Foundations of a Free Society

Reflections on Ayn Rand's Political Philosophy

Gregory Salmieri, Robert Mayhew

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780822986539
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Foundations of a Free Society brings together some of the most knowledgeable Ayn Rand scholars and proponents of her philosophy, as well as notable critics, putting them in conversation with other intellectuals who also see themselves as defenders of capitalism and individual liberty. United by the view that there is something importantly right—though perhaps also much wrong—in Rand's political philosophy, contributors reflect on her views with the hope of furthering our understandings of what sort of society is best and why. The volume provides a robust elaboration and defense of the foundation of Rand's political philosophy in the principle that force paralyzes and negates the functioning of reason; it offers an in-depth scholarly discussion of Rand's view on the nature of individual rights and the role of government in defending them; it deals extensively with the similarities and differences between Rand's thought and the libertarian tradition (to which she is often assimilated) and objections to her positions arising from this tradition; it explores Rand's relation to the classical liberal tradition, specifically with regard to her defense of freedom of the intellect; and it discusses her views on the free market, with special attention to the relation between these views and those of the Austrian school of economics.

Part One

REASON, FORCE, AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF POLITICS

The Place of the Non–Initiation of Force Principle in Ayn Rand’s Philosophy

DARRYL WRIGHT

Toward the end of her seminal essay “The Objectivist Ethics,” Ayn Rand states the following: “The basic political principle of the Objectivist Ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. No man—or group or society or government—has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man. Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use” (VOS 36; original emphasis). Let us call this the non–initiation of force principle.¹ The principle encompasses both the ban on initiated force and the (specifically limited) authorization of retaliatory force against initiators. Although this is Rand’s basic political principle, the passage makes it clear that the principle’s scope is wider than politics. It applies not only to the actions of government and the organization of societies but also, and equally, to the actions of individuals and groups both inside and outside of organized societies.² It is the basic political principle, for Rand, because it is in some sense the foundation of all her specifically political arguments and conclusions: not their ultimate foundation but, as we might put it, their proximal foundation—the principle nearest to politics, but wider than politics, on which (along with all of the other, deeper principles in Rand’s philosophy) her political philosophy rests. The other principles that seem foundational in Rand’s political philosophy are those involved in her account of individual rights. I will discuss the relation of that account to the non–initiation of force principle below.

The non–initiation of force principle itself raises a number of questions. How should it be understood? What specific kinds of actions does it prohibit? What is its justification in Rand’s thought? Why is force coercive, and are there other forms of coercion, such as economic coercion? Why does Rand insist on the need for a complete ban on the initiation of physical force within human relationships, to the extent of prohibiting even many government actions that are widely regarded as legitimate, even essential, and whose status as initiations of force is controversial, such as economic regulation or redistribution? How is her principle related to the “nonaggression principle” espoused by libertarians? It would require a full-length book to do justice to all these questions, but in this chapter and the two that follow I will touch on all of them and extensively explore the core of her justification for the non–initiation of force principle.

Since Rand’s approach to philosophy is holistic, a proper understanding of the principle requires us to see how it grows out of her more fundamental positions in ethics and epistemology, and this is my subject in the present chapter. Specifically, I aim to show how this principle is based in her ethics and relies on an account of the intellectual consequences of force that is shaped by her epistemological views. Accordingly, I will start by summarizing key themes from her ethics and eliciting her core argument for the main (prohibitory) part of the non–initiation of force principle. I go on to examine issues in her epistemology and end by exploring Rand’s conception of initiatory force, and some of the main forms that force can take. This exploration raises questions about the effects of force on the mind and about the scope of the non–initiation of force principle, which I discuss in the next two chapters, respectively.

1. Rand’s Justification of Moral Principles

The non–initiation of force principle is a moral principle, for Rand. So let us consider how, in general, she justifies moral principles; and how, more particularly, she justifies moral principles pertaining to our treatment of others. Not all moral principles are other-directed, in her view, but some are, and this one clearly is.

On Rand’s view, moral evaluation has a teleological basis. We elucidate that basis by asking why moral values are necessary for us. In the deepest sense, Rand holds, the need for moral values derives from the fact that we are living organisms of a particular kind. All living organisms must pursue specific values—specific goals, appropriate to their nature and needs—in order to maintain their lives; a living organism exists through goal-directed action. This is true even for plants, although their goal pursuit is not conscious and purposive, as it is for animals. Our similar need to pursue specific values in order to live is the ultimate basis, according to Rand, for all of the values and forms of evaluation that figure into our lives.

