[GaryJudd]

On September 12 I heard an interview with a New Zealand woman, Rachel Morris, who went to the US in 2003 to do a post-graduate course in journalism at Columbia University. After gaining her degree and working in some lesser editorial roles, she spent four years as executive editor of The New Republic magazine and is just completing over six years as executive editor of the HuffPost Highline magazine. She was still in Washington DC, but returning to New Zealand to edit a New Zealand magazine. During the interview she said:

I came here [to the US] in the middle of the first term of the Bush administration, not long after 9/11. And then it just feels like a period … that I’ve been here so many years … of the things that are happening in the United States now had their roots in the years when I was very first trying to figure out how America worked and really I think the things that are happening here now are unlike anything I’ve seen in my entire time here and I think, you know, it’s almost like watching a large and very prosperous state sort of fail from the inside ….

A “lethargic body slowly eaten by internal corruption,” perhaps? (See below.)

Morris was describing her difficulty in deciding whether to leave her job in Washington and come back to NZ. She said she now had a personal connection to the US and it was hard to leave because of the “historical importance of this moment in time,” and there was the “pandemic, social unrest that affects people I know, people I’m close to, so for all kinds of reasons it is really hard to leave even though life here is quite strange and difficult at the moment.”

Morris’ perspective of things happening now having their roots in the years after she first arrived is wrong as the roots were growing long before she arrived, as Ayn Rand pointed out allegorically in her fiction work and time and time again in her non-fiction work.

Rand’s essay, “The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus,” was published in the May-June 1965 issue of The Objectivist Newsletter at p 19. At p 26, she said:

There is, however, one difference between the type of fascism toward which we are drifting, and the type that ravaged European countries: ours is not a militant kind of fascism, not an organized movement of shrill demagogues, bloody thugs, hysterical third-rate intellectuals and juvenile delinquents — ours is a tired, worn, cynical fascism, fascism by default, not like a flaming disaster, but more like the quiet collapse of a lethargic body slowly eaten by internal corruption.

Did it have to happen? No. Can it still be averted? Yes.

This is what she meant by fascism (p 23).

This editorial did not mention, of course, that a system in which the government does not nationalize the means of production, but assumes total control over the economy is fascism.

It is true that the welfare-statists are not socialists, that they never advocated or intended the socialization of private property, that they want to “preserve” private property — with government control of its use and disposal. But that is the fundamental characteristic of fascism.

The next issue of the Newsletter, July 1965 at p 27 sees the commencement of her article “The Cashing-in: The Student ‘Rebellion’” (reproduced in Return of the Primitive the Anti-Industrial Revolution, p. 5). This concerned the events at the University of California at Berkeley, in the fall of 1964, during which a so-called “Free Speech Movement” commenced a protest that became an occupation with assaults and other acts of violence. At pp 44-45, she said:

But even though the student rebellion has not aroused much public sympathy, the most ominous aspect of the situation is the fact that it has not met any ideological opposition, that the implications of the rebels’ stand have neither been answered nor rejected, that such criticism as it did evoke was, with rare exceptions, evasively superficial.

As a trial balloon, the rebellion has accomplished its leaders’ purpose: it has demonstrated that they may have gone a bit too far, bared their teeth and claws a bit too soon, and antagonized many potential sympathizers, even among the “liberals” — but that the road ahead is empty, with no intellectual barricades in sight.

I re-read Rand’s commentary on the student rebellion because I wanted to get a sense of comparison between then and now. My impression is that today is much worse, palpably so.

In the “The New Fascism” article, she was not saying that fascism had arrived, but the US was drifting towards it. The whole article and the one on the student rebellion contained warnings of what was to come if trends were maintained.

I took a quote from the “The New Fascism” article, at 24, which related to President Johnson, but which I modified to be a commentary on the current position: Consider our present, and possibly next Administrations. I don’t think I’ll be accused of unfairness if I say that President Trump and former Vice-President Biden are not philosophical thinkers. No, they are not fascists, they are not socialists, they are not pro-capitalist. Ideologically, they are not anything in particular. Judging by their past records and by the consensus of their own supporters, the concept of an ideology is not applicable in their cases. They are politicians — a very dangerous, yet very appropriate phenomenon in our present state. Each is an almost fiction-like, archetypal embodiment of the perfect leader of a mixed economy: a man who enjoys power for power’s sake, who is expert at the game of manipulating pressure groups, of playing them all against one another, who loves the process of dispensing smiles, frowns and favors, particularly sudden favors, and whose vision does not extend beyond the range of the next election.

