Commentary 25- Heidi Moore on Ayn Rand

April 11, 2008, 5:51 pm
Capitalism Shrugged: Should Ayn Rand Be Required Reading?
Posted by Heidi Moore

As we head into the weekend, we’re thinking about Ayn Rand. And you should be, too, if you’re worried about the current state of capitalism.

That’s because BB&T, a North Carolina bank, has donated over $30 million to 27 universities, including the University of North Carolina Charlotte, with the understanding that “Atlas Shrugged” would become required reading for students, according to Bloomberg. Last month BB&T agreed to donate $2 million to the University of Texas at Austin to create a chair in Objectivism, which would be the first in the country.

Some will applaud, and some will shudder. Rand is the uncompromising author of individualist screeds that all came together under the philosophy of “Objectivism.” Should Rand be part of the American canon? If you’ve read “Atlas Shrugged” or “The Fountainhead,” you’re already familiar with Rand’s instructive, demanding tone that selfishness is the highest good. (It’s also a play on the American qualities of independence and individuality, best expressed by Walt Whitman in his book of poetry, Leaves of Grass. The book includes the poem “Song of Myself” and was frequently given to impressionable females by a famous individualist, former president Bill Clinton.)

There’s no question that Rand’s influence is already pervasive. By now, you know that Alan Greenspan was a disciple of Rand’s. The famous Gordon Gekko speech in Wall Street — though it was not written by Rand at all — was Randian in its philosophy: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good… Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind.”

Rand’s actual writing is not too far off from that, and you could probably mine her work for some bitterness against, say, the Fed’s abnormally strong intervention in the J.P. Morgan-Bear Stearns situation: “Government ‘help’ to business is just as disastrous as government persecution… the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off,” for instance.

(Personally, we believe Rand is a better spokeswoman for architecture than anything else; we know two people who attended architecture school after being inspired by “The Fountainhead.”)

Rand’s work has thrived even though it can be an obstacle to romance; this light essay on love noted that some women are turned off by men who claim Rand among their favorites.

But Rand has a bit of a reputation problem among those who have not drunk the Kool-Aid. Greed and selfishness generally get a bad rap, no matter how you try to redefine them. And there’s a my-way-or-the-highway absolutism about Rand’s work — “There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil,” she once wrote — that may be at odds with today’s cooperative, interlocked financial system, where codependency is the rule. When a firm does refuse to go along with the others — think Bear Stearns at the time of Long-Term Capital Management — the grudge lasts for years and, according to some, may hold the seeds of their eventual destruction. For every individualist aficionado of Atlas Shrugged, there’s an ABC After-School Special that shows people doing whatever the cool kids are doing — like, say, lending money they can’t afford for $26 billion leveraged buyouts, or buying up mortgage securities they don’t understand.

Deal Journal readers, we put the question to you: Should there be more Ayn Rand to instruct young, impressionable minds? Or is the problem with capitalism today too much Rand already?

Original Referenced Link

My Commentary:

“And there’s a my-way-or-the-highway absolutism about Rand’s work — ‘There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil,’ she once wrote.”

To understand the proper context of Ms. Moore’s quote, the following statement by Rand should be added:

“There can be no compromise on moral principles”

Unless, of course, one believes it is wrong to steal, except to do it once in a while is fine, just as a compromise. Or that honesty is good, except dishonesty is okay once in a while, just as a compromise. Or that freedom is good, except that it is okay to give it up, bit by welfare state bit, just as a compromise.

To compromise… i.e., to seek a middle ground… is acceptable, according to Objectivism, when dealing with specific, concrete issues that don’t involve violation of one’s principles. For example, negotiating the terms of a contract on the sale of a property, or deciding which movie or restaurant to attend with a spouse or friends, or determining the choice of a job, etc. The “absolutism about Rand’s work” involves basic principles and fundamental moral issues. Would you say that there is a middle ground between a life of theft and a life of productive work? Or between honesty and deception or fraud? Or between freedom and slavery? On basic principles, “the middle is always evil” because it implies that there is no distinction between right and wrong. “In any compromise [middle ground] between good and evil,” Rand writes, “it is only evil that can profit.” (For a wider discussion on this, see Rand’s essay “Doesn’t life require compromise?” in her book, The Virtue of Selfishness.)

Of course, it is the moral absolutism of Ayn Rand’s philosophy that must be discredited by power-lusters and seekers of the unearned. It is the Objectivists’ absolute, uncompromising, and selfish defense of the moral principle of inalienable individual rights that threatens the steady growth of welfare statism in America. It is the middle-of-the-roaders seeking compromise between government controls and inalienable rights who are responsible for the steady erosion of freedom and subsequent growing social and economic problems in America (which no longer has a Capitalist, but a mixed economy)

It has now been some 40 years since first reading Ayn Rand, and I have discovered that there is one common tactic shared by most of Rand’s critics. First misrepresent, then attack, her views. Heidi Moore is a master at this.
It seems very few people are willing (or able) to present her ideas honestly and objectively before critiquing them.

The problem is not too much Rand or not enough Rand, but understanding Rand.

Comment by Zemack - April 12, 2008 at 12:00 pm