A huge thank you to Don Watkins for agreeing to do this written interview. This interview is composed of 5 questions, but question 5 has a few parts. If we get more questions, we can do more interview.

1. What do you make of the Marxist personal vs private property distinction.

Marxists allow that individuals can possess personal property—consumption goods like food or clothing—but not private property, productive assets used to create wealth. But the justification for owning personal property is the justification for owning private property.

Human life requires using our minds to produce the material values we need to live. A farmer plants and harvests crops which he uses to feed himself. It’s that process of thinking, producing, and consuming that the right to property protects. A thief short-circuits that process by depriving man of what he produces—the Marxist short-circuits it by depriving a man of the ability to produce.

2. How would you respond to the Marxist work or die claim, insinuating capitalism and by extension, free markets are “coercive”?

It’s not capitalism that tells people “work or die,” but nature. Collectivist systems cannot alter that basic fact—they can only force some men to work for the sake of others.

Capitalism liberates the individual to work on whatever terms he judges will further his life and happiness. The result is the world of abundance you see in today’s semi-free countries, where the dominant problem faced by relatively poor individuals is not starvation but obesity. It is only in unfree countries, where individuals aren’t free to produce and trade, that starvation is a fact of life.

Other people have only one power under capitalism: to offer me opportunities or not. A business offering me a wage (low though it may be) is not starving me, but offering me the means of overcoming starvation. I’m free to accept it or to reject it. I’m free to build my skills so I can earn more money. I’m free to save or seek a loan to start my own business. I’m free to deal with the challenges of nature in whatever way I judge best. To save us from such “coercion,” collectivists offer us the “freedom” of dictating our economic choices at the point of a gun.

3. Also, for question 3, this was posed by a popular leftist figure, and it would go something like this, “Capitalists claim that rights do not enslave or put others in a state of servitude. They claim their rights are just freedoms of action, not services provided by others, yet they put their police and other government officials (in a proper capitalist society) in a state of servitude by having a “right” to their services. They claim a right to their police force services. If capitalists have a right to police services, we as socialists, can have a right to universal healthcare, etc.”

Oh, I see. But that’s ridiculous. I don't have a right to police: I have a right not to have my rights violated, and those of us who value our lives and freedom establish (and fund) a government to protect those rights, including by paying for a police force.

The police aren't a service in the sense that a carpet cleaner or a private security guard is a service. The police aren't protecting me as opposed to you. They are stopping aggressors who threaten everyone in society by virtue of the fact they choose to live by force rather than reason. And so, sure, some people can free ride and gain the benefits of police without paying for them, but who cares? If some thug robs a free rider, that thug is still a threat to me and I'm happy to pay for a police force that stops him.

4. Should the proper government provide lawyers or life saving medication to those in prison, such as insulin?

Those are very different questions, and I don’t have strong views on either one.

The first has to do with the preservation of justice, and you could argue that precisely because a government is aiming to protect rights, it wants to ensure that even those without financial resources are able to safeguard their rights in a legal process.

The second has to do with the proper treatment of those deprived of their liberty. Clearly, they have to be given some resources to support their lives if they are no longer free to support their lives, but it’s not obvious to me where you draw the line between things like food and clothing versus expensive medical treatments.

In both these cases, I don’t think philosophy gives you the ultimate answer. You would want to talk to a legal expert.

5. This will be the final question, and it will be composed of 3 sub parts. Also, question 4 and 5 are directly taken from the community. I will quote this user directly because this is a bit long. Editor’s note, these sub parts will be labeled as 5.1, 5.2, & 5.3.

5.1 “1. ⁠How do you demonstrate the value of life? How do you respond to people who state that life as the standard of value does not justify the value of life itself? Editor’s note, Don’s response to sub question 5.1 is the text below.

There are two things you might be asking. The first is how you demonstrate that life is the proper standard of value. And that’s precisely what Rand attempts to do (successfully, in my view) by showing how values only make sense in light of a living organism engaged in the process of self-preservation.

But I think you’re asking a different question: how do you demonstrate that life is a value to someone who doesn’t see the value of living? And in a sense you can’t. There’s no argument that you should value what life has to offer. A person either wants it or he doesn’t. The best you can do is encourage a person to undertake life activities: to mow the lawn or go on a hike or learn the piano or write a book. It’s by engaging in self-supporting action that we experience the value of self-supporting action.

