Justice in Objectivism

Hello all. This is my first post. (waves) I'm relatively new to Rand, having read We The Living and Atlas Shrugged, and am now midway through Fountainhead. (I also like Rush's 2112 if that counts. ;->) I find her ideas intriguing, but I have a few problems / questions. Perhaps it's my lack of understanding.

One of my primary problems is with the justice in her universe. She appears to want a uniform, objective code of justice (a noble goal)... but seems to judge her characters very SUBjectively in terms of evaluating their actions as good or bad.

For example: James Taggart builds a railroad out to the middle of nowhere in Mexico based on a vague altruistic ideal that the poor Mexicans deserve a railroad and might use it. The rail line fails miserably and it, and Taggart, are denounced as evil.

Yet later, Dagny and Hank build a railroad out to the middle of nowhere in Colorado. In this case, however, it turns out there are resources out there just waiting for a shipping line and the John Galt line turns out to be a rousing success. Because they did this along principles of selfishness, they and their rail are good.

Yet the fundamental act - that of building a railroad to the middle of nowhere - is EXACTLY THE SAME. The only difference is in the motivations and thoughts behind its inception. But one railroad is good and the other is evil.

Or take personal actions. The rape in Fountainhead. Yes, Rand states very clearly that Dominique was truly "asking for it," but how many walking pieces of human filth claim, "the b***h was asking for it!" as their only excuse for sexual assault? That Roark was able to read Dominique's mind and know she wanted to be taken doesn't change how, to ANY objective observer (including the shocked first-time reader!) the act appears to be a violent, reprehensible one. And if Roark had been wrong in his mind-reading, he would be in jail.

Or Dagny shooting the guard at the end of Atlas. Cold-blooded murder of someone who didn't institute violence against her first. His only crime was being indecisive of all things. Yet, based on PURE contextualism - he happened to be guarding a door which was installed by evil men who were holding an innocent man hostage - Dagny's murder is seen as acceptable and justifiable. (even when there were non-murderous approaches possible)

I think I've made my point. Rand's personal evaluation of her characters' actions seem to be very SUBjective and rely on *impossible-to-prove* mental motivations to judge "good" and "evil" rather than *objective* observable facts. Now, relativism has its place in moral debate - but it is fundamentally incompatible with concepts of equalized, objective justice. And suggests Rand forsees a state that, from its outset, would let people literally get away with murder.

And this bothers me a lot.

Can anyone help me out?

Post 1

Sunday, September 4, 2005 - 1:22pm

Jason Blalock,

Context is everything.

James Taggart stepped on innocent people's freedoms to build his railroad. Dagny and Hank build a railroad using the work and resources of only willing free individuals. See the difference?

Marcus gives an excellent explanation of Ayn's sex scenes here.

As for your crime scene, Dagny was saving Galt from people who were torturing etc. him. The guards were there to prevent people from saving him. Sure, Dagny and the others might have possibly saved Galt without ending anyone's lives... but who would know? The guards seemed pretty jumpy. In fact, they began firing their weapons at our heros if I remember correctly. Dagny was going to save an innocent and incredible man from torture. His life and her life were primary values, primary reasons to determine how to act.

When a man has a weapon in his possession, who is ready to kill you, you have to make a hard decision. You or him. The guard could have shown that he was not a threat by putting his weapon down and quietly walking away with his hands in the air.

Post 2

Sunday, September 4, 2005 - 4:47pm

Dean Michael Gores,

Ok... See, I can understand having a subjective value system. That's fine. When the chips are down, I'm a moral relativist myself. But I don't see how that's compatable with the ideal of an *objective* justice system. (which is a desired thing in the world of Atlas Shrugged)

I have to assume that Rand had the guard killed intentionally, that she thought it through, and decided that the killing was justified. But what kind of justice system would you have in which Dagny would NOT be tried and convicted of cold-blooded murder?

I looked up the scene. It's never stated in text that the guard has a gun, and its existance can only be inferred through Dagny's dialogue. It's theoretically possible he was *holding* the gun, but that is not stated at all and he's fumbling with keys - making the proposition extremely unlikely. Far more believable that the gun was holstered. Then, at the same time, the guard was begging her not to kill him and stating very clearly that he *could not* kill her. He therefore was no direct (or even believable) threat to her whatsoever, and there were any number of non-violent (or non-lethal) methods she could have employed to get the keys from him. Instead, she executed him.

It would seem to me her trial would degrade into some awful form of Utilitarianism. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I killed THAT man, who was no direct threat to me, because he was indirectly helping (through his fumbling indecision and pathetic pleas for his own life) to kill a BETTER man!" That is the logical end of a subjective legal system of the kind that would acquit Dagny of murder.

