Ayn Rand defends an ethic which is remarkable for its absence of any obligation towards others, only towards oneself. As if by magic, this spirits away multiple forms of interdependence, power relations, and abuses of power, and the violence and injustices which poison human existence and against which in real life the appeal to reason is ineffective.punditman says...
-François Flahault
Punditman read the other day that Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is flying off the shelves and this at first seemed to him counter-intuitive. Ayn Rand is the founder of the philosophy known as Objectivism. She was a Russian emigre who had witnessed and experienced first-hand, repression by the Bolsheviks. Her 1957 novel depicts persecuted, over-taxed, over-regulated capitalists, inventors and innovators as going on strike against society's socialistic unproductive leeches who are incapable of survival without these brilliant businessmen to lead them.
To refresh his hazy memory on this literary icon, Punditman embarked on a little research and by the end of it his head was ready to explode. Readers may find this link helpful in aquainting one's self with the Randian legacy. For all you lazy unproductive leeches who don't follow Punditman's links (sarcasm, ok?), here is a quote from Ayn Rand at the end of that article:
"Any free nation had the right to invade Nazi Germany and, today, has the right to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba or any other slave pen." “The invasion of an enslaved country," Rand maintains "is morally justified only when and if the conquerors establish a free social system."She died in 1982. Would she have bought into the nonsense about bestowing freedom in Iraq, or would she have been smart enough to see through the statist-corporate lies?
Other research has revealed these choice quotes from Rand, hero to Ronald Reagan, Alan Greenspan, Brangelina, other Hollywood gliterati, sports stars and celebs everywhere:
"I am for an absolute laissez-faire, free, unregulated economy."Rand also testified in 1947 as a "friendly witness" during the United States House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings during the McCarthy era.
"If you separate the government from economics, if you do not regulate production and trade, you will have peaceful cooperation, harmony, and justice among men."
Rand's ideas still hold sway because there are those who believe that the current crisis is a result of over-regulation, not greed. Mystery therefore solved as to why her ideas resonate with some.
Thus Rand, who opposed altruism, foreign aid and philanthropy, would have also been against saving failed capitalists. According to many of her online disciples, she would have railed against the Bush and Obama bailouts of failed enterprises. That is about the only appealing Randian notion Punditman could find in his web sojourns, although he arrives at it from a completely different direction than the objectivist. One article quoted an acqaintance of Ayn Rand as saying she was not a nice person. Probably not.
Clearly, Ayn Rand was a no-holds-barred ideologue who felt that people were basically greedy and selfish and that egoism and "reason" should rule. There are many "objectivists" out there who still hang on her every thought. Some even tried to set up a society in Costa Rica, but failed.
Perhaps instead, the Randinistas should just drink beer with some of Punditman's old Marxist-Leninist associates from University days, because ideologues of all stripes seem to have a certain common personality trait: bullheadedness. But Punditman will not be joining their ilk; he no longer sits in a Grad lounge somewhere listening to two sides feign dialectics as they talk past one another while espousing largely impractical philosophies.
Does this mean Punditman is happy? Now there's a philosophical question worth pursuing.
