I was very interested to read historian Jennifer Burns’ important new biography of Ayn Rand in part because Rand and I have a great deal in common. We are both Russian Jews from St. Petersburg, both atheists, and — most important — both of us became libertarians in large part because of our experience with communism. Burns interestingly describes how Rand’s opposition to communism was influenced by the repression suffered by her parents after the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917 (for example, her father’s home and business were confiscated, and the family was discriminated against because of their “bourgeois” background). My great-grandfather (who was much poorer than Rand’s father), also had his small business confiscated in 1918, and this was one of a series of incidents that influenced my paternal grandfather’s own lifelong opposition to communism. He and Rand were almost exact contemporaries, born one year apart.
Despite all of the above, I was never much influenced by Rand or impressed by her writings. I became a libertarian in high school primarily as a result of reading Friedman, Hayek, Nozick, and Thomas Sowell — and because being a refugee from communism prevented me from becoming a left-liberal, as would otherwise have been likely. I also read some of Rand’s books at that time. But I wasn’t impressed with her effort to defend free markets based on her theory of the “virtue of selfishness,” or her “Objectivist” philosophy. Many of her ideas seemed poorly developed or superficial. I was also turned off by her intolerance for disagreement and her lack of serious effort to engage with opposing points of view.
I still think these criticisms of Rand are largely accurate. There was, however, one important point that I underrated: Ayn Rand was the greatest popularizer of libertarian ideas of the last 100 years. Many more people have read Rand’s books than have read all the works of Friedman, Hayek, Mises, Nozick, and all the other modern libertarian thinkers combined. In becoming a libertarian without any influence from Rand, I was actually unusual. Over the last 15 years, I have met a large number of libertarian intellectuals and activists of the last two generations, including some of the most famous. More often than not, reading Rand influenced their conversion to libertarianism, even though very few fully endorse her theories or consider themselves Objectivists. Burns quotes Milton Friedman’s perceptive assessment of Rand as “an utterly intolerant and dogmatic person who did a great deal of good.” I think he was probably right.
Being remembered primarily as a great popularizer would have angered Rand. As Burns’ biography makes clear, Rand saw herself as a pathbreaking original thinker who had discovered important philosophical and political truths that had previous been ignored or at least underemphasized. Rand believed that her theory of Objectivism was the only possible moral grounding for a free society. Burns documents her contempt for scholars like Hayek, Friedman, and Murray Rothbard, who tried to defend libertarian ideas on other grounds. For example, she called Hayek’s work “pure poison” and considered him “an example of our most pernicious enemy.” Indeed, the very word “libertarian” was anathema to her, and she viewed most non-Objectivist libertarians as ideological enemies. Rand also believed that one could not be a true supporter of free markets and limited government without also endorsing Objectivist views on a wide variety of non-political subjects, such as her atheism, her “Romantic” views on art and literature, and what she considered to be her rationalistic theories of love and romance. Over the years, she cut herself off from nearly all of her friends and admirers, often because they had expressed disagreement with some relatively minor part of her views.
Burns also extensively documents Rand’s many conflicts with social conservatives, especially William F. Buckley and other writers at National Review. The National Review conservatives particularly objected to her atheism. Rand was just as obnoxious to her conservative critics as she was to rival libertarian thinkers. And the conservatives often gave as good as they got. For example, Whittaker Chambers’ 1957 review of Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in the National Review ridiculously compared Rand to the Nazis and communists, claiming that the true message of the book was “To a gas chamber — go!” Rand’s claim that atheism and support for freedom are inseparable was likely wrong. On the other hand, she was more insightful than the National Review conservatives on a great many other issues; for example, her opposition to Jim Crow, and her 1963 denunciation of racism as “the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism” hold up better than this notorious 1957 National Review editorial arguing that the “white community” of the southern states were justified in denying the vote to blacks “because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.”
One of the strengths of Burns’ book is that she — unlike some other liberal scholars — has an excellent understanding of the issues that divided libertarians and conservatives, and also of the distinctions between different types of libertarianism. As a result, she is able to situate Rand effectively in the context of these related movements. Though the book is subtitled “Ayn Rand and the American Right,” much of it chronicles major conflicts between Rand, her supporters, and rival libertarian or conservative groups. Burns effectively shows that many other libertarian and conservative thinkers disagreed with Rand, or even hated her (as she often despised them). But they nonetheless benefited from her ability to attract an enormous new audience to libertarian and pro-market ideas.
I do have a few disagreements with Burns. The main one is with her claim that it was Ayn Rand’s emphasis on the importance of free markets that prevented an alliance between libertarians and liberals of the kind advocated in the late 1960s and early 1970s by libertarians such as Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess (ironically, Rothbard later advocated an alliance with Pat Buchananite conservatives). Rand, who despised the left even more than she did social conservatives, played a role. But many other factors were more important, including the lack of interest in such an alliance on the left. To the extent that the libertarian emphasis on free markets prevented the alliance from forming, this was hardly the result of Rand’s influence alone. Support for laissez-faire was common ground for nearly all libertarians — including those most hostile to Rand and most eager for a coalition with the left. Even at the height of libertarian dissatisfaction with conservatives during the Bush era, a variety of issues unrelated to Rand prevented the much-discussed “liberaltarian” coalition from getting off the ground.
Despite such reservations, Burns’ book is a great analysis of Rand’s place in history, and I certainly recommend it to anyone interested in Rand or the history of libertarian and pro-free market movements. Today, Rand is as popular as ever, and the debate over her legacy will surely continue.
UPDATE: To avoid misunderstanding, I should note that my grandfather’s opposition to communism was also influenced by much greater forms of oppression than the confiscation of a business, including the regime’s mass murders, suppression of religion, secret police system, censorship, and so on. Burns describes how the same was true of Rand and her family. However, the confiscation of one’s entire livelihood also should not be underrated, and in both cases it was noteworthy because it was one of the new regime’s earliest repressive measures.
UPDATE #2: Some commenters and others doubt that Rand actually believed that true support for capitalism and a free society requires endorsement of her views on religion, literature, and other nonpolitical issues. However, Rand repeatedly stated that Objectivism was a unified philosophy that had to be accepted across the board. As Burns shows in her biography, this was one of the reasons why Rand was so intolerant of other libertarian thinkers — and even members of her inner circle — who disagreed with elements of her philosophy even though they agreed with her on most public policy issues. She also claimed that religion was intrinsically “anti-man” and inherently hostile to freedom and capitalism. Rand expressed similar views about the need to adhere to the correct views on literature and other issues, in order to consistently support freedom.
Ricardo says:
Like Ilya, I was also exposed to Ayn Rand only after having learned about libertarian ideas from other thinkers. In retrospect, that was a positive thing. I didn’t pick up Atlas Shrugged (the only Rand book I’ve ever read) until I was 16 and had already read a great deal of other works of philosophy, economics and political theory. I remember it being a good enough novel for me to read through it at a pretty swift pace but I always viewed it as being a surreal work of fiction with comic book characters (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing) rather than anything that was supposed to change my life.
The Objectivism as (fundamentalist) religion comparison is dead on. The business reply card embedded in Atlas Shrugged that urges you to mail it to the Ayn Rand institute if you want to learn more about the ideas in the book reminded me too much of a leaflet pushing evangelical Christianity. Like any religion, it has the most potential for good if people just accept the broad outline of the worldview it is pushing and take all the specifics with a large grain of salt. The broad outline here being “thou shalt not initiate force against another.”
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October 22, 2009, 1:11 amBrian says:
False. Ayn Rand would say that capitalism must be supported by more fundamental metaphysical and ethical ideas, i.e., an objective and knowable universe, man’s efficacious capacity to reason, ethical egoism, and individual rights. But she never said or implied that other other of her ideas — which are horizontal, so to speak, with a pro-capitalist view — must be accepted to properly ground capitalism. It’s frankly pretty stupid to suggest that Rand thought that capitalism must be grounded in certain views of art or love.
Mr. Somin earlier states that “[m]any of her ideas seemed poorly developed or superficial.” Maybe he didn’t read too conscientiously.
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October 22, 2009, 1:33 amIlya Somin says:
she never said or implied that other other of her ideas – which are horizontal, so to speak, with a pro-capitalist view – must be accepted to properly ground capitalism. It’s frankly pretty stupid to suggest that Rand thought that capitalism must be grounded in certain views of art or love.
She did say that Capitalism must be grounded on an acceptance of her entire Objectivist philosophy, which in turn included acceptance of her views on a wide variety of nonpolitical topics. If you don’t accept these views, you can’t be an Objectivist, and if you aren’t an Objectivist, you can’t truly support capitalism. I did not claim that “Rand thought that capitalism must be grounded in certain views of art or love.” But I do think that Rand thought that you could not consistently support Capitalism without accepting her broader philosophy, which includes very clear and determinate views on religion, art, romance, and other issues.
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October 22, 2009, 1:38 amMatthewM says:
I also read did not discover Rand, specifically Atlas Shrugged, until my mid-30s, after my libertarian-ish views were already well developed. Like Ricardo, I found the characters in Atlas Shrugged somewhat cartoonish, and the plot is a little too operatic for my taste. But there is great value in the work for the moral principle that is expressed throughout — that the state never possesses the right to use force or violence to deprive another of their labor, property or life except to defend life or property; and that a state which routinely violates this moral commandment will reduce the population to barbarism. In fact, the most evil character in the book is the unnamed old woman in the hinterlands whose motto was “from each according to the ability, to each according to their needs” whose social movement turns a once prosperous community into an impoverished wasteland. Rand can be seen as the libertarian rebuttal to Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, which set the course of economic statism in America throughout the 20th and 21st centuries; and as such, she is very important indeed.
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October 22, 2009, 1:39 amSplunge says:
I wonder what the formal Objectivist position is on the canonical American habit of conflating the worth of ideas with the attractiveness of their leading proponents?
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October 22, 2009, 1:52 amD.R.M. says:
It’s entertaining to watch the true Objectivist, one who approaches Rand’s work in accordance with her claim that it is an integrated philosophical system, try to stretch Rand’s definition of art (“Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments”) to cover the music played by a symphony orchestra.
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October 22, 2009, 1:54 am24AheadDotCom says:
I’ll have to read it one of these days. After all, it not only has a pirate, but a very special kind of pirate: the Reverse Robin Hood kind of pirate. As for her impact, in 2004 in CA with the outcome predetermined months before and with the ground set for a protest vote, the LP candidate only got around 40,000 votes. That was twice as much as the Peace’n’Freedom candidate (Leonard Peltier), but it still is much less than the number of her books that have probably been sold in CA. Libertarians are able to make a lot of noise — in part because of funding from certain groups — and they have some impact, but they just don’t have the numbers. In the market of ideas, they’ve failed miserably, and when their ideas are imposed it’s through force of funding.
As for “the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism”, maybe someone could tell us why most libertarians support MassiveImmigration despite the fact that the vast majority of those coming will fall under the sway of groups like this. Is it that they can’t figure that out? Are they living in a fantasy world where the air in the U.S. will transform people into ardent libertarians? Or, are they just paid off?
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October 22, 2009, 2:27 amNoah David Simon says:
I always took this free market stuff with a grain of salt. I did learn a lot from your analysis here of Jen Burns work. I get the feeling the crux of Rand’s interest was in the individual and not economics. when you get beyond the romance of a systematic idea you usually find there are black holes in physics that turns the whole system inside out. I’m fairly certain this kind of ‘paradox’ is what we are experiencing right now and it is amusing to see all these orthodoxy of Libertarian ideas running around saying “I told you so”, instead of acknowledging the limitation of their theories. the biggest criticism of leftism is it’s inherent rejection of libidinal and sexual impulses. now it seems individualism is shrieking like an angry baby that it all could of worked if people weren’t inclined to social collectivism. maybe it just was inherent? the romance of it all is both addictive and controlling and also perhaps more true then any economic analysis. I’m no atheist, but I can see the beauty in humanity, individualism and it is beauty and grandeur that leads me back to faith in g-d. the systematic stuff is the dogma... it is bound to fail in every idea.
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October 22, 2009, 2:27 amBrian says:
First, Mr. Somin is a better man than me for not replying in kind to my intemperate “pretty stupid” phrase. Sorry about that.
Your larger point of Ayn Rand as intolerant is in my opinion correct. The case for capitalism can only be improved, and in fact requires, insight from fields like economics and sociology. Ayn Rand seems to recognize this only in a intermittent and perfunctory manner. On the other hand, Rand’s overriding point was that capitalism requires a moral foundation, which implies antecedents in ethics, epistemology and metaphysics.
