Most of us are familiar with the feud between Rothbard and Rand, and of other aspects of Rand’s personal life that make great fodder for jokes. There are also plenty of self-described Objectivists who advance (what Rothbardians consider to be) silly arguments on the necessity of government. But after discussing these issues with two Objectivists (on separate occasions), I have found that younger followers of Rand are actually quite similar in what they envision as an ideal legal system.The first thing I asked (in both cases) was, “Suppose I’m a pacifist and I don’t think violence is ever justified. Can your government extract funds from me to finance its activities?” They both responded with a firm no, and said that taxation was immoral.
Then I moved on to the next defining characteristic of government: a claimed rightful monopoly of the use of force. Here the matter was a bit hazy, but at least one of my Objectivist critics agreed that people could set whatever rules they wanted on their private property, and that the “government” could not send its agents onto private property to enforce “laws” in defiance of the owner’s wishes. I informed this young gentleman that in my book, he was an anarcho-capitalist.
Don’t get me wrong, the arguments and values that these Objectivists would use when describing their ideal world would not sound like The Ethics of Liberty. But what I’m pointing out is that, when it comes to practical issues and identifying which practices would seem legitimate and which unjust, I don’t think there need be such a huge gulf between self-described Objectivists and Rothbardians.
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Some of us are self-described anarcho-capitalists!
Technically, I’m not sure if I should call myself an Objectivist any longer. I’m too much of an Aristotelian and a Rothbardian, perhaps. Maybe a neo-Objectivist, or a fellow traveler.
In any case, I came across Rothbard via Mises via Rand. I have been very much influenced by her thought, but by no means am dogmatic about it.
However, I think the size of the gulf between self-described Objectivists and Rothbardians will depend on whether the Objectivists adher to ARI, The Objectivist Center, or are independent.
By the by… In “Goverment Financing in a Free Society,” Ayn Rand did argue that goverment financying in a fully free society would be completely voluntary. She didn’t go into detail on how this would be done, but one suggestion she made was a lottery.
Eh…sorry for the repeated comments. I should have thought this out more in advance and made just one post.
Regarding the Objectivist you put the government as monopolist question to… I think his answer – that the government can’t enforce its laws on private property – is not an “orthodox Objectivist” answer. Ayn Rand was very much against anarchy and argued the government should have a monopoly on the legal use of force and law courts.
That said, I don’t think it is an un-Objectivist answer either. In fact, I would argue that if one were to consistently apply Ayn Rand’s ethics, one would be logically committed to anarcho-capitalism. See this essay by Objectivist Roy A. Childs, Jr. for the classic argument along these lines: http://www.dailyobjectivist.com/Extro/OpenLettertoRand.asp.
“That said, I don’t think it is an un-Objectivist answer either. In fact, I would argue that if one were to consistently apply Ayn Rand’s ethics, one would be logically committed to anarcho-capitalism. See this essay by Objectivist Roy A. Childs, Jr. for the classic argument along these lines: An Open Letter to Ayn Rand
That is only one half of the story, the other half of the story which is not told is that Roy Childs recanted on his belief in anarchism and called it “incoherent” and “dangerous” to the libertarian movement. See:
Anarchist Illusions. Unfortunately, Childs died before he wrote his full attempted refutation of anarchism, so we can only speculate as to what he meant.
Regarding anarchism, I really enjoyed the recent piece at LewRockwell.com, James Ostrowski’s “The Myth of Democratic Peace” (http://www.lewrockwell.com/ostrowski/ostrowski72.html).
Ostrowsky has demonstrated, in simple and logical terms, how anarchy is never eliminated by a state society, it is simply re-arranged. In a free society, there is anarchy in the relations between individuals. In a society with a monopolistic state, there is anarchy between individuals and the government – a worse sort of anarchy, since the government always insists on judging its own case in disputes with individuals.
Mr. Kane,
Yes, I am aware of that unfortunate fact about Childs. I wish he hadn’t changed his mind, and it would have been interesting to see why he did. However, I think that his change of heart was mistaken and that it does not diminish the quality of his previous Objectivist critique of minarchy.
As Doris Gordon points out (at l4l.org), if you applied objectivism correctly, you wouldn’t allow the murder of humans just because they were unborn.
I think I would describe myself as a Scholastic or Thomist, or whatever updating to the 21st century along those lines would be.
Of course if you are a pacifist, and think violence is never justified, I would probably make a living creating a “yellow pages” of people who could be pillaged and would not fight back. If you will not protect your rights (or assert them to some entity who will), they are merely an abstract concept, not a reality.
And when you have a jury system, government too is (or ought to be) judged by a group of individuals. With fully informed juries (fija.org), government could not get too far. But if jurors or citizens are utterly ignorant and cannot know or dispense justice or even decide using simple rules, how can you have any society – even an anarchocapitalistic one?
Of course if you are a pacifist, and think violence is never justified, I would probably make a living creating a “yellow pages” of people who could be pillaged and would not fight back.
Note to self: Don’t ever hire this guy as a babysitter.
This is the kind of abstract stuff that I really love. But I’d like to find out more about how we can get there from here.
Wanna know how to “get there from here?” It’s not that hard … each side just needs to stop painting the other as some sort of monster. Peter Schwartz’s essay “Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty,” (exerpt: “The Libertarian movement … embraces the advocates of child-molesting, the proponents of unilateral U.S. disarmament, the LSD-taking and bomb-throwing members of the New Left, the communist guerrillas in Central America and the baby-killing followers of Yassir Arafat”) for one, is despicable, not just for its shoddy arguments and oversimplification, but it actually describes libertarianism as “evil,” thus equating it with Nazism and Stalinism!
I used to belong to the “Objectivism” e-mail discussion group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Objectivism/), and I once posted a message linking to the Objectivist Resource Center (http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/). When my message was posted, I found that the moderator had removed the link, with the message: “Link cut as I do not approve of this person’s website”!!
Exerpt from another exchange:
Member: “The Libertarian candidates that I have seen and heard speak about strong laws to protect children. They advocate extreme limits on government, but understand the role of the ilitary to protect the freedom of individuals.”
Moderator (this a direct reply, mind you!): “It is not meaningful to post allegations which flies [sic] in the face of reason here. We all know that the Libertarians are enemies of freedom — end of discussion!”
Judging by the moderator’s bizarre behavior, it must be a rather Orwellian kind of freedom he has in mind.
Now, of course, I have to quit this group, for the rules state: “NO ONE is allowed to be on this list that supports or sanctions any of Ayn Rand’s and Objectivism’s enemies! This means that no one is allowed on the ‘Objectivism’ list that supports or sanctions: … libertarians; anarchists; etc.” When David Kelley talked to a libertarian group, the same sort of people who run that group judged him to be “sanctioning” evil libertarians, so I suppose my posting on this blog is, too. And if this sort of thing represents Objectivism today, then the answer to this post’s titular question is unquestionably “no”; Objectivists are not close to Rothbardians at all. (At least Rothbard was good-hearted enough to put his criticisms of Rand and her inner circle in humorous form; the Ayn Rand Institute’s criticism of libertarians is just vitrolic and ugly, totally unbefitting an organization that purports to train tomorrow’s intellectuals)
None of the above, however, can excuse the nastiness that can flow from the Rothbardian side to the Randians. Luckily, this doesn’t seem to happen nearly as much, but David Gordon’s
After rereading my above comment, I realize that they it may sound rather vitrolic. My point was not to malign either side in the Objectivist-Rothbardian debate (I’d be a hypocrite otherwise), but only to express my disillusionment that the followers of a philosopher devoted to freedom are now attacking, of all things, libertarianism.
– Lowell R.
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