Cocytus wrote:Objectivism appears internally consistent, but its application to the real world would find people on both sides of the political divide dissatisfied, which is par for the course for any consistently applied philosophy. Rand held that the rationality of men in capitalistic exchange precluded the use of force in human relationships, and thus precluded the use of war ("say what?" go the conservatives) as well as any kind of protectionist measures.
It is commonly said that democracies don't fight one another (though how true this is sort of depends on where you draw the line of democracy versus "people who vote but are oppressed") . . . that is sort of an analog of the thought that true moral capitalists would similarly not find themselves in that position.
However, even surrounded by democracies full of capitalists, it would not make sense to not have an army.
The basic position of Rand is that violence is not a tool as some would use it . . . that is, one must not employ it or threat of it as a means of short-circuiting the reason of another party. But when one party employs it, all bets are off and the ass-kicking may commence.
At the same time, she posited that pure unregulated laissez-faire capitalism is the only moral system ("come again?" go the progressives.) She accomplishes this by simply defining morality in terms of solipsistic self-improvement.
Solipsistic? Hardly. Objectivist epistemology is based on the assumption that reality as perceived by the minds and tools of men is what exists. A single person can be wrong . . . reality is the final arbiter by which that is determined. Thinking is the only virtue . . . refusal to think the only vice. The morality is thus based on the fact that given the constraints of reality plus some basic values (e.g. life), there are certain things that must follow.
"My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists—and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceed from these. To live man must hold three things as supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—purpose—self-esteem. Reason as his only tool for knowledge—purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve—self esteem as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think…These three values imply and require all of man’s virtues, and all his needs: Rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride....."
The body requires food . . . food requires eating . . . eating requires effort and thought and planning. Therefore, what leads to eating might be good. But of course, many things can lead to eating in society . . . theft, the pretense of helplessness to invoke the charity of others, and so on. Other acts of eating might also be anti-life, such as consuming one's own winter reserves at the first sign of cold and thereby causing oneself to starve quickly.
These violate honesty, with oneself or others (she makes little real distinction between them, since dishonesty to others is the subversion of reality just as surely as self-deception would be).
It is difficult for anyone who knows anything about labor conditions in the late 19th to early 20th centuries, prior to Al Smith's labor reforms and the New Deal patterned on them, or who simply feels any sort of human emotion at the suffering of the poor, to describe capitalism as moral.
Sweatshop labor conditions are not capitalist. That is a form of theft and advantage-taking just as surely as excessive taxation and the use of force to recover it.
Capitalism on paper and communism on paper can both be twisted in reality. The problem is that communism on paper starts out evil, whereas capitalism is only twisted into it.
At the same time, the proscription of the expectation or giving of the unearned i.e. of any welfare or charity, is wholly inconsistent with a moral or ethical society.
Rand does not say you cannot give charity . . . just that charity cannot exist as a demand or at the point of a gun. That's basically what the modern American Tea Party is saying.
"As a basic step of self-esteem, learn to treat as the mark of a cannibal any man's demand for your help. To demand it is to claim that your life is his property - and loathsome as such a claim might be, there's something still more loathsome: your agreement. Do you ask if it's ever proper to help another man? No - if he claims it as his right or as a moral duty you owe him. Yes - if such is your own desire based on your own selfish pleasure in the value of his person and his struggle. Suffering as such is not a value; only man's fight against suffering, is. If you choose to help a man who suffers, do it only on the ground of his virtues, of his fight to recover, of his rational record, or of the fact that he suffers unjustly; then your action is still a trade, and his virtue is the payment for your help. But to help a man who has no virtues, to help him on the ground of suffering as such, to accept his faults, his need, as a claim - is to accept the mortgage of a zero on your values."
Certain aspects of Objectivist thought are considered cold-hearted when they really aren't . . . but all too often I see the easy assumption of cold-heartedness or selfishness (defined as an evil, as opposed to defined in Rand's way of individual rights and reason) as being the Objectivist position when that is not at all true. The term "Randroids" is cute and all, but the bleeding-heart moralities so often called good today are far more cold-hearted to all mankind, and often much more selfish in regards to the person feigning altruism.