Ayn Rand had a traditional, foundationalist view of philosophy. It’s this approach that informs any statement you might find that by Rand to the effect that one must accept Objectivism to property defend capitalism. Capitalism depends upon more fundamental branches of philosophy. One could properly derive a correct view of politics and capitalism, even while getting it wrong on another equally derivative branch of philosophy, aesthetics. (Or you can not think about aesthetic issues at all, and the case for capitalism still stands.)
(BTW, Rand would not even deem her views of psychology and romance as part of philosophy proper. Nor would she call her artistic preferences, her sociological view of religion, or “other issues” she chose to write about philosophy.)
Good night and good morning.
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October 22, 2009, 2:31 amjellis58 says:
I was a pretty strong libertarian before being introduced to Rand towards the end of junior year of college. I starting calling myself an objectivist and bought into the entire system for about 4 or 5 months before finally relizing how shallow and superficial the “philosophy” was. The cultlike dogmatism of other objectivists didnt help either.
I think my story is pretty common. I think a lot of even the most thoughtful libertarians went through a rand phase at one point. There’s something extremely seductive to people with libertarian leanings about a theory that will give you all the libertarian answers to everything through the aplication of some very simple formulas, avoiding the need for any critical thought. Once you start questiong the basis for the forumlas the whole thing falls apart though. but the forumla is easy so it can be hard to give up, especially when you get called a rational genious for accepting it.
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October 22, 2009, 2:33 amyankee says:
I think you’re not giving Rand enough credit as an influential original thinker. Previously, most intellectual attempts to defend capitalism had been based on one or another theory of how free markets were good for society, because the Western moral tradition had (until that point) mostly condemned greed, selfishness, and pride. Since greed, selfishness, and pride are the basis of the market system, markets needed an instrumental justification that placed them in the framework of the Christian value system in which one is commanded to love one’s neighbor as oneself.
Rand presented an alternative theory that presented the pursuit of personal profit as an unalloyed act of virtue and selfless efforts to help others as worthy of condemnation. In the Randian moral system, redistributive taxation and the welfare state aren’t just ineffective or inefficient or counterproductive, they’re inherently immoral. Her ideas on this point were enormously influential among today’s conservative elites, which is why you see, e.g., the elite right’s fanatical insistence that no matter what the problem is the solution is to cut taxes on the rich.
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October 22, 2009, 2:44 amIlya Somin says:
As for her impact, in 2004 in CA with the outcome predetermined months before and with the ground set for a protest vote, the LP candidate only got around 40,000 votes. That was twice as much as the Peace’n’Freedom candidate (Leonard Peltier), but it still is much less than the number of her books that have probably been sold in CA.
I think you are conflating the impact of libertarians with the electoral fortunes of the Libertarian Party. These two things are separate and distinct. Libertarian ideas have had a great impact by affecting public opinion and the policies of the two major parties. Measuring the impact of libertarianism by the LP vote is kind of like measuring the impact of environmentalism by the Green Party vote.
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October 22, 2009, 2:54 amIlya Somin says:
I think you’re not giving Rand enough credit as an influential original thinker. Previously, most intellectual attempts to defend capitalism had been based on one or another theory of how free markets were good for society, because the Western moral tradition had (until that point) mostly condemned greed, selfishness, and pride.
Not true, Locke, Jefferson, Spencer and and many other pre-Randian thinkers defended capitalism based on theories of natural rights. And thnkers like Mandeville and Adam Smith argued that greed had many positive qualities.
Rand presented an alternative theory that presented the pursuit of personal profit as an unalloyed act of virtue and selfless efforts to help others as worthy of condemnation. In the Randian moral system, redistributive taxation and the welfare state aren’t just ineffective or inefficient or counterproductive, they’re inherently immoral.
Many 18th and 19th century free market advocates also denounced taxation and redistribution as immoral. Rand was not original in taking this view.
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October 22, 2009, 2:56 amyankee says:
I will grant you that the defense of capitalism based on natural rights was not original to Rand, but the defense of capitalism based on the idea that private greed was the pinnacle of virtue was much more novel. Rand applied both arguments, which are not really the same.
You’re right that Mandeville and Smith said good things about greed, but that supports my point rather than undermining it. The idea that greed is good because “Private Vices by the dextrous Management of a skilful Politician may be turned into Publick Benefits” contains public benefit as part of the justification. The concept of public benefit was completely anathema to Rand. Insofar as Mandeville has nasty things to say about the “higher virtues,” it is more in the nature of cynicism than in the idea that helping others is, as such, a bad thing.
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October 22, 2009, 3:33 amRicardo says:
Indeed, this was the essence of Victorian-era social policy. There was a bit of Christian theology in there also. The idea was that poor people are poor because they don’t work hard so if you give them money, you’re not only encouraging them to be lazy but also in some sense enabling the sin of sloth. But a big part of it really came down to “what’s mine is mine and what’s thine is thine.”
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October 22, 2009, 3:36 amAdam Smith says:
“How selfish soever man may be supposed, here are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.” —
The first sentence of The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Smith’s view of morality as based on sentiment expressed there has more in common with Pytor Kropotkin’s mutual aid interpretation of evolution than with Rand’s objectivism.
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October 22, 2009, 3:42 amRicardo says:
Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments is an empirical theory — it’s trying to explain why most people are not psychopaths, not why they should not be. Some of his theories turn out to be true: most people (non-psychopaths) do in fact get a warm and fuzzy feeling from helping others, similar to but weaker than the feeling they get when they themselves are helped by others. Psychologists have verified some of the theories in the book using modern techniques. Smith always emphasized the altruistic impulse is natural but also that it is weak. Market forces are therefore needed to take those weak impulses and add real strength to them by operating through the stronger impulse of enlightened self-interest.
As for where Ayn Rand stood on this, I’ll let others who have read more of her have their say. My own recollection is that she was really attacking Kantian ethics in her embrace of selfishness. Remember, Kant said that the only act that can truly be said to originate in pure motives is one that provides no material or psychic benefit whatsoever to the person doing the action. I don’t think Rand ever said that those who help others because they feel better about themselves are somehow doing anything wrong. On the contrary, under Objectivist morality feeling good about yourself is a perfectly good reason to do something.
In short, Theory of Moral Sentiments doesn’t give you the ideas you need to show a conflict between Smith and Rand. It is the case, though, that Smith certainly embraced the public good as a justification for capitalism. On the other hand, Wealth of Nations was partly a public policy guide telling current and future British officials how to not screw up the country. It certainly wasn’t a work of pure philosophy and I believe Smith did embrace standard classical liberal theories of justice enough to believe strongly in a moral defense of private property.
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October 22, 2009, 4:08 amD.R.M. says:
Brian, while an objective viewer of the philosophy could say her aesthetics were incorrectly derived and can be evaluated separately from her politics, Rand certainly would have had no truck with anyone who made that claim. She would have insisted that her aesthetics were correctly derived, and could only be rejected by rejecting her epistemology and metaphysics, which would then cut the Objectivist ethics and politics off at the root.
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October 22, 2009, 4:22 amPersonFromPorlock says:
Out of curiosity, what evidence is there that selfishness is better served by going into the market rather than into politics? Our politicians do themselves right well, after all. Doesn’t ‘selfishness as a virtue’ support big government as easily as it does capitalism?
I did read Atlas Shrugged in two gulps (one gulp being beyond human capacity) years ago, but the main thing I took from it was a sense that the world Rand was writing about was stuck in around 1935. Her characters go coast-to-coast by train when in real world 1957 jet airliners were being introduced, for instance. And of course, the much-remarked upon lack of children, presumably killed and eaten by the adults and serve them right.
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October 22, 2009, 6:08 amjosh says:
The hyperlinks on this blog are nearly indistinguishable from the normal text.
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October 22, 2009, 6:46 ammattski says:
She embodied her philosophy to perfection.
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October 22, 2009, 7:40 amsbron says:
24Aheaddotcom is right about immigration and the Libertarians. Most of today’s immigrants are socialist (hence the majority voted for Obama, favor affirmative action and taxpayer-funded health care.) And many bring racial prejudice (Raza, anti-Semitism among Muslim immigrants etc.) with them. There is nothing Randian or Libertarian about mass immigration without limits. Strangely Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute favors such immigration. I think Rand herself would have been outraged about our open borders and Libertarian disdain for the hard work and acheivements of native-born Americans.
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October 22, 2009, 7:55 amSplunge says:
Maybe it’s worth noting that Greed as a Christian vice is required to be excessive, destructive desire for acquisition. Merely wanting to have three good meals a day, a healthy life, a clean home, et cetera, might better be described as Non-Masochistic, while wanting to eat out on weekends, live longer than strict nature provides (through miracle medicine), and a home not just clean but aesthetically pleasing, perhaps leave your children a little nest egg, could be described as Aspiration or possibly Energy, much nicer terms.
To come to be called something as nasty as Greed, I think we have to imagine an individual moving from I would like to succeed to Others must fail!. I would imagine such antisocial hostility is actually rather rare.
So it might be more reasonable to say that the free market, or classical liberalism, is founded not on Greed but on Aspiration, Hope, and Energy, and the principle that individuals should be allowed to pursue the goals those motives inspire as far as possible without interference.
Sounds nicer that way, doesn’t it? I’m always mystified by the odd folks who disparage the free market system as based on greed, as if wanting not to be hungry when you go to bed — more or less the bedrock motivation for all we do in a free system — is despicable.
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October 22, 2009, 8:35 amGramarye says:
I agree with Splurge about the interplay between greed and Christian doctrine, which is also consistent with what (I think) Prof. Somin said above about atheism and support for free markets not necessarily being inextricably intertwined. Remember the Parable of the Talents.
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October 22, 2009, 8:54 amDenitsa says:
I think you all prefer to fall into discussing Ayn Rand’s personality and other activities, than the book itself. Whatever she meant while writing the book, it was important only for her. In reality, once the book is completed, it’s a separate entity that should be discussed on its own.
I don’t know about Ayn Rand and here problematic relationships, but the book has at least one very good idea — to do everything, because of your best interest, something that requires absolute rationality. And it paints the picture of a society where people simply prefer not to think for themselves. It may be a utopia, but I personally think this is the main reason why human-kind is still in the stage of absurdity. Although we claim we live in democracy, in reality, very few people really think, the majority simply follows. Which is precisely what Atlas Shrugged is fighting with. The “mass” behaviour. Yes, the picture is frozen in a different time, however does it matter if its a plane or a train?! The fact is that people prefer not to think. People prefer not to question. Most people agree or disagree based on beliefs and understandings that someone — parents, teachers or whoever hammered into their brains and are completely inflexible when it comes to decisions making.
You might argue that this is true only for the stupid democrats/republicans. WRONG! It is true even for SCIENCE. Where people are supposed to question each and every statement being made and to base their opinions only on rationality. Even in science, however, people act on mobs, you put the program in their heads and that’s it. What is left for the rest of the society. In reality, probably 1% of the people actually think for themselves and usually those people are very busy manipulating the rest or simply profiting (or of course they might be on the bottom since the system has two places for them — top and bottom, put free journalists wherever you like) .
Maybe what Atlas Shrugged is impractical, but it is definitely a good starting point. Since we live in a society, your real best interest is probably in 90% of the cases the best interest of the society. The problem is that unlike other “free” ideas, this idea requires heavy thinking. Because it goes for the ultimate — each time you do something, you have to do it, because you’re rationally convinced in it. Go figure how you’ll do that without profound knowledge, understanding and experience (and patience). This is the ideal and it is a good way for everyone to follow.
And yeah, before someone tells me that s/he is from the rational people, erm, spend some time with yourself. Impulsive shopping? Impulsive sex? Impulsive fights? Fanaticism against other parties, communists, creationists, evolutionists, gays, immigrants, whatever? It’s very easy to fall into the trap of your supremacy. But rationality means that each of your feelings and actions should be completely justified and moderate. Your relationship with your loved ones too. But again, that requires knowledge and patience. As in physics, you can do the best thing for you, only if you know everything about the system, which is simply unachievable. But the more you know, the better you can react.
