions during a crisis. Those transformations can be for better or worse, depending on the underlying ideas driving the transformation.

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COVID-19 is our current national crisis. People are approaching it with a lifetime of ideas they have gathered up and accepted, either expressly, or by default, because they didn’t examine the ideas around them too closely. What ideas have a significant segment of the American population accepted? What ideas have the majority of academics, journalists, lawyers, and politicians accepted? In a crisis, there is very little time to act. Immediate action is called for. Just like soldiers will “fall to the level of their training” rather than “rise to the occasion” in an emergency, so too will politicians fall to the level of their “training” from college. What did they learn at the universities? For the most part, their professors taught them to embrace collectivism, and to reject individual rights. This collectivism has taken the form of many slogans over the years, and now, the serpent’s egg is hatching.

I’ll start by defining some of my key terms:

(1) What are individual rights?

“A ‘right’ is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.” (The Virtue of Selfishness, “Man’s Rights”, Ayn Rand)

(2) What is the purpose of individual rights?

“Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational.” (Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand)

(3) What is collectivism?

“Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group—whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called ‘the common good.’” (Ayn Rand, “The Only Path to Tomorrow,” Reader’s Digest, Jan, 1944, 8., http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/collectivism.html)

Our society and legal system are a combination of egoism and individual rights on the one hand and collectivism and “the common good” on the other. The former are older ideas that are based in the likes of Aristotle and John Locke, while the later are based in the ideas of Marx, Hegel, and other 18^th Century philosophers. (See “Explaining Post Modernism: Skepticism and Socialism From Rousseau to Foucault”, Hicks, 2018; see, also, The Ominous Parallels, Leonard Peikoff.)

The expression: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” is inaccurate. The road to hell is paved by what one considers to be the good, but is, in fact, the opposite. The road to hell is paved by collectivist intentions. Several commonly held collectivist ideas have resulted in what are logical, albeit unforeseen, consequences of the government’s reaction to the present COVID-19 epidemic. What are some of these collectivist ideas driving the current governmental response to COVID-19?

(1) The Collectivist Idea that “Healthcare Is A Right”

One of the first acts of many state governors in the face of the COVID-19 crisis was to force “non-essential” healthcare workers off the job. Counties and states banned “elective” medical care. https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/dallas-county-enacts-shelter-in-place-effective-sunday-night-to-combat-covid-19-pandemic/

Apparently, politicians thought of doctors and healthcare workers as having “fungible” skill-sets. If they banned “elective” procedures, then they believed this would leave more healthcare “resources” for others. However, just because a doctor can perform a rhinoplasty or a breast-enhancement surgery, doesn’t mean he has sufficient knowledge to treat a person suffering from a viral respiratory illness. A dermatologist can’t perform heart surgery:

“…thousands of health care workers across the nation who have been laid off, furloughed or are working reduced hours as their services are deemed nonessential…The workers range from dentists and general surgeons to medical assistants and nurses, from allergists and dermatologists to primary care physicians and pediatricians.” https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/04/02/coronavirus-pandemic-jobs-us-health-care-workers-furloughed-laid-off/5102320002/

People were told by politicians not to be selfish, and forego “elective” medical procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Who decides what is an important health care matter and what is merely “elective”? When health care is viewed as a right, it’s not you and your doctor. The government owns your doctor’s life. (And your life.) Politicians and bureaucrats, viewing healthcare as a “right” are essentially saying:

“That spot on your arm? Probably nothing, probably not melanoma. That toothache? Probably nothing probably not a life-threatening tooth abscess. That debilitating knee pain? How selfish of you to want to be out of pain when there are people dying. You think you have a life-threatening peanut allergy, and need to see your allergist? Suck it up, and quit complaining, buttercup.”

What was the consequence of government forbidding “elective medicine”? Doctors and hospitals can no longer make a profit, which means, in the long run, they’ll go out of business and there will be less healthcare, not more:

“Government-mandated cutbacks on elective procedures and routine check-ups have forced independent medical practices to temporarily close their doors. The loss of revenue may soon force some practices to furlough staff, and in the worst-case scenarios to go out of business, causing significant access-to-care disruptions once the pandemic subsides.” https://triblive.com/opinion/dr-lawrence-john-covid-19-could-devastate-medical-practices/

Thinking of “health care as a right” has also led to a massive conflict between different groups in our society. One group doesn’t need to go out to work, either because they can work from home, or because they are wealthy enough to avoid work. Another group, needs to work, and cannot do so from home. Their jobs and businesses have been largely shut down due to local and state “stay at home orders”. This reflects the phenomena of “rights inflation”.

“A collectivist tyranny dare not enslave a country by an outright confiscation of its values, material or moral. It has to be done by a process of internal corruption. Just as in the material realm the plundering of a country’s wealth is accomplished by inflating the currency—so today one may witness the process of inflation being applied to the realm of rights. The process entails such a growth of newly promulgated ‘rights’ that people do not notice the fact that the meaning of the concept is being reversed. Just as bad money drives out good money, so these ‘printing-press rights’ negate authentic rights….The ‘gimmick’ was the switch of the concept of rights from the political to the economic realm. The Democratic Party platform of 1960 summarizes the switch boldly and explicitly….The right to a useful and remunerative job…The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health….If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.” (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, “Man’s Rights”, Ayn Rand https://courses.aynrand.org/works/mans-rights/ , emphasis added.)

