From empathy to communism.
Opponents of collectivist trends that increasingly restrict and threaten individual rights and freedoms through commandments and prohibitions sometimes feel that people around them seem to be driven by an invisible unstoppable force that makes arguments against rights-violating measures continue to fall on deaf ears..
Sometimes people listen head nodding to arguments against collectivist measures and the person making the arguments thinks she has made her point. But then such a person must conclude to her dismay that they haven’t had any influence whatsoever on the subsequent behavior of that person.
Someone who was even nodding along with the arguments…
Something that is often all the more mind-blowing because the person often supports things that are objectively not in his interest at all.
Explanations for this are then sought.
Is it a form of ‘battered wife syndrome’? or ‘Stockholm syndrome’? or do people take some perverse pleasure in their own oppression? or is it mass hypnosis? Or a form of pathological compassion without thinking about consequences? without realism? The similarity with some religious practices is also striking. Many religions have an ascetic aspect and practice atonement for sins and sacrifice to the gods. Sometimes from the actual conviction that man is born sinful and that all existence should therefore consist of penance.
What is active in many incarnations, however, and which really permeates all aspects of our culture, is a moral imperative that often goes unspoken because it has achieved a certain cultural hegemony. It is often a given, an unassailable standard that almost everyone endorses, including the timid opponents of collectivist measures of deprivation of liberty and expropriation. And that moral imperative is the real invisible unstoppable force that drives collectivism. This moral imperative is altruism, according to the definition given by Ayn Rand.
According to altruism, every action taken in the interest of others is good, and every action in self-interest is bad. This is a principle that many people will reject as an isolated statement and maybe even laugh it off as something that nobody seriously believes in, but it is really a form of judgment that you see popping up all over our culture, like for example in the American TV series ‘Charmed’, or when the integrity of someone’s argument for climate change regulation is called into question because that person has invested in technology that would receive funding. Revealing self-interest then discredits someone. People who reject everything earthly and dedicate their whole lives to ‘the other’, such as Mother Theresa, are even canonized.
In the remainder of the text, this collectivist altruism is constructed and contrasted with the objectivist alternative to this moral code.
The invisible unstoppable force that draws us into a collectivist utopia can only be stopped if the moral code that underlies it is challenged.
That is possible, but then we have to go back to basics.
Is reality knowable or not?
This is an important question because the answer to it has implications for how people think about truth and falsehood and how knowledge is created.
Objectivism holds that our senses are our only source of information about reality and that they are also a reliable source of information. In addition, objectivism states that through observation and induction it is possible to build objective knowledge about reality that can be proven to be true. Logic is characterized here as a process of non-contradictory identification of aspects of reality. In addition, objectivism argues that reality has primacy over consciousness.
What exists exists, independent of the observer and the reality is therefore also the same for every observer. This also means that knowledge about reality is transferable and exchangeable, if that knowledge is true.
Subjectivism, however, argues that reality is fundamentally unknowable. Mysterious physical phenomena, such as quantum mechanics, can make this compelling. Also, some question our senses because, for example, we can’t see infrared or things on a microscopic level. In other words, one seeks a direct connection with something beyond the senses, which isn’t found. The existence of different cultures and norms is also seen by some as proof of this. In the west, for example, we react with horror at the thought of eating dog while we eat cows, which are a sacred animal in India. And within Islam, pigs are not allowed to be eaten, then instead because it is considered an unclean animal.
These two perspectives on the knowability of reality have different consequences. From the objectivist perspective, the primacy for knowledge discovery lies with the individual, which can be done himself, through observation and categorization. But of course we also learn many concepts from others during our lives, then it is ultimately the responsibility of the individual himself to accept something as knowledge only if he can reduce it himself back to the evidence of the senses, by the process of logic.
