(a teensy bit of context) (a not-so-teensy bit)
This situation is unacceptable: 8 in 10 Philosophy Majors Favor Socialism
In addition to being unacceptable (on the merits of socialism vs. capitalism), it makes a bad impression about philosophy on the wider American public which contains a great many folks skeptical of philosophy's value for society, and some of whom have influence on state university budgets. This should be cause for alarm for the philosophers whose profession will inevitably be targeted because of this.
If ever there is an idea discredited theoretically, morally and historically, it is socialism. Mises' 1922 book, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (linked above) is an epic, monumental takedown of socialist "thought," and is widely acknowledged among defenders of the free market -- i.e., capitalism -- for being such. (Keep in mind that a great many of capitalism's defenders are not often in agreement about what thinkers and arguments are its strongest. Misesians may overlap plenty with Rothbardians, say, but there isn't so much overlap between Rothbardians and Randians. Just for instance.) Mises' book and case against socialism was most widely discussed in reference to his "calculation argument," in which he established with great thoroughness and care that a truly socialist production framework couldn't properly calculate prices (particularly for production factors, i.e., capital goods). What role for entrepreneurs in a socialist framework, particularly if such putative entrepreneurs had to answer to some collective production bureau? (There also is a sizable body of literature on entrepreneurship by 'Austrian school' economists influenced principally by Menger, Bohm-Bawerk, Mises and Hayek.)
Socialism's defenders took Mises on regarding the "calculation problem" (which appears in the end to have vindicated Mises, if Heilbroner's testimony is any indication). But they neglected the rest of Mises' book, which exposes patterns and habits of thought among socialists that are inimical to Western civilization. The final chapters of Socialism concern the tendency of socialism toward cultural destructionism, for example.
The history of socialism was not only one of failure, but monumental and monumentally deadly failure. Some 20 to 40 million or more people perished in the Great Chinese Famine alone. Time and time again mediocrities and sociopaths with access to power were (unsurprisingly?) drawn to this ideology, or more specifically the Marxian strain of it.
If anything might have discredited socialism, it is this deadly (and often outright bloody) history. There is no honest denial of it, no way to spin the evidence.
If anything discredits socialism it is the ethical premises it relies upon, and while ethical theory isn't subject to the same testing the way that socialism was tested historically, one uncontroversial ethical principle (if any exist at all) is that stated by John Hospers, philosophy professor and first Libertarian Party presidential candidate, more or less directly channeling his former sparring partner, Ayn Rand: "other men's lives are not yours to dispose of." Socialism, by definition, contravenes this principle.
Here's the definition of socialism appearing at the top of the above-linked google search:
a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
As Rand states in "This is John Galt Speaking" (Atlas Shrugged), "When you clamor for public ownership of the means of production, you are clamoring for public ownership of the mind." The theme (of course?) of Rand's novel is: the role of the mind in man's existence. (This applies in both the material and the spiritual realms, in politics and religion.) It is only by application of the distinctively human conceptual faculty that the human race has moved from a primitive, caveman existence to modern, technologically-sophisticated society - and in any era of this progression, it's exceptional individual minds/intellects rising above the herd level, the conventional, the given, who drive further progress. Non-human-intellect natural resources (means of production) have to be transformed by the human intellect to generate value-added or technological advance, and these minds/intellects come attached to specific individuals who are in a unique position to develop and direct this resource. But even more importantly, ethically speaking (and not just a matter of historical explanation) the minds/intellects are their owners' to dispose of. The whole point of her novel's heroes going "on strike" is to devote their energies/talents/minds to ends and projects of their own choosing, rather than to be forcibly subjected to the dictates of their public-sector inferiors.
Now, I'm aware that Rand-bashers typically refuse to understand Rand's point, hence their resort to any number of intellectually lazy or reckless caricatures or outright smears. In any case, she remains socialism's most potent critic of socialism (and defender of capitalism) on ethical grounds.
Now, socialism proper - the state or collective owning "the means of production" is discredited roundly enough that defenders of it are hard to find these days. But there's a little loophole in the above definition of socialism: "or regulated". The same moral principle applies: under this definition the state or collective can still control and direct (under force of law) how individuals are to dispose of their intellects, talents, time and energy and the subsequent property holdings. And significant wide-ranging regulation of people's economic lives is not only typical of most nations' economies of today, but those of the more socialist bent seek more such control.
