Most people get Ayn Rand's philosophy wrong

Great Debates
1

Disclaimer: I am not a strong proponent of any specific ideology. IMHO people tend to glom onto them as if they were gospel without using their brains to figure out when or if they work. Nor do I consider myself an expert on Ayn Rand or her Objectivism philosophy. However I have read Atlas Shrugged (but not The Fountainhead).

I also make no judgement of the literary quality of her writing or derivative works as they relate to her ideas. Atlas Shrugged is a bit of a ham-fisted slog and they made a trilogy of films that are neigh-unwatchable. I found them on Amazon Prime and now wish I could neigh-unwatch them.

However the Bioshock videogame is specifically influenced by Ayn Rand and Scorsese’s The Aviator and the MCU’s Iron Man feel very much like they are based off Ayn Rand’s philosophy.

Also Rand herself may have been kind of a bitch. But jerks can have good ideas too.

For reference, I had Google put together an outline of Rand’s philosophy:

Core tenets

  • Objective Reality: Reality exists independently of anyone’s mind, thoughts, or feelings.
  • Reason: The human ability to reason is the only tool for gaining knowledge and for navigating reality.
  • Rational Self-Interest: The moral purpose of one’s life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness and well-being.
  • Laissez-faire capitalism: The only social system that respects individual rights is one with zero government interference, where individuals trade and interact voluntarily.

Key virtues and principles

  • Individualism: Emphasis on the individual as an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others.
  • Productiveness: Productive achievement is considered the noblest human activity.
  • Independence: The virtue of thinking for oneself rather than accepting ideas without scrutiny.
  • Integrity: Adhering to one’s rational principles and values.
  • Rational Egoism: The view that rational self-interest is the standard of morality, and altruism (self-sacrifice) is not a moral ideal.

Political and social framework

  • Individual Rights: Protecting the sovereignty of the individual is paramount.
  • Limited Government: The government’s only legitimate function is to protect citizens from coercion and violence, enforce contracts, and defend the nation from foreign invaders.
  • Voluntary Trade: All human interaction should be based on voluntary exchange and mutual benefit.

So what do I think people get wrong?

First of all, her name Ayn is pronounced rhymes with MINE, not like Ann. I just learned that.

More importantly

Rich conservatives tend to think of Ayn Rand and say “Being rich justifies that I can act like a giant selfish asshole and can do whatever I want!”

Liberals tend to think of Ayn Rand and say “Being rich just lets rich people justify being giant selfish assholes who do whatever they want!”

That is an oversimplification IMHO.
If you are wealthy in Rand’s world, it’s because you either built a successful business or inherited wealth from someone who did. And you built that business in a free market economy without any government subsidies, tax breaks, or favoritism. That’s what wealthy people seem to get wrong about Rand. Being rich should not afford them any special deals or breaks beyond what they already get by virtue of having a shit-ton of money.

The big one that seems to rile up the Left is the lack of charity or social services or generosity in general. Her philosophy doesn’t preclude these things. It just doesn’t mandate them. The government can’t force Bill Gates to give away billions, but he is certainly free to pursue his philanthropy works under his own terms.

I suppose the real debate regarding Ayn is how this works in practice. What prevents once productive wealthy people from turning into looters and moochers who use their wealth and power to stifle competition? Does the government have a role in creating common infrastructure? Stuff like that.

I’m also curious how this philosophy might apply in a world where AI and automation renders most, if not all work obsolete.

2

Like all variants of libertarianism, it implicitly assumes nobody is a jerk. In the presence of jerks, it turns out the jerkiest most violent people prosper and everyone else lives in a hell of the jerks’ making.

So no, just as Marxist flavor communism won’t work with real human nature, neither will Rand’s philosophy past the opening statement about the nature of reality.

3

This is the biggest thing I think she’s wrong about – there is no such society. Maybe she wishes there could be, but even at the most “laissez-faire” period in America (or wherever), there were tons of policies, institutions, practices, etc., that favored the rich (in general), and plenty of rich people specifically (like white rich people, connected rich people, etc.).

And I hold that building such a society would be impossible, since they’d invariably be under the control of those highly-flawed people at the top (i.e. scumbags like Elon Musk).

4

I read both, as an early twenties year old kid. Was not swayed… and I am pretty far anarchist.

Seems like immature fan-wank for the gullible and too easily influenced.

(Also, she’s just not that good an author)

5

I would say “Like all variants of utopianism” (left wing, right wing, chicken wing, you name it).

6

Historically the argument is government should provide things that contribute to overall economic activity but that are hard enough to charge for that the market will under-deliver it. Not because demand doesn’t exist, but because there’s no practical way to monetize it.