However, from the subjective perspective, this is not accepted as the standard of truth. After all, if reality is fundamentally not really knowable, how can one person claim to possess the truth? Even if many agree with him, aren’t they all just in the same illusion? This is the conclusion to which one comes from subjectivism. Knowledge is considered to be socially constructed within a group. So each group can have its own truth. Note that ‘science’ can also be regarded as ‘one of the ways of knowing’. There is no final truth accepted under subjectivism. Note that the fact that this sentence itself makes a claim of truth also makes it immediately clear that there is a fundamental contradiction in subjectivism that is the result of letting go of an external frame of reference that is the same for everyone. But note again that such a reference to an external frame of reference is from the perspective of subjectivism nothing but ‘your truth’. This is a feature of all metaphysical positions, they form the basis of a worldview and explain competing metaphysical views from their own framework.
Religion used to provide such a shared external frame of reference, hence statements such as ‘I am only answerable to God ‘, this did put a certain brake on collectivism.
Justice or fairness
In addition to acquiring knowledge, our lives also largely revolve around action.
We do all kinds of things, with or without consequences. Individual actions, from different situations, ultimately have different consequences and different life outcomes. If you are born in a slum and are put to work in a factory when you are 16, you will gain very different knowledge and therefore act very different from if you where to grow up in a Swiss boarding school with the expectation from your parents that you will lead their multinational one day. At the same time, Steve Jobs became one of the richest people in the world, while an adopted child of a middle-class family. Also, Tina Turner managed to become a global star, while hailing from a Nutbush, Tennessee, a village home to a few hundred people, making a living growing cotton. So again there are two ways of looking at what primarily determines our actions. In the first place, do we determine our own actions? Or are our actions mainly driven by our environment. In other words, do we primarily shape our inner world ourselves or are we primarily formed by our situational life experience and socialization?
And does a person have free will or is free will an illusion?
From the objectivist perspective, people themselves shape their inner life and have free will. From the subjectivist perspective, people are shaped by their circumstances and socialization and possess only the illusion of free will, just as they have only the illusion of knowledge of reality.
From these perspectives, two different conceptions of the word ‘justice’ also emerge. Since the word “fairness” often is used as roughly synonymous with justice, I will use the word justice for one concept and the word fairness for the other. Justice can be described as proportional reciprocity in reward or punishment for actions, especially in a social context. Crudely said, he who does good, meets good and eye-for-an-eye-tooth-for-tooth, in other words, you reap what you sow. Justice as fairness looks at the circumstances and how a person is formed and sees fundamental unfairness because one person has to overcome more obstacles than another to get to the same point and may also be less equipped to do so due to differences in biology, nutrition, upbringing and culture, all things that someone can do nothing about themselves and vice versa, they can also be benefits that someone ‘does not deserve’. That’s all ‘not fair’.
From the objectivist perspective, the relationship between man and reality is primary and everyone ultimately creates their own inner world, people have free will and it is each person’s own responsibility to perform acts of value and merit and guilt are the result of one’s acts. It is therefore your responsibility to change your circumstances if they are unfavorable and differences in circumstances are simply part of the reality that must be accepted. Above all, another person cannot be held responsible for someone’s negative situation if he did not cause it, but only if he caused it.
From the subjectivist perspective, it is not fair that people have different opportunities in different circumstances or that they have different capabilities because people are primarily shaped by differences in genetics, developments in the womb, socialization and culture. This leads to a different view of merit and guilt and the idea of personal responsibility. These are concepts that have less or no meaning from the deterministic, subjectivist perspective.
The reader may now understand why there is a ‘Lady Justice’ above without a blindfold. The left-wing idea of fairness, what they call justice, is with discrimination based on who is on trial, not without it.
Does a human being have the right to exist for his or her own good or not?
This is a fundamental question whose answer has enormous consequences. Because this is a value trade-off and value trade-offs are much clearer in zero-sum situations, i.e. where a choice has to be made between acting that either promotes one or the other, but not both, it helps to contrast this with the alternative, which is that a person has no right has to exist for his or her own good.
Existing for your own good translates into acting in your own interest is good and not existing for your own good translates into acting in the interest of others is good.
These are normative statements that are mutually exclusive. What is good in one frame is seen as bad in another.
