A Passion for Liberty
Tibor R. Machan @ Rational Review
Posts tagged Karl Marx
Column on Equality is Only A Cheap Dream
Oct 29th
Equality Is Only A Cheap Dream
Tibor R. Machan
Two academic researchers, both of them psychologists, have recently rekindled all the fuss about inequality of income in the United States of America. Mostly this topic has been the province of political philosophers, economists and theorists, many of whom have been urging the government to engage in more aggressive coercive resource redistribution. (Such redistribution is, of course, what happens routinely in the marketplace–where people take their wealth and use it to obtain various goods and services, thereby handing to the providers wealth that they, in turn, will redistribute–without any coercion involved.)
But the peaceful wealth redistribution of a free society and market doesn’t sit well with these avid egalitarians because free men and women spend their resources without worrying about distributing it equally, evenly, or fairly, only with doing it peacefully, voluntarily and productively. So the goal of economic equality isn’t served vigorously enough for them, thus they want the government to nationalize the process, take it out of private hands.
OK, so these two psychologists went around asking people about what kind of society they would like to live in and the responses to the question, “What kind of country would you like to live in?” convinced them that most people, as Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its 10/25-31, 2010 issue, “shared a similar vision of what they thought America looked like and what a fairer society would be.” The bulk, “Rich and poor, Republican and Democrats” tend toward egalitarianism.
Well that may be what many people wish for in their dreams. It is fairly cheep to dream like this. But the two researchers–Professor Dan Airely of Duke and Michael I. Norton of the Harvard Business School–did not ask the pertinent question, namely, “Would you prefer a fairer, more egalitarian, society if it meant that your liberty to use your life, time, labor and resources would be severely curtailed by the government as it undertakes making people equal?” But this question wasn’t asked and accordingly the conclusion the researchers reached is completely useless.
People have always had dreams of equality in their view of social life, starting with Plato (who had Socrates imagine the perfect society wherein equality reigned supreme). But as most Plato scholars know, the Republic presents an impossible society, a highly distorted one. Then, more recently, we have Karl Marx whose communist society is supposed to be populated by fully equal citizens who love one another intimately and for whom the principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” governs the realm. This is not a formula for perfect equality but for a great deal more of it than any free market system would generate. However, people forget that Karl Marx imagined communist society as populated not by men and women such as we are but by what he called “the new man,” a different kind of (specie) being from us. Those “human” beings would love the society above all, love everyone as only intimate friends do now. Marx realized that an egalitarian society cannot be the home to ordinary, normal human beings but only to those who fit his idea of the new man.
Our champions of egalitarianism fail to appreciate the significance of the point Karl Marx made. They do not realize that human nature would need to be re-engineered before an egalitarian social-political-economic system could come about. The so called findings of the two researchers also fail to show any appreciation for the point Marx did appreciate. And the price of this error is that the sort of equality they think is so desirable would require the systematic coercive remaking of human beings (something Stalin once envisioned when he hoped that Lysenko, his agricultural guru, could remake us to fit the communist dream).
If the subjects of their study had been apprised of what Marx knew and what has always been true, namely, that making people equal conflicts with their liberty, it is doubtful that they would have jumped on board of the egalitarian ideological train.
Column on Absurdities of Atomism
Oct 13th
Absurdities of Atomism
Tibor R. Machan
Individualism has had its foes over the centuries, mainly because it is a bulwark against some people
making use of unwilling others. If one is indeed a sovereign individual, with rights to one’s life, liberty,
etc., others are morally and would in justice be also barred legally from coercing one to do anything at
all. Force against people could only be deployed if they started interfering with others, intruding upon
them—assaulting, kidnapping, raping, robbing and doing other violence to them. Otherwise no one gets
to mess with others unless they agree.
