How Ayn Rand became the new right's version of Marx

[marmar]

How Ayn Rand became the new right's version of Marx
Her psychopathic ideas made billionaires feel like victims and turned millions of followers into their doormats

George Monbiot
guardian.co.uk, Monday 5 March 2012


It has a fair claim to be the ugliest philosophy the postwar world has produced. Selfishness, it contends, is good, altruism evil, empathy and compassion are irrational and destructive. The poor deserve to die; the rich deserve unmediated power. It has already been tested, and has failed spectacularly and catastrophically. Yet the belief system constructed by Ayn Rand, who died 30 years ago today, has never been more popular or influential.

Rand was a Russian from a prosperous family who emigrated to the United States. Through her novels (such as Atlas Shrugged) and her nonfiction (such as The Virtue of Selfishness) she explained a philosophy she called Objectivism. This holds that the only moral course is pure self-interest. We owe nothing, she insists, to anyone, even to members of our own families. She described the poor and weak as "refuse" and "parasites", and excoriated anyone seeking to assist them. Apart from the police, the courts and the armed forces, there should be no role for government: no social security, no public health or education, no public infrastructure or transport, no fire service, no regulations, no income tax.

Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, depicts a United States crippled by government intervention in which heroic millionaires struggle against a nation of spongers. The millionaires, whom she portrays as Atlas holding the world aloft, withdraw their labour, with the result that the nation collapses. It is rescued, through unregulated greed and selfishness, by one of the heroic plutocrats, John Galt.

The poor die like flies as a result of government programmes and their own sloth and fecklessness. Those who try to help them are gassed. In a notorious passage, she argues that all the passengers in a train filled with poisoned fumes deserved their fate. One, for instance, was a teacher who taught children to be team players; one was a mother married to a civil servant, who cared for her children; one was a housewife "who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing". ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/05/new-right-ayn-rand-marx

[DirkGently]

1. The beginning of the complete inversion of social ethics.

As a species, we cooperate or perish. Randians, Libertarians, et. al, contend they're entitled to the benefits of that cooperation, but not obligated to participate.

[Gruntled Old Man]

2. Good analysis

[MindMover]

3. The best part of this analysis is the part about Greenspan....

But they have a still more powerful reason to reject her philosophy: as Adam Curtis's BBC documentary showed last year, the most devoted member of her inner circle was Alan Greenspan, former head of the US Federal Reserve. Among the essays he wrote for Rand were those published in a book he co-edited with her called Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal. Here, starkly explained, you'll find the philosophy he brought into government. There is no need for the regulation of business – even builders or Big Pharma – he argued, as "the 'greed' of the businessman or, more appropriately, his profit-seeking … is the unexcelled protector of the consumer". As for bankers, their need to win the trust of their clients guarantees that they will act with honour and integrity. Unregulated capitalism, he maintains, is a "superlatively moral system".

Once in government, Greenspan applied his guru's philosophy to the letter, cutting taxes for the rich, repealing the laws constraining banks, refusing to regulate the predatory lending and the derivatives trading which eventually brought the system down. Much of this is already documented, but Weiss shows that in the US, Greenspan has successfully airbrushed history.

Despite the many years he spent at her side, despite his previous admission that it was Rand who persuaded him that "capitalism is not only efficient and practical but also moral", he mentioned her in his memoirs only to suggest that it was a youthful indiscretion – and this, it seems, is now the official version. Weiss presents powerful evidence that even today Greenspan remains her loyal disciple, having renounced his partial admission of failure to Congress.

Saturated in her philosophy, the new right on both sides of the Atlantic continues to demand the rollback of the state, even as the wreckage of that policy lies all around. The poor go down, the ultra-rich survive and prosper. Ayn Rand would have approved.

[JHB]

4. Bookmarking

[hifiguy]

5. Rand was crazy, evil and hypocritical.

Her modern followers are considerably worse and are utter moral bankrupts.

[kemah]

6. She collected SS and Medicare what a censored

An interview recently surfaced that was conducted in 1998 by the Ayn Rand Institute with a social worker who says she helped Rand and her husband, Frank O’Connor, sign up for Social Security and Medicare in 1974.

Also have you noticed the people who hate Obama care the most are themselves on medicare with pre existing conditions, obese, which means diabetic. They also run around in their motorized wheel chairs paid for by medicare.

[sofa king]

7. It's all Rush's fault.

No, I mean Rush the band.

Just as the bible-thumpers have been claiming the whole time about other bands and my pal Satan, Rush quietly introduced generations of listeners to the philosophies of Ayn Rand, poisoning their minds with libertarian dreams hammered in with sophisticated timing change-ups and a pocket as deep as Mitt Romney's.

And Rush is. fucking. awesome!, for those of you who don't know, allowing those Geddy-squeaked ideas to slip by relatively unnoticed.

Unfortunately, the right-wingers completely missed some of the other poisonous ideas Rush was pitching, like agnosticism (Freewill), anti-authoritarianism (2112, Farewell to Kings, Red Barchetta) and ethical pursuit of science (Natural Science), probably because right-wingers seem incapable of understanding allegory, analogy, and metaphor.

