There is much to be said, little of it positive, for Objectivism, a philosophy and a way of life of the most infuriating arrogance and irrationality.
Aesthetics and Epistemology: Hillal Did It Better
Objectively, "‘A’ is ... a set of lines."
Like the sage Hillel, Rand was once asked to define her movement while standing on one foot. Unlike Hillel, Rand was not able to do so with contradicting herself.
The central problem with the movement can be explained by looking at its motto, "‘A’ is ‘A’." Objectivism is based on the belief that things have objective meanings and that subjectivism reflects fuzzy thinking. However, the axiom they use to explain this position uses something, the letter ‘A,’ which has only a subjective meaning. To a speaker of Spanish, "‘Ah’ es ‘Ah.’" To one who reads only Chinese, "‘A’ is ‘What do those letters mean?’"
While you would have similar problems with numbers, not every culture uses the same symbols for numbers (Arabic numbers aren’t, for example), numbers at least point to something concrete. A letter, in contrast, stands only as a symbol for a sound not used in every language, where that symbol itself varies in form between languages where it is used. Using this illogical example demonstrates the same kind of fuzzy, self referential thinking that Objectivist purport to abhor.
Subjective Reaction Contributes to Objective Truth
Taken a bit further, while it is critical to grasp objective truth in any situation, at least part of that truth is the subjective reactions of others to that objective truth and those subjective perceptions cause further actions to be taken.
For example, in any modern battle between relatively evenly matched forces, by any objective measure both sides are defeated. Both have lost equipment that is expensive and difficult to replace. Both have lost Soldiers who are killed and wounded, the last creating another expensive burden on that wounded Soldier’s side. However, the side that considers itself to have won, and acts accordingly, generally wins, even if it has been more gravely beaten in objective terms. The textbook example of this is the North Vietnamese conquest of the South from 1960 to 1975, despite US support to and military intervention on the side of the South.
As we study the underlying objective facts behind many important historical events, we often discover that the objective facts should have dictated other outcomes, but that people’s subjective reactions, often based on incomplete information, created unforeseen outcomes.
The Depression should have ended given many of the actions Herbert Hoover took (less some counter-productive ones like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff) well before the end of his first term. However, people’s subjective fears, many of which were objectively irrational, kept people from spending or investing, prolonged the Depression ... and helped elect FDR ... in 1932.
Thus, while objective truth is possible to obtain, at least in retrospect, a part of that truth is people’s subjective reaction to that truth, which is based upon incomplete information, cognitive biases and emotional reactions.
An example of how people’s cognitive biases can cause unpredictable outcomes is the odd effect created by Objectivism’s epistemology, "Objective Truth," and its aesthetics, "Romanticism."
Childe Howard to the Dark Tower Designed or John Galt at Tintern Abbey
It makes no logical sense for a movement that values objective sensory input as the sole source of truth to base its aesthetics on Romanticism, an artistic movement based on the artist’s subjective reactions, as Wordsworth said in Tintern Abbey, "seeing into the life of things."
Logically, especially given Objectivism’s creed of "Man-worship," some kind of Classicism, the artistic movement of the Enlightenment, would have been more reasonable, if Realism might have been politically unacceptable due to its ties with the Marxist or Socialist movements. However, based perhaps on her Russian upbringing, Romanticism was clearly a more comfortable fit for Rand.
Some of this embrace of Romanticism may also be attributable to the idea of the Byronic hero, as Objectivism loves its ubermenschen Howard Roark and John Galts, but the Byronic Hero archetype also should fall outside the Objectivist worldview. The Byronic hero does not add much to the world, and, to paraphrase the famous description of Byron’s Don Juan, is more shaken by the world than shaking.
Don Juan, for example, is not an economic actor, nor does he create art or ideas that shape the world. He is not Howard Roark building great structures, nor even Howard Roark working humbly for people who can teach him something, expecting nothing but to give good work for his pay until it is mutually convenient to end the association, acting as the perfect "Trader." In contrast, things happen to Don Juan and he reacts. In some sense, Don Juan (and certainly Childe Harold) are, in Objectivist terms, "Looters," who consume value without creating it. Even Tennyson’s Ulysses sails off less to do great things than to die attempting to do great things.
In some sense, Howard Roark in The Fountainhead is a Byronic Hero, destroying his building in order to preserve his artistic sensibilities. However, that action, which Rand glorifies as the central action of the novel, conflicts with Objectivism’s central moral notion that we should exist as "Traders," making mutually beneficial, arm's length transactions with others and never compelling anyone to do anything by force. Indeed, the most enjoyable parts of The Fountainhead, concern Roark 's early years working for various architects learning his trade, almost an elegy to at-will employment.
This willingness to embrace aesthetics so alien to the movement’s epistemology was a sign of a deep lack of rationality at the heart of Objectivism. The bizarre ... and tolerated (even enabled) ... behavior of its founder was yet another sign.
Cult of Personality
While Objectivism disdains altruism as a sort of a "phony crown" (to borrow a lyric from Paul Simon) of martyrdom, it also teaches that no human being should be considered anything but "an end in himself." Rand’s behavior with her followers often demanded a demeaning altruism from her disciples.
