Did Ayn Rand sincerely believe that Objectivism would be good for mankind?

[Little_Nemo]

Ayn Rand sincerely believed that Objectivism was good for Ayn Rand. And in accord with her beliefs she didn’t give a damn if it was any good for mankind.

[BrainGlutton]

[Quotes about Rand:]
(Ayn Rand - Wikiquote)

Alphabetized by author

For she [Rand] further holds that objective reality is readily accessible by solitary individuals using words and logic alone. This proposition – rejected by nearly all modern scientists – is essentially a restatement of the Platonic worldview, a fundamental axiom of which is that the universe is made up of ideal essences or ‘values’ (the term Rand preferred) that can be discovered, dispassionately examined, and objectively analyzed by those few bold minds who are able to finally free themselves from hoary assumptions of the past. Once freed, any truly rational individual must, by simply applying verbal reasoning, independently reach the same set of fundamental conclusions about life, justice and the universe. (Naturally, any mind that fails to do so must, by definition, not yet be free.)

• David Brin, Liberty magazine, September 2000.

Rand has not often had a positive reception from the ethics community for a number of reasons. The major one is that she championed self‐interest loudly and forcefully. For an ethics community committed to the view that morality means restraining and sacrificing self interest this could mean only one thing: She must be urging the strong to do whatever they feel like to the weak. That view, given the long history of ethics, could simply be rejected out of hand. 
But such a rejection evaluates Rand’s advocacy of self‐interest from within a set of premises about economics and human nature that she rejects. She rejects the belief that ethics starts by taking conflicts of interest as fundamental. She rejects the view that ethics starts by reacting to scarce resources; she rejects the view that ethics starts by reacting to the nasty things some people want to do to each other; and she rejects the view that ethics starts by asking what to do about the poor and unable.

• Philosopher Stephen Hicks, “Ayn Rand and Contemporary Business Ethics,” in Journal of Accounting, Ethics & Public Policy, Volume 3, Number 1 (Winter 2003), pp. 1-26

[F]rom the initial outline Ayn Rand provided, a very rich and powerful philosophy emerges – e.g., it solves such problems as science versus free will and moral responsibility, knowledge versus the fact of fallibility. Merely because Rand’s ideas were not born in academe or developed in full detail by her, it cannot be concluded that they are unsound.

• Philosopher Tibor Machan, New York Times letter to the editor, August 3, 1986.

I have to say I found Ayn Rand’s philosophy laughable. It was “a white supremacist dreams of the master race,” burnt in an early-20th century form. Her ideas didn’t really appeal to me, but they seemed to be the kind of ideas that people would espouse, people who might secretly believe themselves to be part of the elite, and not part of the excluded majority.

• Writer Alan Moore, in Comic Book Artist #9 (August 2000) “The Charlton Comics Story: 1945-1968” by Jon B. Cooke

Rand tended to believe that questions of fact could be determined by the manipulation of vague terms. This tendency is most clearly illustrated in her so-called “metaphysical” theory of reality, in which she tries to demonstrate the objectivity of reality and validate causality on the basis of cognitively empty tautologies such as “existence exists” and “A is A.”

• Grey Nyquist, Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature, iUniverse, 2001.

But all of Rand’s heroic capitalists triumph in industries that are now dead or bleeding. It’s easy to write potboilers that posit sharp moral distinctions between the makers and takers when you live in a big-shouldered factory world where people still make things.

• Laura Penny, More Money Than Brains, (2010) p. 15

Ayn Rand is one of the most widely read philosophers of the twentieth century. … Academics have often dismissed her ideas as “pop” philosophy. As a best-selling novelist, a controversial, flamboyant polemicist, and a woman in a male dominated profession, Rand remained outside the academy throughout her life. Her works had inspired passionate responses that echo the uncompromising nature of her moral vision. In many cases, her audiences were either cultish in their devotion or savage in their attacks. The left was infuriated by her anticommunist, procapitalist politics, whereas the right was disgusted by her atheism and civil libertarianism.

• Chris Matthew Sciabarra, in Ayn Rand : The Russian Radical (1995) Introduction, p. 1

[M]ore conservative theorists are not discussed… Ayn Rand [doesn’t] warrant a mention.

