THE POWER OF SELF-INTEREST

I have recently been involved in a stimulating conversation with a small group of friends about the power of self-interest. We progressives often like to think that anyone whose primary concern is for him or herself is living just shy of a noble life. Isn’t nobility really about the good of the other, not just the good of oneself? But let’s take another look.

One of the protagonists in this conversation insists that all human motivation is centered on how it affects the self. I do things for the good of society so that being part of society I share in reaping the benefits. I want the left-out to be cared for because that makes my world that much safer. Universal health care eventually means I will be taken care of no matter my status. What is good for everybody else is also good for me. My guess is that in our personal daily lives we operate out of self-interest almost all the time. And that is not evil. It is our nature. Without it we would descend into the dungeon of not caring about much of anything.

There are, however, economic and political implications. The energy behind capitalism is essentially self-interest. Any corporation which is not interested in whether or not it makes a profit cannot stay in business, and no worker I know is indifferent as to whether he/she earns a decent income, gets a periodic raise and is protected by adequate safety measures.

Nevertheless an absolute commitment to the self is not only dangerous, it is also destructive. America’s most significant political division is between those who hold that nothing should interfere with the right of every individual to secure for him or herself anything within their grasp with no reponsibility to anyone else or to society in general, and those who believe we have a social contract in which we are bound together in a mutually supportive web.

The clearest philosophic statement of the total right of the individual comes from the philosopher Ayn Rand. Her two major novels and reams of other writings spell out this “objectivist” notion. Gordon Gekko, of the movie “Wall Street,” is a character loosely adopted from her book, “The Fountainhead.” “Greed is good” echoes Gekko, who lives by that creed. Reading the papers and listening to the lectures reproduced in the Ayn Rand Institute one discovers the political implications of this stance.

Dr. Aaron Book, the Institute’s President, has stated that the only legitimate function of the government is to safeguard the absolute right of the individual without engaging in any activity for the common good. In a debate he stated that we should do away with child labor laws, the 13th 14th, and 15th amendments, social security, laws to protect the environment and everything else that would take wealth from the individual and use it for the good of both society and any person not creating it.

Here is where it currently gets sticky beyond the philosophic argument. Is the right wing of the Republican Party the nation’s contemporary advocate of Rand’s perspective? Paul Ryan says Ayn Rand is the reason he entered politics. He requires all his staff and his interns to read her books. Ryan says, “Ayn Rand more than anyone else does a fantastic job explaining the morality of capitalism; the morality of individualism.” Clarence Thomas who requires his law clerks to read “The Fountainhead,” has said, “I tend really to be partial to Ayn Rand.” Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin holds that “The Fountainhead” is a foundational book. Rush Limbaugh and Fox News continue in their adulation of the movie version of “Atlas Shrugged.” The evangelical religious right is pulled both ways. It affirms the political and social philosophy of the Rand movement, but is appalled that Rand herself was an atheist.

Capitalism is perhaps the best, most doable way for the whole society to prosper, but taken at its extreme without any concern for or protection of the common good and society at large, it applauds a total commitment to the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us. One must ask whether that philosophy is where the current conservatives in the Republican Party really want to take us. I for one believe that we need each other, are bound to each other, that “No man is an island entire to himself,” and that our national policies must be shaped in that direction.

Come up with a different motivation, and the claim is that it is also ___. Come up with another explanation for a motivation, and the argument is that underneath it is still ___.

And it doesn't matter whether ___ is self-interest or something else, the game is the same.

Unless there is a clear test proposed wherein the self-interest hypothesis could be disproved, the arguments are useless.