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Argumentation Ethics: A Systematization
Systematic proof of a libertarian theory of justice.

Introduction

Argumentation ethics is an ethical system that underpins a libertarian theory of justice, providing a principled solution to all conflicts over physical resources (scarce goods). It offers a justification that follows the maxim held by every practicable ethical system: to establish rules which, if universally followed, would logically eliminate all conflicts from the very outset of humanity. These rules are known as the right of self-ownership and the appropriation of external goods (self-ownership), allowing one to derive a tautological principle from them, the NAP (Non-Aggression Principle), which is stated as follows:

Non-Aggression Principle (NAP): No person, or group of persons, has the right to initiate aggression against the person or property of another .[1]

“Aggression” is defined as the initiation of the use, or the threat of the use, of physical force against the person or property of another. Aggression is therefore synonymous with a violation of rights.

The reason this principle is considered tautological, given the right of self-ownership and the appropriation of external goods (self-ownership), is that by prohibiting violations of a person’s property rights, it becomes redundant—because the very concept of a right already carries with it the obligation not to violate it.

In the following sections, these rules will be defined and their existence demonstrated, culminating in the tautology of the NAP through a systematic analysis starting from the philosophical roots of argumentation ethics.

Goods, Scarcity, and Action

In order to explain that the scarcity of goods (and their intrinsic rivalry) and the capacity for rational agreement are the conditions of possibility for any competent ethical system, I will take as my starting point praxeology, which is the axiomatic-deductive science that studies human action (material object) from the point of view of the formal consequences of the description “human action” (formal object). This starting point is fundamental and inescapable because ethics is necessarily practical: norms take place in a practical dimension (they dictate what must be done, demanding operability) and aim at the proper regulation of certain human practices. We begin with a fundamental axiom:

Human Action (HA) : A deliberate attempt to move from a less satisfactory state to a more satisfactory one.

Explanation of the axiom: Dissatisfaction is the incentive to act; the acting subject does so because they are dissatisfied and seek to improve their situation—that is, to fulfill their desires. If this were not so, the human being would not act, since they would be completely satisfied, have no desires to fulfill, and therefore no action would occur. The mere attempt to refute this definition of “Human Action” involves acting to satisfy the desire to refute another’s claim, thus falling into a performative contradiction.

The term “performative contradiction” can be understood through the following example: suppose a subject asserts:

(p) I am not acting.

The proposition expressed by this statement is false under the conditions of possibility for expressing it. In order to assert anything, one must perform an action; therefore, if someone asserts that they are not acting, they are expressing a necessarily false proposition (in this praxeological context), because certain conditions of possibility must be met to make that statement, and one of them is performing an action. This type of contradiction centers on contradictions related to the very conditions of possibility for human action. Another example is that one must be alive in order to act; therefore, to assert that one is dead involves a contradiction, because to act one must be alive (a condition of possibility for human action).

In line with the argumentative thread, from the axiom HA the following theorem is derived: human beings, in order to act, make use of means that the subject deems suitable to satisfy their needs.

Explanation: Every action is performed on something—even the action of expressing something in language—with the aim of conveying meaning either introspectively or intersubjectively, and it is this “something” that takes on the term “good.” In the example given, certain components of the brain are used to express something in language, and other parts of the body—such as the sense of sight (and the other senses)—are used to learn the language and thereby express meaning through the practical interpretation of linguistic signs. A far more intuitive example is that of drinking water from a glass: the desire is to drink water, and the physical means (the glass) are used to achieve the end of the action (drinking water).

Having derived a definition of “good” from the axiom HA, we must next explain the notion of the problem of allocating “scarce goods,” which are synonymous with “physical resources.” The following example, presented by Hoppe, is very useful in this regard:

In Paradise there are only two scarce goods: a man’s physical body and the space it occupies. Crusoe and Friday each have only one body, and each can occupy only one place at a time. Thus, even in Paradise there can be disputes between Crusoe and Friday: they cannot both occupy the same place at the same time without coming into physical conflict. In view of this, even in Paradise there must be rules governing social order—rules concerning the proper placement and movement of bodies. Outside of Paradise, in the land of scarcity, there must be rules that regulate not only the use of bodies but also everything that is rare, in order to exclude any possible conflict. This is the problem of social order.[2]

We can speak of scarcity in the sense used in economic science: it is simply the relationship between ends and the economic goods that constitute the means to achieve them—where we say that the goods are insufficient in relation to the ends because each resource can be used for various purposes, but it is never enough for all of them at the same time, which forces us to choose and economize. In view of this, the economizing of goods becomes necessary: choosing among more or less urgent ends to which goods can serve as means. This aspect can be described as both fundamental and individual, since it is revealed even in the acts of economizing carried out by a single individual. Crusoe, even before meeting Friday on his path, also faces the need to economize means.

The second aspect of scarcity, more relevant from an ethical point of view—though related to the first—is called “rivalry.” This phenomenon means that a given good cannot be used simultaneously by two entities if they wish to use it to achieve incompatible objectives. This dimension of scarcity can be described as interpersonal. In addition to rarity—that is, the absence of unlimited superabundance of goods—the condition for the possibility of conflict is also the nonexistence of a perfect harmony of all interests. Taking into account these two conditions, Hoppe maintains that, although the subject matters of economics and ethics differ, they share a common starting point: the fact of scarcity, in Hoppe’s words:

The recognition of scarcity is not only the starting point of political economy; it is also the starting point of political philosophy. Of course, if there were an unlimited abundance of goods, there would be no economic problem. With an abundance of goods, my current use of them would not diminish my own future supply nor anyone else’s present or future supply, and no ethical issues of right and wrong, justice and injustice, could arise—because no conflict over the use of such goods could occur. Economics and ethics are only necessary so long as goods remain scarce.[3]

Therefore, both economic and ethical claims must be formulated “in terms of property rights or the correct allocation of property titles.”

The definition of conflict that follows from these conditions is:

Conflict: a scenario in which two or more entities attempt to use the same scarce good for mutually incompatible ends.

The third and final condition for the existence of disputes over the just distribution of goods, moreover, is the capacity of actors to argue—which, in Hoppe’s view, is the foundation of moral subjectivity. The question of justice arises only from the standpoint of such actors and only in relation to them. As Hoppe points out, even if in the aforementioned scenario of Robinson’s encounter with Friday—“Friday” being the name of the gorilla—a conflict over scarce resources could still occur (at minimum human and animal bodies), it would not be ethically relevant. The gorilla could crush or devour Robinson, and Robinson could kill or subdue the gorilla; no question of a just resolution would arise between them. So long as the incident—concerning use of a scarce good—is attributed to a “person” who acted as they had to act (since, given the circumstances, they “could not have acted otherwise” by their very nature), the attempt to prevent conflict through norms is meaningless. Whenever conflicts are interpreted as mere natural events explainable by causal laws (as in the case of the gorilla), they will be regarded solely as phenomena of nature whose resolution belongs, at best, to technology rather than ethics. For an ethical system to emerge, it must be taken for granted that the two or more parties in conflict recognize one another reciprocally as autonomous agents capable of reaching agreement: on one hand, this implies mutually assuming that a person could have acted differently than they actually did if they had chosen to; on the other hand, it presupposes sharing a notion of what an agreement is and being able to distinguish unambiguously a bilateral or multilateral agreement from a state of non-agreement.

