Ayn Rand and the worship of selfishness

The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.

Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.


A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.

 The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.

 To reduce you to a body, to teach you an animal's pleasure, to see you need it, to see you asking me for it, to see your wonderful spirit dependent on the upon the obscenity of your need. To watch you as you are, as you face the world with your clean, proud strength - then to see you, in my bed, submitting to any infamous whim I may devise, to any act which I'll preform for the sole purpose of watching your dishonor and to which you'll submit for the sake of an unspeakable sensation ...I want you - and may I be damned for it!
 
If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.


― Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand

The word "Freedom" has now taken on a narrow meaning within the mainstream of American opinion: "What I personally want I must have" It's the concept that has always been used by small children, thieves, dictators and ancient kings. It's the chant of infants " Gimme; it's mine and you can't have any."

Ayn Rand in "Atlas Shrugged" popularized Rand's philosophy of Objectivism: advocating rational selfishness and free markets(unregulated). I like Paul Krugman's view of this philosophy: "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." 

 
Reagan, Greenspan and Milton Friedman became great fans of Rand and her thoughts  have popularized the Libertarian movement and heavily influenced Paul Ryan and the Tea Party, The Supreme Court and right wing extremists. Rand's early years were spent in Stalinist Russia  and this clearly influenced her hatred of Governments and her obsessive faith in the good will of rich and powerful men acting in a free and unregulated economic system. She claimed that in such a privatized system there never would be a need for regulations and social legislation because the economic system would work so well. She died in 1982 before events proved how utterly wrong she was about human nature. I wonder whether this rigid ideologue might have changed her views if she had lived to observe the rape of Russia under Yeltsin, the greed driven destructive behaviour of Wall Street and British bankers that came close to destroying the economies of the West, the alarming rise in unemployment in a deregulated laissez-fare market and the obsessive greed of an oligarchy intent on keeping it all.

 Mike Wallace interviewed her in 1959 and taking the time to listen to some of these You Tube tapes will give you an idea of what an ideologically narrow and naive woman she was.  A rigid ideologist, just like the communists she detested, she was determined to fit all human affairs into a simplistic model. Her model simply rejected government and replaced it with a blind faith in the leaders of laisez-faire capitalism.

Her influence still dominates the thinking within Wall Street, the Republican Party and the Supreme Court. No doubt her philosophy has provided a justification for the selfish values of wealthy men like the Koch Brothers and many others like him; gave birth to the Tea Party and popularized and strengthened the Libertarian movement. She was a pro-choice atheist, and viewed all religions and beliefs in the supernatural as barriers to reason so I am sure she would have been puzzled by the Tea Baggers (and most mainstream Republicans) who have blended her "Objectivism" in with a curious reinvention of evangelical Christianity, a contempt for intellectuals, blacks, the poor and foreigners, and a love for the military.

Rand's beliefs continue to dominate Republican political thinking in America despite the alarming wealth gap widening between the 1% and the rest of America. Freedom is now all about me. Rand vigorously rejected any form of social conscience and the Social Contract as influenced by John Locke in the Declaration of Independence and refined by the eminent American philosopher John Rawls as purely signs of human weakness. 
 

It is hard to conceive of a functioning democracy based on a philosophy of selfishness and laissez faire capitalism run by an oligarchy of wealth, free from any restraints. As described in Ayn Rand's writings it advocates a rejection of the social reforms of the 20th century and reduces the role of the nations state to that of a modern Sparta. Not a promising outlook.

T Hobbes, J Locke, JC Rousseau vs Ayn Rand

Dave's Observation
I don't find the usual attribution of the US financial meltdown to greed to be particularly helpful.
By and large people were just trying to maximize their sales, hit their targets or whatever. There is greed there but I don' t know that it expressed itself in a different way than in normal times. One wonders if it is even useful to ascribe a human vice to something like a financial system.

My Response

The word "Greed" clearly reflects the anger and resentment of a public who feel betrayed and exploited by a collapsing financial system. It's true, as you point out, that the people involved were simply maximizing their performance as they have always been inclined to do, but you have to accept that free of constraints, self interest inevitably leads to excesses. This is what has happened.

The belief that dismantling regulations would free the entrepreneurial spirit and thereby benefit humanity has proved to be utterly naive. The philosophers,Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau who profoundly influenced Western thinking and the formation of our governments understood that man is driven by self interest and by necessity had to enter into a social contract with his fellow man to control his behaviour by establishing governments for societies protection.

Ayn Rand took the opposite view that self interest should be the foundation of morality. Since all participants are acting selfishly the market is self correcting. She chose to be blind to the fact you could harm others while pursuing your self interest. The Chicago School and Greenspan were captivated by this ideology and thus the disaster we have today. In short, you need rules of the road to prevent disasters; regulations to restore our confidence in the integrity of the fiscal system

Yes, there is a moral element in all this. A social contract saves us from ourselves and makes for a fairer society. A world run by corporate interests is unlikely to have any collective moral compass.

The neo-conservatives and their Republican friends really believe that no government is good government and by starving tax revenues all public effort to set a social agenda and offer regulatory controls will be starved into extinction. Thus man can again be restored to his "noble savage" state of freedom.

I think the answer to "what does it all mean and what needs to be resolved" will only be found by America shifting politically to the radical left. Leftist values invariably respect intellect and education, and demand a fair redistribution of the nation's wealth through universal health coverage, adequate minimum wage policies, taxation commensurate with earnings, arts subsidies and the list goes on. It is fair to say that this sense of fairness eventually becomes a universal public value and spills over into international relationships.

Would it happily end there? Obviously not. Our world changes, our environment is threatened, in the absence of any weapons agreement the proliferation of atomic weaponry goes on, and our vastly expanded global trade has us tripping over each other. The social contract to manage the pursuit of self interest becomes increasingly a vital global concern. It is now self evident that the US role of "The World's Policeman" by necessity must give way in an increasingly multipolar world.