At least socialists are honest
Political ·Sunday January 31, 2010 @ 16:46 EST (link)
If I am debating with an avowed socialist (or communist, or Marxist, etc.) at least I know where their principles lie. Nor do I need them to adhere to a particular label; as long as their principles are made clear we have a point for discussion. I can attempt to convince them that, for example, man is an end in himself—that man has a right to his own life—and not a sacrifice to the state, and that such sacrifice ends in tragedies like the former Soviet Union. I can convince them that property will always be owned, and if owned by "the state", will (and always has) devolve to ("private") control by the biggest tyrant, and that private property is a necessary extension of man's rights. I can point them to such documents as Rand's essay The Objectivist Ethics for a philosophical grounding of man's rights, and to her book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal for more on property rights.
But I cannot help those without firm principles. We have nothing to talk about. If your principles are, for example, encompassed by terms like "pragmatism", i.e., do what works, which actually sounds fairly good prima facie, we will have problems. First, in who is "doing"—usually some state, by force—and then in what defines good (clearly violation of individual rights must not be defined as evil in such a system, or as a goal or constraint of any sort). Then there is the problem of the first time: a "pragmatist" might claim that program X is good because it works elsewhere (for some definition of "works"), but it's never the same program in the same culture, so without precedent the pragmatist is an experimenter. Which is great, if his subjects were not men and his effects not the ruination of the lives of men, as if they were so many white mice in a lab. How many millions have died because individual rights and freedom were subjected to some vast ideal that failed?
In fact, history shows that greater freedom leads to greater prosperity (see, e.g., The Link Between Economic Opportunity & Prosperity: The 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, and history in general) and higher standards of living. So by happy coincidence, supporters of individual rights are better pragmatists than most that claim that title but actually lean towards statism.
However, after a long enough discussion, one can usually tease out some principles from a pragmatist (see upcoming post on the relationship between liberty and respect for private property). Frequently these are statist: unlimited tyranny of the majority, the sacrifice of man to the (purposes of the) state, and the state as liege lord over a fiefdom of citizen serfs. I suppose I cannot complain at the work I do to tease out an unprincipled (or weakly or vaguely principled) person's values, because in doing that I also engrave, clarify, and strengthen my own philosophy and the application thereof.
