What you love is your own power / What you live is your own story
In your head is the answer / Let it guide you along
Let your heart be the anchor / And the beat of your own song
— from the Rush song Something for Nothing (lyrics by Neil Peart)
As I was preparing to write this article, I gathered a small batch of Rand's books from my personal library and I laid them out in my computer/writing area. My cousin Adam was over visiting one evening and he picked up some of the books and said, "What are you doing reading Ayn Rand?" I told him I was writing a critique of sorts and I was getting reacquainted with the subject matter. He turned the books over in his hands a few times and read a few words out loud from the book covers: "Anti-egalitarianism"..."The evils of altruism"... "What else do you need to know?" he asked. Well put, indeed.
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Objectivism is an ugly philosophy. The proponents of Objectivism — the "Objectivists," if you will — have written scores of volumes in celebration of this purportedly "brilliant" epistemology which celebrates the "noble" practices of individualism, greed and selfishness. Extensive and coherent critiques of Objectivism are, at least in my experience, a bit harder to come by. I have noticed that Objectivist rhetoric often provokes an incredibly emotional response from its opponents and perhaps it is the visceral emotional reaction of opponents which ultimately precludes opponents from effectively refuting the most basic of Randian principles. It's certainly not my intent to craft some sort of scholarly repudiation of Randian thought but I do want to take a very brief look at what makes Objectivism so objectionable. One of the best places to start with such a critique is by perusing Rand's smaller works, such as her writings from her newsletter, "The Objectivist." Since Rand quotes herself quite often, she often provides specific key references from her larger works in her essays. To put it succinctly, one can get a good impression of Rand's general philosophy without suffering through large tomes such as Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Incidentally, the screenplay to the film version of The Fountainhead was written by Rand herself, so you can save yourself a lot of time by skipping the book and renting the DVD. I am sure the characters in the book are just as hideous and unlikeable as their celluloid versions.
Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal presents one of the clearest pictures of Objectivist utopianism; a time and place in which unbridled, unregulated capitalism reigns supreme and the wants of the individual supersede the needs of the masses. It is, at the most basic level, concentrated elitism which builds its arguments upon a marriage of idealistic self-promotion and incomplete, self-serving critique on a multitude of topics. It is in this particular work that Rand declares capitalism to be "only rational and moral system in man's history" (p. 34; all references to this text are from the 1967 Signet paperback edition). A brief look at statistical data from capitalist countries around the time of this essay puts Rand's declaration in proper perspective. In Ernest Mandel's Introduction to Marxism, Mandel provides an overview of social inequality in capitalist society, circa 1973. It's hard to imagine these compelling figures as being indicative of a "rational and moral system."
A pyramid of wealth and social power exists in all capitalist countries. In the USA, a Senate Commission has estimated that less than one per cent of American families possess 80 per cent of all shares in companies, and that 0.2 per cent of families possess more than two-thirds of these shares. In Britain, in 1973, the richest one per cent of the population held 28 per cent of all marketable wealth; and the richest five per cent, 50.5 per cent of that wealth (these figures, however, strongly understate the concentration of wealth because they include private dwellings which, for a large part of the population, are not 'marketable wealth' but necessary living conditions). In Belgium one third of the citizens are at the bottom of this pyramid, possessing nothing other than what they earn and spend, year in, year out; they have no savings and no assets. Four per cent of the citizens occupy the top of this pyramid, owning half the private wealth of the nation. Less than one per cent of Belgians own more than half the stocks and shares in the country. Among these, 200 families control the big holding societies which dominate the whole of the nation's economic life. In Switzerland, one per cent of the population possess more than 67 per cent of the privately owned wealth.
Inequality of revenue and wealth is not only an economic fact. It implies inequality in chances of survival and death. In Great Britain before the Second World War, the infant mortality rate in the families of unskilled workers was double that in bourgeois families. Official statistics indicate that in France in 1951, infant mortality expressed in deaths per 1,000 births was 19.1 in the liberal professions, 23.9 among employers, 28.2 among commercial employees, 34.5 among tradespeople, 36.4 among artisans (craft workers), 42.5 among skilled workers, 44.9 among peasants and agricultural workers, 51.9 among semi-skilled workers, 61.7 among unskilled and manual workers. The proportional differences had hardly changed ten years later, although the infant mortality rate had fallen in each category.
[...]