At first sight, her use of “appropriate” in relation to politicians seems odd but if you consider its meaning as “especially suitable or compatible,” it seems her meaning is that this dangerous breed is what one may expect to surface in a mixed economy, which she describes at page 20.

A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and controls — with no principles, rules or theories to define either. Since the introduction of controls necessitates and leads to further controls, it is an unstable, explosive mixture which, ultimately, has to repeal the controls or collapse into dictatorship. A mixed economy has no principles to define its policies, its goals, its laws — no principles to limit the power of its government. The only principle of a mixed economy — which, necessarily, has to remain unnamed and unacknowledged — is that no one’s interests are safe, everyone’s interests are on a public auction block, and anything goes for anyone who can get away with it. Such a system — or, more precisely, anti-system — breaks up a country into an ever-growing number of enemy camps, into economic groups fighting one another for self-preservation in an indeterminate mixture of defense and offense, as the nature of such a jungle demands. While, politically, a mixed economy preserves the semblance of an organized society with a semblance of law and order, economically it is the equivalent of the chaos that had ruled China for centuries: a chaos of robber gangs looting — and draining — the productive elements of the country.

A mixed economy is ruled by pressure groups. It is an amoral, institutionalized civil war of special interests and lobbies, all fighting to seize a momentary control of the legislative machinery, to extort some special privilege at one another’s expense by an act of government — i.e., by force.

Rand was describing what a mixed economy leads to, with the hope that it would not. “Did it have to happen? No. Can it still be averted? Yes.”

As we observe political behaviour and the chaos, anarchic at times in some places, not confined to universities, but on the streets of America’s largest cities, we must ask: has it now happened? Is it too late to do something about it? Is the Covid 19 pandemic the final straw precipitating collapse into a fatal decline?

[O]ne cannot, as we know, predict or even delimit the trigger(s) that could be decisive once the groundwork has been laid. The final straw could come from anywhere….

Or the trigger might be economic in nature, such as runaway inflation, a 1929-scale depression, skyrocketing unemployment, taxes that cannot be borne, a middle-class wiped out financially, or national bankruptcy…. or U.S. silence in the face of domestic outbreaks of lawless protesters, all of it observed with growing anger by the American police and military.

Is the trigger one of the above or all of them? Some combination? Something else? The only relevant observation at this point is that in one form or another the basis for each of the above has already been laid in the United States and is now visible.

[Leonard Peikoff, The DIM Hypothesis (2012), 333-334.]

Peikoff predicts religious totalitarianism. “ ‘God is dead,’ said Nietzsche in the nineteenth century. To which a recent book title gives the twenty-first-century reply: God Is Back.” (Ibid., 333.)

In the passages quoted from the “The New Fascism” article, Rand defines fascism by reference to control over the economy. At the time, the United States government, like those in other Western democracies, already exercised substantial control of the economy. 

Coming to today, Trump deregulates but he doesn’t suggest that the controls are illegitimate exercises of government power, only that he thinks they should be fewer or different, in the interests of the economy he says, whilst he is at the same time increasing government interference by trade interventions and in other ways. 

The civil unrest prevalent in the US today may be compared with Rand’s description of the type of fascism that ravaged the European countries. Most of the things she described are seen in the United States today. Her questions and answers in 1964 were — “Did it have to happen? No. Can it still be averted? Yes.” The first question and the first answer are still correct. The second question remains appropriate, but the second answer must be in doubt.

If Leonard Peikoff is right, the answer is “No.” Is he right?

/sb

[JosephAvatar]

Re: Gary Judd’s post 102131 of 10/6/20

I made up my mind about this subject a long time ago, when I got into economics, before I became familiar with Objectivism. The evidence is overwhelming that some people do not care about reason, and they are a major voting block.

This is a reason I think that the designs of political systems all through history have been flawed. Reason and whim get the same political influence. It leads to the same contradiction in a political system as in a man. What should a man of reason do with his mysticism? Like I did, throw it all out, it has no value to offer qua mysticism, only destruction.

In the same way, a proper political system that upholds individual rights must be unapologetically on the side of reason. No compromise on principle is possible, the government should be totally on the side of the good, which is reason.

Contradictions lead to paralysis, and the good is becoming paralyzed in our world. The cognitive contradiction is on the side of the good. This is why I’m optimistic. It is not that evil is powerful, it’s that the good has not been thinking enough. In other words, the problem can be solved.

[GaryJudd]

Re: Joseph Avatar’s post 132876 of 10/7/20

Joseph Avatar appears to be disagreeing with Dr Peikoff. Perhaps he is right to do so. Even Dr Peikoff allowed for a glimmer of hope. But that was in 2012. Since then things have continued to go steadily downhill at a pace that seems to increase every day. 