Finally, remember the slogan that Ayn Rand is fighting — “from everyone according to his/her merit, to everyone according to his/her need”. Do you think our current society is one of the merit or one of the needs. Think carefully and thinking about politics. Just make an assessment of the society. I’m a physicist, in physics, the merit is very exploited. But the end result is far from “to everyone according to the real merit”. So, I don’t know, how is it in you business? If it’s like in mine, then “Atlas Shrugged” is still actual.
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October 22, 2009, 8:55 amtherut says:
Theological liberalism and the new religion of Liberation theolgy is deffinately anti-capitalist. Hence our left wing socialist Christian groups that have been slowly dying for the last approximately 100 years in this country. They have replaced The Gospel with socialism which makes their Churches nothing but political action groups and their pews empty. They have lost all sense of God and Jesus is a myth to them.
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October 22, 2009, 9:15 amDavid says:
Indeed. In fact, whenever I read this sort of critique–great ideas, bad person–I always think of Lord Acton’s lesser-known observation:
“Great men are seldom good men...there is no worse heresy than to suppose that the office sanctifies the holder of it.”
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October 22, 2009, 9:45 amdrunkdriver says:
I read a lot of Rand in high school and early college, I thought The Fountainhead was a great book when I first read it. Atlas Shrugged was awful literature, but an interesting read.
I’ll look forward to the new biography, I hadn’t realized someone had a new book on her. The book by Barbara Branden was quite revealing.
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October 22, 2009, 9:53 amMark Field says:
What’s odd about this is that it’s true in some sense. There is, of course, no intellectual basis for it, no logical inconsistency which prevents someone from recognizing that liberalism and Marxism are separate and distinct theories. But empirically, former Marxists (at least the most well known) do seem to gravitate towards conservatism. I suspect the reason for that lies more in temperament.
Rand as an author? Meh. Rand as a thinker? Laughable. Rand as an influence on others? Tragic. Not yet as tragic as Plato, but give her time.
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Mark Field says:
The NYT reviews Burns’ bio along with Anne Heller’s here.
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October 22, 2009, 10:24 amDaniel Chapman says:
http://xkcd.com/610/
Remember to let your cursor hover over the image for a couple seconds for the sub-joke.
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October 22, 2009, 10:26 amsashal says:
to Mark Field
I am a refugee from USSR too.
But the experience with Soviet system did not turn me into RW extremist.
I am liberal in the the true old European sense.
That’s the views I came here with already as an adult and the once I stay with.
Sure , one can find lefty tendencies and government overreach in some policies promoted by some in the Democratic party, but for me who directly experienced authoritarian government in action it is as far from socialism as the Moon from the Earth.
Yes , I was more inclined towards republicans on my arrival as an automatic total opposite of what I had before...
But viral idiocy and craziness of the Republican party of late, blatant distortion and lies, anti-science views, belligerent stand on the world affairs causes nothing but disgust ....
P.S.
I think the libertarianism just like marxism is nothing but intellectual construct , fantasies of dissappointed in their personal fate liberals . Libertarianism has as much in common with reality and human nature as Marxism .
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October 22, 2009, 10:37 amDavid Nieporent says:
Of course, Ilya did not say he was a “former Marxist,” but a refugee from communism.
Anyway, sure, real liberalism is a distinct theory from communism, but what Americans call liberalism — socialism — isn’t at all.
As for former Marxists gravitating towards conservatism, (1) by saying “at least the most well known,” I think you undermine your point; after all, a Marxist who merely moves a few notches to the right is not likely to become as well-known as a Marxist who publicly moves all the way across the spectrum, and (2) I’m not sure it’s true anyway. Sure, you had Whittaker Chambers, but most became neoconservatives, not conservatives.
In any case, if it’s true, I would suspect the reason for it would be that firsthand experience with comunism would lead one to become strongly anti-communist.
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October 22, 2009, 10:38 amJosh Blackman says:
Ilya, thanks for posting this. I can’t wait to read the new book. Check out my post how Ayn Rand Influenced Me, and Reconciling Objectivism with Religion
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October 22, 2009, 10:39 amAnderson says:
Popularized elitism. Rand couldn’t be more American.
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October 22, 2009, 10:40 amgreat unknown says:
Re: update [#1]
The censorship, murders, etc., were not an official philosophical part of Communism, but rather tools to achieve utopia. One could perhaps rationalize them as the ends justifying the means. In any case, one could argue that
these actions did not invalidate the inherent correctness of the philosophy. One could reject the regime, but not the idea.
The confiscation of property, OTH, is integral to Communism [and redistributionism generally]- a feature, if you will, and not a bug. This is certainly a determinative issue in deciding whether or not to reject [/hate] the philosophy in toto.
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October 22, 2009, 10:45 amMark Field says:
Nice post sashal.
I’m sure that to you sheep, all other sheep look different. To those of us on the outside, you all share the basic characteristics of, well, sheep. But if it makes you happy, I’ll modify my comment to say that they shifted to the conservative side of the spectrum (including neocons, paleocons, libertarians, and others).
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October 22, 2009, 10:49 ammattski says:
Splunge:
‘Greed’ “rather rare”? That sounds rather novel. Isn’t it weird that they went and wrote all those holy books about about such obscure and hard-to-find problems?
So all the while us liberals thought we were advocating for proper regulation of the financial markets, in actuality what we were really up to was being angry at John Thain for not wanting to go to bed hungry?
Thank you for explaining to me my thoughts.
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October 22, 2009, 11:21 amGordo says:
My great-grandfather, a prosperous sausage maker in Pskov, was also stripped of his business and livelihood by the Bolsheviks, and spent the last 35 years of life living with one or another of his nine children.
Unlike Ilya, however, I can recognize the fundamental difference between a Western mixed capitalist/socialist state, based upon the consent of the governed and subject to removal by the governed, and a communist party and state built upon the Bolshevik model.
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October 22, 2009, 11:24 amDavid III says:
The book that introduced me to the broader background of Ayn Rand and the times was the book It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand, by Jerome Tucille. It chronicles the growth of the Libertarian movement in the late 60s/early 70s, and places it in its historical perspective, written by one of the people involved in the effort.
The most hilarious scene in a very funny book is his description of one of the first efforts to get various disparate groups with common views against authoritarianism together under the overall banner of what eventually became the libertarian party. He describes the group as “a giant Left-Right libertarian coalition: left-wing anarchists and acid-dropping love children; middle-class tax resisters and blue-collar hardhats; right-wing free traders and intransigent individualists.” It even included a young woman named Mary who was wearing Objectivist superhero garb — a skintight black body suit with a giant gold dollar sign on her chest.
Unfortunately, things started going downhill when cracks in the coalition appeared. Enraged by one of the anarcho-communists denouncing “greedy profiteers”, Mary grabbed him and started slamming his head back and forth against the wall, screaming at him, “Greed! Greed! Greed’s what makes the world go ‘round, you degenerate altruist son of a bitch, you filthy little whim-worshipper, you collectivist creep!”
I am pretty sure that Jerry Tucille dresses some of the incidents up to make them more amusing, but the book is well worth a read just for the worm’s eye view of the process that went into turning Libertarianism into a psuedo-respectabl political philosophy, and Ayn Rand plays a major role in the events.
Not strictly on-topic, but the post reminded me of it.
David
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October 22, 2009, 11:26 ammattski says:
That is a pearl. And if anyone is curious try reading this.
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October 22, 2009, 11:29 amMikhail Koulikov says:
By the time (in eleventh grade, I think) I got to the end of Atlas Shrugged...I actually was completely turned off to Objectivism and anything Rand hoped for.
In my mind, when you are trying to come up with a General Theory of Everything, your number one question HAS TO BE ‘how do I convince the guy in the apartment down the hall from me to sign up for this’ — or if I cant’ convince him, how do I go about forcing him.
Well, and, ‘how will this world *actually* work once it’s implemented.’ To the best of my understanding, Rand never bothered about the details, or felt the details far way too far beneath her, and this is exactly why to me, she is basically just another fairly stereotypical Russian dreamer, an heir to Chaadayev and Kropotkin, rather than Lenin or Trotsky.
...that she never really bothered to think about how to actually package and sell her views properly doesn’t help.
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October 22, 2009, 11:31 ambyomtov says:
what Americans call liberalism — socialism — isn’t [a distinct theory from communism] at all.
Oh come on David. You’re smarter than that. Having less than a religious devotion to markets doesn’t make one a communist, or a socialist for that matter.
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October 22, 2009, 11:32 amRandy says:
Splunge: “So it might be more reasonable to say that the free market, or classical liberalism, is founded not on Greed but on Aspiration, Hope, and Energy, and the principle that individuals should be allowed to pursue the goals those motives inspire as far as possible without interference.”
Well said, and much more palatable.
The rut:” Hence our left wing socialist Christian groups that have been slowly dying for the last approximately 100 years in this country. They have replaced The Gospel with socialism which makes their Churches nothing but political action groups and their pews empty. They have lost all sense of God and Jesus is a myth to them.”
Strangely, the same can be said of the right wing Christian groups. They have been slowly dying and the new generation is rejecting them en masse. They have replaced the Gospel with a strange sort of superiority and judgemental values that makes their Churches nothing but political action groups hell bent on fighting evolution and gays, and regulating the smallest aspects of people’s lives.
When I was about 12 or so, I read Rand’s “Anthem.” I found it chilling and yet wonderful. Over the years, I have reread it (it’s a very short novella) and later saw it as science fiction. I read it recently and find it a sort of lower rank Brave New World, or Farenheit 451. It’s trite and smug in it’s conception, and simple in concept, but I still get a guilty pleasure from reading it.
I guess that’s because every time I read it (and I assume this is true for the everyone who reads her works), I identify with the person who is fighting the establishment. I’m not one of society’s drones who blithely accept the party line.
In the real world, however, most people, if they think about it at all, claim that they are the fighters, and that everyone *else* are the drones. Write a book that can contain those contradictions and still get the message across, and you have a winner. Rand, unfortunately, was not up to it.
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October 22, 2009, 11:40 amDuffy Pratt says:
What I find most interesting is how often libertarians refer to their “conversion”. This fits with my observation that libertarians often sound more like religious zealots than anything else.
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October 22, 2009, 12:11 pmzuch says:
Rand’s best works (such as they are) are (sometimes pot-boiler) fiction and her non-fiction stuff (Objectivism) is a load’o’manure....
Rachel Maddow did an rather sympathetic interview with Jennifer Burns last night (but it doesn’t seem to be on her web site).
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Most if not all religions are extremely jealous of the others.
Cheers,
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October 22, 2009, 12:15 pmmischief says:
Since it was an attempt to remake humanity, the tools were an integral part of the process.
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October 22, 2009, 12:53 pmThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Ayn Rand’s Contributions says:
[...] up on Ilya’s post, I though I’d mention a couple of other contributions Rand [...]
Anderson says:
“[Rand] viewed most non-Objectivist libertarians as ideological enemies…”
What I’ve read of the bios makes her sound a good bit more like Lenin than like Milton Friedman. To the communist revolutionary, *he* is the awakened one, and those playing Snakes n Ladders in the free market are the “drones.” Rand sounds like someone trying to give capitalism the same cachet as Leninism — which might explain her limited appeal.
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October 22, 2009, 1:44 pmR Gould-Saltman says:
David III:
When I ran across Tuccille’s “It Usually Begins With. . . ” (when I was in school, and was beginning to notice a strain of what struck me as worship of a very strange hero among some of my classmates) I too thought that he had to have engaged in a certain amount of literary license.
Now, thanks in part to links I’d learned from VC, I’ve realized that maybe he didn’t. For instance, much to my disappointment, “Galambosianism” and the “Theory of Primary Property” turn out not to be a scathing satirical trope, but were instead merely reportage.
I’m still not sure about Rand’s purported demand that all her Objectivist disciples learn ballroom dancing, though ...
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October 22, 2009, 1:47 pmInstapundit » Blog Archive » ILYA SOMIN on Ayn Rand…. says:
[...] ILYA SOMIN on Ayn Rand. [...]
Dana H. says:
“I think Rand herself would have been outraged about our open borders...”
No way. Once after one of her lectures, a questioner asked whether she favored restrictions on immigration. She was astounded by the question and replied that such restrictions are clear violations of individual rights. Angrily, she continued by saying that the speaker must also be dropping her personal context, since, “If it weren’t for free immigration, I would be dead.”
(I may not have the quote exactly right, but its essence is correct.)
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October 22, 2009, 3:15 pmMendicant Optimist says:
What would Howard Roark do?
