Barbaric Conduct in London

Barbaric Conduct in London

Tibor R. Machan

The apparent murderer in London declared on a video that "The only reasons we killed this man ... is because Muslims are dying daily," he said in video aired by CNN affiliate ITN.  

Of course, this is a dodge, once again: “we” didn’t kill this man. The guy with the bloody hands and cleaver did that.  And there was every reason to think this was barbaric: no trial, no evidence, no due process, no defense mounted, nothing.  It is in the jungle where matters are handled like they were in London this time.  That others carry on comparably is no excuse.

The mere fact that the apparent killer--and he admitted to being the one--spoke reasonably clear English doesn’t make this any less barbaric.  After all, many vicious murderers are well enough educated.  Nor is it any excuse that “Muslims are dying daily.” People are dying daily everywhere but none of that justifies going out and butchering other people.  

And please don’t give me that ridiculous excuse of “blow-back.” That metaphor is absurd.  We aren’t talking about the weather! We are witnessing an out of control young man lash out in a most uncivilized fashion.There is no excuse for that.  If you cannot bring those you are charging with murder to justice, you need to stand down, not go crazy with a cleaver.  You need to insist on handling the situation in accordance with principles of justice.  Oh, I guess this was wild justice.  But that’s no justice at all unless nothing else is possible.  But in London if you know of a crime and work hard to bring a culprit to justice, it may take some time and patience but that what amounts to being civilized.  (Just consider how long many who are accused of a crime linger in prison or jail!) 

My "I told you so world"

My “I told you so world.”

Tibor R. Machan

So all of us who have long concluded that big government--which is to say, government with wide, nearly unlimited scope of power over the population it is supposed to serve--is a menace, no better than a gang of embezzlers and extortionists, can shout out “I told you so.”  From the time of the American Revolution it should have been crystal clear that trying to solve the problems of a society with what government has to offer, namely, brute force (more or less subtly applied) is a horribly bad idea.  Yes, it was that even before but by then plenty of major interlocutors in political discourse knew it well.  Sadly, the governmental habit was by then so ingrained in most populations around the globe that getting rid of the habit became nearly impossible.  

My own special area of concern has been government regulation, that insidious practice of meddling with people’s lives on innumerable fronts, and I have been watching just how addicted some leaders and public philosophers are to the idea.  So I read such publications as The Economist, Barron’s, Bloomberg Businessweek and the like almost religiously, perhaps because I am hoping against hope that the message that government regulations are nasty as all get out will in time sink in.

The most recent issue of The Economist has a special report on world banking and what jumped out at me when I finished reading it was the naivete of the final paragraph of the report: “Paradoxically, stricter regulation intended to tame banks that were thought too big to fail is leading to the creation of even bigger and more systemically important institutions.” (May 11, 2013, p. 18).  The futility of trying to fix economic problems with government regulation has been pointed out long ago--I learned it back in the mid 1960s from University of Chicago economics genius, Sam Peltzman--just as has been the futility of big government intervention itself, but even the editors of the normally sensible magazine, The Economist can pen sentences like the one above, as if they were making some sort of novel observation! They should remember a famous quip attributed to Albert Einstein, namely, “Insanity [is] doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results..”

Guided by the idiocy of the likes of Paul Krugman, thousands who chime in on the topic still believe that using the government to fix things is a worthy notion. The institution may have some merit for purposes of guarding our basic rights, as Jefferson and the other signers thought, but beyond this there just is no excuse for trusting it with any tasks.  (When I make mention of this to some liberal friends I often receive a list of state achievements such as the Hoover Dam, the TVA, etc. that allegedly would not get done if government were de-authorized; but all that commits the fallacy of the false alternative: we either have government intervention or nothing.  How about developing non-government solutions and institutions to address the problems?)

           We could extend this discussion, of course, to all the current fiascoes, with the IRS and the Department of State, etc., where the classical liberal teachings have gone unheeded.  But I am sure readers can reach those conclusions on their own, at least here.

Back to Basics Please!

