Don't Call Bernie Sanders a Capitalist

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

The Foundation for Economic Education recently published an article about millionaire Bernie Sanders with the title, "Bernie Is a Capitalist, Whether He Likes It or Not."

Although this may be true of the first of the following dictionary definitions of the term, it is patently false about the second:

1. a person who has capital, especially extensive capital, invested in business enterprises.

2. an advocate of capitalism.

3. a very wealthy person.
I would emphatically add that it's debatable, to say the very least, that "he deserves that money." It is his property, under capitalism, and he did gain it by trade. To that extent, it is proper that he has the money. But he did so while advocating an immoral and impractical -- a vile and deadly -- ideology. In that sense, he "deserves" that money in the same sense that a chiropractor or a fortune teller deserve whatever they receive from others, and he should thank his lucky stars for the remnants of capitalism that are allowing him to get away with it.

I do, believe it or not, for reasons analogous to criminals sometimes walking free in our justice system: It's the price we pay for the protection of the rights of the individual being the default in our government. Or which, like private property ought to be default, but which Sanders and his ilk want to finish turning into "51 percent of people choos[ing] something, and the other 49 percent have to go along." This article, sadly and tellingly, does not convey outrage or even alarm that this is an increasingly accurate description.

The piece does contain other interesting information -- such as a link to the instructions Sanders could follow to volunteer for income equality, were he sincere about his advocacy of the same; and it does indicate that socialism calls for government coercion. But it misses a big opportunity to make a case against Sanders that would really hurt: a moral one.

As Ayn Rand once pointed out to FEE founder Leonard Read:
Image via Wikipedia, public domain.
The mistake is in the very name of the organization. You call it The Foundation for Economic Education. You state that economic education is to be your sole purpose. You imply that the cause of the world's troubles lies solely in people's ignorance of economics and that the way to cure the world is to teach it the proper economic knowledge. This is not true -- therefore your program will not work. You cannot hope to effect a cure by starting with a wrong diagnosis.

The root of the whole modern disaster is philosophical and moral. People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics. They are accepting bad economics because they have embraced collectivism. You cannot reverse cause and effect. And you cannot destroy the cause by fighting the effect. That is as futile as trying to eliminate the symptoms of a disease without attacking its germs. [bold added] (Letters of Ayn Rand, pp. 256-257)
FEE would have done better to point out that Sanders, like many others who have become the first kind of capitalist -- including many who truly deserved their fortunes, like Bill Gates -- are far from being the second kind. More broadly, they could have noted that unless more of us become the second kind of capitalist, there won't be any of the first kind for much longer.

-- CAV

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rand didn't have it quite right. Technically, the right economics flows from correct philosophy. But as other objectivists have pointed out, humans develop from the bottom up. Babies and children learn simple concepts, then more complex concepts. So from an educational point of view, economics gives credibility to higher up philosophical concepts. I must admit, peeking at higher level concepts while learning lower level concepts helps. I found Thomas Sowells book Basic Economics very helpful in reinforcing basic philosophy.

Gus Van Horn said...

Anon.,

You seem to take Rand as saying that (for example) the millions of young socialists would have had to explicitly adopt bad philosophy to have adopted socialism. This is not the case. As she makes clear in her famous West Point address, people absorb the basics of philosophy from their culture all the time, including especially people who disdain or disregard philosophy.

In short, if you have it pounded into your head from every direction that alruism is a moral ideal and that you owe everything to society (e.g., "give back to the community"), you will almost certainly end up being an altruist unless you question what others say and think more about the issue than most do. And you will think socialists are on the moral side of the argument we are having now. You may never have even heard of the likes of Immanuel Kant, or Plato, or St. Augustine, but you will be generally following their philosophical guidance anyway.

Gus

Anonymous said...

Gus,
We seem to be talking past one another. Robert Tracinski got booted out of some objectivistist organisation for claiming that humans learn simple concepts, then progressively build on that. Googling this point shows that some educators agree with this model of human growth. This differs from Rands approach of teaching the highest level concepts first, then the lower level concepts that naturally follow. Concepts have a tree structure, as her book on concepts show, remember?
Hence teaching proper economics leads students to more readily grasp higher level concepts such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I have downloaded many FEE books, and they have strengthened all my convictions, including Rands philosophy. So Rands criticism of FEE wasn't spot on.

Gus Van Horn said...

Anon.,

I have no knowledge of or comment on Robert Traciniski's membership in any particular Objectivist organization, but that is beside the point, anyway.