He’d ask, “What’s the Volokh Conspiracy?”
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October 22, 2009, 3:40 pmKoblog says:
Ricardo,
In an atheistic evolutionary existence inadvertently the result of an explosion, who are you to tell me “thou shalt not initiate force against another”?
In that lawless world, power really does come from a barrel of a gun — a little explosion aping the original Big Bang.
Why, in an atheistic evolutionary world, should the weak not be killed by the strong at any time without consequence? Dog eat dog, right?
You can’t adhere to (and require of all others as well) “thou shalt not initiate force against another” while “tak[ing] all the specifics with a large grain of salt.”
To believe the foundation of moral system is faulty and yet adhere to its tenets (or at least the parts you like) is insane.
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October 22, 2009, 3:45 pmMatt Johnston says:
While Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead contained many libertarian themes and I think Rand did a fair job popularizing the libertarian philosophy, I think her adherence to the unified theory of Objectivism undercut the “popularization” of libertarian thought.
I rather think that science fiction writers of the 50’s and 60’s, particularly Robert A. Heinlein, did far more to “popularize” libertarian thought. Heinlein’s short stories, that appeared in magazines outside of SF genre magazines, including the Boy Scout’s magazine, sowed the seeds of libertarian thought much more broadly. Certianly popular SF like Stranger in a Strange land did a fair amount of popularizing of libertarian thought.
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October 22, 2009, 3:46 pmyankee says:
I guess that depends on whether you think freedom includes the freedom to cross an arbitrary government line or to work for people who are willing to hire you.
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October 22, 2009, 3:50 pm24AheadDotCom says:
Dana H. writes: “Once after one of her lectures, a questioner asked whether she favored restrictions on immigration. She was astounded by the question and replied that such restrictions are clear violations of individual rights.”
And, that illustrates yet again why libertarians are idiots.
In the real world, if we opened the borders what would happen is stronger, more cohesive countries (China, Mexico, maybe India and to a lesser extent Russia, Brazil, Indonesia) would deliberately send us people in order to form colonies inside the U.S. and in order to obtain power inside the U.S. and perhaps even joint or single control of territory. That would violate the individual rights of U.S. citizens, reducing their power or taking their property away. Almost all libertarians can’t figure that out; the reason isn’t known but for at least some it’s because, once again, they’re paid off.
Following the money explains the part of the libertarian movement that psychology doesn’t.
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October 22, 2009, 3:53 pmGainesvilleGuest says:
Likely? Seriously?
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October 22, 2009, 3:57 pm24AheadDotCom says:
Yankee says: I guess that depends on whether you think freedom includes the freedom to cross an arbitrary government line or to work for people who are willing to hire you.
It looks like the Libertarian Mind Cavalry has ridden in to the rescue. It all sounds so simple until you realize what exactly happens: those people being hired have a political impact, giving more power to the far-left and their governments inside the U.S. not to mention their impact on my fellow citizens. Most libertarians I’ve run across online have little or no interest in their fellow citizens; they’re global free agents who’d gladly stab their fellow citizens in the back.
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October 22, 2009, 3:57 pmSeerak says:
No way. Once after one of her lectures, a questioner asked whether she favored restrictions on immigration. She was astounded by the question and replied that such restrictions are clear violations of individual rights. Angrily, she continued by saying that the speaker must also be dropping her personal context, since, “If it weren’t for free immigration, I would be dead.”
OMG, if that Randian poseur Bill Quick read *that*, he’ll go berserk.
Rand and I have a great deal in common. We are both Russian Jews from St. Petersburg, both atheists, and – most important – both of us became libertarians in large part because of our experience with communism.
As I understand it, Rand stated that she immediately recoiled from communism at the moment she first heard of it and its principles as a child, in 1912. Her experience merely confirmed her expectations.
I don’t have the source handy at the moment, alas.
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October 22, 2009, 4:06 pmDilan Esper says:
If I can defend Rand (a first for me) on the religion point, I think she’s right that religion is inherently in tension with liberty in several ways.
First, religion is a tool of social control. Indeed, that’s basically its main historical function. (Sorry, religious believers– the actual content of religions is false.) You want the population to do something it might not want to do? Tell ‘em God ordered them to do it. It’s basically one big sanctions regime to punish bad behavior. It’s not that different from the state (and has been often intertwined with the state).
Second, the content of religions is very anti-freedom. Religions are full of prohibitions on sexual freedom, collection of interest, profit maximization, borrowing and lending, greed, avarice, and keeping and flaunting one’s wealth, etc.
Third, religion often is in tension with capitalism. Think about pornography, or attacks on violence and sex in the media, or attacks on Christmas commercialism, or attacks on abortion rights and contraception, or attacks on strip clubs and prostitution. Religions often condemn voluntary transactions between sellers and buyers. Indeed, many religious leaders say that the commercial culture created by such transactions is an affront to God.
So Rand was right that religion and libertarianism don’t mix very well. The reason this is often obscured is because they are in a political coalition with each other.
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October 22, 2009, 4:08 pmcheeflo says:
Thank you for articulating this perspective so well. A rational self-interest is not only about self-sufficiency and thriving, it is the very foundation of survival. Greed is an irrational impulse.
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October 22, 2009, 4:14 pmTwirlip says:
“I will grant you that the defense of capitalism based on natural rights was not original to Rand, but the defense of capitalism based on the idea that private greed was the pinnacle of virtue was much more novel.”
The notion that “private greed is the pinnicle of virtue” is one of the reasons why Rand-style libertarianaism cannot be taken seriously as a moral philosophy. Rand made no Socratic or Platonic style arguments to arrive at her position, she simply declared it to be so.
More immediately, the notion that “greed is virtue” leaves Rand style libertarians on weak ground in resisting the spirit of our age. The Congressman taking bribes is following Rands injunction. So is the wealthy businessman bribing him. So is the voter supporting socialist policies of wealth distribution. All are being greedy and thus are being “virtuous”. Making greed the cardinal virtue gets to to exactly where we are in America today.
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October 22, 2009, 4:19 pmmischief says:
A libertarian society with no social control, no social stigmas for the exercise of certain legal freedoms and certain voluntary transactions — is a libertarian society that won’t be libertarian very long. Because raising children to be the strong, independent citizens that such a society needs is not compatible with their parents’ being free to do whatever they will without legal penalty or social stigma.
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October 22, 2009, 4:27 pmTwirlip says:
.
You’re using a very specific definition of liberty as being freedom to do certain kinds of thing (and not do other kinds of things) in order to say that.
Libertarianism is simply one possible conception of a system of liberty.
Well, it’s more accurate to say that it conflicts with libertarian notions of what “sexual freedom” is. And libertarianism is full of prohibitions of all sorts of other activites, group activites high among them.
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October 22, 2009, 4:28 pmTwirlip says:
Said a wiser man than Rand:
Of course Rand seems to have regarded society as something to be overcome.
This has been accomplished in certain parts of the world, chiefly in Africa. The result is not and cannot be a libertarian paradise.
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October 22, 2009, 4:32 pmTwirlip says:
If you think that society is something to be overcome, this is the sort of mindset you end up with.
But libertarianism is parasitical on society, and it cannot survive the death of its host. We know what happens when society disintegrates and it is not the libertarian utopia.
At least those of us who are familiar with history know this. History does not seem to a field which most libertarians have any acquaintanceship with.
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October 22, 2009, 4:38 pmMark Field says:
Agreed. I think Rand turned off at least as many as she converted.
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October 22, 2009, 4:45 pmJayDee says:
Take a look at Ayn’s “We, The Living”. It’s set in the Soviet Union during the period of the Bolshevik takeover, and it’s one of the best expositions of the soul-destroying aspects of Communism ever written.
It’s little read, but it helps put Rand’s later writings, and her philosophy, in context. It’s unlikely that anyone who reads it would conclude that property confiscation was the only (or even most significant) reason someone might flee Communism.
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October 22, 2009, 4:50 pmNever Yet Melted » The Influence of Ayn Rand says:
[...] Ilya Somin, at Volokh, having just finished Jennifer Burns’s excellent new biography of Ayn Rand, makes a point of recommending it, and offers his own view of Rand. [...]
Mike K says:
I suspect that many philosophers and poli-sci professors would be depressed to learn how much behavior is controlled by biology. Steven Pinker has written about it and the latest research into autism is exploring the role of hormones that have far more complex actions than previously understood.
We are probably the playthings of genetics and chance mutations. Reassuring in a way.
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October 22, 2009, 5:06 pmmockook says:
I’m sure Rand was referring to “earned” wealth/greed, not confiscated wealth/greed.
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October 22, 2009, 5:14 pmcrcrites says:
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October 22, 2009, 5:19 pmTwirlip says:
No doubt. But that point tends to get glossed over. It’s also not very obvious why it should be true even if it were made. “If “private greed is virtue” as the Randians claim, what difference where the money comes from?
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October 22, 2009, 5:32 pmDilan Esper says:
mischief and twirlip:
You make arguments (I don’t think they are really great ones on the specific issue of religion, but they are at least colorable and they certainly apply to some other things libertarians believe in) as to why some forms of social control are necessary. And so they are. But that’s not my point. My point is that Prof. Somin was wrong to breezily assert that Rand was wrong that religion and liberty don’t mix very well. They really don’t, and Rand was quite right about that. If you are pursuing a society where people have broad freedoms, perhaps bounded by the harm principle, religion is going to be a pretty big obstacle, because religion is simply not a libertarian institution. It’s an authoritarian one.
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October 22, 2009, 5:33 pmCraig says:
Yankee wrote:
“The idea that greed is good because “Private Vices by the dextrous Management of a skilful Politician may be turned into Publick Benefits” contains public benefit as part of the justification. The concept of public benefit was completely anathema to Rand. “
You nailed it. Rand recognized that all values exist in a hierarchy, and as such, can be called upon to override lesser values. By citing the “public good” in a political context you allow your leftist opponents to justify every statist trampling of the individual. This is why Rand despised conservatives who tried to defend capitalism, using the Lefts premises and justifications. If your defense of capitalism uses the “Public Good” as any kind of higher value or justification, then the collectivists can easily come in and undercut you with a better way to meet the “public good.” However, if protecting the “minority of one” is held out as the highest value in the case for capitalism, then the left can’t undermine you. And, you have the benefit of being internally consistent.
This is why libertarians/conservatives are always disappointed by their political leaders. They assume the politician will agree with them on x,y &z because they agree on a,b &c. Only, later to discover the “Public Good” argument can be used to justify any change in position.
Until, protecting the “minority of one” is held out as the highest moral value, the inconsistency and insanity will prevail. Rand knew this, and it’s why she was so adamant about it.
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October 22, 2009, 5:34 pmTwirlip says:
Well, duh! You’re saying that different conceptions of how society should be organsized and different conceptions of what freedom is are not compatible with one another?
Who’d have guessed?
But libertarian freedom is not the sine qua non of liberty. It’s only one possible view of liberty. It’s nonsense to pretend that all of the others are unfree merely because they don’t buy into the libertarian view.
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October 22, 2009, 5:42 pmLarryH says:
Ayn Rand was an artist, in the Arts & Humanities realm of Western thought, not in the Science & Technology realm. Therefore she tended to seek a crackpot “end of the tracks” notion that Objectivism was The Ultimate Solution — - as if to assert “that’s it folks, it’s the be-all and end-all of whatcha gotta have.” To this extent she was a typical arts-and-humanities B.S,‘er.
I consider her nonfiction material far more powerful than her two best known novels. It appears that she had no sense of humor. Greenspan’s assessment makes a lot of sense.
Incidentally, this claim of “comic book” characters is far off the mark, in a quite important way; they are “cartoon” characters. The top technical journals refer to various sketches( “Figure 3″ ) as cartoons. For instance, the classic sketch of an atom is indeed a cartoon. Cartoons are absolutely critical to higher thought; we use them all the time. In fact, it would be a challenge to find any cognitive function which does not employ the elements of cartooning.
Broadway plays are more cartoonish than nearly all movies. Please think about that, folks. We are captive to our expectations.
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October 22, 2009, 5:44 pmMichael McNeil says:
“Greed! Greed! Greed’s what makes the world go ’round, you degenerate altruist son of a bitch, you filthy little whim-worshipper, you collectivist creep!”
LOL! While we’re talking about “greed” as fundamental social virtue or vice, it’s well worth recalling Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations in this regard in his great masterpiece Democracy in America from the 1830’s.
