Ayn Rand Birthday Girl
Communism is not self-denial
Ayn Rand, the great champion of capitalism, had her 120th birthday recently. She seems to have faded from view lately. The only recent mention of her that I have noticed is a piece from the Cato Institute on how she didn't like DEI. It's been 15 years since Glenn Beck got everyone buying a copy of her hefty novel Atlas Shrugged. A few years later I got a free pirate epub copy and listened to it on high speed text to speech. But I wouldn't recommend it. There is plenty of shorter and more digestible stuff about her views to be found on the Net. This YouTube interview with some guy from the Ayn Rand Institute is probably a good introduction.
For a trainee Red, I think the main assignment is to see through what she has to say on selfishness and altruism.
According to Rand, ethics should be based on self-interest. By that she meant that it is right for people to seek to meet their own needs and that they should not be sacrificed to the needs of others. I must say I fully agree with the idea of people being able to make the most of life, to develop as people and to meet their needs as far as they possibly can, while not harming the needs of others.
Of course, where I part company from Rand is in her belief that this self-interest requires capitalism. She basically argues that all the alternatives have ruled themselves out of court because they are all some form of collectivism or statism based on what she calls altruism.
According to Rand, altruism means we have no right to exist for our own sake, while service to others or the public good is the only moral justification of our existence and self-sacrifice is our highest moral duty. Collectivism holds that the individual’s life and work belong to the state, to society, to the group, to the gang, to the race or to the nation. And the collective may dispose of the individual in any way it pleases for what it deems to be for the collective good.
In the case of a future classless communist society this is stuff and nonsense. It will not be based on this sort of self-denying altruism but rather on an altruism that is enlightened self-interest and that can best be described as mutual regard. The is the golden rule straight out of the Bible in fact!
Freely giving our time and energy to others will not be self-denial or self-sacrifice. We will engage in work and other activities because we find them rewarding in themselves. This is not so hard to imagine once most of the tedious and arduous work is done by robots and computers, and we don’t have bosses harassing us. And not being motivated by extrinsic rewards and being happy with an equal share is not so hard to imagine when you consider that we would be sharing high and increasing livings standards. We would not be sharing poverty.
People who are more productive, creative or innovative would not feel robbed when they received the same as everyone else. They would be working because they are doing what they like doing. And also they know that other people are generally doing their best and not shirking.
And if you are like Frank Reardon in Atlas Shrugged and you want to develop a new steel alloy, you would just put up a proposal to one or more of the agencies established for the purpose of funding innovative projects. So there would be no problem there.
Of course, it is not just a matter of a revolutionary state taking over the means of production and you then have communism. While there will have to be a revolutionary movement that fairly rapidly makes serious inroads into the task of transforming ourselves, society and the nature of work, it won't fully kick in for a while. The urge by some to shirk won't vanish overnight nor will work being less than delightful and an encroachment on other uses for our time.
So it will be necessary to retain some connection between work and reward. In other words we will apply the principle from each according to their ability, to each according to their work.
Transforming work will be a bit of a process. The average Joe and Jolene will have to learn how to do a lot more thinking and deciding so they are not stuck with boring routine stuff. And they will have to prevail over people who want to retain the old ways where we bully and annoy each other, and try to monopolize the more interesting work. Only then can we separate work from income and adopt the principle from each according to their ability to each according to their needs.
Having said all this, it is still important to keep in mind that self-sacrifice or putting oneself in harms way does not have to be self-denial. It may be the best way of giving your life purpose under certain circumstances. At the moment resisting fascist tyrants and invaders is a good example. Down the track, joining a risky revolutionary movement will be the choice for may people.