The Ayn Rand Letter Vol. II, No.

10 February 12, 1973 An Untitled Letter--Part II

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Politically, statism breeds a swarm of "little Caesars," who are motivated by power-lust. Culturally, statism breeds still lower a species: a swarm of "little Neros," who sing odes to depravity while the lives of their forced audiences go up in smoke. I have said repeatedly that American intellectuals, with rare exceptions, are the slavish dependents and followers of Europe's intellectual trends. The notion of a cultural aristocracy established and financed by the government is so grotesque in this country that one wonders how an article such as Mr. Peregrine Worsthorne's got published here. Can you see any group or class in America posturing about in the "spirit of noblesse oblige"? Can you see Americans bowing to, say, Sir Burrhus Frederic (Skinner) or Dame Jane (Fonda), thanking them for their charitable contributions? Yet this is the goal of Britain's little Nerosand of their American followers. I refer you to my Letter of January 1, 1973, "To Dream the Non-Commercial Dream," for a discussion of why such "aristocrats" would have a vested interest in altruism and why they would be eager to pay a social price "for the privilege of exercising their talents." If, by "meritocracy," Mr. Worsthorne means a government-picked elite (for instance, the B.B.C.), then it is true that such an elite owes its privileges to luck (and pull) more than to merit. If he means the men of ability who demonstrate their merit in the free marketplace (of ideas or of material goods), then his notions are worse than false. Package-dealing is essential to the selling of such notions. Mr. Worsthorne's technique consists in making no distinction between these two kinds of "merit"which means: in seeing no difference between Homer and Nero. An article such as Mr. Worsthorne's (and its various equivalents) would not appear in a newspaper, without some heavy academic-philosophical base. Newspapers are not published by or for theoretical innovators. Journalists do not venture to propagate an outrageous theory unless they know that they can refer to some "reputable" source able, they hope, to explain the inexplicable and defend the indefensible. An enormous amount of unconscionable nonsense comes out of the academic world each year; most of it is stillborn. But when echoes of a specific work begin to spurt in the popular press, they acquire significance as an advance warningas an indication of the fact that some group(s) has a practical interest in shooting these particular bubbles into the country's cultural arteries. In the case of the new egalitarianism, an academic source does exist. It may not be the first book of that kind, but it is the one noticeably touted at present. It is A Theory of Justice by John Rawls, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. <arl_168> The New York Times Book Review (December 3, 1972) lists it among "Five Significant Books of 1972" and explains: "Although it was published in 1971, it was not widely reviewed until 1972, because critics needed time to get a grip on its complexities. In fact, it may not be properly understood until it has been studied for years..." The Book Review itself did not review it until July 16, 1972, at which time it published a front-page review written by Marshall Cohen, Professor of Philosophy at The City University of New York. The fact that the timing of that review coincided with the period of George McGovern's campaign may or may not be purely coincidental. Let me say that I have not read and do not intend to read that book. But since one cannot judge a book by its reviews, please regard the following discussion as the review of a review.

Mr. Cohen's remarks deserve attention in their own right. According to the review, Rawls "is not an equalitarian, for he allows that inequalities of wealth, power and authority may be just. He argues, however, that these inequalities are just only when they can reasonably be expected to work out to the advantage of those who are worst off. The expenses incurred [by whom?] in training a doctor, like the rewards that encourage better performance from an entrepreneur, are permissible only if eliminating them, or reducing them further, would leave the worst off worse off still. If, however, permitting such inequalities contributes to improving the health or raising the material standards of those who are least advantaged, the inequalities are justified. But they are justified only to that extentnever as rewards for 'merit,' never as the just deserts of those who are born with greater natural advantages or into more favorable social circumstances." I assume that this is an accurate summary of Mr. Rawls's thesis. The Book Review's plug of December 3 offers corroboration: "The talented or socially advantaged person hasn't earned anything: 'Those who have been favored by nature, whoever they are,' he [Rawls] writes, 'may gain from their good fortune only on terms that improve the situation of those who have lost out.'" ("...it is the parasites who are the moral justification for the existence of the producers, but the existence of the parasites is an end in itself..." John Galt, analyzing altruism, in Atlas Shrugged.) Certain evils are protected by their own magnitude: there are people who, reading that quotation from Rawls, would not believe that it means what it says, but it does. It is not against social institutions that Mr. Rawls (and Mr. Cohen) rebels, but against the existence of human talentnot against political privileges, but against realitynot against governmental favors, but against nature (against "those who have been favored by nature," as if such a term as "favor" were applicable here)not against social injustice, but against metaphysical "injustice," against the fact that some men are born with better brains and make better use of them than others are and do. The new "theory of justice" demands that men counteract the "injustice" of nature by instituting the most obscenely unthinkable injustice among men: deprive "those favored by nature" (i.e., the talented, the intelligent, the creative) of the right to the rewards they produce (i.e., the right to life)and grant to the incompetent, the stupid, the slothful a right to the effortless enjoyment of the rewards they could not produce, could not imagine, and would not know what to do with. Mr. Cohen would object to my formulation. "It is important to understand," he writes, "that according to Rawls it is neither just nor unjust that men are born with differing natural abilities into differing social positions. These are simply natural facts. [True, but if so, what is the purpose of the next sentence?] To be sure, no one deserves his greater natural capacity or merits a more favorable starting point in society. The natural and social 'lottery' is arbitrary from a moral point of view. <arl_169> But it does not follow, as the equalitarian supposes, that we should eliminate these differences. There is another way to deal with them. As we have seen, they can be put to work for the benefit of all and, in particular, for the benefit of those who are worst off." If a natural fact is neither just nor unjust, by what mental leap does it become a moral problem and an issue of justice? Why should those "favored by nature" be made to atone for what is not an injustice and is not of their making? Mr. Cohen does not explain. He continues: "What justice requires, then, is that natural chance and social fortune be treated as a collective resource and put to work for the common

