Between Marx and Rand

In 'Nicomachean Ethics', Aristotle tries to address the finding of that legendary middle ground, the 'Golden Mean' that supposedly exists amongst all points of extreme contention. He acknowledges that it is harder work than it seems, not because it may or may not be there, but because it is easy to be drawn to either of the contending viewpoints. He quotes directly from Homer when Calypso advises Odysseus:

"Hold fast from surf and spray..."

In a practical sense, I wish a certain Italian ship captain had taken that insight to heart, but that aside...

One technique I have found useful is citing similarities. Take, for instance, the Scylla and Charybdis of modern political debate, Ayn Rand and Karl Marx. Both Rand and Marx are materialists, consequently both reject any sort of metaphysical or extra-empirical analysis. Both hold utopian viewpoints, in the sense of causality: if the circumstances they envisage are produced, the society that they wish to be manifested will emerge. Both saw reality from a dynamic perspective, that we mortals were playing a part in a historical drama, not simply plodding along as we have always done through this age and other ages recorded or lost to the sands; probably why the two of them have always attracted the kind of pent-up adolescent energy that always is drawn to so-called revolutionary culture.

Where the many-headed Scylla of Rand is focused on the individual. In the Randian vision, the particular vision is paramount. The individual is intended to live for the individual. Any reference to a 'moral universe' where the influence all people have on each other is paramount is ludicrous, the pathetic legacy of superstition and weak minds relying on emotion instead of reason.

Marx's Charybdis cares not at all for the individual swallowed into its vortex. On the contrary, the Marxian vision regards the individual as the legacy of superstition and selfishness. It is that very moral universe, supposedly redeemed of its theological heritage and re-interpreted by Marx, that is paramount. The individual exists to serve a hyper-extended version of that good world that re-forms its unique nature to the point of orthodoxy. The cog is good-long live the cog.

A middle ground that retains the secular character of both viewpoints would be to me the classical vision of rights coming with responsibilities. Passion and purpose do not have to exclude one another-on the contrary, they can make each other possible. But to develop such a viewpoint would require a sense of historicity, of broad and tenacious understanding of societal formation that neither has.