If “health care is a right”, then “health is a right” – and it will conflict with other people being able to earn a living with shelter in place orders. The wealthy, who don’t need to work, will tend to see “health as a right” that trumps the right to earn a living by people of lesser means. White-collar workers, who can work from home, will tend to focus on “the right to health”, while service industry people in the restaurant and “non-essential” retail businesses will want to leave home. Who do you think has more influence in Washington and the State Capitals? The wealthy/white collar types, or the poor and service-industry employees?

The retired elderly, who are more susceptible to COVID-19, will also tend to see “health as a right”, that overrides the need of younger adults to earn a living, and of children to obtain an education . Who do you think has more political influence in Washington and at the State and local level? The politicians know senior citizens vote, while the young do not.

Right now, the US has enough wealth that it can manage without people actually starving. Not so in other areas of the world. The lock-downs in Africa are causing people to go without food:

“Four weeks into a 35-day lockdown poor communities are facing food shortages as incomes for mostly informal workers have dried up.”

https://news.yahoo.com/violence-looting-point-food-crisis-africa-lockdown-112929125.html

The wealthy of Africa don’t care. They have plenty of food, so they will choose to reduce their health risk, and they’ll impose that choice on the poor.

Years of thinking of “health care as a right”, without considering the context of who is to pay for it and who is to provide it, has resulted in the present conflict between those who can afford the lock-down (the elderly, the wealthy, and white collar workers), and those who cannot afford it (the young, service industry workers, and the working poor.) “Rights inflation” has destroyed real, individual rights to life, liberty, and property. It has lead to “pressure group warfare” in the legislature and government as different interest groups try to ensure their group’s interests are advanced at the expense of other groups. (What I call a “cold civil war”.)

In reality, there is no “right to health care” or “right to food”. There is a right to take the actions necessary to maintain your life, while leaving others free to do the same, by not using physical force against them to deprive them of their values. All law must hold this principle as its touchstone. You have a right not to be robbed. You have a right not to be murdered. You don’t have a right to get together a big enough gang of lobbyists in Washington DC or at the Dallas County Commissioners Court, and then “legally rob” other people through taxes and regulations -or force them to remain in their house and off their job.

(2) The Collectivist Idea of “Prophylactic”, or “Preventative” Law.

“Preventative law”, or “prophylactic rules”, is not aimed at prohibiting the violation of individual rights. It is law aimed at preventing certain actions that could potentially lead to the violation of individual rights. It arises because legislators do not fully understand or comprehend what the purpose of government and law is in the first place: To allow men to live their lives in a social environment, free from the initiation of physical force.

“Gun control” laws are an example of preventative law the left loves. The left wants to stop people who might kill with a gun by banning them for everyone. But, if government officials are entitled to initiate physical force against those who merely choose to own a gun, then there is nothing, in principle to stop them from initiating physical force against anyone deemed a “potential threat”.

Another example are most “environmental regulations”. These laws prohibit certain economic activity not because someone has actually been injured by another person’s pollution coming onto their property, but merely because a business *might* injure someone with its activities.

Another, more relevant, example with regard to the current COVID-19 crisis would be a curfew law. Such a law is enacted to prevent all persons from going outside after a certain hour, because there is a small number of criminals who commit armed robbery at night. This was the example provided by Ayn Rand on a discussion of the concept of law, recorded in the 1960’s. (http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-works/objective-law.html. -Starting at about 14 minutes in, Miss Rand discusses this issue for preventative law, and gives the example of curfew laws. She says a small number of people might engage in “night hold ups”, what we’d call a mugging today, but she did not believe it is justification for holding the best in society to the level of the worst in society.)

Preventative law is very common in the laws regulating businesses, and has been for about a hundred years now:

“…’protective’ legislation falls in the category of preventive law. Businessmen are being subjected to governmental coercion prior to the commission of any crime. In a free economy, the government may step in only when a fraud has been perpetrated, or a demonstrable damage has been done to a consumer; in such cases the only protection required is that of criminal law.” (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, “The Assault on Integrity” Alan Greenspan.)

The effect of preventative law is to make it difficult to maintain your life. Second Amendment advocates will say something like “when guns are outlawed, only the outlaws have guns”. This is said, in part, because “gun control” makes it impossible to legally use a gun for self-defense. A law-abiding person is being held to the level of a criminal when it comes to “gun control”, even though there is no evidence he would commit a crime with a gun. In the case of the COVID-19 emergency, those who want to earn a living are being legally prevented from doing so, even though there is no evidence they are sick.

Similar to “gun control” laws and “environmental laws”, with COVID-19, the left wants to stop the vast majority of people from living their lives, with zero due process, and zero evidence that they are sick or contagious.

