Reblogged:FEE's Ex Nihilo Attack on Ayn Rand

[Gus Van Horn blog]

Over at FEE is a piece by Lawrence Reed whose headline reads, "Indians, Property Rights, and Ayn Rand," and whose blurb elaborates: Ayn Rand got many things right, but on the issue of Native Americans she made a big error.

Interesting I thought. I don't recall Rand specifically positing or critiquing a general Amerindian stand on that issue.

As a labor of love (which my respect for intellectual property rights will otherwise keep obscure and thus financially unrewarding), I have been gradually creating a searchable database of the works of Ayn Rand and some of her students. (It is, albeit incomplete, a superset of this one.)

Although I like to imagine myself a good researcher, I found nothing directly or indirectly addressing this issue by Ayn Rand herself. (Anyone knowing otherwise should feel free to point to a source in the comments to this post, or by emailing me directly. But read the rest of this before you do.)

This is odd by itself, but it was hardly the only swipe at a position allegedly held by Ayn Rand, but unsubstantiated. The piece actually, and bizarrely, starts its out-of-the-blue swipe at Rand with the following:

Philosopher Ayn Rand (author of Atlas Shrugged) got many things right, but she also got two very big things wrong. One was that life is the result not of intelligent design but of pure chance, an observation that science is increasingly debunking (see Science Is Affirming Creation, Not Accident). [link to creationist web site omitted]

This attack is quite easy to refute:

I am not a student of the theory of evolution and, therefore, I am neither its supporter nor its opponent. ("The Missing Link" in The Ayn Rand Letter, vol. II, no. 17, May 1973)

Since, as of now, I have heard Rand accused of both dismissing and espousing evolution, I think it's worth also quoting Leonard Peikoff, her most important student, on this matter:

Darwin's theory, Ayn Rand held, pertains to a special science, not to philosophy. Philosophy as such, therefore, takes no position in regard to it. (Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, Chapter 11, footnote 19)

So on at least one count, FEE's piece is demonstrably wrong, which is the best that can be said for it. (To be clear, this is not to say that Rand espoused creationism.) As far as I can tell, its assertions about Rand's opinion on what "the Indians" thought about property rights is, as Wolfgang Pauli might put it, "not even wrong," as far as any casual reader of the article is concerned.

That said, in a comment on the article, Reed cites an off-the-cuff answer Rand gave to a question on the matter after her West Point address as the source of his allegation about Rand's views. Nevertheless, it is clear that this matter was not a prominent theme she developed in her commentary, and one wonders if she might have said the same thing had she known more about some Amerind cultures. (It is instructive to consider what she says about so-called "collective rights.") Conversely, if we take Reed's assessment of the Nez Perce at face value, it is likely incorrect to apply it to all Amerind tribes.

All in all, it behooves anyone looking to FEE for help defending capitalism to consider how slipshod this piece is, as well as why it goes out of its way to attack Ayn Rand, whose defense of capitalism is so sorely needed today.

I don't have a good answer to that question, but Ayn Rand, who wrote the following in 1946 to FEE's founder, Leonard Read, would doubtless have been unsurprised by something like this coming:

Image by Ritam Baishya, via Unsplash, license.

The mistake is in the very name of the organization. You call it The Foundation for Economic Education. You state that economic education is to be your sole purpose. You imply that the cause of the world's troubles lies solely in people's ignorance of economics and that the way to cure the world is to teach it the proper economic knowledge. This is not true -- therefore your program will not work. You cannot hope to effect a cure by starting with a wrong diagnosis.

The root of the whole modern disaster is philosophical and moral. People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics. They are accepting bad economics because they have embraced collectivism. You cannot reverse cause and effect. And you cannot destroy the cause by fighting the effect. That is as futile as trying to eliminate the symptoms of a disease without attacking its germs. (Letters of Ayn Rand, pp. 256-257)

As we see, Read ignored Rand's advice about the name and purpose of his organization.