What should be clear in this section is that the purpose of every norm is to prevent conflicts over the use of scarce physical resources. Norms that lead to conflict contradict the very purpose of norms—implying that norm and conflict are a mutually exclusive opposition—and that any consistent ethical system, to be considered as such, would, if all its rules were observed, logically eliminate all (ethical) conflicts.

Theory of Property

By “property” is understood not an empirical relation drawn from observation between persons and things; rather, it denotes a legal, normative, or moral relation (the three terms will be used interchangeably from now on), whose existence or non-existence—independently of any factual circumstances—depends on whether it can be justified or founded as such. The theory of property, therefore, is not empirical but normative. It does not address the question “How is it that certain people hold or do not hold certain relations with particular objects?” but rather asks, “How is it that certain relations between particular people and particular objects can be considered justifiable, and others not?” Naturally, a theory of property, insofar as it is a normative theory, must also include treatments of the fundamental question of the justifiability of norms and of the decidability between competing, incompatible normative theories (those that are consistent and robust).

One may then naturally ask: which property rules are configured, as justifiable rules, and what does “justifiable” mean? The answer is obtained essentially from a deeper analysis of the condition of autonomy and the capacity for consensus or agreement. This examination is also necessary because the realistic nature of that requirement has been repeatedly questioned and remains controversial.

There is only one set of rules that fulfills the ideal of avoiding conflicts—and, hence, satisfies the condition of possibility for emerging as an ethical system: a libertarian ethics of property rights. To avoid conflicts, the rules that regulate the distribution of property titles must allow exclusive control of scarce resources to be assigned to individual owners or “ultimate decision-makers.”

To eliminate ambiguities, by “property” we shall henceforth understand (and will later derive this definition) the following:

Property: the right of exclusive control over a given scarce good (the right to be the ultimate decision-maker regarding the control of that scarce good).

Before moving forward, now that we have explained the concept of “property,” we must clarify that a categorically coherent domain—consisting of a set of property rights—is one in which each person’s rights are defined so as to be exclusive of all other persons’ rights. Two people cannot simultaneously hold rights over the same physical object. Were this not so, duties would arise—due to the mutual holding of property rights over the same scarce good—that prescribe mutually inconsistent actions (both holdings would generate the norm of exclusive control over that good, but between two individuals this exclusion cannot occur simultaneously, thus prescribing mutually incompatible or inconsistent actions).

A Priori of Argumentation

To demonstrate without gaps the visible core of argumentation ethics—the a priori of argumentation and communication—we must explain the foundation of this principle (here the terms “dialogue” and “argumentation” are used interchangeably, without excluding other meanings they may have in other contexts).

At first glance, this principle has been radically mischaracterized by critics of argumentation ethics such as Callahan, Murphy, Eabrasu, and company, who have identified argumentation with the mere contingency of an exchange of sentences, completely missing the transcendental sense that Hoppe and his entire philosophical tradition attribute to the concept of “argumentation” in its proper context.

To prove this essential principle of argumentation ethics, we must analyze the conditions of possibility of language. Here we will focus on the practical dimension of language. For language to be applied, it must form part of the sphere of human action, since language implies the existence of an interpreter (the subject), a linguistic sign, and a referent object. It is through action that the interpreter performs the interpretation (forgive the redundancy) of the linguistic sign, and if that interpretation is correct or incorrect, they will succeed in expressing meaning through the use of that sign.

The action necessary for the formation of any language is the act of communication (Peirce’s semiotic conception). In order to use a linguistic sign correctly and thus express meaningful content, intersubjectively verifiable rules of language must be established to distinguish correct from incorrect uses of signs and confer meaning upon them.

Anyone who denies this intersubjectivity of language would have to confront Wittgenstein’s argument on the impossibility of a private language, and the meta-semantic theories of contemporary analytical authors like Hilary Putnam and his semantic externalism—an immense intellectual challenge that runs counter to the broad academic consensus in linguistics and the philosophy of language.

Language, being intersubjective, requires intersubjectively verifiable criteria in order to express things with meaning; but these criteria could not be established at all unless there were at least a rudimentary formation of a linguistic community. A linguistic community is a group of individuals who share the same system of signs and rules—phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic—and employ it in communicative contexts governed by common conventions (register, politeness norms, pragmatic uses), maintaining periodic interactions (oral, written, or mediated) that allow those norms to be transmitted, validated, and adjusted.

The minimal unit that can constitute a linguistic community for the formation of language lies in at least two distinct speaker–communicators who, in a stable and regular manner, exchange propositions: one emits messages in a sign system, and the other receives, validates, and responds to them, thereby establishing shared rules. Without at least that concrete dialogue with differentiated roles of sender and receiver, there is no common linguistic rule that both can test and adopt, and therefore no “language” can exist. Although in practice communities expand into larger networks to stabilize variants and norms, the cornerstone of every language remains that propositional exchange between at least two interlocutors that constitutes a primitive linguistic community.

Since dialogue—understood as the propositional exchange between sender and receiver—constitutes the condition of possibility for language, every form of justification, whether internal (reflective thought) or external (argumentation before others), necessarily presupposes that dialogical structure. In other words, for any utterance to have sense and communicative validity, it must fall within the conventions and roles proper to dialogue: shared norms of coherence, reference, and courtesy. Thus, each act of justification not only draws on the content of what is said but also implicitly or explicitly incorporates the rules and expectations governing any linguistic interaction; justification (internal or external) cannot escape this dialogical structure, for it requires the very same rules that underlie communication from the ground up.

Knowing this, if the rules that govern any language involve ethical norms, then every act of justification—internal or external—will also be governed by these ethical norms (by the property of transitivity). What will be argued below is the existence of ethical norms that are conditions of possibility for all dialogue, and, hence, the conclusion that every justification, by being given in a language, has as its condition of possibility the admission of these ethical norms as true—and therefore their application to every possible justification.

Right of Self-Ownership

Argumentation, as a peaceful form of interaction, requires that the parties refrain from performing invasive actions against their opponent’s body. As Hoppe writes, “so long as argumentation continues, the parties must mutually recognize that each exercises exclusive control over their own body.” Anyone who would wish to challenge this conclusion would be committing a performative contradiction, since they would have to do so through argumentation, thus implicitly acknowledging its validity. The first principle of the libertarian theory of justice––the right of self-ownership, or more precisely, the property right in a person’s own body––is thereby established.

To rigorously prove these claims, we must first distinguish the types of matters that argumentation can address: argumentation can be about facts or about norms. The source of argumentation about facts is what I call disagreement, and its purpose is to resolve this disagreement. The source of argumentation about norms, on the other hand, is conflict; its aim is to resolve this conflict.

I will initially demonstrate that argumentation is an interpersonal action free of conflict:

• On the initiation of the argumentative act: The act of argumentation, in aspiring to the dissolution or resolution of conflicts–disagreements, implies that the parties involved are willing to be convinced by the other—or at least to agree that they are in disagreement—thereby seeking conciliation. All of this, by the very definition of argumentation, is achieved by the “force” of words, propositions, or discourse alone. Thus, at the start of the argumentative act there is no conflict whatsoever.

• On the process of the argumentative act: As argumentation proceeds, the individuals agree that they remain in disagreement with each other’s propositions, and by the inference from the definition of the argumentative act, this is part of the attempt to convince or be convinced by the propositions presented or received. Therefore, during the process of argumentation there is no conflict whatsoever.