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October 22, 2009, 5:51 pmmockook says:
Pretty good comedy routine there...
D’s good, R’s bad, almost as if you are acting the partisan, not a thinker.
I must have missed where Obama, Pelosi and Reid came out as atheists. Oh, and stopped sending missiles into Pakistan. And, etc., etc., etc.
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October 22, 2009, 5:58 pmDilan Esper says:
But libertarian freedom is not the sine qua non of liberty. It’s only one possible view of liberty. It’s nonsense to pretend that all of the others are unfree merely because they don’t buy into the libertarian view.
That may be true, but religion isn’t about liberty at all. It’s about control and authority and submission to a higher power.
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October 22, 2009, 6:08 pmJudy Weismonger says:
I am so very tired of those who either didn’t read Rand, or can’t “get it” what Objectivism is...to the point they have not clue...that Objectivism is not either “fundamentalism”...or a “religion.” Both requires mysticism, worship,unproven “beliefs,” utopianism, and lots of emotionalism. Neither fundamentalism or religions...work from a position of realism, logic, or facts.
What “Objectivism” is...is the demand that one “think”...and provide or acquire proof, evidence, data, and facts of what one claims. All the rest is just emotional, self-serving utopian garbage.
Now why would Ayn Rand “argue” or engage in silly discussions about your feelings, or beliefs...when such “emotionalism” and desires are nothing but “subjective” observations? What’s the point?!
How can anyone who is an Objective thinker...who desires facts, and knowledge of consequences...argue with people who wants other people to simply feel their “pain,” need for sympathy? Ridiculous!
There is no argument here...either one engages in fact-filled ideas, and is cognizant of consequences...or they live in a bizarre, utopian world of self-imposed “victimology”...
in which its always “them” (the poor victim of which nothing is ever asked or required, and who never takes responsibility for their own behavior and failed lives)...vs “us” (people who live responsible lives, take care of themselves and others without being forced by a police state to do so...who are successful, and don’t spend their entire lives whining). How could an Objectivist...or any rational person discuss anything “relevant” with such silly, subjective emotionalism?
Now why would Ayn Rand or anyone with a brain who respects facts, data, evidence, reason, logic and reality...want to enter into a discussion with a bunch of whining, pitiful “victims?”
Do you poor pitiful little whiners get it now?
Judy Weismonger PhD
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October 22, 2009, 6:24 pmmockmook says:
Perhaps religion isn’t all bad, it may function as a cultural and wisdom repository that exceeds the capacity of any single family.
And, any limitations on individual liberty through religion (at least in the USA) are purely voluntary limitations–how is that anti-libertarian?
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October 22, 2009, 6:25 pmSuperSkeptic says:
I’m often characterized as a libertarian, but I think you confuse libertarian for anarchist. Btw, I’ve never read Rand (with the exception of an excerpt here or there) — and am glad I ducked the objectivist cult.
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October 22, 2009, 6:46 pmBonze Saunders says:
Yawwwwn... that old canard. Rand praises “selfishness” in a very peculiar sense. Desiring to defend the righteousness of possessing a “self”, she tried to reclaim “selfishness” as a virtue by redefining it.
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October 22, 2009, 6:52 pmDilan Esper says:
Perhaps religion isn’t all bad, it may function as a cultural and wisdom repository that exceeds the capacity of any single family. And, any limitations on individual liberty through religion (at least in the USA) are purely voluntary limitations–how is that anti-libertarian?
The first point, it seems to me, proves too much to be useful for a libertarian. Because the government / state is also cultural and wisdom repository. That’s certainly how the common law works, but you could argue that some of that occurs in statutes and ordinances as well. (It also isn’t really true about religion, in that much of the “knowledge” that is reposed in religion is actually false or unwise.)
The second point is the subject of the whole Kerry Howley dust-up over at Reason Magazine recently. Religions are not only often intertwined with the state but, even when they are not, they have governmental-like aspects to them. They also aren’t really voluntary– certainly not when it comes to children but also not when it comes to the social pressure that they exert in many societies. And they utilize the state to push anti-libertarian laws. It’s not really appropriate to talk about religion as purely voluntary in the context of, say, church groups pushing for abortion bans and sodomy laws.
But the other thing I would say to this specific to Rand is that Rand believed that liberty wasn’t just about having the theoretical right to do things, but to actually achieve great things. In other words, it wasn’t just about the state getting out of the way but also about individuals (especially skilled and smart individuals) making the right choices to maximize their potential. And certainly under THAT vision of liberty, religions are pretty much an obstacle to the skilled classes achieving all they can achieve.
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October 22, 2009, 6:59 pmnewscaper says:
I’ll say it again — in any honest reading of history, the vehicle by which the notion of universal dignity and human rights — equality before God and therefore Law– became widespread was thru Christianity (which I’ll repeat til I’m blue in the face is/was not some Falwellian monolith).
Others have held these ideas: some of the Greek philosophers (whose views affected the early Christians, but which they themselves never really ran with in practice) and some Buddhists, etc — but it was that foundation within Christianity which ‘took’ in actuality.
Example: People like to forget that the early abolitionists in both the US and UK were largely motivated by Christianity.
Regardless of the actual ‘truth’ of any given religion, the person who above described it as a ‘repository of cultural wisdom’ was right — regardless of the mumbo jumbo aspects and the reinforcing memetic trappings, the successful ones have been 8functional* for people living in societies (with the biggest difference in that regard being how they view outsiders, in theory and practice.)
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October 22, 2009, 7:18 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Agreed Dilan Esper
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October 22, 2009, 7:43 pmcrcrites says:
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October 22, 2009, 8:08 pmPaul R says:
Heinlein was influenced by Rand’s technique. The first book he wrote after reading Atlas Shrugged was Starship Troopers. (from Grumbles from the Grave?)
I’m fairly disappointed by the level of discourse here. No one here is even vaguely familiar with the Rand I have studied. All these dismissals of Rand for being superficial are themselves superficial.
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October 22, 2009, 8:23 pmDavid Nieporent says:
Whereas racism explains your entire life. The only thing funnier than the fact that you make every comment, no matter what the topic of the post, about the evil brown people coming to take over is that you think India is a “cohesive country.”
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October 22, 2009, 8:25 pmMark Field says:
Equality before the law was a commonplace in ancient Athens. Their word for it was isonomia (“equal law”), and it distinguished their democracy from tyranny, oligarchy, etc. Human rights is another story. That doctrine did derive from Christianity, though philosophers have by now given it other foundations.
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October 22, 2009, 8:25 pmDavid Nieporent says:
None of the things you describe are incompatible with libertarianism, until the religion in question is intertwined with the government. Libertarianism is not the same as suspending all judgment as to what actions are advisable and what actions are not.
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October 22, 2009, 8:36 pmmischief says:
My point was that you’ve got a much bigger obstacle — one that dwarfs your complaints about religion. Namely “a society where people have broad freedoms, perhaps bounded by the harm principle” is in itself your obstacle. Owing to the undeniable fact that humans arrive on this planet in the form of babies. Do you argue that the “harm principle” can require you to provide free food and lodging for someone else for years on end? Do you deny that children, raised in a setting where adult sexual freedom takes precedence over them, suffer for it — and suffer in a particular way prone to make them unfit citizens for a libertarian society?
And in fact, you admit it:
How are these social controls, admittedly necessary, compatible with your “broad freedoms, perhaps bounded by the harm principle”?
Oh, and the fallacy of your assertion
lies in your assumption that “liberty” is necessarily “broad freedoms, perhaps bounded by the harm principle”. Given that such a liberty doesn’t even mix very well with itself, perhaps another definition of liberty was meant.
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October 22, 2009, 8:51 pmRob Pirsyg says:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equally.
I don’t think it makes any sense to say that idea came from 17th century Christian Europe. There was no point in Christian Europe when it was not self-evident that all men were created unequal.
That idea came from Native Americans, and through the contemplation of the “noble savage” by Europeans like John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau.
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October 22, 2009, 9:05 pmDilan Esper says:
None of the things you describe are incompatible with libertarianism, until the religion in question is intertwined with the government. Libertarianism is not the same as suspending all judgment as to what actions are advisable and what actions are not.
Individual judgment? Sure. Collective judgment? No way. And as I pointed out above, religion is authoritarian, not libertarian, even when it isn’t in the form of a state-established church.
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October 22, 2009, 9:16 pmmockmook says:
I might be wrong, but I think Rand was primarily interested in what is TRUE, only secondarily interested in ways to influence others.
TRUTH and POWER are two separate things.
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October 22, 2009, 9:20 pmM. Simon says:
The degree that altruism is beneficial is in fact biologically determined and has a mathematical formula.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection
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October 22, 2009, 9:28 pmM. Simon says:
mischief,
The answer to your question lies in biology not politics. See my 9:28 pm.
You can’t have a coherent theory of humans without a substantial nod to biology.
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October 22, 2009, 9:32 pmnewscaper says:
Mark Field said
“Equality before the law was a commonplace in ancient Athens.”
Yes — for Athenians. The issue was one of scope.
There was no direct line back to Greece except thru what was picked up and intermixed in Christianity — Rome by itself did not extend the idea.
The pagans at best had a “your tribe has your ways, we have ours” brand of coexistence — but not a real notion of universality.
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October 22, 2009, 9:33 pmBart says:
Re: Atlas Shrugged: Yes, the characters were one-dimensional cartoon cutouts. Yes, the dialogue was often stilted, and the lectures monotonous and repetitive. Further, I learned as I advanced in age that, even if one imagines oneself a superman, there will come times in your life when you or loved ones will fall short of the ideal, and could use a little cushioning to break the fall.
Informed by my technical training, though, I came to see that there was a genuine scientific principle (as opposed to a phony one like “scientific materialism”) which was being espoused in Rand’s writings, that of an efficient feedback system for maximizing human productivity. Efficient feedback demands maximal controllability and observability, i.e., the ability to respond directly at every available node using the maximal amount of observable information. Such feedback is best realized in a system with the maximum number of independent and informed participants. A top down system, as in a Communist State, or to a lesser degree a general Social Welfare State, is the very antithesis of this ideal: a small number of ill-informed actuators effecting aggregated states of the system. There is no mystery why such a system does not work very well. Logically, scientifically, inexorably, it cannot.
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October 22, 2009, 9:36 pmAustin says:
Rand was also almost certainly an Aspie.
That has to be factored into any analysis of her work and her impact. Aspergers make enormous contributions to whatever field they work in, but they can be very difficult to work with. John Boyd was another brilliant Aspie.
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October 22, 2009, 9:45 pmM. Simon says:
crcrites,
I see that even in the engineering field where you might think that a penchant for original thinking within the bounds of reality might be highly prized. Nope. Conventional solutions (within the conventions of a school or organization) are prized.
A good organization will prize unconventional solutions when it is in trouble. A bad organization will never prize them no matter how fast it is sinking.
No functioning organization will ever look at ways of doing things that are against its grain. It is only when functioning ceases (relatively) that new ways are sought.
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October 22, 2009, 9:51 pmnewscaper says:
M. Simon said:
“You can’t have a coherent theory of humans without a substantial nod to biology.”
Its a bit old now, but Matt Ridley’s Origins of Virtue is a great popularization of the developments in evolutionary psychology with a nod to game theory. I found particularly fascinating how the best solution to what is known as the ‘iterated Prisoners Dilemma’ is ‘tit for tat (eye for an eye), compared to the ‘betray first’ solution to the one-off version. Better yet, when the ability to remember prior behavior is added, the mathematically best strategy is ‘tit for tat, but sometimes forgive’, which allows the possibility of rescuing the system from being stuck in the destructive side of ‘tit for tat’. The fascination is that this progression tracks human moral/ethical development up thru a practical Christianity (or other enlightened systems.)
Ridleys Red Queen does the same for fundamental human sexual biology as the underpinning of much of the rest of human behavior and culture — precisely the sort of grounding that social ‘science’ so desperately needs (but the leftists ensconced there resist).
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October 22, 2009, 9:55 pmM. Simon says:
newscaper,
Jews had a system of universality called the Noahide laws. i.e. a minimum set of laws for non-Jews and a more stringent set for Jews. You couldn’t take a man’s property just because he was not a member of the tribe as long as he conformed to minimum community standards.
It pre-dated the Greeks by a bit.
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October 22, 2009, 10:00 pmModa says:
So much for “objectiv“ism, eh?
