Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (49 page)

This ethical stance had political implications. While Rand viewed “indiscriminate tolerance” and “indiscriminate condemnation” as variants of the same error, she asserted that in an “irrational society,” a rational person must never fail to pronounce moral judgment.
⁸⁵
Any failure to do so would constitute an implicit moral sanction of evil. Since evil is a destructive force, and reason is fundamentally creative, a single appeasement is morally reprehensible and has potentially fatal long-term consequences. Still, a person’s context might determine the appropriateness of a specific moral response; it has been alleged that Rand and many of her followers engaged in endless tirades and denunciations where polite conversation and orderly debate might have been more effective.

This intolerance was reflected in many of Rand’s positions in the area of situational
ethics
. Though Rand saw restitution as a means of earning forgiveness of a moral breach (Peikoff 1991b, 289), her uncompromising view of the world left little room for moral reform. And while Rand did not deny the legitimacy of
charity
as a means of helping those who were unfortunate victims of circumstance, she most certainly did not give
enough attention to the issue of private, voluntary assistance in human affairs. Typically, Objectivists would answer those who inquired about the plight of the poor and the handicapped, with a flippant, “If you want to help them, we will not stop you.”
⁸⁶

These flashes of insensitivity cannot be taken completely out of context. In Rand’s opinion, the institutional poor were a consequence of statist economy. Peikoff (1987bT, questions, period 1) argues too that if people were to let orphans starve in a genuinely free society, they would be so malevolent and corrupt that freedom could not last for any length of time. Indeed, voluntary, mutual aid has survival value (N. Branden 1983b, 225n). Rand recognized that a rational individual never forgets the fact that
life
is the source of value, that there is “a common bond among living beings,” and that other individuals are potentially capable of achieving the same virtues of character.
⁸⁷

While Rand’s situational ethics are tempered by enlightened self-interest, the evidence suggests that in her own personal relationships, she was a fervent moralizer. This “religious” streak in Rand’s approach has been noted variously by a number of commentators.
⁸⁸
Nathaniel Branden argues that Rand exhibited a kind of
“Manichaeism.”
⁸⁹
Manichaean thought is inherently dualistic.
Paul Thomas
(1980) explains that the Manichaeans saw good and evil as “two independent, co-equal principles, so that evil
as evil
is required if the good is to establish itself” (384n).

Strictly speaking, Rand was
not
a Manichaean. Rand did
not
posit a radical separation of good and evil precisely because evil is not coequal with good. She defined evil
negatively
, as rooted in a revolt against rationality. Evil has no power without the sanction of good. It cannot exist on its own, and depends upon the default of the good for its sustenance. Evil can only destroy, it cannot create. It requires that others create before it can expropriate their values. Good does not require the presence of evil, but evil is a parasite on the moral host. Rand skewed the relationship in terms of the good and the rational, not in terms of their negations.
⁹⁰

And yet it is entirely possible that Rand did integrate elements of the Manichaen perspective into her
psychology
. As a child of Russia’s
Silver Age
, Rand may have inherited the
Symbolists
’ belief in the polarity of good and evil.
Merezhkovsky
had in fact endorsed a Manichaean view, and even the dogmatic communists saw the world in terms of a ruthless, apocalyptic struggle between polar opposites.
⁹¹
Rand’s intolerance echoes these immoderate Russian tendencies. If anything, this suggests that it is not possible to escape the limitations of one’s past completely or remake oneself entirely. In Rand’s struggle against dualism, she may have retained aspects of a Manichaean worldview in her own psychology. But in speculating so freely
on the roots of Rand’s alleged
moralizing
, I risk committing an equally dangerous psychologistic error. The more important question is whether such intolerance is endemic to any totalistic
philosophy
.

It is apparent, however, that the history of the organized Objectivist movement is replete with stories of “
authoritarianism
in the name of reason.” Those “students of Objectivism” who displayed “inappropriate” behavior were condemned for having committed “an offense against an abstraction called ‘morality’” (N. Branden [1969] 1979, 246 n. 48). Nathaniel Branden admits to having fueled such intolerance. In later years, he recognized that this use of moralistic judgment only obscured an understanding of a person’s specific circumstances and context. As a psychologist, Branden (1987) sees human beings engaged in a struggle for adaptation and self-preservation: “Even if the path we choose is mistaken, even if
objectively
we are engaged in self-destruction,
subjectively
at some level we are trying to take care of ourselves—as in the case of a suicide who seeks escape from intolerable pain” (79).

For Branden (1973), neurotic behavior can be understood as an individual’s attempt to protect his
self-esteem
and to ensure his own “
survival by self-destructive (reality-avoiding) means
” (8). But there is a subtle distinction here between psychological and ethical
egoism
. Psychologically, every action seems to embody self-interested motivation
subjectively
defined. Ethically, however, the achievement of values that are objectively and rationally selfish frequently requires a dedicated, personal struggle of momentous proportions.
⁹²
Psychology and the therapeutic process provide an individual with a technology that facilitates the practice of virtue and the actualization of value (N. Branden 1982T).

