Regardless of the consequential outcomes induced by Communist policies, the original aim of communism is to unconditionally guarantee the right for all human kinds of individuals to protect their autonomy. Communism supports individuals’ freedom of choice as long as they do not invade others’ right for it and they do not deviate from the universal moral standard implies. This characteristic of Communism is resemblance to the two schools of American idealism, Wilsonian (The current main stream) and Jeffersonian (Libertarian Rebels).
Both Communism and American idealism pursue in defending their believing universal right and morality. The critical difference between Communism and American is their view on individuals’ property right. Communism claims that individuals’ property right is distributed and monitored by the centralised state authority to each individual according to their rightful need, and then supports redistributing their property by the state’s involuntary force if anyone’s autonomy is threatened. By contrast, American idealism regards that the state should only impose the legislature to protect individuals’ right to keep holding their property, and generally disagree with the frequent usage of the involuntary force of the redistribution.
Libertarians, Jeffersonians and Jacksonians (The realist derivation of Jeffersonians), are against the excess expansion of American economic activity which will cause devaluing any individuals’ property right due to the increasing need for public goods and services in a huge scale. They claim that the redistribution and investing to the public goods and services should be carried out by the voluntary participation by individual citizens. They support the existence of the bourgeoisie, the rich cohort of citizens owing a huge volume of property. But, because these bourgeoisie need to live in such a small scale of economy and community which Libertarians strongly aspire to establish, they will be easily purged when they are seen as uncooperative and they will have less opportunities for their wealth manipulation.
Wilsonians, the mainstream in the current US politics, support the feasible level of the government intervention into the distribution of individuals’ property right even with the involuntary force. As same as Hamiltonians, the pragmatists, Wilsonians aspire to increase the aggregate wealth of the USA in order to gain the economic and political power enough to spend for achieving in establishing their ideal. Even though it is not the same level as Communism, Wilsonians are eager to use the collective force to redistribute individuals’ property by the centralised power of the state authority. Even though Wilsonian modern liberalist ideal is not same as Communism, it is very similar to what Communism originally aspired to achieve in.
When politicians aggressively pursue in the individual right and the individual autonomy, then their policy-outcome will eventually result in either the isolationism based on a small scale economy or the world moral imperialism hypocritically enforcing its universal moral value upon the entire world. In terms of American philosophy of Natural Right, the former is Jeffersonian Libertarian and the latter is Wilsonian political liberalism. In terms of Communism, the former is Marx-Leninism and the latter is Trotskyism as well as the Soviet Communism after the end of WW2.
The modern idealism initially invented by Locke and then innovated by Kant afterward, is based on the staunch belief in Natural Right as the absolute universal morality. This was brought into both Europe and America in different forms. It was transformed to be socialism in Europe while it was transformed to become Jeffersonian (Libertarian) at first and then Wilsonian (Political liberalism) later on. Sum up, even though their characteristics are different from each other, both Communism and American idealism essentially share the same quality of their ethical fundamental principle.
4.2. Libertarian incompatibility with Adam Smith
Adam Smith is the father of economics as well as one of the remarkable scholars of British Liberalism. So, his philosophy is a good example of the Classical Liberalism, and his Scottish background will help to compare and contrast American idealism with his philosophy. This comparison attempts to show how incompatible American idealism and Smith's liberalism.
Firstly, more than English and American legal system, Scotland has had a closer relationship with Continental European counterpart. So, the influence of Continental Europe on Scotland is still strong, and Scotland adapted both Enlightenment Philosophy and Legal Positivism much faster than England. For example, Scottish regional law is based on Legal Positivism as same as Continental Europe, and the concept of Separation of church from state strongly exists in Scotland unlike the rest of Great Britain.
This is the aspect that Smith's Liberalism became eventually different from Lockean and Jeffersonian liberalism. Adam Smith’s philosophy was highly inspired by Scottish and European enlightenment (The enlightenment) and Legal Positivist philosophy. So, they insisted that only the optimum way is to let all be free to do what they want instead of relying on a particular moral and legal entrepreneur to command all. By contrast, American Libertarianism is based on the concept that the absolutely and universally right morality exists, and this political philosophy regards that all nations ought to follow. So, despite Libertarians’ belief in freedom of choice, their belief in the universal moral principle leads to a moral paternalism.
Adam Smith’s philosophy cannot be compatible with both Wilsonian Liberalism as well as Libertarianism. He would have argued that American idealism including Libertarian put excessive emphasis on paternalism to command humans to follow the natural right as the universal moral principle. He would have pointed out that there is no guarantee to accomplish American idealist paternalism without any sacrifice of either the material prosperity or the big collective involuntary force. Because humans are not God, it is impossible to control their surrounding nature and unseen future. Therefore, by referring to his theory of the Invisible Hand, he explained that there is no absolute moral or legal command which creates a perfect world.