And now, nearly eighty years later, we see it not just ignoring the need for the right premises to promote capitalism, but actively undermining Rand in part for not espousing Creationism -- in an article supposedly making a case that at least some Amerindian cultures upheld a theory of property rights in some form.

In light of the above, I would urge any reader to consider for themselves Rand's commentary on the ethical origins of collectivism and how they relate to mysticism, i.e., religion.

-- CAV

Link to Original

[DavidOdden]

What she actually said is reproduced in Ayn Rand Answers (ed. by Robert Mayhew), pp. 102-104.

[EC]

On 1/10/2024 at 11:47 AM, DavidOdden said:

What she actually said is reproduced in Ayn Rand Answers (ed. by Robert Mayhew), pp. 102-104.

Essentially her (correct/moral) argument was that the Indians (American Indians not Indians from India which we have to unfortunately be explicit in stating these days) did not recognize property rights and where essentially constant nomads with no physical boundaries for their tribes, and therefore owned no land by definition. This means that all land in the colonies where properly open to homesteading and the ownership properly/morally gained via working it. People without borders nor property rights nor constant occupation and settling of a vast geographical area cannot claim "ownership" of vast areas just on the basis of being in the general area for 10,000+ years. This is both a fact and moral. For what it's worth, I have American Indian DNA from both sides of my family in case someone tries to throw out the ridiculous, false, and evil "racism" nonsense "argument".

[DavidOdden]

Genetics does not immunize against racism, which is an ideology that is chosen for any number of bad reasons, even self-hatred. The real question is whether a person is properly deemed racist for holding an ideology that some ethnic group is intrinsically inferior or superior. The real answer to that is “of course, that is what it means to be racist”. Unqualified plural nouns can be interpreted in many ways, so a statement like “the Indians did not recognize property rights and where essentially constant nomads” might mean “all Indians” (just as “dogs are mammals” means that all dogs are mammals), or “most Indians”, “many Indians” or “more than 1 Indian”. In light of that fact, it is an error to speak vaguely, the part that is not clear to me is whether you mean “most Indians”, or “many Indians”.

The other part of the racist canard is whether a person believes that an alleged inferiority / superiority is due to genetics, versus culture. It is not at all hard to dismiss the genetics-based stance, but it has also become socially unacceptable to embrace anything that smacks of cultural evaluation, however there are exceptions carved out where it is acceptable to criticize a person for “white-savior” or “male dominance” behavior (usually based not on the behavior itself, but on the bases of the fact that the person is white or male, or has a philosophy).

In evaluating Rand’s beliefs about Indians, based on paltry documentary evidence, we have to look to see what is the most likely interpretation reflecting her actual intent. She does refer to generic unqualified “American Indians”. She says that she believes the most unsympathetic Hollywood portrayals of Indians, without also stating her beliefs on the most unsympathetic Hollywood portrayal of whites, which I also believe. Her understanding of Indians is based on a portion of Indian life in the US, that of the Plains Indians, which was indeed nomadic, a lifestyle where one’s means of survival depend on non-systematic rights to land plus corporate ownership of land, not individual ownership. This is even true of contemoorary white mammal-herders. It is wholly inaccurate as a representation of even the majority of Indians (counting individuals) but it is true w.r.t. the majority of territory in the US. Even now, most of the US is made up of under-populated minimally-settled land in the middle. I live in one of those states where the majority of land is not owned by individuals, it is held by “the tribal chief”, to be administered “for the benefit of the tribe”.

I find post-hoc historical criticism to be supremely annoying because it is typically carried out in a factual and philosophical vacuum. The historical brutality of the Catholic Church to my historical peoples can or cannot be excused because they were taming a group of irrational savages, by teaching them different forms of irrational savagery. The irrational savages some of whom settled America gave way to an increase in rational men who build cities and industries, though there are still way too many people who are not on board with the program of living rationally. Historical analysis is completely pointless and irrelevant to anything, other than the academic discipline of “historical criticism”.