• On the end of the argumentative act: At the conclusion of argumentation, two cases can occur: (1) the individuals accept the truth of each other’s propositions and conclude that they agree, arriving at a common position; or (2) the individuals do not accept the truth of each other’s propositions and conclude that they agree that they disagree. Thus, at the end of the argumentative act there is no possibility of any conflict.

Since this definition is an abstraction stripped of situations irrelevant to the nature of argumentation itself, the factual relevance of things like control over a resource—such as the body—is ruled out; such control may or may not exist or may be interrupted. When two interlocutors exchange opinions, the fact that they control their bodies at that moment is irrelevant if argumentation operates under implicit norms, since those norms are derived solely from its definition, free of factual contingencies. If we ask what must be in place for communication to flow smoothly, we are clearly referring to necessary norms; what the participants in dialogue require is a normative guarantee that one of them will not at some point end this state by leaping at the other's throat.

Having proved that argumentation is a conflict-free practice, it can also be proved that argumentation implies that the parties must recognize themselves as autonomous subjects, i.e., that they must have control over themselves. The proof of this is that nothing could be expressed if the body is not controlled by the will (or brain, mind, consciousness, soul, etc.), hence the participants in an argumentation must be able to control the body in order to exchange their reasons. But since all subjects necessarily exercise direct control of their body, any attempt at control by another subject would necessarily imply indirect control, and thus direct control has logical and temporal primacy with respect to the others. We thus deduce that both participants must have and acknowledge direct control (which is inevitable to do anything) of their body (thus implying a claim right, not just a privilege in Hohfeldian terms). The “duty to have direct control over my body” is known as the right of self-ownership, since each individual possesses the right to exclusive dominion over his or her body.

The duty to respect the bodily control of others is not exhausted in the brief lapse of a debate: these ethical rules constitute the inexcusable condition of any linguistic justification, since any use of language -even internal monologue- is only possible by virtue of the same dialogical norms that are linked to the descriptive fact that is the condition of the possibility of language. Insofar as language is sustained by shared conventions that oblige us to recognize the other as a subject endowed with autonomy, any act of justification, whether reflexive or directed to a third party, implicitly incorporates this ethical requirement. Thus, whoever formulates a reason not only appeals to coherence and clarity, but also to the mutual recognition (claim right) of bodily self-ownership (liberty right) as an unavoidable presupposition of all valid discourse.

If the reader remains unconvinced by the previous justification, an alternative can be offered based on the method of reductio ad absurdum —that is, by assuming the contrary position and deriving a contradiction from it:

If ownership of the body were assigned to some indirect controller of the body, conflict would be inevitable, since the direct controller of the body cannot relinquish direct control over it while alive. In other words, direct control holds logical and temporal priority over any indirect control, for otherwise, conflict would be unavoidable—which contradicts the very purpose of property norms.

This descriptive fact implies an ethical norm by the impossibility of its denial: the right to have exclusive control over one’s body. Therefore, the right of self‐ownership must necessarily be concluded even if the initial explanation is rejected.

The right of self‐ownership is thus established on the basis of two independent strong arguments.

Right of Appropriation to External Goods

For a conceptual system to be rational, it must be non-contradictory (Popper, 2002). Nothing that violates the law of non-contradiction can be true, justified, or, ultimately, rational (Łukasiewicz, 1987, 1988). In a system of rationally justified rights, the existence of opposed and contradictory rights and duties is, by definition, entirely excluded, since conflicting rights violate the law of non-contradiction. As Steiner notes in reference to rights in general: “the mutual consistency—or compossibility—of all the rights in a proposed set of rights is at least a necessary condition for the possibility of that set. That a set of rights is a possible set is, I think, in itself a necessary condition of the plausibility of any principle of justice that generates that set. Any principle of justice that yields a set of rights producing contradictory judgments about the permissibility of a particular action is either unrealizable or (what amounts to the same) must be modified to be realizable” (1994). Therefore, systems of rights in which contradictory or opposed rights exist fall outside any consideration regarding their rational justification. In essence, such a system can never be rationally justified. It is evident, moreover, that one of the most important and direct ramifications of a non-contradictory system of rights is the avoidance of conflict. This is because, for a person adhering to the norms of such a system, it is impossible to be in a situation involving conflicting rights or duties. Thus, in our interpretation, it is not so much that property rights are justified functionally or teleologically by their capacity to avoid conflicts, but rather that their conflict-avoidance function is a logical consequence of their fundamental justification as rational (non-contradictory) assignments of individual jurisdictions (Barnett, 2004) or spheres of liberty (Steiner, 1994).

Now then, the question is: what set of rights can constitute a non-contradictory set of rights? Following Steiner, we can say that rights predicate human action. Since every act of action always occurs at a specific time and place, it can receive an exhaustive description in extensional terms of its spatiotemporal components. Therefore, we will say that two acts of action are incompossible when they share at least one physical component; in contrast, acts of action are compossible when they share no physical component.

Now, rights that "oblige" people to carry out two or more acts of action that share at least one physical component are, by necessity, contradictory rights—they "oblige" one to do what is incompossible—whereas rights that oblige people to carry out acts of action that do not share components are non-contradictory rights.

And how can we ensure that rights never become contradictory? It is a necessary and sufficient condition to conceive of rights as rights to the exclusive control of physical components of actions—that is, as rights to possess tangible things. If the physical components of actions are distributed unambiguously among people—if each physical component is clearly and exclusively assigned to a single person—then there can never be rights over acts of action that share physical components, and, therefore, there will never be rights that oblige people to perform incompossible acts of action (Steiner, 1994).

As Steiner points out (as cited in a previous section), “a set of categorically compossible domains, constituted by a set of property rights, is one in which each person’s rights are delineated such that they are mutually exclusive of the rights of any other person… we interpret this to mean that there can be no two people who simultaneously have rights over the same physical thing” (1994).

Because the nature of possession is such that it is impossible for two or more people to possess the same thing at the same time—although it may seem possible that two or more people simultaneously mix their labor with the same thing (for example, when two people pursue the same wild animal)—assigning rights to those who first took possession of a thing, the first-comers, necessarily avoids the non-contradiction of rights and conflicts between people from the very beginning of history.

From the start, it is always clear who holds title to each physical resource, as well as which resources remain available for appropriation and which do not. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe writes: “With regard to the purpose of avoiding conflict, there is no alternative to private property and original appropriation. In the absence of a pre-established harmony among actors, conflict can only be avoided if all goods are always in the private property of specific individuals and it is always clear who owns what and who does not. Moreover, conflicts can only be avoided from the beginning of mankind if private property is acquired through acts of original appropriation (rather than through mere declarations or words by latecomers)” (2012).

It is, by definition, inconceivable for more than one person to be in a position where it is physically possible to dispose of a thing at will to the exclusion of others. Nor is it conceivable for more than one person to reach such a position simultaneously. Therefore, taking first possession of scarce resources as the basis for title and as the principle of justice in original appropriation ensures the non-contradiction of rights and the avoidance of conflicts since the dawn of humanity.[4]

Any other alternative that posits that only a subsequent possessor to the first possessor is the original owner will involve undesirable theoretical costs such as ad-hoc criteria, brute facts, arbitrary rules that would require case-by-case analysis, being cracked by Ockham's razor, which states that the simplest explanation is the most preferable one, since simplicity is a theoretical virtue with respect to inference to the best explanation: inference to the best explanation is the procedure of choosing the hypothesis or theory that best explains the available data. Factors that make one explanation better than another may include depth, comprehensiveness, simplicity, and unifying power. And by contrasting explanations with respect to who should be the original owner, the explanation that the original owner is the first possessor has the most theoretical simplicity according to the metaethical principles argued.

