When Ayn Rand comes to mind, I remember The Fountainhead before anything else. The protagonist is named Howard, a rare occurrence for the hero of a work of fiction. His surname is Roark, a one syllable, no-nonsense growl that, with a consonant shift here and a zzzz vibration of the vocal cords there, can be morphed into "Schwartz." The vowel sound is the same, whether it roars or is at war.
The Fountainhead begins with our protagonist being thrown out of architecture school, showing the same even-keeled response as Socrates showed before he was poisoned with hemlock. He refuses to budge one iota from his ideology and calmly accepts his fate. Death or expulsion, it doesn't matter. Howard Roark is stubborn, refuses to listen to authority figures, and lives in his own little world, misunderstood by the ignorant people around him.
I think Mr. Roark goes too far, not caring for the needs of his clients as he pursues his artistic vision, but at least that vision has a noble purity about it.
In Anthem, a novella that follows The Fountainhead, the government is now the unreasonable force, with an agenda out of control. This phenomenon is written about in the 3/26/12 online edition of CounterPunch. The article by Pam Martens is entitled "Occupy Wall Street Must Battle 70 Years of Corporate Propaganda--Ayn Rand’s Nightmare is Today’s Wall Street."
Ms. Martens describes Anthem in the following manner:
The book presents a frightening dystopian world produced by the ever present Randian trademark – an out of control government. People are known by numbers instead of names; individual rights have been eviscerated. To break the will of the individual, uttering the word “I” results in being burned alive in the town square. (Charming high school literature.)What has happened today, however, proves that in a country dominated by powerful multinational corporations, Rand not only had the wrong target of big government in her cross hairs but the despotic enemy became the very deregulated market she helped design with acolytes like former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan and her corporate cronies.
According to Ms. Martens:
Wall Street workers must routinely sign non disparagement agreements – they can’t say anything bad about their employer, during or after their employment. The employee is further bound under a gag order not to disclose anything “proprietary” at the firm – all trade secrets, interpreted by Wall Street firms to include corruption, is under a confidentiality order.
Howard Roark would rather starve than sign such an agreement. Most of the rest of us, however, like to eat. Given the chance to prosper for a major Wall Street firm, I imagine most of us would grimace inside and sign on the bottom line.
This practice needs to be outlawed. Imagine Ms. Rand writing today, her new protagonist introducing legislation for the Howard Roarks of the world to thrive (or not thrive) in today's business environment. Sometimes government can be our friend.
ayn rand was an ugly, hypocritical harpy who would have done us all a favor if she stuck to writing shitty fiction for hollywood.
Try attacking her ideas rather than her , if you can.
The problem is that her ideas are misinterpreted by her supporters today. Rand's protagonists were all industrialists and industrial workers. Many of the antagonists were CEOs and investors (moochers and looters).
The emphasis is ultimately on self-sufficiency. I'm not sure how many bankers could work in a steel mill or do farm work. Hank Reardon, Francisco D'Anconia, and Dagny Taggart were the kind that HAD done it and would happily do it again. Orren Boyle and James Taggart would never do that.
We live in a post-industrial automated economy. There are much fewer industrial jobs today like the ones described in the book, and a lot of them are in China rather than the US. Today's heroes of capitalism (Mitt Romney, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein) probably wouldn't do very well working in a 1940s-era steel mill. Today's capitalists aren't really the kind that are generating electricity, producing oil, and getting food and products where they need to go.
Atlas shrugged had an excellent point in a world that had moved from 1925 to 1957. What it didn't foresee was Paul Ehrlich and Rachel Carson and the environmentalists showing up in the 1960s, forcing innovation to occur on a technological and financial level only, and moving us towards a FIRE economy. I think it is less applicable today than it was 50 years ago when smokestacks were a sign of prosperity.
Architects and Engineers are the modern-day Hank Reardons and Dagny Taggarts. There are some Midas Mulligans in finance, but there are also some Orren Boyles and Wesley Mouches and Robert Stadlers who probably think they're Midas Mulligan.
Oh well. Back to my rusty honda.
i like to attack, as they say, the total package.
her outward physical repulsiveness matched the inner nastiness of her ideas quite well.
Agreed. She has deified into some legendary figure.
I tried reading Ayn Rand, once. Got as far as "Who is John Galt?" before tossing it into the food processor and settling down in front of the idiot box.
Great points. Environmental and other regulations (looking at you embryonic stem cell research) have made innovation far less certain and far more expensive.
Would there be a Wozniak/Gates if the current patent environment existed in th 1980s?
Some resources need protection. Inventors should profit from their ideas. There should be some protection from untested pharmaceuticals. But, currently, it is too much. Countries where the government cares less are pulling ahead.
We just came off a long period of deregulation. Some regulation is good. It keeps our air clean, our water safe to drink, and our food safe to eat. Sometimes, we have a good trade-off when we can trade looking over our shoulders a great deal on risks to consumers for looking over our shoulders a little at the government.
I am in agreement that regulation is both necessary and proper. I lean libertarian, but I generally like the FDA and having clean tap water.
