How are the two different? Seems that they both espouse the same notions of minimal gov’t involvement in people’s lives as well advancing the cause of individualism while decrying group mentality and socialism. They both hold that neediness does not entitle one to a claim against those that are wealthy. Similarly, being wealthy does not require one to give one’s wealth away to the poor. Perhaps Rand was simply a Libertarian but I seem to have read a few posts in GD that lead me to believe there is a difference between the two.
Ayn Rand called Libertarians “hippies of the right”. See Ayn Rand. One of her disciples, Peter Schwartz, wrote a scathing paper called “Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty”. Her basic objection to libertarianism, aside from her ordinary neurosis, was its postulation of the Noncoercion Principle.
Libertarianism does not advocate “minimal government” per se, but rather the basic right of human consent, enshrined in its core principle. For a basic understanding of the libertarian philosophy, see Understanding the Libertarian Philosophy.
IIRC Rand also strenuously objected to what she perceived as the “universal tolerance” of libertarianism. Objectivism requires unyielding moral legalism, which Rand claimed that Libertarians, who accepted virtually anyone and any behavior, could not possibly accept.
MR
Objectivists believe that there are certain moral rules that can be proved by logic. Therefore, anyone who doesn’t follow those moral rules after they have been explained is either an idiot or a psychopath. Therefore, Objectivists believe that 99.999% of the world is composed of idiots and psychopaths who refuse to acknowledge Ayn Rand’s legacy.
Libertarians may believe lots of the same things objectivists do, but they come to those conclusions differently.
Although I liked a lot of what Ayn Rand had to say, I’m aware that I am a fallible human. So I don’t get worked up as to whether liking a particular piece of art marks someone as a moral degenerate or not. I don’t think we can derive the whole of ethical conduct from the law of non-contradiction.
I never saw any of that when I read Rand’s works. Perhaps I haven’t read enough, or haven’t read enough into it, but I’ve always viewed Objectivism as being just that: An objective view of life where certain things are bad (those that cause harm or restrict freedom), certain things are good (freedom, for one thing, and freedom from harm), and the concept that most people can choose their actions regardless of their past. I like it, because I’ve always smelled something fishy about the concept of altruism, where people end up feeling cocerced into doing things they don’t want to do for people they’d rather not be around. I agree with that much. I never picked up anything that would suggest Ayn was nuts (except certain posts on the SDMB), but I’m more interested in her philosophy, anyway. Has she been found incompetent by a professional, or is that just something that has been ‘spread around’?
BTW, Objectivism (what I know of it, at least) is very compatible with Liberatarianism because of its non-coercion basis.
Here’s an interesting link I found by poking around the site Lib gave us: http://www.libertarian.org/theory.html#rand
It makes this statement:
Which makes for a pretty strong claim for a philosophical consistency between the two worldviews.
Ayn Rand didn’t just dislike Libertarians - she HATED them. She also hated conservatives, and called “The National Review” ‘The Most Dangerous Magazine in the U.S.’.
To me, this is more an indictment of her twisted psychology than of her philosophy. I think her hatred of other right-wing philosphies had more to do with jealousy than anything else. By God, SHE was the arbiter of all correct behaviour in the capitalist world, and anyone else who tried to take an independant view was to be reviled, even more so than the statists who opposed her.
Rand’s primary failing was that she tried to turn a political philosophy into the Grand Unified Theory of human behaviour. She managed to rationalize every one of her personal tastes and codify them into ‘correct’ behaviour. Thus, she liked Mickey Spillane, and therefore Mickey Spillane’s books were all about a ‘triumph of the human spirit’. She criticized pop music heavily for its supposed waste and frivolity, while she personally liked to dance around her house listening to her ‘tiddlywink music’. To her death, she was incapable of seeing her own hypocrisy.
Her tendency to see every single human endeavour on a black/white morality scale screwed up hundreds of thousands of followers. I have no problem with the notion of an absolute morality when it comes to freedom, the role of the state, etc. But when you try to extend your philosophy to demonize people who like playing QUAKE vs the ‘good’ people who play UNREAL (or vice versa), then you’ve gone way, way too far.
“Totalitarianism is philosophy given political power”.
-me
Part of the problem with reading Rand is the disparity between her earlier works of fiction and her later attempts at systematization of Objectivism. She never completed the latter task, so it doesn’t take a “professional” to say that Objectivism does not hold water as a system. She was never able to finish her Grand Unified Theory of Human Behavior.