Note that acting in your own interest is not the same as short-sighted selfishness or acting at the expense of others. This is understandable when you realize that others will jump to their conclusions and that you will be be punished for your negative behavior. Which action exactly is really in your own interest requires careful considerations, this is also called rational egoism, or prudence, and taking into account the interests of others is therefore also part of this, but it is not primary .
Conversely, it can be said about acting in the interest of others that it is impossible if you don’t also take care of yourself because taken to the extreme you will die while doing things for others, something that ultimately ends with doing nothing at all for others anymore. But it is good to realize that acting in the interest of others on the basis of not having the right to exist for your own good implies that taking your own interest into account is not primary , this is the principle of altruistic morality.
Whether you live fundamentally for yourself or not, is a question you get the the clearest way by considering an all-or-nothing choice.
Suppose you can safe a stranger from certain death by dying yourself.
What is your choice?
It is good to always remember your answer to this question because the fundamental contradiction between rational egoism and altruism will not be manifest in many situations. People can be motivated out of self-interest in many situations to be just as friendly, helpful and generous as people who act from an altruistic motive. That is because if certain people are important to us, it is in our own interest that they are well. It is only when sacrifices have to be made that the contradiction comes to light. And by this is meant the sacrifice of self-interest, where someone has to give up something he or she values in exchange for something he or she values less or not at all. Then the rational egoists refuse because it does not serve them, while the altruists do not refuse, this is because it is not relevant to them as long as someone else benefits.
Because according to the altruists self-interest is not primary, they will not see the self-interest of others as primary, but since their moral code does have acting for others primary, this translates into acting for whoever has it worst at the moment, according to whichever standard. This translates politically into altruistic collectivism, into socialism, socio-economic welfare projects and the whole cultural Marxist woke movement. For many it also translates into a semi-religious guilt that arises from the conflict that inevitable self-care has with altruistic morality, a guilt that with some regularity asks for sacrifice, an indulgence.
It is good to realize that many who call themselves liberals nevertheless lose ground over the years to Marxist movements because they accept, perhaps unconsciously, the altruistic premise. The accusation of selfishness, relative wealth or privilege of position, or a lack of humanity often smelt opposition to self-impairing legislation from a liberal angle.
The second basic principle of justice of the influential liberal thinker John Rawls states “ Social and economic inequality is justified only if it is linked to positions open to all and/or if the least advantaged in society benefit from it” .
This is obviously a more sophisticated elaboration of the altruistic code which is in fact a mirror image of the trade-offs made by a rational egoist. For just as a rational egoist also does things for others, out of self-interest, Rawls argues that collectivistic altruism also asks to let people live for themselves…but only to the extent that in practice this also serves the collectivistic altruist ‘greater good’.
With such tenets at the heart of liberalism, it is not surprising that liberalism is only capable of weak resistance to Marxist thought. Even great champions of free markets like Milton Freeman framed their arguments in altruistic terms. For instance claiming that the “capitalist system has lifted millions out of poverty.” But such arguments fall completely within the altruistic morality and are therefore only accepted within that morality as a means to an end. However, on the principle that you have the right to exist for your own good, those kinds of arguments are completely irrelevant to whether a political system is good or not. From the perspective of rational self-interest it is only important from a political point of view that you cannot and should not be forced to sacrifice self-interest, that is primary. That is the political implementation of the fundamental right to exist for your own sake, as you have defined it for yourself. If that ultimately results in less poverty, then that is grant, but that is secondary and is not the argument for a certain economic system from objectivism.
The primary question is, does the system respect your fundamental right to exist for your own sake, or not?
Or does it violate this right by forcing people to sacrifice?
And the antecedent question of conscience is: if you think you have the fundamental right to exist for yourself, how consistently do you manifest it in word and deed? If someone calls you selfish or heartless because “you’re supposed to do it for someone else” or “you can miss it” how quickly will you give in to fear from aggression of the altruists about your selfish attitude? Which will make you fall back in line with altruism?
The other way around, you can also ask the question, do you actually support the people who do benefit your life? Are you really applying selfishness to your personal life by actually sticking out for people that are a value to you?