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October 22, 2009, 10:11 pmPeterM says:
This thread has been disappointingly shallow and sometimes infantile.
Noticeably absent from this thread and virtually all of the reviews of the Burns/Heller books is any serious discussion of Ayn Rand’s philosophy. How to account for this is a matter of speculation.
Let’s start with something simple: the common accusation that Ayn Rand’s characters are one-dimensional, cardboard-like, even cartoonish figures. This is utter nonsense. Take Atlas Shrugged, for instance. The common criticism is that the characters are all black and white, super heroes or super villains. This is simply not true. There is a whole range of characters between John Galt at one end and Dr. Stadler or James Taggart at the other end. How are the accusers to account for Cheryl Brooks, Eddie Willers, Mr. Ward, the Wet Nurse, the hobo on the train, Dan Conway, Ken Danagger, Mayor Bascom, etc., etc.? More importantly, how we to account for Hank Rearden? Rearden is, arguably, the hero protagonist through the first half of the novel, and yet the plot is carried along by his flaws. Or, consider James Taggart, one of the novel’s villains. Rand’s presentation of Taggart is really quite sophisticated.
Contrary to what the anti-Rand seminar book says, Rand’s characters are deeply complex and nuanced.
In my experience, I have found that those people who level this charge against Ayn Rand do so usually because they find their views encapsulated in characters such as James Taggart, Orren Boyle, Wesley Mouch, and Dr. Stadler. In other words, they look in the mirror held up by Ayn Rand and see themselves portrayed in an unflattering light.
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October 22, 2009, 10:30 pmM. Simon says:
Making greed the cardinal virtue gets to to exactly where we are in America today.
You are confusing honest greed with theft. An all too common mistake. It is not completely clear to me the cause of confusion. But I would mostly ascribe it to folks who lack any inherent moral principles. They then project their desire for theft on the rest of us.
Having spent more than a little time with common thieves I saw them justifying their thievery by projecting the impulse to theft on their victims making their thievery just. Anarchism was very popular among the thieves. They believed in socialism but wished to cut out the middleman — the state — and do their own thieving. In that respect they were really more honest than your garden variety of socialist. They were willing to do their own dirty work.
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October 22, 2009, 10:34 pmFormer Chicagoan says:
Twirlip says: “If “private greed is virtue” as the Randians claim, what difference where the money comes from?
All the difference in the world. You are so clueless. Read the book and come back next week.
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October 22, 2009, 10:43 pmMark Field says:
Name me a Christian society before 1700 in which equality before the law was actually practised. Include “benefit of clergy” in your analysis.
Christianity sometimes talked a good game, but rarely did it practice one. The fact that Christians gave it lip service doesn’t mean that’s how the concept became embedded in republican thinking. That happened because (a) it’s part of the inherent logic of republicanism; and (b) the republican theorists knew what the Athenians knew.
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October 22, 2009, 10:55 pmM. Simon says:
Koblog says:
In an atheistic evolutionary existence inadvertently the result of an explosion, who are you to tell me “thou shalt not initiate force against another”?
Self interest tells you that. Because you do not wish force initiated on you. Or if you are of a religious bent: The Golden Rule. Or another: reciprocity works. Or if you are a Randian: self interest.(didn’t I already mention that — yes, I did) i.e. you will be better off in a place where anticipatory reciprocity is practiced than where it is not. Or you might frame it: civilization is based on trust. So you act civilized anticipating others will see the advantage. And if they don’t you may (yourself or through others) apply sanctions.
It amazes me that people can ignore their every day behavior or fail to see the obvious. Knowing this I might be tempted to the buccaneering life if the results were not so obviously to my disadvantage. i.e. to what principle do I appeal to when the bigger buccaneer arrives? Reciprocity at work.
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October 22, 2009, 10:56 pmRicardo says:
This point was made much more forcibly by Hayek (and to a lesser extent, many of the classical economists) than by Rand. Since this technical view of society doesn’t go into the morality of different institutions, I’m quite sure Rand would have denounced such a view, much as she denounced Hayek.
The key to understanding Rand is that she never said anything that was both original and correct. Her stronger points all have hints of Locke, Bastiat, Smith, (arguably) Mill and many other classical liberal thinkers even if she never acknowledged the intellectual debt.
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October 22, 2009, 11:26 pmPaul R says:
All knowledge and experience is at first some one person’s personal experience. This is no bar to objectivity. Objectivity requires basing your abstractions finally in reality, something seen or heard or touched. Rand’s anti-communist convictions were grounded and objective. Communism is evil, in theory and in practice, and that fact is known objectively and certainly.
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October 22, 2009, 11:36 pmPaul R says:
Just a neighbor with a gun and a right to self-defense. It really is as simple as that, no God is needed to see the way to an orderly society.
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October 22, 2009, 11:43 pmRicardo says:
Who are you arguing against here? I’m trying to read Objectivism in a way most favorable to Rand and its other advocates. The moral theories in Objectivism are too underdeveloped to be taken too seriously.
On the other hand, if you are pushing religion as a better source of morality I would point out that a) it is not atheists, agnostics or Objectivists who are taking up so much space in American prisons and b) if you want to ground morality in a “correct” foundation, you have to be open to the possibility that any given religion may well simply be wrong.
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October 22, 2009, 11:46 pmMichael says:
After reading Whisperers and Stalin and his Hangmen, I’d be as interested in the general mosaic of Jewish/Russian reaction to and liberation from communism as in Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand’s significance intellectually seems to me to be in her counterpunch to Marxism which is that the workers might be seen to exploit the capitalists. It wouldn’t have to be dressed up as a grand theory if it had been sucesfully delivered socially and intellectually some 60 years earlier. One of the appeals of communism was that it was often on the side of the racially oppressed, viz. Ho Chi Minh and African figures and perhaps first of all Jewish. It’s interesting that her ‘objectivism’ yielded a similar result, also that it has a strident atheism.
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October 22, 2009, 11:55 pmKate says:
“I guess that depends on whether you think freedom includes the freedom to cross an arbitrary government line or to work for people who are willing to hire you.”
It ceases to be an “arbitrary government line” the moment you go to that “government” for the “free” (as opposed to freedom) benefits.
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October 23, 2009, 12:05 amF.T.W. says:
Reply to D.R.M.: “It’s entertaining to watch the true Objectivist, one who approaches Rand’s work in accordance with her claim that it is an integrated philosophical system, try to stretch Rand’s definition of art (”Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments”) to cover the music played by a symphony orchestra.”
As a former Objectivist I struggled with this precise problem. I was not the only one. The problem revolves around the whole system of Western diatonic music, specifically what causes the emotional response generated in people brought up on it.
My interest was in the acoustical aspects. I studied everything including the early work of Helmholtz.
My conclusion was that the emotional “high” in a great Romantic piece like Rachmaninov’s 1st Piano Concerto (Rand’s favorite) was a result of the composer’s ability to re-create in orchestral terms what the human voice would produce, naturally, in a similar emotionally charged setting. It has to do with the whole range of overtones and their relationship to chord structure and harmony.
But as anyone who has a background in Western music from the early Baroque through Classical and Romantic knows, the system is a very complex integration of melody, counterpoint, harmony, and rhythm.
None of it can be exactly defined, let alone explained rationally.
Rand’s definition of Art actually fits here if you think of an orchestral composer in terms of his striving to humanize artificially created sounds, to “recreate” the emotionally charged human voice through the “selective” use of instruments, according to the composer’s “metaphysical value-judgements”.
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October 23, 2009, 1:19 amF.T.W. says:
Correction: Rachmaninov’s 2nd Piano Concerto
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October 23, 2009, 1:41 amPaul R says:
She isn’t in their debt because their useless technical arguments do not persuade a man concerned with what is moral rather than the merely expedient. Witness Barack Obama and his righteous determination to share the wealth, other people’s wealth.
The key to understanding Rand is to invest the (significant) time required to come to grips with her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Her most original idea is her theory of concept formation, from which comes a recognition that ideas are related in an epistemological hierarchy, and her reformulation of what it then means to be objective.
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October 23, 2009, 2:27 amOrson says:
No, prof. You are clearly confusing her IDEAS with her personality and her acolytes. For instance, her atheism in the famous Playboy magazine interview by Alan Toffler, she states she was not a militant atheist but an INTRANSIGENT one. This makes atheism a logical but not immediately necessary extension of her views on reason against mysticism.
However, as many notable libertarians like Rothbard have said, merely associating with his future Catholic wife got him tossed from “The Collective.”
The root of the “Two Ayns” problem was clearly Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). This she shared with Branden. Together they shouldered on to do great things for liberty.
One point of argument of course is how politics and ethics are more derivative — logically speaking — from the Objectivist views on metaphysics and epistemology. I see this as its strength, not a weakness.
For example, rational egoism or a capitalist-libertarian view of abortion rights cannot be determined without considering these more fundamental positions. If one mystically views every conceptus as sacred and human, then one will go one direction — if not, then another.
But NDP has been a problem for many other high-powered intellectuals in history. Rand is not unique in this defect. Certainly Marx, for example, so famous for loving proletarians while ignoring his starving family. In other words, lacking the empathy of those closest to him, much as Rand did to Rothbard, and many others.
Branden had youth and professional interests on his side to move-on, past NDP, productively; Rand lacked these advantages, and so her world closed around her.
The new Heller biography gets Rand right in not indulging in (thankfully, now dated) attempts at “psycho-history.” There’s plenty of time for that later. But Stephen Cox ends his Liberty review with the plaint that he knew of no cure the failures for empathy Rand showed. (There is, but no easy ‘cure.’)
The NDP issue is not a problem for admirers who do not believe Rand’s system was closed (cf, objectivistliving and solopassion), and that her ideas stand on their own merits. However, for ARIans (cf, objectivismonline), it is. Here’s where the overblown claim of “integrated philosophy” verges into “perfect exemplar” of Rand, into personality worship.
My hope is that through discussions over the next year or two, this NDP issue will become more obvious — and finally discussed! — instead of remaining the obvious 1200 pound gorilla inside Rand’s salon. It is about time.
There remain people who use Rand as an excuse for “judgementalism” in place of thinking, feeling, and dialog — or wield their own egotistical “superiority” in place of learning and teaching and developing happier, socially positive virtues. Such regressive dolts are properly marginalized by negative reputational social effects. I think it is why Rothbardians and libertarians were reknown for having better parties than Objectivists. They could let lose, unlike Rand who had to have the last word.
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October 23, 2009, 4:27 amOrson says:
WRONG.
I have had (or at least courted) three Aspie girlfriends in my lifetime — all romantically unsuccessfull. In fifty years, none have married, unlike Ayn. In addition, my college roommate — a buddy before and after, no less — is an Aspie (and Rand acolyte).
Aspie’s develop unique forms of humor. The women especially remain very sensitive to the notion that they have unintentionally hurt someone — the very opposite of Rand. They learn empathic “skills” like painting-by-numbers, ie, by immitation (which is why the non verbal skills needed for seduction and romance are lacking).
Nor do Aspie’s master feeling and insight for culture in general as Rand did. Instead, they are natural born organizing specialists. Respectively, these women from my life are an MBA educated oil and gas data analyst, an art prof in graphic design, and an executive editor for a medical specialty audience. (The man is a stats prof.) No Aspie I know is a creative generalist or Big Picture thinker like Ayn Rand.
No, Austin — Rand was certainly no Aspie. (See above, NDP. Go read the wiki entry and see.)
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October 23, 2009, 5:02 amricky says:
“Having less than a religious devotion to markets doesn’t make one a communist, or a socialist for that matter.”
When you have people talking about instituting things like the “Fairness Doctrine” based on a completely arbitrary assertion of “market failure”, it’s understandable that some will become suspicious of those who criticize the free market in general. I don’t think you need to have a “religious devotion to markets” to think that the government interferes way too much in everything these days and continues to get bigger and more intrusive every day. Calling yourself a “liberal” in this place and time puts you on the side of bigger and more intrusive government which leads us further down the road to communism. I don’t think we need to wait until the government has 99.99999999% control of the economy to call people communists for wanting more government control.
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October 23, 2009, 5:11 amPaul R says:
You don’t want to believe Rand actually understood and deliberately chose her words and deeds because that would mean your rationalism is wrong, so you rationalize it away as a mental illness. Pathetic.
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October 23, 2009, 6:34 amMichael McNeil says:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equally.
