Follows Ayn Rand are totally illogical

[Psy]

I have been debating a follower of Ayn Rand and pointed out that it is in the rational interest of workers to struggle against their bosses that conflicts with the interest of the property owning class. His reply, capitalism is a classless society thus there is no conflict of interests, I asked him to prove this and he just said because capitalism entitles everyone to the right of property.

I don't get their train of thought, previously I disproved the idea of caplism being classless simply due to all labor disputes being workers vs capitalists with very similar grievances, all with neither party able to gain anything with the other giving up something. Yet to supporters of Ayn Rand that was totally irrelevant because workers could buy the means of production (with the capital they don't have access to) thus in their logic class does not exist.

I really don't know how else to respond the stupid logic of communists are wrong because capitalism had already got rid of class division.

[Tommy4ever]

I'd never even heard that one before. :laugh:

Randism seems even more stupid than before.

Perhaps you could point out that whilst all have the right to own property in a capitalist society, only a select few have the means and ability to own the means of production (make sure to point out the distinction between private property and personal property so people don't think you want to communalise their toothbrush :p).

Beyond this, you might be talking to a brick wall I'm afraid. :/

[Robocommie]

Capitalism IS egalitarian from a liberal point of view. Liberalism is a legalistic philosophy, in which equality before the law translates to equality in point of fact. It doesn't take into question material concerns, which is the flaw and limitation of liberalism. It ignores the fact that, while equality before the law is very nice and good and all, it's not enough for a truly equal/just society.

[ZeroNowhere]

It doesn't matter what they can be, it matters what they are. I could be a good weightlifter if I had trained and eaten accordingly, but I'm certainly not going to be sent to the Olympics by that merit. They are moralizing, but Marxists are more interested in analyzing.

[RedSunRising]

Followers of Ayn Rand are sociopaths, little point in arguing with them.

[Psy]

Followers of Ayn Rand are sociopaths, little point in arguing with them.
I was trying to point out to them that their utopian vision would logically result in perpetual class war as they object to the stabilizing power of the bourgeoisie state (and of course they don't support a workers revolution) yet still cling to the capitalist mode of production. I even pointed out that it was the US state that saved the American capitalists butt in 1877 by US Army forces crushing the spreading worker uprisings that started with the railway strike yet that fact went right over their head.

I was basically trying to point all their talk of rationally was not rational at all.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Yeah brick wall is right. It's just such a stupid argument and don't know where you could even begin. The randist seems to be conflating class with caste. Yes, there is social mobility, upward or downward, for people in capitalism unlike in feudal caste systems or slavery. But class just means classifications; what is someone's place in the material functioning of a society i.e. their relation to the means of production.

[REVLEFT'S BIEGGST MATSER TROL]

Well obviously slave owners could become slaves so I would say they were all part of the same class as well. :cool:

[Psy]

I'd never even heard that one before. :laugh:

Randism seems even more stupid than before.

Perhaps you could point out that whilst all have the right to own property in a capitalist society, only a select few have the means and ability to own the means of production (make sure to point out the distinction between private property and personal property so people don't think you want to communalise their toothbrush :p).

Beyond this, you might be talking to a brick wall I'm afraid. :/
I tried bring that up but I ran into a brick wall response refuting the idea of property is a social construct, with the Randitie claiming they are part of human nature. I brought up early human tribes and he claims property and capitalism existed even back then, that the hunter that killed the pray got 100% ownership of the kill and traded it for commodities other members of the tribes produced to which I called bullshit and gave up.

[Tommy4ever]

I tried bring that up but I ran into a brick wall response refuting the idea of property is a social construct, with the Randitie claiming they are part of human nature. I brought up early human tribes and he claims property and capitalism existed even back then, that the hunter that killed the pray got 100% ownership of the kill and traded it for commodities other members of the tribes produced to which I called bullshit and gave up.

But in hunter gatherer society it was a group of males who did the hunting. So which of them owns the kill? Whilst women and children gathered berries, nuts etc. So do they claim that the men traded a share of the meat for a share of the food gathered by the women and children? :confused:

[Demogorgon]

Objectivism is more a cult than a political position. You are not going to get productive argument out of them.