(3) The Collectivists Hold a “Platonic Guardian” View of Science, and a Distrust of the “Common Man”

The father of collectivism in Western Civilization is Plato. He divides his collectivist “Republic” into three classes: the producers, the auxiliaries, and the guardians:

“The guardians are responsible for ruling the city. They are chosen from among the ranks of the auxiliaries, and are also known as philosopher-kings.” https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/republic/characters/

Today’s leftists view themselves as our society’s philosopher-kings. Their attitude is: “Don’t bother explaining the science to the people. Don’t try to obtain voluntary consent. The people are too stupid to understand. Force is necessary. Force is the only method that is efficacious.”

“The hallmark of collectivists is their deep-rooted distrust of freedom and of the free-market processes; but it is their advocacy of so-called ‘consumer protection’ that exposes the nature of their basic premises with particular clarity. By preferring force and fear to incentive and reward as a means of human motivation, they confess their view of man as a mindless brute functioning on the range of the moment…” (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, “The Assault on Integrity” Ayn Rand.)

This attitude of the elite philosopher-king who will rule over the rest of us is seen in a common argument amongst environmentalist politicians, which is something along the lines of: “97% of scientist agree that human beings are causing average global temperatures to go up.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2016/12/14/fact-checking-the-97-consensus-on-anthropogenic-climate-change/#45e4f5b71157

This is not an argument based in evidence or logical argument. It’s a sort of “argument from authority’” (At one time, the majority of authorities thought the Earth was the center of the universe.) What matters is the evidence, which can be communicated to anyone with a normal brain. If there is evidence, then show the evidence. Don’t just belittle people and tell them there is a scientific consensus, but they’re too stupid to understand the science. (This argument is probably being used because most of the reporters and politicians who think average global temperatures are going up due to human activity don’t understand the science themselves.)

If you went to the doctor’s office, and he said: “You need immediate surgery, but I’m not going to tell you where or why -just trust my authority as a doctor,” you’d likely want more of an explanation. To the philosopher-king left, no such explanation is necessary or useful during the present COVID-19 crisis. Just obey them because they know better. These decisions are often being made by state governors and mayors, using ill-defined “natural disaster statutes”, with little or no input from legislatures or courts. The actions of California Governor Gavin Newsom, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer reflect the two-thousand-year-old ideas of Plato. Our “Philosopher-king” governors and mayors will rule over us, the “unwashed masses”. We’re too stupid to make our own decisions.

In Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, a major character is a government scientist who sets himself up as a sort of “philosopher-king”, who wants state funded science because he thinks the people are too stupid to make their own decisions, or to understand science. This is the story of Dr. Robert Stadler. He was a brilliant scientist, disgusted by the profit motive and the need to earn a living. He viewed science as something that should be pursued, not to serve human life, but as a “pure intellectual pursuit”. For Dr. Stadler, “reason” wasn’t “man’s means of survival”. It was a sort of Platonic “end in itself”.

Prior to the start of the novel’s main plot line, Dr. Stadler had used his reputation as a scientist to obtain governmental funding for a “State Science Institute”, so that he could pursue “science without a profit motive”. In the end, all that the “State Science Institute” produced was a weapon of mass destruction aimed at the subjugation of the American population. (A fictional version of the atomic bomb.)

The last scene involving Dr. Stadler is him physically wrestling for control of the weapon with Cuffy Meigs, a “two-bit” “mafia type”, who has risen to power in the corrupt government of a dystopian near-future America. Cuffy Meigs has no respect for science or reason. His only interest is gaining power through the use of physical force, and he’s better at it than Dr. Stadler. I think what Rand was trying to say here is: Beware all you men of science who think the masses are too stupid to understand your ideas, so you want to substitute force for voluntary persuasion. If you try to set yourself up as a philosopher-king who rules by the use of force, you’ll ultimately loose to the criminal thugs of the world, who are better at violence than you’ll ever be. The criminals who will come to power will care little for science or reason.

If reason is discarded in favor of force, then the winner won’t be the person with the most logical argument. It’ll be the person with the biggest gun, and who is most willing to use it. The most brutal will come to power, not the men of reason. It’s the thugs like Stalin and Mao Zedong who will be in the political driver’s seat, not a Newton or Galileo.

When individual rights are outlawed, only the criminals will have guns.

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If it’s collectivism that is driving current governmental policy when it comes to COVID-19, someone might ask what is my alternative? It’s fine and good to talk about individual rights, but how would a more capitalist society, committed to the respect of rights to life, liberty, and property, deal with the problem of a pandemic? This is a fair question.

Part of the problem is the average American has a difficult time even imagining what a truly capitalist society would look like. They make assumptions that are collectivist, often just by “default” because “that’s just how it is done” in their minds. Non-academic Americans value individualism and the egoistic “right to pursue happiness”, but they cannot always translate that into practice when it comes to our legal system and institutions. This is not a failing of the American people at large. It’s a failure of intellectuals, college professors, newspaper reporters, economists, lawyers, and politicians to present and explain such ideas. The majority of the intellectual elites are hostile towards individualism, and don’t believe people should pursue their own happiness. “Selfishness” is a dirty word for most of the elites in our society.