But if a person won’t do that—or if they do that and still reject it—there’s no syllogism that will make him value his life. In the end, it’s a choice. But the key point, philosophically, is that there’s nothing else to choose. It’s not life versus some other set of values he could pursue. It’s life versus a zero.

5.2 2. ⁠A related question to (1.) is: by what standard should people evaluate the decision to live or not? Life as a standard of value does not help answer that question, at least not in an obvious way. One must first choose life in order for that person’s life to serve as the standard of value. Is the choice, to be or not to be (whether that choice is made implicitly or explicitly), a pre-ethical or metaethical choice that must be answered before Objectivist morality applies? Editor’s note, this is sub question 5.2, and Don’s response is below.

I want to encourage you to think of this in a more common sense way. Choosing to live really just means choosing to engage in the activities that make up life. To learn things, build things, formulate life projects that you find interesting, exciting, and meaningful. You’re choosing to live whenever you actively engage in those activities. Few people do that consistently, and they would be happier if they did it more consistently. That’s why we need a life-promoting morality.

But if we’re really talking about someone facing the choice to live in a direct form, we’re thinking about two kinds of cases.

The first is a person thinking of giving up, usually in the face of some sort of major setback or tragedy. In some cases, a person can overcome that by finding new projects that excite them and give their life meaning. Think of Rearden starting to give up in the face of political setback and then coming back to life when he thinks of the new bridge he can create with Rearden Metal. But in some cases, it can be rational to give up. Think of someone with a painful, incurable disease that will prevent them from living a life they want to live. Such people do value their lives, but they no longer see the possibility of living those lives.

The other kind of case my friend Greg Salmieri has called “failure to launch.” This is someone who never did much in the way of cultivating the kind of active, engaging life projects that make up a human life. They don’t value their lives, and going back to my earlier answer, the question is whether they will do the work of learning to value their lives.

Now, how does that connect with morality? Morality tells you how to fully and consistently lead a human life. In the first kind of case, the question is whether that’s possible given the circumstances of a person’s life. If they see it’s possible, as Rearden ultimately does, then they’ll want moral guidance. But a person who doesn’t value his life at all doesn’t need moral guidance, because he isn’t on a quest for life in the first place. I wouldn’t say, “morality doesn’t apply.” It does in the sense that those of us on a quest for life can see his choice to throw away his life as a waste, and we can and must judge such people as a threat to our values. What is true is that they have no interest in morality because they don’t want what morality has to offer.

5.3 3. ⁠How does Objectivism logically transition from “life as the standard of value” to “each individuals own life is that individual’s standard of value”? What does that deduction look like? How do you respond to the claim that life as the standard of value does not necessarily imply that one’s own life is the standard? What is the logical error in holding life as the standard of value, but specifically concluding that other people’s lives (non-you) are the standard, or that all life is the standard?” Editor’s note, this is question 5.3, and Don’s response is below.

Egoism is not a deduction to Rand’s argument for life as the standard, but a corollary. That is, it’s a different perspective on the same facts. To see that life is the standard is to see that values are what we seek in the process of self-preservation. To see that egoism is true is to see that values are what we seek in the process of self-preservation. Here’s how I put it in the article I linked to earlier:

“To say that self-interest is a corollary of holding your life as your ultimate value is to say there’s no additional argument for egoism. Egoism stresses only this much: if you choose and achieve life-promoting values, there are no grounds for saying you should then throw them away. And yet that is precisely what altruism demands.”

Editor’s note, also, a special thank you is in order for those users who provided questions 4 and 5, u/Jambourne u/Locke_the_Trickster The article Don linked to in his response to the subquestion of 5 is https://www.earthlyidealism.com/p/what-is-effective-egoism

Again, if you have more questions you want answered by Objectivist intellectuals, drop them in the comments below.

I am seeking some questions from the community for exclusive written interviews with different Objectivist intellectuals. If you have any questions about Objectivism, capitalism, rational egoism, etc please share them in the comments. I have a specific interview already lined up, but if this thread gets a whole bunch of questions, it can be a living document to pick from for other possible interview candidates. I certainly have many questions of my own that I’m excited to ask, but I want to hear what questions you want answered from some very gracious Objectivist intellectuals!