Dead Ends All: Capitalism, Objectivism, Marxism

by David Sims

AN “OBJECTIVIST,” that is, a follower of the Jewess “Ayn Rand”’s extreme libertarian philosophy, once tried to explain away the deep flaws of capitalism as mere personal corruption and adherence to “bad philosophy”:

As Ayn Rand would say, the problem exists within philosophy: either ignorance of philosophy or adherence to bad philosophy. Consequences have ideas. [I think he meant ‘ideas have consequences’ — Ed.] The reason corruption exists is because people are led astray by ideas that are destructive.

Whatever the source of bad ideas might be, they do arise in the minds of people who have the power to gain by them, and never mind the consequences to the future condition of the world and to the people who will have to find a way to live in that world.

These bad ideas aren’t, from Rand’s point of view, anything “astray,” because in Objectivism the standard of value is your own life. Others matter only insofar as your own happiness is affected. For certain others, such as your family or your spouse or, perhaps, some of your friends, the extent to which they matter (to you and only you) justifies your paying maintenance costs, up to a point. You will remember that Rand said that she would support her husband, if necessary, because he was essential to her own happiness.

But beyond these close relationships, there’s no particular reason for an Objectivist to care. Which means that an Objectivist wouldn’t really worry about whether or not the Earth will be the slightest bit habitable, say, a thousand years from now. That kind of concern, for a future in which you yourself will not be alive, belongs to a different kind of philosophy, which values collectives above the individual.

One of those philosophies is National Socialism, which values the perpetual survival and advancement of the (White) race. And, of course, any other race could entertain a similar philosophy — the Jews, for example, have their own variation [with extreme parasitism and systematic deception added — Ed.].

But people who already have become powerful under our existing system, through the multi-generational inheritance of wealth, will, given any chance, take for themselves the coercive powers of government. Either they will subvert an existing political structure, or they will form their own system of gun-toting thugs and impose their own (possibly corporate) regulations about what people, who are subject to them in a practical sense, must do and what they must not do. This will happen with the inevitability of a chemical reaction, when suitable reagents are mixed in a suitable solvent.

Objectivism has the same general flaw as Marxism does. Marxism demands that men behave with more altruism than men have in them. Objectivism [as presented to the public, anyway] demands that men behave with more rationality and with more morality than men have in them.

Marxism fails, sooner or later, because people will abuse a commons and try to take out of it at least a little more than they put into it, and they will ignore any and all propaganda intended to cajole them into doing the opposite. Objectivism/libertarianism will also fail, sooner or later, because losers will turn to crime, and because winners will accrue coercive powers, and because the people in the middle will be persuaded by the profit-seeking winners to waste their money by buying what they don’t really need. The losers will ignore moral exhortations to be lawful. The winners will ignore moral exhortations to forswear the rod and the axe. And the people in the middle will never wise up, at least not by and large, about the “necessity” of their purchases.

* * *

Source: Author