Anyone who finds socialism attractive and yet fails to engage with Rand and Hospers (and Nozick and Mack) with due dialectical diligence is either ignorant or dishonest. So which of these two is this 80 percent of philosophy (sic) majors, and - more importantly - how did this 80 percent manage to end up supporting the unsupportable? How poor a job did their philosophy (sic) instructors have to do in order to generate such an unacceptable result? I understand that the philosophy majors who go on to grad school would have to do a minimally decent job of dialectic with the libertarian position espoused above (which holds that either (a) market arrangements are in fact the best-known way of improving people's economic situation as well as preserving other freedoms and republican political institutions, or (b) that non-market arrangements are the best way of improving lives where markets didn't meet the task, or both). But what excuse is there for so many undergrads/majors for embracing such a monumentally stupid, immoral and un-American idea as socialism (whether defined in terms of ownership or of control of "the means of production")? (The best non-market arrangement I can propose for improving people's lives is (of course?) widespread philosophical education.)
If philosophers concerned with the public image of their professors have a clue, they'll be driven to some amount of action to counteract what's going on here. (How does socialism compare to / contrast with biblical fundamentalism, say? With the Rapture-ready variants? With more extreme variants than that?) Let's put this in terms that might stimulate their competitive juices more:
Economics majors aren't nearly so favorable to socialism; "only" 1 in 4 find socialism appealing. Now, in the undergraduate academy there are three main sectors: the physical sciences, the "soft" or social sciences, and the humanities. Various measures of (academic) intelligence show consistently that the smartest (on average) physical sciences majors are in Physics, the smartest social scientists are in Econ, and the smartest humanists are in Philosophy.
So . . . which majors are really the smartest and least ignorant when it comes to socialism?
You can't really blame "the campus environment" for the deplorable level of Philosophy majors' support for socialism, since that toxic environment hasn't destroyed (yet) the Econ departments enough to result in their majors supporting socialism in similar numbers. Anyway, the overwhelming majority of the Econ and the Philosophy majors can't both be right about the socialism thing; one of these groups is probably screwing up big-time. So which group is it? Are the Philosophy professors curious enough to find out, and perhaps clean up their acts? This is assuming that institutional incentives related to possible departmental budget cuts by representatives of pissed-off taxpayers aren't motivation enough.
As it is, 80 percent of philosophy (sic) majors supporting socialism only supports the widely-held thesis that "philosophers don't know how the real world works." Two last points to bring up here:
(1) There is indeed a widespread problem about the relation of philosophy to the real world, and that is a tendency among highly intellectual people - academic types perhaps most especially - toward cognitive rationalism, or a fundamental breach between ideas and the world that's supposed to moor down the ideas. (If you're a philosopher who wasn't confronted the problem of rationalism head-on, explicitly, fully and systematically, then how do you know you're not beset by it? Note that Peikoff delves in pretty deep on this stuff in Understanding Objectivism - head on by name in Lectures/chapters 8 and 9 and implicitly throughout the first 7 lectures/chapters as preparatory work.
(2) How would the likes of Plato, Aristotle and Kant address the socialism subject? One thing they (well, Aristotle for sure) wouldn't do is to fail to have a rigorous dialogue with the Econ profession. (I say Aristotle for sure, not just because of his sprawling research program, but if you open a history of economic thought you might just well find Aristotle discussed as a leading founder of the discipline - basically not surpassed for some 2,000 years until the Physiocrats et al.) Aristotle's sensibility is such that he'd be engaged heavily with Mises' book as well as Rand/Hospers' "your life is your own to dispose of" thesis. Nozick's 1974 Anarchy, State, and Utopia was praised on a back-cover blurb for its "unsurpassed dialectical sensibility" or words to that effect. It's unmistakable that this former leftist Nozick did his homework and concluded about socialism pretty much the same thing that Rand, Mises, Hayek, and Hospers did: it's indefensible as moral theory and as social science. Would Aristotle with his unsurpassed dialectical sensibility conclude any differently? Does Rawls' advocacy of a quasi-socialistic regime of economic and/or property rights fall afoul of the "individuals' lives are their own to dispose of" moral principle, and if it does, does this rule out as unacceptable (this aspect of) Rawls' theory? Among leading Harvard political philosophers of the early 1970s, the ratio of Rawlsians to Nozickians was 1:1. Wouldn't that be a more healthy representation of the philosophy profession than the (more or less) 4:1 ratio among philosophy majors? If so, whence the disconnect between points A and B?
Also, perhaps philosophers might explain how Hospers - a non-Harvard man tainted by his enthusiasm for and association with Rand - has gotten little recognition for his "other men's lives are not yours to dispose of" formulation while Nozick's essentially similar point but stated less strikingly is what gets the academic attention? What's wrong with Hospers' formulation? How is it not a powerful moral principle?
(I once stated this principle to a Rand-basher who replied that "that's actually a Kantian principle," and whereas Kant was a philosopher this Rand-basher respected most highly, this basher wouldn't extend any credit to Rand for espousing that very idea. Par for the Rand-bashing course, as my exhaustive experience in this area tells me.)