I don’t think it makes any sense to say that idea came from 17th century Christian Europe. There was no point in Christian Europe when it was not self-evident that all men were created unequal.
That idea came from Native Americans, and through the contemplation of the “noble savage” by Europeans like John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau.
False. The concept that “all men are equal” in law originated not in 17th century Europe nor with the American Indians but rather amongst Stoicism-inspired ancient Roman jurists.
As R. H. Barrow writes in his interesting work Slavery in the Roman Empire:
One might note that this concern for the family life of slaves was considerably more humane than the legal code of the southern United States was ever able to achieve (or interested in, for that matter) during the time that slavery was still legal in these United States.
We see that this idea and ideal that “all men are equal” — along with the concept of natural law (ius naturale) in general — originates not in the American Declaration of Independence, or the Western Enlightenment which occurred during somewhat the same time frame, nor with supposedly liberal American Indians, but rather amongst Stoicism-inspired jurists of ancient Rome.
Perhaps Stoicism should thus be considered the real inventor of “human rights” and “natural law.”
Reference: R. H. Barrow (Senior Scholar of Exeter College, Oxford; Classical Sixth Master at Sedergh School), Slavery in the Roman Empire, 1928, Barnes & Noble, New York, 1996; pp. 152–156.
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October 23, 2009, 7:48 amdispatches from TJICistan » Blog Archive » sources of libertarianism says:
[...] http://volokh.com/2009/10/22/assessing-a… [...]
PeterM says:
This thread has been disappointingly shallow and sometimes infantile.
Noticeably absent from this thread and virtually all of the reviews of the Burns/Heller books is any serious discussion of Ayn Rand’s philosophy. How to account for this is a matter of speculation.
Let’s start with something simple: the common accusation that Ayn Rand’s characters are one-dimensional, cardboard-like, even cartoonish figures. This is utter nonsense. Take Atlas Shrugged, for instance. The common criticism is that the characters are all black and white, super heroes or super villains. This is simply not true. There is a whole range of characters between John Galt at one end and Dr. Stadler or James Taggart at the other end. How are the accusers to account for Cheryl Brooks, Eddie Willers, Mr. Ward, the Wet Nurse, the hobo on the train, Dan Conway, Ken Danagger, Mayor Bascom, etc., etc.? More importantly, how we to account for Hank Rearden? Rearden is, arguably, the hero protagonist through the first half of the novel, and yet the plot is carried along by his flaws. Or, consider James Taggart, one of the novel’s villains. Rand’s presentation of Taggart is really quite sophisticated.
Contrary to what the anti-Rand seminar book says, Rand’s characters are deeply complex and nuanced.
In my experience, I have found that those people who level this charge against Ayn Rand do so usually because they find their views encapsulated in characters such as James Taggart, Orren Boyle, Wesley Mouch, and Dr. Stadler. In other words, they look in the mirror held up by Ayn Rand and see themselves portrayed in an unflattering light.
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October 23, 2009, 8:13 amChris says:
Rand would find it fascinating that she has been classified as a libertarian. She labeled libertarians as “hippies of the right” did she not? If you are going to engage in Rand-analysis/criticism, at least read what she wrote. I have no doubt that she would still despise the philosophical system that wrenches the concept of liberty out of any moral heirarchy and elevates it to the prime value. I am not a Rand apologist and have my own reservations/criticisms of her philosophy, but at least I base such objections on what whe thought and wrote.
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October 23, 2009, 8:31 amnewscaper says:
M. Simon said
Well, yes, which is why people talk about the much disparaged (in certain quarters) judaeo-christian heritage. Christianity didn’t appear spontaneously — but the difference it brought to the table was this: the Jews were ‘God’s chosen people’ and, while most every religion has some form of this favoritism, Jews aren’t particularly interested in any one joining them, even in principle. By contrast, to Christians (in principle if not practice — messy tribal/provincial/greedy/cruel human nature gets in the way) every non-christian is a child of God and a potential believer to be persuaded (a potential christian). The difference — again in principal, however uneven in practice — between Christianity and Islam is that the latter by contrast quite explicitly sees non-believers as enemies who must submit.
And for those others talking more or less correctly about Athenian and Roman roots, my point was not about ‘who first invented’ these ideas, but how they actually came to be widespread in the modern world. Historically, how it actually all went down, is that they only spread so far in the Enlightenment into popular culture because of fertile ground prepared by related ideas from elements within *Christianity*. Without it the rest was pretty much parlour games for certain of the elites of no broader impact.
P.S. Some personal background — raised Catholic, I went thru my hardcore atheist/Objectivist/then Libertarian phase 20–25 years ago. I’m still not a believer, but now consider myself more agnostic-leaning with a more appreciative balanced take on the historical role of Christianity, good as well as bad.
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October 23, 2009, 8:42 amTwirlip says:
As many people have observed, she borrowed heavily from Nietzsche, even if at second or third hand.
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October 23, 2009, 9:41 amTwirlip says:
Ah, the deep, deep thoughts of a Randian.
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October 23, 2009, 9:42 amTwirlip says:
Whether it is a “canard” or not, it is the public face of libertarianism, and one which libertarians seem loathe to repudiate.
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October 23, 2009, 9:45 amTwirlip says:
A great many libertarians believe that “there is no such thing as society”, in Thatchers phrase, or at least that there ought not be such a thing. You see some of them commenting on this thread.
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October 23, 2009, 9:48 amBurke says:
I’m a long-time fan of Ayn Rand (50 years). The main difference between Rand and libertarians is that she had a rational, consistent underlying philosophy from which her political views were derived. Libertarians are mostly just a hodge-podge group of government haters.
I’ve read reviews of Burns’ book that contain remarks she made about Rand. It’s obvious that he did not understand her philosophy at all and really did not get her facts right.
For example, Burns claims that Rand became a lover of capitalism after and because the communists nationalized her parents’ business. In fact, she had hated communists long before that.
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October 23, 2009, 9:57 amBurke says:
I’m a long-time fan of Ayn Rand (50 years). The main difference between Rand and libertarians is that she had a rational, consistent underlying philosophy from which her political views were derived. Libertarians are mostly just a hodgepodge group of government haters with a variety of irrational philosophies.
I’ve read reviews of Burns’ book that contain remarks she made about Rand. It’s obvious that he did not understand her philosophy at all and really did not get her facts right.
For example, Burns claims that Rand became a lover of capitalism after and because the communists nationalized her parents’ business. In fact, she had hated communists long before that.
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October 23, 2009, 10:00 amBlue Neponset says:
She was 15 when her parent’s business was nationalized. How much earlier did she develop her hatred of communism?
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October 23, 2009, 10:31 ammischief says:
Name me a society anywhere in which equality before the law was actually practised. Include “hate crime” as actually enforced in your analysis.
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October 23, 2009, 10:34 ammischief says:
And?
What’s the connection?
And should I not swat mosquitoes while I am at it? If I am allowed to swat mosquitoes because they might initiate force against me, why am I not allowed to use force to defend my interests against anyone else who might interfere?
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October 23, 2009, 10:36 amzuch says:
Ms. Judy Weismonger P. H. D.:
In your esteemed professional career, did anyone bother to point out to you that this type of ‘argument’ is a logical fallacy, the fallacy of bifurcation (aside from the other forensic failings)?
Yes. I think so. On objection criteria, and on the facts presenteds, it seems you’re a first class jerk. Is that a fair assessment of the objective reality?
Cheers,
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October 23, 2009, 12:30 pmDemosthenes says:
Very true. If you restrict Rand’s theory of aesthetics to literature and drama (and perhaps the visual arts as well), I would tend to agree with the definition much more often than not. But even here, there are obvious exceptions, such as landscapes — which, contra most people, she dismissed from the category of art because they had nothing to say about the human condition. And she could not stretch her point to encompass music. I find great value in what Rand had to say about Art...as long as it’s properly bracketed.
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October 23, 2009, 1:57 pmBart says:
Ricardo:
There is no shame in “reinventing the wheel”, so long as you are not claiming credit for the original discovery, or if you have added something like chrome hubcaps to the design. I’m simply describing my own intellectual journey, not that anyone would care. But, Rand started me on the path. For that, she has my appreciation. I think that is more or less the point of Ms. Somin’s column. Whatever her ouevres’ faults, Rand’s works appeal to the young, and introduce them to the path of enlightenment.
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October 23, 2009, 2:08 pmDilan Esper says:
Christianity sometimes talked a good game, but rarely did it practice one. The fact that Christians gave it lip service doesn’t mean that’s how the concept became embedded in republican thinking. That happened because (a) it’s part of the inherent logic of republicanism; and (b) the republican theorists knew what the Athenians knew.
This is a really weird discussion because the real catalyst of actual equal rights in Western societies was the Enlightenment, which conservative Christians hate (but which Ayn Rand probably thought was a pretty good development).
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October 23, 2009, 2:20 pmBrad Williams says:
This idea that AR became a knee-jerk pro-capitalist primarily because of a specific event in her childhood is irresponsible psychological speculation which ignores the evidence. The purpose of this claim is to show that AR was not a rational philosopher, but an emotionalistic reactionary. On the contrary, AR’s work gives her actual reasons for being pro-capitalist: they are not emotionalistic, but philosophical and logical — thus they had to have been been based on a very wide range of observations, and indeed they can be verified by anyone, no matter where you were born.
Furthermore, Somin fails to grasp that political philosophy depends on morality and epistemology, so of course misses the point of AR’s animosity to both libertarianism and conservatism. AR states her reasons, among other places, quite clearly in “Philosophical Detection” in _Philosophy: Who Needs It_.
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October 23, 2009, 2:29 pmyankee says:
Recpirocity works, but reciprocity + selective violations of reciprocity when you are unlikely to suffer significant consequences for doing so works better.
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October 23, 2009, 3:08 pmmischief says:
There is no libertarian way to prevent people from agreeing with each and ordering their actions similarly and acting together.
If you use a definition of “authoritarian” so absurdly broad that your statements about religion are also “authoritarian”. If religions contain prohibitions against “sexual freedom, collection of interest, profit maximization, borrowing and lending, greed, avarice, and keeping and flaunting one’s wealth, etc.” and are so authoritarian, why, your prohibitions on such prohibitions are likewise authoritarian. You don’t need them enforced by the state.
As for claiming that they are individual, not collective — if “you are pursuing a society where people have broad freedoms”, how are you doing it all by your lonesome? Because if people agree with you and act with you, it is collective.
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October 23, 2009, 3:17 pmTwirlip says:
Meh. The Scottish Enlightenment was an explicitly Christian movement, and it had a lot more impact on the US than did anything going on in France.
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October 23, 2009, 3:23 pmDilan Esper says:
mischief:
You have missed the point. If all a religion constitutes is a voluntary association of individuals, you would have a point.
But:
1. Many members of a religion are forced to be in the group, either by their parents or community pressure.
2. Many religions ARE entangled with the state / officially established.
3. Many religions push for the state to enact legislation prohibiting things that they believe God prohibited.
Those things make religions much different from purely voluntary associations.
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October 23, 2009, 3:59 pmDilan Esper says:
Meh. The Scottish Enlightenment was an explicitly Christian movement, and it had a lot more impact on the US than did anything going on in France.
Enlightenment philosophy was in no sense Christian, and indeed, many Enlightenment philosophers were persecuted by the Church.
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October 23, 2009, 4:01 pmTwirlip says:
Did you not take in the words staring out at you?
The Scottish Enlightenment was an explicitly Christian movement, and it had a lot more impact on the US than did anything going on in France.
Maybe bolding it will help.
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October 23, 2009, 4:34 pmDilan Esper says:
Twirlip:
I don’t know what you mean by “explicitly Christian”. The ideas expressed by enlightenment philosophers who influenced Western (and we are talking about the West here, not strictly the US) conceptions of human rights were secular ideas very much opposed by Christian authorities, whether it was Locke, Kant, Spinoza, Hume, DesCartes, etc. Many of these philosophers were persecuted by the Church, as were many more explicitly Christian expositors of enlightenment ideas (such as Martin Luther). And, of course, in the backdrop of the enlightenment was a great expansion of human knowledge that religious authorities fought tooth and nail, i.e., Galileo, Copernicus, etc.
There’s a reason the time when Christian clerics ruled the West is referred to as the “Dark Ages”. And it isn’t because the enlightenment spread Christian ideas.