I'm not talking about the abstract ideal of Loving Life. I'm talking brick-and-mortar day-to-day reality of life and a justice system that serves it. And a world where Dagny could defend THAT killing, and not be punished for it, would be one where justice is entirely SUBjective. There could be no (or virtually no) concrete laws whatsoever, and legal decisions would be based on the whim of the judge and jury.

If, as you say, context is everything, then that's what will inevitably come.

So on one hand, we can preach that we shouldn't kill men, that it's against our self-interest, and that the purpose of government is to protect us from other citizens who want to kill us... but what good is that AT ALL if the justice system is entirely context-based? What sense of safety do I have knowing that someone more powerful than me could kill me, claim necessity, and be believed?

Should, then, ALL "moral" choices ultimately be made at the end of a gun? A gun held collectively by each other at each other?

I cannot believe this is what Rand wanted, but when I try to reconcile her WORDS on the subject of justice with the ACTIONS of her characters, that's where I end up. Where am I going wrong?

Post 3

Sunday, September 4, 2005 - 5:50pm

The world at that point was not a world of justice and laws, but a dictatorship, and the guards thugs working for that dictatorship - so to rescue the good [Galt] required eliminating if need be anyone baring the way... ergo, one dead guard...

Post 4

Sunday, September 4, 2005 - 6:01pm

Well for one thing, she wouldn't be tried because as I viewed it, it was an act of war. There was a man who was valuable to her who had committed no wrong or no act of violence to anyone and who was being tortured. The man who was guarding the door didn't know or CARE what he was supposed to be guarding.

Imagine a more real life version of the scenario. 1940's Germany, you're a Jew and you've managed to escape Hitler's nightmare scenario... you manage to discover some of your loved ones weren't so lucky. You can pass for a gentile and you volunteer for a covert mission to retrieve your loved ones and anyone else you can sneak out. You reach the door and are stopped by a low ranking security guard. He doesn't really know what's going on, not completely... he's afraid to ask the tough questions, but deep down he sees the bodies, and smells the burning flesh. He's keeping you out from a basic sense of his simplest job duties... you give him fair warning "Any one who stands idly by as murder takes place is a murderer himself, will you let me pass or should I consider you a murderer and act accordingly."

She made her view of violence pretty clear in Galt's speech "If a person deals with me through force, I answer him WITH FORCE. Do not try to say I'm sinking to his level, I'm merely granting his wish. Destruction. and the only destruction he had a right to wish for, HIS OWN." emphasis mine. Violence should never enter into the equation ideally. More specifically a rationally moral person should never START the use of violence under any circumstances... but conversely once someone else starts it, you should not hesitate to end the violence with more force than the other party can deal with.

I'll admit some of the things you mentioned hit me as kind of weird the first time I read these stories too, but the more I thought about them, the more I understood their underlying objective morality.

---Landon

Post 5

Sunday, September 4, 2005 - 6:02pm

P.s. Welcome aboard. =)

---Landon

Post 6

Sunday, September 4, 2005 - 6:05pm

Ok, so asking simply... taking as a given that context IS a requirement in evaluating acts as good or evil, how would an objectivist justice system work?

Post 7

Sunday, September 4, 2005 - 9:03pm

What is the current objective value of a man who refuses to think while working for moochers, slave drivers, and outright torturous murderers of the innocent? Negative value? Ah yes, negative. (But of course maybe he could be reformed and become a positive value in the future.) What is the probability that he will do something to destroy Dagny's critical speed or stealth? Too high? Objectively evaluate the risks involved, what do you think Dagny should have done?

"Would all of the guys who want to kill me and Galt please move to the left, and all of the guys who don't please move to the right? Great. Now please stand there on the left as I pull out my weapon, shoot some of you, reload, and shoot some more."

Give me a break. Lets get in and out as quickly as we can, making our lives the highest value. Why should Dagny entrust her critical stealth, time, and safety to this guard? To save his life? That's ridiculous.

I assure you, if you are guarding me from someone I love as they are innocent and being tortured, you better stop guarding before I get there, otherwise one of us may very well end up dead-- I will always act to increase the over-all chances of the survival of myself and that which I value.

Edit: Yikes! Always? Ok, I admit, once a long time ago I made a little mistake-- : )
(Edited by Dean Michael Gores
on 9/04, 9:15pm)

Post 8

Sunday, September 4, 2005 - 9:11pm

Jason, I'd think the US has an excellent justice system, of course there may be areas that could be improved. The major difference would be in what is considered a crime-- I consider coercion a crime, and do not consider any destructive act to oneself or their own property as a crime. I think that individuals should have primary control over the products of their own labor.