The use of force is still not under the control of objective law – that is a goal to which we aspire, not a state of grace that we have reached. What we have now is better than what we had then, and this is a general truth about human progress. The valid criticism that can be leveled against people in the past is not that they were irrational, it is that they were ignorant. If you didn’t know that fact before this moment, I would not criticize you for being irrational, but a man who has had the truth explained to him and still rejects that truth without valid reason to do so, that man is irrational.

[EC]

2 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

Genetics does not immunize against racism, which is an ideology that is chosen for any number of bad reasons, even self-hatred. The real question is whether a person is properly deemed racist for holding an ideology that some ethnic group is intrinsically inferior or superior. The real answer to that is “of course, that is what it means to be racist”. Unqualified plural nouns can be interpreted in many ways, so a statement like “the Indians did not recognize property rights and where essentially constant nomads” might mean “all Indians” (just as “dogs are mammals” means that all dogs are mammals), or “most Indians”, “many Indians” or “more than 1 Indian”. In light of that fact, it is an error to speak vaguely, the part that is not clear to me is whether you mean “most Indians”, or “many Indians”.

The other part of the racist canard is whether a person believes that an alleged inferiority / superiority is due to genetics, versus culture. It is not at all hard to dismiss the genetics-based stance, but it has also become socially unacceptable to embrace anything that smacks of cultural evaluation, however there are exceptions carved out where it is acceptable to criticize a person for “white-savior” or “male dominance” behavior (usually based not on the behavior itself, but on the bases of the fact that the person is white or male, or has a philosophy).

In evaluating Rand’s beliefs about Indians, based on paltry documentary evidence, we have to look to see what is the most likely interpretation reflecting her actual intent. She does refer to generic unqualified “American Indians”. She says that she believes the most unsympathetic Hollywood portrayals of Indians, without also stating her beliefs on the most unsympathetic Hollywood portrayal of whites, which I also believe. Her understanding of Indians is based on a portion of Indian life in the US, that of the Plains Indians, which was indeed nomadic, a lifestyle where one’s means of survival depend on non-systematic rights to land plus corporate ownership of land, not individual ownership. This is even true of contemoorary white mammal-herders. It is wholly inaccurate as a representation of even the majority of Indians (counting individuals) but it is true w.r.t. the majority of territory in the US. Even now, most of the US is made up of under-populated minimally-settled land in the middle. I live in one of those states where the majority of land is not owned by individuals, it is held by “the tribal chief”, to be administered “for the benefit of the tribe”.

I find post-hoc historical criticism to be supremely annoying because it is typically carried out in a factual and philosophical vacuum. The historical brutality of the Catholic Church to my historical peoples can or cannot be excused because they were taming a group of irrational savages, by teaching them different forms of irrational savagery. The irrational savages some of whom settled America gave way to an increase in rational men who build cities and industries, though there are still way too many people who are not on board with the program of living rationally. Historical analysis is completely pointless and irrelevant to anything, other than the academic discipline of “historical criticism”.

The use of force is still not under the control of objective law – that is a goal to which we aspire, not a state of grace that we have reached. What we have now is better than what we had then, and this is a general truth about human progress. The valid criticism that can be leveled against people in the past is not that they were irrational, it is that they were ignorant. If you didn’t know that fact before this moment, I would not criticize you for being irrational, but a man who has had the truth explained to him and still rejects that truth without valid reason to do so, that man is irrational.

A few points, but I don't really want a long discussion on this because I agree that there is very little point in debating the past that was so long ago that everyone involved is centuries dead.

First, I of course wasn't attempting to "immunize" myself from racism as a non-racist that is intensely against any and all forms of racism/collectivism but was just trying to cut off any false accusations from some that visit this forum that I believe would maybe try that.

Second, I would say most Indians were nomads without the concept of property rights. I, of course never meant to imply that all are which would be ridiculous to assume.

Third, I'm also not dismissing that incoming colonists didn't make mistakes or occasionally act in immoral ways to the natives, which again would also be an irrational assumption. Just that this was unlikely in the vast majority of a largely unpopulated massive region.