Why Businessmen Need Philosophy

    That’s the title of a recently released book. The subtitle: “The Capitalist's Guide to the Ideas Behind Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.” It does not surprise me that Rand’s style of atheism slash libertarianism is all the rage among young people and free-floating adults who imagine themselves to be rugged individualists.

    I haven’t read Atlas Shrugged but I remember my son Giovanni asking in high school if I thought it would make good reading. I said yes, since I had confidence in Giovanni’s moral and theological instincts. I was a little on edge, because the book has a cult following and I couldn’t be certain that it would not take Giovanni in. So I asked Giovanni what he thought of the book when he finished it. He liked it, he said, but his take was that the book promotes its author’s approach to life, a mix of selfishness and megalomania. Not his exact words, but that was the gist.

    Businessmen need philosophy but they don’t need Ayn Rand's philosophy. From a biblical and Jewish point of view, this essay by Meir Tamari is an antidote to the libertarian fashion of the moment. Joseph Ratzinger’s Market Economy and Ethics is worth a read; he wrote the essay long before he became Pope Benedict. The Economy of Communion model of doing business, again with Catholic roots, is worth looking at.

    Evangelicals who are allergic to Catholic social teaching might consider Puritan models, far more prudent and ethical than what passes for “conservative” today. For background, I recommend a volume by a fellow Waldensian, Mario Miegge, Vocation et Travail: Essai sur l'éthique puritaine (Histoire et Société 16. Genève: Éditions Labor et Fides, 1989).

    For a sympathetic presentation of Ayn Rand and her philosophy from a classical point of view, check out Robert Sirico's  Who Really Was John Galt, Anyway?

Comments

[Mitchell Powell]

I think Giovanni got it exactly right. I think what sucks people in about Ayn Rand is that she is absolutely genius at unmasking the hypocrisy of the way politicians and moralistic busybodies meddle in the business of others. What's unfortunate is that upon tearing down a false cluster of approaches to economics and personal life, Ayn Rand starts to replace it with the sort of weird dogmatic false 'objectivism' that is so delightfully parodied in Rothbard's

[Mitchell Powell]

. . . little one-act play 'Mozart was a Red'.

[Jonathan Bartlett]

A good re-introduction to conservative thought for people who have been pulled into Libertarianism is Benjamin Wiker's "10 Books Every Conservative Must Read". He has a chapter on Rand (she's listed only as an imposter). He makes a great summary of the how and why of conservatism starting with Aristotle and moving forward.

[JohnFH]

Thanks, Jonathan, for the tip.

[Benj]

As a classical liberal and a Christian, I could never quite stomach Rand's philosophy.

Though there are other valid political positions for a Christian to take, of course, I have found F.A. Hayek's work to be the most attractive conceptual framework for my libertarianism. Hayek's critique of central planning is a sort of humility: no one person or group of people has the information necessary to "run an economy" or meet the needs and desires of millions of individuals.

There is no virtue in selfishness. The question is whether selflessness is more effectively and justly practiced on the local level in families and social institutions, or through power of government.

[JohnFH]

The question is whether Hayek's approach allows sufficient room for the purposes of government according to Psalm 72.

[Benj]

I admit there are problems reconciling a sharply libertarian position with some biblical teaching on the poor. Without getting into a long discussion, I only meant to suggest that Christians who tend in that direction will find a more satisfactory conceptual ally in Hayek than in Rand.

[JohnFH]

Good point, Benj.

[Angela Erisman]

"There is no virtue in selfishness. The question is whether selflessness is more effectively and justly practiced on the local level in families and social institutions, or through power of government."

I have been struck lately by what seems to be national amnesia about the fact that government is a tool of our own creation. People speak of it as though it were something that exists out there on its own for us to either agree or disagree with, love or hate. But it is something we shape, and something whose shape and purpose we can (and should) constantly re-think, in dialogue with the intellectual framework established by the founders.

Perhaps it's my long duree perspective as an ancient historian, but government is a tool for accomplishing things. Always has been. The question is more WHAT it is being/should be used to accomplish. If care for the poor is a priority for us as a nation, then there is no reason why government should not be a tool for serving this goal, alongside the actions of individuals. In fact, if it isn't, it seems to me we're suffering from a chasm between our priorities and our actions. An ethical problem, effectively. I suspect we as a nation are suffering from a severe moral crisis of this sort. Frankly, it is terrifying.

Dealing with systemic problems requires some sort of organized, collective action. It cannot be accomplished by individuals alone. Especially when there is accountability built into it, as there is in ours (or used to be, since we are progressively giving our voice away to corporations), government is one very important means of organized, collective action that is (or should be) accountable to the full range of constituencies in this country. So in my mind, there is no question.

