I am more than a little disturbed by all these pieces coming out about why the left has no Ayn Rand as a guide or how Ronald Reagan was a "socialist" compared to Paul Ryan. One has to be more than a little careful not to elevate these two icons to acceptable status. Let's keep Ayn Rand in perspective. She was a talented mass market novelist who wrote David and Goliath myths about a super individualist versus the behemoth society. Her philosophy was not even second rate. Ronald Reagan did not save the economy; his legacy was a crumbling foundation for growth and a rising tide of injustice. It could be seen as a positive to fail to measure up to either of them.
The right's portrayal of Paul Ryan as a Reaganite is not that far from the truth, but the right then goes on to mythologize and entirely distort the Reagan years. Under Reagan in the 1980s, wages stopped growing, productivity grew at historically slow rates, investment was soft, and the deficit never came down to the levels promised. That deficit was an albatross around the neck of George H.W. Bush, his successor. Meanwhile, deregulation was unloosed, only to be given further impetus by the Clinton administration. The right goes so far as to attribute the productivity boom of the second half of the 1990s -- that is, after the Clinton tax hike -- to Reagan. How can we take such claims seriously?
Does Ryan go much farther than Reagan did in terms of changing Medicare from a guarantee to a poorly financed premium program? Sure. Would he cut other programs to almost zero? Yes. Did Reagan? No, but probably because he couldn't politically, not because he didn't want to. Maybe Reagan had a more generous heart than Ryan's -- he was once a lefty and never a rich kid like Ryan, and his dad worked for the New Deal. But he played the race card in California and on his way to the White House. Is there anything uglier these days than his attacks on "welfare queens" were then?
In the end, Romney and Ryan are both preaching Reagonomics: cut taxes and worry about closing the deficit sometime in the future. Neither tells us the loopholes they'd close or the other programs they'd cut to allegedly meet their deficit targets. Their aim is to reduce the size of government, as was Reagan's and Milton Friedman's. The deficit is a secondary consideration, for all the blather about it.
As for why the left doesn't have an Ayn Rand, I say thank goodness it doesn't follow a great over-simplifier like her. Her sexually charged novels focusing on an individualist hero appealed to adolescents or those who still yearned for those years. Her economics were derived from her individualism. A Russian by birth, her thinking was animated by her loathing of Soviet totalitarianism -- certainly understandable. But she became an ideologue, not a disinterested intellectual. She had no serious friendships with the likes of Hayek and collaborated with few schooled economists other than Murray Rothbard, who later left her circle. She was really more a cult leader than a thinker.
The nation turned conservative in the 1970s and began reading Rand, Hayek and Friedman again. Milton Friedman's writings really only caught on well after he published, but he was all over the mass media in the 1970s and won a Nobel prize, which would have been unlikely had it existed when he started out. These books were very accessible as part of the right's appeal with the simplistic nature of their economics, all captured by a demand and supply curve that economists as far back as Alfred Marshall warned against taking too seriously. Today, the entire economy is portrayed as a supply and demand curve crossing at equilibrium. But we have cause and effect mixed up here. Americans became more conservative not due to the literature, but for a complex number of reasons.
But there have been great leftist successes. J.K. Galbraith was more articulate than any of these conservative authors and wrote major bestsellers. The counter-culture of the 1960s was groomed on Marcuse and others. I, myself, as a student wrote a summary of such writing for the curriculum of the Harvard Business School. Why is there no return to these kinds of authors -- to Harrington, Rachel Carson, Betty Friedan even Eldrige Cleaver? The answer is that the nation and its press are pretty conservative and seek books that reinforce these views.
Perhaps we will get a novel out of Occupy Wall Street that will move young people. I hope so. It seems ripe with possibilities. But there are other books to be read or at least dipped into. The most recent mass phenomenon was a book by French author Stephane Hessel called Time for Outrage! in English. It reportedly sold millions of copies and helped ignite the Arab and Spanish Spring. It is a highly accessible and moving and angry work. Robert Nozick was the popular libertarian philosopher of the 1970s, but John Rawls won the day among serious thinkers. A lot of writers have written about the importance of government recently. Stiglitz has written well about inequality.
So let's not demand another Ayn Rand, who wrote essentially low-brow literature, or another Reagan, who is now mostly a mythological figure. Let's keep our sights higher and avoid drawing the wrong conclusions from the right's past success.
