85. Rand (April 1962), “How does one lead a rational life in an irrational society?,” in Virtue of Selfishness, 71.
86. B. Branden, quoted in Rand (January 1963), “Collectivized ethics,” in Virtue of Selfishness, 80. In a communication printed in Commonweal after the publication of Atlas Shrugged, a young Murray Rothbard (1957, 313) defended Rand’s book against those who saw it as embodying an “anti-charity” creed. Rothbard, who was characteristically critical of Rand in later years, argues that despite its rejection of the traditional virtue of “humility,” Atlas Shrugged does praise “charity for the sake of virtues” and not “for the subsidization of vice”: “The difference between Miss Rand’s concept and the usual Christian morality is that there is compassion for a man’s fight against suffering, or against unjustly imposed suffering, rather than pity for suffering per se.”
87. Rand (February 1963), “The ethics of emergencies,” in Virtue of Selfishness, 46–47.
88. Rothbard 1987; N. Branden 1989, 296; Bidinotto 1989; Kelley 1990, 76; B. Branden 1990, 51; Smith 1991, 218.
89. N. Branden 1989, 296. Branden argues that the “strain of Manichaeism” in Rand’s thought is not a “literal” dualism, but a “tendency to see good and evil as essentially separate and opposed principles, and to interpret all human experience in terms of their confrontation.”
90. In Rand (September 1971), “Brief summary,” in Objectivist, 1091, she stated: “One cannot start with or build on a negative; it is only by establishing what is the good that one can know what is evil and why.”
91. Rosenthal 1975, 129; B. Branden 1986T. Interestingly, there are passages in Lossky [1917] 1928 which also suggest that evil was not coequal with good, and that it was dependent on good for its existence; see 182–83.
92. N. Branden (September 1962), “Isn’t everyone selfish?,” in Virtue of Selfishness, 60.
93. Peikoff 1983T, Lecture 10. Despite this view, in Peikoff (18 May 1989), “Fact and value,” in Schwartz 5.1, he continues the practice of intellectual “purges.”
CHAPTER 10. A LIBERTARIAN POLITICS
1. Rand ([1964] 1993cT) acknowledged that Mises and Hazlitt “are usually called libertarians.” She distinguished them from traditional conservatives because they did not defend capitalism on mystical grounds. She also recognized that the libertarians were a loosely defined group of thinkers who came from a variety of philosophical traditions. Though she agreed with libertarians on most political and economic issues, she argued that these issues could not be separated from a more basic philosophical framework.
2. Rand (September 1971), “Brief summary,” in Objectivist 10:1090.
3. Rand (9 May 1934), “From Ayn Rand’s unpublished writings: Philosophic journal,” in Binswanger 4.4.4.
4. Rand (9 February 1961), “The Objectivist ethics,” in Virtue of Selfishness, 15, and (April 1963), “Man’s rights,” in Virtue of Selfishness, 92.
5. Rand (23 October 1972), “A nation’s unity, part two,” in Ayn Rand Letter 2:127.
6. Rand (1 January 1945), quoted in Peikoff 1991a, x.
7. In Rand (January 1963), “Collectivized ethics,” in Virtue of Selfishness, 81, she suggested that the “fallacy of the frozen abstraction,” is a variation on the fallacy of composition, in which one substitutes a “particular concrete for the wider abstract class to which it belongs.”
8. N. Branden (February 1962), “Intellectual ammunition department,” in Objectivist Newsletter 1:7.
9. McKeon (January 1941), “Introduction,” in Aristotle 1941, xxvi.
10. Aristotle, Politics 1.2.1253a2, in Aristotle 1941, 1129. This Aristotelian predilection reappears even in Locke’s state of nature, where individuals compose a polity out of their compelling interests. Replogle 1984, 83. Rasmussen and Den Uyl’s (1991) development of Aristotle’s social conception is informed by Rand’s insights.
11. Atlas Shrugged, 747, and Rand 1947.
12. N. Branden (August 1963), “The divine right of stagnation,” in Virtue of Selfishness, 123; N. Branden and E. D. Branden 1983, 9.
13. Rand (November–December 1965), “What is capitalism?” in Unknown Ideal, 16.
14. Ibid., 22–23.
15. Rand (3 June–1 July 1974), “Egalitarianism and inflation,” in Philosophy, 153.
16. Rand (23 October 1972), “A nation’s unity, part two,” in Ayn Rand Letter 2:125–26.
17. Rand (17 February 1960), “Faith and force: The destroyers of the modern world,” in Philosophy, 79–80.
18. Rand (17 February 1960), “Faith and force: The destroyers of the modern world,” in Philosophy, 79–80. A discussion of the reason/freedom and faith/force distinction is provided by Hollinger (1984), “Ayn Rand’s epistemology in historical perspective,” in Den Uyl and Rasmussen 1984.
