/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

I’m more irked by Ayn Rand’s hypocrisy tbh.

There are many leftist critiques of her pertaining to her exaltation of selfishness as a human virtue, as well as hard-right ones pertaining to her exaltation of hyper-individualism over collectivism. But much less is heard about her hypocrisy.

No, I’m not talking about that time she took welfare handouts, something that her devotees have justified in an ideological coherent way as merely her taking back money taxed away from her by the state. Nor her support for American settler-colonialism that she justified on the basis that Native Americans had no conception of property so it technically wasn’t a theft of their land (although that is debatable).

Rather, I’m talking about her support for zionism, which is harder to defend under her own ideological construct. Besides the fact that Israel is a collectivist entity and zionism itself being a collectivist ideology with both using the Old Testament as the basis for their foundations (e.g., Zionists using the mythical kingdom of Israel as described in the Torah to create precedence for a Jewish state), what makes it glaring is that you can’t argue that Palestinians didn’t have a conception of private property the way pre-colonial American societies did because Palestinian society did have private property rights which, even if it somewhat differed from American and English common laws on property, doesn’t negate that both American and Palestinian society have a common conception of private property. This is made all the worst considering how the Israel contemporary to Rand’s life was experimenting with socialist policies such as the Kibbutz in ways she would have opposed if said policies were implemented in America.

So it is hypocritical for Ayn Rand, a NAP-supporting hyper-individualistic capitalist atheist that sees private property rights as absolute and sacrosanct, supporting what would be deemed (from a consistent Objectivist POV) as the theft of private property at the hands of an aggressive and expansionist, racialist, collectivist and theological entity that doesn’t respect the property rights of individuals on the basis of religion and ethnicity.

As for her ideas, any company that put it to action would just end up going bankrupt since a successful enterprise would require a degree of cooperation and collective teamwork that would require all agents to put their selfishness aside. It doesn’t mean that they would need to completely extinguish their self-interest completely, just that it would have to fit into the broader collective goal for an enterprise to be successful.

Tbh, the focus on the individual as the main agent of history in spite of said individual relying on the labor of others for their success can be traced back to Locke, or at least that’s as far as I was able to trace back to.

>>2852446
It neglects the instinctive sense we have that a trade made under duress is coercive, and all the ways in which natural duress compromises our rationality. (e.g. if starving we'll do irrational things for food, and a rational but malicious actor can exploit this. drawing the line between a king who encloses your land by force and makes a serf of you, and a farmer who gives you food in exchange for work isn't easy…), it is also absolutist, rejecting minor exceptions to a general rule for pragmatic reasons, which is always difficult.

But if I'm honest, I've reassessed rand slightly and I think that her philosophy is actually somewhat useful for the individual even if dysfunctional for society. I've forgotten the specific passages, but the rise of idiot rightism (Trump etc) has made the relentless rationalism (even when insane) or someone like Rand more sympathetic and interesting. Spend enough time looking at the Trump cult and tell me we're doing enough to facilitate man's rational faculties…

>>2852500
I'm not going to respond to the bit on Israel because I actually agree with you.

>any company that put it to action would just end up going bankrupt since a successful enterprise would require a degree of cooperation and collective teamwork that would require all agents to put their selfishness aside
This is mistaking egoism in objectivism for selfishness. Egoism in Rand's thought is simply having your own values and living for oneself. Given that 99% of humanity feels empathy, it's rational for 99% of humans to cooperate and help one another.

>>2852501
>we have that a trade made under duress is coercive
Can you elaborate on how it contradicts her argument ?

>which natural duress compromises our rationality
She actually accepts in her "survival ethics" that it is more rational for the starving man to steal food than to respect property. Her argument however is that she distinguishes between life-ethics (how you live as a human normally), and survival ethics (extreme scenarios). Claims about proving that a baby on mount everest proves that Ayn Rand is wrong fundamentally misunderstand her inductive approach to what "life" means contextually.