The USA accounts for nearly half of the industrial production and consumes more than half of a great number of primary industrial materials in the capitalist world. Five hundred and fifty million Indians have less steel and electrical energy at their disposal than nine million Belgians. The real per capita income in the poorest countries of the world is only eight per cent of the per capita income in the richest countries. Sixty-seven per cent of the world's population receive only 15 per cent of the world revenue. In India in 1970, 20 times as many women per 100,000 births died in childbirth as in Britain. (pp. 10-11 1979 Ink Links ed.)
Inequality of revenue and wealth is not only an economic fact. It implies inequality in chances of survival and death. In Great Britain before the Second World War, the infant mortality rate in the families of unskilled workers was double that in bourgeois families. Official statistics indicate that in France in 1951, infant mortality expressed in deaths per 1,000 births was 19.1 in the liberal professions, 23.9 among employers, 28.2 among commercial employees, 34.5 among tradespeople, 36.4 among artisans (craft workers), 42.5 among skilled workers, 44.9 among peasants and agricultural workers, 51.9 among semi-skilled workers, 61.7 among unskilled and manual workers. The proportional differences had hardly changed ten years later, although the infant mortality rate had fallen in each category.
[...]
The USA accounts for nearly half of the industrial production and consumes more than half of a great number of primary industrial materials in the capitalist world. Five hundred and fifty million Indians have less steel and electrical energy at their disposal than nine million Belgians. The real per capita income in the poorest countries of the world is only eight per cent of the per capita income in the richest countries. Sixty-seven per cent of the world's population receive only 15 per cent of the world revenue. In India in 1970, 20 times as many women per 100,000 births died in childbirth as in Britain. (pp. 10-11 1979 Ink Links ed.)
Rand's works are riddled with half-truths and historical inaccuracies which she uses to prop up Objectivist mythology. Rand purposefully neglects and ignores the victimization and exploitation wrought by American capitalism, blaming its most acute failures on government regulation and portraying businessmen as innocent "victims" in the essay "Notes on the History of American Free Enterprise" from Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, she acts as an apologist for corruption and greed at all levels, including her analysis of the American railroad system in the early 20th century in which she states: "It is important to note that the railroad owners did not start in business by corrupting the government. They had to turn to the practice of bribing legislators only in self-protection" (107-108). Have a look at works like "You Railway Men" and "Proclamation to the American Railway Union" by Eugene Debs to get a better sense of the true working conditions under the railroad tycoons of the early late 19th and 20th centuries. The businessmen were not oppressed — The businessmen were the oppressors.
Rand's former lapdog Alan Greenspan (yes, that Alan Greenspan) gets into the act as well in the aforementioned volume. In his essay "The Assault on Integrity," Greenspan claims: "(I)t is precisely the “greed” of the businessman or, more appropriately, his profit-seeking, which is the unexcelled protector of the consumer" (p 118).
Greenspan is in true form here as an über-capitalist. These days, this mode of thinking has been picked up by the likes of folks like pseudo-journalist John Stossel, who praises price-gougers and longs for the days of the "Robber Barons."
Rand's perverted world view extends beyond the simple espousal of greed and capitalism but these factors remain at the core of her analysis of any and all social phenomena, including that of racism. For an overview of the Randian take on racism, see her essay "Racism" from the volume The Virtue of Selfishness. One could easily fill an entire volume with arguments refuting and disproving her assertions in this particular work. Rand's views on women are unbelievably shortsighted and filled with self loathing. In Rand's essay "About a Woman President" from the book The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, Rand wrote that women are "not psychologically suited" to be leaders despite her own ascendancy to an unchangeable leadership of her own personality cult:
To act as the superior, the leader, virtually the ruler of all the man she deals with, would be an excruciating psychological torture. It would require a total depersonalization, an utter selflessness, and an incommunicable loneliness; she would have to suppress (or repress) every personal aspect of her own character and attitude; she could not be herself, i.e., a woman; ... she would become the most unfeminine, sexless, metaphysically inappropriate, and rationally revolting figure of all: a matriarch.
So there's a lot of written material to choose from, but it's even more compelling to hear Rand's thoughts from Rand herself. YouTube offers a series of interviews with Ayn Rand, including a vintage episode of the Mike Wallace Show from 1959 and an episode of the old Donahue show from 1979 (It's worth noting that the user comments feature is disabled on all of the Rand interview pieces). I have read numerous works by Rand over the years, but when I discovered the Wallace interview on YouTube recently, I was once again struck by the ugliness of Rand's world view. Hearing the venom pour from her own lips really puts her writings in a better perspective. In one segment, Rand answers Wallace's request to explain the fundamental tenets of "Randism." Rand corrects him and refers to her philosophy as "Objectivism" and explains:
My morality is based on man's life as a standard of value. And since man's mind is his basic means of survival, I hold that if man wants to live on earth and to live as a human being, he has to hold reason as his only guide to action and that he must live by the independent judgment of his own mind. That his highest moral purpose is the achievement of his own happiness, and that he must not force other people nor accept their right to force him. That each man must live as an end in himself and follow his own rational self-interest.