[Psy]

But in hunter gatherer society it was a group of males who did the hunting. So which of them owns the kill? Whilst women and children gathered berries, nuts etc. So do they claim that the men traded a share of the meat for a share of the food gathered by the women and children? :confused:
Yhea that is when my brain hurt from the amount of stupid in their argument.

[Desperado]

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

[Die Rote Fahne]

Best response would be "why did Ayn Rand take social security cheques?"

[RED DAVE]

[H]e claims property and capitalism existed even back then, that the hunter that killed the pray got 100% ownership of the kill and traded it for commodities other members of the tribes produced to which I called bullshit and gave up.There is absolutely no evidence to support his belief. What you are dealing with is religion. Ask him for anthropological or archaeological proof of this.

RED DAVE

[Aurorus Ruber]

Best response would be "why did Ayn Rand take social security cheques?"

She was just doing her part to keep welfare out of the hands of lazy bums by drawing on the finite pool of social security herself to decrease the total supply. ;) Or maybe she just figured that rational self-interest overrode any economic principles she had articulated, which after all ruled out the opportunity for free money. I really do wonder what sort of rationalization she would have given.


I have been debating a follower of Ayn Rand and pointed out that it is in the rational interest of workers to struggle against their bosses that conflicts with the interest of the property owning class.

I have often wondered the same thing as well. I imagine that many Randroids would simply argue the free market works better for everyone than any alternative. Any attempt to subvert this point by adopting another economic model would, so they claim, result in disaster (no doubt they would aggressively push the USSR as typical of non-free market economics). Given that, it does sort of make sense to claim the workers are following their rational self-interest by supporting the free market rather than trying to overthrow it. Of course, this line of reasoning would assume the free market is the most rational economic system in the first place, making it rather circular as a defense of the free market.


"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

Quite. It's important to emphasize to this Objectivist that the abstract right to own property does not translate into equal opportunity or perfect freedom as they suggest.

[Ocean Seal]

I have been debating a follower of Ayn Rand and pointed out that it is in the rational interest of workers to struggle against their bosses that conflicts with the interest of the property owning class. His reply, capitalism is a classless society thus there is no conflict of interests, I asked him to prove this and he just said because capitalism entitles everyone to the right of property.

So what you're telling me is that if I fill out some papers I can get my own factory? Shit, why am I working then.
No conflict of interests. I see plenty conflict. There is in fact a conflict between those that do own property, and those that "could" own property. I mean I could go and buy a factory if I went to Atlantic city and gambled my life savings successfully several times over. I suppose it is possible:blushing:.




I don't get their train of thought, previously I disproved the idea of caplism being classless simply due to all labor disputes being workers vs capitalists with very similar grievances, all with neither party able to gain anything with the other giving up something. Yet to supporters of Ayn Rand that was totally irrelevant because workers could buy the means of production (with the capital they don't have access to) thus in their logic class does not exist.

If they could, why wouldn't they? Oh right, eating gets in the way. See workers have to pay for food, for bills, and they have to save in case of an economic downturn where the boss kicks them out on the street. Ask him if he thinks that the 50% of the world on less than $2 a day can buy the means of production.


I really don't know how else to respond the stupid logic of communists are wrong because capitalism had already got rid of class division.
After a while, I think its best just to give up. Someone who contradicts something you've so obviously disproven probably won't listen to reason.

[∞]

Tell him/her this...my boss doesn't do shit. In fact all hes doing right now is watching Sportscenter in his office. Thats all that needs to be said.

[L.A.P.]

There is absolutely no evidence to support his belief. What you are dealing with is religion.

RED DAVE

And they call Marxists dogmatic.:glare:

[Psy]

There is absolutely no evidence to support his belief. What you are dealing with is religion. Ask him for anthropological or archaeological proof of this.

RED DAVE
Well when he claimed lower lifeforms (even bacteria) has property, my I just could not comprehend the level of stupid of his argument. Viewing what bacteria consumes as the bacteria's property is just so far off from the concept of property that I can't think a way to misunderstand the concept of property more as in his incoherent rambling he linked the concept of property as the meaning for all life, that life can not exist without the concept of property to which my first thought by his logic bacteria can't exist because it had no concept of property though he actually thinks bacteria does.