I wonder if Mr Avatar could answer some questions derived from his post, to tease out the issues.

Let me first state some of what I think he is saying. He is making the contrast between reason and whim or mysticism. I think he is saying that there is a “major voting block” that does not seek knowledge by looking to reality, but by cleaving to emotion (whim), religion, or other forms of mysticism. If that is his meaning, I agree.

I think he is saying that political systems throughout history have been flawed because the systems reflect a failure of the people to gain knowledge by looking to reality, and are instead the products of emotion, religion, or other forms of mysticism. If I have accurately stated Mr Avatar’s meaning then, with the caveat that throughout history the people as such have mostly had no part to play in the design of political systems, I agree with him.

Now for the questions.

(1) Does a political system that is the product in whole or in part of emotion, religion, or other forms of mysticism contain within it the seeds of its own failure or destruction?

(2) Mr Avatar says:

In the same way, a proper political system that upholds individual rights must be unapologetically on the side of reason.

Is he saying that a system that does not uphold individual rights is not a proper political system? Is he perhaps saying that the upholding of individual rights is a necessary but not sufficient component of a proper political system? Or, that it is both necessary and sufficient?

(3) Why must a “a proper political system that upholds individual rights” be on the side of reason? Why is it not the other way round — i.e., that a political system based on reason would be unapologetically on the side of individual rights? Isn’t ‘based on reason’ the fundamental, with the upholding of individual rights a derivative consequence?

(4) Going back to question (2), is not ‘being based on reason’ both the necessary and the sufficient requirement of a proper political system?

(5) If a political system that is the product in whole or in part of emotion, religion, or other forms of mysticism contains within it the seeds of its own failure or destruction (i.e., the answer to question (1) is Yes), has the mysticism contained in the Declaration of Independence — enhanced by the mysticism of Kant, Hegel, Marx and their disciples and its impact on the minds of men — been steadily displacing the then dominance of the existence and need of freedom and individuality (egoism) to a point where it is irreversible?

(6) If it can be reversed, how?

/sb

[JosephAvatar]

Re: Gary Judd’s post 132882 of 10/7/20

I think he is saying that there is a “major voting block” which does not seek knowledge by looking to reality, but by cleaving to emotion (whim), religion, or other forms of mysticism. If that is his meaning, I agree.

Correct, a major voting block is having political power, and is unrestrained by reason. It’s a big problem.

If I have accurately stated Mr Avatar’s meaning then, with the caveat that throughout history the people as such have mostly had no part to play in the design of political systems,

I agree, most people just want to live their lives, and they do not control the design of the political systems.

(1) Does a political system that is the product in whole or in part of emotion, religion, or other forms of mysticism contain within it the seeds of its own failure or destruction?

What is the first thing reason does when it encounters some idea that does not adhere to reason? Reason throws the idea out, always, and on principle.

For example, when Galileo made some good integrations, a lot of religion had to be tossed away as worthless scrap. When Darwin made his integrations, more religious doctrines had to go.

If a system is built where unreason can be upheld by force, which is what we have today, then yes, there is no way for reason to prevail on principle. Reason requires total domination. It cannot compromise at all with mysticism. If people of faith have access to force, they will always use force against people of reason; it is the law of identity. Epistemologically faith and force are separate, but they always go together in reality.

The only way for reason to prevail persistently, is to keep force in the hands of reason. What this means in concrete reality is that if reason and individual rights are desired, then a government must stand in total support of reason.

Is he saying that a system that does not uphold individual rights is not a proper political system? Is he perhaps saying that the upholding of individual rights is a necessary but not sufficient component of a proper political system? Or, that it is both necessary and sufficient?

The political systems we have today are historical achievements. They are comparatively stable and have demonstrated their ability to enable globalization and trade on a scale never seen before. This is because the systems today uphold individual rights to a substantial degree in many countries. The system of the nation-state is largely responsible for this amazing achievement, with the USA being the trailblazer.

I think I should have worded it better. I should have written that an amazing government would be totally on the side of reason. The more reasonable a government is, the better it protects individual rights. I recently moved to the UK. They are not totally reasonable here, but it’s OK. I have many rights but need permission for many actions. I am a good person, and would in an awesome political system have complete freedom, and would only need permission to do things like handle explosives, handle dangerous materials, etc.

People who want to live by reason need protection from those who want to live by faith and force. Galileo and Darwin needs protection from the church, not the other way around. This is why Galileo and Darwin needs a government.

