Web Letters | The Nation

Re-branded feudalism

Arguing that an idle rich class living off inherited wealth produces superior cultural outcomes is a proposition that could have been put forward by feudal lords during the Dark Ages. This philosophical approach only benefits the plutocratic few while abandoning the many, i.e., the “peasants,” to poverty and misery—and is not so much a rational argument as an attempt to defend the indefensible. But of course, touting the interests of the wealthy always pays much better than advocating for the poor.

Socialism vs. moral maturity

The implicit claim in the article is that freedom of economic activity leads to unequal outcomes. This is presumed to be bad. Why? The postulate of the primacy of egalitarianism and the rejection of all moral narratives outside of social—which is to say abstract, unreal, intellectualized—moral growth is unexamined. It is stipulated.

And nowhere does Corey Robin examine in a serious way what Nietzsche meant by an Übermensch. He intended someone who recognized the freedom that complete acceptance of our finite existence enabled, and who grew beyond the need for moral narratives.

Hayek’s project depends entirely on the distribution of individual moral narratives that are largely shared and congruent among differing economic constituencies. His ideas both build and depend on common-sense notions of moral reciprocity, honesty and diligence.

Hayek’s ideas build communities. Socialists build lifeless shells quacking at the back door of the government, pleading daily for scraps.

Nietzsche and conservatism: look again

Corey Robin’s piece on the relation between Nietzsche and contemporary American conservatism does not take into account passages such as the following:

1. “Under the charm of the Dionysian…the union between man and man is affirmed.… the slave is a free man; all rigid hostile barriers that necessity, caprice, or impudent convention have fixed between man and man are broken.” (Birth of Tragedy, sect. 1)

2. “the pathological estrangement which the insanity of nationalism has induced” (Beyond Good and Evil, #256)

3. “the individual…is an error” (“Expeditions of an Untimely Man,” #33, Twilight of the Idols)

4. “order of rank …the development of more comprehensive states … enhancement of the type ‘man’ ” (Beyond Good and Evil, #257, beginning of chapter titled “What is Noble”)

These do not imply that Nietzsche was a socialist, only that the conservative interpretation of Nietzsche is as fictional as is the “invisible hand of the market,” an Idol that he did not have the foresight to reckon with.