Can someone explain Ayn Rand to me?!

I don't think Chomsky is a good comparison. I also dislike Chomsky's writing and think he's very obscurantist. He hashes his shit around to make it assume more relevance that it really has, and uses big words to make it sound like better ideas than it really is. If he could start from a solid, basic thesis, and also write it well, I would like him more. I like him best when he's interviewed by other people. The way he hashes shit around, I think you could call it facile, and also call Scientology and Objectivism facile, but I wouldn't call it dogmatic.

Ayn Rand's Objectivism is a facile, rationalizing cover for market-Nazism. Wealth-supremacy would also be a good term for it. The basic idea is that wealth should be the basic measure of everything, and all culture and politics should be oriented towards getting wealth and controlled by the wealthy. Ignoring of course, that there's a such thing as a cost of living, and that there can be no egalitarianism without a level playing field for how people make their living. Objectivism pretends that there's no such thing as coercion in the labor market, so all wealth distribution is meritocratic. It pretends to be egalitarian through "free trade."

For an example if how ridiculous that is, Ayn Rand supported child factory labor by saying "at least they aren't dead" and that laissez-faire capitalism gives people freedom by raising living standards, as if there wasn't such a thing as the Great Depression. She also hated there being a minimum wage. I wouldn't be surprised if she hated that there was such a thing as weekends, overtime, and retirement, too.

I think it's kind of wierd someone said she disliked homosexuals. That doesn't seem to fit because Objectivism calls itself "libertarian." (A perversion of classic libertarianism of course because it's anti-egalitarian- it means total liberty for how wealthy people spend their money, like child sex should be legal just because people want to buy it.) Also, on the "objectivism dating service" thread, someone said she was really into kinky sex.

Finally, while I regret making any assumptions--in this case, assuming what you would be annoyed about--it seems to me that you were doing quite a bit of assuming yourself, including that little tossed off line about me having a guru or not. I'm glad you confess to being lowbrow anyway. It's a lot more fun down here, as you well know.

Transcription from a TV interview on 25 Nov 1992

JOHN PILGER: And yet you’re often described as an extremist
CHOMSKY: Sure. I am an extremist. Because a ‘moderate’ is anyone who supports western power, and an extremist is anyone who objects to them.

admittedly, it drives you up the wall that I did that.

Apparently, you enjoy "driving (certain) people up the wall", or at least imagining that you do. Maybe it's just because I don't see legions of Chomskyites all over the 'net - it's just not the same author / audience relationship, and I don't find your characterization convincing. If you pursue your thinking to its logical conclusion, than anyone who closely follows a prominent thinker is "dogmatic". It just seems like an anti-intellectual argument at its core.

And as for the legions of Rand-ites and Hubbard-ites on the 'net, I don't ever and have never seen them. I didn't run into them in undergrad or grad school either, but I sure as shit knew a lot of people who were familiar with Chomsky. So if it's merely my experience that is guiding my perspective on this, I apologize. I'm sure there are a lot of Objectivists and Scientologists on the Internet but I have not ever run into one.

As for what I enjoy doing or imagining what I enjoy doing, I thought we were going to stop making assumptions. Whatever.

Obviously because everyone around here is so much smarter than me, I've lost the argument, and I must resort to desperation in order to preserve my precious dignity. After all, Chomsky isn't anything like Ayn Rand. He's not extreme in any way, there is not even the slightest amount of dogma to anything he does, none of his followers are dogmatic in any way, and if I didn't have massive self esteem problems I wouldn't end up playing the house asshole on every political thread that I have time to participate in. Sucks to be me.

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"Best Books...chosen by Chuck Klosterman"

ATLAS SHRUGGED - "People who are intellectual (but not necessarily smart) constantly insist that Rand's philosophy is simplistic and flawed, and maybe it is; no philosophy is perfect. But she makes more sense than anyone else I've ever experienced. If you disagree with Atlas Shrugged, it basically means you disagree with the concept of 'being great.'"

That is fucking hilarious Eisbar.

Also, did anyone see that Ayn Rand movie on Showtime (I think it was Showtime)? I saw parts of it, but only because I love Helen Mirren.

