Ayn Rand's Followers Just Don't Get Her

What is it in the words of Ayn Rand that fascinates her followers, and fills others with revulsion?

Whatever her flaws, there is an undeniable bluntness, clarity and beauty to her words. Even as history fails to conform to prophecies of the left and the right, Ayn Rand's words haunt the headlines.

It's not surprising when liberals, conservatives, and even libertarians attack Rand's ideas, as she had little patience with any of the aforementioned groups, and her ideas are not easily classified.

What is strange is how far off track some self-proclaimed "objectivists" have gone, and how Ayn Rand's words contradict those of her modern followers. The fact that she has followers at all would be enough "to make her turn over in her grave," a metaphor that she would take exception to, given her contempt for mysticism in all its forms.

Stranger yet is a nominal 'left-libertarian' and member of the new high-tech underclass coming to her defense, while daring to challenge her devotees. It's not so strange in the context of Rand's philosophy. The words of Ayn Rand still stand on their own merits, and directly contradict those who try to twist them into justifications for the preposterous and inhuman convulsions of an obsolete and dying world-view.

It's easy to go off on bloggers and other online sources; unfortunately the nonsensical threads are traceable to some well known and respected sources within the objectivist movement. When Leonard Peikoff starts making Bill O'Reilly sound like an antiwar liberal, something is wrong.

Peikoff Defends the War State

People who sound and act like neocons or worse seem to align themselves with Rand's philosophy, and continue to provide rhetorical ammo to her detractors. There is no point in detailing and debunking each absurdity here; if I had time for such pointless and futile blog-warfare, I would wage it in the places where such things belong. One example is enough.

I have a friend on the "social bookmarking" site Digg, who uses the handle "Ayn Rand Fan." Whenever this individual sends me a 'shout' the following headline is visible in my mailbox:

"Ayn Rand has sent you a shout on Digg," which leaves me feeling like I'm getting e-mails from the dead. I read them anyway, and click on the links. I always find something interesting, although many of the views they express I strongly disagree with.

There's the usual stuff on might expect; attacks on the environmental movement, and protests against any attempt to limit the power of big business. The fact that big business is hopelessly dependent on statist practices and policies now, something that Ayn Rand predicted, is acknowledged at times but still a pro-corporate bias is visible.Weirder yet, However is the pro-war stance that the new objectivists repeatedly take and how their readers in the blogosphere interpret their statements. The result is "shouts" like the following one: "Iraqi Women & Children Will be Bombed or American Ones Will," which fortunately, isn't exactly what the real story is about.The actual link on Digg leads to an interview of Leonard Peikoff, a respected Ayn Rand scholar and the founder of the Ayn Rand Institute, whose name and commentaries appear throughout The Ayn Rand Lexicon.The interviewer is Bill O'Reilly, and the exchange between O'Reilly and Peikoff is surreal.

"Dead Babies and All of That"

O'Reilly: I understand that if the US does go in with duty heavy air power and all kinds of things like this, and civilians get killed, you're not so concerned.

Peikoff: I'm absolutely not concerned with innocents [sic] people in the enemy territory.... you have to take anyone in that territory and regard him as part of the enemy....

(Who else was talking like Peikoff at that point in recent history? Osama bin Laden is the first name that comes to mind. -DM)

O'Reilly: Alright Now uh if they were to adopt your philosophy, the Bush Administration, and go in and just level the country....you'd see the dead babies and all of that, and then we would be fighting then all of the hundreds of millions of moslems across the world....that that might not be a war we want to get into. (1)

The discussion deteriorates with O'Reilly using his usual bullying tactics, and Dr. Peikoff's tone becomes shrill and hysterical. However, it is still possible to understand what Peikoff is advocating.

Oddly enough, Peikoff wasn't advocating obliterating Afghanistan or Iraq. He was talking about Iran. There are a lot of things that are dangerous and offensive about the current regime in Iran. But they didn't attack us, Sunni extremists did. The last time they even came close to attacking us was back in the days of the Reagan-Bush I coup, while Ollie North et al were busy selling weapons to them.