• Christine Stolba, on Rand’s complete absence from a selection of widely-used American women’s studies textbooks despite her prominence, in “Lying in a Room of One’s Own: How Women’s Studies Textbooks Miseducate Students” (2002)

[bldysabba]

@Trinopus

They bought and paid for goods and services with gold coins. They did have wealth. They cared for it very much.

They kept their location secret. This is far, far from “happy to take in anybody who is willing to earn.”

The story at that point had degenerated into bad myth.

Another serious objection is that our society can easily run itself by the efforts of the “second string” of creative people. Take away the top fifty, and the next-most skilled and intelligent top seventy-five will run the economy very effectively indeed. The world is not upheld by a single Atlas, but by a myriad myriads of caryatides. You and me. We uphold the world. “We are John Galt.”

That `gold’ was brought in only by the banker guy as means of exchange and everyone else earned it, except for deposits made by the pirate. And if you insist that they cared for wealth, please tell me why you believe this. They cared for earning, but not wealth. Most of these folks left behind or destroyed multimillion dollar fortunes to live in this valley where they could find a society that was based on rules they accepted.

Also about the society not running on Atlases - I’m not sure. There’s no way these Atlases can get anything done just by themselves of course, but the value of leadership and individuals is often outsized. Steve Jobs is an example well known to Americans, but India has a slightly different individual that makes me think individuals are more important than they may seem - E. Sreedharan. The wiki is terrible, in a nutshell he used to be a government employee who somewhere along the way gained a reputation for getting work done on schedule, on budget even under India’s impossible government rules. He then went on to implement some large and complex projects, including the Delhi Metro. And you know in stories like this the individual(and perhaps a core team) has to be really important because practically nothing in the Indian government works like this otherwise.

[BrainGlutton]

@Little_Nemo

Ayn Rand sincerely believed that Objectivism was good for Ayn Rand.

Was it?

[miss_elizabeth]

I do think she thought her plan was the best for mankind. So, in that sense, she can be seen as innocent. I mean, I get where you’re coming from. But, even in her lifetime, there was plenty of evidence that her philosophy didn’t work in practice the way she’d imagined it. I guess I feel like her ignorance of the negative repercussions of her ideas was intentional; she actively avoided hearing anything bad and dismissed the people who disagreed with her without really hearing them out. And I do feel like she’s to blame for that. She wasn’t stupid; if she’d been truly interested in trying to help society she could have worked at her ideas and refined them, and perhaps come up with something better. She chose not to. I hold that against her.

That and she was pretty terrible to a lot of people. The way she treated her followers was just shitty. So I guess I think she was sincere in trying to help humanity, but also she was willfully ignorant of the evidence that she wasn’t doing so. I’m not sure that makes her a monster, but I don’t respect her.

[bldysabba]

@BrainGlutton

[Quotes about Rand:]
(Ayn Rand - Wikiquote)

The David Brin quote if about her epistemology, as it seems to be, is wrong, and based in either misunderstanding or dishonesty. He’s basically pigeonholing her as a “rationalist” and then regurgitating the definition of rationalist from there. The wiki belies it pretty thoroughly

According to Rand, attaining knowledge beyond what is given in perception requires both volition (or the exercise of free will) and adherence to a specific method of validation through observation, concept-formation, and the application of inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. For example, belief in dragons, however sincere, does not mean reality contains any dragons. A process of proof identifying the basis in reality of a claimed item of knowledge is necessary to establish its truth.[16]"

[Captain_Amazing]

It brought her a bunch of material success and prestige. I don’t know that it was great for her emotional state, though. And I don’t agree that Objectivism is outside the mainstream of philosophy. It’s derived from Nietzsche. The Objectivist man is a variant of the Nietzchian Over-man; the creator, who rejects conventional notions of morality, who seeks to be neither slave nor master, but a free man, beholden to no one, who’s able to see reality as it is.

If you want a good biography of Rand, check out Jennifer Burns’s “Goddess of the Market”, which is a look at her life and ideas. I’m told Anne Heller’s “Ayn Rand and the World She Made” is also a good biography, but I haven’t read it myself.

