Why are the citizens of a dictatorship responsible for the dictator&#3

Questions about Objectivism
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A sentiment I commonly see among fellow Objectivists is that any given individual in a country is responsible for the actions of the government of that country. For example, one might say that it is acceptable to target civilians specifically if their government acts aggressively to the US (or does so indirectly, by sponsoring terrorism). What is the reasoning behind this?

Let’s say, for example, some random peasant named Ivan in the old Soviet Union. The totalitarian government uses force to suppress dissent, prevent emigration, etc. The threat of force is used to prevent him from making any moral choices. As Rand would say, morality ends where a gun begins. How, then, can this person be held morally responsible, especially given that the actions he’d be held responsible for weren’t even conducted by him? Even if (for example), Ivan helped to manufacture bombs, shouldn’t the initiator of force (the person who made Ivan make those bombs in the first place) be held responsible exclusively?

More importantly, however, is the fact that as far as I can tell, this seems to be based on a collectivist line of reasoning: Ivan happens to be in the same arbitrary group as Stalin (geographical location or citizenship), therefore Ivan is as bad a person as Stalin/responsible for what Stalin did. I can’t think of any other reasoning that supports it.

What other arguments are there? “If we make it clear that we’re holding civilians responsible for the actions of a dictator that’s attacked us, maybe they’ll do our work for us and get rid of him”? Could we also then be justified–even compelled–to attack neighboring countries for the same purpose?

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A sentiment I commonly see among fellow Objectivists is that any given individual in a country is responsible for the actions of the government of that country. For example, one might say that it is acceptable to target civilians specifically if their government acts aggressively to the US (or does so indirectly, by sponsoring terrorism). What is the reasoning behind this?

Careful. That is far to general of a position.

That thought really only applies only in a time of retaliatory war and only to a just retaliator. It is a very specific context. It’s been discussed here several times, woudl suggest you look at some of the threads on it.

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Would also suggest you look at Yaron Brook’s Objective Standard article on Just War Theory, which is what the opposing view is based upon.

http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues…-war-theory.asp

4

Let’s say, for example, some random peasant named Ivan in the old Soviet Union. The totalitarian government uses force to suppress dissent, prevent emigration, etc. The threat of force is used to prevent him from making any moral choices. As Rand would say, morality ends where a gun begins. How, then, can this person be held morally responsible, especially given that the actions he’d be held responsible for weren’t even conducted by him? Even if (for example), Ivan helped to manufacture bombs, shouldn’t the initiator of force (the person who made Ivan make those bombs in the first place) be held responsible exclusively?

More importantly, however, is the fact that as far as I can tell, this seems to be based on a collectivist line of reasoning: Ivan happens to be in the same arbitrary group as Stalin (geographical location or citizenship), therefore Ivan is as bad a person as Stalin/responsible for what Stalin did. I can’t think of any other reasoning that supports it.

This may have been covered in other threads, but I think the best way to look at a dictatorship is that it is a hostage situation on a much larger scale. Imagine a crazed gunman takes an innocent woman hostage and starts shooting at you, you, in the course of defending yourself, accidentally shoot and kill the woman. You are not a murderer, you were simply trying to defend yourself, the gunman is the one who knowingly put the woman in harm’s way, and presumably would have killed you and continued killing until both he and his hostage were killed.

That is precisely the calculation of a dictator, he counts on that moral equivocation that blanks out on the context of war and aggression. He knows that most people will swallow the logic of “you killed an innocent civilian, you are a murderer” and not dig deeper to consider that a peaceful country like the US has no reason to kill innocent civilians, unless they are unfortunate enough to be held hostage by a warmongering dictator.

Now of course, if you take an example like Japan in WWII, the emperor enjoyed overwhelming popular support for Japanese aggression, so it is hard to feel sorry for those civilians that were unlucky enough to pay the cost of that support. But it seems to me that at least half of these cases involve civilians who do not support the acts of aggression that put them in harm’s way.

Then again, the ability of dictatorships to control the flow of information and make themselves look like victims of aggression can complicate the issue. Consider for example that a significant number of North Koreans actually believe that the US has designs on attacking North Korea, at which point US soldiers would cannibalize the NK civilians, as is the time-honored tradition of the US military..

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Moderator’s Note:

Split the discussion started by Gary Brenner into To Nuke or Not to Nuke

For those who have not encountered Gary before, he was on the board a while back arguing for the Prudent Predator principle, of which this is but a variant. That post lasted some 600 individiual responses at which time, he had not budged an inch, and simply refused to understand the concept of what acting on principle means. One would do well to check that thread just to see what you’re getting into.

http://forum.ObjectivismOnline.com/index.php?showtopic=8874

I’d like to ask the mods to split this into its own thread so that jparagons doesn’t have to have his question and thread hijacked as it is sure to be.

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Response to Mark K moved to new thread.

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Although there have been several threads on this already that address the exact question of this thread, I think it is important that any such discussion of this kind begin with what Ayn Rand actually had to say on the matter.

I think this comes up a lot because many people don’t understand what it is like to actually live in a dictatorship. I see a lot of excuses like “poor ignorant Ivan has no idea that when the state steals his goods they are using them to build doomsday weapons.”

I don’t think it is apparent to some the level of staggering ignorance that would require. The dictators make is very plain what they are doing - they parade their armies in the streets and yell at the top of their lungs over the airwaves about who they are going to kill.

I’ve also heard a variation on that argument, that Ivan is ignorant of morality itself and thus couldn’t be expected to know the stakes he is involved in. I wonder if people would make the same argument for a murderer. That he was ignorant of morality and therefore not responsible for murdering. I know I sure don’t - I can imagine only a few things more unjust. It is simply your responsibility as a human being to know certain things. If you fail in that endeavor, it is not the responsibility of moral and innocent people to bear the burden of your failure. That would be altruism of a high order.

Even assuming that someone is completely brainwashed - if such a thing really can happen - then the same logic applies. Whatever the reason, there is someone working to kill me. The proper response is to stop him by force, and his guilt or innocence in the matter doesn’t enter into it. The morally necessary action is to stop the threat to my life in the most expedient manner possible - i.e. the way that works most quickly, puts me at least risk, and makes me sacrifice the least of my well being. If that means just happens to involve killing Ivan The Ignorant Brainwashed Zombie-Peasant well, then, it sucks to him - but the ultimate moral responsibility lies with the dictator.

And if Ivan had any chance to rebel or leave in the past but chose instead to be a coward and therefore become an agent of my destruction then that represents a choice on his part where he assumed the risk of Being Nuked By Me. So it’s a little late for him to cry foul at this point. In fact it would be immoral of him to demand that we sacrifice our safety to accommodate him and his caving in to a dictator.