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Ayn Rand, Whittaker Chambers, and a Disturbing Question About the State of Conservatism Today
In National Review in 1957, Whittaker Chambers published a review of Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged so devastating that Rand never again spoke to William F. Buckley, Jr., the founder and editor of NR.
Now a young friend, having just discovered this review for himself, has sent me an email, quoting a passage he considers “brilliant” (I do, too), and then asking a question about conservatism today.
The passage from Chambers’s review:
Here occurs a little rub whose effects are just as observable in a free enterprise system, which is in practice materialist (whatever else it claims or supposes itself to be), as they would be under an atheist Socialism, if one were ever to deliver that material abundance that all promise. The rub is that the pursuit of happiness, as an end in itself, tends automatically, and widely, to be replaced by the pursuit of pleasure, with a consequent general softening of the fibers of will, intelligence, spirit. No doubt, Miss Rand has brooded upon that little rub. Hence, in part, I presume, her insistence on “man as a heroic being” “with productive achievement as his noblest activity.” For, if Man’s “heroism” (some will prefer to say: “human dignity”) no longer derives from God, or is not a function of that godless integrity which was a root of Nietzsche’s anguish, then Man becomes merely the most consuming of animals, with glut as the condition of his happiness and its replenishment his foremost activity. So Randian Man, at least in his ruling caste, has to be held “heroic” in order not to be beastly. And this, of course, suits the author’s economics and the politics that must arise from them.
My friend’s question:
Am I wildly off base here? Isn’t “conservatism” well on its way to selling its soul and descending into such bestially materialistic depths?
Good people of Ricochet, how are we to answer my young friend?
Published in General
Isn’t materialism the belief that its better to not have billions of people starving to death?
Call me crazy here.
At the risk of wading well my beyond my depth here, I’d say that because “conservatism” is more cultural than political “it” doesn’t have a soul to sell. Because it is cultural and therefore “organic” it evolves and changes over time, hopefully (from a conservative perspective) not too quickly. Is it changing, yes. The great tragedy would be if it didn’t .
I don’t think “conservatism” is well on its way to selling its soul. I think the United States of America has distanced itself from the Judeo-Christian values that it was based on. Atheism is now our official State religion. As a result, we are becoming a society where anything goes. The examples of “beastly” behavior are all around us. Watch an episode of the “Kardashians” if you don’t believe me.
Peter, I’d tell your friend that it isn’t just conservatism. Our entire culture has been oozing toward materialism for awhile now. These things are difficult to pin down with any accuracy, and accounts will vary by a few centuries. I think it’s fair to say, though, that the ’60s saw an acceleration of the pursuit of glut and it doesn’t seem to have slowed too much. Or, maybe, we’ve always pursued glut with just as much gusto as we do now – only we now lack the strong cultural or political counter-measures that previously managed to focus our energies and keep our pursuits on the virtuous side, on balance.
I won’t call you crazy because that is indeed one of the meanings of materialism. Prioritizing material necessity and comfort over spiritual values. Of course the two are related, it’s just a matter of which one you consider to be serving which as the ultimate end.
However, I think Chambers meant “materialism” in its other sense that there is no spiritual realm – nothing exists except for matter and its movements.
One can be a materialist in the first sense and still believe in and value the spiritual and God. One cannot do that if they are a materialist in the second sense. It seems to me and my limited knowledge that much of philosophy has been driven by an attempt to be a materialist in the second sense without having to forgo the benefit of the spiritual from the first sense.
Yes. Conservatism has increasingly become anti-liberalism. As such, it has become primarily concerned with the order of things rather than the nature of things. The most important tools in the conservative toolbox then are economic theory and data.
This is quite limiting and makes us dull boys.
Chambers in several passages accuses Rand of dictatorial tendencies. You would hope that a former devotee of Vladimir Lenin would be more circumspect when making such claims about a woman who suffered personally under his rule. Surrounded by the achievements of a free country Chambers was taken in by Communism while Rand had nothing to do with it in a time and place where becoming a communist would have benefited her greatly. Their respective literary merits aside, that tells you enough about both individuals.
Pass on to your young friend any and all links to the skirmishes here between conservatives and libertarians.
That Chambers piece was brilliant. In it he put words to the idea I’ve felt lurking for a while about the Utopian underpinnings of libertarianism.