Back to Basics Please  

Tibor R. Machan

In today’s climate of political theatrics it isn’t very easy to figure out where right stands versus wrong.  As Ron Paul points out at The Daily Bell, the Benghazi fiasco pretty much amounts to an illustration of the folly of the American government’s unending involvement in foreign affairs it should stay out of.  The way the Obama Administration works hard to obfuscate its role, how it seems (at least to me, who has been trying to follow the mess) to conduct foreign policy that reminds one of the three stooges, seems to be designed to operate like a magician who wants the audience to focus on distractions, never on essentials.

The idea that occurs to me when confronted with the mess is that those who have even the mildest concern for rhyme and reason should press the Obama people on one central topic: Do the rights of individuals concern this government in the slightest? Obama & Co., appear to view the Benghazi disaster as some kind of game, never mind deaths, casualties, professional responsibilities, etc.

The fact that four individuals were killed appears to be beside the point, merely a move on a chessboard.  And that itself appears to me to be the implication of this government’s disinterest in the most basic duty of a free government, namely, to secure the protection of the rights of the citizenry. Certainly no one in Washington appears to care about this. Every press conference evades the issue; it seems that the president just wants to wash his hands of any taint of failure, wants to make sure that the opposition party cannot find anything to criticize about his teams conduct in the affair.  

What should matter in all this is whether the mandate to the government, contained so clearly in the Declaration of Independence, that government is instituted so as to secure our rights is being properly fulfilled.  It seems clear to me that it isn’t. That’s basic and very regrettable.

A Precis on Humanism

A Precis on Humanism 

Tibor R. Machan

     In modern times humanism has been associated with Karl Marx and one of his teachers, Ludwig Feuerbach.  The latter was an atheist who believed that it wasn't God who created man but the other way around.  Since, however, this left no one to command us to do the right thing, an alternative source of morality was proposed by Feuerbach, namely, humanism.

     A humanist argues, not unlike Socrates did, that ethics or morality rests on an understanding of human nature.  What is right and wrong depend on what kind of beings we are.  Because of our free will, we, unlike other animals, are capable of doing violence to our own nature.  But we ought to choose to follow it, instead.

     As it happens, Marx, who took quite a few of his ideas from Feuerbach, held a collectivist conception of human nature.  "The human essence," he said in his famous essay "On the Jewish Question," "is the true collectivity of man."  

     So the desire to find ethical guidance from an understanding of human nature came to the advocacy of an out and out collectivist morality.  If, as Marx held, we are specie-beings, so that our flourishing or development in life must be achieved together, in concert; if individuality is a myth and collectivity the norm, then humanistic ethics and politics will, accordingly, be collectivist.

     The two most emphatic humanists of this kind were Karl Marx and Auguste Comte.  They both thought that only a secular understanding of human affairs made sense but they also embraced a conception of human nature that left little room for the fact of human individuality. As a result most humanists have been socialists, communists, or something close to these and have found capitalism anathema to human nature. 

     This is very unfortunate because although flourishing among others is a crucial attribute of human life, the essential individuality of human beings cannot be denied.  Even engaging in arguments testifies to this, let alone the incredible diversity evident throughout history and the globe, especially involving human creativity. Indeed, it is arguable that the most genuine humanism is individualism.

      The issue of humanism is vita for several reasons.  Although fundamentalist religions will likely always be part of human life, there is also a growing awareness that ethics and morality, including our sense of justice, must gain a footing apart from theology or religion.  The reason is that faith is ineffable, ultimately.  It is too personal, too subjective, and thus it tends toward schism rather than harmony.  Whereas the humanist idea that an understanding of human nature, based on science and ordinary human reason, holds out promise. 

     Ethical ideals, if they are part of the human world, need to be ascertained in such a way that everyone who but consults his or her reason can grasp them.  Such a replacement of a more religious approach to ethics, now that the world has become so small, is a welcome idea.

     However, if humanism remains wedded to collectivism, it will turn out to be a false and dangerous alternative to faith based ethics.

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More Environmental Confusions

More Environmentalist Confusions

Tibor R. Machan

The New York Observer reported in its April 15, 2013, issue (B 1) that Leonardo DiCaprio is teaming up with Christie’s in New York City, to hold a “major philanthropic auction.” I am not interested in the details, which appear to me a kind of kiss up to fellow celebrities on the political/cultural Left.  But the following statement from the actor is quite instructive:

The Observer reports: ‘’The world’s forests, oceans and biodiversity provide us with innumerable benefits like oxygen to breathe, clean water to drink, and an abundant food supply,’ Mr. DiCaprio wrote in a letter to artists asking for donations, on his foundation’s stationary, the promotional item mentioned above. ‘And yet our planet and these vital ecosystems that sustain life are under enormous pressures from modern civilization’.”

