An Informal Critique of Ayn Rands Politics:

As Found in Various Chapters of The Virtue of Selfishness

-Will Porter

When it comes to Ayn Rand I essentially agree with her as far as epistemology, metaphysics, and even ethics to some degree. In these areas my disagreements are either insignificant and dont plunge into any of the vital functioning organs of her philosophy, or they lie simply in how one goes about explaining such things as principles and their application. But when it comes to her ideas on government and politics, I find myself in dire opposition. From her The Virtue of Selfishness(1964) I will refer to the essays entitled The Ethics of Emergencies, The Nature of Government, and Government Financing in a Free Society. The majority of this book I agree with, but there are various contradictions and fallacies of the type Rand herself decried and so virulently pointed out in others to be found among these essays. In The Ethics of Emergencies, Rand states that doomsday-type scenarios only serve to skew the real issues that sound moral principles apprehend and deal with. While her main focus in the essay was to highlight the altruism and sacrifice implied in alleging lifeboat scenarios represent a negation of ethical norms, her general contention was that simply examining some potentially negative consequences of adherence to a principle is not enough to invalidate it, especially if such contrived examples are highly unlikely to take place and exemplify an exception to the normal condition of human experience. To Rand, reference to the possibility of such situations does not serve as objective or sound criticism of a principle. I mention this because later in the book, in her essay The Nature of Government, Rand employs a similar type of doomsday scenario to claim the impossibility of a peaceful stateless society; it is this that I will take strong issue with. She claims society will degenerate into a state of chaotic violence without a state, without an exclusive holder of the use of legitimate force. What will stop every individual from carrying out whatever his whim dictates? What will stop your neighbor from killing, robbing, or defrauding you? Who will enforce contracts? What will prevent gang warfare? Throughout this she makes use of various example scenarios. To quote:

Visualize, for example, what would happen if a man missed his wallet, concluded he had been robbed, broke into every house in the neighborhood to search it, and shot the first man who gave him a dirty look (The Virtue of Selfishness pg. 127 The Nature of Government - Ayn
Rand 1963)

This is nothing more than a highly unlikely scenario; she is using it in attempt to justify her claim that monopoly holders on the use of violence are required to hold together civilization. Most neighborhoods are incredibly peaceful. This has nothing to do with government policing or any government action. The cooperation found in the majority of neighborhoods simply comes from the incredible luxury that capitalism furnishes society with. When survival isnt a dire struggle, people tend to come around from savagery to civility. This phenomenon brought about by high standards of living is a reinforcing element for the maintenance of peace and the general respect for property rights between neighbors. Rands assumption of brutality as the general governing rule of interaction is misguided and her remedy of statism is unfounded. She goes on to say that any kind of competition in defense, legal, or police services would undoubtedly resolve in violent conflict between two agencies, with both firms A and B sending their police to uphold some decision and immediately shooting it out at the first point of contention. What she fails to recognize is the superior efficiency of the market. Due to the division of labor, different private entities would probably specialize in each of the proper services that Rand delegates to the state. It would obviously be in these companies prerogative to pre-establish some ground rules with competitors as to avoid this kind of quarrel, as igniting a private war isnt exactly the most efficient use of investors resources. Due to competition between these companies, the services would not only be provided more efficiently, but there would be far more incentive to adhere and maintain some kind of Objective Law, as Rand refers to it, that respects individual rights in a clear -cut and consistent way. Unlike governments, firms would have no incentive to create a highly complex web of legal gibberish that is near-impossible to actually comply with. The more refined and simple legal-structures would probably be the ones to garner the most patrons. Why is government considered to be the only entity that can employ legal scholars? Why are we lead by Rand to believe that governments, on an a priori basis, are the very best at determining just what is Objective Law? These claims, by Rands very own standard, amount to mysticism and sophistry. Also in The Nature of Government, Rand extrapolates on the blood-soaked history of statism, being based in the absolute violation of human rights, and wonders what iron-clad selfesteem within man could allow him to endure such abuse. To assume you could reform such an institution to have it do exactly the opposite of what it is historically known to do exclusively best, is a trite absurdity. But it is this very iron-clad resolve found in man that will lead us away from the violence and coercion of statism; that will allow men to resolve and overcome the difficulties that a ruler-less society will invariably bring about.