[bldysabba]

@BrotherCadfael

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: * The Lord of the Rings * and * Atlas Shrugged *. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”

Dressing up as funny doesn’t make random assertions any more true, only more memorable.

[BrainGlutton]

And from TVTropes:

Creator: Ayn Rand

The creator of Objectivism, whose philosophy is expressed in her fiction —especially The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. She also wrote the screenplay for the film of The Fountainhead, but wasn’t too happy with the final film (citing production design and other issues).

Born Alisa Rosenbaum in Russia. She left it after it had turned communist but before Stalin took over, and she was very much anti-communist. She took it much further than most people, though.

She was already coming up with Objectivism even when her early works, We the Living and Anthem, were written. But The Fountainhead was her first big success (due to word of mouth rather than advertising).

The success of The Fountainhead led to Atlas Shrugged, a novel indisputably capable of stopping doors and being used an effective lethal weapon, not that Rand would approve of that except perhaps in self-defence, and the Ayn Rand Society (which is still going).

Ayn Rand helped keep American libertarianism in general alive after the 1930s. Objectivism, while not the same thing as libertarianism (Objectivism is a full philosophy whereas libertarianism is a specific political ideology), is in some ways one of its parent ideologies, though more extreme in some regards — it is against not just communism and socialism, but also altruism (Auguste Comte’s definition of ‘altruism’, not the commonly-used definition) in general, which it feels keeps people dependent on others and unable to take care of themselves. As for the Libertarian Party itself, though, Rand denounced them as the “hippies of the right”.

Ayn Rand and Objectivism are both very polarizing subjects on the internet and elsewhere. Internet Backdraft often results from mentions of her work, largely because of the emphasis of the philosophy.

Ironically, among academic philosophers her work is one of the few subjects that isn’t particularly polarizing - nearly everyone hates it, if they don’t just ignore it. When the first academic book about Rand’s philosophy appeared in 1971, its author declared writing about Rand “a treacherous undertaking” that could lead to “guilt by association” merely for taking her seriously. Even philosophers like Robert Nozick who agree with most of her conclusions think her arguments for them are incoherent. This may be starting to change, with her books beginning to show up on reading lists for some political philosophy courses, as well as the establishment of the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. Think-tanks founded by Objectivism’s proponents, such as the Ayn Rand Institute and The Atlas Society, also promote Objectivist ideas. Penn State Press’s Rereading the Canon series, which was a collection of volumes of Feminist interpretations of specific philosophers, included a book on Ayn Rand. Rand-influenced academics like Tara Smith, David Kelley and Chris Matthew Sciabarra have published many works expanding upon Objectivism and detailing the implications of her ideas.

Unfortunately, Rand as a figure generates intense feelings of either seething hatred or (some say) cultish adoration and as such debates over the content of her ideas have a general tendency to spill over into debates about her as a person. For instance, several Rand critics question her ability to stay true to her own principles. She may have also received government aid after getting lung cancer, but Rand herself argued that if someone had paid taxes to fund these systems then they “have a clear right to any refund of their own money” (see here). These aspects of Rand’s character have been criticized by several Objectivists. While Rand’s personal eccentricities do not necessarily prove anything about the validity or invalidity of her philosophy, Rand did once point to herself as proof that her philosophy could work in the real world.

Some Americans are finding her writings especially evocative in the current economic climate (circa early 2009). Her sales are on the rise and commentators have noted it. Mind you, the sales of Karl Marx’s works are also on the rise. There could be other reasons as well. Her pen name is allegedly a contraction of her birth name: “Рзнбаум” (Cyrillic for Rznbaum) resembles “Randayn” when handwritten. Her name is pronounced like the German ‘Ein’ - rhymes with “mine”, though some online detractors use the mnemonic “Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ayn Rand”. Annoying objectivists by consistently, repeatedly pronouncing it as if it were merely a creative spelling of “Ann” can also be fun.

Unfortunately, given the polarizing nature of Rand’s work, this page can be caught up in an Edit War from time to time. To make it clear, this page is NOT about what your evaluation of Rand, her works or her ideas is. Any contributions should observe the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement.