Peter, I’d also tell your friend that yearning for the spiritual and the meaningful is a fundamental human trait. Because of that, the culture is never closed to a reawakening, to having that particular itch scratched. As many on Ricochet have stated, I believe that that project must happen from the ground up, with politics being the lagging indicator of success. It starts in our families, our neighborhoods, our schools, churches.
Modern philosophers place too much faith in systems, economic and political. None can circumvent the temptations, challenges, and complexities of human nature.
Certainly, some systems are objectively preferable to others. But neither democracy nor capitalism can save Man from himself. Freedom is not a guarantee of goodness or prosperity. It is only opportunity.
Our mistake is not that we cherish free enterprise and elections, but that we prioritize modes of opportunity over willingness to engage that opportunity with respect and charity. Morality and liberty rely on each other, like a body and mind. We cannot treat one while ignoring the other.
Or, as Chambers put it in his essay:
“At that point, in any materialism, the main possibilities open up to Man. 1) His tragic fate becomes, without God, more tragic and much lonelier. In general, the tragedy deepens according to the degree of pessimism or stoicism with which he conducts his “hopeless encounter between human questioning and the silent universe.” Or, 2) Man’s fate ceases to be tragic at all. Tragedy is bypassed by the pursuit of happiness. Tragedy is henceforth pointless. Henceforth man’s fate, without God, is up to him, and to him alone. His happiness, in strict materialist terms, lies with his own workaday hands and ingenious brain. His happiness becomes, in Miss Rand’s words, “the moral purpose of his fife.””
+1. Very well stated.
It seems that the “Socon” portion of our alliance attempts to prevent that soul-selling.
As Adam Smith demonstrated much earlier, production must precede consumption. To be able to enjoy something of pleasure, someone must produce it first. And to be able to partake in something pleasurable, you must first produce something to trade for it. So pleasure-seeking is unsustainable without first having given of yourself in a creative, productive effort that makes other people better off. I would argue that such a process is inherently civilizing and enriches the soul.
I would also argue that it’s consistent with the values of the Hebrew Bible. God engaged in six days of creation — and then rested on the seventh. We (at a minimum, the Jewish people) are enjoined to emulate that behavior. Adam and Eve — representing their descendents, the entire human race — are told by God (Gen. 1:28), “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
The threat to this order is not materialistic philosophy, but a culture and society that encourages people to consume without first producing.
The connection, I’d argue, between political and cultural conservatism is in the notion of self-interest. Capitalism is driven by self-interest. Limited government is based on self-interest. And so on.
But it’s easy to conflate, mistake, blur, or mangle the notion of self-interest. It’s easy to descend into mere selfishness. It’s tempting to resort to materialism.
Self-interest is not the same thing as selfishness.
To explain … we’re describing the process of making decisions. Decisions always involve decision-makers, and for whose benefit the decisions are made. Those are two different things. For example, as a parent, I make the decisions, but they’re for the benefit of my children. The decisions come from my self-interest, but they’re not for my self-benefit.
Decision is (at least) a two-place equation: whose interest drives the decision (self-interest; I decide), and for whose benefit. The basis of conservatism is all about self-interest, not self-benefit. Freedom, in essence, means that if a decision affects you, you get to make the decision – not government.
Rand’s philosophy of egoism, I argue, mangles that distinction. Her “egoism” is poorly disguised selfishness.
Yes, Chambers was taken in, but he discovered his error (philosophic materialism generally) and corrected himself. Rand saw the horror and responded with her own philosophic materialism, apparently not realizing (I hope) that Chambers is correct that while hers might “[differ] at the top in avowed purpose, and possibly in conflict there, at bottom they are much the same thing” with the main question being: “who is to run that world in whose interests, or perhaps, at best, who can run it more efficiently?”
Any Rand may be on her way to materialism, but that’s different from conservatism. Not all conservatives are Randian.
The OP was about conservatism and many of the responses have addressed the culture as a whole. What evidence is there that conservatism is drifting towards materialism?
Wow, this kid must be a tough sell. If anything, on the “materialistic” arguments of the last 20 years, conservatives have lost. How else do you explain Obamacare, the National Debt, our maze-like tax system, the expanding of all the alphabet agencies such as the EPA and OSHA, the increase in regulation, etc.? So, if we’re going to the depths, we mustn’t be descending very fast, if at all.
Whereas, on the moral issues over the last 20 years, conservatives have won. More and more people believe abortion is wrong, and abortions are down. Gun ownership is up. Anti-gay marriage propositions win in every state where they’re up for a vote–it’s liberal judges who overturn the results. We’ve proven Government can’t take the place of parents. On and on and on.