So, while there certainly is a crazy component to the Cult Of Rand, it's very easy to scoff at its ideas when you come at them from a position of privilege.

No, just sarcasm, Don, and it does nothing for your dignity.

Most of the people I consider 'great' don't have the capitalist/materialist worldly whatsits - money, power, fame, etc. - that Randian Libertarians/neo-cons seem to be so wowed by.

rand's "cult," on the other hand, seems to have been inspired by her writings and her personality. her philosophy has a sort of "my way or the highway" mindset built into it. as with chomsky, that isn't bad in itself -- except that rand purports that her philosophical system is both internally consistent and complete. it's all Torah and no Talmud, if you will, with no room built in for clarification or modification of the basic text -- no toleration for hermeneutics, at least as far as miss rand and her most devout followers were concerned. additionally, miss rand and her coterie ("the collective," they called themselves -- apparently, randism doesn't totally sap its adherents' senses of humor) were notoriously fond of excommunicating people, essentially for not seeing things the way miss rand did (or, at least wr2 one very famous randian dust-up, b/c the guy she was fucking was fucking another woman on the side!) whatever else one can say about chomsky, i simply don't see either the same close-mindedness or willingness to excommunicate coming directly from him (some of the more fanatical of his supporters, that may be a different story).

"Personally, I’m not a committed pacifist, so I think that, yes, [violence] can sometimes be justified."

Chomsky quote here; this is a sentiment he's expressed elsewhere as well. He qualifies it heavily, so not sure if this makes him "extreme" necessarily. (Even without knowing the context, I'd guess that the "I'm an extremist" quote Don referenced upthread was ironic - Chomsky labelling himself with others' terminology.)

x-post w/ Tad

"Semantics" or whatever aside, I don't think it's a hugely controversial thing to claim that Chomsky has many, MANY uncritical devotees on the left, and that these attitudes are not only a hindrance to accomplishing anything but also contrary to Chomsky's anarcho-whatever ultra-critical politics.

Markelby, if I had any damn dignity I wouldn't be spending this much time chasing my tail.

Andrew - I don't really think it was a great quote, to be perfectly honest. But I found it within about ten seconds of Googling and don't really feel like going to better sources i.e. Lexis to get more appropriate comments. Perhaps Chomsky isn't an "extremist", but he's certainly in the far part of the left; there really aren't that many avowed pacifists around anymore, so in that he seems a bit on the extreme. It would be fun to spend a day Googling and Lexis-ing Chomsky just to find a bunch of radical type of quotes to post but it's really beside the larger point anyway.

And Eisbar, despite me mouthing off to you in the past (sorry about that, I was a dickhead) you have put my original quote into perfect context. Not that you necessarily tried or wanted to, but thanks for making my case.

The idea of "strong" Will as a determining force in human society is for the egotistical and iniquitous.

Hi Don, that was me, not Andrew. Anyway, the point wasn't to contradict, just qualify; I don't think Chomsky would have a problem with "far left" (I distinctly remember him labelling himself a "conservative"(!!) once but didn't follow up on what his idiosyncratic def. might be).

in general he's usually pretty dismissive of protests etc. as cute but ill-informed and not that effective too, harbors no pro-direct-action stance w/r/t the anti-glob protests, etc.

Fuckers.

Just because someone you know who wasn't privileged, who latched onto it and then succeeded- isn't relevant to the truth of Ayn Rand's stuff any more than being born-again christian, scientologist, or Moonie would be to those ideas.

The vast majority of ILXors who are criticizing Ayn Rand on this thread are exactly the same set of people she posits will/should control the world. It is really easy to say, "This isn't right, life shouldn't work that way" when you are doing so from a position of power and/or privilege. My father was inspired by the idea of a meritocracy, which is really what Ayn Rand's philosophy boils down to (an evil, heartless, untenable meritocracy with several glaring caveats, but nevertheless the core of the philosophy is that people who are successful deserve the greatest rewards) at a time when the world around him was going through a severe upheaval; we're talking about a man who remembers being made to switch to the back of the train car when going to down to visit relatives in Alabama, a man who as a boy won the right to go on a trip to a conference to DC, only to be told once he got there that he wasn't allowed to actually go inside and eat with all of the white kids, someone who saw first-hand the Civil Rights movement unfold and the attendant opening of possibilities that came with it. We're talking about a startlingly intelligent man with a strong work ethic and an aptitude of inorganic chemistry who grew up in a world that told him over and over that he would ever only be allowed to go so far because of the color of his skin.