If Leonard Peikoff is the face of the modern objectivists they've got a serious problem. Without any disrespect to his past commentaries on Rand's work, and acknowledgement that his statements were made in the confusion and hysteria of the days immediately following 9-11, Peikoff, and the Ayn Rand followers who listen to him have it all wrong.

In Ayn Rand's Own Words

War is Wrong

Wars are the second greatest evil the human societies can perpetrate. (The first is dictatorship, the enslavement of their own citizens, which is the cause of wars) (Lexicon p. 526) Ayn Rand believed in the power of ideas, of the intellect and of reason.

War is A Function of Statism

Yet again, some of Ayn Rand's words take on an eerily prophetic quality in relation to recent history.

"When a statist ruler exhausts his own country's economy, he attacks his neighbors. It is his only means of postponing internal collapse and prolonging his rule. A country that violates the rights of its own citizens, will not respect the rights of its neighbors. Those who do not recognize individual rights, will not recognize the rights of nations: a nation is only a number of individuals" (The Ayn Rand Lexicon page 527) (2)

The above statement by Ayn Rand requires no comment other than "it applies."

Wars are started by governments. Organized violence is a characteristic behavior of political authority. A '"terrorist state" is a state at war. To end all wars, end statism.

Corporatism, and its desired outcome, fascism as defined by Mussolini is statist in nature, and global corporatism is a necessary precondition for the emergence of a global fascist state. Unending warfare between nations is the simultaneous result and justification of authoritarian solutions on national and international levels.

The economic devastation of a war to the economies of nations is repaired by governmental intervention at a war's end. However, the economic recovery America experienced after WW II cannot be recreated by a war economy; the destruction of competing industries in Europe and Asia by force is no longer a viable option, and the global elite is without national or ideological loyalties.

Ayn Rand went as far as to assert that the US's involvement in WW II, while necessary and moral was actually to the detriment of the US's economy.

The current economic devastation that has icons of capitalism begging for welfare from Uncle Sam is the direct result of the expansion of statist policies, which violated the rights of individuals and nations, using war as an excuse.

Social and Religious Conservatives are Useless or Worse

Rand:

What are the "conservatives"? What is it that they are seeking to "conserve"? (Lexicon p.96)(3)

Ayn Rand saw through the ruse of using empty slogans and religious justifications to promote a self-contradictory and intellectually indefensible position: defending property rights while advocating restrictions on lifestyles, art, literature, censorship of TV and Radio , and the ultimate violation of individual sovereignty; compulsory military service.

'The most immoral contradiction-in the chaos of today's anti-ideological groups-is that of the so-called 'conservatives,' who posture as defenders of individual rights, particularly property rights, but uphold and advocate the draft. By what infernal evasion can they hope to justify the proposition that creatures who have no right to life, have the right to a bank account?" (Any Rand, 1966)(4)

While the draft ended with the Vietnam War era, violations of the individual's sovereignty abound. Particularly troublesome is the double edged executioner's blade of drug prohibition and forcible drugging. How can property rights, in the absence of the right to control which chemicals are placed by oneself or by others in one's own body, have any meaning?

Where the social and religious conservatives were headed was painfully clear to Ayn Rand too:

"Today's conservatives are futile, impotent and culturally, dead. They have nothing to offer and can achieve nothing. They can only help to destroy intellectual standards, to disintegrate thought, to discredit capitalism, and to accelerate this country's uncontested collapse into despair and dictatorship."(Lexicon p. 98)(4)

The Republican Party's alignment with the most reactionary and irrational elements of the right, who choose literal interpretations of scripture over reason and science, has brought it to its current state of disarray.

Similarly, the rejection of anything even resembling fiscal responsibility and capitalist principals with regard to misdirected wars and corporate welfare-statism has nullified any claim to a philosophy of individual responsibility and accountability by today's conservatives.

