Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical

by Sciabarra, Chris

  As a novelist and lecturer, Rand presented her otherwise integrated perspective in stark terms, which often did violence to the complexities and subtleties of her philosophy. This was perhaps an unavoidable by-product of her popular expositional style. It was an approach that made her famous, and which very much reflected the immoderate tendencies inherent in the Russian literary tradition.

  Rand advocated “a black and white view of the world” since one could not “identify anything as gray, as middle of the road,” without knowing “what is black and what is white, because gray is merely a mixture of the two.”81 While she defined rationality as the basic virtue, she regarded irrationality as the basic vice.82

  In order to understand Rand’s notion of irrationality, it is important to grasp her distinction between an error of knowledge and a breach of morality (Atlas Shrugged, 1059). Rand recognized that people are not infallible or omniscient. A person who makes an error of knowledge may be in full mental focus, but may either lack sufficient information, or make a mistake. Such a person is not irrational. By contrast, a person who breaches morality commits the equivalent of a “cardinal sin,” in Rand’s view, a “sin” that makes all other vices possible. For Rand, the essence of such a breach is willful evasion of the facts of reality.

  Rand recognized that evasion can become habitual in a person’s psycho-epistemology. Such evasions may inevitably contribute to a form of psychological repression that blocks an individual from being aware of certain uncomfortable facts. Though repression is outside the realm of conscious control, and thus, extra-moral, Rand condemned the sustained practice of willful evasion. A person who consciously evades the facts of reality acts against the means of his or her own survival. Such irrationality cannot be practiced with impunity; it must engender consequences that undermine a person’s self-preservation.

  Rand believed in a kind of Gresham’s law of morality. Just as bad money drives out good money, so bad moral principles have a tendency to drive out good ones. She argued that most people internalize a mixture of both rational and irrational premises, but that unless the irrational ones were fully articulated and transcended, people risked poisoning even their good principles (Peikoff 1987T, lecture 6). Knowledge is an integrated totality. To evade one fact is to introduce a contradiction into one’s consciousness, which, if left unchecked, must engender further contradictions, and the ultimate disintegration of one’s cognitive and evaluative mechanisms. Rand compared the process to government intervention in the economy. She argued that unless the irrationality (or intervention) is examined and entirely eliminated, it requires further irrationality (or intervention) in a misbegotten attempt to overturn the deleterious consequences.83 The result is disastrous in both cognitive and social spheres. Ultimately, Rand’s analysis of statism is a radical critique of systemic irrationality.

  Rand argued that rationality, the good, has nothing to gain from irrationality, the evil. Rand believed that evil is impotent because those who engage in sustained evasion cannot realize the potentialities distinctive to human being. Because evil is fundamentally impotent, it can only succeed by the default of those rational and moral people who do not recognize its basic irrationality. In a clear articulation of principles, irrationality is defeated. By obscuring these principles, the irrational gain a certain leverage in social relations they do not naturally possess.84 It is for this reason that Rand rejected any compromise on basic principles of right and wrong.

  This ethical stance had political implications. While Rand viewed “indiscriminate tolerance” and “indiscriminate condemnation” as variants of the same error, she asserted that in an “irrational society,” a rational person must never fail to pronounce moral judgment.85 Any failure to do so would constitute an implicit moral sanction of evil. Since evil is a destructive force, and reason is fundamentally creative, a single appeasement is morally reprehensible and has potentially fatal long-term consequences. Still, a person’s context might determine the appropriateness of a specific moral response; it has been alleged that Rand and many of her followers engaged in endless tirades and denunciations where polite conversation and orderly debate might have been more effective.

  This intolerance was reflected in many of Rand’s positions in the area of situational ethics. Though Rand saw restitution as a means of earning forgiveness of a moral breach (Peikoff 1991b, 289), her uncompromising view of the world left little room for moral reform. And while Rand did not deny the legitimacy of charity as a means of helping those who were unfortunate victims of circumstance, she most certainly did not give enough attention to the issue of private, voluntary assistance in human affairs. Typically, Objectivists would answer those who inquired about the plight of the poor and the handicapped, with a flippant, “If you want to help them, we will not stop you.”86

  These flashes of insensitivity cannot be taken completely out of context. In Rand’s opinion, the institutional poor were a consequence of statist economy. Peikoff (1987bT, questions, period 1) argues too that if people were to let orphans starve in a genuinely free society, they would be so malevolent and corrupt that freedom could not last for any length of time. Indeed, voluntary, mutual aid has survival value (N. Branden 1983b, 225n). Rand recognized that a rational individual never forgets the fact that life is the source of value, that there is “a common bond among living beings,” and that other individuals are potentially capable of achieving the same virtues of character.87

  While Rand’s situational ethics are tempered by enlightened self-interest, the evidence suggests that in her own personal relationships, she was a fervent moralizer. This “religious” streak in Rand’s approach has been noted variously by a number of commentators.88 Nathaniel Branden argues that Rand exhibited a kind of “Manichaeism.”89 Manichaean thought is inherently dualistic. Paul Thomas (1980) explains that the Manichaeans saw good and evil as “two independent, co-equal principles, so that evil as evil is required if the good is to establish itself” (384n).