I'd recommend checking out www.importanceofphilosophy.com.
(Edited by Dean Michael Gores
on 9/04, 9:16pm)

Post 9

Monday, September 5, 2005 - 7:54am

Hey Jason,

Rand tends to write in archetypes, concretizations of philosophical views. Dagny, the archetypical uncompromising selfish heroin, kills the archetypical waffling pathetic guard. The scene itself is a concretization of one philosophy triumphing over another. Her justice is having her philosophy prevail. The scene offers a principle, not a precedent.

As for the rape scene, see http://solohq.com/Forum/ObjectivismQ&A/0075.shtml#15. Post 15 is my rationale for the scene. I also recommend checking out Barbara Branden's post 60 in that thread.

Jordan

Post 10

Monday, September 5, 2005 - 8:35am

Jason, these are good questions.

I think part of the problem is the assumption you seem to be making that an objective legal system cannot take context into account. You seem to be saying that any legal system that takes context into account is subjective.

A subjective system of law is one in which whoever is enforcing the law decides what it is, with no standards to which he must adhere. That's basically how dictatorships and absolute monarchies work -- the law is whatever the supreme leader decides it is, from one moment to the next. If Hitler (or one of his henchmen) decided you were a criminal, he didn't need to give any basis for that decision. His thinking it was enough, and you were executed. (Some people would say that any completely subjective system can't really be considered a system of "law" at all, but let's set that issue aside for now.)

An objective system of law, as I think Rand envisioned it, is one in which the laws are defined in advance; are available for all to read; are realisitcally capable of being understood, obeyed, and enforced; and are consistent with reality and freedom.

A law can be objective and still take context into account. In fact, it's almost impossible for a law not to take context into account.

Take, for example, murder. An Objectivist society would have to have a law against murder. If you tried to write the law without taking any context into account, you'd have to say something like, "Killing a human being is murder." Period. It doesn't matter if you killed someone in self-defense, killed someone in defending a loved one, killed someone by accident, killed someone because your job is to execute convicted murderers, etc. Killing = murder. End of story. Next case.

Such a law would be easy to enforce because it's so clear-cut. But no one would want to live in a society in which that was the law, and I'm sure that that is not what Rand had in mind as Objectivist law. You would need to be more specific about what constitutes murder, and the only way to do that is to add context. For example: "Intentionally killing a human being who is not then actively trying to kill you or a third person is murder." The italicized words are all context. And you'd need to add exceptions for police, soldiers, and executioners. And you'd need to define what "intentional" killing is, so that prosecutors, judges, and juries will know whether, for example, someone who shoots a gun into a crowd without aiming at anyone in particular intended to kill the person who was actually hit.

As I said, that's all context. But adding all that context does not make the law subjective. People in that society can know what murder is, can keep from committing it, and can tell whether a prosecutor, judge, or jury is following the law or is instead enforcing his/its own, subjective idea of what the law should be. That's an objective law. And it's more, not less, just than the non-contextual version of the law.

That's a lot of dry discussion. I hope it makes sense.

Post 11

Monday, September 5, 2005 - 9:21am

Jason,

I am as troubled as you about all this (and just as new--waves). On the one hand Objectivism abhors the use of force by individuals and calls for the use of force by a rational government only when an individual has initiated force against another. On the other hand Objectivism grants its adherents the right if not the moral obligation to judge others as either good or evil. It is all too human to follow up a condemnation of "evil" with an execution or some show of force in the evil-doer's punishment. Nathaniel Branden has suggested that moral condemnation need not be followed up by putative action, but his seems to be a minority opinion. The implication is that enacting force against embodied evil is our moral obligation.

So, I'm confused because the idea that force is wrong unless enacted by a rational government against force-wielding individuals seems to conflict with the implied principle that evil men must be thwarted by any means necessary. So it would seem that objective evil is not limited to using force against others, but is a punishable characteristic in and of itself before any forceful action against another individual by the evil individual has been taken. So force really isn't the problem, evil is the problem. Yikes! When we start condemning people for their world view, or their bad premises, we're heading down a road well trod by inquisitors, witch-hunters and practitioners of genocide for centuries.