How would a government under capitalism deal with a viral pandemic? ¹

I want to briefly address another set of ideas circulating in our society. These ideas tend to fall under the term “conservatism”, although, like “liberalism”, that is a poorly-defined term. “Conservatism” tends to reject collectivism, but one strand of that school of thought wants to replace it with religion and faith. In other words, it wants to replace the Enlightenment ideas of John Locke and Isaac Newton with those of the early Middle Ages. The early Middle Ages, the Dark Ages, were characterized by the fall of the Roman Empire, ignorance, the destruction of trade, reduced standard of living, “…frequent warfare and a virtual disappearance of urban life.” https://www.britannica.com/event/Dark-Ages

Today, cultures dominated by religious faith are mostly found in the Muslim world. Religious theocracies like Iran are characterized by violence and the violation of individual rights in order to prepare people for the afterlife. It’s beyond the scope of what I’m writing here, but, I’ve read a compelling argument for the possibility that a large crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic could lead to a rejection of modernism in favor of some version of religion. It would probably take the form of a Christian theocracy in Europe and North America. In other words, it’s possible that religious faith, which still exists to some greater or lesser degree in the minds of Western men, could come to the surface, especially if Westerners widely viewed science and modernism as having failed them during a major crisis. (I refer the reader to “The DIM Hypothesis” by Leonard Peikoff for more on that.) This would largely be the fault of academics and philosophers as well, since they’ve spent the last hundred and fifty years attacking reason. (See “Explaining Post Modernism: Skepticism and Socialism From Rousseau to Foucault”, Hicks, 2018; see, also, The Ominous Parallels, Leonard Peikoff.)

(1) Privatized Cities

First, it must be understood that cities would be private under capitalism. Every square inch of a city would be owned by some particular person, or group of people. There would be no “public property” at all. Force is not used to fund a private city, and all standards of behavior and business safety are established by voluntary contract. (With contracts being enforced by the court system.)

Even today, there already are “quasi-private” cities to some degree. You see this, at least partially, with “planned communities”. A developer will build an entire city grid with streets, neighborhoods, schools, parks, and business districts. Then, anyone who wants to move there, must agree to the conditions of the developer. There is a preexisting agreement not to build a commercial warehouse right next to a neighborhood with families in it. Bars are located in one section of the town, while schools and families are in another, etc. An example of an almost entirely private city may be Celebration, Florida, which was created from scratch by the Walt Disney Corporation.

Major cities are seeing the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the United States, New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco have been hit hard. These are all “port” cities, with a large flow of people and goods into, and out of the country. Additionally, they are “high density” populations, so the virus can easily spread once it comes into one of these cities.

People living in high-density, high-immigration cities like New York, are, in a sense, imposing the likelihood of pandemic on the rest of the nation. It’s an example of what economists call a “negative externality”. People who might become sick due to risky behavior, but are asymptomatic carriers, are wanting to move about and earn a living. When some of them become sick, they then infect other people, who develop more serious symptoms or even die. The people who get sick, but are asymptomatic, are unwittingly imposing the cost of their more-risky behavior on those who do not want the risk:

“The spread of COVID-19 is a great example of an externality, which is an economic term for a cost or benefit incurred or received by a third party. The best example of a negative externality is air pollution, such as when a factory emits air pollution that imposes a cost on neighbors.” https://www.cato.org/blog/less-costly-ways-reduce-harm-covid-19-without-travel-immigration-bans

Negative externalities arise because private property rights in a particular sphere are non-existent, or not well-defined. The solution is to define private property rights, and distribute “public property” to private owners. (Through a public auction, or through some sort of distribution to taxpayers.)

The details of how you take an existing city and “privatize” it would take an entire paper of its own, but in principle, the existing residents of the city, who pay the local taxes, should all be given shares in a corporation that owns all of the previously-public infrastructure. These shareholders then have a right to elect a governing board of directors. Coerced local taxes would be replaced by “user fees”. Shareholders have to pay the user fees, and abide by the rules. The corporation would be free to charge fees for the use of its facilities, such as the roads. The city could also impose health and safety rules as a contractual condition of living there. For instance, a local business would need to abide by health and safety rules in order to have access to the roads in the city. The business would be free not to abide by these rules, but they’d be limited to flying their customers in by helicopter, or some other means that doesn’t involve the use of the roads. Since most businesses couldn’t carry on without access to the roads, they’d all abide by the health and safety rules, or they’d shut down and move somewhere else. Those who don’t like the rules, can move to another city. Competition would then occur between cities to attract residents and customers by offering the best “package” of services, such as roads, utilities, and reasonable health and safety rules, at the lowest cost.

If there are only private cities, then pandemics could be more easily fought. The owners of private city infrastructure have a profit incentive to ensure that pandemics do not spread. Say there are three private cities, and one of them, City A, has a pandemic. Cities B and C can refuse entry from people from City A until the pandemic is over. In other words, instead of the government having to impose a lockdown on City A, all of the other cities will, effectively, “socially distance” at the city-wide level.