19. Rand (9 February 1961), “The Objectivist ethics,” in Virtue of Selfishness, 32.
20. For an Objectivist view of the development of the concept of individual rights, see Ridpath 1983T.
21. O’Neill 1983; Osterfeld 1983; Den Uyl and Rasmussen 1983; Mack (1984), “The fundamental moral elements of Rand’s theory of rights,” in Den Uyl and Rasmussen 1984; Nozick 1974, 179n. I dealt with some of the critics’ objections to Rand’s views in Chapter 9, since most focus on the ethical basis of the theory.
22. Rand (April 1963), “Man’s rights,” in Virtue of Selfishness, 92. Peikoff (1983T, Lecture 6) emphasizes that Rand’s theory of rights does not apply to a state-of-nature or a Robinson Crusoe scenario. Rights are strictly applicable to a social context.
23. Rand (April 1963), “Man’s rights,” in Virtue of Selfishness, 93.
24. Marx (1875), “Critique of the Gotha programme,” in Marx and Engels 1968, 333–34.
25. Marx [1843] 1963, 44. Marx [1843] 1963 is hereafter cited as Critique by page number in text and notes.
26. Marx, [1843–44] 1971, 103, 108.
27. On these issues, see N. Branden (April 1962), “Counterfeit individualism,” in Virtue of Selfishness, 135; 1980, 51; and 1983b, 230.
28. This parallel between Rand and Hegel was first noted in print by Den Uyl and Rasmussen (“Capitalism,” in Den Uyl and Rasmussen 1984, 172, 181 n.25). The authors speculate that Rand could have developed a theory of alienation that would have had obvious similarities to the Marxian view. By coercively appropriating a person’s property, the state, through taxation, alienates an aspect of the person. I explore some of these themes in Part 3.
29. On abortion, see Rand (September–November 1968), “Of living death,” in Voice of Reason, 58–59; Schwartz (June 1980), “Interview with Ayn Rand,” in Binswanger 1.3.1–2. On animal rights, see Peikoff 1991b, 358.
30. On intellectual property rights, see Rand (May 1964), “Patents and copyrights,” in Unknown Ideal. On inheritance, see N. Branden (June 1963), “Inherited wealth,” in Unknown Ideal, 92. On corporate rights, see Peikoff 1976T, Lecture 9, and Hessen 1979. On removing immigration restrictions, see Rand 1973T.
31. Rand (April 1964), “The property status of the airwaves,” in Unknown Ideal, and Kelley and Donway 1983. Though in Rand (24 April 1972), “The Shanghai gesture, part three,” in Ayn Rand Letter 1:68, she saw the “somberly dignified Indian,” as one of America’s most important self-images, she was, by and large, not very respectful of those Native American cultures which lacked a notion of private property. She was insensitive to the different cultural means through which the notion of property was filtered. On Native American rights, see Rand 1974bT; Peikoff 1976T, Lecture 9; and Binswanger 1991T, Lecture 3. For an alternative view of European–Native American relations, see Franck 1992. His argument against the Spaniard devastation of the indigenous populations is fully within the Objectivist tradition.
32. Rand (April 1963), “Man’s rights,” and (June 1963), “Collectivized ‘rights,’” in Virtue of Selfishness.
33. Rothbard, quoted in B. Branden 1986, 413.
34. Rothbard 1973, 15–18. Childs ([1969] 1994) also criticized Rand’s position
on the nature of government. Though he later changed his views on the subject, Childs utilized key Objectivist concepts in his defense of anarchism. B. Branden, 28 June 1993C.
35. Thomas 1980, 56. Horkheimer observes similarly that “Anarchism and authoritarian statism both belong to the same cultural epoch.” Jay 1973, 125.
36. Rand (September 1971), “Brief summary,” in Objectivist 10:1090.
37. See Schwartz (1986) for an extensive critique of anarcho-capitalism from an Objectivist perspective. Also see Sciabarra 1987.
38. An analysis of anarcho-capitalist ideology is central to Nozick’s famed work, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974).
39. Rothbard (1982) provides an Aristotelian-Thomistic-Lockean foundation for his particular brand of libertarian theory.
