Objections to Objectivism
Is Stealing Selfish?
Copyright © 2001 by John Ku

Ayn Rand as Confused Utilitarian

Among the favorite replies to supposed conflicts of interests that Objectivists like to give is that when taken in full context of reality, acting against the interests of others is not in one's rational self-interest. The clearest instance of this is given by one of the considerations Rand appeals to for the example mentioned in the last chapter involving the job:

Both men should know that if they desire a job, their goal is made possible only by the existence of a business concern able to provide employment – that that business concern requires the availability of more than one applicant for any job – that if only one applicant existed, he would not obtain the job, because the business concern would have to close its doors – and that their competition for the job is to their interest, even though one of them will lose in that particular encounter. (The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 56, my emphasis)

A crude summary of this argument is that the state of affairs that necessitates one of them losing is in the collective interest (i.e., their interest, the aggregate of all self-interests) of the job applicants. Any particular job applicant is a part of that collective whose interests it is in to have that state of affairs. Therefore, the state of affairs in question and whatever results from it is in each and every applicant's self-interest. A parallel argument of this form that would condemn stealing might contend that having property rights is in the collective interest of society; you are a member of that collective who benefits from such an institution; therefore, acting against such an institution is never in your self-interest.

Do not confuse this with the argument that appeals directly to self-interest on grounds of reciprocal effects from the collective. This is not Rand's argument here, and if it is, then it is plainly false. It is implausible to think that one tiny infringement on one's own part against a system that benefits oneself will bring the entire system down thereby making it against one's interest to do so. One act of stealing is not going to subvert the entire institution of property such that one loses all of one's own property. Nor is Rand arguing that one's act will have smaller negative consequences for the system but that they will always be distributed somehow to the original perpetrator in exact or greater proportion to the benefit gained from such a violation. Rand's argument may not be much more rational than this, but it's definitely not an appeal to some mystic doctrine of karma.

Needless to say, this argument is invalid; self-interest cannot be inferred merely from collective interest. The clearest example of a divergence between the two is given by the prisoners' dilemma: Suppose that you and I are questioned separately about some joint crime. We each have two choices, either to confess or to keep silent. If we both confess, each of us gets 10 years in prison. If we both keep silent, we’ll each get 2 years in prison. If one confesses and the other keeps silent, the one who confesses will go free while the one who keeps silent will get 12 years. It can thus be represented by the following table:

The point is that it is in each of our self-interests to confess no matter what the other does yet it is in our collective interest to keep silent. Suppose I know for a fact that you have confessed, then looking at the options available to me given by the first column, it is in my self-interest to confess. I will save myself 2 years in prison. Suppose instead that I know that you have kept silent, then of the options available to me given by the second column, it is again in my self-interest to confess. I will save myself 2 years in prison. But I know for a fact that you must do one or the other. It follows that it is in my self-interest to confess. The same applies to you. However, if we both confess, we shall both be worse off than had we both kept silent – a difference of 10 years each to 2 years each. (For a more thorough discussion of prisoners' dilemmas, you might want to see Derek Parfit's book, Reasons and Persons, from which much of this explanation has been taken.)

Granted any two person prisoners' dilemma is likely to appear hopelessly arbitrary, but the term prisoners' dilemma has been abstracted to include any case involving a conflict between self-interest and collective interest. And so, I think many person prisoners' dilemmas are quite common. In fact, they would be given by any situation in which of two choices A and B, (i) everyone would be better off if they all did A than if they all did B and (ii) for any given person, it would be better for him to do B, and everyone else to do A. Among the many circumstances fulfilling these conditions is the dilemma between respecting property rights and stealing. Thus, the mere fact that respecting property rights would be in the collective interest is insufficient to show that respecting them is in one's self-interest.

So, hopefully, by now, it has become abundantly clear that in so far as Rand relies on an appeal to the collective interest, she unwittingly abandons egoism and embraces some consequentialist form of altruism such as Parfit's Utilitarianism. This is by no means the only solution to prisoners' dilemmas and as we shall soon see, Rand manages to present another distinctly altruist solution in the guise of egoism.

To Ayn Rand as Confused Kantian

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