The Objective Standard Blog

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Vladimir Shlapentokh’s Flagrant Dishonesty Regarding Ayn Rand

Posted by Alan Germani at 6:12 pm

I recently posted about Vladimir Shlapentokh’s opinion piece in the Christian Science Monitor, in which he misrepresents Ayn Rand’s ideas and calls for Tea Partiers to distance themselves from her. In that post, I focused solely on his absurd claims about Rand’s politics; here, for those who may be interested in but unfamiliar with Ayn Rand’s actual views, I’d like to dispatch some of Shlapentokh’s other fallacious claims.

Shlapentokh accuses some of “merely formulating opinions of [Rand] from hearsay” rather than having “genuinely read Rand’s novels and essays,” thus implying that he has actually read her works. In fact, judging from the inaccuracies in his piece, either Shlapentokh has not read Rand’s works and is dishonestly implying that he has, or he has read her works and is dishonestly misrepresenting her ideas.

Shlapentokh claims that “the issue of taxes—at the crux of [the Tea Party] movement—was addressed by Rand only in regard to big companies, and never as a concern for ordinary people.” In fact, Rand said very little about taxation (and, to my knowledge, nothing about taxing “big companies”). Rather, she focused on the fundamental principle that governs such derivative matters, that of property rights:

Man has to work and produce in order to support his life. He has to support his life by his own effort and by the guidance of his own mind. If he cannot dispose of the product of his effort, he cannot dispose of his effort; if he cannot dispose of his effort, he cannot dispose of his life. Without property rights, no other rights can be practiced (source).

Rand defended the rights of individuals to retain property (including their earnings) from all forms of government seizure as a matter of principle—applicable to “big companies” and “ordinary people” alike.

Shlapentokh also claims that “Rand was fully indifferent to the workers in her novels, whom she described as primitive beings—‘savages’ in the words of Atlas’s steel mogul Hank Rearden, arguably one of Rand’s most beloved personages.” Setting aside his intimation that “moguls” such as Rearden are “non-workers,” Shlapentokh provides no quote from either Rand or Rearden to this effect—which is unsurprising given that none exists. Rand certainly celebrated the achievements of industrialists, championed their rights, and demonstrated that we all benefit from the activities of such producers:

When you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you.

When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making, for the work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the making of that product, for the work of the philosopher who taught men how to think . . . (source)

But it does not follow from Rand’s defense of the most productive among us that she categorized the less productive as “savages.” Rather, she characterized productive work “in any line of rational endeavor, great or modest, on any level of ability” as a virtue, noting: “It is not the degree of a man’s ability nor the scale of his work that is ethically relevant here, but the fullest and most purposeful use of his mind” (source). As for the term “savage,” Rand reserved it for literal savages (uncivilized men) and those who choose to mimic them—including statists.

Shlapentokh also insinuates that Rand was opposed to America’s core principles, because, as he says: “In Rand’s most popular novels, ‘Fountainhead’ and ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ it is impossible to find any praise of the American Revolution or the American Constitution.” This is like suggesting that J.K. Rowling is anti-British because the characters in her Harry Potter series of novels fail to praise the Magna Carta and English Common Law. Is an author intellectually obligated to praise in his fiction the founding events, documents, or mores of his country? To ask the question is to demonstrate its absurdity.

In any event, it is worth noting that The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are essentially hymns to the virtues and founding principles of America. Their themes speak to the crucial, life-serving importance of rational thinking, independence, productiveness, individual rights, and liberty. It is also worth noting that, contrary to Shlapentokh’s claims, in Atlas Shrugged Rand does directly praise the achievements of the American Revolution. For instance, the novel’s main protagonist describes America as having “displayed to an incredulous world what greatness was possible to man, what happiness was possible on earth,” while a secondary protagonist pays “reverent tribute” to America as “a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement” (source). And if one expands one’s survey of Rand’s thought to include her non-fiction, one finds her praising the Constitution as an “incomparable achievement” (source) and praising America and its founding:

I can say—not as a patriotic bromide, but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political and esthetic roots—that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world (source).

As a matter of easily observable fact, Rand identified and defended America’s core principles throughout both her fiction and her non-fiction. As I discuss here in response to Shlapentokh’s claim that she “espoused an elitist, oligarchic philosophy,” Rand, far from being anti-American, was arguably the most profoundly American thinker of the 20th-century.