(3) Why must a “a proper political system that upholds individual rights” be on the side of reason? Why is it not the other way round — i.e., that a political system based on reason would be unapologetically on the side of individual rights? Isn’t ‘based on reason’ the fundamental, with the upholding of individual rights a derivative consequence?

Yes, I think you’re right. What I was stressing was the desired effect: individual rights. How can one achieve this effect? Only by initiating the cause: reason in government.

(4) Going back to question (2), is not ‘being based on reason’ both the necessary and the sufficient requirement of a proper political system?

Yes, I think so. To the extent that a government adheres to reason, it is a good system.

(5) If a political system which is the product in whole or in part of emotion, religion, or other forms of mysticism contains within it the seeds of its own failure or destruction (i.e., the answer to question (1) is Yes),

I don’t think it’s a problem if there’s an explicit policy in the government that it should adhere to reason. The problem is when faith is accepted “on occasion.” This is the case in all governments today, and is a systematic design flaw.

has the mysticism contained in the Declaration of Independence — enhanced by the mysticism of Kant, Hegel, Marx and their disciples and its impact on the minds of men — been steadily displacing the then dominance of the existence and need of freedom and individuality (egoism) to a point where it is irreversible?

Yes, I think so.

(6) If it can be reversed, how?

I think what’s needed is a new system design that starts with the essentials.

Starting with “a good political system must have a senate with 100 seats, and it must have representatives elected every few years” is not going to work. That’s the wrong end to start, it’s the surface layer, the non-essentials.

An amazing government must uphold reason in epistemology, self-interest in ethics, and individual rights in politics. They almost did this in the US, but as The Federalist Papers make clear, they knew full well that their work was a giant leap in the right direction, but not a perfect system.

A principally good government will become better over time, just like a great business or good person. Get the principles right, and with time and effort, it will improve.

/sb

[GaryJudd]

Re: Joseph Avatar’s post 132884 of 10/8/20

Thanks to Joseph Avatar for engaging with the issues I raised and answering the questions I posed.

The thrust of the points he made is that, as he put it, “an amazing government would be totally on the side of reason,” and “people who want to live by reason need protection from those who want to live by faith and force.” I completely agree.

Mr Avatar has incisively formulated some critical principles. I would like now to take the matter a bit further because I do not think that reason implies individual rights, in the sense of rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as absolutes. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness themselves are absolutes as being part of nature, but rights to them are not. I think the issue is of critical importance and it is something I have been giving a lot of thought to, with views developing over the last few years.

The last section of Dr Peikoff’s The DIM Hypothesis, commencing p. 342, is entitled “Is There Still Hope?” On the previous page (341), he summarizes the problem when he says:

Subservience to something beyond the things we see, something accepted on faith has in pre-philosophical form been the orientation of the species from the start. From this perspective, America’s trend today is not a mere fad; it has deeper roots. The nation is moving to regress to the mind of primitivism, which, it seems, despite all the values produced by modern civilization, remains ineradicable in the species.

This describes a philosophy in which unreason predominates, which is causing America to move to regress to the mind of primitivism. Peikoff says, “The only way to uproot a philosophy is to replace it with another.” After referring to the technical terms he developed within his hypothesis, he identifies Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism as the only current philosophy with cultural potential to uproot the philosophy prevailing in America.

Objectivism is not presently realizing that potential. A reason may be an inconsistency within the Politics branch of the philosophy. At p. 342, in describing what must be uprooted, Dr Peikoff says:

Floating abstractions give men a sense of integration, of the whole, and thus at least the illusion of understanding the world and knowing what to do in it. Concrete-boundedness gives men nothing but the sky above and the cave under their feet.

If “individual rights” is, within America’s founding document the Declaration of Independence, a floating abstraction, a mystical concept being a gift from God, and that is perpetuated in Objectivism’s principles of politics, that creates a problem.

There can be little doubt that within the Declaration, “rights” is a floating abstraction. But because of the context, and the circumstances under which it was declaimed, it gave a sense of integration, of the whole and thus at least the illusion of understanding the world and knowing what to do in it. That illusion persisted for a lengthy period, but the reality of the mysticism inherent in the Declaration may be what is causing America to fail from the inside.

Has Objectivism rescued “rights” from the floating abstraction pit? Or is it, within Objectivism as it is within the Declaration, still a floating abstraction?

Ayn Rand’s essay, “The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made,” (PWNI, Centennial Edition, 31) explains the vital distinction between the metaphysically given and the man-made. The former is part of nature. “Nature is the metaphysically given — i.e., the nature of nature is outside the power of any volition.” In other words, that which is part of nature cannot be created or annihilated, it cannot come into or go out of existence. It must be accepted, and it cannot be changed.

