'The poor deserve to die; the rich deserve unmediated power.' What do you think?

[Solopower]

According to George Monbiot, Objectivism is a belief system that contends that selfishness is good, altruism evil, empathy and compassion irrational and destructive. It's Ayn Rand's philosophy and becoming very popular in the US.

It's the perfect justification for capitalism. This seems to be what has informed Tory policy for most of the 20th century and is probably behind the government's desire to reduce the role of the State - they believe in the survival of the fittest. The rich survive because they deserve to. The rest of us are runts and parasites and they want rid of us.

'Apart from the police, the courts and the armed forces, there should be no role for government: no social security, no public health or education, no public infrastructure or transport, no fire service, no regulations, no income tax.'

Could it work?

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/05/new-right-ayn-rand-marx

If selfishness is good, then why the need for the police, courts and armed forces? Would this be to stop the selfish, feckless poor attempting to slit the throats of the virtuously selfish rich?

And what happens when only the rich are left? Who will wipe their bottoms, then? Or will they forget their selfishness and nobly shoot themselves when the time comes? Oh, silly me - their children will do it for them. Which means a fair part of their selfish lives will be spent concocting ways to prevent their children from doing that, rather than accepting their fate like the selfish old tossers ought to.

At least Ayn Rand has the b*lls to say what Dave, George, Liam and the rest of their buddies think, but realise it won't get them elected.

One assumes the security forces would be there just to keep the slave populace in order?

And who can the rich exploit if they've got rid of all the underlings???? It's much too hard making a decent profit out of people who aren't deeply stupid.

I guess it means getting rid of people who won't or can't do as they are told, unless they are ruthless enough to get rid of anyone who doesn't agree with them.

It sounds a bit like going back to the days when everyone had to watch out for the next Viking raid. Hardly a step forwards, is it? Why on earth did we move away from that and seek more peace and stability, I wonder?

I think it is a horrible philosophy and it is definitely being pushed and promoted by some people. I think it is about dictatorship and the end of democracy. It really serves the elites. Just like Marxism, which pretended to serve the proletariat, but really served the elite, her philosophy pretends to support capitalism, but really serves the elite.

She is no conservative, she scorns religion and God, just like the materialist Marxists. She is a materialist just like the Marxists and just like them, she does noit value religion and compassion. Just like them, she argues in favour of the elites, the planners who think they are more worthy than the ordinary people.

As the interviewer in the following interview says, around the 4.00 minute mark, she wishes to destroy almost every edifice of the contemporary American way of life, just as the elitist Marxist wanted to do.

This isn't our system. This is a system that serves the elite, just like Marxism.

Monbiot makes good points about it, but is wrong to imply that cutting the 50% rate of tax has anything to do with this horrible system. Is he pretending that cutting tax from 50% to 49% is inspired by this horriblke philosophy?

The real elite probably don't even pay 50% tax, with all their advisers and consultants.

If she were alive today, she might possibly be a green and pretend that she wanted to "save the planet" for the elite and from those ordinary people who are supposed to be "destroying" it.

I thought many supporters of the Tea Party movement were from the Christian right? How can they openly support a philosophy which advocates selfishness? Is there a branch of Christianity which says that Jesus was a deluded old fool who spent too much time thinking of heaven and not enough time thinking of ways of making money out of his healing powers and persuasive tongue?

Sh would probably say that the ordinary people don't serve to eat meat because that contributes to using the elite's resources. She is all about "derserving it". Of course, to her the elite would "deserve" to eat meat, it's just the ordinbary people who would have to be kept on "sustainability" rations of food and fuel.

Unfortunately this philosophy has been hyped by the media and movies and "intellectuals", and many ordinary people, who have never read it, have been duped by the elite media which promotes it.

Monbiot is correct when he says the following

"Like all philosophies, Objectivism is absorbed, secondhand, by people who have never read it."

Ordinary people are often duped by the power of the corporate mediia and their cheerleaders, just as they are by "climate catastrophe".

When the elite wish to dupe ordinary people, they pretend that their views are scientific. She calls her philosophy "objectivist" and "climate catastrophe" is said to be "scientific".

She claimed her philosophy was "rational", just like the Marxists claimed that their philosophy was "rational" and "modern". Both philosophies were opposed to the protector of ordinary people - the so-called "unscientific", "irrational" belief in God.

They both remove God from the system and replace God with "the elite". It is not God who can "save the planet" from us ordinary sinners using up the elite's reosurces, it's only the elite who can "save the planet" for us.

She believed that only the "elite" could save America, and they tell us only the "elite" can "save the planet".

Are you drunk?

Marxism wasn't about giving power to an elite, as far as I remember - quite the reverse. They wanted the people to share the power, redistribution of wealth - that's what communism is about, isn't it?

Maybe it's because too many of the most powerful human beings in the world are like AR describes them - ruthless and selfish - that Marxism or Anarchism hasn't worked so far. Maybe we're just not ready for it.

From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs. What could be fairer than that?

Are you drunk?

'They wanted the people to share the power, redistribution of wealth - that's what communism is about, isn't it?'

Was that why they rounded people up by the millions and sent them to gilags and to Siberia? Was that why they sent anyone who objected to psychiatric institutions?

Judge people by their actions, not by their words.
They stripped ordinary people of their private property, their private wealth and their private businesses and they placed it into teh hands of the elite, the planners who they said were looking after the interests of the proletariat.

They never allowed opposition parties and they shot people trying to escape their prison over the Berlin Wall. They were a ruthless elite who duped the people.

'From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs. What could be fairer than that?'

From each all their private wealth and to the elite all of their property - that is what it really means and that is what Orwell described in Animal Farm.

It's a morality really, for all she deems it rational etc.
All that talk of 'deserving' & 'should'

Of course it's horrible.
No political philosophy is worthy of any serious consideration if it doesn't even aim to improve the lot of most people. Both communism and capitalism have that aim, whether they achieve it or not is a different thread.

''They wanted the people to share the power, redistribution of wealth'

Then why did people try to climb the wall, to breathe the air of freedom? Why did they celebrate when the boot was removed from their necks and the tanks departed from their streets?

The people hoped and prayed that one day the "evil empire" would fall, that the gulags would be just a memory and that the elite would finally be off their backs and that they would be free.

They hoped that

"From each according to his crimes; to each according to his deeds"

Never mind communism Claig - what do you think about horrible Rand's horrible philosophy?

Not that I'm putting words in your mouth - wouldn't dare

Who is they, Claig?

There are ruthless capitalist dictatorships too, and right-wing states that do all of the above.

Would I have wanted to live in communist Russia or China at the time of the Cultural Revolution? No. But nor would I fancy being poor and black in the US right now.

The problem with this sort of circular argument is that none of us really knows what we are talking about. Few of us have first-hand experience of more than one or two ways of life. We all have to rely on what we're told by whichever newspaper we read, and the arguments we fling around about atrocities seem to cancel each other out.

If you want to judge communism by how it was applied in a certain country fifty years ago, would it be fair to judge capitalism by the economic crisis it has created at this time and in this place?

I have said it is a horrible philosophy and supports the elite over ordinary people. Just like communism, it sought to destroy religion, compassion and all the edifices of our civilization, for the benefit of the elite and to the detriment of the people.