We get "better see the reds dead." We get arguments such as Jordon's that Dominique was so resistant to the good that she had to have it forced upon her in the person of Howard Roark. (Seriously, if Dominique is so resistent to the good that she won't allow herself to have sex with the man she loves, isn't her story tragic enough without our hero raping her? Or are we saying that the rape was a necessary step in her healing?) Similarly, we have various Objectivists justifying the death penalty, wars of aggression, etc. So far as I've been able to see, this seems to be a deep rooted problem with some Objectivists (including its founder), not necessarily with Objectivism itself. Meanwhile, I'm gonna go out and grab me some Branden to read. I'd suggest you do the same.

-Kevin

Post 12

Monday, September 5, 2005 - 11:01am

Kevin,

Just want to clarify, my literary interpretations shouldn't be treated as moral defenses. I'm trying to elucidate Rand's characters, trying to make sense of and explain them, not trying to defend them.

Jordan

Post 13

Monday, September 5, 2005 - 9:34am

Jay,

Oh, that I understand. I think we have a pretty good justice system in the US in terms of balancing context and concreteness. It's just that, when the chips are down, it seems that Rand very often has her characters behaving in morally questionable ways. If you break down the exact motivations that led someone to a particular decision, you can rationalize it... but it starts getting hard to see how she could feel these "precedents" were anything other than discrete acts. (as opposed to being examples to the rest of us, which I thought is what she was trying to do)

I just pick on the murder of the guard because it seems SO blatant.

The rape scene, again, in SPECIFIC context it's OK, but still deeply troubling since there's no discussion of the act (or reference to it at all) until after the fact. And 999 times out of 1000, if not more, such behavior would be abhorrent.

A couple others: When she's discussing Nat Taggart, it's implied that he killed a bureaucrat who's blocking his projects (personal violence in response to ecnoomics), and also outright stated that he threw a g-man down the stairs for no crime at all except offering him a government job.

And the man is otherwise treated as a saint throughout the book. They all but pray to him for guidance.

Even accepting that the stairs bit was intended to be a joke, it's troubling that she paints a "heroic" character as being so cavalier towards the personal rights of another human being who just happened to be in government employ. He wasn't initating force in any way whatsoever. Just offering him a "dirty" government job.

I could also nit-pick some of Francisco's behavior, but then, he's not the most morally clean character in the book. I was bothered by his willingness to perpetrate *direct* fraud in the building of "steel" slums made of cardboard. Everything else he did, he let other people's assumptions destroy them, which is fine. But since it's the government paying for his slums, it's apparently OK for him to accept money for steel while providing cardboard - and nevermind the poor Mexicans who end up living in those things.

One of the foundations of her economics is that you are morally obligated to provide value for value, no? I can't imagine fraud being sanctioned. But since government is the "enemy" it appears to be acceptible to her. (or otherwise, how was Francisco's action ANY different than the looting and mooching perpetrated by so many of the evil characters?)

I might even point out (and I know this makes me evil ;->) that John Galt pretty much created the socialistic crisis that occurs. Yes, at the point Dagny reaches "Atlantis" America is pretty much screwed... but I have a hard time believing that things were THAT bad *at the point Galt first began his plan.* In fact, one could almost read it that he got so pissed off at what happened at the 20th Century corp that he decided to take out his anger on the entire world by deliberately crashing the system. (or else why didn't he attempt to market his infinite energy device or otherwise behave in a constructive manner? Why go STRAIGHT to becoming Shiva the Destroyer?)

While on one hand he DID allow everyone else to hang themselves and no one was "forced" to go socialist, on the other he did deliberately manufacture the crisis so that he could, years later, sweep in and save the day. He went in fulling knowing what he was doing. Had Galt not walked away, the crisis would have never come. It's very circular to me.

Also, it's not just Galt who weilds this power. In ANY system, eventually someone is going to accumulate enough power that, if they walked away, they could crash the system. It's pretty much inevitable in human society. For exmaple... I assume that Objectivism is OK in general with the stock market. So would Warren Buffett be justified in cashing out and, in the process, creating a panic that destroys America's financial system? If he converted his investments into hard currency, he could make himself into the richest man on earth.

It all adds up, to my mind, as just being TOO subjective in its moral judgements. I realize she disliked Kant's categorial imperatives, but the alternative cannot be complete subjectivism. You can't say "murder is forbidden" and then attach the string of caveats that permit the killing of the guard and have the law still maintain any meaning. You can't say "fraud is illegal... unless you're dealing with the government or an entity you otherwise consider immoral." And setting up a system where man has no responsibilty to each other *at all* would seem to beg people to accumulate enough power that they could hold it over the heads of everyone else. Eventually someone would gain that power, one way or another.