Realize that the trend towards more and more Marxist policies can only be reversed if people learn to withstand the altruist pressure and unashamedly learn to sing that Lesly Gore song, ‘’You don’t own me”
What are the limitations of abstractions?
Within objectivism, the link between facts and concepts is central. Every word or concept must be reducible to the evidence that our senses can give. Logic, as a process of non-contradictory identification of facts is important here as a method.
However, there is one thing that is crucial about this, concepts, abstractions ultimately always remain regarded as categorization tools that are necessarily defined on the basis of similarities, but therefore these abstractions can never encompass the whole essence of what they refer to.
For example, the word “bird” refers to a class of warm-blooded vertebrates characterized by having feathers, a hollow but strong skeleton, but you have many different bird species, all of which are different, and even if you only look at a specific bird species you will still discover differences between individual birds.
A concept, an abstraction can therefore never encompass the individual in its entirety.
The objectivist view of concepts can be contrasted with the Platonic view which sees concepts as the essence and for which the things in reality to which they refer are fully encompassed. This includes the belief that individual differences are trivial and can be ignored and thus it is possible to view very generalist statements as absolute truths. After all, you can safely say that a fish cannot run. But that’s an innocuous example.
However, there are pitfalls that people fall into again and again if they do not have the sense of reality inherent in the objectivist epistemology. For example, people sometimes reason with abstractions that are disconnected from existing things, these are often words that people have adopted from others without realizing what exactly they refer to in reality.
Sometimes people also reject a certain proposition, for example that it would be okay to shoot an innocent 75-year-old person if it would somehow save the life of someone 45-year-old through some magic. While they do not realize that this has implications on a more abstract level, it goes back to the question of whether a person exists for himself or not, and the position you take in this has far-reaching consequences.
Furthermore, considering a ‘nothing’ as a ‘something’ and not respecting the conceptual hierarchy are errors that lead to distorted, often somewhat vague, ideas. Strangely enough, such ideas often take on a great importance for people, perhaps because they no longer refer to reality and people connect them with a mystical feeling instead.
When it comes to statistics, people seem particularly prone to losing sight of reality. Reducing reality to categorizations based on univariate statistics is a very glaring mistake here. A grotesque example from the covid-19 crisis was the narrowing of the discussion to two categories, the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. In which case, infection, disease and hospitalization statistics were used to show that the unvaccinated had a greater disease burden than the vaccinated.
However, if categorization based on multivariate statistics is applied, for example by adding age and obesity, you get a much more nuanced picture in which the disease burden is not necessarily significantly higher in unvaccinated young people.
The univariate fallacy can also be found in evolution deniers who, for example, arrive at a distribution based on skin color, which is located on a spectrum and thereby invalidate race as a concept. While the reality is that with a multivariate categorization that includes bones, jaw, hair structure and orbital structure and other aspects such as relative pedomorphology or mineral density of the bones, it is possible to build a model with which the vast majority of people be categorized.
And that doesn’t even take into account the method of genetic clustering.
We see the same in people who wish to present gender as a spectrum, which point to something like height or personality, for example, and reduce the discussion to the overlap that you then see. Again the picture changes enormously when you apply multivariate categorization, because then people suddenly 99.99% fall into one category or the other.
With intersectionality univariate statistics are even an integral part of the framework. Singular human characteristics are used to define categories to which people belong, e.g. race, ethnicity, gender, creed, social class, caste, weight, sexuality, disability or appearance [1], and each of these categorizations are presented as individual axes from which an individual draws identity. The total identity for an individual therefore exists at the crossroads (intersection) of these different group categorizations. Even human health thus becomes a social category [2]
Socio-economic inequalities can be measured on each individual identity axis. These are considered to be socially determined and to represent a fundamental unfairness. In other words, people are classified into privileged and oppressed. According to the altruistic imperative, these unfairnesses must then be corrected. A logical consequence of this approach is that, for example, men or whites or handsome people (or whoever is given privilege on a specific identity axis) are discriminated against in order to achieve equity along an identity axis.
