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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Ayn Rand: WTF?

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21:02 / 23.11.04

Ayn Rand in, well, not a nutshell, but a relatively short message board post...
Economics: Capitalism.
Ethics: Egoism.
Metaphysics: Naturalistic.
Normative Political Ideals: Minimal government and state intervention, combined with capitalist economics and the use of rationality to further society.

Who objects to her? Well, all the usual suspects - socialists, (extrinsic) moral realists, metaphysicians, people who love big governments.

Most interesting though is the criticisms made by Michael Shermer in Why People Believe Weird Things. Shermer is a libertarian and (fairly obviously) a naturalist (he edits Skeptic). But in WPBWT, he has a chapter on how Objectivism and Ayn Rand's followers are basically following Rand's in a personality cult manner.

Now, I agree with pretty much everything she says (maybe with slight reservations on the point of ethical egoism), but I've never had any reason to read her books. If I want to read about capitalism, I can read Milton Friedman. If I want to read about metaphysical naturalism, I can read various philosophers on the job.

I ought to read Ayn Rand, but I'm not sure I can be bothered.

10:26 / 26.11.04

In Rand vs. The Frankfurt School, she's really not as forgivably misguided as them.

If people lived under Stalin and wrote tracts about how great capitalism was, I'd be way more inclined to like their ideas then some livnig under capitalism writting about how great it was. Ignorance about a regime you don't live under, as part of a criticuisnm of a regime you do is understandable,* while not seeing the giant gaping holes in capitalism when you are living in the giant gaping holes isn't even ignorance. It's callous, nasty and unforgivable.

*I accept I may be ass-talking about the situation of the Frankfurt School, knowing as I do little about the biographies. Someone call me out if I'm wrong.

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:16 / 26.11.04

All the usual suspects presumably includes "people who don't think rape = GREAT!" too, right?

16:05 / 26.11.04

"Normative Political Ideals: Minimal government and state intervention, combined with capitalist economics and the use of rationality to further society."

Can you give a concrete example of using rationality to further society? It sounds vaguely nice but I'm at a loss as to what exactly it has to do with believing there's a conspiracy against individuals of genius, which sounds rather more like a delusion about being persecuted than anything else.

16:07 / 26.11.04

You know, I think Condoleeza Rice would do a brilliant job of portraying Ayn Rand in a story of her life.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:27 / 28.07.05

"[The Native Americans] didn't have any rights to the land and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using.... What was it they were fighting for, if they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their "right" to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or maybe a few caves above it. Any white person who brought the element of civilization had the right to take over this continent."

(Ayn Rand, in a Q&A session following her Address To The Graduating Class Of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, March 6, 1974)

01:25 / 29.07.05

Oh, Ayn, Ayn, Ayn...Such a wise an culturally informed take on Native American culture, especially their agricultural practices. Here's an alternative understanding of Native American (esp. northeastern US) farming techniques

So it's unsurprising that she's beloved by guys (by which I mean white men and the people who want to be like white men) like corporate lawyer Fritz Attaway (a man who helps the 'free market' along by helping the big music/movie industries crack down on 12 yo downloaders), whose "summer reading" list was featured on NPR last sunday morning. Fritz astutely points out:

"At one point I thought that Buddhism was a religion I could identify with, but after reading that book [The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying], I've decided that Buddhism is very fatalistic, and I'm not. I believe I have much greater control of my destiny than at least the Buddhist teachings I've read. So I decided I'm probably not going to embrace Buddhism."

Amazingly, in addition to this vast knowledge of Buddhism (!) Fritz has read "almost all" of Ayn Rand's works, but some of them are a little long...he couldn't make it through Atlas Shrugged...But you know, she's just so really really smart....

(Listen to that guy on the link, and tell me there's no right wing pressure on public radio in the US...)

Just FYI, I also thought it might make sense to link to this old headshop thread on A.R.

imaginary friend on the phone

23:35 / 12.08.05

I can't speak for her novels or go very deeply into her personal philosophy, so I don’t know if this supports or contradicts it, but Rand, along with other narcs such as Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan, was one of the "friendly witnesses” who, in 1947, provided information to the house committee on Un-American Activities, testifying against leftists and suspected communists and feeding the paranoia driven red-scare fire of post war America.

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