good. Justice does not require equality, but it does require that men share one another's fate." This is the conclusion that required reading a 607-page book and taking a year "to get a grip on its complexities." That this is regarded as a new theory, raises the question of where Mr. Rawls's readers and admirers have been for the last two thousand years. There is more than this to the book, but let us pause at this point for a moment. Observe that Mr. Cohen's (and the egalitarians') view of man is literally the view of a children's fairy talethe notion that man, before birth, is some sort of indeterminate thing, an entity without identity, something like a shapeless chunk of human clay, and that fairy godmothers proceed to grant or deny him various attributes ("favors"): intelligence, talent, beauty, rich parents, etc. These attributes are handed out "arbitrarily" (this word is preposterously inapplicable to the processes of nature), it is a "lottery" among pre-embryonic non-entities, andthe supposedly adult mentalities concludesince a winner could not possibly have "deserved" his "good fortune," a man does not deserve or earn anything after birth, as a human being, because he acts by means of "undeserved, .... unmerited, .... unearned" attributes. Implication: to earn something means to choose and earn your personal attributes before you exist. Stuff of that kind has a certain value: it is a psychological confession projecting the enormity of that envy and hatred for the man of ability which are the root of all altruistic theories. By preaching the basest variant of the old altruist tripe, Mr. Rawls's book reveals altruism's ultimate meaningwhich may be regarded as an ethical innovation. But A Theory of Justice is not primarily a book on ethics: it is a treatise on politics. And, believe it or not, it might be taken by some people as a way to save capitalismsince Mr. Rawls allegedly offers a "new" moral justification for the existence of social inequalities. It is fascinating to observe against whom Mr. Rawls's polemic is directed: against the utilitarians. Virtually all the defenders of capitalism, from the nineteenth century to the present, accept the ethics of utilitarianism (with its slogan "The greatest happiness of the greatest number") as their moral base and justificationevading the appalling contradiction between capitalism and the altruist-collectivist nature of the utilitarian ethics. Mr. Cohen points out that utilitarianism is incompatible with justice, because it endorses the sacrifice of minorities to the interests of the majority. (I said this in 1946see my old pamphlet Textbook of Americanism.) If the alleged defenders of capitalism insist on clinging to altruism, Mr. Rawls is the retribution they have long since deserved: with far greater consistency than theirs, he substitutes a new standard of ethics for their old, utilitarian one: "The greatest happiness for the least deserving." His main purpose, however, is to revive, as a moral-political base, the theory of social contract, which utilitarianism had replaced. In the opinion of John Rawls, writes Mr. Cohen, "the social contract theory of Rousseau and Kant" (wouldn't you know it?) provides an alternative to utilitarianism. Mr. Cohen proceeds to offer a summary of the way Mr. Rawls would proceed to establish a "social contract." Men would be placed in what he calls the "original position" <arl_170> which is not a state of nature, but "a hypothetical situation that can be entered into at any time." Justice would be ensured "by requiring that the principles which are to govern society be chosen behind a 'veil of ignorance.' This veil prevents those who occupy the 'original position' from knowing their own natural abilities or their own positions in the social order. What they do not know they cannot turn to their own advantage; this ignorance guarantees that their choice will be fair. And since everyone in the 'original position' is assumed to be rational [?!], everyone will be convinced by the same arguments [??!!]. In the social contract tradition the choice of political principles is unanimous." No, Mr. Cohen does not explain or define what

that "original position" isprobably, with good reason. As he goes on, he seems to hint that that "hypothetical situation" is the state of the pre-embryonic human clay. "Rawls argues that given the uncertainties that characterize the 'original position' (men do not know whether they are well- or ill-endowed, rich or poor) and given the fateful nature of the choice to be made (these are the principles by which they will live) rational men would choose according to the 'maximin' rule of game theory. This rule defines a conservative strategyin making a choice among alternatives, we should choose that alternative whose worst possible outcome is superior to the worst possible outcome of the others." And thus, men would "rationally" choose to accept Mr. Rawls's ethical-political principles. Regardless of any Rube Goldberg complexities erected to arrive at that conclusion, I submit that it is impossible for men to make any choice on the basis of ignorance, i.e., using ignorance as a criterion: if men do not know their own identities, they will not be able to grasp such things as "principles to live by," "alternatives" or what is a good, bad or worst "possible outcome." Since in order to be "fair" they must not know what is to their own advantage, how would they be able to know which is the least advantageous (the "worst possible") outcome? As to the "maximin" rule of choice, I can annul Mr. Rawls's social contract, which requires unanimity, by saying that in long-range issues I choose that alternative whose best possible outcome is superior to the best possible outcome of the others. "You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live." (Atlas Shrugged.) (To be continued.)