Objectivist scholar Léonard Peikoff, who is the intellectual heir to philosopher Any Rand, writes this about anarchism: Anarchism is the idea that there should be no government. In Objectivist terms, this amounts to the view that every man should defend himself by using physical force against others whenever he feels like it, with no objective standards of justice, crime, or proof. Um, no that is not what anarchism means! Can you see how lame this is? No anarchist I know of defends “using physical force against others whenever he feels like it” as a serious idea to consider. Objectivists sum up anarchists as nothing more than “hippies on the right” swimming in a cesspool of whim-worship. They are emotionally driven subjectivists, you see. There is an inherent flaw with the lack of a centralized authority. For example, when it comes to terms such as force, coercion, rights, liberty, aggression, retaliation, defense, etc – human beings are frothing at the mouth, make-it-up-as-you-go subjectivists. An anarchist state would bring about a collapse into a subjectivist orgy of different meanings depending on the philosophy of the interpreter. And at last count, as the argument goes, there are about 5.5 billion interpreters on our planet. The idea here is that a blood bath of unimaginable proportions would result from the irrational subjectivism that is anarchism. What the anarcho-capitalist objects to, the Objectivists charge, is not government - but the fact that gives rise to the need for one: the need for outside, impartial observers to objectively evaluate and control the use of force in society. In other words, people are emotionally whim-riddled philosophical monstrosities out to demolish objectivity! Rand and the Objectivist intellectuals suffer from a sort of Hobbsian sense-of-life. But the government is here to protect us from ourselves, and even though they are only human beings like the rest of us, by placing the magic label “government” upon themselves we, the rest of us, are required to pledge allegiance. Of course, the funny thing here is that according Objectivist epistemology “reason is an attribute of the individual” – which I agree with – but when one examines the Objectivist take on anarchism, one would conclude that it is the Philosopher Kings of Rand’s “proper government” that are only capable of determining objectivity while the masses are wholly depended upon the power elite’s interpretation of coercion, rights, liberty, aggression, protection”, etc. From this standpoint, “the people” are epistemology crippled in matters of justice and abstract principles of such as non-aggression and individual rights. The fountainhead of this sort of histrionics Leonard Peikoff and it has become comment currency in various Objectivist circles to mouth it. So much for reason being an attribute of the individual. The contradiction is clear.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 02:58:23 +0000
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