Rand taught that concepts are hierachical, but the idea that concepts should be taught from the highest -- presumably most abstract -- level first is not an accurate description of the kind of pedagogy I recall any Objectivist recommending. (It would be impossible, anyway, since concepts are formed, at least at first, by integrating and differentiating from numerous concretes one has observed or learned about.

The below is a direct quote from Ayn Rand on concept formation, taken from the chapter "Concept-Formation" in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology:

"The child's mind isolates two or more tables from other objects, by focusing on their distinctive characteristic: their shape. He observes that their shapes vary, but have one characteristic in common: a flat, level surface and support(s). He forms the concept "table" by retaining that characteristic and omitting all particular measurements, not only the measurements of the shape, but of all the other characteristics of tables (many of which he is not aware of at the time).

"An adult definition of "table" would be: "A man-made object consisting of a flat, level surface and support(s), intended to support other, smaller objects." Observe what is specified and what is omitted in this definition: the distinctive characteristic of the shape is specified and retained; the particular geometrical measurements of the shape (whether the surface is square, round, oblong or triangular, etc., the number and shape of supports, etc.) are omitted; the measurements of size or weight are omitted; the fact that it is a material object is specified, but the material of which it is made is omitted, thus omitting the measurements that differentiate one material from another; etc. Observe, however, that the utilitarian requirements of the table set certain limits on the omitted measurements, in the form of "no larger than and no smaller than" required by its purpose. This rules out a ten-foot tall or a two-inch tall table (though the latter may be sub-classified as a toy or a miniature table) and it rules out unsuitable materials, such as non-solids.
"

First, Rand is showing that children learn low-level concepts on their own.

Second, walking through this example, I think it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to teach a child the higher-level concept "furniture" first, absent some experience forming concepts from concretes, and then "table" from that, and based on that, I find your claims regarding Rand and other Objectivists questionable.

Having said that, I don't think FEE's work is completely useless: It can help advocates of capitalism better understand economics (for example), but that isn't Rand's criticism. Consider the well-known fact FEE needn't point out that socialism has failed every time it has been tried on a national scale. People are still falling for it. Why? Because they think/wish/hope that what socialists say about caring for the poor Others is true and good. And because of that, they are willing to give socialism another chance or at least swallow the idea that it wasn't executed well or wasn't really tried last time.

By not (at least at its beginning, or as far as I can tell, now) emphasizing that capitalism is good, FEE was/is fatally ceding the moral high ground to the enemies of capitalism. This causes people to be less worried about understanding the actual merits of "evil" capitalism or learn that our current system isn't actually capitalism, for that matter.

Gus

Anonymous said...

I've read and re read the original post. Good economics will show to a open minded, reasonable person that collectivism doesn't work. I have read something like 8 books from FEEs site. They talk of trade - win-win. mutual consent for mutual gain. That hits altruism on the head. In all these books, show how government meddling in the interest of the common good, only makes things worse.
Your Randian "emphasizing that capitalism is good, FEE was/is fatally ceding the moral high ground to the enemies of capitalism" isn't true just because Rand said it over and over and over. How can it be if trade as taught by FEE is a two way street. Two people motivated by self interest, putting their desires first, seeking maximum profit? Rand had this quirk of running down her competition. She frequently took cheap shots at Christianity and American conservatives. Exalting yourself by putting others down is a bully trait. So I am not surprised that she put down FEE.
PS her claim that conservatives are worse than liberals because liberals don't know any better is laughable. Liberalism is just a cloak for criminality.
I'm disappointed that you sound like a Randian parrot.

Gus Van Horn said...

Anon.,

You are rude. I happen to agree with Ayn Rand about many things. Saying so, or saying those things, or applying what I have learned is an inevitable result. And I occasionally run into someone like you who insults me on that basis. Ho hum. I recommend finding a more constructive use of your time than looking for reasons to insult people. I am done wasting my time on this conversation.

The passage I quoted in the post, for anyone here who is interested in learning something, was from a 1946 letter by Ayn rand to Leoneard Read, who founded FEE. Since then, we have witnessed millions of deaths due to socialism and the misery and collapse of numerous socialist regimes. And yet people keep turning to socialism -- which conservatives oppose every time as "impractical." If misery and death following socialism are no coincidence, neither is widespread adoption of socialism against opponents who weakly call it idealistic, but impractical (or similar variants. This was the point Rand was trying to get Read to see over sixty years ago. If socialism has been tried and failed for a century, fighting it on economic grounds alone has been tried and failed for at least six decades now.

FEE is doing valuable work, but it is only part of what we need to successfully defeat socialism this time, and to keep it at bay afterwards.

Gus