In 2008, the Libertarian Party sent a funeral wreath to the Republicans

Ayn Rand wrote the above quote from "Conservatism: an Obituary" in1966

Capitalism is a Radical Ideal

Did laissez-faire capitalism ever really exist? It's doubtful that it ever did. From the days of the robber barons to the current state of economic disarray, the course of events was defined by an interdependency of state and capital. Whether taxpayer dollars are systematically looted and distributed to poor or rich beggars, the reality of state "redistribution of wealth" is present

From the early days of the organized labor movement, through the turbulence and upheavals of the early 20^th century, the New Deal, and finally WW II when union workers, including communists and anarchists set aside their differences with the US government, believing that the defeat of Hitler took precedence over all, business has run to the state for help.

Dying by the Statist Sword

Business used government troops to control strikers, and deputized company thugs to put down strikes, using public funds, and governmental authority, using statist practices to solve the problems of "private enterprise." Other social, economic, and military interventions were demanded by, and granted to business using funds that did not belong to them, and powers that were not theirs to wield.

Ayn Rand:

" It was business, not labor that initiated the policy of government intervention in the economy (as long ago as the nineteenth century)-and business was the first victim. Labor adopted the same policy and will meet the same fate. He who lives by a legalized sword will, will perish by a legalized sword"(Lexicon 513)(5)

When US or multinational corporations do business with shady and unstable dictatorships and find that suddenly their holdings have been nationalized, is it the US government's responsibility to provide law enforcement functions outside of the US? Again, these types of interventions are gross misuses of public funds and wastes of human lives.

In the sense that it's never really been tried, capitalism is in fact an ideal, and ideals exist in people's minds only. Therefore Ayn Rand was an idealist, and in her own words "a radical for capitalism."

Altruism is Hypocrisy

Ayn Rand blamed Immanuel Kant for the paradox of altruism and the peculiar notion that only actions from which one derived no benefit whatsoever, material, emotional, or spiritual were truly virtuous.

Whether Rand's interpretation of Kant was correct or incorrect is a question best answered by philosophy professors. However the paradox of altruism can be seen in the exhortations to 'productivity' and participation given to each new potential producer and consumer from the time they enter the public school system until adulthood.

Ayn Rand:

Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible.(Lexicon 4-5)(6)

The above qualities that Rand names are functions of self, and will. They are not sacrifices to abstractions. Invocations of "society," "the greater good," "others," "authority," and "duty" motivate the individual through repression, guilt, fear, and herd instinct.

True kindness compassion and respect come from an internally directed moral code or belief system, and from the heart. An action done for the benefit of another 'because it feels right,' is still a selfish action.

It's also obvious that those advocating 'self sacrifice' are usually interested the sacrifice of selves other than their own.

The evil old men who exhort suicide bombers to experience the joys of martyrdom and their counterparts, who praise warriors dying in the name of freedom, all the while looting and destroying the nation and freedoms these young men and women are willing to kill and die for; these criminals are well served by the notion of altruism while they manipulate those who actually believe in it.

Here I feel compelled to quote Leonard Peikoff at his best, in words far removed from his ranting and raving at Bill O'Reilly:

"To be a socialist," say Goebbels, "is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole." By this definition, the Nazis practiced what they preached. They practiced it at home and the abroad. No one can claim that they did not sacrifice enough individuals.-(Leonard Peikoff, Lexicon p. 166)(7)

Ideas Matter

Ayn Rand rejected the assertion made by many historians as well as modernists espousing amoral economic and political world views, that things have "always been that way," and therefore, by implication they will continue to be "that way" forever.

Rand's vision did not idealize her world, or deny the flaws and failures of America, the country that she loved as only a refugee from dictatorship can. She saw the evils of the world quite clearly, and while her theories of the reason for their existence are open to debate, she did not believe in "necessary evils," a term generally used by the evil to create the illusion that their actions are somehow needed.