Of course, nobody wants to be forced to do anything. So, I respectfully submit that Rand's use of the word "force" is something of an inflammatory straw man argument. The real issue is not of "forcing" morality, per se, but one of fostering empathy and commonality. Rand says these things are inherently counterproductive and immoral. Simply put, in Rand's world self-gratification is paramount. To hell with everyone else.
One of the most disturbing components of Objectivism is the Randian analysis of love both as a phenomenon and as a social relationship. Mike Wallace touches on this from his 1959 interview segment:
Wallace: And cannot man have self esteem if he loves his fellow man? What's wrong with loving your fellow man?...Why, then, is this kind of love, in your mind, immoral?
Rand: It is immoral if it is a law placed above oneself. It is more than immoral, it is impossible, because when you are asked to love everybody indiscriminately, that is to love people without any standards, to love them regardless of the fact of whether they have any value or virtue, you are asked to love nobody.
Rand: It is immoral if it is a law placed above oneself. It is more than immoral, it is impossible, because when you are asked to love everybody indiscriminately, that is to love people without any standards, to love them regardless of the fact of whether they have any value or virtue, you are asked to love nobody.
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| Alexandra Kollontai |
Rand continues by explaining her perception of love as a matter of "self interest." The cold, sterile world of Anthem that Equality-7-2521 rebelled against in Rand's work Anthem is seemingly presented for approval by Rand herself in the form of "Objectivist love." (For an even more glib Objectivist description of the concept of love see pages 34-35 of The Objectivist Reader.) The works of people like Che Guevara, who wrote of the "love of living humanity", and Alexandra Kollantai, who wrote of love as a cooperative, common, living relationship, stand in direct opposition to the dystopian vision of Randian love. Which kind of love do the people of the world more readily embrace? Love as a form of selfishness or love as a common relationship between equals? Political and philosophical labels aside, I think most of us would prefer the latter.
It is perhaps useful to reflect a bit on how Rand and her followers practiced Randian teachings in everyday life. As in many "great" movements and religions, the practice was a significant divergence from the theory. Michael Shermer's book Why Do People Believe Weird Things? illustrates how Rand's inner circle degenerated into a personality cult which celebrated the supremacy of one individual and the subordination of the group to Rand as the Supreme Leader. Rand's inner circle referred to itself as "The Collective," which was either ironic or hypocritical depending largely on one's perspective and sense of humor. Shermer cites the writings for Nathaniel Braden, who was one of Rand's closest associates at the zenith of her power. According to Braden, the Collective adopted a creed laden with the calling cards of a true personality cult. The basic tenets of the creed included the following:
Ayn Rand is the greatest human being who has ever lived.
Atlas Shrugged is the greatest human achievement in the history of the world
Ayn Rand, by virtue of her philosophical genius, is the supreme arbiter in any issue pertaining to what is rational, moral, or appropriate to man's life on earth.
(p 118, 1997 ed.)
Atlas Shrugged is the greatest human achievement in the history of the world
Ayn Rand, by virtue of her philosophical genius, is the supreme arbiter in any issue pertaining to what is rational, moral, or appropriate to man's life on earth.
(p 118, 1997 ed.)
Rand — anti-collectivist and champion of the will of the individual — demanded the collective subordination of her followers in the most absolute terms imaginable. Was she a visionary or a prophet? Not quite. She was simply a hypocrite.
Rand, for all her ravings on the inherent evil of all other social and economic systems and institutions sought to build one of the most heartless and draconian systems imaginable through propaganda, hypocrisy and her own homegrown cult of personality. It is tragic enough that some of her ideas have indeed found their way into the mainstream schools of political and economic thought in America (thanks to the likes of Greenspan, Friedman, et al.) but we should probably breathe a collective sigh of relief that Objectivism has never gained full credibility and widespread support as an attractive and viable philosophical movement.
The next and final installment of this series will examine the influences on Randian Objectivism on the lyrics of Rush.
Further Reading
Rush reflections, part one: Different stages
Rush reflections, part two: Dreamline
I have 
I mean, it's an easily defeatable scheme after all...It's apparent that the all the British need to defeat the "flashmob" menace is Henry Kissinger and a couple of super heroes. 