The right to appropriate external goods is thereby established on the basis of the first possession theory.

Possession and Objective Link

This “first possessor” norm is the result of applying the more general principle of objective linkage to the case of objects that can be claimed as private property from a state of non-ownership. Let us remember that the purpose of property rights is to prevent conflicts over scarce (rivalrous, conflicting) resources. To fulfill this purpose, title to specific resources is assigned to specific owners. However, the assignment must not be subjective, random, arbitrary, or biased if it is to truly be a property rule and help prevent conflicts. This means that title must be assigned to one of the competing claimants based on the existence of an objective and intersubjectively verifiable link between the owner and the claimed resource.

Therefore, it is the concept of an objective link between the claimants and a claimed resource that determines ownership. The first use is simply what constitutes the objective link in the case of resources that previously had no owner. In this case, the only objective link to the thing is that which exists between the first user—the appropriator—and the thing. Any other supposed link is not objective, and is based simply on a verbal decree or other arbitrariness. Claims of ownership cannot be based on a simple verbal decree, as this would not help to reduce conflicts either, since any number of people could simply decree their ownership of things.

Therefore, in the case of colonized goods—resources that previously had no owner—the objective link is the first use. It has to be this way, due to the nature of the situation.

This objective link provided by “first use” is not generated magically, but rather through a specific process. The act of owning something external necessarily involves mixing our “labor” with the scarce good owned, and this notion of labor can be understood if we define it in these terms:

Our body produces energy, converting body tissue into energy, part of which is expended in our actions. Some of our expended energy is infused into parts of the external environment, transforming its characteristics in various ways[5]

This is how we arrive at the notion of work or “labor,” which is the means by which we can determine genuine possession of something that is not ours through intersubjectively verifiable criteria (transformation, marking, sustained use, improvement). If there were no labor expenditure involved in attempting to possess a scarce good, there would be no way to satisfy an objective link, since possession by definition implies an action toward the scarce object one seeks to possess, thus implying a labor expenditure toward the scarce good. And if there is no way to establish an objective link, the metaethical principle that norms are intended to avoid conflicts is broken, thus ruling out such an idea by reduction to absurdity.

Consequently, in the case of “colonizable” goods (i.e., resources that start out without an owner), the necessary and—in regulatory practice—sufficient condition for the attribution of title is the first effective use that establishes an objective link that is intersubjectively verifiable through the combination of labor or its observable equivalent.

Then, the question of how much labor expenditure is relevant for it to be considered genuine possession is a technical rather than a normative matter, and is irrelevant to this analysis (but relevant to analyzing the technical implications of this theory of original appropriation).

Overcoming the fact-value dichotomy (is-ought) and non-cognitivism

In the libertarian context of the grounding of an ethical system, the background of the criticisms of the fact-value dichotomy and non-cognitivism, both of which are contemporaneously defended by philosophers of high esteem, has been largely ignored (I know of no rigorous libertarian study of this). Hoppe has gone so far as to claim that Argumentative Ethics is a “value-free” justification:

“ There is a logical gap between the statements ‘is’ and ‘ought to be’ that defenders of natural rights have not successfully bridged, except for some general critical remarks about the ultimate validity of the dichotomy between facts and values. Here, the praxeological proof of libertarianism has the advantage of offering a completely value-free justification of private property. It remains entirely within the realm of statements about what is and never attempts to derive a ‘should be’ from an ‘is. ’" – Hoppe H. H. On the Ultimate Justification of the Ethics of Private Property. (2006). Ludwig Von Mises Institute. p. 345.

However, I will go against Hoppe's assertions and argue that the fact-value dichotomy is false.

First of all, it is necessary to know what this dichotomy states, how it has been proposed and defended. The fact-value dichotomy is defined as the position that descriptive judgments, i.e. judgments about how the world is (propositions), and value judgments, i.e. judgments about how things should be or about the valuation of something (they are not judgments capable of having truth value, and therefore are not propositions), are rigidly isolated judgments, that is, totally separate and differentiated judgments, implying that descriptive judgments are free of value judgments, and value judgments are free of descriptive judgments, establishing an impossibility of logical connection between both types of judgments. Thus concluding that ethics does not deal with questions of fact, but in mere expressions of emotions, desires, attitudes with respect to the approval/disapproval of behaviors.

To begin with, it is clearly false that Argumentative Ethics offers a “value-free” proof, being that property rights per se are considered as belonging to ethics, since they tell us how scarce goods should be distributed.

The first and best known defender of this dichotomy is David Hume, who asserted that it is impossible to derive an “ought” from an “is”. However, the foundation he offers for this dichotomy is limited since, being considered an empiricist and the formulator of the problem of induction, all judgments on “matters of fact” fall under this problem of induction and thus prevent universalizing or establishing a necessary connection to conclude that all judgments of fact are rigidly separated from judgments of values. Just by showing a counter-example of a descriptive judgment that implies a value judgment (or vice versa), their dichotomy is already overturned. To make it clearer: judgments about matters of fact, in Hume's framework, are only formed-obtained from experience and thus depend on inductive knowledge. And in order to conclude as a universal principle that value judgments are rigidly isolated from judgments about matters of fact, one would have to perform a complete induction on the latter (an impossible task, there are an infinite number of different formulations for these judgments about all kinds of facts), and by this, infer that an essential condition of value judgments is that they are relations of ideas. Otherwise, he still falls into the problem of induction and the fact-value dichotomy is not a universalizable principle.

As we mentioned in a previous section (“a priori of argumentation”), language can only be public, that is, it can only exist if it has as its basis a linguistic community that assigns a set of rules to a set of linguistic signs to differentiate a correct use from an incorrect one when expressing meanings (see semiotics). As these rules are a type of constitutive norms, i.e. norms (on how a language should be used) that define a practice, it is concluded that in a matter of fact (linguistic community) a set of norms (duties) that define this practice (fact) are implied.

If the meaning of a term is understood by the practices in which it is used (linguistic community). If these practices depend on norms, the term carries those norms (if p -> q, then q is implied in p). Implying a “must” in an “is”, making the norms or must deal with a matter of fact, and hence are propositions (apt to have truth value).

Therefore, it is a strong counter-example to this false dichotomy, since every term that is part of a language will be based on a practice that implies a set of rules, thus being a matter of fact linked to a set of duties, exterminating the idea that it is a rigid separation between the two.

The reader might object that any value judgment can be reformulated, without losing semantic content, into a descriptive judgment, making the rigid separation hold, but such an objection would be self-defeating since all this can prove at most is the semantic interchangeability of both judgments, correlating both and closing the dichotomy itself. All this attempted objection achieves is to prove that norms describe facts.

So, going against Hoppe, it was possible to overcome Hume's guillotine with Argumentation Ethics, giving a much stronger example than Searle's with respect to promises, and much freer from objections. What was achieved is to prove that the very existence of the praxis of language (language) contains normative judgments, so that these judgments are not independent of descriptive judgments (as Hume's guillotine would have it).