Ayn Rand believed in the "Benevolent Universe Premise," which she described as follows:

"There is a fundamental conviction which some people never acquire, some hold only in their youth, and a few hold to the end of their days-the conviction that ideas matter....That ideas matter means that knowledge matters, that truth matters, that one's mind matters....(8)

Contained with the Benevolent Universe Premise is the belief, supported by history that ideas in the end will triumph over mysticism, force, and reaction.

Intellect is wealth

It is true that Ayn Rand believed in the superiority of industrial capitalism. However she also saw material achievements as being ultimately derived from ideas. One can look at the protagonists in her novels and see that none of them were mere speculators or manipulators.

The architect Howard Roark ( protagonist of The Fountainhead) clearly placed a higher value on his intellectual property rights and artistic freedom than on his career or even his physical freedom.

The idea that an intellectual can best protest a corrupt and dysfunctional social order by refusing to do anything more than manual labor, presented in the context of Atlas Shrugged, also contradicts the accusations of crass and heartless materialism leveled at Ayn Rand by her critics.

What Ayn Rand "got," was that teaching the sacrifice of individual rights to the common good is taught from the first day of public school, making the superficial public positions and slogans of business and government meaningless.

It is the "normal" individual who is "socialized," and the non-conformist may be labeled as socially dysfunctional, asocial, or mentally ill. Similarly, the truly anti-social person only believes in their own individual rights, and delights in violating the rights of others, if they believe that "rights" as such exist at all.

Does it matter whether a corporation or a government is the dictatorship you must answer to? If the two are in bed together, it makes no difference. One may be able to excuse the dictatorial workplace when the individual's life resumes at the end of the day, but increasingly, the policies of the corporate world are backed by government policy, and no part of the individual's life or body is truly their own.

Taking back control of one's own life is easier said than done, and in the case of those not blessed with independent wealth, there will be a high price to pay, accompanied by resulting discomfort. But one's own time and thoughts are the only wealth that the individual, once stripped of societal ornamentation can truly possess. Money is a variable, and exactly how much on can acquire is not subject to an arbitrary limit in all cases. Life however is a finite, concrete and absolutely limited quantity, although the exact limit can't be determined until the moment of death. Who demands the hours of your life, and the use of your mind from you on the basis of societal obligation murders you by degrees.

Something Better is Possible

The following is an example what brings me back to Ayn Rand again and again. Her vision is clear and her words, also from the "Benevolent Universe Premise" are direct:

Ayn Rand: One feels "This injustice (or falsehood or terror or frustration or pain or pain or agony) is the exception in life, not the rule" On feels certain the somewhere on earth-even if not anywhere in one's surroundings or within one's reach-a proper human way of life is possible to human beings, and justice matters." (9)

We can only hope at this time that Ayn Rand was right about this too.

NOTES/REFERENCES

1. Bill O'Reilly, Leonard Peikoff, FOX Network

Friday, October 12^th 2001, 6:37 PM

2. Ayn Rand- Capitalism the Unknown Ideal p. 38 "The Roots of War"

3 Ayn Rand-"Conservatism: an Obituary" p.194

4 ibid; p. 199

5 Ayn Rand-The Ayn Rand Letter "The Moratorium on Brains" pp. 1, 3, 2

6Ayn Rand -Faith and Force the Destroyers of the Modern World

7. Leonard Peikoff "The Ominous Parallels" p.19

8.-Ayn Rand "The Inexplicable Personal Alchemy" The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution p.118

9. ibid

All Ayn Rand (and Leonard Peikoff) quotes were taken from The Ayn Rand Lexicon, 1988, Meridian, Penguin Group NY NY,

Quoted in the Lexicon:

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal 1966 (Conservatism: An Obituary)

Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World

The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution(1971)

The Ominous Parallels- Leonard Peikoff (1982)