Yet before reading Robert Bidinotto's comments below, I did not quite recognize that many people were so repulsed by being an oppressor in a world they saw as a zero-sum game that they chose instead to be a victim. In dealing with zero-sum win/lose governments, I have made this choice myself. This repulsion for being the bully/oppressor serves as the reason that many people act as though they are altruists, the philosophy of self-sacrifice. Fortunately, the free private sector is very accommodating to win/win relationships and we can develop a society in which self-sacrifice is not a necessary choice to avoid becoming a monster oppressor.
In a Facebook discussion, Robert Bidinotto, the author of the Hunter thriller novels, made what I believe to be unusually perceptive and brilliant observations that made this much clearer to me. As he says, this explanation for the popularity of altruism needs to be understood and promulgated with vigor. With his permission, I am reproducing his comments here:
Robert Bidinotto: On the Origins of "Self-Sacrifice" as Moral "Ideal"
Politics is force -- and the initiation of force necessarily creates zero-sum situations of victimizers vs. victims. This means politics necessarily fuels resentments, hatred, and social "polarization," because politics invariably, unavoidably results in "win/lose" relationships.
This state of affairs is the exact opposite of the voluntary, non-coercive trade relationships in a free society, which are to mutual benefit and are thus "win/win." In the marketplace, all parties to an uncoerced transaction walk away afterward believing that they are better off than before. It's why when we pay for something in stores, we customarily say "thank you" -- and so do the sellers. We are happy to get the goods and services sold to us, and they are happy to get our money in exchange. There are no victimizers, and no victims.
You'd think people who truly wanted a peaceful, benevolent, harmonious society would realize this, embrace the free market, and reject government coercion as the central organizing principle of society. But no.
Why?
I think that's because a huge percentage of people harbor a fundamental zero-sum, winner-loser view of economic and social relationships. Few people ever become leftists because they read turgid tracts by Marx and Engels about "class warfare." They become leftists because they see social and economic relationships in terms of either gaining power over others, or of submitting to the power of others. They see human interests as being fundamentally in conflict, so that the "self-interest" of some necessitates the "exploitation" of others.
This worldview or Narrative is rooted deep within humanity's tribal past, where human relationships *were* all about either domination or submission. We have to remember that capitalism, historically, is very new -- and from the outset it was misinterpreted through the conventional, long-standing filter of that zero-sum, win-lose worldview. Capitalists were thus "robber barons," not society's creative benefactors. Marx, and generations he influenced, interpreted capitalism and all human relationships in terms of class warfare. Today, "identity politics" rests on the same view of inherent conflicts of interest among demographic groups. Society, to the left, is all about "power relationships."
If I'm right about this, then many people's idealization of the ethics of "self-sacrifice" makes a kind of sense. Altruistic self-sacrifice is not so much the result of philosophical/ideological persuasion, as it is the result of a deep-seated core belief in inherent conflicts of interest -- and the subsequent conclusion that the only way for people to live in social harmony is to forgo their "selfish interests."
This puts a different interpretive spin on the age-old popularity of altruism. On its face, self-sacrifice makes no sense. Acting in opposition to one's best interests is bizarre, and why people should *want* to accept it as a "moral ideal" is even more bizarre. So Ayn Rand, for one -- viewing human action as powered by abstract philosophical ideas -- tried to explain altruism's prevalence by imagining that malicious philosophers and thinkers have pushed it upon the gullible as a self-contained "ism," and embedded it into various philosophies. You can read endless articles from Rand and her followers bashing "altruism" per se, as a causal force in society. You also see that their critiques have had little societal impact.
My explanation for this failure is that the attacks on altruism per se are strategically misplaced. If what I said above is valid, then altruism is less a moral cause than a moral *conclusion* -- a logical choice for those who believe that socio-economic relationships involve inherent conflicts of interest. If that's your Narrative about the social world -- if you see transactions as nothing but power relationships about dominance and submission -- then you have a logical choice to make: either to become a cold-blooded, predatory brute, or to become (or remain) "nice" and allow yourself to be an exploited victim. Those who truly believe in this Narrative may conclude that they'd rather keep their self-respect by being victimized than join the ranks of criminals and brutes. Altruism thus becomes evidence not of low self-esteem, but rather the misguided quest to *retain* one's self-esteem and humanity in a world of brutes and barbarians.
Is this interpretation far-fetched? I observe that in discussions of emergencies and "lifeboat situations," even many Randians recoil from a view that sees these as zero-sum conflicts, which would require them to behave as ruthless brutes, surviving at the expense of others. Most would prefer to keep their humanity and self-esteem by dying nobly, rather than survive like predatory beasts.