>it is also absolutist
That's more of a Peikoff thing tbh

We don’t care about philosophy here, only practicality, whenever Randians end up in positions of power, things go completely wrong and nothing works because it’s the ideological mirror of Utopian Socialism from the 18th and 17th centuries.

Benjamin Frank BTFO Rand before she was even born in Russia. YOU NEED TO GO BACK SLAVIC WHORE! THIS IS AMERICA!

>All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.
https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s12.html

>>2852507
Utopian socialists were underrated tbh, running practical experiments may not bring global communism but it can serve to develop productive forces

>Survival requires reason
The oldest species on earth are at least 10s of millions of years old. Reason is unnecessary where you have instinct, and man as an animal certainly has instinct.
>Man survives by using his rational mind, not instinct or force.
Man is 200,000 years old in the current form of homo sapiens. Was reason brought into the world at that time?
>A mind can only function if left free to think and act on its own judgment
Well, some brains are insufficient to reason effectively, so its not simply leisure, but also biology. For example, the human brain grew to twice its size over around a million years. Causes for this are speculated to be about diet. Indeed, paleolithic man is taller, stronger and was presumably smarter than early neolithic man because of the nutrition of their diets. At the same time that man invents agriculture, then (around 10,000 BCE), man as a species becomes less intelligent, but more technical.
>Capitalism is the only system that bans coercion between individuals
I would suggest you read Chapters 26-33 of Capital Vol. 1:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/
The process of "primitive accumulation" was coercive.
>property rights
As Marx writes in the Manifesto, capitalism erodes property rights by monopoly. Think of how so many people are forced to rent from landlords, or work for businesses instead of having their own property. For every wage worker, there is one less business owner.
>capitalism is the only moral/practical social system; it's the only one consistent with the requirements of human survival and rationality.
Capitalism is historically recent though (beginning around 1500 CE), so how did we survive and have reason before this? The first premise of the syllogism then undermines the final premise as a conclusion.
>any actual counter-arguments done against her pro-capitalist stance that are valid.
Survival and reason existed before capitalism. Individual rights existed before capitalism. Property existed before capitalism.

>>2852507
>We don’t care about philosophy here
speak for yourself

>>2852518
Marx and Engels ended philosophy

>>2852520
Again, speak for yourself.

>>2852521
Any philosophy after Hegel, Marx, and Engels is bourgeois masturbation and nothing else, objectively reactionary like religion

>>2852446
It's ahistorical. Slavery and feudalism were objectively the most rational way to organize society in the past. Capitalism is now increasingly obsolete and socialism is increasingly the more rational way to organize society. The most practical system for survival is contextual. The current level of productive forces seems ripe for socialism due to the increasingly large and devastating wars.

>3. Capitalism is the only system that bans coercion between individuals and protects property rights, allowing each person to act on their own judgment.

This is wrong

>>2852446

Premise 3 can be easily rejected as formulated. I'd reject it for two reasons. First, your claim is transcendental in the sense that you make a claim about all other systems. As formulated it's simply impossible to substantiate because we aren't aware of all other systems of economics. So you'd have to rewrite the premise as "the only system that we know of" or are aware of. Even then I think it would be better formed if it contrasted with socialism specifically because the argument would be much tighter in scope and socialism is the only other big dog in the fight anyway.

Secondly, the idea that capitalism "bans coercion between individuals" is absurd. I'd imagine that your definition of "coercion" is incredibly narrow and idiosyncratic and refers only to someone directly threatening violence upon someone else. But this is a very incomplete view of coercion and misses out on a huge range of manipulations, tricks, group and structural coercion, subtle social pressures etc. Claiming that all these do not constitute a breach on someone's "free will" (I'm a determinist so immediately reject the free will assumptions anyway) would require an argument of its own.

