-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Objectivist Conference has a major recruiting problem: All the young people want to be socialists
- Thread starter Kernel
- Start date
Never put forth any terms. Just expected posts to have a more substantive thought (as yours) instead of regurgitated memes. Although, your post reads more like a historical capstone on the epochs of man, as opposed to critiquing the main points of Objectivism which are
1. Metaphysics objective reality
2. Epistemology reason
3.Ethics self interest
4. Politics capitalism
Now I would argue that if more people read her philosophy (I referenced Atlas shrugged, but her strictly philosophical objectivist writings are published) many would agree.
Most of us believe in an objective reality that exists independent of ourselves. In fact science, which you point out, relies on this premise. Of course this could be argued referencing David Humes skepticism. As for reason, well maybe you disagree there. But, is your reason reasonable in its reasoning? Doubtful, but okay.
Self interest is closer to the discussions I've had earlier on this thread in which we understand humans to be selfish individuals, but now younger generations are espousing the more biological approach of E.O Wilson in our symbiotic communal nature. Yes, perhaps we work together. But Selfishness can be a powerful motivator. This selfish capitalistic endeavor has brought us great things, and most reforms are aimed at regulating the flow of capitalism as opposed to dismantling it, no?
And if you argue the ridiculous circular argument that this is only due to the fact that we currently operate within a capitalist framework and have no alternative, well why do you think we first arrived at this point? Because it Ipso facto produces results.
I never said I agreed with all of Rands views. But, I feel this points more towards a lack of life experience in our youth.
If you read through my posts I actually admitted being incorrect on this and wrote the top five countries. It is still ranked seven in Asian countries, but was not the best example. But, I'm sure you posted in good faith.
You don't actually think Rand invented capitalism do you. And no, we are not selfish beings, we are evolutionary cooperative because it gives us the highest chance of survival in any situation.
I'm not sure where the original ground breaking though in all that is where we should give the cursed woman her dues.
What you've read is pretty much what it is, but much like anything else that has existed over centuries/decades the narrative surrounding it has been twisted and mutated depending on the circumstances. In this case it's pretty much American right wing propaganda labeling anything and everything not serving their agenda as communist/socialist, eventually becoming so ingrained that the American left also cede to the mindset thinking "well, if universal healthcare equals socialism, then sign me the fuck up!".
The Fountainhead is very much worth reading if you pretend you've never heard of Ayn Rand before and all the crazy cult baggage that comes along with it.
It's fundamentally a story about artistic vision and the creative process.
I don't identify as an objectivist or agree with Rand's politics, but reading The Fountainhead as a teenager did improve my life.
Rand herself was full of contradictions. Some kind of narcissistic nut who convinced her husband it was OK for her to have an affair and then ran some kind of strange cult. She hated gays, and drug users and didn't think a woman should ever be president, etc. But I do think there is value to her work. And in fact I don't think the ideas she expresses necessarily require you to adopt some kind of rigid right-wing ideology, though it's certainly unkind to a particular strain of left-wing thought.
Just read The Fountainhead and maybe give Atlas Shrugged a whirl but ignore everything else.
It's fundamentally a story about artistic vision and the creative process.
I don't identify as an objectivist or agree with Rand's politics, but reading The Fountainhead as a teenager did improve my life.
Rand herself was full of contradictions. Some kind of narcissistic nut who convinced her husband it was OK for her to have an affair and then ran some kind of strange cult. She hated gays, and drug users and didn't think a woman should ever be president, etc. But I do think there is value to her work. And in fact I don't think the ideas she expresses necessarily require you to adopt some kind of rigid right-wing ideology, though it's certainly unkind to a particular strain of left-wing thought.
Just read The Fountainhead and maybe give Atlas Shrugged a whirl but ignore everything else.
How about the list you posted from the Heritage Foundation where the United Arab Emirates is rated as the 9th freest country in the world.
Ah yes, if I think the country where you can't dance or drink publically isn't the ninth freest in the world I must be a Maoist.
Wonder why no one takes Libertarians seriously.
Depends on what you mean by State, and whether ownership=operational control (i.e. a representative of the State has directly operational control over the enterprise) and how that power balance is managed by the workers.
One of the things I've learned in 30+ years talking to people about this is that post-revolutionary praxis is a complete unknown, and that history can only be a guide to what not to do and what to look out for to stop things going bad - e.g .cult of personality around the leader/s of a revolution.
