[This originally appeared in The Thought 122 (January-February 2001). I made some minor changes to make it flow better and added some more examples. The view taken here is not that controversial, but in the arena of The Thought, I felt it had to be explicated.]
In classifying people, often some resort to self-reporting. If someone claims to be a liberal or a conservative or a libertarian or responsible or hardworking or lazy, some will take their word for it without finding out whether these labels really apply. True there is some variability among such labels and spectra along such parameters. Someone could be, for instance, mostly conservative or somewhat lazy or even off the particular spectrum used. Surely, to use examples, Jim Stumm is a different kind of libertarian than Murray N. Rothbard… or Ayn Rand.
In fact, Stumm (The Thought 121, p28) claims Rand is not a libertarian. He also points out, rightly, that she claimed not to be a libertarian and intensely disliked libertarians. However, is this the proper way to approach such classifications? I believe it is not. It can be misleading, especially in cases like this – where one person finds certain people who latch onto a label distasteful and therefore resists that label.
The question to ask here is: How does one determine whether a given person is a libertarian? Closely related to this is how one determines whether a philosophical system is politically libertarian – or, to be more charitable, compatible with libertarian politics.
If we define libertarianism by, say, the non-initiation [of force] principle (NP), then this exercise becomes quite simple. (I’ll leave aside whether this principle is consistently definable outside a wider philosophy or whether it’s practicable. I think NP is a good enough touchstone for libertarians.) We have merely to ask whether the person in question adheres to this principle, wittingly or not. In terms of a philosophical system, such as Objectivism, we need ask whether the philosophy’s deeper views (ontology, epistemology, and ethics) and methods lead to libertarian politics – i.e., to NP. In both cases – that of Rand the person and of Objectivism the philosophy – the answer seems to plainly be: Yes. Yes, both are libertarian.
So even if Rand and a few of her followers claim otherwise, their politics are libertarian. This should not be surprising, especially given that she helped to build a certain strain of the wider libertarian movement and has influenced other strains too. Moreover, she and many of her followers have written extensively on political philosophy and political issues. (See everything from Rand et al.’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal to recent issues of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies.) In these writings, she openly holds NP as one of the underpinnings of her political views. Ditto for her most of her followers. (A few exceptions exist, such as Murray I. Franck who is pro-taxation, but these are rare. Rand was vehemently against taxation, a view that is consistent with her holding NP.) This provides more evidence for my claim here – the claim that Rand is a libertarian regardless of whether she liked other libertarians or the label. A political ideology by any other name... Well, you know?
(Since Objectivist politics are so blatantly libertarian, it’s still an open question of whether Objectivism necessarily leads to libertarianism. I believe it does, but it’s beyond the scope of this brief rejoinder to examine this in detail.)
This alone would be enough to demolish Stumm's claim, but it’s interesting to see many so called Objectivists – e.g., Chris Sciabarra (author of Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism, Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, Marx, Hayek, and Utopia, and editor of the aforementioned journal), Peter Saint-Andre (editor of Monadnock, an online journal), Dave Euchner (2000 Libertarian Party candidate for U.S. Congress in Massachusetts and legal scholar), and Lindsay Perigo (radio talk show host, editor of The Free Radical, and political activist) – are libertarians in name as well as in political belief. Some are even anarchists, such as economist Larry Sechrest. (I'm not name-dropping here, just using high profile examples.)
It’s time people stopped taking Rand at her word and start looking at her ideas, examining them dispassionately to see where they lead – rather than just accepting what she and some of her followers tell us about them. This, of course, is the method one should use when examining any person’s beliefs or any set of ideas. Anything less is an abdication of judgment.