[Demogorgon]

Well when he claimed lower lifeforms (even bacteria) has property, my I just could not comprehend the level of stupid of his argument. Viewing what bacteria consumes as the bacteria's property is just so far off from the concept of property that I can't think a way to misunderstand the concept of property more as in his incoherent rambling he linked the concept of property as the meaning for all life, that life can not exist without the concept of property to which my first thought by his logic bacteria can't exist because it had no concept of property though he actually thinks bacteria does.
You are dealing with a very bizarre cult, though I am not sure that I have seen a suggestion this far-fetched from them before. There is little to be gained from arguing with them, would you try to engage a fanatical scientologist in sane debate? The same principal applies here.

[RED DAVE]

Well when he claimed lower lifeforms (even bacteria) has property, my I just could not comprehend the level of stupid of his argument. Viewing what bacteria consumes as the bacteria's property is just so far off from the concept of property that I can't think a way to misunderstand the concept of property more as in his incoherent rambling he linked the concept of property as the meaning for all life, that life can not exist without the concept of property to which my first thought by his logic bacteria can't exist because it had no concept of property though he actually thinks bacteria does.According to Murray Rothbard, one of the chief philosophers of libertarianism, and a one-time disciple of Rand, the relationship between parents and children is a limited contract in which the parents are not obligated to feed the child, so it would be okay to let the kid starve to death.

I kid you not about this. He actually wrote this in a book.


Applying our theory to parents and children, this means that a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so. But the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die.http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/fourteen.asp

RED DAVE

[the Left™]

i have been debating a follower of ayn rand and pointed out that it is in the rational interest of workers to struggle against their bosses that conflicts with the interest of the property owning class. his reply, capitalism is a classless society thus there is no conflict of interests, i asked him to prove this and he just said because capitalism entitles everyone to the right of property.

i don't get their train of thought, previously i disproved the idea of caplism being classless simply due to all labor disputes being workers vs capitalists with very similar grievances, all with neither party able to gain anything with the other giving up something. Yet to supporters of ayn rand that was totally irrelevant because workers could buy the means of production (with the capital they don't have access to) thus in their logic class does not exist.

I really don't know how else to respond the stupid logic of communists are wrong because capitalism had already got rid of class division.

lol what

[Psy]

lol what
The thing you have to remember i that follower of Ayn Rand sees altruism as evil as only people free to purse their self-interest is moral. I find altruism is how they tend to first bash the ideas of Marx, when you point out Marx was for workers to purse their class interest it quickly gets murky as if workers had a rational self-interest it was their moral duty to follow it if you literally take Ayn Rand teaching as true thus it was the moral duty for both sides to engage in class war. In other words their theory of objectivism contradicts with the material interests of the classes in capitalism. Thus in the Ayn Rand follower I was arguing with denied class interest exists to avoid the idea that class war is the rational conclusion of contradicting interests of the two classes in capitalism.

[REVLEFT'S BIEGGST MATSER TROL]

Well when he claimed lower lifeforms (even bacteria) has property, my I just could not comprehend the level of stupid of his argument. Viewing what bacteria consumes as the bacteria's property is just so far off from the concept of property that I can't think a way to misunderstand the concept of property more as in his incoherent rambling he linked the concept of property as the meaning for all life, that life can not exist without the concept of property to which my first thought by his logic bacteria can't exist because it had no concept of property though he actually thinks bacteria does.

First off you obviously need to stop talking at this point.

Second off you need to realise that this Randian is defining "property" as literally, anything any "thing" does any thing with, ever.

In which case you can say you aren't against property defined as he is. You just want a different set of "rules" goverening how this property is distributed. In the same way as presumably he feels it is okay for human beings to trangress the "property" of bacteria according to his system of just property rights (lol), just say you feel it okay to overthrow the rich according to your idea of just property rights or whatever.

Defined as this absolute eeijit has, the issue isn't around "property", but what makes certain property just or morally acceptable.

[Rafiq]

Capitalism cannot exist without the proletariat. Though it is not illegal for proletariats to become bourgeois, it is very uncommon.

[Rafiq]

I would suggest reading Marx. If you know Capital inside out, you basically know how to disprove the myth that capitalism works.

[MattShizzle]

capitalism is a classless society

http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn34/DjBlindax/n725075089_288918_2774.jpg

And yeah, Objectivism is completely sociopathic. These are the people who would like even the roads, police and fire departments to be private so the poor could be even more shit on and the rich could get even richer.