There would also only be private highways, and the owners of the private highways could set standards of health for who can travel on them. They would want to protect their customers, so it is even less likely that people from City A would be allowed to travel to City B while the pandemic in City A is going on.

This is a much more “granulated” and precise approach to preventing the spread of disease than at the border of a country, which causes unnecessary disruptions of trade and the flow of healthy people.

(2) Freedom of Immigration Can Increase Healthcare “Resources”

With the exception of short quarantines and refusing entry to terrorists at war with the United States, more immigration would reduce the chances of a viral pandemic spreading and overwhelming the healthcare industry. An example of this could be seen with the fires in Australia in 2019. During that emergency, firemen from around the world traveled to Australia to help put out the conflagration:

“Firefighters from across the US have been helping since early December. On Saturday, a group of 20 will deploy and will be followed by another group of 80 on Monday, bringing the total to 175 American firefighters on the ground in Australia.

Canada, and New Zealand are also part of a mutual aid system, helping Australia in its firefighting efforts.” https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/more-us-firefighters-heading-to-help-australia-fight-wildfires/ar-BBYBhzS

COVID-19 didn’t spontaneously arise all over the world at one time. It started in a specific city in China. It spread from there to the rest of the world, then it spread to nearby countries like South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. (With air travel causing it to spread further, faster.)

If COVID-19 had been revealed sooner, it might have been possible to stop it before it started with doctors and healthcare workers coming into the area to treat patients, similar to what firefighters did in Australia. The spread of COVID-19, however, was moved along by the suppression of information by the Chinese government, which does not respect individual rights, like freedom of the press or freedom of movement.

(3) “Socially Distance” Ourselves From Authoritarian and Totalitarian Nations

The existence of “bad actors” like China makes a viral epidemic more likely to spread to freeer, more capitalistic countries like the United States and Western Europe. The suppression of individual rights in countries like China would have to be addressed by specific foreign policy actions of a fully capitalist nation. Open warfare with nations like China may not always be possible, perhaps because they possess nuclear weapons, making it too risky, or simply because it is not in the national interest of the capitalist nation to go to war with them, in terms of cost and lives lost.

How would a capitalist republic deal with bad actors like China, short of open war? By not dealing with them, and encouraging, but not forcing, their citizens not to deal with them.

A capitalist nation would recognize that it is, in a sense, at war with all totalitarian states, even if no shots are being fired. A free society and a totalitarian state are not compatible. Short of open warfare, which might not be feasible, here are some alternative solutions:

a. Economic boycott – Private citizens within the capitalist nation can be urged to voluntarily sign contracts stating that they will not have business dealings with totalitarian states, and the contracts only become enforceable in a court of law when a sufficient number of people have signed the contract. For instance, there could be a contract which would say: “I agree, upon 75% of the rest of US Citizens signing this contract, to boycott all Chinese companies, and have no business dealings with them for X number of years.” People would then be shown the many atrocities committed by nations like China, and persuaded, using reason and evidence, that dealing with such a country is not in their long-term interests.

b. No Enforcement of Contracts with Chinese Businesses and Nationals – United States Courts would have their jurisdiction to enforce contracts with companies or persons from totalitarian states withdrawn by Congress. (This might take a Constitutional Amendment.) If a US business takes delivery of goods from China, and doesn’t pay, the Chinese business has no recourse in US courts. If a Chinese company wants its money before delivering goods, and then that Chinese company doesn’t deliver the goods, a US court wouldn’t have jurisdiction to enforce the contract. Trade with China would be reduced to Chinese nationals bringing goods to the US for cash exchange. This would eliminate a lot of trade between the US and authoritarian and totalitarian nations, because neither side in a trade could rely on the enforcement of contracts.

c. Higher Voluntary Taxes on Businesses Engaged in Trade With China – This gets into how government would be funded under Capitalism. There are several alternatives. Most of them revolve around paying some sort of fee for government services. For instance, in order to have one’s contract enforced in a court, it would be necessary to pay a certain percentage of the value of the contract ahead of time. A contract for the sale of $100 of goods might have a 5% contract enforcement fee, in which $5 must be paid to the government as “insurance” against breach. In recognition of the fact that any US person doing business with Chinese companies and nationals is helping to prop up that regime, the government could impose a higher contract enforcement fee. The higher fee would cover the cost of increased military spending that is necessary to keep the United States safe. So, a person who does business with Chinese nationals, in any given year, might pay a 15% contract enforcement fee, rather than the usual 5%, on all of his contracts with other US citizens in the next year. In that way, US citizens would be highly discouraged from having business dealings with Chinese nationals at all.

Much higher voluntary taxes on Americans doing business with China are justified because they are making America less safe. They are imposing a cost on the rest of us, which can rightfully be recouped, to pay for extra military protection. The companies doing business with China should pay for the “negative externality” they are imposing on other Americans with their risky behavior. They’re free to do so, but not free to impose the cost on the rest of us.

Other laws relating to viral pandemics under capitalism are also possible. Some may even be better than the ones I have proposed here. The point is to show that a free society is not less “efficient” than an authoritarian one at dealing with the problem. The opposite is true. The principle of individual rights won’t guarantee man’s survival, but totalitarianism will make it impossible.

