I wanted to note this extremely good critique of Ayn Rand's Objectivism, and especially what might by known as the John Galt gambit, published by Lee at A Secondhand Conjecture. If you've never read Atlas Shrugged, John Galt is the man who convinces literally all the talented, unappreciated people to cease carrying the ungrateful proles on their backs, to retire from society and let it collapse around the ears of the non-productive. On some Randite Libertarian blogs the idea of a John Galt strategy over the next four years is--not surprisingly--starting to appear.
Here's a substantial excerpt from Lee's piece [I've placed some of my favorite insights in bold]:
Synova wrote a little post that gets halfway to where I would come down on this perennial parlor game of the John Galt general strike. Sy recognized that to be successful, such a revolt would realistically be a miserable experience for a society, resulting in bloodshed and economic ruin. But she does not depart from Rand in assuming that the eventual outcome would be desirable. I’d advise the ancient wisdom that if the means are clearly evil in a political project, one should become immediately skeptical of the alleged justice of the ends.
We should also be skeptical of the social assumption for Galt, that there is a definable and rigid division among men into a minority of Platonic creative guardians, and an empowered majority of proletarian oppressors and their craven political servants — and that these factions could have accurate self-recognition of their social roles. I would contend that anyone who thinks of the majority of the people as disposable abstracted parasites, under a constitutional order that explicitly derives its governing powers from the majority consent of the governed, is never selling you anything that’s going to arrive in a happy place.
Additionally, as with all radical revolutionary doctrines requiring mass mobilization, the necessity of placing the attainment of utopia in the distant future, or behind a historical barrier of war or great sacrifice, is an organizing principle in itself. As Eric Hoffer warned in his defense of the idea of the present, if you have to get to the future to find out if an ideology is just and correct, it isn’t. Not that this is an inconvenience to the revolutionary, as there’s always a need for someone to run the next war or 5 year plan when it turns out everything has gotten much worse thanks to his determined efforts.
Because of that intrinsic conceit, Rand’s ideology is arguably one of the most dangerous to have materialized on our shores. Like her literary style, it has an essentially hierachialist Russian character that cloaks itself seductively in the cultural language of liberal America. Many libertarians have been wise to regard her visions and schemes such as Galt, as somehow at odds with their ideals, even if they’re often unsure how.
For libertarians, the Randian revolt ought to be uncomfortable, because it is honest. It directly confronts the great and omnipresent danger at the heart of libertarianism: The discord of the libertarian individualist with popular democracy (as an exercise, try replacing the word “collectivism” with “democracy” in objectivist literature and you may experience an epiphany). Objectivism thrives in this conflict and worse, offers a solution to resolve the internal moral contest: mobilize, revolt, destroy the present to save the future.
That’s because what one sees over and over again in libertarian literature is the frustration at the tendency of voting majorities to support social programs which redistribute wealth from rich to poor. The libertarian vexation is not unfounded, as this reality does indeed have a corrosive effect on economic growth and can slowly imperil human liberty by course. Since libertarians are materialists and understand that all political freedoms are material freedoms (of what use is freedom of speech, if you cannot own a printing press?), this quickly becomes a moral crisis. There’s thus always a temptation, exploited by the objectivist, to conclude that there’s a way to prevent this from happening through counter-democratic means. The temptation is fundamentally the conclusion that the democratic enterprise is irretrievably and inevitably a moral compromise.
This is pretty deep stuff, and if any tried-and-true Objectivist reads this post--either here or over at Lee's place--I'm sure there will be both howls of anger and sneers of disdain.
But what emerged for me on reading this, in one of those indirect epiphanies that you get from time to time, inspired by reading or seeing something for reasons you can't quite grasp, is this distinction in my Libertarianism:
I am not a Libertarian who happens to live in America, and who pursues the utopian objective of reforming all society into Libertarian Land.
I am an American citizen who believes strongly in the expressed goals and promises of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the US Constitution [while fully realizing that those documents are sometimes contradictory], and who believes that the most effective and most just strategy for achieving those goals is achieved via a Libertarian approach.
I pursue the goals of non-aggression and freedom, of limited government and personal responsibility, not just because I believe they are more ethical, but because I believe they work.
This also means that, despite the frustrating regularity of American national elections descending to the level of who can promise more bread and circuses to the voters, I am committed to democracy, committed to this constitutional republic.
And I see my fellow citizens who don't agree with me as people to be convinced in the long run and positively engaged until then, not as opponents to be forced or coerced, even indirectly.