Ayn Rand has a problem with violence. I think that all anarcho-capitalist ideologies (of which Objectivism is certainly one) have the problem of violence.
To the extent that anarcho-capitalists defend violence, they do so for purposes of individual and collective self-defense. But that’s not what I’m talking about, here. I’m talking about aggression, particularly violence as an adjunct of theft. I’m talking about, quite literally, legalized banditry.
I’ve started the book Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns, which is a bio of Ayn Rand. The book focuses on her intellectual influence rather than her artistic influence because, as Burns notes, Rand’s artistic influence is non-existent. Mostly, the people who like her books don’t read for pleasure but as a political exercise.
Burns uses new papers largely unavailable to previous researchers to write the book, and she attempts neutrality. As a researcher who is looking to contextualize Rand’s work into Rand’s life, neutrality is desirable. But, in the end, I have trouble getting behind it.
Continue reading Starting Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right
I’ve been reading about early America, colonial days up to the American Revolution, mostly. Of course, before the English got around to exploring things, the Spanish were the most prolific North American explorers.
One of the central problems, I feel, with Ayn Rand’s work in general, and Atlas Shrugged in particular, is that she was a very black-and-white thinker.
To her, any “governmental coercion” equals the Stalinist USSR.
Of course, I have hindsight she doesn’t have, but it is also my experience that Objectivist-inspired neocons have a convenient and peculiar way of historical interpretation.
So, after World War II, the United States was as close to a socialist democratic republic that we’d ever get, from the New Deal to the Marshall Plan, Keynesian economics held sway. The highest tax rate was around 95% both here and abroad.
Continue reading Starting some critique about Ayn Rand, oh, yeah, bab-ee, it’s AWN!