Though her works have their own pages, it might be worthwhile to note here Ayn Rand’s relationship to the Strawman Political trope. Indeed, her villains are very much Strawman Politicals. For example, in Atlas Shrugged, they simply want to feed off of the talent of the gifted. Ayn Rand’s personal diaries note that each protagonist is planned to show either why they will succeed because of their adherence to Objectivist principles, or why they will fail because of their non-adherence, or doubt, or acceptance of anti-Objectivist principles such as Comtean altruism. These notes also compare each character to the Ultimate Objectivist Messiah, John Galt. So in essence, even her protagonists can be considered Strawman Politicals.

The above is especially true for Rand’s later writing. Comparison of her three novels could indicate a clear deterioration in the quality of characters representing the opposite ideology. Her first novel, “We, The Living” is very harsh on Communism as an ideology and on the Soviet regime as a regime, but it has a major character, Andrei Taganov, who is a Communist, senior member of the Party, and who is very much a Good Guy: heroic, idealistic, generous, in fact a Knight In Shining Armour and his lady’s bodyguard - he is deeply in love with the book’s female protagonist who returns his love quite a bit and is always torn between him and the other man in her life who is anti-Communist (and Rand admitted in the forward to the book that this character to a considerable degree represents herself!). In her second book, The Fountainhead, the character who represents Roosevelt’s New Deal, Ellsworth Toohey, is an unquestioned Bad Guy, a Man You Love to Hate - but he is a brilliant Chess Master, always spinning webs of very clever and complicated Conspiracy, in short a Worthy Opponent with whom the female protagonist has (at least in the early parts of the book) a complicated Love Hate Relationship. There is also Peter Keating, who’s basically a sympathetic Anti-Villain with an equally complicated relationship with the main hero, Howard Roark. In “Atlas Shrugged” - which Rand herself considered her best, but not everybody agrees - there is nothing of the kind. All characters representing the opposing political and social point of view are miserable, disgusting nothings, who never do or say a single thing deserving of the reader’s appreciation.

[bldysabba]

@Trinopus

Another serious objection is that our society can easily run itself by the efforts of the “second string” of creative people. Take away the top fifty, and the next-most skilled and intelligent top seventy-five will run the economy very effectively indeed. The world is not upheld by a single Atlas, but by a myriad myriads of caryatides. You and me. We uphold the world. “We are John Galt.”

Another point I remembered here - the “second string” you mention has been dropping out of sight too, giving up regular jobs or not doing the jobs they do well. If I remember correctly, the railroad was losing all employees who showed any competence. Also, if competence stops being appreciated in the society at large, it’s quite easy to imagine that production will break down, and so can society, especially in addition to other stresses - a little bit like the USSR, which of course was her personal bugbear(and with good reason I suppose).

[BrainGlutton]

BTW, Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! features Atlanta Hope, a caricature of Ayn Rand whose philosophy is hyper-statist, authoritarian, and “Heracleitan.” Apparently she is what Rand would have been if she had been inspired by Heraclitus instead of Aristotle. She also has a very hard time achieving orgasm.

[bldysabba]

@BrainGlutton

BTW, Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! features Atlanta Hope, a caricature of Ayn Rand whose philosophy is hyper-statist, authoritarian, and “Heracleitan.” Apparently she is what Rand would have been if she had been inspired by Heraclitus instead of Aristotle. She also has a very hard time achieving orgasm.

I don’t actually see too much inspiration from Aristotle in Ayn Rand to be honest. Most of her fiction, which is the bulk of her work, seems to be focused on providing a rebuttal to collectivism.

[Trinopus]

@bldysabba

That `gold’ was brought in only by the banker guy as means of exchange and everyone else earned it, except for deposits made by the pirate. And if you insist that they cared for wealth, please tell me why you believe this. They cared for earning, but not wealth. Most of these folks left behind or destroyed multimillion dollar fortunes to live in this valley where they could find a society that was based on rules they accepted.

Perhaps, but I don’t find it convincing. The community is pretty small. Who washes the dishes? Who empties the latrine? Even with electricity, there isn’t enough labor. It’s a fantasy utopia. What happens when someone runs out of money? They don’t eat? Again, do they expel people…or kill them?

