So, after Matt Hancock’s humiliating resignation, our Tory Government has just appointed Sajid Javid as the new Health Secretary?
What we are NOT being told, of course, is that Mr Javid is ideologically committed to the total destruction of the NHS.
Mr Javid is a dedicated follower of the US “thinker” Ayn Rand (apparently he makes a point of re-reading a key scene from Ayn Rand’s novel “The Fountainhead” twice a year). Ayn Rand’s system of thought (which styles itself as “Objectivism”) is an extreme form of right wing libertarianism in which selfishness is regarded as the ultimate virtue from which the whole of morality is derived.
Now, it is entirely rational to attempt to deduce a system of morality from enlightened self interest. After all, fundamentally we only have access to the content of our own consciousnesses. What is irrational, however, is to change the commonly accepted meaning of the subject at hand to do so, and to further compound that rhetorical trick, or act of self deception, by using another term in a way that, though closer to its conventionally accepted meaning, is still left deliberately unclear.
The first term in question is “morality”. Morality is normally regarded as relating to how our behaviour affects others. It is very closely associated with concepts of pro-sociality or anti-sociality. For Rand, however, the “moral” is merely that which serves our own “virtues”, and virtues are whatever promotes our own life. For Rand someone could be moral, or immoral, merely if living stranded on a desert island, with their actions having no possible affect whatsoever on any other sentient being directly or indirectly, now or in the future. Having re-defined morality in this way, having removed all of its social context, it is therefore inevitable that Rand will see selfishness as the core of morality: the argument is circular.
The second term is Rand’s use of the concept of “selfishness” itself. Commonly this is regarded as placing ones interests above those of other people, something that would be a violation of some of the oldest and most widely accepted moral principles, such as the Golden Rule. Also, if everyone is attempting to place their interests above those of other people, in it unclear how any defined standard of interpersonal behaviour whatsoever, any of Rand’s “objective rules or laws”, could ever be established by any form of consensus, as against by compulsion. Possibly, therefore, Rand merely means placing your interests on a level with those of other people. But, in 1116 pages of her magnum opus “Atlas Shrugged”, the answer to this simple question: does Rand’s use of the word “selfishness” imply placing your interests above those of other people, or as equal to other people’s, or at least equal to those who will reciprocate, is never made clear.
As soon as you do this, though, that is as soon as you accept that your interests are equal to those of other people who accord you the same respect, you are led towards emphasising equality, mutuality and cooperation, all the things, that Rand, having experienced the disaster of Bolshevik Russia, was desperate to shift from the centre of any moral universe and marginalise, to be replaced with personal ambition, self-reliance and unregulated competition. Rand’s grotesquely unbalanced view of morality is therefore forced in a very right wing direction.
In fact, Randian Objectivism then proceeds to such a dark place that it is arguably even more dangerous than the Nietzschean creed from which is derives so much inspiration. In Nietzcheanism the slaves are compelled to serve the ubermenschen (the “supermen”), so at least get to live to fight another day. In Randian Objectivism the “slaves” are Atlas’s burden, potential “looters” in the guise of needy beggars who are to be “shrugged” away at the earliest opportunity. In a heavily populated world facing environmental challenges and resource shortages, and where those needing to make productive use of their capital can simply soon replace workers wholesale with machines, Randian Objectivism starts to look dangerously genocidal. In this Randian future the bulk of humanity gets to play the same role as the Native Americans in Ayn Rand’s view of the history of her favoured nation, a nation that was itself, in an irony lost on Rand, based on the most extensive act of looting in human history. That “burden” is simply to be swept away as an obstacle to Rand’s idea of “human achievement”, or, in the words accredited to Rand’s ultimate ubermensch, John Galt, the “Atlas” of “Atlas Shrugged”: “we had to extinguish the lights of the world, and when we would see the lights of New York go out, we would know that our job was done.” The very final line of the book is: “He raised his hand and over the desolate earth he traced the sign of the dollar.”
Of course, Rand’s ideas are revered by many tax and regulation avoiding, and privatisation loving, billionaires, who then fund think tanks and political parties aiming to quietly promote such ideas the world over.
So now we now have a Health Secretary who is an adherent of this philosophy, who therefore thinks that anyone who needs healthcare, but can’t afford to pay for it, is a “looter”, part of Atlas’s burden, who should perish. Who really opposes socialised healthcare as an evil.
And our Government have made this appointment while we are still fighting a pandemic, and when yet another major reorganisation of the NHS is looming. How late, or non-existent, would our lockdowns have been with Mr Javid in charge? Will Big Business, via the new Integrated Care System boards, essentially now take over the NHS, with all that could imply for moving to a more “American” model?
The Tories are clearly intent on destroying the NHS, and lying while they do it. For most of us and our loved ones, at least those of us who have so far survived Tory austerity and the pandemic, this is literally an existential crisis.
gezwinstanley 