On the second question of this part: non-cognitivism. Non-cognitivism is a related position but expressed in other terms, it is necessary to define what is meant by it. Non-cognitivism holds that moral sentences (“stealing is wrong”) neither describe moral facts nor are they true/false in the strict sense. Rather than describing, they express something:

• emotions (“boo to steal”— emotivism )

• prescriptions or injunctions (“don't steal!”— prescriptivism )

• more refined attitudes (“I am against stealing”” — contemporary expressivism ).

The implication of this is that moral sentences cannot contain a propositional logical structure to be considered as such, i.e., a moral sentence cannot contain any logical connectors/operators, nor can logical rules of inference be applied to moral sentences. Linking such things to a moral sentence would make it cease to be an expression of an emotion, command, attitude about a behavior, since logical connectors and logical rules of inference are not expressions, but semantic operators that combine and regulate propositions apt for truth (propositional contents). But, we have a very clear counter-example to non-cognitivism where we can evidently use moral sentences in logical rules of inference with logical connectives:

1. If X is wrong, then p doing X is wrong.

2. X is wrong (atomic moral sentence)

3. Let p do X is wrong

This is undeniably a case of a Modus Ponens, a logical rule of inference. The bullet the non-cognitivist would have to bite is that (2) has a radically different meaning than the one used in (1), which would lead to denying that it is the case of a Modus Ponens, since (2) would not be a proposition according to the non-cognitivist, falling into a meaningless ad-hoc. Another bullet the non-cognitivist would have to bite is to reject the semantic tools of logic and propose a semantics of his own to replicate these patterns that mimic logical inferences and connectors (without falling into ad-hoc or arbitrary rules or insufficient rules to establish clear differentiations in cases where there are different meanings), which is a titanic cost. Norms, therefore, are propositions that can be true/false, describing facts of reality, and not mere expressions of emotions, attitudes, etc., implying in the truth of ethical cognitivism, the position that moral/ethical sentences express propositions and, therefore, can be true or false.

However, if the reader remains dissatisfied, there is a paper entitled “ The Frege-Geach objection to expressivism: still unanswered ” by John Skorupski , which is devoted in depth to explaining why contemporary responses to this very problem remain insufficient.

The performative contradiction, then, takes on the character of a logical contradiction insofar as it is linked to a normative proposition (the norms of a dialogue deal with the norms of a practice, that is, with a matter of fact, being apt to have truth value). To deny the right of private property would be a performative contradiction since one tries to deny a prescriptive judgment contained in the fact of discourse itself which is linked to the praxis of language. The contradiction occurs because meaning is linked to linguistic communities that can only be constructed through dialogue (and thus by following its norms). And if they depend on dialogue, dialogue is an objective fact of the world that contains normative judgments to be a fact. So, to deny these normative judgments implies self-refutation, one denies a necessary basis that is the condition of possibility of the praxis of language through the praxis of language.

Title Transfer Theory

The theory of title transfer in contracts assumes that the owner can transfer ownership of property to others by expressing their intention to do so. The theory takes for granted that the original property is alienable at the owner's will. Rothbard writes: “Property rights imply the right to enter into contracts regarding that property: to give it away or to exchange title to it for someone else's property.” (Rothbard, “ Property Rights and the Theory of Contracts ,” p. 133)

However, we must ask ourselves: why does expressing the intention to transfer ownership make it a reality? Why does the owner have the power or ability to do so? This power is implicit in several interrelated aspects of the original ownership (original appropiation). First, it should be noted that the owner, who has the exclusive right to control the resource, can allow others to use it. For example, they can lend their car or hammer to their neighbor. This highlights the distinction between ownership and possession. The owner has rights to a thing even if they do not possess it. It should also be noted that “allowing” others to use one's property is done by expressing (communicating) consent to the borrower. The express consent of the owner of property to allow its use by others is what distinguishes lawful use (such as a loan) from unlawful acts (such as theft); it is what distinguishes guests from intruders. In short, since the owner of an item has the right to control it, they can, through a sufficiently objective manifestation or communication of their consent, allow others to possess the item while they retain ownership. Thus, the “contract” is merely a consequence or application of property rights; the owner has the right to exclude or deny permission to others to use the resource he owns, or he may give his consent. This must be communicated in some way through language.

Secondly, the original property was acquired at the time. Therefore, it can also be abandoned. One is not obliged to keep something forever just because it was acquired as original property at the time. But both acquisition and abandonment imply a manifestation of the owner's intention. Let us remember that the very purpose of property rights over scarce resources is to avoid conflicts over the use of (rival) resources. Therefore, property rights have an unambiguously public aspect: the claimed property has visible (manifest) boundaries for others. An essential aspect of property is that it publicly delimits the boundaries of one's property so that others can avoid using it. If the boundaries are secret or unknown, conflicts cannot be avoided. In order to know that something is owned by someone else and to avoid unauthorized use of another's property, the boundaries of the property must be publicly known.

In fact, one of the reasons why the first possessor of a scarce resource acquires title to it is the need for boundaries to be objective and public. The result of using a thing, whether by transforming it in an apparent way to certain limits or by establishing a publicly discernible boundary around the property, can be objectively evident to others. That is why Hoppe refers to acts of original appropriation as “delimiting” or “producing boundaries for things.”

Acquisition is an action by which the intention to possess something is manifested by establishing public boundaries. Similarly, ownership is abandoned and title to it is lost when the owner manifests his intention to abandon it and thus renounce ownership. This intention is not manifested simply by suspending possession or transferring it to another person, since possession can be suspended without losing ownership. Thus, a farmer who leaves his farm for a week to buy supplies in a distant city does not thereby lose ownership, nor has he expressed any intention to abandon his farm. For these reasons, the owner of an acquired property does not abandon ownership merely by not possessing it, but does have the power and right to abandon it by expressing his intention to do so.

Ownership of acquired property includes the right to use it, to allow (license) others to use it (retain ownership while transferring possession to another person), and to relinquish ownership by expressing the intention to do so. If these aspects of ownership are combined, it becomes clear that the owner of an asset can transfer title to another person by “renouncing” the asset in favor of a designated new owner. If title to property can be renounced in favor of the world at large, then, a fortiori, one can do ‘less’ and simply renounce it “in favor” of a particular person.

Let's consider the case in which the owner abandons the property completely. In this case, it once again becomes ownerless and available to be appropriated by a new original owner, that is, the next person to possess it. For example, suppose someone lends their car or hammer to a neighbor and then abandons the object. In this case, the neighbor initially has possession, but not ownership, of the object. When the owner abandons it, the car or hammer becomes ownerless again. As an ownerless resource, it is now subject to reappropriation by the next possessor, who happens to be the neighbor already in possession. By combining the power to allow others to use the property with the power to abandon it—both rights or powers of owners—it is possible to transfer ownership to a specific transferee.

Another way to look at it is to consider the general rule that the first possessor has a better title to the property than other claimants who, compared to the first possessor, are newcomers. If the property is conditionally abandoned in favor of a particular transferee, then the transferee has a “better title” because, between these parties, the previous owner has abandoned it and therefore does not have a better title. And between the transferee and any third party, the transferee benefits from the prior title of the previous owner because, from the perspective of third parties, the transferee is a licensee of the previous owner and/or a prior possessor than the third parties.