Roads are the classic example. It was possible to charge for telegraph or phone service when that stuff was invented, so the government didn’t have to build that out; private industry did. Although the government did massively assist by creating helpful right of way laws that forced landowners to permit first pole lines and later buried infrastructure to be put on/under their land without compensation. But with roads, except for limited access toll roads, there was no practical way to charge for them. So if we were to have a dense rich road network, it needed government action funded by taxes to do it.

Nowadays it’s not inconceivable to have an all private road network paid for by fees charged to the users via a phone app that tracks their usage. But it would sure be a big change.

7

The only bit of this that isn’t widely known (at least I didn’t know) is the objective reality bit, I knew she was generally atheist leaning but didn’t realize this was a core tenet. Other than that I would listed those other two if you’d asked me what her core tenets were. Not that it changes very much I don’t think anyone who argues for or against Rand is arguing about objective reality.

8

The problem is, “rational” (or “enlightened’‘ in one TV interview I saw) is made to do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to self-interest: who decides, and by what right, what self-interested action is objectively “rational” or “enlightened”, and who applies that to everyday human interactions?

9

Except it does. Why would you ever be charitable and do anything for anyone else, that will not benefit you in anyway, if your only motivation is “rational self interest”?

10

That is the fundamental flaw in her philosophy. This doesn’t exist. Even if the rich dude is a genuine “rags to riches” story who made it from being very poor to very rich with no inherited wealth (which is rare), they did receive government “subsidies” in some form. Roads, electricity, water, not being immediately robbed and murdered (by someone who’s rational self interest, without the nanny state to stop them, would be served by it)

I don’t think any of the criticism of Rand is based on misunderstanding her philosophy. What you describe is pretty much how her philosophy has always been debated.

11

As above. Ayn Rand herself didn’t exactly live her own philosophy as well or consistently as she thought or claimed she did. And whenever called out on it, often turned it around and attacked whoever dared question her.

Kind of exactly like the sorts of people the OP say get it wrong, some of whom actually personally knew her and were direct acolytes. Actually, that seems to be the common thread, including the OP. Every individual who sees value in Ayn Rand’s “philosophy” almost invariably seems to have their own interpretation of it that doesn’t always square with Rand’s or how Rand herself interpreted it (again, not consistently) but in ways that favor their own unexamined biases and assumptions.

12

I question your premise, at least as regards her detractors, because I think you will find that we are very much aware of this particular tenet of her philosophy and it is the one we almost uniformly disagree with. We might not be fully informed about the rest of her philosophy, but we don’t need to be to have a good reason for dismissing it. We are right about the one thing that we know for certain we don’t like about her philosophy.

Moreover, to the extent I personally have been familiar with her broader theory of objectivism for some years now (links to external blog post), I also find her philosophy self-contradictory. She asserts the preeminence of arriving at conclusions through a rational and objective understanding of our world and how it works, but then goes on to assume, as axiomatic, that the best kind of economic system is one that has in fact never been tested in the real world: laissez-fair capitalism. So what’s her objective, rational basis for that? Where are her empirical observations?

13

They usually are, they just don’t realize it. People don’t want to realize how cold and uncaring objective reality is. Words like “fair” and “deserve” are generally used to try to mentally cushion people from thinking about that reality. But wishing (and praying) don’t make it so, not even a little bit. Intellectual rigor in this area is very hard to come by.

14

Rand did write about charity, basically saying there was nothing at all wrong with having goodwill towards your fellow man and giving to a charity that aligns with your values. i.e. You get the benefit of the warm and fuzzies by acting within your own value system. Her big thing here is that nobody has a claim on anything you produce simply because they have a need. But if you want to help of your own free will, that’s just fine, so long as you’re not destroying yourself in the process. I’m not an Objectivist myself, but this does make some sense to me.

15

As my father (on whom be peace) put it, “no amount of staring ever turned a deuce into an ace.”

16

Really? I think 90% of the people I hear saying her name pronounce it correctly. Shrug.

17

I found this quote (the listed source is amusing):

My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.

Playboy, March 1964

On the other hand, Rand’s philosophy is that the proper goal for everyone is to maximize their achievements and well-being, strongly suggesting that charitable works are the province of fools (or if you prefer, traitors to themselves) who abandon her Prime Directive.

18

IMO the main misunderstanding when it comes to Randian philosophy is the idea the American right wing actually believed in it. All the years of prattling on about liberty and freedom and protecting from government oppression. The rise of Trump and the almost complete acquiescence of that side of the political spectrum to Maga has shown it to be utter bullshit, they never believed a word of it.

19

They did however really like the selfish-is-the -highest-ideal part.

20

Libertarianism: The philosophy that contends that a paradise of individual freedom could exist if only every person in it thought exactly like them.