Why Ayn Rand hated Libertarians

by gnosis • 13 years ago

14 19 13 years ago

As someone who's only familiar in passing with both Rand and Libtertarianism... could someone explain briefly whether/how Libtertarians co-opt her ideas as repeatedly suggested?

I'm aware that she has some fairly well-distributed literature to her name, but to claim any "idea" as your own is pretty bold, particularly in an area that's been puzzled and argued over for much of human history. It seems to me either she's vastly overstating her own body of work or Libtertarians are/were doing some truly, painfully obvious plagiarizing to merit such a claim.

vitno• 13 years ago

not at all. Libertarianism can be directly traced back to the theory of Austrian economics and the political theory of Locke.

There are many similarities, but Rand approaches her ideas from a very different angle.

maxharris• 13 years ago

Murray Rothbard wrote this to Ayn Rand in a letter dated October 3, 1957:

"I now come to the painful part of this letter. For standing as I do in awe and wonder at the glory and magnitude of your achievement, knowing from early in the novel that I would have to write you and express in full how much I and the world owe to you...

When I first met you, many years ago, I was a follower of Mises, but unhappy about his antipathy to natural rights, which I “felt” was true but could not demonstrate. You introduced me to the whole field of natural rights and natural law philosophy, which I did not know existed, and month by month, working on my own as I preferred, I learned and studied the glorious natural rights tradition. I also learned from you about the existence of Aristotelian epistemology, and then I studied that, and came to adopt it wholeheartedly. So that I owe you a great intellectual debt for many years, the least of which is introducing me to a tradition of which four years of college and three years of graduate school, to say nothing of other reading, had kept me in ignorance."

mtgx• 13 years ago

So what were actually her arguments, other than just calling libertarians anarchists, her enemies, and mocking them? She just seemed really pissed off at them for whatever reason. But I don't think I saw any real argument in that interview.

This interview also made her seem a lot less smart than Republicans have made her out to be (just based on this interview, I haven't read anything else of hers). She seemed like your average Fox News moderator.

richardjordan2• 13 years ago

She made the argument as a simple point - that they're anarchists and that anarchy begets collectivism.

I think the broader purpose of the post, though, is to point out the irony in folks who think of themselves as Rand acolytes and Libertarians. This is a common position, and I hear it a lot in Silicon Valley/startup circles.

Personally I don't think much of her ideas, I find them simplistic and in some places naive and immature, other places disingenuous. I think many Libertarians suffer similar failings and propose positions that are vastly simplistic in the context of the real world. I know that many smart people I respect disagree with my position, and that's fine, I'm not looking for argument on those points.

So, as a critic of both groups it doesn't bother me to see them lumped together. But it's amusing that Rand wanted nothing to do with that.

phaus3• 13 years ago

I'm not criticizing, but what's a better alternative to the two mainstream political parties we are currently saddled with?

I'm asking because while I don't belong to any political party, there are aspects of libertarianism that do appeal to me, such as dramatically reducing government spending, government waste, government corruption, and actually observing the constitution.

danielhughes• 13 years ago

That was a collection of questions and responses from different sources and times. It wasn't an interview transcript. I made the same mistake as I was reading it and at one point started to wonder why the "interviewer" was asking the same question over and over.

gnosis2• 13 years ago

"So what were actually her arguments, other than just calling libertarians anarchists, her enemies, and mocking them?"

Well, let's see, from the first paragraph:

- She called Libertarianism "a mockery of philosophy and ideology"

- She accused Libertarians of "slinging slogans and trying to ride on two bandwagons"

Later, she accuses them of entertaining "amateur political notions" and "rushing into politics in order to get publicity".

She says that Libertarians

- are based on "half-baked ideas, and in part on borrowed ideas".

- "spend their time denouncing me, while plagiarizing my ideas".

- "are perhaps the worst political group today, because they can do the most harm to capitalism, by making it disreputable."

- would "like to have an amoral political program"

I could go on quoting her, but maybe if you actually read the article yourself you'll see what her "arguments" are.

phaus3• 13 years ago

Most of these statements are so vague that she might as well not have made them. That was his point. The article doesn't give any real insight into her thought process, unless her thought process was indeed as shallow as this collection of interviews makes it out to be, which I doubt.

nollidge2• 13 years ago

Those aren't arguments, they're opinions.

Apocryphon• 13 years ago

None of her statements actually deal with the ideals of libertarianism, just her problems with their movement/party. A pity, I'd like to see how objectivism and libertarianism contrast with each other. Ideological battles are much more entertaining than ad hominems.

nollidge2• 13 years ago

That doesn't really tell you why she hated them, just how vehemently she did.

jlarocco• 13 years ago

No, I think the answer to the first question explains it pretty well.