Living organisms as such do not pursue moral values, of course, nor could they. An animal relies on instinctual knowledge and values to act successfully within its environment; for example, to recognize and pursue its appropriate food and to recognize and evade predators. Further, not only does an animal’s consciousness equip it with automatic values pertaining to its actions in the world but the functioning of its consciousness is itself governed by certain automatic values, in the sense that, by nature, the animal is motivated to attend to its environment and act on what it perceives; it cannot choose not to do these things. Rand writes that an animal’s senses “provide it with an automatic code of values, an automatic knowledge of what is good for it or evil, what benefits or endangers its life. An animal has no power to extend its knowledge or to evade it. In situations for which its knowledge is inadequate, it perishes. . . . But so long as it lives, an animal acts on its knowledge, with automatic safety and no power of choice: it cannot suspend its own consciousness—it cannot choose not to perceive—it cannot evade its own perceptions—it cannot ignore its own good” (VOS 20; original emphasis). An animal cannot evade the knowledge, or act against the values, that its nature equips it with. It has no ability to act on a momentary whim, to drift purposelessly, to surrender its good in a moment of cowardice, or to neglect the work its life requires, such as seeking food or building a nest. Its genetic programming automatically maintains the right kind of relation between its consciousness and reality, setting it on a reality-oriented, purposive, consistent course, suited for maintaining the animal’s life across its lifespan. External factors can threaten or destroy it, but within its power, the animal by nature does its best for itself.³

The integrity of the relation between an animal’s consciousness and reality is protected by its genetic coding. But human consciousness, according to Rand, is volitional. Its functioning is not determined by our genetics (though its capacities and the requirements of its proper functioning are). We must create the equivalent state in ourselves—in our souls—a state that can underwrite the basic kinds of cognitive and existential actions that our lives require over their entire span. This, according to Rand, is the proper function of a moral code. Moral virtues (or principles), she says, “pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness” (Atlas 1018).⁴ Fundamentally, Rand holds, it is our moral code that either enables us to project, produce, and achieve the range of other values, material and spiritual, that we need in our lives or prevents us from doing so.⁵

Let us now consider, more specifically, Rand’s views of the role of principles in ethics. Principles, in her view, are necessary for evaluating specific actions. In some sense every normative ethical theory must agree with this. We evaluate an action by bringing it under whatever principles the theory proposes as the criterion of right and wrong. Even if what is right depends, say, on what the virtuous person would do in a particular situation, this is a kind of principle.

But Rand makes a more specific claim about the need for principles. All normative ethical theories must have some overall criterion of right and wrong. But the status of secondary principles that are subordinate to this overall criterion has been contentious in teleological theories. On some views, such principles are at best rules of thumb that can be overridden by judgments about particular cases. What Rand claims, however, is that, even though the basis of her ethics is teleological, we have no way of evaluating the relation of a given action to the ultimate end independently of secondary principles. There is no way for us to simply inspect the action and determine straightaway how it relates to our lives. In order to do that, we first require broad teleological principles pertaining to the fundamental requirements of any human being’s life. Since these requirements, as Rand conceives them, are moral requirements, the basic principles that we require are moral ones.

Moral principles enable us to grasp the long-range tendencies of specific ways of functioning cognitively and existentially. They provide a framework for constituting one’s life so that it will be self-sustaining. In evaluating an action morally, the concern is not with its specific effects but with how well it fits into such a framework.

For Rand, moral principles maintain our lives in another respect also. They are a precondition of the self-esteem that one needs in order to live.⁶ Animals value themselves automatically, by virtue of being constituted to act self-sustainingly. But human beings do not; self-loathing is possible for us. What determines self-esteem, according to Rand, is whether one’s life fits one’s own conception of a properly human life and whether that conception is grounded in the facts of human nature in such a way that it can withstand the test of its being put into practice. Your self-esteem will suffer if you recognize yourself as acting against your accepted (perhaps implicitly so) moral principles or if you act on principles that you profess to accept but cannot honestly endorse, in view of their actual consequences.

The justification of specific moral principles, according to Rand, must proceed by reference to a developed account of human nature. Since the justification of the non–initiation of force principle will rely on some of this ethical content, I will briefly sketch some key elements of her account and the principles they lead to. She holds that reason—conceptual thought—is our means of survival; we must use our minds to develop the knowledge and values that our lives require, and to guide all aspects of our lives. Further, the values we require include material values, and these must be both envisioned and produced, a process that requires rational thought and purposive action at every stage and is central to a properly human form of existence.