As an analogy, imagine a person sitting in a tree with their loaf of bread. Below them, other people occasionally pass by. They can eat the bread if they wish, or keep it, or, if they want, they can simply throw it away, leaving it to any of the passers-by who want to pick it up. This would be analogous to total abandonment. Or they can throw it to a specific friend in the crowd, abandoning it and at the same time “guiding” it to the desired recipient, who can then take possession of it.

This is why an owner can transfer ownership to others: scarce resources without an owner are acquired and can be abandoned. Assets that can be abandoned by expressing consent to undo or terminate a previous acquisition can be transferred to other specific individuals.

Conclusion

We have thus arrived at the conclusion that the essential points of the libertarian theory of justice are true, implying the following truths:

Bibliography

Skorupski, J. (2012). The Frege-Geach objection to expressivism: still unanswered. Analysis 72 (1):9-18.

DOMINIAK, Łukasz. Libertarianism and Original Appropriation. Historia i Polityka [online]. 21 grudzień 2017, nr 22 (29), s. 43–56. [udostępniono 18.8.2025].

Hoppe H. H. (1987). Eigentum, Anarchie und Staat – Studien zur Theorie des Kapitalismus.

Slenzok, Norbert. (2024). Filozofia polityczna Hansa-Hermanna Hoppego. Studium krytyczne.

Putnam, Hilary (2002). The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays. Science and Society 68 (4):483-493.

Hoppe H. H. (2006). On the Ultimate Justification of the Ethics of Private Property. Ludwig Von Mises Institute.

Steiner, Hillel (1994). An essay on rights. Oxford, UK ;: Blackwell.

Kinsella, Stephan. (2023). Legal Foundations of a Free Society. Papinian Press.

Murray N. Rothbard. (1978). For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto. Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Hoppe H. H. (2012). The Great Fiction. Laissez Faire Books.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

[1] M.N. Rothbard, “ For a New Liberty”

[2] H.-H. Hoppe, The Great Fiction …,s. 9-10

[3] H.H. Hoppe, The Economics and Ethics

[4] Łukasz Dominiak, Libertarianism and Original Appropriation

[5] Steiner, An Essay on Rights

Zulu and some of his fans categorize Rothbard as an Objectivist who simply refused to acknowledge this fact because of his nasty split with Rand and instead opted for the labels “Aristotelian” or “neo-Thomist”. As much as I’d like it to be true, I personally dissent from this categorization for a number of reasons. The following will include a mass of quotes from Rothbard from the 50s to the time of his death and some elaborations upon them in an attempt to illuminate the issue of where he stands with regards to Objectivist philosophy. I’m here assuming the reader is familiar with the overlaps his worldview has with Objectivism, so my task here is to explore the other side of the coin.

In a 1954 letter to Richard Cournelle, Rothbard says that one “who stumbles on Ayn finds that there are great truths that we have literally never heard in the classroom”, but “the good stuff in Ayn's system is not Ayn's original contribution at all.... There is an underlying, but . . . growing philosophic position beginning with Aristotle where it is set forth, the idea of a rational ethics based on the nature of man and found by reason, reason determining ends, etc. Aristotle and Spencer were fine on this.” Roy Childs would concur that Rothbard spoke of Rand’s philosophy as unnecessarily “reinventing the wheel”.

He goes on to claim Ayn’s philosophy was actually a “horrible perversion” of Aristotelianism “with the most unpleasant-and unlibertarian implications.” He had major issues with the fact that Rand “denies against all evidence the existence of even the most primary instincts in man.”, especially her denial "that emotions can ever be primary, which loses any independent basis for love, friendship, laughter, pleasure, etc. as values in themselves out the window.” He asks whether “love, friendship, joy, etc . . . count for anything in the Randian hierarchy of values?”

He hated Rand’s “almost fanatically Puritan view that the only development of man's powers that is worth anything is working at developing mental powers.”

Rothbard then gets to the crux of the issue: “The implications of this grow more horrifying as you think about it . . . [Rand’s system] actually denies all individuality whatsoever” He claims that if her theory about human nature is true, then “there is no basis for different interests, only for different complexities of interest. Thus, she maintains that I could be just as good in music as in economics if I applied myself, whereas I know damn well I'd be a flop.”

He claims she was ignorant of the insights of marginal utility theory “of more units becoming less values, and of each individual's balancing different ends harmoniously” which is “one of the key bases of true individualism, since each individual can learn what ends are rational, [and] choose only among these rational ends,” leaving room for individual tastes within a broader framework of rationality. “But by ignoring marginalism and denying any sort of degrees in life,” he writes, “Ayn is driven to a position that is monomaniacal in its monolithic quality.” The logical consequence of this, according to Rothbard, “is that there is no such thing as a unique individual.” Since men are only “bundles of premises”, then everyone would have the same bundle if they chose to be rational. “Therefore, according to Randianism, utopia would be a place where all men are identical, in their souls if not in their personal appearance.” Rothbard concludes with a humorous example (doubly funny because it actually happened): “The logical conclusion is, for example, that there is no reason whatever why Ayn, for example, shouldn't sleep with Nathaniel Branden" or any of her disciples with any other, "since they all have the same premises, they are all the same people, or rather inter-changeable parts of a machine.”

At the time, Rothbard agreed with George Reisman that Rand’s system is “a perfect engine of complete totalitarianism, but that Ayn herself is a libertarian out of an irrational prejudice, and that fifty years from now some smart Ran-than disciple will see the implications and convert the thing into a horrible new Statist sect,” and speculated that “life in a Randian Rationalist society would be a living hell.”

To me the most puzzling part of the letter was the following: “she herself is involved in a contradiction. On the one hand, she charges that anyone who believes in free will—which is basic to any sort of individualism—is insane, because he is postulating an uncaused element. Yet she reduced everything back to "thinking" vs. "not thinking," and it is clear that on her own grounds this decision to "think or not to think" is "free" and therefore "uncaused" and therefore, she is as insane as anyone. And if she allows this little grain of free will, why not all of it?" Rand had always been a proponent of free will and was never a determinist, her journals going back to the 30s confirm this. I suspect, however, that it is Rothbard who at the time didn’t understand her position on the matter. He assumes volition had to be “uncaused”, and since he probably heard Rand argue against the mystical “indeterminist” accounts of free will, he assumed she must have been a determinist. Most likely under Objectivist influence, Rothbard corrected this error and saw that there is no dichotomy between volition and causality, which can be seen in his “Mantle of Science”.

It goes without saying that these are some extremely serious and non-trivial differences and accusations against Rand’s philosophy. I trust that there’s no reason to go into detail as to why they’re utterly mistaken here. One may claim that all these complaints were made before the publication of Atlas Shrugged, and Rothbard’s glowing review of it indicates a recognition of the errors in his ways and his subsequent wholehearted adoption of Objectivism. But, as his later writings would indicate, that is a strongly mistaken assumption. (I am going to omit Rothbard’s disagreements with Rand where I believe he actually had the stronger case, such as anarchism, the death penalty, civil disobedience, secessionism, foreign policy etc. since I believe they’re perfectly compatible with Objectivism, Rand notwithstanding. It’s not a coincidence they’re all in the realm of politics.)