Trouble is that from an environmentalist viewpoint the enormous pressure of which DiCaprio speaks is itself part of the environment, not some independent natural force.  In short, modern civilization is part of the system!  If it causes harm, that means the system itself is causing harm.  

This is an inescapable fact.  Environmentalists have no justification for removing people, including the people of modern civilization, from the environment.  From their viewpoint, we are all in it together. We are all parts of nature, as well.

Interestingly a good many environmentalists are also animal rights champions and their argument includes the idea that human beings aren’t different from other animals in crucial respects. Tom Regan has argued that non-human animals possess virtually the same level of consciousness as we do and thus ascribing to them basic rights such as human beings have is justified.  The other main advocate of treating animals like humans are treated, which justifies “liberating” them, holds that the feelings and interests of non-human animals differ very little from those of human beings, something that once again warrants ascribing to them basic rights akin to those we ascribe to ourselves.

All this suggests that animal rights advocates who are environmentalists place human beings within the realm of nature. So the enormous pressure from modern civilization--i.e., people--is actually just one additional natural pressure, namely, evolutionary pressure.

The bottom line is that for environmentalists the contributions people make to environmental developments are natural ones and cannot be rejected as something alien. Pollution, technology, modern agriculture, etc., etc., are all part of nature as far as environmentalist are concerned (including Mr. DiCaprio). From his point of view, then, even the environmental movement is but an aspect of nature!  Its battles are natural battles, no different in principle from hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.

I point out all this mainly to reduce the rhetorical heat emanating from too many environmentalists whereby what they like about the world counts as natural but what they do not counts as alien.  That just will not do.

Public Choice Theory is Overlooked

Public Choice Theory is Overlooked

Tibor R. Machan

Whenever public officials promise to manage affairs of state, I am baffled how they fail to pay heed to public choice theory.  This is the idea, for which the late, great James Buchanan, earned his Nobel Prize (an idea he developed with his friend and colleague Gordon Tullock in the book The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962].).  

The gist of it is that public servants, so called--politicians, bureaucrats, and their colleagues--tend to promote goals of their own even as they claim to be serving the public interest.  And this is not very difficult to grasp.  

The public is, after all, a vast number of citizens whose interests vary enormously so it is a pure myth that there is a public interest that can be served by public servants.  Given this plain fact, whose interest will public servants serve?  The interest they consider important.  

In the last analysis the so called public interest is really the private interests public officials like best.  Even the democratic process cannot sort out what the public interest is. (The best approximation is put forth by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence where he identifies securing the protection of our basic rights as the purpose for which government is established, i.e., the public interest.)

Despite the hopelessness of pursuing and serving the public interest, politicians and their cheerleaders keep pretending that they have managed to overcome the hurdles facing them and assert that they are public servants instead of folks whose objectives are determined by lobbyists who represent innumerable, often conflicting, private and special interests.

I am confident that if one keeps the above in mind, one will have a clear picture of what is going on all the time in Washington, D.C. and other centers of political power.  Intentionally or not, the public servants are all serving private and special interests and are hoping that their own calculation of how to line these up will assure their reelection.  Because they all believe, earnestly, that somehow they will manage to figure out what is best for the country--or nation or state or the people or some equally nebulous body they claim they want to serve. (Or they are crooks!)

If they came to terms with public choice theory and learned the lesson it teaches, they would realize that the only public interest they can possibly serve is to secure the protection of the right to liberty of all citizens of the country.  These citizens will then figure out what is in their own interest and pursue it good and hard in their own sphere of influence, with their own families, friends and fellows.  

Until and unless this is acknowledged and implemented by our so called public servants, there will simply continue a Hobbesian war of all against all to get a more or less sizable portion of the public wealth.  And even the current worries about the national debt can best be understood as a result of this failure to appreciate the implications of public choice theory (as well as the tragedy of the commons).