But I think the regulations should be straightforward and easy to follow. The overlapping frameworks, cost of litigation, difficulty of interpretation all add to costs. Also, it seems that many regulations do not have a rational basis, but are the result of political pandering.
Both she and Marx had their lives subsidized by other people's money and never produced an actual, physical good in their life. Their flakey philosophonies, while outwardly opposed, served as a mouthpiece to promote a crony hegemony within their respective regions. Sure some of their stuff sounds good, but if you weigh them against common sense it becomes harder and harder to fit reality into their interpretation of it.
I'm dining on sacred cow tonight, pass the Peter Luger
Actually, Marx was a journalist for a long time. It is arguable that he was in fact more productive during his lifetime than Ayn Rand.
Books are actual, physical goods.
If her ideas are so absurd, should they be that much easier to discredit? But no, the left, right, and center only throws out ad hominems. I suspect they lack the intellect or courage to examine and challenge her ideas. If anyone hasn't read her books, don't listen to this bilge, I suggest you read them and make up your own mind.
let me start off with her support of the US invasion of vietnam. all of her objectivist bullshit flies out the window when you start supporting a war like that. how exactly does trying to keep a french imperialist client, and how does sending your own goon squad in there to finish the job when that fails square with objectivist ethics?
she's just a commonplace screeching militarist harpy.
Oh I'm the first to say that policy is bullshit. More so is the present-day objectivists' insane level of support for israel and calling for the bombing every middle-eastern country that doesn't jive with them. I don't agree with Rand on a number of issues, and I sure as hell wouldn't call myself an objectivist for a number of reasons. What I don't like is the fact that nobody wants to discuss her ideas, they just want to smear her (which often around revolve her personal appearance, or the fact she was nasty and didn't live by the ethics she preached, or the fact that her books are long and can get hyper-preachy). I do think there are a lot of sound principles to be gleaned from reading her books, and it is up to the reader to apply them to his own life as he sees fit.
The main takeaway I got from Atlas Shrugged was those who create or produce can only be forced to do so insofar as they allow others to extort from them.
In the book, those individuals who were able to produce, chose to drop out of the system and stop the motor of the world instead of continuing to produce in a system that attempted to take advantage of them.
Just my .02
^ yes, that's her basic 'message'. The simple refutation is that there are mote than a handful of people who produce and can manage, and the progression of people with influence is usually to seek more influence even if it comes at other people's expense. Rand's understanding of how things worked was heavily shaped by her perception of communist dictatorships, and her familiar operating space was not the public mainstream...she instead served as a glorified propagandist for entrenched business interests here. Her stuff is a fun read, but not to be taken as the literal truth, neither is her worldview.
The problem is the "isms". Trying to codify reality into a rigid theology beyond using it as a basic learning tool is ultimately fruitless. The map is not the territory.
Basically agree with IlliniProgrammer, and i personally believe her ideas have a lot of value.
One common characteristic among the "Motor" characters of atlas shrugged, were that they were founders/owners and managers at the same time, if not directly involved in the construction of these companies/industries. This cannot not be 100% translated to many of today's CEOs & etc. which are mere agents, maximising thier utility, which in many cases does not translate in the priciples Rand uses to describe a "motor" individual.
e.g. a Steve jobs/Wozniak/Gates/Buffet are different in many cases that CEOs of most financial institutions or large corporates... there is an agency factor playing a role here, which in many cases is not fully resolved in pro of these fundamental principles.
Personally, I like her work and deem it a good read.
ayn rand accuses libertarians of ripping off her ideas while objectivism itself is just a ripoff of the austrian theory of value, transferred to ethics. more hypocrisy from this ugly toad.
let's end the thread. she does not deserve any more electrons.
My recommendation is, as with any book: - read it critically, - take it with a pinch of salt, - don't dogmatise ideas, and - just keep the good things (including a positive alternative to those ideas you don't agree upon).
Agree, not all ideas in Rand's books are well-thought or will fit all possible minds and situations. Perhaps it provides a good explanation for purpose, and could serve as a motivation to explore and building your own future while being productive to yourself and to society (value added).
I am not so sure whether discussing her physical appearance is of any relevance, and personally, I care about the book and its message to me, not really whether she lived up to her ideas (or people's perception thereof).
it's actually quite relevant. how exactly a man-faced bow-wow like her could bag a good-looking hollywood husband AND be having an affair with a younger woman's husband is only possible if all parties involved have been mesmerized with her swirling vortex of bullshit. the wider popularity of her "ideas" is just this absurd, sordid little situation writ large.
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Agree 100%. There is a lot of great ideas and food for thought in her novels and nonfiction. A lot of people seem to either toss out all the ideas or take it for gospel, I don't get it.
what few good ideas she writes about aren't hers. better to go to the sources than through this repulsive little charlatan. rand is highly appealing for people who want to justify their cupidity but are too lazy to try to mentally work through superior writing to be found, ironically, in shorter books. the "fuck you jack i got mine" idea stretches as far back as plato and up to nietzsche. if you encounter rand AFTER reading them you'd immediately see her for the two-bit plagiarist that she is.
i had a very early edition of atlas shrugged, btw. alarm bells should ring when there is a addressed postcard glued into the binding for ordering more "objectivist" crap.
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