By now this is pretty much common sense in many societies except to those zealots who want to conscript others to
their various projects, never mind the need to persuade them first. But one way this kind of prohibition
of doing violence to individuals is being discredited is by distorting what individualism means. And a
very common approach is to charge the position with “atomism,” the idea that individualism means that
people can live isolated from others, that they can be utterly self-sufficient and flourish that way.
Of course, no individualist in his right mind ever makes this claim. Some have made use of a version
of this for purely analytical purposes, such as economic analysis. Doing this, however, does not mean
that individualism implies the idea. Just because when people examine boxing or some other sport
they do not pay attention to the marital status or artistic tastes of the athletes, it doesn’t mean that these
can be well understood without paying heed to those aspects of their lives only that their boxing, etc. could
very well be. Most of us have our lives pretty much partitioned so that it is possible to examine it from
various angles, focusing on just this or that part of it. One can be considered in one’s role of a parent or
friend or professional or citizen or lover of novels, etc. None of this means that one is only such a one
dimensional individual, only that we can be understood in our various roles in life.
In economic analysis, for example, what tends to matter most is that we interact with others in the
exchange relationship—we sell to them and buy from them and economists mostly focus on this fact.
Sociologists focus on something else and biologists yet on others. None of this means that they believe
we are nothing but economic or social or biological individuals.
To charge individualism with this kind of narrow-mindedness is a trick. Individualists themselves belie
the charge in their very own lives, given how they are party to multiple rich relationships—familial,
fraternal, professional, political, economic, artistic, recreational, etc. The point is not difficult to
demonstrate in the case of every individual’s life. And individualism implies only that these relationships
exclude treating people as subjects, as the victims of others’ imposition and coercion. But as to
voluntary relationships, all those are perfectly compatible with individualism and are, indeed, demanded by
it. Nothing else is more fitting for human relationships than being involved in them because one wants
to be instead of because one is made a part of them by some others who presume to have the moral
authority to decide how people ought to choose to live.
Nor does individualism mean that people are immune to critical evaluation by their fellows, that
whatever one does is just fine and dandy. But if it is something peaceful—such as being fond of certain kinds of art or sports or technological gadgets—that is something others must acknowledge as immune
to intervention apart from possible comment or advice or perhaps a bit of peer pressure. You want
me to give up my love of jazz and join you in your love of bird watching, you’ve got to ask me and
convince me.
Only if I intrude on you or someone else have I made myself the proper subject of forcible
invasion.
Column on Does the General Understand Freedom?
Sep 12th
Does the General Understand Freedom?
Tibor R. Machan
Here is the relevant exchange:
“[ABC News'] Martha Raddatz: Is this [the public and widely publicized possible burning of the Koran] something that could have a long-lasting effect on soldiers here?
General Petraeus: We fear it could. This could provide indelible images, images that in an Internet age will be non-biodegradable. They will always be in cyberspace and available for extremists to use to incite and inflame public opinion against our troopers and civilians.
“My job as a commander is to be concerned about the safety and security of our troopers. I think it’s important to provide an assessment of an incident that could jeopardize that safety, I think that’s very important. I think I have a moral obligation in fact to speak out on an issue like that….”
So this reminds me of how, in contrast to the general’s words, many sensible people reacted to the Danish cartoon episode: They thought it was perhaps unwise, unnecessarily provocative to publish them but once published, the issue became whether the newspapers had the right to do so. They did and this right needs to be defended, even while its particular exercise could be judged ill advised, even outright offensive.
Why not the same attitude about the prospect of burning the Koran? The fact that certain people may respond to it by violently lashing out against innocent individuals is lamentable. When one deals with people with a tribal mentality who lump everyone in a country or those of a certain religion or nationality or ethnic background together, never considering that these are different individuals whose deeds are their own, not those of the others in the group, one must realize that such reactions are possible even if totally irrational. Yet not by any means excusable. Muslims who join in are guilty of violence against innocent people, even if some other people who look like those innocent people have insulted them by burning the Koran.