So - could you leave a socialist country and take some form of accumulated wealth to another society? Depends on whether your country used currency as a means of exchange or not.
In all honesty, outside of the basic principles of worker ownership pretty much everything is up in the air - do you have a centralised or distributed government/State? Do you put a time limit on the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' or other interim structure that was required to govern during the interregnum and say first 5 or 10 years post revolution? None of these things can be answered before they're done.
I'm at a loss for words. You really have no idea what I'm saying do you. Your dying to drop some zinger of a gold nugget. First the list refers to several factors. One of those is the governments involvement in regulating commerce. It wasn't the list of countries who are most free to dance, lol. Therefore, I referenced your support for China as opposed to Hong Kong as the former is less economically free in a democratic capitalist viewpoint. Seeing as how you criticized the lists "radical libertarian" ideology.
It lists the UAE, a country with massive problems with slavery and theocratic legal codes involving amputation, as freer than France or the US.
If a garbage right wing think tank like that is guiding how you structure your view of the world, then I don't know what to tell you.
Yes. Democratizing control the tools and resources (land, mineral, water, etc) that produce value in civilization.
Not insufficient, but the ultimate power must lie with the collective. For example, we can elect in a president but we cannot elect out a president. We have representatives who can choose to exercise certain legal devices to remove a president, but those representatives can choose not to use these legal devices, nor can we elect out those representatives until their reelection comes up. We, as a populace, are effectively barred from interfering with the presidency short of violent rebellion.
Now, you can argue that, for the sake of stability, we cannot just have a revolving door of presidents depending on popular opinion, and various schools of socialist thought have different ideas about that. But I think, as others have mentioned, one of the important concepts needed to make socialism work democratically, theoretically, is responsiveness. We shouldn't have leaders who seize lifelong power (Stalin, Mao), and sometimes we shouldn't even have "untouchable" elected leaders in spans of 4 years at a time (Orban, Trump). But these are implementation details, no one knows how can work out until it's put to the test. The goal is always decentralization of power in order to discourage abuse of power.
Decentralization lies at the basis of socialist tradition, for the simple reason that fairness and justice is not possible so long as one person can control many. Depending on how extreme you want to go with it you can go to communism (classless society) or anarchism (stateless). You can integrate it with capitalism, which is what European/Nordic social democracy is based on. I have many other thoughts about capitalism I won't go into here.
Keep in mind that, for the purposes of Marx, the socialism he wrote about in his time did not necessarily extend beyond the workplace. The extension of the ideals of Marx's socialism to general governance was done by people who carried on Marx's legacy, yes, sometimes to disastrous results. He was mainly interested in boss-worker, landlord-renter, bourgeois/proletariat dynamics.
Last edited:
Most human endeavors that push us forward or are things people love about our society are usually socialist policies or born from public money, not private institutions. Social security, computers, rocket ships, Postal service, k-12 school, internet, GPS, the list goes on and on. Not one of these things was born without public funding of some kind. Yet we always talk about individuals like they are the true geniuses... Steve Jobs didn't do even one tenth of the work that got him all his money. I say this all the time because it's true. No one on this Earth got to where they are without help. So quit making policies and ideologies that act like individuals made this society what it is.
Last edited:
Ayn Rand was born and lived through the Russian revolution. Her families pharmacy was taken over by the state. These events heavily influenced her views on government and ownership of goods. This is why she was such a proponent of limited government.
Our current views on rule of law and private property are bedrocks of a free citizenry. But along comes social democracy. An attempt to have your cake and eat it too. We will have a strong welfare state, governmental regulation of business, and nationalized companies. Also, we'll have collectively ran companies with employee stakes, and employee boards.
But, what is Rands critique against this system? That's what I'm most interested in understanding. I'm genuinely stuck here because in the Scandinavian countries it appears to work. Is she saying that this type of governing is ripe for a dictatorial takeover? Or, that the governmental regulation of business creates increases in the costs of goods, creating locked markets and monopolies? That this system hampers entrepreneurial spirit? Or, is she saying it leads to a lack of technological innovation?
Looks like you figured the problem out yourself. You said the magical word theocracy. Which is why Rand was an atheist.
You didn't think to yourself before posting that list "hmm one of the top ten is a theocracy, maybe this list isn't very good"???
Is there a correlation between a theocracy and laissez Faire practices? Rand was a strong advocate for reason.