40. Rand (December 1963), “The nature of government,” in Virtue of Selfishness, 112. Rothbard’s libertarianism has elicited critical responses from socialists, conservatives, Hayekians, and Objectivists. On this provocative critical convergence, see Sciabarra 1991. Rothbard (1978) is the best introduction to his thought.
41. B. Branden 1962T, Lecture 8; Peikoff 1983T, Lecture 7.
42. Rand (December 1963), “The nature of government,” in Virtue of Selfishness, 112–13.
43. Ibid., 109.
44. Rand (June 1963), “Collectivized ‘rights,’” in Virtue of Selfishness, 103.
45. Rand (April–May 1967), “The wreckage of the consensus,” in Unknown Ideal.
46. Rand (February 1964), “Government financing in a free society,” in Virtue of Selfishness.
47. Rand (November–December 1965), “What is capitalism?” in Unknown Ideal, 18.
48. For raising this issue, thanks to Nyberg (2 December 1993C).
49. It was Hayek (in “History and politics,” in Hayek 1954, 15) who first observed that it was somewhat misleading to use the word “capitalism,” when it had been closely tied to a socialist interpretation of history.
50. Weber 1930; Novak 1993.
51. Mises ([1949] 1963) defends a “value-free” approach to economics. Hayek (1976, 120, 132) argues that the market economy, governed by the rule of law, will maximize chance opportunities, even though its rewards “often have no connection with merit.”
52. It is for this reason perhaps that Walsh ([1985] 1990T, Lecture 3) acknowledges that the institutions of Western capitalism were developed in their initial stages by non-capitalist means, which were the only methods available at the time. One commits an ahistorical fallacy if one indicts capitalism as a social system for having utilized methods that were distinctive to the historical period out of which it emerged. On this basis, all of human history is bathed in blood, and nothing on earth is legitimate.
53. Rand (7 December 1960), “Conservatism: An obituary,” in Unknown Ideal, 195.
54. Rand (April 1963), “Man’s rights,” in Virtue of Selfishness, 95. Rand does not use the word “eudaemonic.”
55. Rand (August–September 1967), “Requiem for man,” in Unknown Ideal, 308. This same apprehension is expressed by Peikoff, in (July 1992), “Some notes about tomorrow, part one,” in Schwartz 6.4, in which he analyzes the movement away from communism in the former Soviet Union.
56. Rand (January 1962), “Check your premises,” in Objectivist Newsletter 1:1.
57. Cox (1993), “Introduction to the Transaction edition,” in Paterson [1943] 1993, xix-xx; Cox 2004, and Rand (October 1964), “Books: The God of the Machine,” in Objectivist Newsletter 1:42–43. Nineteen forty-three saw the publication of The Fountainhead and The God of the Machine, as well as Nock’s Memoirs of a Superfluous Man and Lane’s Discovery of Freedom. In fact, Paterson’s book was published in the same month as The Fountainhead. Both books are critical of “the humanitarian with the guillotine.” Rand and Paterson differed violently over religion. Without access to Rand’s personal journals, it is difficult to ascertain who influenced whom on certain issues. B. Branden (1986, 172, 177, 182) notes that Rand probably learned much about U.S. history and political institutions from Paterson. But in failing to give Rand any credit for some of the ethical ideas expressed in The God of the Machine, Paterson disappointed Rand deeply. Also see N. Branden 1989, 123–24.
58. N. Branden, “Common fallacies about capitalism,” in Unknown Ideal. I will examine some of these Austrian-flavored discussions in Chapter 12.
59. Rand (25 October 1971), “The moratorium on brains, part one,” in Ayn Rand Letter 1:8; Reisman (August–September 1968), “Platonic competition,” in Objectivist 7:504; Buechner (August 1982), “Ayn Rand and economics,” in Binswanger 3.4.3.
60. Rand (November–December 1965), “What is capitalism?” in Unknown Ideal, 12, 15.
61. Marx and Engels (1848), “Manifesto of the communist party,” in Marx and Engels 1968, 49.
62. Marx [1843–44] 1967, 247. Marx [1843–44] 1967 is hereafter cited as Jewish Question by page number in text and notes.
63. Capital, 3:817; Marx [1863a] 1963, 393. Marx [1863a] 1963, [1863b] 1968, and [1863c] 1971 are hereafter cited as Surplus-Value by part and page number in text and notes.