Indeed, while it is an affront to burn what some billions of people regard as a holy book (to those people), it is not an attack on them but on their beliefs. Well, get used to it.
In a pluralistic world millions of people constantly denounce millions of other people, including by way of insulting the books they deem important. Millions of people have denounced the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence, various examples of important literature, and so forth. Books by Karl Marx, by Harriet Beecher Stowe (who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin), Ayn Rand and by thousands of others have gotten condemned as well as praised. But, as that wise saying has it, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Indeed, denouncing people is something acrimonious but peaceful, as is offending them, and in a civilized world one is free to do what is peaceful however offensive it may be.
This, unfortunately, has been overlooked, even implicitly denied, in many regions of the world, including in the West where politically incorrect language is often deemed to be legally actionable. When the thought someone has while committing a crime, a so called hate crime, is punishable, then it is difficult to reject the thinking about offensive albeit peaceful language and deeds in evidence among many, many Muslims. It is wrong, but so is the thinking that supports punishing more severely a crime deemed to be motivated by hate than the crime without that motivation or motivated by something else. Such is the result of faulty thinking–one cannot cherry pick what inconsistencies one will accept and which are those one will reject. They must all go!
General Petraeus sadly got it wrong when he wants to shut down the Koran burning on the grounds that some will react to it irrationally. Sure, the burning should not happen because it is a needlessly provocative deed but no one should be forcibly stopped from uttering even the most provocative, blasphemous words or carrying out even the most insulting but peaceful deeds. One has a right to be wrong in a free society and public officials may have to cope with the results, including the perpetration of irrational reactions from people who don’t get it, who don’t understand what freedom entails.
Utopian Attractions
Jun 13th
Utopian Attractions
Tibor R. Machan
Former submarine officer and author of My Nuclear Family, Christopher J. Brownfield, gave an interview in The New York Times Magazine (6/12/2010). In one of his comments–indicating clearly why The Times would feature him–he described his submarine life and interviewer Deborah Solomon, who loves to throw softball questions at all those she interviews who agree with her basic outlook, says to him: “You make it sound liek a commune,” to which Brownfield replied, “It’s weird, but it does have that collective feel. Everyone is in the same boat [no pun intended I assume]. There are lots of analogies to be drawn between the way we live on a sub and the way the world needs to live together.”
Never mind that this ex-solidere once swore to protect the ideals laid out in the U. S. Constitution but here he is defending a distinctively Marxist communist political vision. Because, yes, by Marx’s account the best of all human societies, one we will only be able to establish when human nature will have changed and the New Man comes into being, is a literal worldwide commune. Everyone will be a cell in this huge commune–what Marx himself called an “organic whole (or body)”–and no one will have a private life, no private property for sure, and everyone will love everyone else equally! The public interest will trump all others and not even as a matter of free choice but by instinct, hard-wiring, via a built-in drive the new man will have had implanted in him by history’s deterministic revolutionary forces.
That is indeed what it appears this former soldier of the United States of America, home of the philosophy of humanistic individualism–where one supposedly is recognized as having a right to one’s life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc.–wants. And, of course, The Times is only too happy to give him a platform. (Am I saying The Times is peddling communism? I don’t think the publisher and editors there have much of a clue about communism but their sentiments do run in that direction, clearly, judging by how much their editorial writers and columnists insist on blaming every malady in the world, every failure, on human liberty, free markets, and freedom of choice!)
If you take a peak at this interview what you will see is a picture of a nice young man, seemingly just out of a fraternity, wearing the uniform of a yuppie, not an ex-submarine officer, of course. Yet the ideas flowing from this man are anything but what his appearance suggest he harbors in his mind and heart. No, he wants the world to be a commune!
Does he not realize that that would squash all the cherished diversity, plurality, individuality–all the spice–from the human species and render it akin to an ant colony, kind of like what one witnesses in North Korea when millions of subjects are ordered around to march in the same blue pajamas to communicate to the world their communist identity? It appears not; nor does Ms. Solomon have the presence of mind to bring it up to him and ask him how his professed global communal ideal squares with his former self-assumed duty to defend the constitution of the world’s most–though by no means sufficiently–individualist country?