The Fountainhead I've had described to me as readable (and would consider picking it up), but Atlas Shrugged sounds like something to be endured if you're not already in the tank for Rand's off-label brand of hyper-individualism. Even when I was all-aboard for more capitalism, more tech at all costs, the rich deserve everything they have, the Objectivist program from its own proponents' mouths didn't convince me of much anything, and the divide grows the more I read of history, science, philosophy, and hell, the more I live of life. Day to day I see problems that require more intervention, more cooperation, more compassion, and more humanism, not less, but the gifted Great Men that society lauds and celebrates stumble and can't even articulate these problems, let alone the solutions. Not only that, but their self-interest harms and damages much even when some progress is achieved by their gall. That's hardly a ringing endorsement. As to metaphysics? Agreement that the premise that there is an objective reality is a reasonable base to practically work from, but (as with the epistemology) I don't find many of the model assumptions reasonable, nor the conclusions (which don't accord at all with the broad sweep of study of science and history). I find more insights in the woefully outdated anthropology of the 19th century, to say nothing of the two centuries of work since.
And has capitalism accomplished things? Yes, and I would be far from the only socialist to allow that it may even be a necessary historical development in civilization. It represents a sizable advancement over the transitional economics emerging out of feudalism, and certainly feudalism itself. To ascribe the success and goodness of capitalism to self-interest, however, is faulty. Self-interest as a driving economical principle was stronger in feudal times, not less, and the unquestioned primacy and wisdom of a feudal liege-lord has more in common with Rand's great man than a contemporary industrial tycoon. So too runs the political tendency, with power only growing more diffuse and segmented with time as the monarchies and doges of old pass into history, even as philosophy leaves behind the rightness of might and encompasses more humanist and pluralistic themes. To privilege the individual upheld by the multitudes as the prime mover of human existence isn't a philosophy of progress, it's a fundamental misidentification of ourselves and how we operate.
Last edited:
Disregarding the epic big smart lib own at the start....
I have read it. It's fun (for all the wrong reasons) and she's an awful writer lmao
Considering Rand was a true believe of the invisible hand afair, I wouldn't hold her in high regard in the "outgrow silly belief" department.
Yeah, nah. It's a story about a profoundly selfish architect who arguably rapes the main character and bombs a tenement building because he doesn't like the changes his clients made to his design. He then gets let off in court by making a rambling speech about the primacy of human ingenuity and how, when you think about it, it was really his building to blow up anyway. Nevermind the, you know, setting off an uncontrolled explosive in a populated area thing.
Do you interpret all art this literally?
Are you like Batman in the DCU freaking out about explosions during fight scenes?
Seeing as how we're sharing libertarian fiction, let me take this time to present:
I do not give a flying fuck about Ayn Rand, her idiot 'philosophy' or anything to do with it.
Tell you what tho, as you're a reader find a copy of David Hervey's work on Das Kapital (or watch his YT videos on the subject) and come back to the thread.
Nothing about the novel's framing of the events seems to indicate that you're supposed to view the bombing as metaphor. Rand sincerely believed that if someone bastardizes your artistic expression, you should be allowed to destroy it through whatever means you deem necessary. Including bombs.
This isn't exactly unusual within her oeuvre. Atlas Shrugged is basically a chronicle of industrial sabotage that would have invariably caused the deaths of millions. That book advocates literal piracy.
We have a thread for corn discussion.
Socialism |OT| The Dawn of a Red Era OT
Fortune has seen to it that ResetEra has opened its doors on the same day (well according to the old calendar system anyway) that the October Revolution happened 100 years ago. This thread is meant to be a place for comrades and fellow travelers to discuss socialism in all its variants* - its...
www.resetera.com
User warned: antagonizing and misrepresenting another member
Hyper individualism? So one is either a part of the Borg collective, or a hyper individualist? I feel as though we only talk in extremes. How has objectivism not convinced you? You say you have read to much history, and science to feel otherwise. Could you be more specific?
You utilize reason to reflect about our theory of knowledge acquisition and then conclude it's unreasonable. So your a true skeptic? Yet, you make conclusions. But, good post there.
I've taken several college courses on Marxist theory already. In fact, how many communist countries are left? Let's list four as China is debatable. Cuba. Laos. Vietnam. And the greatest of all North Korea.
Im sure your sending Hong Kong your best wishes as they fight for democracy and economic freedom. Keep the dream alive comrade!