By contrast, the man-made can be changed: “it must be judged, then accepted or rejected and changed when necessary.”

Man’s faculty of volition as such is not a contradiction of nature, but it opens the way for a host of contradictions — when and if men do not grasp the crucial difference between the metaphysically given and any object, institution, procedure, or rule of conduct made by man. [Rand’s emphasis.]

I suggest that rights arise within institutions, procedures and rules of conduct made by men. They are not metaphysically given. Rather, specified rights being man-made must be judged, then accepted or rejected and changed when necessary.

Rand explains how the man-made is to be judged:

It is the metaphysically given that must be accepted: it cannot be changed. It is the man-made that must never be accepted uncritically: it must be judged, then accepted or rejected and changed when necessary. Man is not omniscient or infallible: he can make innocent errors through lack of knowledge, or he can lie, cheat and fake. The man-made may be a product of genius, perceptiveness, ingenuity — or it may be a product of stupidity, deception, malice, evil. One man may be right and everyone else wrong, or vice versa (or any numerical division in between). Nature does not give man any automatic guarantee of the truth of his judgments (and this is a metaphysically given fact, which must be accepted). Who, then, is to judge? Each man, to the best of his ability and honesty. What is his standard of judgment? The metaphysically given.

Reason is both a faculty possessed by man and a value. As a faculty possessed by man, it is metaphysically given; it is the critical characteristic of man and is why “a rational animal” is the definition of “man.”

Reason “is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses” (“The Objectivist Ethics”). “It integrates man’s perceptions by means of forming abstractions or conceptions, thus raising man’s knowledge from the perceptual level, which he shares with animals, to the conceptual level, which he alone can reach. The method which reason employs in this process is logic — and logic is the art of non-contradictory identification.” (“Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World,” PWNI.)

We employ our faculty of reason to judge the man-made. My thesis is that in the present context the man-made is rights and the metaphysically given against which they are to be judged are life, freedom (liberty), happiness and the pursuit thereof, freedom or liberty being the most pertinent.

Life is metaphysically given. Freedom (liberty) is a metaphysically given attribute of man — as a being of volitional consciousness, his mind is free; he is free to act unless other men constrain his freedom; and he needs to be free in order to survive qua man. All this can be observed.

Happiness is a metaphysically given possibility for man. Pursuit of happiness is a metaphysically given attribute of man — men can be observed to be pursuing happiness, although not all men do so.

Life, freedom, happiness, and the pursuit of happiness are the metaphysically given and we should employ our metaphysically given faculty of reason to judge man-made rights with those metaphysically given as the standard of judgment.

Whilst we find life, freedom, happiness, and the pursuit of happiness in nature, we cannot find rights in nature. That is because they are a man-made construct falling to be judged by the standard of the metaphysically given.

I suggest that the basic principle for the organization of society and government is not rights. The basic principles are freedom and reason. Freedom because it is a metaphysically given attribute and need of man. His mind is free, and he needs freedom of action to live as a man. Reason because in the organization of society and government reason must be employed to judge the man-made institutions, procedures, and rules of conduct against man’s need for freedom.

Rights have their origin in the law. They are to be found in the earliest legal systems. They can be an important institution to safeguard freedom. Conversely, they can deny freedom. We judge the former to be valid by the standard of freedom; we judge the latter to be invalid by the same standard.

An example of the former is the right given to one party to a freely negotiated contract with the other assuming a correlative duty. Another example is the right of a person not to be assaulted and the correlative duty of others not to assault him.

An example of the latter is the right given by the government to a jackbooted official to break down the door of a law-abiding citizen. Another example is the right given to one business to seek the closure or curtailment of another because the former claims to be harmed by the latter’s competition.

In the 17^th and 18^th centuries, the concept of “right” was stolen from the field of law, to create so-called natural rights, said to have been bestowed by Nature or God.

If rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are judged to be absolutes (cf, OPAR, heading on p 351: “Individual Rights as Absolutes”), that makes them as if they were metaphysically given and therefore the standard against which other rights are measured. Then we can have, for example, a right to food treated as valid because the claimant has a right to life; or, a right to be free from any constraints imposed by government because everyone has the right to liberty or freedom. Claims are made to rights of the environment, the disabled, indigenous people, immigrants, LGBTQIA+ — the whole gamut within identity politics.

All these can be validated when they are judged against rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as absolutes. They cannot be validated when, employing reason, they are judged against the metaphysically given freedom, as they all involve infringement of the freedom of others.