The fact that Ayn Rand was able to carry on an affair for years with a key member (Nathaniel Branden) of her very moralistic movement, even with the "consent" of their respective (and equally economically dependent) spouses, is a sign that Objectivism was a cult of personality.
The granting of special dispensations for founders and leaders for behavior that would be anathema on the part of followers is a clear sign of corruption, whether it is on the part of Jim Jones, the Catholic Hierarchy or the Supreme Soviet. This is exactly the type of fuzzy-minded subjectivism that Objectivism purports to oppose.
This same kind of quixotic avoidance of objective facts led Rand to oppose Ronald Reagan in 1980. Rand opposed him despite the fact that Reagan supported many of the same laissez faire economic policies that Rand had long propounded on the sole ground that Reagan was pro-life. This was true even though Reagan was unlikely to be able to change the law on that issue but was likely to implement his economic program, as subsequent events demonstrated.
Thus, in practice, Objectivism seemed to often veer sharply from an ideal of appreciation for human achievement in an objectively understood world to a reality of adolescent priggishness and a disdain for those people too benighted not to see the adherents’ superiority.
Objectivism in Practice (Unfortunately): Regulation
This lack of understanding of human realities also seems to have deeply influenced Objectivism’s understanding of regulation. The brilliant Classical Economist, Milton Friedman, did not like the idea of regulation. However, as much as he disliked the idea, he acknowledged in his book, Free to Choose, that regulation was needed and was a valid part of the police power of government.
In contrast to this rational view, Ayn Rand believed that people ought to pay taxes by sending in an amount at the end of the year equal to the value the tax payer perceived that the government gave them that year, sort of like the tip someone might give a barber or hair-dresser at the end of a year. Rand associate Alan Greenspan, a former Chairman of the Federal Reserve (!??!), said last fall that he was amazed by the collapse of the banking system, as he thought that Bankers’ enlightened self interest would avoid such problems.
All of this overlooks the sort of Enlightenment principals stated by James Madison when he said, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." (http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa51.htm) An instructor in a CLE I attended said that a few years ago, a major consulting firm did a study of employee theft. They concluded that 10% of employees would never steal, 10% would always steal and that for the remaining 80%, it was a function of effective process controls.
In practice, it may at times be easier to profit in the short term by fraud than by innovation or hard work. For most people, the amounts of money to be gained from any pattern of fraud would not be enough to justify the fraud, given that the scheme could probably not be sustained. If, however, you dealt in large amounts of money and could procure enough money to go somewhere without an extradition treaty before the fraud was detected, the temptation might become plausible. Regulations do three things:
- for the honest (that special 10%), Regulations prompt diligent investigation and provide a "speed bump" to excessive enthusiasm for a pet project "that seems too good to be true;"
- for someone in the 80% (most of us), Regulations provide a "reality check" on our temptations; and
- for that last 10%, they provide a framework to define, prevent and prosecute defalcations.
Objectivist "Man-worship:" Worshipers of a Lesser God
Objectivism considers none of these issues. In fact, its ideal of "Man-worship" blinds it to the needs for these considerations.
Objectively, our species has produced many special heroes, among them: Moses; Cyrus of Persia; Socrates; Sun Tzu; Jesus of Nazareth; Cicero; Gautama Buddha; Marcus Aurelius Antoninus; Boethius; Mohamed; Aquinas; Moore; Erasmus; Galileo; Newton; Washington; Wellington; Lincoln; Einstein; G.C. Marshall; Gandhi: M.L. King Jr., Mandela, etc. It has produced innumerable decent people, who lived and died honorably, productively and anonymously.
It has also produced a hardcore of truly intolerable bastards, some of whom had been, at other phases of their lives, saints, philosophers, humanitarians and tzedekim. The famous Stanford University "prison experiment" (in which student "guards" acted with increasing violence towards increasingly recalcitrant student "prisoners" http://www.stanford.edu/... http://www.prisonexp.org/... alone is enough to prove objectively that there is a "Heart of Darkness" (in Conrad’s phrase) even in the best of us.
We are, as a species, imperfect, if often admirable. For all of our potential, however, we often fall short. Sometimes, the best of us do evil. At other times, the worst of us are heroes, like the thief, Dismus, at Calvary (http://www.e5men.org/archives_9.cfm). All of this considers moral choices. It does not even begin to talk about situations where wise men and women cause vast tragedies by making the objectively wrong decision, based on incomplete information, cognitive bias or emotion.
To respect man as a successful species that often acts nobly and productively is objectively reasonable. To worship man "as an end in himself," as Rand said, instead of celebrating and seeking to emulate human virtue, is absurd.
Conclusion
Still for all the flaws I see with Objectivism, it is an ill wind that blows no good. While any movement that could have inspired Steve Ditko’s work on Spider-man and Doctor Strange, to say nothing of his work on The Hulk, Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, The Creeper and The Question (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ditko; http://www.steveditko.com/... can’t be said to have produced nothing, little else recommends it.