Corruption of Individual Rights

The Corruption of Individual Rights

Tibor R. Machan

Whenever a good idea surfaces, there will surely be many who will try to hitch their wagon to it filled with corrupt versions that aim to serve numerous purposes having little to do with the original good idea.  One example is the idea of individual natural human rights.

Some simply disagree with the idea, like Jeremy Bentham did, denouncing it in various terms (e.g., “nonsense upon stilts”). Others do not like going about it straightforwardly.  Instead they try to recast the idea to mean what it didn’t.  A good case in point is the idea of welfare rights.

The rights John Locke identified as belonging to every adult human being are prohibitions, aimed at spelling out a sphere of personal jurisdiction, a private domain, for us all, one within which the individual is sovereign, the ruler of the realm as it were.  For example one’s right to private property spells out the area of the world that one is free to use and roam with no need for anyone else’s permission; to enter this realm one must give one’s permission without which others must remain outside.  One’s right to one’s life is similar.  No one may interfere with one’s life without having gained permission, not even someone who means to do one no harm but only provide help (e.g., a physician).

The point of such rights is to recognize that every adult person is in charge of his or her life and property and others must not intrude.  Why is this important?  Because people make significant decisions about how they will live and if others intrude, these decision become distorted.  Basic rights carve out the region of the world where the individual is in charge!

This is of course an irritant to all those who would just as soon have other people available to be used, bothered, nudged, and so forth.  The tyrant is fended off by individual rights, as is the meddlesome legislator and regulator.  So instead of accepting this, such folks are bent upon recrafting the idea of individual rights.  Welfare rights are like that.  If one has a basic right to welfare, it means others must become involuntary servants to one’s objectives and may not tend to their own affairs in peace. The idea of basic individual rights establishes peace among people.  They must deal with one another by consenting to the various projects one might support.  One may not be conscripted and robbed.  And this is inconvenient, of course, to people who don’t want to bother about gaining the consent of those whose support they seek.  Instead of convincing them of the merits of their projects, they can skip this troublesome step and just tax and draft and otherwise make people serve them whether or not they want to.

People of course often should help others but that must be done voluntarily.  There is no merit to such help if it coerced! To avoid the perception that one’s support is coerced, the idea of welfare rights is fabricated!  This needs to be resisted good and hard!

Public Museums & Censorship

Public Museums and Censorship

Tibor R. Machan

Is there a difference between censorship and selectivity?  In a private gallery or museum the owners or curators must always be selective.  There isn’t infinite, unlimited room available to place all the art that might be exhibited.  Good judgment is part of the job of management.  Not unlike including versus excluding columns and other materials in magazines and newspapers and chapters or stories in collections, or stocking libraries, such editing is not censorship.  The latter would involve some public authority imposing his or her decision on the owners/editors. Exercising professional judgment and authority isn’t censorship.

It is different when it comes to public museums or other public offerings. Reportedly some time ago Brooklyn, NY, deputy mayor, Joseph J. Lhota, who never went to see the paintings nevertheless made decisions about which were to be included and excluded from the Brooklyn Museum, decisions that turned out to displease some citizens. Supposedly just hearing about the materials was enough for Lhota who tried to make the museum remove ‘Holy Virgin Mary’ by Chris Ofili (a portrait initially accepted by the museum authorities) that contained elephant dung and images of genitalia in an eight-foot-tall portrait of the Virgin Mary, a semi-abstract collage that had been hanging at the museum.

Was Lhota engaged in censorship or the responsible supervisory work of a public official? There is no way to know.  The reason is the radical yet entirely reasonable notion that in the last analysis there should be no public museums as all any more than there should be public churches or bakeries! For one, no decisions such as those that fall upon the curators can be made in the name of “the public.”

Even if one rejects the idea that beauty or artistic merit lies in the eyes of the beholder--in other words, even if there are objective standards of artistic excellence or merit--those aren’t the job of public officials to deploy.  What is artistically worthwhile may not be subjective but it is highly varied, not uniform. But even if it were uniform, it would not be right for public authorities to meddle in art criticism, just as it isn’t right for them to adjudicate among different religions or moral systems.  In a bona fide free country such tasks are all supposed to be privatized!