Book Review of “Explaining Postmodernism”, by Stephen R.C. Hicks

This is the best non-fiction book I’ve read in a decade. I highly recommend it. The over-all value of the book lies in tracing the origins of what I find to be a common tactic when debating a leftist. You present them with arguments, facts, and logic, and, at the end, they will say something like:

“Well this is all just your white male prejudice,”; “that’s only logic, come down to reality,”; “those are just your definitions, and all definitions are ultimately arbitrary”; or, even, “I don’t feel that you’re right, and why is your logic better than my feelings?”

Hicks has provided an explanation, lying in the history of philosophy, for why so many people seem to consider such responses to a logical argument to be persuasive. That explanation lies, mostly, in the ideas of dead, white, male philosophers who lived two-hundred years ago. Those notions have slowly “trickled down” to the masses, and infect the majority of people’s minds today -especially any college student with a “gender studies” or “black studies” degree.

The author expressly states his theme in his table of contents:

“Thesis: The failure of epistemology made postmodernism possible, and the failure of socialism made postmodernism necessary.” (Table of Contents, Pg. i.)

Did I find this, in fact, to be his theme based on my reading of the book? Overall, I’d say, yes. I’ll start with Hicks’ definition of “postmodernism”:

“Postmodernism rejects the entire Enlightenment project. It holds that the modernist premises of the Enlightenment were untenable from the beginning…” (Pg 14)

“Postmodernism reject the Enlightenment project in the most fundamental way possible -by attacking its essential philosophical themes. Postmodernism rejects the reason and the individualism that the entire Enlightenment would depend upon.” (Pg. 14)

His definition of “postmodern” is basically a “negative definition”. He defines it as an attack on the Enlightenment. What does he think the Enlightenment stood for?

“In philosophy, modernism’s essentials are located in the formative figures of Francis Bacon…Rene Descartes…, for their influence upon epistemology, and more comprehensively in John Locke…for his influence upon all aspects of philosophy.” (Pg. 7)

“Bacon, Descartes ,and Locke are modern because of their philosophical naturalism, their profound confidence in reason, and especially in the case of Locke, their individualism. Modern thinkers stress that perception and reason are the human means of knowing nature -in contrast to the pre-modern reliance upon tradition, faith, and mysticism. Modern thinkers stress human autonomy and the human capacity for forming one’s character -in contrast to the pre-modern emphasis upon dependence and original sin. Modern thinkers emphasize the individual…“ (Pg. 7)

To sum up, Hicks sees three “types” of philosophical attitudes in the Western World:

The “Pre-modern”, as exemplified by the Christian Medieval, and, probably, the Ancient Greek worlds;

the “modern” attitude, which started around the time of Francis Bacon; and

the “postmodern”, whose origins he goes on to explain later in the book.

What was the “failure of epistemology” he says “made postmodernism possible”? He doesn’t spend too much time explaining what “epistemology” is. He clearly is familiar with, and sympathetic to, Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. I assume he generally agrees with what she said in “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology”. I also think he is assuming people reading his book will already have some general understanding of the subject of philosophy and its basic questions. But, early on, he defines what he views as the “Enlightenment epistemology”, which is:

“If one emphasizes that reason is the faculty of understanding nature, then that epistemology systematically applied yields science. Enlightenment thinkers laid the foundations of all the major branches of science. In mathematics, Isaac Newton….developed the calculus….Linnaeus…a comprehensive biological taxonomy…Lavoisier…the foundations of chemistry.” (Pg. 9)

Hicks says there were:

“…philosophical weaknesses…” that had “….emerged clearly by the middle of the eighteenth century, in the skepticism of David Hume’s empiricism and the dead-end reached by traditional rationalism.” (Pg. 24)

But, he says that the real “counter-Enlightenment” started from 1780 to 1815 with a split between Anglo-American culture on the one hand and German culture on the other. (Pg. 24) In Germany:

“Immanuel Kant is the most significant thinker of the Counter-Enlightenment.” (Pg. 27)

Kant’s priority was to defend religion from the Enlightenment:

“I here therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.” (See Second Preface to the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant.)

How did Kant “deny knowledge in order to make room for faith”, according to Hicks?

“The fundamental question of reason is its relationship to reality. Is reason capable of knowing reality -or is it not? Is our rational faculty a cognitive function, taking its material from reality…or is it not? This is the question that divides philosophers into pro- and anti- reason camps…the question that divides the rational gnostics and the skeptics, and this was Kant’s question in his Critique of Pure Reason.” (Pg. 28)

“Kant was crystal clear about his answer. Reality -real, noumenal reality- is forever closed off to reason, and reason is limited to awareness and understanding of its own subjective products….Limited to knowledge of phenomena that it has itself constructed according to its own design, reason cannot know anything outside itself.” (Pg. 29)

In this way, reason was, according to Kant, limited to the “phenomenal realm”, while the “noumenal realm”, the realm of religion, was off limits to reason. (Pg. 29)

