Ayn Rand is back in the news now that Rand acolyte Paul Ryan has been chosen as Mitt Romney's running mate. I found this link to an Ayn Rand interview on the Tonight Show from 1967. Hearing her speak is entertaining because she sounds exactly the way you would expect a Soviet spy to sound.
The usual slam on Ayn Rand is that her Objectivist philosophy is a selfish adolescent power fantasy. And there's good reason for that. The Russian Revolution took place when Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum (Rand's birth name) was 12 years old. It completely shattered her world and scarred her for life. Objectivism was literally born in the mind of an teen-aged girl whose father's pharmacy was confiscated when the Bolsheviks came to power.
Her family were non-practicing Jews. She decided in high school that she was an atheist, no doubt under the influence of the Soviet school system. Rand went to Petrograd State University and was purged with other bourgeois students, but managed to get a degree due to the intervention of visiting foreign scientists. She went to the United States in 1925 and eventually became a Hollywood screenwriter.
Rand believed that reason is the primary human attribute. She rejected absolutely any form of religion, and believed the very concept of altruism was incompatible with human life and happiness.
Ironically, this flies in the face of reason. Altruism is essential for human and animal communities to survive and grow, and even for the evolution of life itself. Since Rand's death there's been a great deal of research into altruistic behavior in other species, which exists even in bacterial colonies. There may even be an altruism gene. Without altruism, the only nations that could field an army and wage wars would be pirate states that conquered other countries for profit, and doled out the spoils of war to soldiers. Otherwise, why risk your life to defend your country? Let the addle-brained fools who believe in God and an afterlife get themselves killed on the field of battle. Better to stay home and get rich selling weapons to the government.
And, of course, altruism is the very basis of Christianity ("Christ died for our sins").
At its core Rand's philosophy is a childish refutation of Soviet Russia's revolution. Objectivism is Bizarro communism: the exact opposite of communism in every respect except its embrace of pseudo-rationality and rejection of religion. Rand's philosophy epitomizes what communists portray capitalists as: supremely selfish, narcissistic, profit-seeking automata.
The problem with Objectivism is that it is inherently weak and cannot work for large groups. It glorifies selfishness instead of loyalty and steadfastness. If there is no altruism, there is no love, no trust. All alliances are fleeting conveniences, to be abandoned instantly when reason indicates selfish gain is to be had. Life for objectivists is one long Machiavellian pissing contest.
Objectivism is so preposterous that it must be the product of a Hollywood screenwriter. Which, in fact, it is.
The cynic in me says that Ayn Rand is just the L. Ron Hubbard of capitalism. But it makes me wonder: was Ayn Rand really a Soviet mole sent to Hollywood to sabotage the West with a form of capitalism that was so toxic and self-destructive that it would collapse under the sheer weight of its selfishness?
Может быть, товарищ. Может быть...
2 comments:
You're late to the party, pal.
Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand and the hypocrisy of the media
Ryan Shrugged
Liberal misconceptions about Ayn Rand or how Nikto repeats all of them and then some. One wonders if Nikto has ever read anything at all by her (and I wouldn't recommend her ponderous, all too Russian, novels, but her essays). If he has, and he's being honest, then his reading comprehension must suck almost as bad as Mark's.
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