Note that quotas are also a form of discrimination if they do not take into account the number of actual applicants per category. If you have 2 positions to fill and you want to divide them 50/50 between man and woman and 10 men and 1 woman apply, then the woman has a 100% chance of a position, but each man only has a 10% chance.
There’s also something paradoxical about the terminology, since being passed over because of your gender or ethnicity doesn’t feel like a privilege right?, the altruistic imperative itself creates a form of suppression on an individual level to smooth out a statistical difference on an identity axis. Your total humanity is also completely abstracted away for the purpose of policy. After all, you are only seen on a case-by-case basis as only one aspect of your entire being, and you are then judged on that, and people want to make policy on that.
Other forms of straying from reality with statistics are making group statistics absolute and assigning group statistics to individuals.
Speed limiting measures can be taken as an example here. Suppose that many accidents have been occurring on a certain route for 50 years. The maximum speed is reduced from 130 km/h to 100 km/h and after that there are far fewer accidents. However, some individual has been driving 160 km/h on that route for 50 years. This person has never been involved in an accident. If this person is arrested when he drives at that speed again, he will be brought to court for what is now considered a crime, while based on this person’s driving history there is no reason whatsoever to assume that he has or will endangered people.
It is then policy that innocents are designated as (potential) perpetrators based on the mistake that the association between speed and accidents that exists at group level can be projected onto each individual road user.
Strangely enough, people are quick to see the inaccuracy and injustice inherent in projecting group stats onto individuals when people do it in other contexts.
Then individual characteristics, such as religion or ethnicity (instead of speed) may suddenly not be associated with statistical correlations at group level such as terrorism or crime (instead of accidents).
In summary .
The above might give the impression that there is parity between these two worldviews, but this is not the case. Collectivist altruism has achieved an enormously dominant position in the western world.
It is good to realize that the intersectional interface and its political implementation, for example in the form of diversity officers who have entered Dutch government institutions under the influence of political parties, like the PvdA, D66 and the EU, or the positive discrimination that is is the culmination of the work of thousands of sociologists, thinkers and activists over many decades [3]. Also bear in mind that many of these neo-Marxist sociologists and/or activists often have their whole lives paid for by the state at a university and devote their entire lives to developing implications and teaching this way of thinking to many classes of students.
Objectivism, on the other hand, only has Ayn Rand and a few organizations such as The Ayn Rand Institute [4]. In contrast, much of the Frankfurter Schule’s work and the critical theory that emerged from that has focused on addressing shortcomings of original Marxism. Improvements were sought in order to eventually arrive at that utopian state of blissful equality. The intersectional framework for example is an enhancement, with social class still a part of it, but now as one of the dimensions in which people are classified as oppressors or oppressed. Categories have been added over the years that are elaborated in great detail and made politically active by problematizing the status quo. Think of the transgender agenda, body positivity, quotas’ s based on gender, or the idea of climate justice. This is possible because of the sheer number of people for whom this way of thinking is modus operandi because they were almost raised in it.
In other words, Critical Theory stands to Marxism as Evolutionary Genetics stands to Darwin.
The climate agenda also fits completely within the altruistic framework [5], as do vegan ideas that focus on breaking down the moral distinction between humans and animals [8]. Its natural extension is the abolition of all moral distinction between man and nature, as promoted by the deep ecology philosophy [9]. The latter states that nature has an independent intrinsic value, independent of its usefulness for humans. Within that worldview all humanity is the ‘self’ and all non-human life ‘the others’. Advocating causes such as deindustrialization or the reduction of human populations size naturally follows from altruism applied to man and nature [13].
