March 12, 2007

Ayn Rand’s Me-First Philosophy Sadly Turns 50

Conservatives struggling with who they are and who they want to be may consider putting the blame on a cranky old lady (actually she’s now a dead old lady) who started mucking up the works 50 years ago this month.

Consider the perspective of Mark Skousen, a great grandson eight times over of Benjamin Franklin, a Columbia University professor and a libertarian economist. No one is perfect.

And as Skousen will not hesitate to say, that includes Ayn Rand, founder of the philosophy of objectivism, which debuted in March 1957 with the publication of Rand’s opus, Atlas Shrugged, and is embraced today by many libertarians. It is also sadly attractive to many conservatives who believe the Republican Party has become just another party of big government.

It is impossible to summarize 1,200 pages in a few words, but let’s do our best: John Galt is an entrepreneur and risk-taker who wants to follow the best philosophy imaginable – that of making money and pleasing one’s self. He’s the hero. A corrupt state apparatus keeps getting in his way, and he finally gives up and spends 11 years doing manual labor.

According to Rand, selfishness is the best philosophy because it is the only authentic one. She believed the worst philosophy is altruism, through which you sacrifice yourself out of concern for others. We could go from there into Rand’s take on God (he doesn’t exist) and even voluntary altruism (it merely leads to the coerced variety and corrupts people by giving them things they didn’t earn), but you get the gist: Self-centeredness is the only philosophy of life that stems from true reason.

Skousen, in a recent analysis published by the Christian Science Monitor, gives Rand props for brilliantly exposing the fraud and corruption inherent in communist, socialist and other statist systems. Indeed, they squash the creation of wealth and the entrepreneurial spirit. That is not a hard observation to make, but Skousen believes few have made it more eloquently than Rand did in Atlas Shrugged.

The problem for Rand, however, is that her philosophy is just as bad at the opposite extreme, and this brings us to the politics of 2007.

Anyone who has successfully started and operated a business knows that it is nearly impossible to succeed if your prime motivation is selfishness. You can only win by effectively serving the needs of others. A capitalist does not object in the slightest to handsome profits resulting. But to suggest, as Rand does and as her followers believe, that pursuit of profit is akin to selfishness is to completely misunderstand how profit is earned. It can only come from the creation of value – and its efficient delivery to others who need it and are willing to pay for it.

I’m not sure either American political party understands this today. I know the Democrats don’t, but they never have. They have always seen big business as robber barons and believed a primary role of government is to counterbalance it. But do 21^st Century Republicans understand reality much better?

Sen. John McCain, one of the GOP’s leading presidential contenders, recently shared with the Wall Street Journal his consternation over the notion that too many benefits from the latest round of tax cuts – which he opposed – went to “the rich.” As if lower rates of taxation are the equivalent of a benefit bestowed by government onto a public that should be grateful for the generous gift.

Recent assaults on oil company profits, Wal-Mart and other profitable businesses – mainly led by Democrats – have hardly led to soaring Republican defenses of capitalism and profits. Why? These profitable companies are providing products and services people want and are willing to pay for. That is not to say that everything they do is laudable, but they call profits “earnings” for a reason. They have to be earned. Do Republicans really understand this? Or are they convinced, as Rand was, that all profits are the result of greed and selfishness – but unlike Rand, are afraid or unwilling to pronounce this good?

If liberals believe profits are selfish and bad, while Randian “objectivists” believe profits are selfish and good, this makes free-market conservatives the moderates.

This conservative believes free-market capitalism is the most efficient system for the creation of wealth, and that this is good for society because it creates more resources with which the altruistic can freely choose to share and help others who need it.

I don’t want a system that forces people to share. It makes the sharing soulless and politically driven. And I certainly don’t want a society run by Randian types who only think of themselves.

As a libertarian, perhaps Skousen did not intend to make the case that Reagan-style conservatism is the most desirable middle ground between the two extremes of Marxist collectivism and Randian objectivism. But that’s the inescapable conclusion from his analysis. Now we just need to find some conservatives who are capable of understanding this and expressing it to the American people.