[Zanthorus]

With regards the original question, perhaps we could start by noting that the main surface characteristic of capitalism is the generalised production of commodities. The generalised production of social wealth in the form of the commodity necessitates that the act of exchange does not take the form of the simple circulation of commodities, in which the act of circulation is undertaken for the accumulation and consumption of specific use-values, and exchange is thus limited by the needs of the individual producers. On the contrary, it requires the circulation of commodities as capital, in which the aim is not the limited needs of any individual, but rather the continual expansion of value. The representative of this expanding, self-valorising value is the capitalist. The expansion of value also requires the existence of something which can expand value. This peculiar something is the commodity labour-power, and the representative of this commodity is the worker whose labour-power it is.

So class is revealed to be something logically intrinsic to capitalism. The generalised production of commodities is the result of the capitalist process of production, and not of man's innate need to truck and barter. Now as to whether a worker could start up their own business and become a capitalist, certainly they could, but this would not at all disprove the existence of capitalists and workers.


Well when he claimed lower lifeforms (even bacteria) has property, my I just could not comprehend the level of stupid of his argument.

This argument was dealt with by Marx in the 1857 Introduction to 'A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy' (Published as the introduction to the Grundrisse) in his remarks on 'production in general'. Essentially, one of the variations of the arguments used by political economists for the eternal nature of bourgeois economic conditions was that, ownership and appropriation are interrelated concepts, the labour process always involves the appropriation of nature for the ends of the producer, and so the conclusion is that the labour process is impossible without property in the means of production. This seems to be a similar argument to what your debating partner is putting forward in claiming that bacteria appropriating elements of their surroundings for survival is the smae as the concept of property.

Now the Marxian counter is that, although on this definition of property is indeed a tautology that forms of production should involve forms of property, the specific form of this property is by no means fixed as the property of private individuals. On the contrary, going back through history we could easily point to examples where the form of property was that of communal or state property. Seen in this light, socialism is not a movement for the abolition of property, but for the abolition of the historically specific form of property which exists within bourgeois society, and for the organisation of production on the basis of a new form of property i.e social property which is the form of propery appropriate to the social appropriation of the production process.

In general, it is characteristic of bourgeois ideology to abstract from the concrete historical specificites of social forms of life and declare the forms specific to captialism to be the eternal forms of production. It would possible to write reams on this subject as to how this mode of thinking reproduces itself elsewhere throughout bourgeois ideology, for example in philosophy where words are abstracted from the language-games in which they originate and their corresponding forms of life, a move which is the source of speculative idealism and of philosophical confusion in general. For now the easiest counter is simply to point out the empirical multiplicity of forms of property and methods of appropriation - from slavery to serfdom to ancient village commmunes tribal forms of life - and point out the concrete differences of these forms with the capitalist form in contrast with their attempts to transform this form into an eternal law of nature on the basis of babbling which usually reduces itself to empty tautologies when pushed.


The thing you have to remember i that follower of Ayn Rand sees altruism as evil as only people free to purse their self-interest is moral.

Well, if we start from the assumption that the pursuit of self-interest is the moral good, then we would quickly find ourselves wrapped up in contradictions, as what is in the self-interest of one is to the detriment of another and it would probably be easy to push the principle to the point where it breaks down and loses all coherency. On the other hand, one might say that the pursuit of self-interest is indeed moral, and then point out that the community established by social labour is a community founded on the egoistic needs of it's individual members. Now in capitalism this community exists as a power alien from it's individual members, the human community is mediated through things, and the self-interest of the members of the community becomes a force against them as a consequence of the alienation of human activity. To the extent that the idea that self-interest constitutes the moral good has any sense, it would be as a protest against the fact that production is not a direct affirmation of the real community of men. One could also note, as you say, that proletarian morality is founded upon self-interest and that it's rules tend towards the abolition of capitalism.

[Agent Ducky]

There is no use arguing with randroids. Their logic is flawed to a point where there is no hope. But if you're like me, they are DAMN FUN to argue with.