[Mitchell]

Where I think we might part ways, Angela, is over the nature of government. While we both agree that it is a tool for organized, collective action, for me a crucial fact for understanding it is that unlike other tools for organized, collective action it is the only one which enjoys the right to use legitimized violence to achieve its ends and make others cooperate. That, I think, makes it more than a tool, and turns it into the greatest institutionalized potential for mayhem and mass murder ever created. To say that if we support something we should also support its implementation by (governmental) force seems quite a jump to me.

[Angela Erisman]

Mitchell, we live in a democracy. We can stand up to uses of legitimized violence to achieve ends if we disagree with it. That's precisely my point; we, in theory anyway, have power to shape government. Every protest against the Iraq war that pointed out our economic and political motives for violence against the Iraqis did precisely this, as have objections to the use of torture to gain intelligence.

Now, how much power we have anymore to actually effect change may be another question. I, for one, have not given up hope yet. It's worth pointing out that I didn't say I supported implementation of policies by violent force. Again, we live in a democracy, not a totalitarian state. At least as long as we can keep the burgeoning fascism in this country at bay, anyway.

Another point worth making is that ANY institution (government, church, anything) has the potential to abuse power. If we're going to harness any kind of collective power for action that is greater than the individual, we have to vigilantly watch out for abuse of power in our ranks. No way around that. I don't see the benefit of throwing the baby out with the bathwater (i.e., having no or minimal organization because of its dangers), so I, for one, strive to keep an eye out for and stand up against abuses of power. Of course, we're pretty ineffective at that as individuals as well, and organizing helps accomplish this goal.

[Mitchell]

This is true, Angela. It's not as though we live in a totalitarian state where the government is nothing more than a naked arm of power on behalf of leaders. Nevertheless, my reluctance to go as far as you do in favor of using government for whatever ends a society accepts lies in the two words you used: 'in theory'. In theory we, whoever 'we' is, have the power to shape government.

The protests against the Iraq war did not succeed in stopping the war, nor did they succeed in stopping us from spreading variations on our theme of dropping bombs all over the place through Pakistan, Yemen, and Libya. Next to the very real death of innocents that our representatives have caused, the words 'in theory' and 'we' and 'stand up' ring hollow for me. And it is not only our handling of wars in which the government has shown itself utterly inept and harmful, but also in its economic policies, its public schools, the way the drug war has turned our cities into war zones, the college system, etc.

I think I also have a dimmer view of 'we' than you do. We, those with all the theoretical power in the US, pray for our troops but not for Iraqis. We grit our teeth in anger at the death of the trade center victims but not at those who die when we drop bombs on a wedding in Yemen. We hate the use of terror against civilians by a non-state entity to force a governments hand, and yet we have shown ourselves repeatedly willing to stoop the same levels. We are endlessly upset about putting a hundred thousand Japanese living here in camps, but we justify the killing of a couple hundred overseas.

This is the we that democracy places in power. This is why I don't see democracy as inherently good.

I doubt you consciously support the implementation of policies by violent force, but what separates government from other entities is precisely the use of violent force to uphold its policies. Any group that doesn't use violent force to uphold its policies is no longer a government, but an NGO of some kind.

Any institution has the ability to abuse power. Only one is handed an overwhelming quantity of weapons and then told to be the final arbiter of what happens in a nation. I'm not ordinarily for the throwing out of babies, but this baby has repeatedly massacred the innocent.

All that said, you might be right. But you can see why it would be difficult to accept it.

[Mitchell]

'a couple hundred' should read 'a couple hundred thousand Japanese'

[Angela Erisman]

Mitchell, I do not see democracy as inherently good, either. Reading your comment pained me because I feel the same shame and outrage and profound sadness that comes through in it; I do see why it is hard for you to accept what I'm saying. But I wonder what a better option is.

Democracy does give us a voice, as long as we continue to stand up and use it rather than creating vacuums of apathy into which powerful and often malignant interests can step. I'm not sure I'd lay the blame for this at the feet of democracy as a form of government, but perhaps at the misuse/abuse of power within it, whose effects pollute our land and, as you poignantly note, the lands of other peoples as well. Yes, I meant that in the priestly/prophetic sense. Ezekiel 22 (and other such texts) hits pretty close to home, as far as I am concerned, and that is extremely depressing and scary. It leaves me feeling helpless, as you clearly feel as well. Maybe the difference between us is that my helplessness has not yet flirted with cyncism. That said, I don't blame you for where you're at.