A Précis on Libertarianism & Capitalism

A Précis on Libertarianism & Capitalism

(Excerpt from Philosophy With Meaning [Addleton Publ., 2013])

Tibor R. Machan

Libertarianism is the political system wherein the highest political good is the protection of the individual citizen's right to life, liberty and property. Capitalism is the economic system of libertarianism since in libertarian societies the institution of the right to private property, that is, to own anything of value (not, of course, other human beings, who are themselves owners), is fully respected and protected.

Libertarian law rests on the idea that the individual is the most important member of society, with all groups to be formed by the consent of individual members, including the military, corporations, universities, clubs, and the government itself. What is primarily prohibited in a libertarian society is involuntary servitude. What is primarily promoted via the political administration is the liberty of all persons to advance their own objectives provided they do not in this process violate anyone's equal rights.

There is dispute about the label "capitalism" as the proper way to call the economic order under libertarianism, mostly because its definition is often a precondition of having either a favorable or unfavorable view of the system. Some have insisted on the use of "laissez-faire," in memory of the French entrepreneurs who responded to the king's question as to what the government can do to help the economy by exclaiming: "Laissez-faire, laissez passé," or "allow us to do, allow us to act." Some use F. A. Hayek's term "the spontaneous order" to stress such a system's support of uncoerced behavior. There is also the more popular term "free enterprise." Yet capitalism is most widely used, by both critics and supporters of an economic order in which individuals have the right to own property and to use of it on their own terms.

By itself capitalism is an economic arrangement of an organized human community or polity. Often, however, entire societies are called capitalist, mainly to stress their thriving commerce and industry. More rigorously understood, however, capitalism presupposes a libertarian legal order governed by the rule of law in which the principle of private property rights plays a central role. Such a system of laws was historically grounded on various classical liberal ideals in political thinking. These ideals can be defended by means of positivism, utilitarianism, natural rights theory and/or individualism, as well as notions about the merits of laissez-faire (no government interference in commerce), the "invisible hand" (as a principle of spontaneous social organization), prudence and industriousness (as significant virtues), the price system as distinct from central planning (for registering supply and demand), etc.

Put a bit differently, "capitalism" or "libertarianism" is the term used to mean that feature of a human community whereby citizens are understood to have the basic right to make their own (more or less wise or prudent) decisions concerning what they will do with their labor and property, whether they will engage in trade with one another involving nearly anything they may value. Thus capitalism includes freedom of trade and contract, the free movement of labor, protection of property rights against both criminal and official intrusiveness.

The concept "freedom" plays a central role in the understanding of both libertarianism and capitalism. There are two prominent ways of understanding the nature of freedom as it pertains to human relationships. The one that fits with capitalism is negative freedom: the condition of everyone in society not being ruled by others with respect to the use and disposal of themselves and what belongs to them. Citizens are free, in this sense, when no other adult person has authority over them that they have not granted of their own volition. In short, in capitalism one enjoys negative freedom, which amounts to being free from others' intrusiveness. The other meaning of freedom is that citizens have their goals and purposes supported by others or the government so as to prosper. Under this conception of freedom one is free to progress, advance, develop, or flourish only when one is enabled to do so by the efforts of capable others.

In international political discussions the concept "capitalist" is used very loosely, so that such very diverse types of societies as Italy, New Zealand, the United States of America, Sweden and France are all considered capitalist. Clearly, no country today is completely capitalist. None enjoys a condition of economic laissez-faire in which governments stay out of people's commercial transactions except when conflicting claims over various valued items are advanced and the dispute needs to be resolved in line with due process of law. But many Western type societies protect a good deal of free trade, even if they also regulate most of it as well. Still, just as those countries are called "democratic" if there is substantial suffrage – even though many citizens may be prevented from voting – so if there exists substantial free trade and private ownership of the major means of production (labor, capital, intellectual creations, etc.), the country is usually designated as capitalist.

The most common reason among political economists for supporting capitalism is this system's support of wealth creation. This is not to say that such theorists do not also credit capitalism with other worthwhile traits, such as encouragement of progress, political liberty, innovation, etc.

Those who defend the system for its utilitarian virtues – its propensity to encourage the production of wealth – are distinct from others who champion the system – or the broader framework within which it exists – because they consider it morally just.