As is, the argument needs supporting arguments and needs to be rewritten to narrow the scope to something that is actually physically possible to investigate

>Survival requires reason : Man survives by using his rational mind, not instinct or force.
Survival is not the highest virtue Humans aspire to. Justice is. You're already proceeding from a wrong assumption. A slave survives but no one wants to live as a slave.
>Reason requires freedom
Wrong. Freedom is the enemy of reason. More importantly, Profit is as well. Freedom, at least in modern terminology, is the complete absence of self-imposed or external-imposed restraints. There is no reason or rationality without restraint and self-discipline. A businessman who decides to make his product 2x worse and expire 50% faster solely so he can juice his earnings report is not behaving rationally or reasonably.
>Capitalism is the only system that bans coercion between individuals and protects property rights
This is wrong and lacks complete historical perspective. Even the original classical liberals like Adam Smith acknowledge that merchant republics (aka capitalist systems) are the most violent societies. Ayn Rand herself admits America's capitalism was founded on the theft and genocide of Native Americans, she just waves it away as an irrelevant coercion and violation of property rights because the Natives somehow "weren't productive enough" with their use of their private property.
>Therefore, capitalism is the only moral/practical social system : it's the only one consistent with the requirements of human survival and rationality.
All of your assumptions leading up to this point were wrong and thus this claim is false as well.

Don’t speak this degenerate kulaks name here comrade

3 is where it all falls apart, because you cannot use logic to derive why someone owns something and someone else does not from first principles.

In fact, the very concept of ownership IS coercive, because to own something you require all other humans to both agree that you own it, and enforce your claim.

>libshit materialism (pseudo christian theology) in the year of the lord 2026
🤣

>>2852446
GTFO and don't ever dare to call that deranged anti-social bourgeois bitch "philosopher". It's the worst crap i've ever had the displeasure read btw

>>2852446
the best part of capitalism is the moments of calm and ccomfort that happen almost in spite of it, and my only hope for a future where every moment is less of a slog.

ayn rand's works of fiction are more alien to reality than contemporary fantasy. an accurate rendition of galt's gulch couldn't be rendered in prose without the malicious tone of american psycho but with the sadomasochistic envy directed at a parade of carefully customised child brides.

I don't think there are any arguments to defend a system run by babyrapists like trump or musk.

>>2852846
I tried reading Atlas Shrugged and the first thing she hits you with, right out the gate, is a conspiracy between America's railroad corporations to avoid making money.

All the big companies in Ayn Rand world have conspired together to avoid competing with each other, because competition would require them to expend effort and that's unacceptable even though the result would be making more money than the other corporations.

I simply could not continue reading.

>>2852849
You have to examine the individual's relations with others because property IS A RELATION WITH OTHERS.

Owning an object or some land or whatever is not a relationship between you and that object, it's a relationship between you and everyone else who recognizes that you own that object.

>>2852446
there are three things that mark it as pseudophilosophy or intellectually fake to me. that any high school teacher would catch if their student made this sort of argument


its factually wrong - does reason really require freedom? what about the choices made by soldiers in defense of their country or prisoners deciding whether to comply to their captors?

its also arbitrary. for ayn rand to be correct choice and consent has to only happen at specific points and not others. what criteria is she using to tell us why consenting to become employed or making business deals is real freedom but joining a trade union or paying taxes do not involve consent?

its not a well structured argument. the "therefore" only comes at the end because she's read other philosophy and knows where "ergo" should come but the points dont logically lead into each other that way. she is imitating the form of philosophy narratively but not logically.

that said she's not absolutely terrible. some of her anti trade union observations are close to Lenin in a surprising way. and her arguments about why libertarianism and left wing anarchism are just the same nihilism presenting itself different superficially is also interesting and good.

parts of her fictional books are entertaining but mostly they are boring. i think she wanted to make epic movies and failed. the 'philosophy' is just material for visual propaganda forced into another shape because that was the most respectable form available to her. she had the right instincts for that at least.