With his flagrantly dishonest piece on Ayn Rand, Shlapentokh has vaporized whatever intellectual credibility he may once have had. And, by publishing the piece, the Christian Science Monitor has tarnished its reputation as a quality journal. Although I doubt we will hear an apology from Shlapentokh, I hope the Monitor publishes something in acknowledgment of the non-objectivity of his piece, which is clearly an injustice to Rand and a disservice to readers seeking the truth about her ideas.

Posted in: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Business and Economics, Individual Rights and Law, Philosophy

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Should Tea Partiers Abandon or Embrace Ayn Rand?

Posted by Alan Germani at 12:59 pm

In a recent Christian Science Monitor editorial, Vladimir Shlapentokh suggests that the popularity of Ayn Rand among Tea Partiers should “concern all Americans” and recommends that Tea Partiers distance themselves from the 20th-century philosopher and novelist. Why?

According to Shlapentokh, Ayn Rand was an “elitist” who held that “the American nobility” and “Ivy League graduates” should have “the decisive voice in American politics.” This “oligarchic philosophy,” claims Shlapentokh, “is both fundamentally antiAmerican and deeply at odds with the tea party’s own ‘we the people’ cause.” In fact, says Shlapentokh, Rand and tea partiers “have very nearly opposite views on the desired political system”:  Whereas Rand “sneers at democracy and majority rule,“ Tea Partiers defend “the fundamental principles of democracy as they were promulgated in the American Constitution—a fundamental point of departure from Rand.”

But Shlapentokh’s account of both Rand’s and the Founders’ political views is patently false. In fact, far from being “nearly opposite” as Shlapentokh suggests, they are essentially the same.

It should come as no surprise that Shlapentokh does not quote Rand regarding her political views, because nothing she ever said or wrote could honestly be taken as championing the elitist politics he ascribes to her. Rand’s actual political philosophy, as she makes clear in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and other works, is not founded on oligarchic rule but on the principle of individual rights. According to this principle, each individual morally must be left free to pursue his happiness so long as he does not infringe on the freedom of others to do the same. In Rand’s words, an individual’s right

is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights (source).

Because she recognized that “rights can be violated only by means of force,” Rand advocated laissez-faire capitalism, in which government protects rights by banning physical force from human relationships.

In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control (source).

Thus, a cursory investigation of Rand’s thought reveals that her actual political philosophy is completely incompatible with the social system Shlapentokh attributes to her—one in which political elites are empowered to violate the rights of others.

Shlapentokh’s characterization of the political philosophy at America’s founding is also inaccurate. He suggests that America’s distinguishing characteristic is “democracy and majority rule,” when its distinguishing characteristic is, in fact, the same as that of Rand’s politics—the principle of individual rights. As is clear from the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Founders’ writings, America was established as a rights-respecting republic, not a democracy. The democratic element of the original American system was merely a procedural aspect of government, not a means by which a majority may impose its will on individuals. In a true democracy, as James Madison, the father of the Constitution noted

there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property . . . (source)

The Founders recognized that there is no fundamental difference between a single tyrant (monarchy), ten tyrants (oligarchy), or two million tyrants (democracy)—and so they engineered the United States as best they could to avoid such tyranny. Unfortunately, as many Tea Partiers and other Americans recognize, America has, through no fault of the Founders, drifted away from their rights-respecting ideal and toward the right-violating majority rule of which Madison warned.

Shlapentokh notes that “Tea partiers portray themselves as ordinary Americans fed up with an out-of-control, deeply indebted welfare state” whose leaders “talk about restoring America to the vision of the founding founders [sic].” If this is indeed what Tea Partiers want, then they should study Ayn Rand’s actual politics rather than dismiss her on the basis of Shlapentokh’s mischaracterizations. In doing so, Tea Partiers will find that there is no better intellectual underpinning for their movement than that provided by Rand, the only prominent intellectual of the past century to recognize and champion the moral significance of the principle of individual rights: the fact that it enables every man, from magnates of industry to hourly laborers, to pursue his happiness without the interference of political “elites” or a political majority or anyone else.

Related:

• Resources for Tea Party Activists

Posted in: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Business and Economics, Individual Rights and Law, Philosophy