[Psy]

This argument was dealt with by Marx in the 1857 Introduction to 'A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy' (Published as the introduction to the Grundrisse) in his remarks on 'production in general'. Essentially, one of the variations of the arguments used by political economists for the eternal nature of bourgeois economic conditions was that, ownership and appropriation are interrelated concepts, the labour process always involves the appropriation of nature for the ends of the producer, and so the conclusion is that the labour process is impossible without property in the means of production. This seems to be a similar argument to what your debating partner is putting forward in claiming that bacteria appropriating elements of their surroundings for survival is the smae as the concept of property.

The problem is this turns the word property into a catchall, basically if you are in possession of anything it becomes your property by this logic.



Now the Marxian counter is that, although on this definition of property is indeed a tautology that forms of production should involve forms of property, the specific form of this property is by no means fixed as the property of private individuals. On the contrary, going back through history we could easily point to examples where the form of property was that of communal or state property. Seen in this light, socialism is not a movement for the abolition of property, but for the abolition of the historically specific form of property which exists within bourgeois society, and for the organisation of production on the basis of a new form of property i.e social property which is the form of propery appropriate to the social appropriation of the production process.

Which doesn't work to someone that thinks possession is the same as property as from the view of possession there is no significant differences. Of course this creates huge contradictions as it means when workers seize means of production it becomes their property simply because they were in possession of it but it became very clear trying to point out such logical flaws became futile.

[RED DAVE]

And to rub it in, the odious, boring movie version of Atlas Shrugged only earned $4,752,353 on a $20 million investment. :D

RED DAVE

[Robocommie]

And to rub it in, the odious, boring movie version of Atlas Shrugged only earned $4,752,353 on a $20 million investment. :D

RED DAVE

Shit, did that get released? I'm tempted to watch it just to see how awful it is.

[Zanthorus]

The problem is this turns the word property into a catchall, basically if you are in possession of anything it becomes your property by this logic.

I wasn't talking about possession, I was talking about appropriation through human labour. The link between appropriation of resources and the right to property in those resources goes back at least to Locke for whom it formed the foundation of his homsesteading principle. There is no 'problem' here as such since the link between the concept of 'property' and appropriation through labour is, at least the argument of your debating partner seems to suggest this, a definitional one. However, since there are multiple social forms in which humans can appropriate resources (In Marxian terminology we would say there are multiple modes of production) this would logically entail the possibility of multiple forms of property corresponding with each form of appropriation. The argument that it necessarily leads to a conception of the eternal nature of individual property involves a further assumption, namely that the primary form of human production is isolated artisan/farmer production, and that collective labour processes are non-existant, which is obviously false.

Of course if the argument about bacteria is really intended to prove that possession of an object turns it into my property then there is not much point either you or me wasting time on these arguments. Also it would appear that the local library is in possession of quite a number of things that are logically mine, and I may have to bring them up on this.


Which doesn't work to someone that thinks possession is the same as property as from the view of possession there is no significant differences.

Well if there are no significant differences then there is no problem. Granted one is left with the rather absurd notion that socialism is in fact a form of capitalism, but it would probably be best to leave it to the Randians to work that one out. By the time they've finished spinning it around in their heads we'll probably have expropriated the expropriators anyway.

[caramelpence]

I was actually thinking about libertarian moral philosophy the other day and a potentially interesting critique came across my mind. A central argument in Nozickian libertarianism (I'm not familiar with Objectivism to the same degree though I'd imagine these arguments are fairly widespread within the libertarian tradition) that springs from the principle of self-ownership is that it is unjust to coercively tax the income of individuals in order to support others, through welfare and the like, because doing so directly threatens their right to the products of their labour, which is itself derived from self-ownership, and so for Nozick the defining characteristic of justice is not a given end-state or determinate distribution of goods (as in, say, Rawls) but a scenario in which any given distribution has come about in the right way - that is, through consensual transactions, rather than through coercion. On this basis, libertarians call for state taxation to be limited to what is needed to support a night watchman state that protects the moral rights of individuals and (by extension, according to libertarians) private property.