4.3. Ayn Rand’s Dilemma between American legal philosophy and Legal Positivism
Ayn Rand is the most remarkable philosopher who rationally pointed out that the subjective moral universalism was the main cause of the economic and cultural collapse of the modern world from 20th century onward. She tried to reincarnate the Classical Liberalism to free individuals from the moral constrained imposed by various kinds of the modern idealism explained in this essay. Nevertheless, she seemed to have not determined which ethical principle she should have followed, the European Classical Liberalism based on Legal Positivism or the American Natural Right Liberalism based on the moral universalism. Then, even though her work was enlightening as well as artistically beautiful, her theory suffered from the inconsistency in her ethical principle.
Ayn Rand admired America as her ideal nation. She fought against those who replace her ideal capitalist nation the United States of America with a Staticist nation. But, she had not realised that America was fated to become a Staticist nation despite her wish. Meanwhile she always condemned Collectivism, she missed out how the fundamental belief in natural right results in the Collectivism of moral and legal philosophy.
Unlike libertarians, she seemed to have realised that the moral collectivism can easily lead a civilisation to the material collectivism. So, she described herself as a Roman Realist (Another word to describe the Legal Positivist) who is oppose to the Natural Law legalism which is the legal philosophy Natural Right is based on. However, even though she condemned Aquinas's Natural Law and Kantian Deontology (The Human Right), she tended to neglect about Lockean and Jeffersonian Natural Right.
What she called “Welfare Staticism” exactly describes about American idealism. She called Communism and the old 20th century style Socialism, where the property right is redistributed by the central state authority or the communitarian cooperative force, the Collectivism. By contrast, she used the world "Welfare Staticism" to describe the political system which allows individuals' own voluntary will and responsibility to own their property. But, this staticism induces them to engage to become altruistic to support the others.
Meanwhile the traditional (material) collectivism regards highly of the equality in outcomes, the Welfare Staticism insists on the equality in opportunity. Then, in order to accomplish the equality in opportunity, individual citizens and their living environment require a certain high degree of the equality in outcome. Then, this equality of opportunity is seen as one of the fundamental of the Natural Right.
Welfare staticism admits the market mechanism encouraging the individual citizens' property right and their free will to exchange it. It encourages the gradual transition from this world to a more egalitarian one. Then, Welfare Staticists have introduced the two major political tools which are the forcible government intervention and the altruism. Regardless of their methods, in order to convince individual citizens to participate into their policy, these Welfare Staticists often quote altruism, and then defines their controlling state authorities including government and law enforcement units as the guardians of the Natural Right.
The modern Welfare Staticists use the government force taxation and the heavy regulation as means of the redistribution of individuals' wealth and expanding the public goods and services in order to secure the natural rights for all individual citizens. Even though Welfare Staticism accepts the property ownership and some level of income inequality, it claims for minimising the inequality gap and providing the publicly shared goods and services which all individual citizens have an equal access. It imposes the heavy regulations on the activities of individual citizens in order to restrict anyone deviating from Welfare Staticist programme, and their state authority always monitors their flow system. The private individual citizens can be eventually frustrated by the extraction by taxation and the censorship by regulation. Then, in order to reduce their frustration, this politics indoctrinates them to believe its programme is designed to be good for all i.e. altruistic.
This type of the Welfare Staticism did not exist in America because the contemporary Americans detested both their property extortion by tax and the restriction on their actions and free will by either regulations or the hands of the others. However, they still considered the equality in opportunity is the fundamental Natural Right for all individuals. So, Americans used to implicitly enforce all individual Americans to voluntarily participate to minimise the inequality in outcome and regulate their actions and wills. This policy actually requires much higher degree of altruism than the modern Welfare Staticism, and then the moral enforcement upon individuals' mind has been the key necessity to maintain American ideal. Therefore, even though American were materially free to do and think, they were mentally and spiritually commanded by their moral entrepreneurial authority.
Ayn Rand admired America as her ideal nation, and fought against those who replace her ideal capitalist nation with a Staticist nation. But, she had not realised that America was fated to become a Staticist nation. America has already been Welfare Statist nation since its establishment. She explained that the (modern/political) liberals rule our bodies meanwhile conservatives rule our consciousness/soul. Even the freedom of body is given to individuals, their action and wills are highly restricted or even controlled under the name of the Natural Right, the nonhuman sovereign functioning as their moral entrepreneurial authority which can be a rational secular one but will be like the Godless-monotheism which was explained in Ethical Principles explained by Mathematical Logic Pt3.
Libertarians, the modern Jeffersonian political activists, argue that they will only remain the equality in opportunity and deny imposing the equality in outcome. However, when they persist in sticking to their Natural Right ideals as explained in the Part 1, some form of collective intervention forces will be inevitably necessary to correct the errors from their claiming universally valid morality.
Despite Ayn Rand always having condemned Collectivism, she missed out how the fundamental belief in natural right results in the Collectivism of moral and legal philosophy. Then, this is why, instead of categorising Ayn Rand into Libertarian, she is categorised into Hamiltonian on this spectrum.
Although Ayn Rand is not quite equitable to Hamiltonian because she distinguished herself from Pragmatism, she supported both big scale economies and big public sector institutes as long as rational individuals and any objective realities such as the market demand for in order to achieve in their prosperity. Nevertheless, it has been debated to think whether or not Ayn Rand is a mainstream school of American political philosophy. Even though she worshiped her new home nation America, the fundamental characteristics of America does not fit in with her desiring world view.
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