The first group of supporters argues that a free-market or capitalist economic system is of great public benefit, even though this depends on private or even social vice, such as greed, ambition, exploitation. As Bernard Mandeville, the author of The Fable of the Bees, put it, this system produces "private vice, public benefit." Many moral theorists see nothing virtuous in efforts to improve one's own life. They believe, however, that enhancing the overall wealth of a human community is a worthwhile goal.

Those who stress the moral or normative merits of capitalism, mostly libertarians, say the system rewards prudence, hard work, ingenuity, industry, entrepreneurship, and personal or individual responsibility in all spheres of human life, and this is all to the good. This alone makes the system morally preferable to alternatives. Yet another other reason given why libertarianism or capitalism is not only useful but morally preferable is that it makes possible the exercise of genuine moral choice and agency, something that would be obliterated in non-capitalist, collectivist systems or economic organization.

Capitalist theorists note that most critics of capitalism demean wealth. Indeed, they virtually attack the pursuit of human individual well being itself and, especially, luxury, anytime there are needy people left anywhere on Earth, as well as, more recently, if any portion of nature is overrun by human beings (as if they were not natural creatures). But, the champions of capitalism argue, this stems from utopian thinking and has the consequence of begrudging anyone a measure of welfare, since some people will always be poor some of the time and nature will continue to be transformed by people.

Yet the capitalist advocate need not be seen as reckless toward the environment. Indeed, arguably the strict and consistent institution of the principle of private property rights – through, for example, privatization and prohibition of dumping waste into other private as well as public realms – may solve the environmental problems we face better than any central planning champions of the environment tend to propose. Libertarians and capitalists think that the environment suffers worst when the "tragedy of the commons" is permitted, whereby commonly owned values are overused since everyone is deemed to have a right to such use while no one in particular is left with the responsibility to care for it.

Capitalism rests in large part on the belief that human beings are essentially individuals and a society's laws must value individuals above all else. Most historians of ideas admit that whether the importance of human individuality should have been recognized in earlier times, it certainly was not much heeded until the modern age. Even in our time it is more often that groups – ethnic, religious, racial, sexual, national, cultural etc. – are taken to have greater significance than individuals. The latter are constantly asked to make sacrifices for the former. In capitalism, however, the individual – e.g., as the sovereign citizen or the consumer – is king. Undoubtedly, a capitalist system does not give prime place to economic equality among people, something that group thinking seems to favor since in groups all are deemed to be entitled to a fair share.

(Excerpt from Philosophy With Meaning [Addleton Publ., 2013])

Tibor R. Machan holds the R.C. Hoiles Chair in Business Ethics and Free Enterprise at the Argyros School of Chapman University.

Welfare Rights Are Wrong

Welfare Rights are Wrong

Tibor R. Machan

Ever since John Locke developed the theory of natural individual human rights, there has been an ongoing attempt to change his idea to something very different.

For Locke the natural rights all human beings have are basically prohibitions. They forbid people from intruding on other people--from killing, assaulting, kidnapping, robbing them, and so forth. In the field of political theory they are referred to as negative rights.  They hold up a sign to all concerning invading people’s lives and spheres and insist: “Halt, you need permission to enter!”

This can be well appreciated when one considers that throughout much of history ordinary folks had been viewed as subjects, not sovereign citizens.  A subject is one who must follow the dictates of some master or superior.  Kings have subjects who must obey their will! Once this fiction is abandoned, it becomes clear that all adult human beings are independent agents, no one’s subject!

But of course many insist that such sovereignty is highly objectionable because it leaves it to the individual whether he or she will give support to others and their various projects.  Involuntary servitude is ruled out if we are all sovereign citizens rather than subject to the will of a king, tsar, or ruler.  Even the majority may not ignore this fact about us, so democracy is properly limited to some very few matters once the sovereignty of individuals is acknowledged.

But by introducing the idea of welfare or positive rights, we are back in the old system since a positive right imposes an enforceable obligation on one to provide others with goods and services, never mind what one chooses to do.  Thus if people have a positive right to health care or insurance or education or housing or a job, they must be provided with this, just as when their right to life or liberty is recognized, they must not be interfered with.

