That venerable magazine, Publishers Weekly, ran a review of my book, Putting Humans First, Why We Are Nature’s Favorite (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). It is a mean-minded short little thing that looks to me was meant to bury the book, especially since Amazon.com published it in full next to where the work is described.Here is what Publishes Weekly said:
“This cranky manifesto opposes the excesses of animal-rights ideologues with an equally doctrinaire libertarianism. Countering animal-rights stalwarts like Tom Regan and Peter Singer, philosophy professor Machan contends that, as the only beings with the capacity for moral choice, only humans can have rights; ‘wondrous humanity’ should therefore stop worrying about ‘speciesism’ and enjoy guilt-free dominion. Machan scores some points on the concept of animal rights (what framework, he wonders, can encompass the rights of both zebras and the lions who feed on them?), but the link to his laissez-faire politics is murky, and his ‘private property rights approach to managing environmental problems’ seems highly inadequate. Shrugging that he is ‘not sure’ about anti-cruelty laws, he hardly mentions industrial livestock rearing or the other institutionalized abuses of animals that have fueled the animal-rights movement. Larger problems like pollution and ecological degradation are a ‘tragedy of the commons’ best handled by privatization of the public realm and perhaps lots of litigation; private landowners, he assumes, will be faithful stewards of their earth, while polluters will answer in court to those whose property or bodies have been damaged by them. Since Machan doesn’t explain how to privatize the upper atmosphere, he allows that there may be a problem with ozone depletion, but he’s satisfied to wait for more research. In Machan’s exuberant call for individuals to do as they please with their animals, their land and their SUVs, the rights of property seem to overshadow those of humans, let alone animals.”
OK, so what is cranky about the book? Beats me—that is just a bit of gratuitous slam, unrelated to the work itself. Indeed, the book is written in a charitable tone as it addresses animal rights-liberation activists and environmentalists. Yes, it is critical but hardly “irritable, grouchy, touchy, cross, peevish, or cantankerous.”
Is the book “doctrinaire” libertarian? If by this we are to understand that the book contains a principled position favoring individual rights as the central guide to public policy, especially when it comes to the environment, yes, that’s so. Why is that “doctrinaire”?
My dictionary states this means “determined to use a particular theory or method and refusing to accept that there might be a better approach.” By that interpretation what I write in the book is anything but doctrinaire since I never, ever deny that “there might be a better approach” to libertarianism. Of course there might be—the real question is, of course, whether there is. And I do not believe there is. But neither does the reviewer believe there is a “better approach” to reviewing my book, so it seems, then, that the review is doctrinaire—and so must be anything anyone ever says about anything.
The silliest part of this “review” comes where we are told that “In Machan’s exuberant call for individuals to do as they please with their animals, their land and their SUVs, the rights of property seem to overshadow those of humans, let alone animals.” First, I do not “call for individuals to do as they please with their animals,” quite the contrary—I oppose wanton cruelty to animals and state that I would even trespass to prevent someone from practicing such cruelty. Second, there is no such thing as “the rights of property.” Property has no rights, individual human beings do. Yes, the property rights of people should “overshadow”—meaning trump—public policies that violate them, and nothing in the review suggests there is anything amiss with that idea.
Ordinarily one should reply to reviews in a scholarly forum, but what PW and Amazon.com offer is mainly an attack without any chance of anyone else saying anything else about the book on a very influential site. So, I am making a small effort to counter the likely impact and hope readers will look at the work rather than take such a slapdash “review” to heart.
{ 7 comments }
Tibor,
Of course you’re doctrinaire! Oh, and your dictionary is all wet. The definition of doctrinaire is actually, “determined to use a clearly reasoned and stated theory or method that I disagree with and refusing to accept that mine is the better approach.”
My advice; get a new dictionary.
Lest anyone misunderstand, that was just a bit of Orwellian humor. I should have signed off as Winston Smith.
I’m looking forward to reading the book.
What can you say, Mr. Machan? Any time you pick up any media publication, you will stumble across an anti-capitalist liberal or socialist that doesn’t like the market and/or it’s ethical motivations.
It reminds me of one time I was sitting in an office, and managed to glance at a cover of Forbes. The cover story was ‘greedy coporate businessmen’ or something to this effect. The charge? They sold stock that was depreciating in value. (Gasp). But I guess one shouldn’t be surprised; once insider trading has been justified, this type of thinking will run rampant.