I suggest, therefore, that if Objectivism is to be the philosophy that uproots the prevailing philosophy, it needs to build a revised philosophy of Politics on the foundation of Rand’s metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, but upholding freedom and reason, instead of rights, as the basic principles for the organization of society and government.

/sb

[JosephAvatar]

Re: Gary Judd’s post 132902 of 10/9/20

This describes a philosophy in which unreason predominates, which is causing America to move to regress to the mind of primitivism. Peikoff says “The only way to uproot a philosophy is to replace it with another.” After referring to the technical terms he developed within his hypothesis, he identifies Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism as the only current philosophy with cultural potential to uproot the philosophy prevailing in America.

I hope I am completely wrong here, but I think this uprooting cannot be done. The thing I cannot integrate is the fact that people have free will. People have free will to choose unreason, and there is not a lot that reasonable people can do with this.

Consider this as a possibility:

It is not a lack of arguments for freedom that makes people choose what they choose today, but a desire for the current state, and a desire for the future that we’re heading towards. People choose statism because that’s what they want.

Why must this option remain off the table? Why can it not be considered? So much ignorance and innocence are ascribed to every person in our political systems. Is this justice? I, for one, think this is injustice.

There can be little doubt that within the Declaration, “rights” is a floating abstraction. But because of the context, and the circumstances under which it was declaimed, it gave a sense of integration, of the whole and thus at least the illusion of understanding the world and knowing what to do in it.

I think they actually had a good understanding and integration of the concept of rights, and I think this gave the USA much of its strength. That was one of the concepts they integrated into the patent system, the property systems, the monetary system, the legal system, etc. It wasn’t perfect, but I think they did a fantastic job there. They could of course not integrate rights with the altruist morality, so they dropped most of that moral code. But they couldn’t get rid of all of it, and the wide abstractions asserted themselves again over time.

I think a better solution will be built when the wide abstractions are based on proper epistemology.

Has Objectivism rescued “rights” from the floating abstraction pit? Or is it, within Objectivism as it is within the Declaration, still a floating abstraction?

The mind can deal with a certain amount of floating abstractions. If a concept is a bit floating, but the framework around it is solid, over time the concept will become more solid.

For example, when all of us got into Objectivism or philosophy, concepts such as metaphysics and epistemology were completely floating. But over time, these concepts have real meaning. I think with the Objectivist framework, if there are any tendencies for the concept of “rights” to be floating, then this will quickly gain meaning over time as more experience in a moral political system is accumulated.

In other words, I’m not at all afraid of there being a few floating abstractions here and there in Objectivism. The foundation is rock solid, and any small missing pieces will quickly be plugged in with evidence.

I suggest that rights arise within institutions, procedures and rules of conduct made by men. They are not metaphysically given. Rather, specified rights being man-made must be judged, then accepted or rejected and changed when necessary.

I agree with this. I do not think that rights are metaphysical, they are part of politics. I just checked OPAR, and Peikoff puts rights at the beginning of politics (chapter 10), which makes a lot of sense to me. The way I understand it, rights are a human construct, just like political systems are. The definition I use for right is:

A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.

Because of this, rights need to be built into a social system. This moral sanction can be built in almost any way, but some ways will be far better for the achievement of life on earth compared to other ways.

My thesis is that in the present context the man-made is rights and the metaphysically given against which they are to be judged are life, freedom (liberty), happiness and the pursuit thereof, freedom or liberty being the most pertinent.

I agree. I would put it slightly differently: that the fundamental right is the right to life, and because man lives by production and trade, he must be free to change nature and transfer ownership. He must therefore have property rights.

Pursuit of happiness is a metaphysically given attribute of man — men can be observed to be pursuing happiness, although not all men do so.

I would say that if not all men do it, then it’s optional. Some people, maybe 10-20% of the population, are pursuing happiness.

Life, freedom, happiness, and the pursuit of happiness are the metaphysically given and we should employ our metaphysically given faculty of reason to judge man-made rights with those metaphysically given as the standard of judgment.

Life is metaphysically given.

I think freedom, happiness, etc. are not. They are man-made. One can choose to build Auswitch and set up a goal for that system: mass slaughter. Or one can choose to build a Federal Government, integrate many colonies into a single system, and set up a goal for that colossal system: the production of individual happiness.

I suggest that the basic principle for the organization of society and government is not rights. The basic principles are freedom and reason.