Also about the society not running on Atlases - I’m not sure. There’s no way these Atlases can get anything done just by themselves of course, but the value of leadership and individuals is often outsized. . . .

I guess I’m just grumpy because of university presidents getting paid more than the President of the U.S., or bank presidents getting multi-million dollar bonuses (in years that their banks have lost money!) I keep thinking, someone else could do the same job, damn near as well…for one per cent of the pay! If all those guys disappeared tomorrow, I don’t think the economy would collapse. In fact, I think it would be a good thing: you’d get a whole new generation moving up. Lots of people would get promoted.

(And…hey…was the oil millionaire the sole owner of the oil wells he set on fire? Doesn’t he have a lot of investors he just screwed?)

As I see it, yeah, it’s all a metaphor, but it pushes believability too far.

As a lesser kvetch, Rand clearly had no idea how American government worked. The referred to “The Legislature” but never to the President. There were lots of other little things that indicated her ignorance of our system.

In her favor, I read the book and enjoyed it. I even read Galt’s 100 page speech. I saw through the numerous flaws and faults in his reasoning, but I did read it without being bored.

[BrainGlutton]

@Trinopus

As a lesser kvetch, Rand clearly had no idea how American government worked. The referred to “The Legislature” but never to the President. There were lots of other little things that indicated her ignorance of our system.

How is that possible? She lived here most of her life. I’m sure lots of Americans don’t know how it all works, but most people are not political/social philosophers.

[Trinopus]

@BrainGlutton

How is that possible? She lived here most of her life. I’m sure lots of Americans don’t know how it all works, but most people are not political/social philosophers.

She wasn’t paying attention, or didn’t care.

Atlas Shrugged is weird in its timeline, too. There was “a war,” but it wasn’t exactly WWII. No Hitler, no atom bomb. (The weird sonic cannon is the biggest WMD in her world.) No American “President.” The Legislature can appoint an “Economics Czar” who takes over total control of the economy. No references to the Constitution.

Is it an “alternate history?” Maybe FDR was never elected? It’s fun to try to see where the timeline diverges from our own history.

[BrainGlutton]

@BrainGlutton

BTW, Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! features Atlanta Hope, a caricature of Ayn Rand whose philosophy is hyper-statist, authoritarian, and “Heracleitan.” Apparently she is what Rand would have been if she had been inspired by Heraclitus instead of Aristotle. She also has a very hard time achieving orgasm.

Oh, and she’s the author of Telemachus Sneezed and her heroine-avatar gets raped countless and countless times.
Rand will always be remembered for that ambiguous-rape-by-engraved-invitation scene in The Fountainhead, you know. It’s a “. . . but you fuck one goat!” kinda thing.

[BrainGlutton]

@bldysabba

I don’t actually see too much inspiration from Aristotle in Ayn Rand to be honest. Most of her fiction, which is the bulk of her work, seems to be focused on providing a rebuttal to collectivism.

Very broadly defined, too. Howard Roark spends his entire career struggling against prevailing architectural fashions. Even fashion is collectivism.

[msmith537]

@Nzinga_Seated

So do you think she is actually greedy and wicked, or that she is honestly trying to practice what she calls ‘rational selfishness’ which she believes will result in a better life for everyone, including the less fortunate?

I don’t know. Who is John Galt?

Rand did not believe in some monolithic “everyone”. There isn’t a “society” in the sense that decisions should be made for the “greater good”. Merely a collection of lots of people, each with their own needs, desires and agendas. But she believed that when people are free to exchange their labor and ideas to pursue their needs and wants, ultimately society as a whole benefited (similar to Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”.

@Nzinga_Seated

I personally believe that some things have to be ‘forced’. I believe that roads and schools and things like that should be made available to everyone, with the government stepping in to make it so.

She was very much against the idea of forced confiscation of property. It’s not so much that she “hated the poor”. She was against the idea that poor people were entitled to being provided someone else’s wealth simply because they were poor. A common theme in Atlas Shrugged is a corrupt government confiscating property and businesses under the guise of “the common good”, and then redistributing it, not based on need, but on political gain.