The Libertarian Forum:

In the march 1970 issue, Rothbard recommended Peter Michelson’s review of The Romantic Manifesto titled “Fictive Babble”, calling it a “Slashing critique of Rand's latest book, including the point that the Rand of 1969 has begun to write like the villains of her own novels.” I haven’t been able to find a copy of the review online. I’ve only seen some select quotes from it and they were all abysmal. The quotes can be seen in this essay. Tibor Machan said the review was “nothing but verbal acrobatics; it reveals no understanding of the philosophy of art and of Ayn Rand.” and asked why Rothbard recommended it in the first place.

Consider these paragraphs from Rothbard in the july-august 1971 issue:

“For while every rationalist libertarian must hold reason higher than tradition, there is one sense in which the traditionalist conservatives have gotten hold of a very important point, and one that has been unfortunately overlooked by the rationalists. And that is wrapped up in the great truth of the division of labor: the fact that the vast majority of people have neither the ability nor the skill to carve out a rational ethic on their own. Ethics is a science, a discipline like other disciplines; and as in any other branch of knowledge it is vain folly to begin exploration of the science afresh and on one's own while disregarding all the other explorers and thinkers who have gone before, I once knew a Randian who tried to deduce astronomy a priori and out of his own head without bothering to consult any of the other literature in the field. While this was a caricature and a half-jest on his part, it exemplified all too well the rationalist - and particularly the Randian - disposition to attempt to carve out a body of thought without bothering to read one's predecessors. In the field of ethics and philosophy in general, it is simply an empirical fact that the greatest thinkers, for two thousand years, have been Christian; and to ignore these Christian philosophers and to attempt to carve out an ethical system purely on one's own is to court folly and disaster.

Apart from their respective merits, then, it is no accident that, in practical application - from sex to music - Christian ethicists should have a far more rational batting average than the Randian. After all, Randian thought has only been in existence for a decade or two, while Christianity has had two thousand years to develop. We stand on the shoulders of the thinkers of the past, even though of course we must use our reason to correct them.

But there are further, and grimmer, implications here for rationalists. For if few people have the ability or inclination to carve out an ethical system on their own, this means that they must - if their actions are to be guided by any coherent set of values - take them passively, almost on trust. But who then are the masses of men to trust for their system of values? Surely that system with the longest and most successful tradition, with the largest quota of great minds - in short, the Christian ethic, This is a bitter pill for many of us non-Christians to swallow, but I am afraid it is inescapable nevertheless.

This conclusion is reinforced when we look around at what has happened to much of today's libertarian movement. The peculiar aspects of the Randian ethic are as nothing to the bizarreries, to the outright lunacies, into which so many ex-Randians (who constitute the bulk of the libertarian movement) have sunk, in their vain attempts to carve out a system of objective ethics on their own. (The latest craze, so we have heard, is “rational bestiality.”) The Christian ethic is, in the words of the old hymn, a Rock of Ages, and it is at least incumbent upon the individual to think long and hard before he abandons that Rock lest he sink into the quagmire of the capricious and the bizarre.”

I submit that these paragraphs, by themselves, would exclude their proponent from being properly labeled an Objectivist. The idea that the Christians are “in practice” more ethically rational on average than Objectivists because the ethical system they adhere to is older is ridiculous. Contrary to traditionalists, age is not a proper measure of the validity of a system of ethics. Saying that it “stood the test of time” only goes to show that men have not yet abandoned it, which could very well be because of their irrationality and not the validity of the system. It’s ironic to say that the best philosophers in the last 2000 years have all been Christian, since the quality of their philosophy was higher the more they contradicted their basic Christian devotion to faith, supernaturalism, mysticism, altruism, asceticism, and humility. The fact that most men are second handers only makes the widespread societal adoption of a rational ethic more urgent and important, instead of advising them to just keep on going with the prevailing view because it’s old.

Rothbard was very unhappy with Rand’s distaste for religion in general. He repeatedly criticized her for “hating religion much more than she hates the state.”, claimed that her interpretation of Christianity is actually a gnostic heresy, and blamed her influence on increasing libertarian disconnect with the broader American culture. In contrast, his views on Christianity seemed to be very warm, as illustrated by this passage from his 1991 letter to Justin Raimondo:

“I am convinced that it is no accident that freedom, limited government, natural rights, and the market economy only really developed in Western civilization. I am convinced that the reason is the attitude developed by the Christian Church in general, and the Catholic Church in particular. In contrast to Greek thought, where the city-state was the locus of virtue and action, Christianity, with its unique focus on the individual as created in the image of God and in the central mystery of the Incarnation—God created His Son as a fully human person—means that each individual and his salvation is of central divine concern. The Church was not tied to any one king or state and therefore served as a vital check upon state power. The concept of tyrannicide and of the right of revolution was developed by Catholic scholastics. Locke (and his followers in the American Revolution) was a Protestant scholastic, developing and sharpening Catholic scholastic doctrine. Thus, even though I am not a believer, I hail Christianity, and especially Catholicism, as the underpinning of liberty. (And also of art, music, and architecture, but that’s another topic.)”

Another quote from the Rothbard-Rockwell Report is telling: “At the risk of alienating my atheist libertarian friends, I think it increasingly clear that conservatives are right: that some religion is going to be dominant in every society. And that if Christianity for example, is scorned and tossed out, some horrendous form of religion is going to take its place: whether it be Communism, New Age occultism, feminism, or Left-Puritanism. There is no getting around this basic truth of human nature.”

So, either Christianity or “some horrendous form of religion”. This makes the false dichotomies identified by Objectivism seem innocent by comparison.

Rothbard made a slight jab at The Ominous Parallels in the February 1983 issue, writing: “Ideas have consequences in history, although they scarcely work in the direct Randian "From Kant-to-Hitler" manner.”
In a letter to John Hospers, Rand writes: “If one were to say that Marx is the direct consequence of Plato, that would be an oversimplification; but to say that Marx, Hegel, Kant and others belong to the philosophical camp whose earliest and most famous exponent was Plato, is an abstract summation in a context that deals only with the fundamentals they all have in common.“

We now come to the famous “Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult” Since I obviously wasn’t present in the Randian movement during the 60s, I cannot know for sure what really happened during this time. All I can do is an analysis utilizing all the info available to me.

Rothbard writes: “Since every cult is grounded on a faith in the infallibility of the guru, it becomes necessary to keep its disciples in ignorance of contradictory infidel writings which may wean cult members away from the fold. The Catholic Church maintained an Index of Prohibited Books; more sweeping was the ancient Muslim cry: “Burn all books, for all truth is in the Koran!” But cults, which attempt to mold every member into a rigidly integrated world view, must go further. Just as Communists are often instructed not to read anti-Communist literature, the Rand cult went further to disseminate what was virtually an Index of Permitted Books. Since most neophyte Randians were both young and relatively ignorant, a careful channeling of their reading insured that they would remain ignorant of non- or anti-Randian ideas or arguments permanently (except as they were taken up briefly, brusquely, and in a highly distorted and hectoring fashion in Randian publications). The philosophical rationale for keeping Rand cultists in blissful ignorance was the Randian theory of “not giving your sanction to the Enemy.” Reading the Enemy (which, with a few carefully selected exceptions, meant all non- or anti-Randians) meant “giving him your moral sanction,” which was strictly forbidden as irrational. In a few selected cases, limited exceptions were made for leading cult members who could prove that they had to read certain Enemy works in order to refute them.”

