| | Christopher,
I honestly think that we are probably dealing with Ayn Rand in two different time periods here, at least: she at one time believed the initiation of force to be always evil, and at another time believed it to only usually be evil. I don't agree. You seem to be looking at -- and evaluating Rand by -- an isolated 7-word sentence: "The initiation of force is always evil" as if it's a floating abstraction, true or not on it's own merit alone. However, I think she deserves more credit than that. I invite you to consider looking at what Rand wrote in context (more than you apparently have). For instance, Rand actually provided a reason why the initiation of force could be evil.
With that larger perspective on this matter -- that Rand had her reasons -- we can take a step back and examine the reasons which would make initiated force evil (rather than treating it merely as a dangling or floating abstraction). Then, knowing the reasons that make a proposition true or untrue, applicable to a situation or not applicable -- we are in a better position to use or to judge the merit of that proposition.
For starters, a couple years before she wrote "The Ethics of Emergencies", Rand qualified the non-initiation of force principle in terms of rights (For The New Intellectual, 1961, p 55):
... no man has the right to initiate the use of physcial force against others. Notice how that's different from the 7-word sentence: "The initiation of force is always evil." The 7-word sentence is an absolute, while Rand's sentence is qualified or contextual. It doesn't say that one should never initiate force, it says that one never has the unqualified right to initiate force. The idea is that no organized, social, or collective system or action should involve initiated force -- because there's no moral principle of right to justify that sort of thing. Rand goes on to explain her reasoning (p 55-57):
To claim the right to initiate the use of physical force against another man ... is to evict oneself automatically from the realm of rights, of morality and of the intellect. ...
So long as men believe that the initiation of physical force by some men against others is a proper part of organized society--hatred, violence, brutality, destruction, slaughter and the savage gang warfare of group against group are all they can or will achieve. ... the best perish, but the Attilas rise to the top. ...
Let no man posture as an advocate of peace if he proposes or supports any social system that initiates the use of physical force against individual men, in any form whatever. Let no man posture as an advocate of freedom if he claims the right to establish his version of a good society where individual dissenters are to be suppressed by means of physical force. Let no man posture as an intellectual if he proposes to elevate a thug into the position of final authority over the intellect ...
No advocate of reason can claim the right to force his ideas on others. No advocate of the free mind can claim the right to force the minds of others. No rational society, no co-operation, no agreement, no understanding, no discussion are possible among men who propose to substitute guns for rational persuasion.
Rand follows up on this reasoning -- that we shouldn't use force because it invalidates reason (which is our very means of survival) -- in the mid-1960s (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 1966, p 17):
Since knowledge, thinking, and rational action are properties of the individual, since the choice to exercise his rational faculty or not depends on the individual, man’s survival requires that those who think be free of the interference of those who don’t. Since men are neither omniscient nor infallible, they must be free to agree or disagree, to cooperate or to pursue their own independent course, each according to his own rational judgment. Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man’s mind. So we can see why initiating force can or might be evil -- i.e., when it interfere's with man's mind in those situations in which the use of man's mind is appropriate (which turns out to be almost all imaginable situations). In the rare occasion where using your mind is harmful, it should be fine to initiate force on others (because it's the mind that we protect when we refrain from initiating force in the first place). So it's not that initiating force is always evil, it's only evil during those times when we should have been using our minds (which is almost always).
In order to show a consistency across time (to show her belief on this didn't change), here is part of Rand's interaction with a questioner at the 1970 Ford Hall Forum. When Rand speaks of having the freedom (to initiate force), think of that as synonymous with having the right. If you do that, then you will see no change of Rand on this matter from 1961 to 1970:
[questioner] If we must give up a measure of freedom--the freedom to initiate force--to avoid anarchy, why shouldn't we give up a measure of freedom to enable the government to protect us from pollution?
[Rand] ...When I say there should be no personal retaliation, this does not imply that one is giving up some freedom. We don't have the freedom to attack another person--to initiate force. ... Establishing a proper form of government has nothing to do with surrendering freedom. It involves protecting yourself and everybody else from the irrational use of force. ...
So the reasoning is the same. The reason initiated force is bad is because it invalidates our use of reason (our applied rationality). It's the irrational use of force -- the kind that invalidates our reason at times when we actually need it (which is most always) -- that's always bad or always evil.
It's much easier to judge policies -- policies that depend on initiated force -- as evil than it is to judge individual action. This is because policies are general, social, organized, collective things that apply across a wide range of situations -- and there is no wide range of situations where initiated force wouldn't, eventually, be evil. Policies are at the opposite end of a continuum with individual and unorganized actions.
Rand also provides the rubric for judging the evil of even individual initiations of force. In emergencies, she talks about initiating the force but -- at the same time -- not having an unqualified right to initiate force (which is something needed to avoid the moral obligation of restitution, which Rand said we'd still have -- if we initiated force during an emergency).
Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 4/19, 11:12pm)
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