Cross-posted from Next New Deal.
Spencer Critchley: The Secret of Paul Ryan's Love for Ayn Rand
Paul Ryan is no Rand or Hayek guy. His budget proposal doesn't balance the budget for more than 20 years later, and that even assumes incredibly optimistic GDP growth.
Lets not forget, the term "cut" in DC means a cut in the planned increases. Ryans budget doesn't cut anything. Of course, Obama has never put forth a budget. He has no guts. Only the clueless would vote for him.
I'm ready to talk about Rand point by point, but essentually, after studying quite a lot, I'm not very eager to waste time on this issue. If Objectivism is a philosophy, Scientology is a religion.
“One has to be more than a little careful not to elevate these two icons to acceptable status. “
Wow, talk about over the top rhetoric...one can disagree with Ayn Rand’s philosophy or Reagan’s political stewardship without denigrating them as unacceptable. I’ve noticed that when liberals cannot when an argument, they personally vilify their opponents. Why is that?
To say that Reagan’s legacy is one of a crumbing foundation of growth and rising injustice is at best a misrepresentation of the facts. Look at the state of the economy when Reagan took office and when he left (as well as the performance in-between) and tell me the U.S. economy did not improve--significantly. Only the most die-hard liberal ideologue could claim different. Yes, debt also went up under Reagan, but that was due to Congress’s insatiable appetite for spending (led by Democrats) which exceeded revenues, despite a growing economy. BTW, what was this “rising tide of injustice”?
I have noticed that conservatives seem to talk to themselves about other people they don't directly address, preferring their own generalizations about them to actual discussion, where their precious beliefs might be challenged. Why is that?
Ok, I'll bite...what beliefs of mine would you like to challenge?
Regardless of how you feel about social programs or what your spending priorities are, the government needs to live within its means. Right now we’re borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend--that is unsustainable. Pretending that we can continue to do so because “the US budget isn’t the same as a household budget”...as Krugman likes to point out...is foolish and irresponsible. Our budget deficit is well over a trillion dollars...which programs are the Democrats willing to reduce or eliminate to balance the budget?
The reason the left doesn’t have an Ayn Rand is that no one is up to the intellectual task. I’ve seen a lot of smears and ad hominem attacks against her but have yet to read a single article that pointed out an inconsistency or contradiction in her philosophy. On the other hand, if I had a dollar for every inconsistency or contradiction seen in liberal philosophy, as espoused on this site, I could retire.
Perhaps simplistic because market economists trying to demonstrate that wealth is created by producing more than you consume requires a LOT less complication and misdirection than Keynesians trying to demonstrate that wealth is created by consuming more than you produce.
I actually love that analogy! Let me extend it: Keynes merely created a lifeboat for capitalism, while modern Keynesians have decided rather than restrict it's use to that of an emergency lifeboat, we will all hop in and pretend it's a luxury liner. They have turned the lifeboat into the Titanic. And now that the Titanic is in trouble, guess what? We have no lifeboat... it's being used as the main vessel!
I am not afraid to admit that capitalism, since it is never really separate from the state, can stand to use occasional help from the state. The problem is, what are the odds that those high enough in authority to actually effect change know what the hell they're doing? They will hear arguments from all corners and, as always, will choose the argument that conforms to the political objectives of the moment. Political objectives generally favor consumption over production.
To have a left-wing Ayn Rand, you'd need a left-wing that's blinded by prejudice, consumed with fantasies of self-aggrandizement and victimization, for whom the flattery of an author of cheesy autoerotica would give validation.
Left wing politics does not need that kind of validation. It is the opposite of Rand's proto-teabagger politics. Liberalism is the politics of progress, of a cohesive society, or respecting human dignity, of improvement of the lives of the poor. It used to be the politics of kind-hearted religious people, until kind-hearted religiosity went into decline. The left wing of 2012 is actually fairly conservative. We are self-aware, and we don't need cheap novels or a cheap guru to make us feel worth.
Based on how well this fits the left you should have 10 already. The left is very blinded by prejudice, consumed with fantasies of victimization.
We know what to look for in deviant leaders.
http://jimcgreevy.com/gvdc/Natl_Debt_Chart.html
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/04/opinion/04reich-graphic.html?ref=sunday
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/recession_cause.htm