She saw libertarians as anarchists, and anarchy as a form of collectivism.

IMO, Ayn Rand is like Richard Stallman in a way. A lot of her points are valid, and her intentions were good, but she was so over the top that it turned a lot of people off.

mcantelon• 13 years ago

Ayn Rand, it seems, didn't like that libertarians were concerned in any way with how to provide collective resources. She idealized a lack of concern with others and one role model of hers was a man named William Edward Hickman who killed and dismembered a 12 year old girl.

>“Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should,” she wrote, gushing that Hickman had “no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel ‘other people.’”

http://exiledonline.com/atlas-shrieked-why-ayn-rands-right-w...

Ayn Rand was an eloquent proponent of sociopathy.

SatvikBeri• 13 years ago

Well, the character she modeled was according to her "A Hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me." Rand certainly didn't advocate killing children.

She admired one quality of Hickman's. In some ways this is actually a mature way of viewing the world. People aren't black and white-even supposed heroes like Gandhi had incredible flaws.

That's not to say her philosophy was right or wrong. Rand experienced significant powerlessness and oppression during her childhood, and a lot of her ideas seem to be a reaction to what she saw and felt in Communist Russia. After having the ideals of altruism and collectivism forced on her for several years, it's hardly surprising that she would admire one someone who completely ignored societal rules.

In fact, ordinary people do this all the time. Villains in movies are considered cool. Many Australian icons were basically criminals. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was enormously successful. And so on.

So, it's not really fair to take a few lines out of context and conclude Rand supported sociopathy. Yes, her philosophy was centered around selfishness-but she consistently supported helping others and argued that long term self-interest and long-term societal interest end up in the same place.

gnosis2• 13 years ago

Hickman kidnapped and murdered a twelve-year-old girl, cut her body in half, cut off her arms (possibly while she was still alive), and left her body for her father to find while intentionally leading her father to believe she was still alive.

Don't you find it just a tad bit strange that of all the people in the world, Rand chose to worship and defend this particular man?

It's not like there weren't plenty of individualists throughout history that weren't nearly as sociopathic.

There's more on Rand's worship of Hickman here:

http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/romancing-the-stone-c...

She described Hickman as "born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness -- [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people ... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should."

Isn't that just beautiful?

miked• 13 years ago

Picking Rand at her youthful (23 y.o.) worst seems hardly fair. The young Rand was very much under the influence of (what she took to be) Nietzsche's thought. (Much of Rand at the beginning and end of her life was Rand not at her best, the interview being a good example.)

Defining a lifetime by a single extreme is a game two can play, so let's play it. Ayn Rand was also capable of great caring and benevolence, as when she loaned money to two struggling friends (who never paid her back). See! See! That's who she really was, all else must be ignored! And since Clarence Thomas and Paul Ryan were fans of hers they too are great humanitarians! It's your ad hominem and guilt by association in reverse. Dang, this is fun!

More seriously, do you really think that someone going thru the intimate details of your life couldn't find one thing to damn you with?

>> Ayn Rand was an eloquent proponent of sociopathy.

No, she wasn't. She was an advocate (hardly a perfect one) of human freedom and prosperity. And speaking of sociopathy , that makes her an eternal enemy of every advocate of one form of socialism or another: Adolf Hitler's National Socialist German Workers Party, Slobodan Milosovic's Serbian Socialist Party, Stalin's Bolshevik Socialism, Saddam Hussein's Arabic Ba'ath Socialist Party, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge flavored socialism, Mao Tse Tung's socialism, or New York Times-endorsed Robert Mugabe's socialism ("I am still the Hitler of the time. This Hitler has only one objective, justice for his own people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people, and their right to their resources. If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold.") Etc., etc., bloody etc.

Mao said "Serve The People". Socialists, like the leaders mentioned above, are the people who truly care. Those who oppose them need to get a good dosing of Zyclon B, or at least a Struggle Session or three.

phaus3• 13 years ago

Let's assume her claims about Libertarianism's origins are correct, even though they aren't.

When you publish a book explicitly detailing your philosophy on the way you think the world should work (The Virtue of Selfishness), and people end up adopting parts of your philosophy, you should shut the fuck up, because you got exactly what you asked for when you published it.

I'm a huge fan of Atlas Shrugged, it's one of the 10 best novels I've ever read. I think that society can learn something significant from it. I can't say I'm a fan of it's author, her extremist philosophy, or the cult that was created in her memory.

Why Ayn Rand hated Libertarians

Related Stories