I would really like to be the interviewer of such a fellow! I could tell him a thing or two about this wonderful commune that he envisions for us all to live in. I would be unwilling to restrain myself from mentioning of some of the more bizarre consequences of this ideal, such as having to celebrate every single human being’s birthday, wedding, graduation, and so forth, and having to attend billions of funerals all at the same time, which is what one does with the few close friends, intimates in normal, largely individualist societies and in those occasional communal associations that have a perfectly good place in them, provided they are not used to fantasize the communist ideal!
But I guess Mr. Brownfield never bothered to consider the implications of his dreamworld!
Column on Tea PArty vs. ACORN, etc.
May 31st
Tea Party versus ACORN, etc.
Tibor R. Machan
It looks like the way the Right despises ACORN, the Left does the Tea Party. It may not even be so much about their political stances, although that is part of it for sure. It is sad, though, that supporters of Mr. Obama had no problem with–indeed were proud of–his history of community organization but forget about this completely as they deride the Tea Party. And I am not just talking about Leftist talk show hosts and hostesses but snooty publications like The New Republic and The New York Review of Books. Instead of celebrating this clearly democratic phenomenon, the Left is demonizing it.
It is one thing to be against the ideas of some organization, quite another to be against organizing itself. Why would organizing be proper and commendable for Leftist causes but not for those of the Right? The Tea Party isn’t some criminal gang burning down building, upending cars, and so forth–they march, mostly, and now and then shout out loud.
But I suppose what is good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander, right? Well, let me add something then to objections against ACORN. Unlike the Tea Party phenomenon, ACORN has a history of freely dipping into public funds in support of its activities, never mind that these are certainly not approved of by all the taxpayers whose funds are being used by the organization. So while the Tea Party has that integrity about it, namely, supporting its mission by voluntary means, the means it advocates for solving problems in society, you cannot say this for ACORN and a whole lot of other Leftists outfits that have no problem with using their critics’ funds.
This is something about which the Left has been very hypocritical over the years I have been aware of its political efforts in America and even before. On the one hand the Left, or most of them, opposed, say, the War in Vietnam and wanted to be able to refuse to pay the portion of taxes that funded this war. Yet when it comes to the Right’s objection to government funded abortion clinics, this doesn’t sit well with them at all. Indeed, whereas many on the Left would wish to withdraw government funding of whatever it is they oppose–subsidies to industries, bailouts, etc.–they seem to have no problem with using such funding for their own objectives.
But this is nothing very new, vis-a-vis the Left’s political philosophy. From as long as there has been a Left, the official position has opposed the individual’s basic right to private property–the first on the list of what must be abolished, according the Marx and Engels in their The Communist Manifesto. But at the same time the Left insists that the labor of the working classes is being ripped off by capitalists in the employment relationship.
So it seems the right to private property is just fine and dandy when it comes to the labor of the proletariat! However, when it comes to governing actual socialist societies, the Left has no problem with treating labor as anything but private property. No labor is public property; so that the East Germans who were attempting to flee the country could be considered thieves because they were stealing labor from the public! (This is one excuse the government gave for shooting those trying to scale the Berlin Wall back in those days!)
Maybe this is just another feature of a substantially pragmatic political outlook–never mind any principles, just forget ahead any which way you can get away with. Here is how it was put by Lenin: “Only one thing is needed to enable us to march forward more surely and more firmly to victory: namely, the full and complete thought of our appreciation by all communists in all countries of the necessity of displaying the utmost flexibility in their tactics. The strictest loyalty to the ideas of communism must be combined with the ability to make all the necessary practical compromises, to attack, to make agreements, zigzags, retreats, etc.” [Lenin, "Left Wing Communism," 1920].