Since Kant posited his epistemic system to save religion, how did it come to be used by a bunch of largely, “irreligious”, if not atheistic, post-modern intellectuals? The rest of Chapter Two of Hick’s book lays out the “evolution” of Kant’s way of thinking by subsequent German philosophers, especially Hegel, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard. He sums these subsequent, pre-twentieth-century philosophers at the end of Chapter 2 in this way:

“The legacy of the irrationalists for the twentieth century included four key themes:

1. An agreement with Kant that reason is impotent to know reality;

2. an agreement with Hegel that reality is deeply conflictual and/or absurd;

3. a conclusion that reason is therefore trumped by claims based on feeling, instinct, or leaps of faith; and

4. that the non-rational and the irrational yield deep truths about reality.” (Pg. 57)

In the Twentieth Century, Hicks sees this tradition as having been continued by most major philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, who “…agreed with Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer that by exploring his feelings -especially his dark and anguished feelings of dread and guilt- he could approach Being.” (Pg. 59)

According to Hicks:

“Heidegger offered to his followers the following conclusions, all of which are accepted by the mainstream of postmodernism with slight modifications:

1. Conflict and contradiction are the deepest truths of realty;

2. Reason is subjective and impotent to reach truths about reality;

3. Reason’s elements -words and concepts- are obstacles that must be un-crusted, subjected to Destruktion, or otherwise unmasked;

4. Logical contradiction is neither a sign of failure nor of anything particularly significant at all;

5. Feelings, especially morbid feelings of anxiety and dread, are a deeper guide than reason;

6. The entire Western tradition of philosophy -whether Platonic, Aristotelian, Lockean, or Cartesian- based as it is on the law of non-contradiction and the subject/object distinction, is the enemy to overcome.” (Pg. 65-66)

Note that little has been said about the political views of post-modern intellectuals yet. Hicks observes that, in fact, most post-modern intellectuals are on the political left. (Pg. 84) Starting at Chapter 4, he addresses the connection between the epistemology and metaphysics advanced by German philosophers since Kant, and its political implications. The reason for the modern socialist’s rejection of reason lies in the failure of socialism in theory and in practice:

“As modernists, the [early] socialists argued that socialism could be proved by evidence and rational analysis, and that once the evidence was in, socialism’s moral and economic superiority to capitalism would be clear to anyone with an open mind.” (Pg. 86)

Free market economists, such as Ludwig von Mises, Milton Freedman, and Friedrich Hayek, have largely won the debate when it comes to the theoretical case for capitalism over socialism. (Pg. 87) The moral/political debate is more “up for grabs”, but, even here:

“…the leading thesis is that some form of [classical] liberalism in the broadest sense is essential to protecting civil rights and civil society…” (Pg. 87)

By the 21st Century the:

“…empirical evidence has been much harder on socialism. Economically, in practice the capitalist nations are increasingly productive and prosperous…every socialist experiment has ended in dismal economic failure…Morally and politically…every liberal capitalist country has a solid record of being humane, for by and large respecting rights and freedoms, and for making it possible for people to put together fruitful and meaningful lives. Socialist practice has time and time again proved itself more brutal than the worst dictatorships in history prior to the twentieth century.” (Pg. 87-88)

The success of the capitalist world and the failure of the socialist nations created a “crisis of faith” for those on the left. As Hicks notes:

“This is a moment of truth for anyone who has experienced the agony of a deeply cherished hypothesis run aground on the rocks of reality. What do you do? Do you abandon your theory and go with the facts -or do you try to find a way to maintain your belief in your theory?” (Pg. 89)

Hicks believes the modern left’s abandonment of reality and reason in favor of “post-modern thinking” is their effort to “have their cake and eat it too”:

“Here then, is my second hypothesis about post-modernism: Postmodernism is the academic far Left’s epistemological strategy for responding to the crisis caused by the failures of socialism in theory and in practice.” (Pg. 89)

Hicks notes that just as religious thinkers faced a “crisis of faith” during the Enlightenment, in which it was widely recognized that there was no way to prove the existence of god on “naturalistic” and rational grounds, so to, by the 1950’s and 1960’s, there was no way for socialists to use naturalistic and rational grounds to justify socialism. It had failed in theory and in practice, and, with revelations about the brutality of the Soviet Union, it had very little moral standing left. (Pg. 89-90) If they wanted to hold onto socialism, they had to reject reason and reality:

“Postmodernism is born of the marriage of Left politics and skeptical epistemology….Confronted by harsh evidence and ruthless logic, the far left had a reply: That is only logic and evidence; logic and evidence are subjective, you cannot really prove anything; feelings are deeper than logic; and our feelings say socialism.” (Pg. 90)

The rest of Chapter Four describes the evolution of modern anti-individualist thought, starting with Rousseau and moving on to Hegel and Marx.