One’s basic rights impose obligations on everyone not to violate them.  But negative rights only impose an obligation to treat others without resorting to coercion, without using them against their will.  Involuntary servitude counters this and sanctions violating such rights as to one’s life, liberty, property, etc., holding that we are born with enforceable obligations of various sort of services to others--God, the state, our neighbors, etc. Instead of seeing us all as free and independent persons, the positive rights doctrine re-affirms the ancient idea that we do not have a life of our own.  

The more modern idea is that while we ought to be generous and charitable, this has to be something we choose!  That is the only way our moral nature is protected and preserved, if the right things we ought to do are done voluntarily, not forcibly imposed by others.

The basic point here is that the doctrine of positive or welfare rights stands on its had John Locke’s insight about the status of an adult human being in a human community, an insight that had been growing in influence in America and the West until recently.  But instead of relying on people’s good will and generosity to help out those in need of various goods and services, the positive or welfare rights doctrine reintroduces the old regime that people in society aren’t free agents but serfs.  (Here is the main point of F. A. Hayek’s superb book, The Road to Serfdom [Routledge, 1944] in which he critiques the modern welfare state!)

The Soviet Goal in the Cold War

The Soviet Goal in the Cold War

Tibor R. Machan

          For a very long time after I left communist Hungary I have been witnessing how numerous Western “Sovietologists” have been trying to clear the USSR of any responsibility for imperialism and, thus, the Cold War.  In the April 2013 issue of Harper’s magazine one James Leigh chimes in with a letter to the editor in which he raises the questions of “whether Stalinist policies were prima facie evidence of a Soviet desire for world domination.” He claims that the demonstrable brutality of Stalin’s regime gives no evidence of a Soviet policy of expansionism.  Rather America’s nuclear program is supposed to have been the “proximate cause” of the Soviet Union’s imperialist attitudes and policies.

          This is a position I have encountered even from stalwart libertarians, such as the late Murray N. Rothbard.  He, too, if memory serves me right, blamed mainly the American government for pushing the USSR toward imperialism.  In other words, the Soviet Union, however vicious, wasn’t aiming to rule the world and the only thing that made it appear so is that America was provoking the Ruskies to be fiercely defensive.

          I have always been curious how those who were blaming the Americans for being the aggressors in the Cold War managed to ignore a certain element of Marxian ideology and geopolitics.  Given that Marx and his followers in the USSR were advocates and promoters of international communism (socialism), their intention to spread Soviet domination across the globe is difficult to deny and natural to fathom.  

          Marx himself argued, back in the 1880s, that the movement toward a communist future across the world had to involved spreading out the borders of socialist Russia.  Marx explained: “If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolu­tion in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting-point for a communist development.” [Karl Marx, Selected Writings (Oxford UP, 1977), ed., D. McLennan] Soviet expansionism, the “desire for world domination,’ was consistent with this Marxist communist idea: the Soviet Union would be a “signal for a proletarian revolution in the West.”

          There are those Sovietologists and scholars of the Cold War who would ignore Marxian ideology as they propose to understand the behavior of the USSR. For them it was a mere epiphenomenon, not a guiding doctrine. Yet that ideology held that capitalism must necessarily be imperialistic so as to create foreign markets for capitalist nations.  And the military of such nations were supposed to be bent on securing those markets coercively, so socialist countries such as the USSR needed to prepare for this. Ergo, the USSR must achieve global dominance lest capitalist nations do so.

          It is true that capitalists want to reach foreign markets but by all accounts they would want to do this peacefully, through trade instead of military conquest. The idea that the USSR and not the USA was aiming for world dominance by military and political/diplomatic means is then a very plausible supposition.  By all reasonable accounts that is just what transpired during the Cold War until the USSR fell.  

           Which doesn’t mean that the Western governments were in no way responsible for a good deal of the malfeasance during the Cold War.  But arguably the Soviets had an official state ideology that rationalized aggressive expansionism and imperialism far more readily than what guided diplomacy and military policy for the Western powers.

A Few Choice Quotes to Consider

A Few Choice Quotes to consider!*

Bannister on Theories:

“... the psychologist cannot present a picture of man which patently contradicts his behavior in presenting that picture.”  From Borger & Cioffi/Bannister, eds., Explanation in the Behavioural Sciences (Cambridge UP, 1970), p.  417.