This is an extremely serious accusation against the Objectivist movement which I have no way of verifying or falsifying. All I can say is that it goes against what I’d expect from Rand and the top Randians. In her 1974 speech to the graduating class of the United States Military Academy at West Point, “Philosophy: Who Needs It”, Rand states the following: “Now you may ask: If philosophy can be that evil, why should one study it? Particularly, why should one study the philosophical theories which are blatantly false, make no sense, and bear no relation to real life? My answer is: In self-protection—and in defense of truth, justice, freedom, and any value you ever held or may ever hold. . .If you feel nothing but boredom when reading the virtually unintelligible theories of some philosophers, you have my deepest sympathy. But if you brush them aside, saying: “Why should I study that stuff when I know it’s nonsense?”—you are mistaken. It is nonsense, but you dont know it—not so long as you go on accepting all their conclusions, all the vicious catch phrases generated by those philosophers. And not so long as you are unable to refute them.” This doesn’t sound like someone who doesn’t want you to read philosophers she deems evil. Leonard Peikoff also continuously urges his listeners to read Kant or secondary sources on his philosophy, to “know your enemy” as they say. Maybe this came after the 60s and represented a shift in policy? Who knows.

Rothbard writes: “Another method was to keep the members, as far as possible, in a state of fevered emotion through continual re-readings of Atlas. Shortly after Atlas was published, one high-ranking cult leader chided me for only having read Atlas once. “It’s about time for you to start reading it again,” he admonished. “I have already read Atlas thirty-five times.”

I STRONGLY doubt that ANYONE could have read Atlas THIRTY FIVE times during the time Rothbard was in the Randian movement. Unless he did nothing but read Atlas over and over again, the math doesn’t add up.

Rothbard writes: “The rereading of Atlas was also important to the cult because the wooden, posturing, and one dimensional heroes and heroines were explicitly supposed to serve as role models for every Randian. Just as every Christian is supposed to aim at the imitation of Christ in his own daily life, so every Randian was supposed to aim at the imitation of John Galt (Rand’s hero of heroes in Atlas.) He was always supposed to ask himself in every situation “What would John Galt have done?” When we remind ourselves that Jesus, after all, was an actual historical figure whereas Galt was not, the bizarrerie of this injunction can be readily grasped. (Although from the awed way Randians spoke of John Galt, one often got the impression that, for them, the line between fiction and reality was very thin indeed.)”

Does Galt being a fictional character somehow prevent him from rationally being a source of moral guidance?

Rothbard writes: “Wit and humor, as might be gathered from this incident, were verboten in the Randian movement. The philosophical rationale was that humor demonstrates that one “is not serious about one’s values.” The actual reason, of course, is that no cult can withstand the piercing and sobering effect, the sane perspective, provided by humor. One was permitted to sneer at one’s enemies, but that was the only humor allowed, if humor that be.”

Objectivism holds that humor is a value, but not an unlimited value. The moral character of humor depends on its object. To laugh at the contemptible is a virtue, to laugh at the good is a hideous vice. To say that laughing at the good has a “piercing, sobering effect” and provides a “sane perspective” is just bizarre. What are you “piercing” through, what are you “sobering up” to and what “sane perspective” is gained by mocking the good? I hate to say it, but these implications that holding your values as sacred is a sign of a stuck up self-important bore who needs to be “brought back to reality” with mocking humor sounds a tad nihilistic. When Jerry Tucille wrote It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand, a distorted account of the history of the libertarian movement which makes the heroes of the movement look like jackasses, Rothbard praised the book and claimed those who didn’t like it simply don’t have a sense of humor. Roy Childs gave a decent review. Interestingly, when Rothbard wrote the satirical play Mozart Was a Red, he mocked what he thought were the bad and irrational characteristics of the Randian movement, not the good and rational ones. Seems like he properly understood the nature of humor in that case.

Rothbard writes: “Personal enjoyment, indeed, was also frowned upon in the movement and denounced as hedonistic “whim-worship.” In particular, nothing could be enjoyed for its own sake – every activity had to serve some indirect, “rational” function. Thus, food was not to be savored, but only eaten joylessly as a necessary means of one’s survival; sex was not to be enjoyed for its own sake, but only to be engaged in grimly as a reflection and reaffirmation of one’s “highest values”; painting or movies only to be enjoyed if one could find “rational values” in doing so. All of these values were not simply to be discovered quietly by each person – the heresy of “subjectivism” – but had to be proven to the rest of the cult.”

This strikes one as by far the most bizarre accusation so far. Anyone even REMOTELY tuned it to the Objectivist literature would know what utter bullshit this is. Pleasure as a crucial need is constantly stressed in Rand’s and Branden’s writing. The idea that Objectivism holds that it is irrational to savor the taste of FOOD is beyond ridiculous. The part of sex might be the most unacceptable considering Rothbard wrote that the Christian ethic has a better view of it than the Objectivist one. Read Rand’s “Of Living Death” to see how ridiculous it is to paint the Objectivist view of sex as monstrously ascetic and hold up the Christian view as superior. The reality is the exact opposite.

Accusations of being “excommunicated” for smoking or for “preferring Bach to Rachmaninoff” also strike me as dubious. Plenty of the members of Rand’s inner circle didn’t smoke or quit smoking before she did. Leonard Peikoff loved Beethoven, whom Rand hated. Nobody was thrown out of the movement because of this.

Rothbard writes: “One suspects that the actual reason, as in so many other parts of Randian theory, from Rachmaninoff to Victor Hugo to tap dancing, was that Rand simply liked smoking and had the need to cast about for a philosophical system that would make her personal whims not only moral but also a moral obligation incumbent upon everyone who desires to be rational.”

Maybe I’m being too harsh, but this sorta smells like aesthetic subjectivism. Given that Rand claimed that objective rules for evaluating music taste have not been formulated yet and thus they have to be treated as subjective for the time being, it’s not even an accurate assessment.

Rothbard writes: “For many ex-cultists remain imbued with the Randian belief that every individual is armed with the means of spinning out all truths a priori from his own head – hence there is felt to be no need to learn the concrete facts about the real world, either about contemporary history or the laws of the social sciences. Armed with axiomatic first principles, many ex-Randians see no need of learning very much else. Furthermore, lingering Randian hubris imbues many ex-members with the idea that each one is able and qualified to spin out an entire philosophy of life and of the world a priori. Such aberrations as the “Students of Objectivism for Rational Bestiality” are not far from the bizarreries of many neo-Randian philosophies, preaching to a handful of zealous partisans.”

This is part-mistake part-projection on Rothbard’s part. He mistakenly believes that Objectivism is a sort of hyper-rationalistic philosophy where you can get to know a priori axioms (through what means? innate ideas? Kantian mental categories? by what method does Rothbard think Objectivism says we get a priori knowledge from???) and deduce every fact about the universe from them. This 1) isn’t even close to the proper Objectivist epistemology and 2) is much more closer to Rothbard’s method than Rand’s. After all, it was Rothbard who said that “all reasoning is deductive, and this process is particularly vital for arriving at truth” and that he finds “theology fascinating because it’s sort of a deductive system, something like praxeology, except of course the axioms are different. But once you have the axioms, you can spin almost the whole thing out…”

There are many other fragments sprinkled throughout Rothbard’s writings that at least suggest a non-Objectivist leaning, but I think a sufficient case has been made.

--- Kameralized 19/02/2025