1. the existence of other planets than earth requires the existence of other civilizations than human
   
2. all planets that exist are required to be the same universe or else they dont exist
   
3. if two objects exist in the same universe there is a distance between them and the distances defined as something that can be crossed over time
   
4. ERGO the only sane thing to believe is that aliens regularly visit earth and base all ones decisions around this fact
   
   

this is my scientific philosophy syllogism

reason is for fags

Only stirner got it right

>>2852446
>1. Survival requires reason
No it doesn't

>>2852446
Ayn rand is considered a horrible philosopher even by mainstream and right wing ones. Her whole philosophy is just inverting a strawman of marxism without dealing with its critiques seriously

>>2852853
<parts of her fictional books are entertaining but mostly they are boring. i think she wanted to make epic movies and failed. the 'philosophy' is just material for visual propaganda forced into another shape because that was the most respectable form available to her. she had the right instincts for that at least.
just part of the failed creative to right wing pipeline along with hitler and steve bannon

>>2853067
good article on that https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/the-political-economy-of-reaction

>>2853067

with rand its more interesting. bannon and hitler were failures because they lacked imagination and only had a competent level of talent
with rand a lot of her ideas were spectacular and anticipated the blockbuster age and postmodern age of maximalism. she wasnt failed so much as unlucky and ending up writing dogshit boring books instead of making fucked up neo-romantic heroic cinema. still fascist both ways but there's interesting fascist and boring received fascist

part of reason rand's novels are successful is BECAUSE they are bad. they came out at time where formal experiments, impressionist writing and serious takes on genre fiction were getting more and more popular amongst liberal intelligentsia. Rand's books are so blocky and ugly and flat and unpaced that its something philistines can embrace to show that they don't care about craft, feeling, experimentation, expression. you know that simpsons episode lemon of troy? when the guy bites a lemon because he can? that's The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged

because if me and three other guys are starving and you have bread, guess what we're gonna do?

I'm back. I was expecting less replies tbh. However, most of them aren't really interesting. I'm not really trying to start debates about surface-level that's already been adressed many times before. I was more looking for counter-arguments for specific stuff like the analytic-synthetic dichotomy, her epistemology, her conception of free will etc.

>>2852517
>Reason is unnecessary where you have instinct
Except the modern man's survival is predicated on reason.

>The process of "primitive accumulation" was coercive
I'm well aware of the enclosure movement (and its shortcomings). A coercive transition to a free system was necessary.

>capitalism erodes property rights by monopoly
You're conflating the reduction of property rights and the reduction of withholders of specific property.

>so how did we survive and have reason before this?
Simple, we lived in an irrational and unethical system.

>Property existed before capitalism
sure but only capitalism enshrines all of those to the fullest extent.

>>2852704
>Slavery and feudalism were objectively the most rational way to organize society in the past
How exactly were they rational from any agents pov?

>>2852785
>as "the only system that we know of" or are aware of
It's possible to substantiate this precisely because it's a transcendental claim

>Claiming that all these do not constitute a breach on someone's "free will" would require an argument of its own

1. There is a qualitative difference between having changing the option that someone faces AND changing the consequences of an existing option through force. One of them allows for exit while the other doesn't.
   
2. Ayn Rand developed an edge case called the survivalist ethic where it's more rational for someone in a desperate situation because ethics cease to be about life but about survival
   
   

>>2852801
This is just a string of unasserted claims

>>2852842
>because you cannot use logic to derive why someone owns something and someone else does not from first principles
The argument isn't trying to normatively justify the initial distribution of property, it's making an argument capitalism is the most rational system.

>and enforce your claim.
It's not coercive because it won't be infringed upon without prior coercion

I rarely hear arguments that manage to invalidate Grug's argument for Grugism:

>1. The man with the biggest club gets to run the tribe.

>>2853235
>>2852785
You're claim is probably the most interesting one here so I'll go more in depth because it's a commonly adressed issue.