64. Rand (9 February 1961), “The Objectivist ethics,” in Virtue of Selfishness, 32.
65. Rand (November–December 1965), “What is capitalism?” in Unknown Ideal, 19.
66. Rand [1976] 1992T.
67. Rand (21 November 1981), “The sanction of the victims,” in Voice of Reason, 154.
68. Rand (3 June–1 July 1974), “Egalitarianism and inflation,” in Philosophy, 154.
69. Among non-Marxist theorists, the Austrians have also promoted a theory of capitalist entrepreneurship and creativity as essential to the production process. See Kirzner 1973. Schumpeter ([1942] 1976, 81–86), who was not a fully Austrian theorist, celebrates the entrepreneur as the author of a “process of creative destruction.”
70. Rand (November–December 1965), “What is capitalism?” in Unknown Ideal, 24–25. Peikoff (1976T, Lecture 10) maintains that Rand’s identification of the “socially objective values” is merely a terminological difference with those Austrians who champion the “subjective-value” theory. Peikoff recognizes that the Austrians discuss “subjective” values in their campaign against intrinsicism, or old-style objectivism. Some Austrian school theorists, however, are philosophically subjectivist, since they deny the possibility of any objective valuation.
71. Rand (November–December 1965), “What is capitalism?” in Unknown Ideal, 24. Franck (27 July 1993C) observes that there are epistemic problems with this formulation. Despite Rand’s contextual proviso, there is the implication that one can take the synoptic standpoint of “the most rational mind” in evaluating the “best possible to man.”
CHAPTER 11. RELATIONS OF POWER
1. Marx (24 January 1873), “Afterword to the second German edition,” in Capital, 1:20.
2. B. Branden 1962T, Lecture 8; Rand 1969T.
3. Peikoff (June 1987), “My thirty years with Ayn Rand: An intellectual memoir,” in Voice of Reason, 343–45.
4. Rand (17 July 1972), “Representation without authorization,” in Voice of Reason, 234–35.
5. To say “structural” is not to imply “structuralism” in Rand’s analysis. Though Rand has a structuralist-like interest in examining the reciprocal relations among various factors within a system, she does not eliminate the human element in sociohistorical theory.
6. Rand (July–September 1965), “The cashing-in: The student rebellion,” in Unknown Ideal, 268; New Intellectual, 54.
7. Fountainhead, 637–38. While the master-slave dynamic is obvious in the case of Toohey and Keating, it is less obvious in the relationship of Keating and Roark. And yet, there are significant elements of parasitism in their relationship. Roark recognizes that Keating is a pure “second-hander,” who has lived off of Roark’s achievements as a “parasite” of consciousness. But throughout their academic and professional careers, Roark helped Keating with his architectural designs. This was not an “altruistic” offering; i
t was motivated by Roark’s perfectionism. In the climax of the novel, Roark submits plans for public housing under Keating’s name. He soon realizes that he has been a willing participant in a relationship that benefits no one. He states: “It’s I who’ve destroyed you, Peter. From the beginning. By helping you. There are matters in which one must not ask for help nor give it.” Roark learns that his assistance, however “nonsacrificial,” could never have facilitated the emergence of genuine self-sufficiency in Keating’s life. Fountainhead, 612–13. This aspect of the Roark-Keating relationship raises a host of fascinating psychoethical issues about the nature of “nonsacrificial” assistance. Rand has not resolved this issue: Why would Roark hopefully expect even “nonsacrificial” assistance to facilitate the emergence of genuine self-sufficiency in Keating, unless Roark had the “altruistic” expectation that actions which benefit himself will also benefit Keating? For raising this issue, thanks to Cox (18 October 1993C).
8. Rand foreshadowed her own concept of “the sanction of the victim,” in her earlier novel, The Fountainhead. Roark defeats Toohey by not granting him any existential or moral validity. Toohey approaches Roark in their only encounter in the novel, and asks him: “Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us.” Roark responds: “But I don’t think of you” (389).
9. La Boetie [1577] 1975. This edition includes an introduction by Rothbard.
10. Aristotle, Categories 7.7b1–19, in Aristotle 1941, 20. Lincoln ([1 August 1858?], “Fragment,” in Basler 1953, 532) also recognized the organic unity of master and slave, for in a democracy, “as I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.” Thanks to Franck (27 July 1993C) for this reference.
11. Heilbroner (1981), “The dialectical approach to philosophy,” in Machan 1987, 6–8.
12. Copleston [1963] 1985, 183; Marcuse [1941] 1960, and (1936), “A study on authority,” in Marcuse 1972, 51.
13. Fountainhead, 682–83. For a discussion of the virtue of independence in “the code of the creator,” see Kelley 1993.
Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical Page 64