Chapter 6 discusses Marxism in historical context. Hicks notes that classical Marxism believes socialism would arise in the more advanced capitalist countries, like England and the United States, first. In actual practice, it arose in semi-feudalistic countries like Russia, Eastern Europe, and China. As such, Twentieth Century Marxists, like Lenin, had to modify their thinking to rationalize the need for a violent and brutal aristocracy to bring about socialism. (Pg. 138 to 141)

By the 1950’s and 1960’s the failure of socialism to arise “spontaneously”, as predicted by Marx, resulted in several different strategies to be tried by socialists. Some subtly changed their ethical standards from “need to equality”, which could include the inequalities experienced by small businesses versus big businesses (pg. 151), or the inequality supposedly present between the races. (Pg. 152)

Other mid-twentieth-century Marxists said wealth was bad anyway, giving rise to the environmentalist movement. (Pg. 153).

A third group of Marxists turned to violence in an effort to move the proletarian revolution along in the First World. (Pg. 165-170) As Hicks notes, several international terrorist groups with ties to Marxist thought, including the Weathermen in the US, and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the Middle East, arose in the early 1960’s.

What does Hicks consider to be the motives of the 21^st Century postmodern left? He notes that postmodernist thinking contains a whole host of contradictions:

“On the one hand, all truth is relative; on the other hand, postmodernism tells it like it really is.” (Pg. 184)

“On the one hand, all cultures are equally deserving of respect; on the other, Western culture is uniquely destructive and bad.” (Pg. 184)

“Values are subjective -but sexism and racism are really evil.” (Pg. 184)

“Tolerance is good and dominance is bad -but when postmodernists come to power, political correctness follows.” (Pg. 184)

There is a “…contradiction between the relativism and the absolutist politics…” of postmodernism. (Pg. 185)

Hicks sees three possible explanations for this seeming contradiction:

1. Postmodernists are “relativists” primarily and their absolutist leftwing politics are “secondary”. He rules out this possibility because, otherwise, there would be more “conservative” postmodernists, but they are all uniformly left-wing. (Pg. 185-186)

2. The use of postmodernism is a “Machiavellian” strategy to undermine their political enemies. (Pg. 186) When they loose an argument, they will respond with: “Of course you, a white, male, heterosexual, would say that. But we cannot know anything about ‘things in themselves’, so reason is limited.”

3. Postmodernism is ultimately a nihilistic world-view, so the contradiction doesn’t matter to a postmodernist:

“The final option is not to resolve the tension. Contradiction is a psychological form of destruction, but contradictions sometimes do not matter psychologically to those who live them, because for them ultimately nothing matters. Nihilism is close to the surface in the postmodern intellectual movement in a historically unprecedented way.” (Pg. 191-192)

The biggest flaw of the book I see may lie in the author’s treatment and evaluation of Marxism, which I think he gives more credit than it deserves. At several points, he seems to suggest that Marxism is more “pro-reason” than I think it ever was, even in its original “classical” format, as propounded by Karl Marx himself. Hicks makes an assertion about Marxist socialism that probably isn’t correct at page 86:

“As modernists, the socialists argued that socialism could be proved by evidence and rational analysis, and that once the evidence was in, socialism’s moral and economic superiority to capitalism would be clear…” (Pg. 86, emphasis added.)

He implies that he is including Marxists in the above description of “socialists”, and not just the non-Marxist socialists of the 19th Century, since he goes on to discuss the claims of “Classical Marxist socialism” on the same page. Also, later, he says:

“Beginning in the 1920’s and 1930’s there had been some early suggestions that Marxism was too rationalistic, too logical and deterministic…And early Frankfurt School theorizing had suggested that Marxism was too wedded to reason…” (Pg. 156 to 157, emphasis added.)

Hicks seems to say that Marxism, as originally conceived, is “pro-reason”, when I think it never was. Non-Marxists socialists, the so-called “utopian socialists”, would have been pro-reason, like Hicks said on page 86. The ideas of Marx probably won out over the “utopian socialists” precisely because Marx embraced the Hegelian dialectic, and didn’t depend on classical Aristotelian logic. Marxism is too “arbitrary”, or disconnected from reality, to really be disproved or proved. Any time someone tries to disprove it, a Marxist could just say that person was a “tool of the capitalist exploiters”, and, “of course”, the critic would say that:

“Aware of the fact that communism cannot be defended by reason, the Marxists proceeded to turn the fallacy of ad hominem into a formal philosophic doctrine, claiming that logic varies with men’s economic class, and that objections to communist doctrine may be dismissed as expressions of ‘bourgeois logic.’ “ (Leonard Peikoff, “Nazi Politics,” The Objectivist, Feb. 1971, 12, found at: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/polylogism.html)

Overall, I consider this to be a minor flaw of the book, which deftly traces the “philosophic genealogy” of today’s “postmodern” left. It really helped me to understand the mind of the average leftist, and how she will dismiss reason and say, I’m engaging in a logic: “…created by dead white men”. Now I see another reason why the average leftist, like some mindless automaton, will point out how I’m a white, male, “bourgeois”, heterosexual -its easier to say this than do any hard thinking about the merits of their political ideology.

(All page number references below are to the 2018, expanded hardcover edition of “Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism From Rousseau to Focault”, by Stephen R.C. Hicks, ISBN 978-0-9832584-0-7)