Branden is not the only post-Randian theorist to grapple with
moralism
. Peikoff himself has argued that moralizing is a product of rationalism. As we have seen, rationalism begins with a list of intrinsic truths. Ethically, the rationalist applies these dogmatic principles with authoritarian ruthlessness. Peikoff explains that in “rationalist” interpretations of Objectivism, there is a one-sided emphasis on a “morality” abstracted from the context and concrete circumstances that give it meaning. The rationalist tends to be as severe on himself as he is on others.
⁹³

As the post-Randian theorists move away from the premise that they are bearers of holy truth, they move toward a kinder, gentler Objectivism. The essence of Rand’s ethos lies not in her alleged moralizing, but in her ecstatic vision of extraordinary human creativity. This normative vision cannot be fully understood if removed from the broad social context that gives it existential meaning. While Rand believed that it was possible to live a rational life in an irrational society, her ethical theory beckons toward a polity that makes the practice of virtue fully efficacious.

10

A LIBERTARIAN POLITICS

In this chapter I examine Rand’s libertarian politics as an outgrowth of her
ontology
,
epistemology
, and
ethics
, the culminating moment of a nondualistic philosophical totality. She aimed to transcend the polarities between
anarchism
and statism, atomistic individualism and organic collectivism. She defended laissez-faire
capitalism
as the only
social
formation consonant with fully integrated human being. Most important, she stressed an inextricable link between the personal and the political.

In my characterization of Rand as a libertarian thinker, I am using this word somewhat broadly.
“Libertarianism”
is a twentieth-century political ideology that carries on the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century classical liberal legacy. Its adherents advocate free-market capitalism and the rule of law, and they oppose statism and collectivism. They include individual-rights advocates such as Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Tibor Machan, Douglas Den Uyl, and Douglas Rasmussen, but also those who depart from the rights perspective, such as
Ludwig von Mises
, F A. Hayek, and Milton Friedman. It is incorrect to view these thinkers as constituting a monolith, since there are significant differences between and among them. Though Rand praised Mises, for instance, she frequently derided others in the libertarian tradition for their lack of purity, or their inconsistency.
¹
In fact, she despised the word “libertarianism,” and often identified it with those who advocated “anarcho-capitalism.” She characterized these individualist anarchists as “hippies of the right.”
²
Her critique of anarchism was a crucial component of her own nondualistic defense of the free market.

And yet despite her protestations, Rand’s politics is essentially libertarian. Her defense of
individual
rights, limited government, and laissez-faire capitalism constituted an invaluable contribution to the reemergence of classical liberal ideology in the twentieth century. Even though her approach is broader than most of her free-market contemporaries, it is fully within the libertarian tradition.

THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY

In stressing the ontological priority of individuals, the centrality of reason, and the necessity of ethical egoism, Rand provided the philosophical foundation for her defense of capitalism. Just as we achieve psychological visibility and an expanded awareness of self in our interactions with other
human
beings, so too, can we best actualize our unique potentialities in a
social
context
. But for Rand, the full development of human capacities requires a
specific
social context. A social system must be consistent with our species identity and with the requirements of
human
survival.

While Rand acknowledged the sociality of human being, much of her politics is designed to clarify the very meaning of the concept “social.” Throughout her writings, it is possible to find vastly different connotations attached to it. At times, Rand exhibited an almost knee-jerk reaction against the very notion that we have a “social” nature. From her earliest journal entries, she questioned whether human beings are born “social,” and whether they must remain so. She asked: “If man started as a social animal—isn’t all progress and civilization to be directed to making him an
individual
?”
³
In later years, her polemical tracts insist that “there is no such entity as ‘society,’” and that “society” is merely “a number of individual men.”
⁴
And although she most emphatically rejected solipsism, she denied on one occasion that human beings are social animals. Society as such does not make us distinctly human, since it is possible to find communal living even among apes (N. Branden 1967T, lecture 13). Rand argued instead that the human being “is a
contractual
animal,” who must plan long-range, make choices, and trade with other individuals on the basis of reliable voluntary agreements.
⁵

Abstracted from the totality of Rand’s works, these statements reek of
reification
. Indeed, by characterizing a
human being
as a “contractual” animal, Rand conjured up images of vulgar, “economic man” as a transhistorical constant. And yet Rand never ceased to criticize society and
social
institutions. From a purely methodological vantage point, Rand clearly believed that the concept of the “social” was a legitimate abstraction. Rand saw “society” as a
relational
concept, as peoples’ “
relations
to each other … men in relation to men.”
⁶
In such a relational construction, Rand committed neither the
fallacy of composition
nor
division
. In composition, we discover a fact that is true of a part, and mistakenly conclude that it is also true of the whole as the whole.
⁷
Division, by contrast, applies what is true of the whole to each of its individual constituents taken separately (Peikoff 1974T, lecture 3). Objectivism recognizes that both the part and the whole have analytical integrity within a specifically defined context. In Rand’s view:

You are permitted to regard as an entity, for purposes of study, a collection of human beings such as a society, but you are not permitted then to say that metaphysically it is an
organism
, tied together by some ineffable means. You cannot say it is anything other than a group of a certain kind of entities, living beings, and you regard them as one entity only from a certain aspect. (“Appendix,” 272)

Thus, for Rand, society has no autonomous existence apart from the individuals who compose it.
⁸
By stressing the ontological priority of
individuals
, Rand rejected the metaphysical basis of organic
collectivism
.