It doesn't take much for philosophy to disintegrate into a 'soap opera' -- and a 'disaster' of words.
Ayn Rand said this, Ayn Rand said that. We are the 'true' educators of Ayn Rand Philosphy. Don't trust this 'faction' or that 'faction'. Trust only us.
How did Milt Friedman's philosophical ideas connect and/or disconnect with Ayn Rand's ideas? Did the two like each other and their respective ideas? Or not?
What caused the break-up in philosophical 'similarity of approach' between Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden? When I was writing my Honours Thesis in Psychology in 1979, they seemed to be on the 'same page together'. Much of the early part of my thesis was based on Branden's 'The Psychology of Self-Esteem' which in turn was very much influenced by the philosophy of Ayn Rand. What happened that they -- 'disconnected'?
Throw in Noam Chomsky's philosophical ideas -- quite the opposite of both Ayn Rand's and Milton Friedman's -- and the philosophical dialectic becomes even more complicated.
Words, words, words...and the ever elusive search for their 'meaning'...
Who said what? When? Where? Do we have that in writing? Do we have it in an interview?
Who's right? Who's wrong?
Where is that every elusive place of 'homeostatic-dialectic-democratic balance'?
Or is that even a goal that some -- or any -- of these philosophers are chasing?
Two of these philosophers -- Milton Friedman and Aynd Rand -- are pretty far right wing.
Chomsky is a known socialist -- although a good one, I believe -- a 'humanistic-socialist'. Similar to Erich Fromm in a lot of respects. Nice to see a man who lists both Adam Smith and Karl Marx amongst his philosophical influences. It seems obvious that Karl Marx has had the greater influence.
I can respect the work of both a 'good Capitalist' and a 'good Socialist'. I list Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Karl Marx, Erich Fromm, Noam Chomsky -- and whatever economic affiliate that Naomi Klein attaches herself to amongst the people I include in this category. Any yet none of them are beyond reproach. Not of them are infallible when it comes to logic, reason, and ethics...We are all too human, too human to try to believe that anyone of us has philosophically and/or politically and/or economically captured 'the whole truth and nothing but the truth' -- about anything.
Everyone is epistemologically and ethically fallible -- including Ayn Rand herself who almost talked and wrote like the 'reincarnation of Apollo' himself -- the God of Light and Reason and Truth.
With all due respect to Ayn Rand -- and I respect her ideas greatly -- I cannot but be amused by the irony I see in the fact that when Rand writes about 'reason' it is almost like she is writing about it with a Capital 'R' -- as in 'Reason'. She wrote about Reason like Plato wrote about 'The Forms' and like Hegel wrote about 'The Absolute' and like Kant wrote about 'The Noumenal World' -- like 'Reason' was some sort of 'Gift From God' and that we all just have to 'turn onto the right channel, the right frequency' -- 'The Frequency From God, The Frequency From Apollo' -- and we will all just magically 'know' what is 'good' vs. 'bad' reasoning.
Or maybe we just have to turn onto 'The Ayn Rand Frequency of Reason' and we will all just somehown magically know how to reason better -- and to live a better life.
A life of 'self-interest'. A life built around 'The Virtue of Selfishness'.
And this she calls 'ethics'. As if anyone would then need to study ethics to know what 'self-interest' and 'selfishness' is all about.
But then, maybe we all need to get a PHD in 'Ayn Rand Philosophy' -- or 'Objectivism' -- to know fully what Ayn Rand meant by 'rational self-interst' and/or 'the virtue of selfishness'.
I would hope that she would not equate it with what just happened on Wall Street last fall before Obama became President -- and that she would not equate it with all of these CEOs and corporate executives on Wall St. pleading for 'Washington Bailout Money' to compensate for their gross financial mistakes -- and greed -- and then turned around on Washington after they did indeed get their first package of bailout money -- and basically said, 'Thank you very much, as they took their golden parachute money and corporate bonuses, and retirement or severance packages -- and thumbed their noses at both the Washington politicians who gave them this money as well as, indirectly, the taxpayers on Main Street -- both those who lost their houses and those who didn't -- who I'm sure did not believe that their excruciatingly hard earned, and lost, tax money was going to be so abusively used, or misused, in this fashion.
I can't see Ayn Rand advocating this type of 'Capitalism' because Capitalism in this fashion -- which I call 'Narcissistic Capitalism' -- espouses the anti-thesis of everything that Ayn Rand I believe stood for in both 'The Fountainhead' and in 'Atlas Shruggged' -- specifically, the one word we might call 'integrity'.
So for Ayn Rand -- and her particular brand of philosophy, 'Objectivism' -- the challenge as I see it is to get 'Capitalism, Self-Interest, Selfishness -- and Integrity' all on the same page together, not an easy feat at all. Indeed, this is where I believe Ayn Rand's brand of Capitalistic Philososphy self-destructs under its own weight. Because inevitably, self-interest collapses into selfishness, which collapses into unbridled greed and narcissism. Which collapses into a world of 'Lord of The Flies' -- of distrust, paranoia, disrespect, and all the 'sophism' that each and every person can get away with. All spirit of 'co-operation' and 'working as a team' collapses under the philosophy that every worker has to 'check to see who's going into the manager's office next' and 'who's stabbing my back to get the proper management networking in place for the next promotion'...
One of the best ways of differentiating between 'Ethical Capitalism' and 'Narcissistic Capitalism' is by noting who works the hardest when the manager isn't around and who works the manager's office the hardest when the manager is around.'
As far as Milton Friedman, I don't think his brand of Capitalism even pretended to be as ethical as Ayn Rand's brand of Capitalism.
With Milton Friedman, it is to be assumed that all stockholders want the highest profits possible for the company they own. And it is the job of the corporate executives to 'deliver the goods'. Everything else is secondary as long as it is legal. A corporate executive has the choice of quitting if he or she doesn't like the particular 'brand of ethics' that is being passed down from the top. Otherwise, he or she does what he or she is told to do -- just like any good 'military man'. Authoritarianism rules. 'Shoot to kill.' Wipe out the people who are getting in the way of the maximum profits of the company. It's the American Way. Or at least the 'Milton Friedman' way. Pushed to the maximum by the applications of Bush and his Friedman brand of Republicans. Now Friedman would argue that America should never have invaded Iraq.
That is one thing we can agree on.
Philosophically, I am looking for a different brand of Capitalism -- different partly from both Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand although probably much closer to the aspired Capitalism of Ayn Rand with a more 'dialectic-democratic, humanistic-existential twist to it -- what I call, 'DGB Dialectic-Democratic, Humanistic-Existential Capitalism'.
Don't ask me what that is completely right now because I don't know.
It is just an abstract vision that needs to be worked out in more concrete detail. And I doubt if I can do it alone.
But incorporated into it will be my usual philosophical mentors: Hegel, Aristotle (the 'middle' path), Bacon, Locke, Adam Smith, Diderot, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Nietzsche, Abraham Lincoln, Eisenhower, Karl Marx, Erich Fromm, Ayn Rand, Foucault, Derrida, Chomsky...
I support 'individualism' -- but individualism in a social and political and economic context of 'Kantian ethics' of 'positive and negative reciprocity' -- 1. treating others like we would want to be treated ourselves; and 2. not treating others like we would not want to be treated ourselves.
That is enough for today.
-- dgb, Feb. 24th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