What did happen is that she grew rather batty in her old age. Nathaniel Branden, one of her proteges, suggested that perhaps the amphetamines content in the diet pills she had been taking for decades contributed to her change in personality. At any rate, compare the articles written later in her life, devoid of substance and full of vitriol, with the philosophically robust material of her middle age. Objectivism is a system that might have been, given more time and real care. But Rand didn’t have much philosophical training, and had a nasty tendency to dismiss the works of writers and thinkers after having only read a page or two.
Much of the demonization that dhanson is talking about comes from her later essays and articles. While many of the basic political positions are consonant between Objectivists and Libertarians, the worldviews are quite entirely different.
MR
Great commentary, Maeglin!
Just to head off any possible misunderstanding, I would stress that their differences do not necessarily make them incompatible. I am a Libertarian Objectivist Christian (or Liberal Quaker), and I find that Objectivism as I interpret it personally, minus Rand’s later neurotic ramblings, is a quite satisfactory philosophy that is in perfect harmony with my other two world-views.
The metaphysic of objective reality makes sense since God is THE Objective Reality (making the physical universe a subjective amoral temporal context). The epistemology of reason makes sense since that is the epistemology that led me to God and His revelation epistemology. The ethic of self-interest resolves a paradox in Christianity for me, namely, that if I am to be selfless, why ought I to accept my own salvation? As it turns out, it is in my self-interest to accept it. And of course, the politics of capitalism fits nicely with libertarianism, and the idea of free-will, a sort of capitalist morality, in which I am a free moral agent.
Do you find that interesting?
Yeah, that’s pretty solid. 
I’ve never seen anything quite like it, actually. I am still looking for my own “philosophical orientation,” per se, so I confess more than a small degree of envy.
Regards,
MR
I don’t believe you can be an Objectivist of any shape or form and still be a Christian. Certainly Ayn Rand would have spittle flying at the notion of a ‘Christian Objectivist’.
The root belief system behind objectivism is that an objective reality exists, and that it is immutable (i.e. it is what it is, and not what we wish it to be - A is A). Extending from that is the notion that reason is our tool to determine the nature of the universe. Religion is anti-reason. It cannot be tested. It requires ‘faith’, or the upholding of a belief without any physical evidence to support it. That makes it anti-reason, and therefore anti-Objectivist.
If you read any of her work on Objectivism (INCLUDING the early stuff) you’ll see that she makes it quite clear at the outset that religion can play no part in it. She considered religion to be evil.
Oh, sure. I know that. But I found her unnecessary entity of atheism to be a blind-sided violation of Ockham’s Razor. Her fatal flaw, of course, was her failure to recognize the tautological nature of her own epistemology. Reason cannot prove any objective existence, but must merely postulate it. I’m sure she would hate me, but that’s not my problem.
Nice and terse, Libertarian.
Further Rand placed entirely too much validity in data received by means of the senses. She seemed entirely unwilling to accept the objectivity of non-sensory data, which obviously precludes mystical experience (which she detested, naturally). So she dismissed an entire realm of experience without adequately proving the primacy of her own, namely that A=A because we see/hear/touch/smell/taste it, etc.
MR
Yikes! I missed this:
The most famous example, no doubt, was Immanuel Kant. She held in utter contempt the very man who might well have done the most to validate her own epistemology! I have always wondered whether she saw Critique of Pure Reason and simply dismissed it (and its writer) by its title.
Things that make you go hmmm…
I consider myself a Liberatarian Objectivist Atheist, making me [sup]2[/sup]/[sub]3[/sub] in agreement with Liberatarian. 
I cannot, however, accept any faith as part of my philosophy because I value sensory experience as my mode of getting information. Reason is validated by experience (A=A because we’ve never seen a case where A<>A). Math can be verified by simple manipulation (get one bead, get another bead, you have two beads, like in nursery school). Religion, however, cannot be (show me a proof of a deity (where I’d come to the same conclusions) and I’ll show you one surprised Derleth).
BTW, how do Quakers relate to the Objectivist philosophy? If I know history, the Quakers were founded centuries before Rand.
You consider yourself a libertarian? Didn’t you once propose the death penalty for repeated drug use?
Liberatarian does not mean stupid. Besides, I never claimed to agree with all of it. I picked it because it suits me best out of all of them.