Of course, it never occured to Forbes that if I bought their magazine, and didn’t like all the rubbish inside (a fair assumption) I would have the same moral claim as they are making against these ‘greedy’ businessmen.
It’s also never occured, apparently, to the reviewer to read any economic theory. He is so ignorant over, well, any economic theory that he decides to rest the burden of proof of good homesteading of land on Mr. Machan, something which shouldn’t be so difficult to ‘prove’.
The theory of the law of the commons is pretty well accepted, and for good reasons. It’s also known that if one doesn’t homestead one’s property values (forests, waterways, etc) with a careful hand, the property value and profit making abilities of these resources will fall. Perhaps our reviewer would also like to ask Machan whether or not people like to trash their own homes, since this is where his ignorance leads us.
I could be wrong, but I think it’s pretty unusual for Amazon to post a negative review in its “Editorial reviews” section. I guess there’s an exception for crazy free-market types.
Tibor,
Have you contacted Amazon about posting your reply to the review? Maybe they would.
If you look at Amazon.com, you can tell that Publisher’s weekly is decidedly left wing.
For example, here is their review of Eric Schlosser’s nonsensical Fast-Food Nation:
“In this fascinating sociocultural report, Schlosser digs into the deeper meaning of Burger King, Auggie’s, The Chicken Shack, Jack-in-the-Box, Little Caesar’s and myriad other examples of fast food in America. Frequently using McDonald’s as a template, Schlosser, an Atlantic Monthly correspondent, explains how the development of fast-food restaurants has led to the standardization of American culture, widespread obesity, urban sprawl and more. In a perky, reportorial voice, Adamson tells of the history, economics, day-to-day dealings and broad and often negative cultural implications of franchised burger joints and pizza factories, delivering impressive snippets of information (e.g., two-thirds of America’s fast-food restaurant employees are teenagers; Willard Scott posed as the first Ronald McDonald until higher-ups decided Scott was too round to represent a healthy restaurant like McDonald’s). According to Schlosser, most visits to fast-food restaurants are the culinary equivalent of “impulse buys,” i.e., someone is driving by and pulls over for a Big Mac. But anyone listening to this audiobook on a car trip and realizing that the Chicken McNugget turned “a bird that once had to be carved at a table” into “a manufactured, value-added product” will think twice about stopping for a snack at the highway rest stop. ”
Now, look at their treatment of Thomas Fleming’s Brilliant “The New Dealer’s War”:
“Fleming, who previously endeavored to rehabilitate the villainous Aaron Burr in Duel, now attempts even more absurd revisionism. Franklin Roosevelt has been lauded by most historians most brilliantly by Eric Larrabee in his book Commander in Chief (1987) as a shrewd political and military strategist who conducted both aspects of WWII with great guile, wit and efficiency. Fleming, however, portrays FDR as an inefficient and oafish warmonger spoiling for battle amid world political, economic and social tensions he did not understand. Fleming revives the well-worn canard that FDR wanted, needed and invited the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Then he quibbles with the notions of “unconditional surrender” and “total war” imposed on the Axis powers, speculating that some compromise should have been reached. Fleming fails to see what Roosevelt and Churchill (who called him “the most skilled strategist of all”) clearly did that Hitler and his allies represented not just standard political and military aggression but a new dark age. Fleming implies that Stalin posed an even larger threat to culture and history, but that the left-wingers of Roosevelt’s New Deal government were not disposed to see his evil. In truth, Roosevelt had few illusions when it came to the Soviets. Realizing their potential to be either formidable foes or formidable friends, he chose the latter at the same time reminding the sometimes disapproving Churchill that one occasionally needed to fight fire with fire.”
I think the review will probably move more copy. The people interested in reading this book probably *do* drive SUV’s–I know I do ):–and want more private-sector adjudication of environmental damage.
You have to ask who is really going to right a reasonable review of this book. Only someone who understands economics; of these, how many are actually much interested in animal rights issues? Only people who write for publications that are narrowly-focused, and so are not quoted by the likes of Amazon.com.
In general, leftists and moderates who have not read Nozick will invariably call libertarianism ‘cranky,’ ‘doctrinaire,’ or ‘un-realistic.’ For them, libertarianism is usually either identified with Reagan-esque deregulation, or with Marxism (its ‘flip side.’) Then there are the Marxists themselves, who I don’t think really have to have any theory other than that they libertarianism is not Marxism.
Comments on this entry are closed.