@Nzinga_Seated

I have tried a thread about Rand before. I am hoping this one will answer my questions and allow me the chance to discuss a topic that interests me, because like I said, whenever I try to have these discussions, especially in real life, I find that people won’t even take me seriously. I do not exaggerate when I say I have been called an idiot for even tussling with the subject as much as I have. That hasn’t been exactly fertile soil for discussion!

Trinopus - Atlas Shrugged takes place in an alternate history. Much of the rest of the world consists of “People’s States of Wherever”, technologies like TV and the airplane are less significant, and the structure of the US Government is different. Since Ayn Rand could…you know..read, I’m pretty sure she knew what the actual title of the POTUS was.

@Trinopus

Perhaps, but I don’t find it convincing. The community is pretty small. Who washes the dishes? Who empties the latrine? Even with electricity, there isn’t enough labor. It’s a fantasy utopia. What happens when someone runs out of money? They don’t eat? Again, do they expel people…or kill them?

Well, if you run out of money, there’s always washing dishes or cleaning latrines.

Based on her philosophy, they would either wash their own dishes and empty their own latrines, or pay someone else a fair wage to do it. You wouldn’t be killed. You would simply be evicted from the owner’s property and you’d have to figure your own shit out if you ran out of money.

@Trinopus

I guess I’m just grumpy because of university presidents getting paid more than the President of the U.S., or bank presidents getting multi-million dollar bonuses (in years that their banks have lost money!) I keep thinking, someone else could do the same job, damn near as well…for one per cent of the pay! If all those guys disappeared tomorrow, I don’t think the economy would collapse. In fact, I think it would be a good thing: you’d get a whole new generation moving up. Lots of people would get promoted.

First of all, the POTUS makes $400,000 a year, plus a $50k expense account, plus he lives in a big mansion with all his needs taken care of. Plus 4-8 years of President of the United States doesn’t look bad on a resume. I don’t think uni profs do that well.

But if they do, who cares?

Rand would be against your sense of entitlement that “washing dishes and cleaning latrines” is somehow less meaningful work and certain people deserve more or less money based on your arbitrary whim. But she would also be very much against TARP or any sort of financial bailouts or subsidies by the government. Then again, she would also have us on the gold standard so there would probably less of these exotic derivatives.

If you think running an investment bank is that easy, I would invite you to go apply for a job at Goldman Sachs or Bank of America and see if you can handle being an analyst.

According to Rand’s philosophies, it’s really none of your concern how the owners of a company spend their money or run their business. If a business owner wants to pull a Francisco d’Anconia and run his company into the ground out of spite, well, that should just make room for some aspiring entrepreneur to fill in the gap.

But much like our world, the world of Atlas Shrugged had few people who could actually “do stuff”. Most people just sort of half-assed their way through the cushiest jobs they could find. Bitching about getting paid more or finding certain tasks “beneath them”. So when the business leaders disappeared, they were left with inept middle mangers and bureaucrats who could only politic and push paper and fuckups. The people who suffered that Rand sympathized with were the regular folks who could and wanted to work, but simply didn’t have the wherewithal to start their own businesses. Some people are only cut out to sweep a factory floor. But they are dependent on the Hank Reardens of the world to start up a factory.

[Nzinga_Seated]

@msmith537

…Rand did not believe in some monolithic “everyone”. There isn’t a “society” in the sense that decisions should be made for the “greater good”. Merely a collection of lots of people, each with their own needs, desires and agendas. But she believed that when people are free to exchange their labor and ideas to pursue their needs and wants, ultimately society as a whole benefited (similar to Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”…

Yes, I understand that completely.

She was very much against the idea of forced confiscation of property.

Yes, I understand this clearly. I mentioned it because I wanted to be clear that I’m not a Randist. Or an Objectivist.

[newcomer]

@BrainGlutton

ISTM that both Ayn Rand and Karl Marx should be required reading in middle school. Same reason we require them to get measles shots – immunization.

Talking philosophy and referencing Karl Marx and Ayn Rand in the same sentence is like talking about desserts and referencing crème brulee and a lollypop. But, then, I might be a tiny bit biased cause we studied Marx in high school – in fact, I had it for all 4 of HS years and it was called “Marxism”.