But yeah, it's all their fault because they're the best band ever in the history of humankind.

[sweetloukillbot]

11. Lot of Rand throughout Rush's work up through Moving Pictures

Something I didn't notice until I really started paying attention to her in recent years. 2112, Something for Nothing, The Trees, Tom Sawyer are all steeped in right-wing Libertarianism. At the same time - I think Peart's philosophy started growing around the time of Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures, and most of his lyrics since then have been more about free-thought and anti-authoritarianism (although that does go hand in hand w/ his Rand libertarianism).

Interestingly, most of the hardcore Rand-ites I know are drummers.

[NICO9000]

15. I wonder what Peart thinks these days

After the terrible tragedies he suffered in the 90s (wife and daughter died within a year), I wonder if he evolved his viewpoints. I don't think he was ever as nutcase as Rand's acolytes are today though.

The new DVD is great. They have some comedy bits on there ("The History of Rash&quot that are hilarious.

[sweetloukillbot]

20. He seems to have lost most of that around Signals and Power Windows.

Listening to their lyrics now (can't think of the song, but there's one on the newest album) it's still libertarian, but it's more social libertarian. Definitely a strong atheist streak - not just Freewill, but there's a song they played on tour last year "Brought Up To Believe" as well. I'm sure the deaths of his wife and daughter helped cement some of those thoughts as well.

[saras]

12. Satan was DEFINITELY responsible for better music than Rand...

...if all you've got to offer is Rush, against the blues, metal, rock, and jazz.

It's impressive in the same way Hayseed Dixie was impressive.

I want to hear who Rush would have been if they had been admirers of Maslow and Rogers instead of Rand. Or Wilson and Shea, for that matter.

And no, as long as there are still original copies of Shaggs vinyl, they're NOT the best band in the world.

[sofa king]

14. I am both flattered and dismayed.

As far as the Shaggs, go, we should let Satan decide:

[saras]

17. Satan can't handle the Shaggs. That's what's so good about them.

They send ol' Beelzebub running out of the room, holding his ears and screaming "I'm a man of wealth and taste!"

Seriously. I tried to like Rush. More than once. I respect them. I admire Neal Peart. I'd love to talk gear with any of them, but I don't know enough of their music and I'd sound like an idiot. That's as far as I got.

If you don't care for the Shaggs, there's always song-poems.

[sofa king]

19. Aha! Hahahaha!

Somehow this proves the very point that I didn't actually have, but which I will now claim I was saying above, maybe if you read it backwards or something. Yes... a palindrome. Nobody expects that:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/rush-the-band-yanks-music_b_1325309.html

Yesterday, I contacted Anthem Entertainment and Rush (the band) about Rush Limbaugh's airing of its music on his show, and today I was exclusively informed that the legendary Canadian rock group has formally demanded that the Rush Limbaugh Program stop using its music on the air.
___________________

Link also provides a .pdf of the official cease and desist letter. I rest the case I never made.

[AlbertCat]

8. More should be made of the atheism inherent in Rand.

It's mentioned, but if the teabaggers knew....

Oh wait, I keep thinking teabaggers will act semi-rationally.

Never mind.





(besides, as a atheist myself, Rand represents the kind of atheism that springs merely from hating the church. Not a very "deep" or useful type. Since there is no god to help out and no reward later for suffering now, a real atheist, not one who just hates the church for one reason or another, knows one must help people be happy NOW. There is no "later". )

[malthaussen]

9. Objectivism is no more than "The Fable of the Bees" taken to extremes.

You can find it foreshadowed in Federalist #10 and it's source, Hume's essay "Of Faction." The genealogy of the idea is pretty long, but what is new about Rand's take on it is that it is now being implemented by the people in power. What I think the Guardian blog does not emphasise sufficiently is just how devoutly the disciples believe it, possibly because for any human with a shred of sanity, it is the most absurd idea to come down the pike in a long time. I'd suggest that it is impossible to be a Randite without being a blind fanatic, and that this fanaticism can go a long way towards explaining both the danger and the success of the movement, not to mention its appeal. Narrow minds prefer narrow paths.


-- Mal

[LongTomH]

10. We need to keep reminding people how poisonous Rand's philosophy has been.

...and what disasters it has wrought, both in the US and the UK!

Kick!

[wwytchwood]

13. read her bio about 6 months ago

she was a truly awful person
-cheated on her husband, and suggested he do the same (he did)
-Alan Greenspan learned evil at her knee
-she dumped on her family, in sooo many ways
-she didnt bathe often
-she thought she was the queen of the universe
-her books were panned as they came out
-and are unreadable, at least to me

oh and she was pro abortion (to keep the lessers from breeding), and had a HUUGE drug habit

[salib]

16. I just saw this on another thread...

"Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."

Doesn't that sound like the corporate psychos that Rand holds in such high regard?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12283461

[saras]

18. No, it sounds like a brilliant idea - a corporation killing monster

Or, as you said, a Terminator corporation. Part Schwarzenegger, part Monsanto, this viciously abstract monster rips the guts from living corporations, fouls their remains so nothing can grow there, and races hungrily after the next victim. The ultimate corporate raider, if the corporations can somehow consume each other without consuming us.