I think the practical implementation of reason in epistemology, and individualism in ethics, is rights and capitalism in politics. Freedom of action is always within a context, and is always limited. For example, you’re free to make noise in your home, until that noise interferes with the neighbor’s sleep. In a social context, nobody can have total freedom to do whatever he feels like, and the exact boundaries have to be drawn up by a government. Within the boundaries, each individual has complete freedom of action, because if the political system is high quality, then there is no contradiction between the freedom of action of different men.

All these can be validated when they are judged against rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as absolutes.

I don’t think they can be validated. I would argue reason is not as fragile as that. There is no way to validate slavery or “rights of the environment” by reason. All such argumentation collapses into mysticism, it does not stand up to logical examination.

I suggest, therefore, that if Objectivism is to be the philosophy which uproots the prevailing philosophy, it needs to build a revised philosophy of Politics on the foundation of Rand’s metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, but upholding freedom and reason, instead of rights, as the basic principles for the organization of society and government.

I think Objectivism and derivative materials are very solid. It can be related back to sensory evidence, so I don’t think that’s a weak spot.

I think the weak spot is to assume that all people want to be happy and live by reason. This is more or less an underlying assumption in the political systems we have today. The evidence is clearly saying this is wrong.

[GaryJudd]

Re: Joseph Avatar’s post 132904 of 10/9/20

Joseph Avatar asks that the possibility be considered that people choose what they choose today because of a desire for the current state, and a desire for the future that we are heading towards. “People choose statism because that’s what they want.” And he asks why this option must remain off the table.

It must remain off the table because statism is a system in which the government holds the power to use force in any manner and for any purpose it pleases against the defenceless citizens. Statism is tyranny where individual freedom is not recognized. Statism means that man is seen as subservient to the state. It inverts the principle that the state exists to protect freedom of the individual and casts upon the ruled the moral obligation to serve the interests of the state, a moral obligation that the state will enforce.

In response to my claim that within the Declaration of Independence, “rights” is a floating abstraction, Mr Avatar suggests that “they actually had a good understanding and integration of the concept of rights, and I think this gave the USA much of its strength.” This runs counter to Mr Avatar’s rightful denunciation of mysticism, as the Declaration claims that men have been “endowed by their Creator” with Rights. Rights, within the Declaration, are a floating abstraction because they are not grounded in reality but are a gift from God.

I agree that the USA did a fantastic job, but this thread concerns the question whether the US today is “failing from the inside,” and if so why. My suggestion is that the seeds of this failure may be found in part in the mystical origins of the principle of rights.

Whilst I agree that when first introduced to a concept such as metaphysics or epistemology, one must validate it for oneself by grounding it in reality, for that is how a floating abstraction is ‘brought to earth’ if it can be, my point is that Objectivism treats Rights as absolutes, as part of existence, part of nature, when they are not because they are man-made (a proposition that Mr Avatar appears to agree with). If Objectivism treats Rights as existing in nature, Objectivism cannot be a solution for the malaise gripping American culture to the extent it is a consequence of rights within American culture (derived from the Declaration of Independence) being a mystical floating abstraction.

I say that (man’s) freedom is metaphysically given because its origin is the nature of man’s consciousness, one of the characteristics of which is the ability to choose, to exercise free will. I say further that because of that fundamental of man’s identity and man’s need to be able to act on the decisions of his own mind, freedom of action is a metaphysically given need. Man’s nature is such that he requires freedom.

Mr Avatar says, and I agree:

Within the boundaries, each individual has complete freedom of action, because if the political system is high quality, then there is no contradiction between the freedom of action of different men.

Systems of government are man-made and should be designed to secure freedom. Here is a quotation from Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies (1943) supporting this idea. I have underlined some parts.

Whether we witness in Plato’s writings a cynical and conscious attempt to employ the moral sentiments of the new humanitarianism for his own purposes, or whether we witness rather a tragic attempt to persuade his own better conscience of the evils of individualism, we shall never know. My personal impression is that the latter is the case, and that this inner conflict is the main secret of Plato’s fascination. I think that Plato was moved to the depths of his soul by the new ideas, and especially by the great individualist Socrates and his martyrdom. And I think that he fought against this influence upon himself as well as upon others with all the might of his unequalled intelligence, though not always openly. This explains also why from time to time, amid all his totalitarianism, we find some humanitarian ideas. And it explains why it was possible for philosophers to represent Plato as a humanitarian.

A strong argument in support of this interpretation is the way in which Plato treated, or rather, maltreated, the humanitarian and rational theory of the state, a theory which had been developed for the first time in his generation.