The critique that I arrived at is this: even with a night watchman state based on some form of taxation that does not immediately discriminate against high-income individuals (say a lump sum payment or a proportional tax system) there are likely to be some individuals who will benefit from the limited functions that the state does carry out more than others - say those individuals who have lots of private assets that need to be guaranteed, or those individuals who are more susceptible to crime and who need the state to protect their immediate bodily autonomy through the prevention and punishment of criminal acts. If this is accepted, then it could be plausibly argued that the Nozickian night watchman state still involves the unjust (according to Nozickian ontology) taxation of resources because there is still a process of redistribution, whereby some individuals receive protection from the state that is disproportionately smaller than the amount of protection that they support through their tax burden. Given that conclusion, the question that arises is: what is so special about the taxation of individuals to support a night watchman state, given that it also involves a redistribution process of some kind, in the sense that some individuals are benefiting from the coerced contributions of others? If it's not special and is like other forms of more direct or explicit redistribution that libertarians are liable to reject as unjust, then it seems that you need to pick one of two conclusions - either accept that more extensive redistribution is not unjust after all and that the entireity of Nozickian moral ontology needs to be reworked or just rejected in its entirety, or accept that the night watchman state is also unjust, which means descending into the absurdity that is anarcho-capitalism.

Is this a sensible critique? Or have I mischaracterized libertarian moral ontology?

[Rooster]

The whole point of Rand's philosophy is to justify being a a miserable and bitter loner. It tries to dress it up in Greek heroes in the Nietzschean tradition, adjusting itself to capitalism and anti-authoritarianism. If you ever meet a real randroid in person, you'll see that this is true.

[Psy]

I wasn't talking about possession, I was talking about appropriation through human labour. The link between appropriation of resources and the right to property in those resources goes back at least to Locke for whom it formed the foundation of his homsesteading principle. There is no 'problem' here as such since the link between the concept of 'property' and appropriation through labour is, at least the argument of your debating partner seems to suggest this, a definitional one. However, since there are multiple social forms in which humans can appropriate resources (In Marxian terminology we would say there are multiple modes of production) this would logically entail the possibility of multiple forms of property corresponding with each form of appropriation. The argument that it necessarily leads to a conception of the eternal nature of individual property involves a further assumption, namely that the primary form of human production is isolated artisan/farmer production, and that collective labour processes are non-existant, which is obviously false.

Of course if the argument about bacteria is really intended to prove that possession of an object turns it into my property then there is not much point either you or me wasting time on these arguments. Also it would appear that the local library is in possession of quite a number of things that are logically mine, and I may have to bring them up on this.

Well I argued that if one picks up a rock from the ground it is not property (there is no relationship between humans regarding that rock) and his defense was if a kid picked up the rock and wanted it they will tell you other wise. He ignored that said rock would have no exchange value or utility to speak of thus no bourgeoisie state will consider it property so if someone took the rock it would not be legally theft as it was not legally property to begin with.

Same with the moon, if you build a rocket ship and make it up the moon you can do whatever you want up there. The moon is not property yet by that same lack of it being property means if another person makes it up there they also can do what they want with it till there is a arrangement to turn the moon into a form of property.



Well if there are no significant differences then there is no problem. Granted one is left with the rather absurd notion that socialism is in fact a form of capitalism, but it would probably be best to leave it to the Randians to work that one out. By the time they've finished spinning it around in their heads we'll probably have expropriated the expropriators anyway.
Well I pointed out bluntly that fascism has nothing to do with altruism but a desperate reaction to defend class privilege from proletarian militancy and while this is the extreme the bourgeoisie state acts a barrier to worker uprisings. Thus Altas Struggled will never happen as the bourgeoisie state act in the interest of the owning class so the owning class will never go on strike to overthrow a bourgeoisies state and even if they did it would only clear the way for a workers revolution as the owning class will have no means to defend themselves against the working class.

[Psy]

The whole point of Rand's philosophy is to justify being a a miserable and bitter loner. It tries to dress it up in Greek heroes in the Nietzschean tradition, adjusting itself to capitalism and anti-authoritarianism. If you ever meet a real randroid in person, you'll see that this is true.
From my experience they want to be a capitalist yet want to justify wanting to be a capitalist by victimizing capitalists as underdogs by viewing the bourgeoisie state exploits the bourgeoisie and that if the state just got out of the way the proletariat would all become capitalists and everyone would just live off the ownership of property.

They think everyone can Bill Gates and ignore that Bill Gates was subsidized by DARPA that pumped in countless tax dollars into computer research decades before the MITS Altair 8800 hit the market and BASIC developed at Dartmouth College which Bill Gates ported to the MITS Altair 8800 as his first big start in the industry, Bill Gates also coded the port BASIC using computer time paid for by tax payers.

