[ExI] An old skeleton tumbles out of the list closet

[Dan]

On Monday, November 12, 2012 6:57 PM Charlie Stross <charlie.stross at gmail.com> wrote:

> Marxism's appeal lay in its attempt to provide an analytical framework for human behaviour,
> at both social and economic levels; its failing lies not so much in the analysis as in the
> grotesquely botched attempts at building an ideology and then a political control system
> on top of it. (Which is to say: Marx, good; Lenin, really not good at all.)

I believe Marx laid the groundwork for the political control system, especially if you read him and Engels on revolution. They were vague about many things, but there seemed to be a clear idea that there would be violent revolution and a dictatorship. If that's so, then Lenin wasn't a radical break with that tradition.

Also, some of Marx's analysis relied on classical liberal class analysis. For more on this, see "Classical Liberal Roots of the Marxist Doctrine of Classes" by Ralph Raico at http://mises.org/daily/2217

This is not to deny some of his innovations in this area. His economics, also, was faulty and that's a big problem since economic crises are supposed to drive social system evolution in his view.

> Rand tried to build a system equivalent to Marxism, but using capitalism as its armature.

I'm not sure that's a fair characterization. I think her innovation was probably to not apologize for free markets, but to applaud them. It seems to me many previous thinkers in the liberal or libertarian tradition had looked at free markets as sort of necessary evil.


> Falls at the first hurdle by having absolutely nothing useful to say about altruism,

I don't know about that. I do agree that there problems with her conception of altruism, but it seems like she studied and reacted to Comte on this. (Of course, in her typical fashion, she's silent about her sources.) See "Altruism in Auguste Comte and Ayn Rand" by Robert Campbell at http://www.aynrandstudies.com/jars/archives/jars7-2/jars7_2rcampbell.pdf


> much less the roughly 75% of human interactions that are strictly *non*-financial.

This seems caricature. Rand didn't, to my mind, reduce all human interactions to financial. But she did believe that human relations at their base should be based on mutual consent and on each person trading value for value in the relationship. This doesn't mean being someone's friend based on getting $21,361.37. I just means that each person should value the relationship and not see it as a burden or a duty. How to apply this to all kinds of relationships is something she dealt with and many of those influenced have gone over. Having known many people influenced by her, I've yet to meet the caricature you seem to point to.


> (Reading Graeber on the origins of money and debt is a bit illuminating here. Oh, and
> Graeber: sometimes wrong, has a whole bushel of axes to grind. But still provocative
> and well worth reading, even if you feel the need to stop every few pages and argue with him.)

I believe Graeber basically wrong on money, though certainly current government money systems probably do fall under his analysis. Like you, too, I think he has axes to grind, but is well worth reading. On the plane back from Rome a few years ago, _Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology_, to my delight. Left libertarians have definitely taken note of him, including many who have been influenced by Rand.


> Perhaps what we're looking for is something like Stoicism, but updated to take account
> of what we now know of cognitive psychology? 
>
> For those who aren't familiar with it, Stoicism was a philosophy and a belief system that
> dates to roughly 300BCE and was eclipsed by the rise of Christianity in the Roman empire
> circa 200CE. Wikipedia entry:
I wouldn't knock Stoicism, though I think it has it's problems and I'm more partial to Aristotle when it comes to the Ancients. That said, continuing on the Rand thing, Roderick Long recently commented that Rand's characters in _The Fountainhead_ were actually a critique of the Stoic view of happiness in favor of the Aristotelean one. His exact words are "Aristotelean metriopatheia as opposed to Stoic apatheia." I must say, as a high school student reading her novel, I missed that. :)

By the way, an excellent book on Stoicism or, more precisely, one of its modern permutations is Lawrence C Becker's _A New Stoicism_. It's a quick read and a bit more informative than the Wikipedia article. :)

Regards,

Dan