The topic of the US constitution is also discussed in this essay. Rand talks about it as if it is, or could be, a sufficient measure to restrain the state. But I ask you, when has any constitution or defining governmental document ever accomplished this feat? No matter how
strictly you word your constitution, eventually some political agent will find it in the states interest to alter it. Since government, as Rand agrees, is a monopoly holder on legitimate force, it may, in the name of legitimacy, either reinterpret or completely discard some clause, amendment, or the entire document itself. In any case, the change will be made to serve the interests of the state and for the sake of political expediency. Usually reinterpretations occur in order to lift or out-fox some formerly imposed restriction. As Albert J. Nock notes in his book Our Enemy, the State, it took no more than a decade before the constitution was made inert and impotent in its role as container of the growth of state power by various interests within the state. It is and was, of course, state power that always ultimately disregards and renders useless any constitution. Mere words on paper have no bearing whatsoever on the abrasive reality of jackboots and gun butts. Not only brute force comprises the power of the state though, but also the use and manipulation of academia in the realm of legal scholarship. Rand claims that the role of legal scholars is to dictate policy and legislation to the state, but in reality this works the complete other way around. This entity with the exclusive use of legitimate force (legitimate defined by them), the state, also has exclusive control on application of legal philosophy and an ability to exert its authority to enact change and alteration in any of its current laws, all done under the guise of consent. This entity is expected to restrain itself and uphold true justice? In what way could you ever hope to contain such a massively bound-up potential for despotism? Rands ideal and utopian notion of government is at a polar extremity from the grim realities of historical statism. Assuming that under Rands constitutional state, the market remained free which is a wildly unfounded assumption considering the precedence for governments to destroy and stagnate healthy networks of exchange there would be massive increases in wealth and standards of living, something that comes along with economic freedom. I would argue that this gives government massive incentive to find a way to extend its breadth, in order to latch onto this new wealth and employ it toward its own legitimate uses. Or it opens the opportunity for wealthy-interests to lobby for legal-favoritism or some form of protectionism from competition. Since the state has an insatiable thirst for funding, it would be within their prerogative to engage in such activities. Certainly no state in history has for long maintained total restrictions on these things, despite the fact that their constitutions/laws typically forbid them from doing so. Thus, I would argue that the power of government is an admixture of brute force and legal manipulation, giving rise to unchecked (and uncheck-able) power at every instance. Finally I will address parts of Rands essay Government Financing in a Free Society. In this piece, Rand claims that voluntary government funding would have to be the very last step in instituting a free society. To this I ask, are we to expect a government that remains coercively funded to initiate or participate in a long, complex, process of liberation that entails getting rid of themselves?? We are to expect a coercive state to ultimately just relinquish their blank-check to legal plunder? What could

possibly ever inspire them to do such a thing? Similar to what Stefan Molyneux has said, this is like trying to turn a Mafia hit man into a peaceful missionary. How could the state even begin to establish free institutions while retaining the legal ability to essentially take from the populace whatever its whims dictate? It seems that to implement free social institutions, one of the very first things that would have to go, or be diminished significantly, would be the states power to coercively expropriate its funding. This short informal critique on Randian political theory is simply to address some serious flaws I see in her notions of the state. Through epistemology to ethics she seems to maintain a logical application of her principles, it is only in the realm of the state do I see her drift astray. In no way is this a final word on the topic nor is it even a complete critique. After reading The Virtue of Selfishness I simply felt the need to tackle some of the more prevalent contradictions that stuck out.