In a clear presentation of this theory, the language of political demands or of political proposals (cp. chapter 5, III) should be used; that is to say, we should not try to answer the essentialist question: What is the state, what is its true nature, its real meaning? Nor should we try to answer the historicist question: How did the state originate, and what is the origin of political obligation? We should rather put our question in this way: What do we demand from a state? What do we propose to consider as the legitimate aim of state activity? And in order to find out what our fundamental political demands are, we may ask: Why do we prefer living in a well-ordered state to living without a state, i.e. in anarchy? This way of asking our question is a rational one. It is a question which a technologist must try to answer before he can proceed to the construction or reconstruction of any political institution. For only if he knows what he wants can he decide whether a certain institution is or is not well adapted to its function.

Now if we ask our question in this way, the reply of the humanitarian will be: What I demand from the state is protection; not only for myself, but for others too. I demand protection for my own freedom and for other people’s. I do not wish to live at the mercy of anybody who has the larger fists or the bigger guns. In other words, I wish to be protected against aggression from other men. I want the difference between aggression and defence to be recognized, and defence to be supported by the organized power of the state. (The defence is one of a status quo, and the principle proposed amounts to this—that the status quo should not be changed by violent means, but only according to law, by compromise or arbitration, except where there is no legal procedure for its revision.) I am perfectly ready to see my own freedom of action somewhat curtailed by the state, provided I can obtain protection of that freedom which remains, since I know that some limitations of my freedom are necessary; for instance, I must give up my ‘freedom’ to attack, if I want the state to support defence against any attack. But I demand that the fundamental purpose of the state should not be lost sight of; I mean, the protection of that freedom which does not harm other citizens. Thus I demand that the state must limit the freedom of the citizens as equally as possible, and not beyond what is necessary for achieving an equal limitation of freedom.

Something like this will be the demand of the humanitarian, of the equalitarian, of the individualist. It is a demand which permits the social technologist to approach political problems rationally, i.e. from the point of view of a fairly clear and definite aim.

Against the claim that an aim like this can be formulated sufficiently clearly and definitely, many objections have been raised. It has been said that once it is recognized that freedom must be limited, the whole principle of freedom breaks down, and the question what limitations are necessary and what are wanton cannot be decided rationally, but only by authority. But this objection is due to a muddle. It mixes up the fundamental question of what we want from a state with certain important technological difficulties in the way of the realization of our aims. It is certainly difficult to determine exactly the degree of freedom that can be left to the citizens without endangering that freedom whose protection is the task of the state. But that something like an approximate determination of that degree is possible is proved by experience, i.e. by the existence of democratic states. In fact, this process of approximate determination is one of the main tasks of legislation in democracies. It is a difficult process, but its difficulties are certainly not such as to force upon us a change in our fundamental demands. These are, stated very briefly, that the state should be considered as a society for the prevention of crime, i.e. of aggression. And the whole objection that it is hard to know where freedom ends and crime begins is answered, in principle, by the famous story of the hooligan who protested that, being a free citizen, he could move his fist in any direction he liked; whereupon the judge wisely replied: ‘The freedom of the movement of your fists is limited by the position of your neighbour’s nose.’

The view of the state which I have sketched here may be called ‘protectionism’. The term ‘protectionism’ has often been used to describe tendencies which are opposed to freedom. Thus the economist means by protectionism the policy of protecting certain industrial interests against competition; and the moralist means by it the demand that officers of the state shall establish a moral tutelage over the population. Although the political theory which I call protectionism is not connected with any of these tendencies, and although it is fundamentally a liberal theory, I think that the name may be used to indicate that, though liberal, it has nothing to do with the policy of strict non-intervention (often, but not quite correctly, called ‘laissez-faire’). Liberalism and state-interference are not opposed to each other. On the contrary, any kind of freedom is clearly impossible unless it is guaranteed by the state. A certain amount of state control in education, for instance, is necessary, if the young are to be protected from a neglect which would make them unable to defend their freedom, and the state should see that all educational facilities are available to everybody. But too much state control in educational matters is a fatal danger to freedom, since it must lead to indoctrination. As already indicated, the important and difficult question of the limitations of freedom cannot be solved by a cut and dried formula. And the fact that there will always be borderline cases must be welcomed, for without the stimulus of political problems and political struggles of this kind, the citizens’ readiness to fight for their freedom would soon disappear, and with it, their freedom. (Viewed in this light, the alleged clash between freedom and security, that is, a security guaranteed by the state, turns out to be a chimera. For there is no freedom if it is not secured by the state; and conversely, only a state which is controlled by free citizens can offer them any reasonable security at all.)

Popper, Karl. The Open Society and Its Enemies (Routledge Classics) (pp. 104-107). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

/sb

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