Nice, consider that thread 'Watched'.We have a thread for corn discussion.
Socialism |OT| The Dawn of a Red Era OT
Fortune has seen to it that ResetEra has opened its doors on the same day (well according to the old calendar system anyway) that the October Revolution happened 100 years ago. This thread is meant to be a place for comrades and fellow travelers to discuss socialism in all its variants* - its...
I'll participate as soon as I can.
Not at all, just that as the push-and-pull between group and individual goes, Objectivism definitely tends far to the end of individualism. There's a lot of squishy middle between "Borg collective" and "Hyper-individualism", even confining ourselves expressly to capitalist strains of thought.
Was primarily interested in classical ancient (particular Greco-Roman) history as a child, dabbled in the American Civil War. Expanded horizons to medieval history, colonial (particularly North American) history, the Venetian Republic, Byzantine Rome's fall and the Ottoman ascendancy, the world wars, the Russian civil war, the Bronze Age collapse, etc. My last book on history was about the experiences of the common Russian people under Stalinist rule in the 1930s. I try to cast as wide a net as possible.
Was primarily interested in astronomy and dinosaur biology as a child, but have since also read much more than I did on archaeology, anthropology, biology (particularly evolutionary and with a special interest toward our genus), the historiographical debates surrounding revisionism, the history and contentious future of astrophysics, the great puzzles and debates of mathematics, anthropogenic climate change, the debate between marxist and capitalist philosophers and economists... again a wide net. Article aggregators help, as does hanging onto good places for deep dives into topics (such as Quanta). My last book on the sciences (not yet finished) is a work on the evolution, migrations, and eventual disappearance of the Neanderthals in Europe and Asia.
Skepticism is certainly healthy, and we can but draw conclusions based upon what we know. And objectivism seemed more plausible the more narrow my focus and life experiences were. The more I see of the world and its people, the less simple the questions and answers seem.
I agree with this. The Fountainhead is legitimately an interesting book I still would advise people to read, and was, in a sense, eyeopening. It illustrated a side I hadn't really considered until then. Also the 20th Century Motor Company in Atlas Shrugged is still one of the best deconstructions of communism (obviously she lived through it). Although the rest of the book isn't quite as good. But mostly they're both fiction, and should be treated as such.
Ah, so that's why I feel like an uncultured swine when I read your posts. I mean that as a compliment; I really should educate myself on many topics as you do.
Pah, I just have a healthy head-start. Still so much more I'm dying to read.
I wish most of us had a 'healthy head-start' like you lol. If I may derail the thread for a second, were you always this curious? I've often struggled to be intellectually curious.
I suppose so, I've loved to read and write since I was young, but my problem then was I could tunnel vision on a topic I loved to the exclusion of worthwhile others. My problem now is that I have to continually discipline myself to keep writing and reading, with the virtue of my age I suppose being the widening of my vision.
That's great to hear. This makes me wonder about the nature of curiosity and why it comes about. Some of us certainly do seem to have more curiosity 'capital' than others from childhood, with a sometimes voracious appetite for knowledge. And some of us, even though they value knowledge greatly (I would say that's my case), still struggle to get genuinely interested in a topic beyond the surface. Anyway, that's a topic for another thread I suppose.
Gave it a brief mention in an earlier post, but Quanta is an excellent journal with plentiful long reads. Approachable even if you're weak on something (like me and maths). I tend to use Flipboard to pull together articles from a wider swathe of sources as well.
Thank you for the recommendation, I'll check it out. It seems exclusively focused on science though. Do you have similar recommendations for history, philosophy, etc.?
(I like how we've derailed a thread on objectivism towards how to actually get educated lol)
History can be a bit more scattershot. I tend to rely heavily on books in that department, ideally chunky ones with thick attribution sections at the end.
See, this, this is what scares me away from history :(. All you've described, which I can tell is precisely what you love, is also what turns people like me away. Doesn't help that my chronological memory is complete crap.
Ahhh, but you see this is the best part. A history book that covers the arguments, the disagreement between the contemporary sources, and the sometimes circuitousness process of translation, preservation, and haphazard rediscovery of old sources reconnects the stuffy tome to the living and breathing human experience, and better equips you to understand how history is made and remembered. There are straightforward history books that try to package things up neatly you can also check out, but you will miss some things in the process.
Oh, I totally get it, don't worry. I'm just saying that it's incredibly overwhelming for a complete neophyte like me.