And we’ve done it against the most powerful institutions in the world: The US public education system–both grade schools and college, and the Federal Government with its jobs-for-life bureaucrats.
What’s the kid want?
Conservatism, to the extent that it allows and even promotes free markets and the free pursuit of happiness, is not endorsing the moral excesses that can occur as a result. It simply acknowledges that there is no conservative alternative to allowing free markets and the pursuit of happiness. Chambers and many paleo conservatives see those excesses as a “rub”, as if they are the necessary consequence or even the intended outcome of the very concept of modern classical liberalism. But what do they propose as an alternative? The only alternative would seem to be empowering a state to prevent those excesses. Depending on what excesses you’re talking about, there’s probably no conservative way to do that. Endorsing a paleo-communitarian worldview is fine, but that’s not an alternative to allowing free markets. The only ways to prevent the excesses of liberty is by effective moral example, education, and leadership, or else by coercive government power. The first is conservative, but when paleos criticize modern classical liberalism, it always seems like they are insinuating the second as the solution.
Tell your friend he should be more concerned with fundamental transformation toward socialism that inhibits the ability to gain material wealth and justifies the theft and redistribution of the earnings and property of more productive members of society than whether a conservative might be bestially obsessed with materialism.
Limited government, I believe as the Founders intended, also means that citizens shouldn’t have to devote more than a reasonable amount having to deal with their neighbors and when they engage in commerce they might do so with a minimum amount of government regulation, taxation and influence…nor should they be preoccupied with examining the intent or delving into the souls of their neighbors.
I find most reviews of Rand’s writing to be problematic or incomplete. Yes, she certainly had her flaws but there is so much in Atlas Shrugged that seems to be playing out today that we would be wise to take her warnings about collectivism and the attack on the individual very seriously.
Whoa. Who says that Rand is articulating modern classical liberalism? Isn’t there much more to that tradition than productivity? Not so to Rand where productivity=morality (if morality exists at all). I suppose if you had to choose a materialism then there are worse materialisms to choose. Anyway, Chambers isn’t criticizing classical liberalism as much as the idea that pursuit of happiness grounded in nothing is a solid enough foundation by itself to produce an actual, productive, desirable, and sustainable society. Without a firm grounding (which Rand does not provide) I think Chambers is correct that the pursuit of happiness will widely devolve into the pursuit of pleasure which weakens the conditions necessary for prosperity and liberty.
Huh?
I am wary and weary of arguments (especially about libertarianism) that envision some extreme and extraordinary end-result and then claim logical and small steps toward that direction are therefore mis-steps. We have a Constitution which is much more Ayn Rand than it is Whittaker Chambers. Can we wander in Rand’s direction just for a little while? Forget Ayn Rand, how about the Constitution?
We are never going to become a Randian world. There’s nothing to fear from that. We are a world of socialists and moochers and it will be a very long time until these forces are subdued.
They are not going to be subdued or vanquished by some self-appointed moralists crafting a perfect society in the abstract, unwilling to take steps in the direction of freedom.
I’m a social conservative, but in a way, I sort of concur with Brian. The progressive project has recently done great harm to the engine of our prosperity, and they still hold the political, cultural, media and educational high ground. Conservatives are right to vigorously oppose that harm, but we are a faction within a minority party, and so are far from reversing the damage. It’s a rather odd time to start asking if we have sold our soul. It’s like when you’re losing 99-58 to the San Antonio Spurs, and you start arguing over how much beef vs. chicken will be served at the victory party. Uh, guys, we have to win the series first.
A quick run down of the status of social issues:
– Gay marriage. Game over — the culture has spoken.
– Life (vs. abortion). I don’t see evidence that conservatism has lost its commitment.
– Family. There are two major things killing the family — welfare and divorce. Conservatism still has the commitment to reform welfare. Divorce? The culture spoke decades ago.
– Religious freedom? Conservatism is clearly committed.
My verdict? Soul intact.
Read some Ayn Rand. She’ll explain it all.
Only if you believe in extremes: unfettered consumption or starvation. Most of us don’t.
I think all of her heroes were libertine and self-indulgent, using exchange value and personal desire as the arbiter of right action. It’s just that they were also so cartoonishly limited to the point of not displaying desires for anything except engineering and rough sex.
None of that link speaks to authenticity. Also, her definition of altruism there is another example of defining things using the blackest of blacks and the whitest of whites – who but she thinks of altruism that way, of demanding self-abnegation and the rest?