Explain how a meritocracy theory wouldn't be like a lightning bolt of realization to this man, however flawed the source is.

i hear what yer saying, dan, though i really don't feel very much like an "elite." i certainly don't live like one.

I think you're missing the point that aside from being self-congratulatory and fundamentally impossible, Rand's dogma basically boils down to "don't give up on your dreams." You're making it out like she's totally evil.

Also, I think it's not in support of born privilege. (That's one thing that makes it impossible.) The heroes in Atlas Shrugged are born in rich, powerful families but they sneak out in summers and work at really basic entry-level jobs instead of the cushy opportunities they're offered because they want to work their own way up (and of course they do). That might have been impossible had they not been born into the families that owned the companies, and it certainly doesn't happen that way in the real world, but she *wanted* a pure meritocracy. She said, however, that one already existed, people just didn't try hard enough in it. That's what makes Objectivists think her philosophy IS egalitarian (we could certainly argue that, but my point is she's not evil!).

That doesn't address your actual question, Dan can address that one because I'm fairly sure I count as privileged.

Dan I appreciate how a person can be attached to something that inspires them. Your father sounds like he deserves success. Still don't see how there should be any problem with criticising Ayn Rand any more than if you said your father was a born again christian, scientologist, or moonie.

Religion gave a lot of inspiration to the civil rights movement too. That's OK with me, but I think what was important is the people in the movement and not the church, pope or other symbols. Those I scoff at, people who preach to me I scoff at, because I don't like religion, but people who try to lead by example are usually OK with me. I don't know if that sounds callous or not, but just consider what else religion has inspired. Consider how in the middle of an AIDS epidemic in Africa, religious leaders are at the front of the people banning safe sex from being promoted, and the heads of state say they will enforce the pope's teaching of abstinence while millions of people die. Following that example consider Ayn Rand's advocacy of child labor. Should religion get respect? I don't think so. I might be wrong about that because it is only something that's tought and people have a choice about believing it. I don't think Ayn Rand should either, but I'm more sure of that. Even leading by Ayn Rand's example and not preaching it puts you among people who exploit others.

Oh yeah, and about the majority of people on this thread criticising Ayn Rand, being "privileged" a) how do you know b) I know people in the arts and writers, like many people on this forum, have a hard time staying employed c) why can't you be privileged and criticise things that are wrong?

Aside from having education and sometimes, but not always, a roof over my head, I don't have this privilege you speak of, I sure don't own a bit of the capital that Ayn Rand's fake meritocracy is based on.

then again, rand (as with so many other rationalists) ended up veering sharply into "natural law" concepts (i.e., what bentham rightly called "nonsense on stilts.") hence, the particularly strident dogmatism of rand and her most devout followers. which is why in the end i'm an empiricist (and a very cynical one at that -- WHO IN THIS BITCH LIKES HUME?!?) and oh yeah, to tie this in with someone else being bashed herein -- chomsky is also a rationalist.

i fear i'm not making any sense.

Ie. a half-baked pseudo-philosopher who ventures into "the novel form" without the slightest regard for the several types of ambiguity which fiction requires, viewing it only as a vehicle for (ahem) "ideas"?

In which case "the novel" turns on its author and exposes her presumptions more efficiently than any analysis of her "philosophy" ever could.

Science is a method of gaining knowledge by systematically studying things that actually exist and have real effects. The notion that someone's health can be affected by the prayers or wishes of strangers is based on nothing but imagination and faith. Such blind belief represents the rejection of reason and science, and is not worthy of serious, rational consideration. What's next? A study of the medical effects of blowing out birthday candles?

Every minute these doctors spend conducting this sort of faith-based study is one minute less spent on reality-based research--research that actually has hope of leading to real medical cures.

Dr. Yaron Brook
Ayn Rand Institute Executive Director
Irvine, CA