Well, then imagine how you'd *live* (and vote) if you truly believed that *normal social life* was all about zero-sum conflicts of interest -- that each transaction under capitalism entailed someone gaining at someone else's expense. You'd conclude, logically, that economic winners were all rapacious predators and "robber barons." You'd conclude, logically, that to keep your soul, you'd have to sacrifice your prospects for economic well-being and do your work solely for the love of it, not for commercial success. You'd conclude, logically, that to keep the economic predators in check, you needed a powerful, highly regulatory government to suppress predatory "greed." You'd conclude, logically, that Marxism's "class warfare" worldview was valid -- as were Marx's proposed remedies -- which would explain the stubborn, indelible appeal of socialism, despite its epic, bloody failures wherever it is tried.
If I'm right about this, then the *main* target of individualists' moral proselytizing ought to be the Zero-Sum Narrative, i.e., the belief in inherent conflicts of interest among people -- and not altruism per se, which is mainly an emotionally driven *reaction* to the zero-sum worldview. We need to teach people that economic relationships in a free society are "win/win," not "win/lose." We need to teach what 19th-century thinker Frederic Bastiat labeled "Economic Harmonies."
And we ought to teach that the "win/win" marketplace, based on voluntary, unforced trades, is the moral antithesis of the world of politics, where all relationships *are* in fact coercive, zero-sum, and "win/lose." We ought to teach that if you want a world that minimizes the coercive victimization of some people by others, then we need to keep relationships in the *private sector* -- that the *political sector* is the *last* place you should turn for solutions, and that politicians are the *last* people you should turn to as saviors.
And that my friends is a very wise analysis of most of our societal problems, if you think this through for yourself. Thank you ever so much Robert Bidinotto.
By the way, the Bidinotto novels are a rare pleasure to read. Here is his author page on amazon.com.
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Before I get to what is missing in the discussion, I would first say about politics as force, that people’s greatest political invention (was it from the Greeks or a lost nameless tribe?) was popular, if not representative, government. It may have evolved out of a stubborn tribal stalemate, and since then has gotten good if grudging use since then for lack of anything better.
Bidinotto’s economic insight is spot-on. I have left-wing acquaintances, former friends, whose view of economics and life is zero-sum interaction. They see everything as win/lose, zero-sum. Hayek observed (not in his Road to Serfdom) that if socialists understood economics they would never be socialists. It applies not only to the real nature of commercial exchanges but to finding the best way to “allocate scarce resources for which there are alternative uses.” Any free-enterprise economist would very quickly explain that successful interpersonal relations proceed from a sense of selling “good deals” or promoting mutual advantage. Any smart initiator of an interaction would grasp this. A bit more of Adam Smith (or Milton Friedman) and less musing on Karl Marx would be a start for the leftists.
For a quick take, I recommend an old Alec Guinness film, “The Card,” which portrays the life of a born entrepreneur who sees his main chances in gaining people’s approval, support and financial backing in exchange for the unimagined opportunities he invents. Valerie Hobson’s closing line, when asked what the fellow is up to, is “His role is to make us happy.”
I would refer (as almost invariably) to Hayek who explained that a collectivist morality that displaces individual morality could be regarded in many ways as on a higher plain in terms of self-sacrifice, as in wartime to serve one’s society as a whole, but it cannot replace conscience-based morality in which a wrong is wrong, even if nobody knows about it and it doesn’t hurt anyone. Further, doing something deemed moral is hardly praiseworthy if it must be done anyway. Usually, he writes, individual morality is less structured and detailed than the collectivist variety, which usually involves its code of “politically correct behavior,” a set of particular “right” actions for the right time and place. Individual morality sets an internal limit, usually informally agreed on, that does little more than give a sense of how far one can go in any situation, even new ones. There is no particularized code of conduct because nobody could ever agree on one anyway.
Next, the surest and most successful source of individual morality has always been religion, a relationship of the human being to an intangible or superhuman power or immanence. It is very well to delegate religion to the mass of humanity who do not study moral philosophy, but religion is demonstrably far easier than philosophies for promoting goodness among people who otherwise have nothing to turn to but the like of Marxism. (My favorite book about religion is Nevil Shute’s “Round the Bend” which places religion in a working life.) Also, for millennia religion has served many of the brightest minds on the planet very admirably, too. There is nothing like a deeply acknowledged general moral anchor to rely on in times like these when the culture sometimes seems to be cratering (is the word I think) into pretty flagrant decadence. There is surely also little in collective etiquette to match the poetry that conveys most religion. A man whose website I followed, until he gave up trying, said he saw little to save the West but a second Protestant Reformation. I believe that Luther also made us political protestants, and I think that some of President Trump’s cabinet, like William Barr see the necessity. Religion may not be for everyone, but it would be a welcome old fashioned comfort to have around again. Sorry to get off on that, but I never have found it to interfere with things known. My own view, take I or leave it.
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