Ok, I'm just rambling at this point. I just can't shake this feeling that for all she SAYS she wants objective justice, she has no problem letting her characters get away with just about anything. It's almost Nietzschean. The Ubermensch can behave however they want, and the rest of us have to accept it.

Post 14

Monday, September 5, 2005 - 9:52am

Agreed, Kevin. I have a hard time, in thought-experiments, preventing Objectivist morality from degenerating into extremism. The same sort that leads to abortion-clinic bombings. You don't even have to use direct force. Why NOT deliberately crash any system you don't like? As the adage goes, a single lever applied properly can move a mountain. No large structure - be it a building or a government - is so impervious that it cannot be brought down.

I could crash a company by spreading enough rumors about it on the stock market. Newspaper baron Hearst can and did destroy lives and political careers through mere hints and suggestions in his newspaper. Rand even mentions these tactics in Atlas when the papers have turned on Rearden. They write an article about him, and then next to it, write an inflammatory piece about an unnamed "steel baron" hosting a party.

This is condemned within the story but, how is this ANY different than the sorts of tactics Galt and his people use? Turn things around a bit. I can just see Francisco the Newspaper Baron saying, "Well, I never SAID it was Boyle. I merely talked about an unnamed steel baron. It's not MY fault people jumped to that certain conclusion! They failed to exercise their rational judgement. I have no obligation to mentally lead them through the newspaper articles!"

And in that scenario, because Boyle was Evil, it would have been perfectly acceptible to use peoples' psychologies against themselves and him. The EXACT same principle behind, say, the way he allows his stock to crumble. The exact same rationalizations would be used.

The means are justified by the end. She denounces one tactic as evil, yet fully supports another which is virtually identical, based solely on whether it's used to bring down a Good man or an Evil one. That is a purely *sub*jective judgement of the activity, not an objective one. Motive defines morality which defines judgement. A bad tree can never bear good fruit, and vice versa.

It's a dangerous worldview, I think.
(Edited by Jason Blalock
on 9/05, 7:58pm)

Post 15

Monday, September 5, 2005 - 1:39pm

Jason, I see your point. I couldn't begin to justify in terms of Rand's philosophy everything that she has her heroes do. The rape scene in Fountainhead, for example, doesn't work for me philosophically or artistically. The same goes for the passage in Atlas Shrugged where, following the tunnel collapse, she seems to be explaining why every person on the train deserved to be killed. I know that she had carefully considered reasons for writing those scenes, but they still don't work for me.

Someday, after I've read more of Rand's non-fiction and books by others on Objectivism, I'll re-read Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and maybe then those scenes will make more sense.

At any rate, the novels allowed Rand to dramatize her ideas, but they didn't allow for a systematic explanation of them. (The only exception is Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged, which is not novelistic in any real sense.) The systematic explanation had to wait for her later writings. To me, Objectivism is found in the non-fiction work. The novels are shadows of Objectivism, dramatizing certain aspects of the philosophy and what happens when unrealistic ideas hold sway. Rand wanted them to be entertaining and moving, and to accomplish that she had to put her characters in extreme situations that are far from the ideal free society that she envisioned. Also, as I understand, her philosophy was still developing in significant ways while she was writing her novels.

In Chris Sciabarra's Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (which I highly recommend, BTW), he has a funny passage in which he describes the way many of Rand's early followers took to imitating her characters, as if that were what Objectivism were all about -- Rand's heroes smoked a lot, so her followers smoked a lot; Rand's heroes liked rough sex, so her followers engaged in rough sex; etc. I think a lot of things in her novels are just noise, and I haven't tried hard to make it all cohere.

Post 16

Monday, September 5, 2005 - 1:50pm

Most of the issues were specifically set up for the reason of being compared to each other. I think it's pretty evident or the connections wouldn't be made. It was all about understanding what makes an act moral or immoral. But the main point that seems to come into play is once force has been initated all bets are off and you play as rough and dirty as you can to get the situation resolved as quickly as possible.

As to the rape/rough sex thing... not even going to bother making an excuse. I think in the context she made it work but It kind of creeps me out when I see other Objectivists purposely emulate that particular quirk of hers.

---Landon

Post 17

Monday, September 5, 2005 - 7:02pm

Jay, sometimes the way an idea is expressed makes a lot of difference. You wrote about the passengers in the Taggart Tunnel "every person on the train deserved to be killed". Try rephrasing that as "no person on the train deserved to live" or better yet "the deaths of those on the train were the logical consequence of their actions and professed beliefs".

Post 18

Tuesday, September 6, 2005 - 9:25am