Besides providing for our material needs, in Rand’s view, rational productive activity satisfies crucial spiritual needs. Psychologically, one’s basic choice is the choice to think—to activate one’s mind purposively: “The choice to think or not is volitional [that is, under one’s direct and immediate control, and non-necessitated]. If an individual’s choice is predominantly negative, the result is his self-arrested mental development, a self-made cognitive malnutrition, a stagnant, eroded, impoverished, anxiety-ridden inner life” (“Our Cultural Value-Deprivation,” VOR 102). If, on the other hand, one’s choice is positive, one experiences a sense of control and mastery and a sense of self-esteem that flows from one’s implicit awareness of oneself as functioning in humanly appropriate ways (that is, on humanly appropriate principles).

For a conceptual being, the activity of living has directly experienced spiritual value. Rand’s term for this value is joy—and when it is a stable and lasting undertone of one’s life, happiness. One achieves this value by living in accordance with the long-range requirements of one’s survival; the individual she describes in the passage above is precluded from accessing it. In Rand’s view, it is the spiritual value of living that provides the motive to live and the purpose of living. Material survival is not an end in itself for us, apart from the spiritual purposes to which it is directed; it is not an end one could choose for its own sake. Unless one could experience one’s life as a value, the choice to live would be purposeless. But choice, for Rand, always requires a purpose to motivate and direct it.⁷ Material survival can be valued only as integral to (and, in that sense, for the sake of) happiness, and rational productive activity is important for us not only because it secures our material well-being but because it is the foundation of happiness.

Rand elaborates this point in answering a question about why a wealthy entrepreneur should continue to work:

When I say man survives by means of his mind, I mean that man’s first moral virtue is to think and to be productive. That is not the same as saying: “Get your pile of money by hook or by crook, and then sit at home and enjoy it.” You assume rational self-interest is simply ensuring one’s physical luxury. But what would a man do with himself once he has those millions. He would stagnate. No man who has used his mind enough to achieve a fortune is going to be happy doing nothing. His self-interest does not lie in consumption but in production—in the creative expansion of his mind.

To go deeper, observe that in order to exist, every part of an organism must function; if it doesn’t, it atrophies. This applies to a man’s mind more than to any other faculty. In order actually to be alive properly, a man must use his mind constantly and productively. That’s why rationality is the basic virtue according to my morality. Every achievement is an incentive for the next achievement. What for? The creative happiness of achieving greater and greater control over reality, greater and more ambitious values in whatever field a man is using his mind. . . .

Man’s survival is not about having to think in order to survive physically for this moment. To survive properly, man must think constantly. Man cannot survive automatically. The day he decides he no longer needs to be creative is the day he’s dead spiritually. (Answers 29–30)

The above gives us some of the grounds for Rand’s claim that rationality and productiveness are cardinal moral virtues, which express and maintain the moral values of reason and purpose. In her view, a principled approach to human survival must begin by recognizing these values and virtues. She characterizes these virtues, in part, as follows:

The virtue of Rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one’s only source of knowledge, one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide to action. It means one’s total commitment to a state of full, conscious awareness, to the maintenance of a full mental focus in all issues, in all choices, in all of one’s waking hours. It means a commitment to the fullest perception of reality within one’s power and to the constant, active expansion of one’s perception, i.e., of one’s knowledge. It means a commitment to the reality of one’s own existence, i.e., to the principle that all of one’s goals, values and actions take place in reality and, therefore, that one must never place any value or consideration whatsoever above one’s perception of reality. (“The Objectivist Ethics,” VOS 28)

Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live—that productive work is the process by which man’s consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one’s purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one’s values—that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others—that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human—that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind’s full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay—that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live. (Atlas 1020)

Rationality, as Rand views it, is not incompatible with spontaneity and emotion, but it does require that these be informed and guided by a background of rational judgment. To simply surrender reason, to any extent, is to act blindly. Productiveness does not require constant work, but it requires a purposive approach to life and full use of one’s mind; it requires that one seek to grow, both intellectually and in the range and caliber of one’s activities.⁸ The primary vice, for Rand, is irrationality and, particularly, any form of psychological evasion—of refusing to recognize salient facts, or attempting to distort them:

[Man’s] basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think—not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment—on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict “It is.” (Atlas 1017)

In formulating moral principles, we must suppose a context in which those principles are substantially reciprocated and set the terms for the functioning of a society. That is, we could not invalidate a principle requiring productiveness by noting that productive people fare badly in a totalitarian dictatorship since they are exploited and expropriated, whereas unproductive people will receive their rations anyway. The primary question of interest pertains to the basic at-large requirements of human survival. Discussion of emergencies or other extreme kinds of nonideal contexts, for Rand, must follow an inquiry into this primary question. The same applies to free riding; we must know the primary principles—the principles that even a free rider depends on some critical mass of others choosing to follow—in order to address that issue.

But the issue of free riding does deserve comment here, since it arises in regard to fo...