[Armchair War Criminal]

Actually, I don't think Objectivists are a totally lost cause. They're very difficult to argue with if you have little experience with them, because Rand read almost no other philosophers beyond Aristotle, and so she employs terms to mean very different things than other philosophers do. But if you know the language it's not much worse than, say, making clear to those with a neoclassical background that the Marxian terms "value," "exchange-value," and "use-value" correspond roughly to what they're used to calling "cost," "price," and "utility."

For instance: the absolutely bizarre (from the standpoint of common usage) use of "property." When they say "survive," they really mean "flourish" or perhaps more precisely (given the Aristotelian influence) "achieving εὐδαιμονία" if they're talking about humans. Another important one is what they refer to as "selfishness" and "altruism." "Selfishness" is just taking the best course of action for you - achieving your goals, whatever they might be - while "altruism" is doing anything that doesn't achieve your goals. This leads to claims like "if a woman wants to feed her starving child, but she spends the last of her money to buy a nice hat for herself instead, she's being altruistic," which, like "bacteria own property," is just totally nuts if you approach the words from the standpoint of common usage. But it actually makes perfect sense within their system, and doesn't mean what it looks like to someone unfamiliar with the philosophy. An Objectivist is apt to dismiss you when you trot out the most immediate objections, just as we dismiss (or, according to our temperaments, sigh and educate) those who object to the labor theory of value with the mudpie argument.

Objectivist metaethics aren't totally crazy; in fact, they're a sight better than most of the folk metaethics people are operating with, and probably not all that different from what the young Marx might contend. Simply put: different creatures need to do different things to flourish ("survive".) Since you want to flourish - whatever that is for you, whether it's living a long pleasant life with your family or writing a great opera or whatever - you need to use the tools you have as a creature, like, in your human case, reason. If you employ your rational capacity, you'll see you have reason to adopt certain behavioral rules ("ethics") to help aid you in your quest to flourish. And foremost among these rules are that, (1) you should try to discover and acknowledge objective reality, and (here's where the politics and interpersonal ethics come in) (2) since you can negotiate with other rational creatures, you shouldn't be dishonest or arbitrarily violent with them, but honor all agreements, so as to ensure your continued ability to negotiate. You don't have any reason not to take what bacteria use to survive (their "property") because you have no credibility to lose by doing so.

Rand also thought it was okay for Westerners to forcibly take the land of Native Americans. There are a couple of ways we can take this, most of which - like the ways we can take her views on gender - boil down to "wow, what an asshole." But the most logical way to get to this from those premises of hers that are reasonable is - and it is in fact a hard logical consequence of them - that we do have reason to expropriate others' property if there's more to gain from plunder than honest dealing. After all, the international community at the time didn't give a fuck about native peoples, and no great power would consider the others not worth dealing with just for expropriating the land of some ignorant savage or another, and, as part of her reasons for this view, Rand noted that the Indians wouldn't have done much useful with it anyway - i.e., the Superior White Man would produce far more with the land he stole than the Ignorant Savages ever could produce with it to trade with the Superior White Man. Regardless of the factual premises here, the logic is pretty airtight.

I think you see the analogy I'm taking this towards, and yes, it's pretty distasteful. But both the ability to condemn colonialist expropriation and an answer to the Objectivist's strongest objection here - that it may be collectively rational for workers to overthrow capitalism, but not individually for them to do so - can be got by going back to Aristotle, and emphasizing not just that we're not just ζοον λογον εχον ("rational animals," an extremely important concept for Rand, because she founds her whole idea of human dignity on the negotiability that it entails, and narrowly defines humans' "tools for survival" on their reason) but ζοον πολιτικον ("political animal") as well. By nature we are empathetic and solidaristic, and we care about both the opinions and well-being of those around us. Not that we don't care more about our own individual selves - in fact, the very text where Aristotle defines man as a ζοον πολιτικον begins with an argument against Plato's utopian socialism on these very grounds - but merely that we have strong reasons to cooperate, bound up in the kind of creatures we are. (This is not an argument in itself for socialism, though many people employ it as such, because of course capitalism and all other previous forms of society, even the most "simple," are based on incredibly complex patterns of cooperation. The idea that capitalism initiates a world of Robinson Crusoes is liberal ideology, nothing more.)