How on earth do philosophy (sic) majors appear utterly ignorant of such a hard-hitting formulation of libertarian principles? Surely Aristotle wouldn't fail to engage fully and fairly with Rand, Hospers, Nozick and Mises? Aristotle is one of the people I can confidently say didn't contribute to negative aspects of philosophy's reputation (notwithstanding hubristic STEM-lords who blame Aristotle for subsequent thinkers turning his physical theories into dogma). He systematically eschewed cognitive rationalism. If the only excuse today's philosophy profession has to offer for not operating at Aristotle's level is that they can't keep up with someone who had as a teacher someone who had Socrates as a teacher, then perhaps that's a legitimate excuse, but they might not like the can of worms this explanation might open up, either. If the notion of (my hypothetical, resurrected, preferably drill-sergeant-role) Aristotle embracing socialism strikes one as ridiculous as it strike me, then one should operate accordingly. Me, I wrote this blog post and have it duly contextualized with hard-hitting links. (Here's even another one, right from the SEP.) Perhaps others in the profession can take measures of their own to help salvage its reputation?
Socialism is a litmus test for sound moral and/or scientific reasoning. In my experience, arguing with socialists is like arguing with flat-earthers; they will stop at nothing to spin the evidence in their preconceived direction, and when confronted with the Rand/Hospers/Nozick principle (especially when illustrated by an example such as a decision to start one's own business to compete with the collectively-run/regulated enterprise, or with the reality of the skills bell-curve that results in differences in income and wealth), they don't even bother spinning: they fall silent. The socialists did a piss-poor job of responding to Mises' treatise in its full context (including his thesis about cultural destructionism), they've done a piss-poor job of even understanding Rand's main political-economic themes, they have a track record of apologetics for the most murderous and authoritarian political regimes; they have long since squandered the benefit of the doubt. You don't even need a hypothetical example of a resurrected Aristotle to figure this out; the aforementioned figures already presented compelling arguments and the historical record of socialism's failure can't be honestly avoided.
Is the only sorry excuse for this sorry state of affairs that the meaning of "socialism" has changed between the time of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, et al and today, such that the Scandinavian welfare-state model (where the lives of the men of mind and ability, as Rand/Galt terms them, are merely extensively regulated but not owned outright) and not the USSR is the most representative case? (As for the use of the term "socialism" to apply to Scandinavia but not to the USSR: how is the linguistic confusion run rampant here in any way acceptable in its own right? How on earth can it look good, no matter how you spin it, that 4/5 of Philosophy majors favor socialism?)
I already linked above Alan Charles Kors' discussion of the malpractice of intellectuals (sic) during the USSR era and afterward. Can there be an "after socialism," Kors asks, if the intellectuals don't come to grips with this malpractice? (Unlike medical doctors they can't be sued for malpractice; it's not evident that they face any serious negative repercussions for the failures of their ideas, a point that Thomas Sowell has repeated endlessly.) The fact that 80 fucking percent of philosophy majors find this evil idea attractive would indicate that the intellectuals (sic) are still engaged in the same malpractice, in essence. Bad-faith rationalizations about how pro-capitalism, libertarian and/or conservative intellectuals aren't competitive in an academic environment won't cut it, and certainly won't help to rehabilitate the low to mixed public reputation of the philosophy profession.
How much could it hurt these academics for them to actually behave like the letters "PhD" behind their names would suggest? How much does it really hurt them to seriously and fully consider that Bezos, Buffett, et al are entitled to their wealth for implementing visions that evidently no one else had the skills to do (at their level, anyway), that they're using their own skills/talents/energies/time/minds attached to their physical and moral personhood, that their activities tend to raise living standards generally, and other such truths about the capitalist system? Short of my hypothetical resurrected Aristotle, there is the example of Nozick who went through all the alternatives on offer and found socialism - basically anything to the left of Rawls - to be woefully inadequate as serious political philosophy. So, what did Nozick miss? (And it wouldn't be very philosophical to peddle the easily-refuted myth that Nozick "abandoned libertarianism," now, would it. What's the 2011 Slate article author's excuse for not acknowledging Nozick's 2001 interview? This is just the sort of intellectually lazy, bad-faith shit I'm talking about, which seems to pass without comment way too damn much. Heck, why don't leftist intellectuals respond to Kors and either atone as he recommends, or explain how they don't have to? Had I somehow missed their addressing Kors' argument? Do I need to make some exhaustive google search to confirm what I already suspect with ample justification? Shouldn't the Kors search link provided above suffice? If anything, the only arguments, facts and justifications here keep coming from the other direction, providing only more evidence of the academic left's shameful, credibility-squandering intellectual history. And the mainstream of taxpaying America certainly doesn't have the patience for this far-left shit.)
