Ayn Rand

[fpb]

There is one person in HP fandom who detested me instinctively, and whom I detested with equal intensity, almost as soon as we became aware of each other. Now I have found out why. She is an Ayn Rand fan. I am, to begin with, too old to put up with Rand's infantile attempts at philosophy - she is one of those people who managed to remain mentally fifteen all their lives - but I also have my roots in European Socialism and Christian Democracy, of all political views in the world the most offensive to an Objectivist (as her cultists arrogantly call themselves). Rand was a disaster and a hypocrite in real life, and her doctrines are only rescued from having to be called revolting by their sheer, self-parodying stupidity. One would think that anyone over the age of sixteen would be able to see through such obiter dicta as "altruism is the root of all evil" or her praise of the dollar sign; alas, America is still full of people without enough culture or self-understanding to see through this sort of thing. One of the things that make Europe still superior to America is that there is no way that a Rand phenomenon could ever take place among us. We do have our follies, but ultra-individualism is not one of them.

Comments

Re: Hey, watch what you say about the U.S. (1/2)

[chthonya]

I hope you'll forgive me for commenting on this; I read FPB's post and your reply before heading home for Christmas, and it's been occupying my thoughts for the last few days. I'm responding not because I wish to raise the temperature again (I don't) but because you appear to be making some assumptions that weren't addressed in the exchange above.

Fundamentally, you seem to be confusing socialism and feudalism. Feudalism requires a 'socially-ingrained hierarchy' in its allocation of land and the obligations associated with it; socialism rejects the idea that resources should be allocated on the basis of class and rests on the principle that each individual has an equal right to a decent life, and it aims to realise this through some sort of social control of resources. (This is not to say that in practice, some people may not have benefitted more from a benevolent feudal landlord than the bureaucracies spawned by so-called 'socialist' countries, but under feudalism such benevolence would be largely up to the individual landlord rather than being inherent in the system.)

Personally I think that feudalism bears more of a relationship to a capitalist economy so far as an employee still contracts to exchange labour for resources (albeit money rather than land) with associated obligations on both sides. Of course, we now have the freedom to change the entitity to which we are contracted, but the economic power wielded by employers still impacts on the freedom of individuals, and the overall focus of the economy is still on something larger than the individual (usually 'the economy' itself, where it used to explicitly be the upper classes) rather than on meeting the needs of the people. But whether you agree with that or not, the point still stands that those supporting a social role for government do not do so because the Government is regarded as a deserving and wise elite, but because they do not believe that aggregated private decisions will give the best results overall. There are some issues that many people feel to be best and most consistently addressed by some form of central organisation, and taxes are paid to facilitate this, not as a 'punishment'.

For the record, I don't personally believe that decisions should be made collectively where they do not need to be (though I never fail to be amazed by people who decry 'big government' but love 'big business' - I'd far rather see decisions made by those who are electorally accountable and not legally mandated to seek financial profit at all costs). But while the market is efficient and effective in some areas, I do believe that there are areas where collective action is either more efficient (e.g. defence - I wouldn't be too confident in a system that was restricted to equipment that could be afforded by individual households and had no central co-ordination - and education, because restricting education based on ability to pay results in a less educated and less productive workforce, and prevents some individuals from reaching their fullest potential) or essential (e.g. national, regional and global environmental issues, because the sources of problems are often spread wider than individual jurisdictions, and the impacts are expensive for everyone and usually borne collectively).