In the OP's case this is actually kind of a useless post, since you already got to the right argument within the Objectivist's framework - that the material interests of workers are contrary to those of capitalists - and (s)he replied not with a fundamentally semantic objection (I think) but a quite substantive one. There's a laughably wrong and a non-laughably-wrong version of his objection: the former is that no, there actually is no conflict of interests: there's such a preponderance of evidence for the fact that there is that if you can't convince, the Objectivist is either completely obtuse (bring up "acknowledging objective reality" and stuff like that, although it probably won't do anything) or you'll have to do some digging to see the semantic barriers. The second, is, again, that each worker may have an interest in there being a socialist revolution, but that the reward/risk ratio for personally trying to get rich (work hard, maybe end up rich) is much better than that of engaging in class struggle (work hard, maybe face political violence, maybe end up slightly richer.) The proper reply to this is that at the very least each worker has good reason to socially approve of others engaging in class struggle, and if this system of social approval and disapproval leads (as social cues often do) to at least some actual, corresponding behavior, then workers can consider that felicitous.

Given the facts about the world, Objectivists should, by their own principles, become socialists. (I've ran into more than a few ex-Objectivist Marxists, so there's presumably something to this, beyond the general shared personality traits that draw one to politically extremist rationalism.) Their philosophical system is in fact your ally, because (unlike, say, Rothbardians) it isn't metaphysical. Typically the greater problem is that most Objectivists also believe in Austrian economics, which is terrifying mental parasite in its mature form, because it says that empirical evidence doesn't matter when theorizing about society. To argue against Austrian economics in its own terms, you have to make incredibly odd-looking claims, like there aren't actually any people or choices or money in the world, just things that superficially look like people making things that superficially look like choices with things that superficially look like money - to which they'll probably respond with purely instinctive laughter, same as we do when we hear claims about bacteria owning property. And my experience is that they typically aren't willing to accept any terms that are defined extensionally ("red is the color of things like streetsigns and blood, found on a frequency of around ~480–405 THz") rather than intensionally ("red is a certain secondary property of surfaces.") So... yeah. (I suppose you could point them in the direction of Roderick Long (http://praxeology.net/), who is both an Objectivist and an Austrian and believes that workers should overthrow the state and expropriate the means of production. And furthermore he calls the current system we're living in where rich businessfolk exploit workers "socialism" (because it depends on the violence of the state to steal people's rightful property) and the future system of revolutionary workers' councils "capitalism" (because it's based on free agreements between equals.))

So to summarize: bacteria own property, people don't exist, child abuse is altruistic, you must finish that godawful fantasy trilogy you're writing if you are to survive, cylons are more human than us, Benjamins aren't money, Gerard Winstanley and Thomas Muntzer were the first capitalists.

[LordAcheron]

The opening post made me chuckle. I don't even bother talking to her followers. Way I see it, its an attempt to justify being a selfish twit and supporting capitalism while knowing full well how it affects the earth and its inhabitants

[Psy]

In the OP's case this is actually kind of a useless post, since you already got to the right argument within the Objectivist's framework - that the material interests of workers are contrary to those of capitalists - and (s)he replied not with a fundamentally semantic objection (I think) but a quite substantive one. There's a laughably wrong and a non-laughably-wrong version of his objection: the former is that no, there actually is no conflict of interests: there's such a preponderance of evidence for the fact that there is that if you can't convince, the Objectivist is either completely obtuse (bring up "acknowledging objective reality" and stuff like that, although it probably won't do anything) or you'll have to do some digging to see the semantic barriers. The second, is, again, that each worker may have an interest in there being a socialist revolution, but that the reward/risk ratio for personally trying to get rich (work hard, maybe end up rich) is much better than that of engaging in class struggle (work hard, maybe face political violence, maybe end up slightly richer.) The proper reply to this is that at the very least each worker has good reason to socially approve of others engaging in class struggle, and if this system of social approval and disapproval leads (as social cues often do) to at least some actual, corresponding behavior, then workers can consider that felicitous.

Yet the Randian in question refused to admit there was even antagonism between employer and employee that can be blamed on capitalism. That both parties lay claim on produced value, workers for expending labor in its production and capitalists for owning the means of production thus it becomes zero sum and antagonistic.