Abstract
The author reiterates his thesis that the motivation for power lust in liberals, conservatives, and totalitarians cannot be explained by “metaphysical importance” (or even, as per Hardin's suggestion, “superior metaphysical importance”) of economic or noneconomic activity per se, but only by the metaphysical fear that voluntary action in one or both of these realms evokes in statists of whatever stripe. Rand actually made both of these arguments, but only the latter has psychological explanatory power and plausibility in terms of Rand's discussion of the benevolent and malevolent universe premises, and thus is to be preferred over the former.
Copyright © 2013 by The Pennsylvania State University. All rights reserved.
2013
The Pennsylvania State University
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