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October 23, 2009, 5:13 pmTwirlip says:
There’s your problem, or one of them. You think that “the Church” and “Christianity” are the same thing. (We’ll omit to discuss for now your convicton that “religion” means “the Christian Church”. How parochial of you).
Galileo was a devout Catholic by the way, and Copernicus was a priest! Your “enlightenment” was driven in large measure by the same religious people you dislike. All the great universities of Western Europe were founded by Christians, in some cases by the Church itself. The Sorbonne, for example, was founded by a prient named Robert de Sorbon in 1257.
Your knowledge of European history seems to have been gleaned from a comic book. The “Dark Ages” are not defined as “the time when Christian clerics ruled Europe”.
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October 23, 2009, 5:39 pmTwirlip says:
If by “many” you mean “none”, sure. Though I understand that Spinoza did receive some push-back from within the Jewish community in Holland.
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October 23, 2009, 5:45 pmDilan Esper says:
Twirlip:
You have an agenda. It’s sort of like the people who want to blame slavery on liberalism, or the people who want to blame the Civil War on the North, or the people who want to blame the Great Depression on the Federal Reserve. You want to credit Christianity with something it doesn’t deserve credit for.
Before the Reformation, the Church basically equalled Christianity in the West. After the Reformation, it still equalled most of it. So when the Church put Galileo under house arrest, I don’t think it’s much of a response to say “but he was a Catholic!”. Descartes self-censored because of what he saw happen to Galileo.
More important, the actual ideas propagated in the enlightenment were the death-knell for traditional Christianity. Free exercise of religion meant established churches were either disestablished or had less power. Slavery, long endorsed by Christian leaders, was condemned. Indigenous persons who did not want to convert to Christianity at the barrel of the conqueror’s gun had human rights. Priests and other privileged classes no longer had rights over commoners. Human rights were discoverable by man and could be generated through human reason, and didn’t have to come from God or religious text or authority. (Parallel to this, science made the key discoveries in establishing that we were not special, did not have any particular importance in the universe, and were not a creation separate and apart from other life forms.)
So if you want to go ahead and call a movement that largely discredited the Christian religion as well as its most powerful authorities a “Christian” movement, that’s your prerogative, I guess. But the enlightenment was, in fact, profoundly secular, even if some of its key players were nominally Christians.
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October 23, 2009, 6:00 pmTwirlip says:
Esper, my “agenda” is to try to hammer a few simple facts into your remarkably thick and uninformed skull.
For a guy warbling on about enlightenment, you do a remakably good impression of a willfully ignorant bigot.
Now, why do I suspect that your knowledge of all these topics is of a piece with your grasp of European history, based on a few half-digested scraps of information you picked up in a magazine article or the internet?
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October 23, 2009, 6:11 pmTwirlip says:
I considered challenging you on this and making you eat it, but what would be the point? You are what you are, and are happy to be it. Feel free to wallow in your ignorance if that’s what turns you on. I’m an openminded sort.
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October 23, 2009, 6:14 pmDilan Esper says:
For a guy warbling on about enlightenment, you do a remakably good impression of a willfully ignorant bigot.
Twirlip, I don’t care how many times religious believers say it, CRITICISM OF RELIGION IS NOT BIGOTED. It isn’t bigoted to say that the leaders of Christianity put Galileo under house arrest. They did! It isn’t bigoted to say that the ideas of the enlightenment destroyed the theoretical underpinnings of Christianity. It did!
Every time a religious believer calls a critic a bigot, they are just admitting that their faith is false. Because no true faith would be so fragile that any criticism would offend the believer.
Seriously, the idea that the scientific, cultural, and philosophical advances of the last 500 years have been very unkind to the Christian religion didn’t originate with me, and it wasn’t the creation of people who hated Christians. It is the natural conclusion if one isn’t into wishful thinking.
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October 23, 2009, 8:17 pmmischief says:
You have missed the point.
And so I do.
That is not “force” in any sense that could be meant in “a society where people have broad freedoms, perhaps bounded by the harm principle.” The parents’ and community’s actions are fully permissable under that rule, and it is a bigoted double-standard to argue against such broad freedoms in the name of broad freedoms.
Moot point.
And you are perfectly free to push the state to enact legislation prohibiting things that fall afoul of your standards. Religion would appear to one of them.
But to speak of “broad freedoms” and demand that certain citizens can not participiate in the legistislative process without conforming to your standards of what their reasons should be is a bigoted double-standard.
Bosh. Especially since many associations, not just religions, would fall afoul of them. If you want to fight for broad freedoms, don’t try to tell us that you want to micromanage what associations we belong to because you don’t consider them purely voluntary.
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October 23, 2009, 9:05 pmDilan Esper says:
The parents’ and community’s actions are fully permissable under that rule, and it is a bigoted double-standard to argue against such broad freedoms in the name of broad freedoms.
We really have a serious problem with conservative Christians (many of whose predecessors were actually bigoted against blacks and Jews and many of whom are still bigoted against gays and lesbians) thinking anyone who criticizes their fragile faith is a bigot.
Seriously guys, this is an issue where you really need to remove the log from your own eye before you worry about the motes in liberals’ eyes.
But to speak of “broad freedoms” and demand that certain citizens can not participiate in the legistislative process without conforming to your standards of what their reasons should be is a bigoted double-standard.
Seriously, you really should refrain from using words that you don’t know the meaning of.
The point is that an institution that tries to use the government’s power to enforce it’s moral beliefs is anti-libertarian. Now go along, pick up a dictionary, and look up “bigotry”. See if that sentence I just typed falls within the definition.
Really, if you guys’ faith were at all persuasive, you wouldn’t whine “bigot! bigot!” every time someone criticized it.
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October 23, 2009, 9:19 pmSteve Simpson says:
I haven’t read Jennifer Burns’s book, so I can’t comment on it. But from Ilya’s comments, it sounds like the book trots out the same tiresome and unjust claims that have been lodged against Rand for thirty years now. Ilya’s own view is a good example of this attitude. Apparently, as high school kid who was enamored of Hayek and Friedman, two thinkers Rand criticized, Ilya was “turned off by her intolerance for disagreement and her lack of serious effort to engage with opposing points of view.”
Rand was certainly a passionate advocate for her ideas and she did not suffer fools easily. But the claim that she was intolerant or dogmatic and that she did not engage opposing viewpoints or give credit to others’ ideas is frankly idiotic and quite easy to dispell if one is actually interested in consulting evidence, rather than second-hand claims. Rand kept almost everything she wrote during her life, most of which has now been published. Those who are interested in whether Ilya’s view is accurate can consult The Letters of Ayn Rand, edited by Michael Berliner. The book was published in 1995. Perhaps Ilya was no longer in highschool at the time and did not have a chance to reconsider his views in light of this volume. But even a quick skim of the book reveals his view to be wildly innaccurate.
Was Rand “intolerant” and dismissive of opposing views? Well, read the 60 pages of letters to philosopher John Hospers in which she engages his views on virtually every aspect of her philosophy. Or read the letter she wrote to W.T. Stace, Princeton philosophy professor and author (p. 603).
Did Rand “hate” and dismiss conservatives? Read the 7 page letter she wrote to Barry Goldwater (p. 565) after reading The Conscience of a Conservative, wherein she attempts to convince him to adopt a more consistent approach to ideas in general and capitalism in particular. At one point, she criticizes National Review, as she puts it, “not because it is a religious magazine, but because it pretends that it is not. There are religious magazines which one can respect, even while disagreeing with their views.” (p. 571) Are these the words of a dogmatist?
Did she hate and dismiss liberals? Take a look at the letter she wrote to liberal writer Martin Larson about an article he wrote about her ethics, in which she states up front “Whether we agree philosophically or not, I thank you for your consideration and your courtesy.” She then spends 7 pages explaining her philosophical disagreements with him on a wide range of political and moral issues. At one point, she responds to Larson’s view that free markets cause depressions by referring him to books by Carl Snyder, Henry Hazlitt, Hans Sennholz, and “the works by the great economist Ludwig von Mises.” (p. 582). Is this what people mean when they accuse Rand of being intolerant and dismissive of the intellectual contributions of others?
For another example of Rand’s alleged intolerance and dogmatism, read the letter she wrote a Catholic priest that begins, “Thank you for your letter. No, I have no desire to ‘tear it up in disgust’ nor to ‘have a good laugh at an enemy.’ I found it profoundly interesting and I sincerely appreciate it.” She then spends nearly three pages very respectfully discussing his views on religion.
I obviously can’t give more than a sense of what Ayn Rand’s letters convey about her as a person or a thinker, to say nothing of the many other works of hers that have been published. Nor can I or anyone else possibly rebut the claim that she was “intolerant” or “dogmatic.” The book is over 600 pages long and contains hundreds of letters to critics, fans, friends, and family that span Ayn Rand’s entire career. Go read it and determine for yourself whether Ilya’s or Jennifer Burns’s assessments of Rand are accurate.
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October 23, 2009, 9:53 pmAn Average American says:
Do you really think more people have read Ayn Rand’s novels than Robert Heinlein’s? I think Heinlein was a much more important author in promoting libertarian ideas to the general public. I was forced to read, “The Fountainhead”, in school, but I’ve read everything Heinlein ever wrote because I wanted to.
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October 23, 2009, 11:11 pmByron says:
DRM:
“It’s entertaining to watch the true Objectivist, one who approaches Rand’s work in accordance with her claim that it is an integrated philosophical system, try to stretch Rand’s definition of art (“Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments”) to cover the music played by a symphony orchestra.”
it is quite simple, Bob Dylan or Bach one is a nihilist at best the other wrote beautiful music. Granted most was for the Church but the arrangements and the procession of the music shows great intellectual capacity.
Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone hardly measures up to Minuet in G. Each piece comes from the very nature of the artist. One rolls in the gutter the other soars.
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October 24, 2009, 12:07 pmmischief says:
That makes the Libertarian Party anti-libertarian.
Obviously. Since you are not only applying a double standard to condemn religion on grounds that apply just as well to the Libertarian Party, you show no signs of being able to notice the fact.
I also note that the differences between your arguments against religion and those used by Communists to justify religious persecution are cosmetic.
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October 24, 2009, 9:26 pmPaul R says:
Two points:
Heinlein was influenced by Rand. I doubt if he got his libertarianism from her, but he was certainly encouraged by her appeal and success to put more explicit moralizing and theorizing into his own works after he read Atlas Shrugged.
There has never been and never will be a government that did not enforce a moral perspective. Libertarianism understood as value-free government and market mechanics understood as value-free economics fit together hand-in-glove in their uselessness. Morality is necessary and unavoidable in every act.
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October 24, 2009, 9:49 pmDilan Esper says:
Obviously. Since you are not only applying a double standard to condemn religion on grounds that apply just as well to the Libertarian Party, you show no signs of being able to notice the fact.
What that the Libertarian does seeks to use the government’s power to stop people from doing things based on their supposed immorality?
You just want to call anyone who criticizes your religious beliefs as a bigot.
I also note that the differences between your arguments against religion and those used by Communists to justify religious persecution are cosmetic.
This is truly stupid. You are essentially arguing that because communists critized religion and also oppressed religious people, anyone who criticizes religion seeks to oppress religious people.
The First Amendment fully protects your right to your religious beliefs, as well it should. If anyone ever tries to punish you or jail you for your religious belief, I will defend your right to practice it. Indeed, I sometimes come to the defense of homophobes who are targeted for politically incorrect beliefs about gays and lesbians, even though I think that homophobia is an awful form of bigotry and prejudice.
The First Amendment does not, however, protect your religion from being exposed as the fraud and delusion that it is.
Whining “bigot” every time someone criticizes a belief, as I said, is basically proof that the belief is false and that you know it. Because nobody worries that much about criticism if their beliefs are on solid ground. You think evolutionary biologists call creationists bigots? If your beliefs are that fragile, you basically know that they are wishful thinking but don’t have the guts to admit it.
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October 25, 2009, 1:42 amDilan Esper says:
There has never been and never will be a government that did not enforce a moral perspective.
This may be descriptively true, but it isn’t a normative justification. When government goes after conduct purely on the basis of morality– especially phony morality based on prejudice and justified by reference to an invisible man in the sky– government is acting without any real legitimacy.
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October 25, 2009, 1:45 amOn Free Market Rhetoric in Politics « Trey Givens says:
[...] of glomming on to the popularity of one of her most famous works — while at the same time smearing its author as “intolerant” and “dogmatic” as a means of belittling the [...]