“was the remark about the rich not getting that way by stealing from others (I paraphrase from memory) — which I believe is true in the large part but can by no means be accepted as unchanging truth”
That’s about it. In a capitalist economy, people get rich by satisfying other’s needs and expanding productive capacity, not by making them poor so as to prey on them more easily. That’s what Statists do through the agency of big government, which is why the USSR collapsed and why the USA will too if we don’t change.
I realize that there are many caveats and limiting variations on this theme, e.g., scammers, cronyism, cabals, corporatism. It was just the tag end of sentence meant to underscore a general truth, not the proclamation of an unchanging truth.
“Marx argued that man’s lower nature would doom capitalism to be overtaken by communism, with socialism as an interim stage on the path.”
Marx was not a prophet. He was an astute critic (and an impudent one at that). The accuracy of his predictions might have as much to do with the attractiveness of his ideas (to a certain type of person) for political rather than technological solutions to man’s social problems, and to the machinations of the Communist Party (and offshoots) that his Manifesto inspired, than to his prescience or analysis.
I found Pope Benedict’s discussion of Marx’s influence interesting in points 20, 21 of “Spe Salvi” (Saved in Hope (2007)). You might, too (see, www.vatican.va). He concludes on this note: “[Marx] forgot that man always remains man. He forgot man and he forgot man’s freedom. He forgot that freedom always remains also freedom for evil. He thought that once the economy had been put right, everything would automatically be put right. His real error is materialism: man, in fact, is not merely the product of economic conditions, and it is not possible to redeem him purely from the outside by creating a favorable economic environment.”
It appears that Marx made the same mistake as Rand.
I take your point about Rand’s incapacitating the virtues necessary to forestall evil. We agree. She made a virtue of vice, selfishness specifically, which is a losing proposition in the long run. Character is with us always. Nobody can be a pig in his business life without consequence to his life overall. And pigs, just like Orwell’s, are more suited to power lust than to freedom.
That is not to say that the pursuit of self-interest makes one a pig, which is why I’m a capitalist despite Rand’s excesses.
There are things about her I like. Her critique, like Marx’s is devastating. Perhaps we could say that the negative sides of each one’s oeuvre is penetrating. The positive sides are flawed, incomplete and dangerous if taken as gospel.
As an aside, your remarks suggested a different way to look at her, and Marx: through the lens provided by Alasdair MacIntyre in “Whose Justice? Which Rationality?”
Victory vies with Excellence as alternative grounding concepts for human action and moral evaluation. Each provides meaning to virtues such as justice or temperance. Both systems make reference to those words; they simply mean different things in each system. What is a virtue in one may be a vice in the other.
He argues that Excellence is the appropriate grounding mechanism, and that traditions arising out of Victory-centeredness are problematic on several grounds. Both Rand and Marx arise out of the latter.
Anyway, look, capitalism is just another "ism." The right for freely consenting adults to own and dispose of private property according to their own lights is quite provided for by "thou shalt not steal," and insisted upon in the declaration of independence, and probably in some other places like the Magna Carta that you'd know about but I wouldn't. An "ism" can't even approach it, and only diminishes it by reducing it from what it really is -- a dimension of liberty.
Capitalism -- imho -- is an ideal at best, an abused buzzword at worst. All ideals are imperfect and limited. Like "Darwinism," it's an attempt to secularize a law of nature -- to dethrone God. I think its time for thinking people to acknowledge that.
Atlas Shrugged woke me up when I was 21 -- right about the time it was waking everyone else up. It was good for that.
Rand was, like so many "atheists," obsessed with Christ, whether she knew it or not. Her hero was Christlike. Her Utopia was a 'promised land.' Unfortunately, ideals -- unachievable paradigms necessarily limited in dimension and therefore unreal -- are all atheist have. Marx was an idealist, too. Idealists always lead astray. Malcom X was an idealist. So was Hitler. Idealists are currently destroying America.
The real world is so much more cooperative to human welfare, if only they'd get their idealistic boots off its neck.
Glad to trade ideas with you. I never read long posts -- yours was an exception. Well done. The articulation of the argument about who pays for and who benefits from education was brilliant and needful.