Marxism has simply already succeeded in achieving many of the traditional Marxist goals of cultivating what Marx called the superstructure. Many of those goals will be recognizable because they have become the norm. Think for example of the dismantling of the traditional family that took place through secularization, saying goodbye to traditional norms and values that go with it, the normalization of sexual debauchery (free love), feminism and the normalization of divorces. Note that same-sex marriage is also instrumental in this because it shifts the meaning of marriage from something primarily about family formation to something primarily seen as an expression of romantic love, which is ultimately fleeting, without a sense of duty. Now there is no question that there are indeed homosexuals who are very much in favor of same-sex marriage from their own motives which are not necessarily Marxist but that is something Marxists always do. They always look for a ‘revolutionary potential’, people who can be mobilized from another motive to fight for part of their agenda. The bizarre spectacle of left-wing parties including orthodox Muslims in their party can be explained from this angle.
Why was the dismantling of the traditional family a Marxist goal?, see: [6].
Marxist ideas are now also reflected in the UN Sustainable Development Goals [7]. You can realize this if you look beyond the idealistic ‘miss universe’ language (food, health, affordable energy, etc. for everyone, who could be against that?) and notice how words such as ‘inclusive’ and ‘equality ‘ are be squeezed into the texts, especially goal 10 stands out ‘Reduce inequality within and among countries’. In other words, it’s a pattern that people their natural empathy is misused to create or maintain an altruistic ongoing institutional transfer of value whereby everyone is ultimately reduced to a servant of the collective.
The Netherlands
In the Netherlands there exists a Knowledge Platform Inclusive Society (KIS), an advisory body for policy makers at municipalities and other government institutions, politicians, professionals working at civil society organizations and migrant organizations, as well as the business community that is financed by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment. In March 2021, this platform released an investigation into institutional racism [10]. In Chapter 1, which deals with definitions, we immediately see a reference to the intersectional framework mentioned above. It is going too far to name everything, but if you read it through, you will soon see that the text breathes critical theory, but I will highlight one point for demonstration.
In 1.3, institutional racism is defined twofold. First as an institution with racist policies, there is not much wrong with that part of the definition. But the second part is a lot more problematic:
“ (2) rules or processes (written or unwritten) that do not explicitly distinguish between groups, but in practice cause one group to be disadvantaged and the other group to be advantaged. “
In the ‘anti-racism handout’ of the influential critical theory activist Robin DiAngelo this definition appears:
Racism is a system that encompasses economic, political, social, and cultural structures, actions, and beliefs that institutionalize and perpetuate an unequal distribution of privileges, resources and power between White people and people of Color. This system is historic, normalized, taken for granted, deeply embedded, and works to the benefit of whites and to the disadvantage of people of color (Hilliard, 1992) .
The similarity is no coincidence, and the rest of DiAngelo’s woke ideology that threatens to pour in includes statements like “ All white people benefit from racism, regardless of intentions; intentions are irrelevant “[11]. This is dehumanization at its best and the ideological justification for racially based expropriation of Whites through propaganda, expropriation and the manipulation of institutions.
Dutch parliamentarian Sylvana Simons asked for a legal definition of racism during a committee debate in 2022. In the response, Hanke Bruins Slot, the Minister of the Interior, we see a reference to the definition of racism of the Knowledge Platform Inclusive Society [12]. It remains to be seen to what extent the D66-appointed National Coordinator against Discrimination and Racism (NCDR) will be guided by neo-Marxist intersectional critical theory, but all signs are there. The fact that a member of the socialist political party PvDA was immediately appointed to this post certainly points in that direction.
Ayn Rand’s philosophy has not gone through these developments and is many decades behind in this regard, both in elaboration, in number of adherents, and in terms of social impact or occupying a position of power in institutions that make or influence policy. It is good for anyone who sees something in her ideas to realize this. Instead of a movement trying to improve its ideas, we really only see orthodox propagators of her ideas and people discovering flaws and then throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
This is a shame because improvements are indeed possible, see the tribal virtue .
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_equity
[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory
[4]https://ari.aynrand.org
[5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_justice
[6]https://simplysociology.com/functions-of-the-family-marxism.html
[7]https://sdgs.un.org/goals
[8]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism
[9]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ecology
[11] https://robindiangelo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Anti-racism-handout-1-page-2016.pdf
[13] https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:934535/FULLTEXT02