Aristotle on Skepticism:

“It is in the highest degree evident that neither any one of those who maintain this view nor any one else is really in this position. For why does a man walk to Megara and not stay at home, when he thinks he ought to be walking there? Why does he not walk early some morning into a well or over a precipice, if one happens to be in his way? Why do we observe him guarding against this, evidently because he does not think that falling in is alike good and not good? Evidently, then, he judges one thing to be better and another worse.” Metaphysics 1006b (IV, iv, 40)

Coase on economic man:

“There is no reason to suppose that most human beings are engaged in maximizing anything unless it be unhappiness, and even this with incomplete success” (Ronald Coase, The Firm, the Market, and the Law, U of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 4.

Salzman on Comparative Political Economy:

"’Well . . . the world is basically divided into two kinds of countries—communist countries and capitalist countries.  A capitalist country is a place where people own things privately and can become more wealthy than other people.  They use money to get whatever they want, and can oppress poor people.  A communist country is a place where the government owns everything.  That way, everyone is equal, and no one can be oppressed.  Without money, people share willingly with each other and help each other rather than just helping themselves.  Everyone works for the good of the people, not just for personal gain.’ Colonel Sun thought about this for a moment, then burst into derisive laughter.  ‘The capitalists sound pretty normal,’ he observed, ‘but that communist arrangement sounds like a lot of crap to me.’" [The Laughing Sutra, p. 58]

There is a story that Communism, Capitalism, and Socialism decided to have lunch together one day. Communism and Capitalism were on time, but Socialism arrived late.  He said, "I'm sorry I am late, but I had to queue up to buy some sausage.  Communism said, "What's a sausage?," and Capitalism said "What's a queue?" [The Laughing Sutra, p. 210]

Quine on Cultural Relativism:

Truth, says the cultural relativist, is culture-bound.  But if it were, then he, within his own culture, ought to see his own culture-bound truth as absolute.  He cannot proclaim cultural relativism without rising above it, and he cannot rise above it without giving it up. [Willard Van Orman Quine, “On empirically equivalent systems of the world,” Erkenntnis, Vol. 9 (1975), pp. 327-8 (pp. 313-28).]

Roger Sperry on Reductionism:

We no longer seek ultimate nature of reality within the smallest physical elements, nor in their innermost essence.  Instead the search is redirected to focus primarily on the patterning of the elements, on their differential pacing and timing and the progressive compounding of patterns of patterns, and on their evolving nature and complexity. (American Psychologist, Vol. 50, No. 7, 506)

John O’Brien:

“The desire of one man to live on the fruits of another’s labor is the original sin of the world.” [George Seldes, ed., The Great Thoughts (Ballentine Books, 19850, p. 314]

Rand on Human Nature:

“Man gains enormous values from dealing with other men: living in a human society is his proper way of life – but only on certain conditions.  Man is not a lone wolf and he is not a social animal.  He is a contractual animal.  He has to plan his life long-range, make his own choices, and deal with other men by voluntary agreement (and he has to be able to rely on their observance of the agreement they entered).” [“A Nation’s Unity,” Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. II, 2, p. 3.]

Alexis de Tocqueville on business:

“The transactions of business opened a new road to power, and the financier rose to a station of political influence in which he was at once flattered and despised.” [Democracy in America, p. xxxvi]

Jostein Gaarner on the supernatural:

“So you don’t believe in anything supernatural then.”

“We’ve already talked about that.  Even the term ‘supernatural’ is a curious one.  No, I suppose I believe that there is only one nature.  But that, on the other hand, is absolutely astonishing.” (Sophie’s World, p. 360)

Arthur Miller on salesmen:

His was a salesman’s profession, if one may describe such dignified slavery as a profession…(“In Memoriam,” The New Yorker, December 25, 1995 & January 1, 1996)

Business Besmirched:

In 1769 [Benjamin] Franklin had written to his friend Henry Home, Lord Cames, the Scottish jurist and philosopher: `There seems to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth.  The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbors.  This is robbery.  The second is by commerce, which is generally cheating.  The third by agriculture, the only honest way....'"[from Forest MacDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum]

*From my personal collection