>the idea that capitalism "bans coercion between individuals" is absurd
Ayn Rand's argument for why coercion can't be treated simply as "any choice I have to make where one alternative is undesirable", it's about initiating that choice.
There's a qualitative difference for instance betwene choosing to work at a factory and face the possibility of being fired, and entering a route to suddenly discover someone imposing on you to be mugged.

One never forced on you anything, it only changed your reality based on something that you already agreed upon. The mugger on the other hand forces on you the choice in giving him your money or being beaten up. It's a constraint that's added to you.

>inb4 natural disasters
The reality of nature, as tragic as it might be, is irrelevant to the question. This is because, the question isn't whether or not you CAN be forced into an unvoluntary choice, but whether or not it's rational to live in a system where other individuals might be able to chose to do so on you without your consent.

Ayn Rand was a deep-cover Soviet agent sent to poison the minds of American elites by stroking their egos and promoting anti-social tendencies that hamper coordination necessary for a superpower.

>>2852852
>Owning an object or some land or whatever is not a relationship between you and that object, it's a relationship between you and everyone else who recognizes that you own that object.
it's both lol. you should have said "not just" instead of "not." my drivers license has my face and name printed on it. it clearly has a relationship with me and I have a relationship with it. Society also recognizes and legitimizes my relationship with it. Both things can be true at the same time.

>>2852520
I think Marx and Engels would have beat you to death with their collected works if they heard you say this drivel. Marx praised Darwin and wanted to dedicate volume ii of capital to him. Marx died without completing a lot of his planned works. His manuscript of volume iii famously cuts off before he finishes explaining his full theory of class. Neither Marx nor Engels had a complete theory of imperialism, labor aristocracy, etc. though they recognized those things. It was left to Lenin to do that. Marx, Engels, and Lenin all died before the space age and computing really took off. Even Stalin died the same year as Sputnik. So much has happened geopolitically, economically, socially, culturally, and scientifically since Marx and Engels. Capitalism remains the mode of production, but to say they "ended philosophy" is just naive. Even the philosophy of science progresses in dialectical relation to the practice of science. I sometimes wonder what Marx would have thought about Popper vs. Khun, about the discovery of DNA, about the Soviet Union. We can't know because he died.

>>2853235
>Except the modern man's survival is predicated on reason.
How? Man is trained to obey, not to think. The poorest people in the world are the least rational and most fertile, while rich countries are dying a voluntary death. Posing "survival" as the first premise is incorrect, but even 'happiness' can be negatively affected by reason.
>A coercive transition to a free system was necessary.
So the destruction of free association is necessary for a "free system". Free for whom? If a people do not voluntarily consent to be expropriated this violates the rights of individuals. But notice how Ayn Rand justified the Native American genocide on the terms that the colonisers were "more advanced". So what? Is rational selfishness just a broad hammer of "might makes right"?
>the reduction of property rights and the reduction of withholders of specific property.
Sure, I accept that, but who is more "free"? A dependent person or an independent person? A system of monopoly is indistinguishable from serfdom in any order, whether capitalist or communist. Ayn Rand was supportive of monopoly (she was against anti-trust legislation), however, and thought that IP laws rightly extended to the length of a person's life, because the inventive labours of cognition grants man a right over his product. I prefer ancaps like David Friedman who say that "the English language is in the public domain". Does Euclid and his estate "own" geometry? Who owns ideas? But of course, "objectivism" IS NOT libertarianism. Many people forget this.
>we lived in an irrational and unethical system.
We still do, hence irrational and unethical people thrive.
>capitalism enshrines all of those to the fullest extent.
If home ownership is declining each passing year, is this a sign of more or less freedom? More or less capitalism?

>>2853308
>Ayn Rand justified the Native American genocide on the terms that the colonisers were "more advanced"

So did Locke and Marx and the fascists and pretty much everyone. The only people who don't are landback radlibs and anprims.

>>2853311
Do you think the West sponsoring the ethnic cleaning of Palestine is justified? What is the real, true difference in the scheme of civilisation?

>>2853311
>so did Marx
provide evidence