  Strictly speaking, Rand was not a Manichaean. Rand did not posit a radical separation of good and evil precisely because evil is not coequal with good. She defined evil negatively, as rooted in a revolt against rationality. Evil has no power without the sanction of good. It cannot exist on its own, and depends upon the default of the good for its sustenance. Evil can only destroy, it cannot create. It requires that others create before it can expropriate their values. Good does not require the presence of evil, but evil is a parasite on the moral host. Rand skewed the relationship in terms of the good and the rational, not in terms of their negations.90

  And yet it is entirely possible that Rand did integrate elements of the Manichaen perspective into her psychology. As a child of Russia’s Silver Age, Rand may have inherited the Symbolists’ belief in the polarity of good and evil. Merezhkovsky had in fact endorsed a Manichaean view, and even the dogmatic communists saw the world in terms of a ruthless, apocalyptic struggle between polar opposites.91 Rand’s intolerance echoes these immoderate Russian tendencies. If anything, this suggests that it is not possible to escape the limitations of one’s past completely or remake oneself entirely. In Rand’s struggle against dualism, she may have retained aspects of a Manichaean worldview in her own psychology. But in speculating so freely on the roots of Rand’s alleged moralizing, I risk committing an equally dangerous psychologistic error. The more important question is whether such intolerance is endemic to any totalistic philosophy.

  It is apparent, however, that the history of the organized Objectivist movement is replete with stories of “authoritarianism in the name of reason.” Those “students of Objectivism” who displayed “inappropriate” behavior were condemned for having committed “an offense against an abstraction called ‘morality’” (N. Branden [1969] 1979, 246 n. 48). Nathaniel Branden admits to having fueled such intolerance. In later years, he recognized that this use of moralistic judgment only obscured an understanding of a person’s specific circumstances and context. As a psychologist, Bran
den (1987) sees human beings engaged in a struggle for adaptation and self-preservation: “Even if the path we choose is mistaken, even if objectively we are engaged in self-destruction, subjectively at some level we are trying to take care of ourselves—as in the case of a suicide who seeks escape from intolerable pain” (79).

  For Branden (1973), neurotic behavior can be understood as an individual’s attempt to protect his self-esteem and to ensure his own “survival by self-destructive (reality-avoiding) means” (8). But there is a subtle distinction here between psychological and ethical egoism. Psychologically, every action seems to embody self-interested motivation subjectively defined. Ethically, however, the achievement of values that are objectively and rationally selfish frequently requires a dedicated, personal struggle of momentous proportions.92 Psychology and the therapeutic process provide an individual with a technology that facilitates the practice of virtue and the actualization of value (N. Branden 1982T).

  Branden is not the only post-Randian theorist to grapple with moralism. Peikoff himself has argued that moralizing is a product of rationalism. As we have seen, rationalism begins with a list of intrinsic truths. Ethically, the rationalist applies these dogmatic principles with authoritarian ruthlessness. Peikoff explains that in “rationalist” interpretations of Objectivism, there is a one-sided emphasis on a “morality” abstracted from the context and concrete circumstances that give it meaning. The rationalist tends to be as severe on himself as he is on others.93

  As the post-Randian theorists move away from the premise that they are bearers of holy truth, they move toward a kinder, gentler Objectivism. The essence of Rand’s ethos lies not in her alleged moralizing, but in her ecstatic vision of extraordinary human creativity. This normative vision cannot be fully understood if removed from the broad social context that gives it existential meaning. While Rand believed that it was possible to live a rational life in an irrational society, her ethical theory beckons toward a polity that makes the practice of virtue fully efficacious.

  10

  A LIBERTARIAN POLITICS

  In this chapter I examine Rand’s libertarian politics as an outgrowth of her ontology, epistemology, and ethics, the culminating moment of a nondualistic philosophical totality. She aimed to transcend the polarities between anarchism and statism, atomistic individualism and organic collectivism. She defended laissez-faire capitalism as the only social formation consonant with fully integrated human being. Most important, she stressed an inextricable link between the personal and the political.

  In my characterization of Rand as a libertarian thinker, I am using this word somewhat broadly. “Libertarianism” is a twentieth-century political ideology that carries on the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century classical liberal legacy. Its adherents advocate free-market capitalism and the rule of law, and they oppose statism and collectivism. They include individual-rights advocates such as Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Tibor Machan, Douglas Den Uyl, and Douglas Rasmussen, but also those who depart from the rights perspective, such as Ludwig von Mises, F A. Hayek, and Milton Friedman. It is incorrect to view these thinkers as constituting a monolith, since there are significant differences between and among them. Though Rand praised Mises, for instance, she frequently derided others in the libertarian tradition for their lack of purity, or their inconsistency.1 In fact, she despised the word “libertarianism,” and often identified it with those who advocated “anarcho-capitalism.” She characterized these individualist anarchists as “hippies of the right.”2 Her critique of anarchism was a crucial component of her own nondualistic defense of the free market.

  And yet despite her protestations, Rand’s politics is essentially libertarian. Her defense of individual rights, limited government, and laissez-faire capitalism constituted an invaluable contribution to the reemergence of classical liberal ideology in the twentieth century. Even though her approach is broader than most of her free-market contemporaries, it is fully within the libertarian tradition.

  THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY

  In stressing the ontological priority of individuals, the centrality of reason, and the necessity of ethical egoism, Rand provided the philosophical foundation for her defense of capitalism. Just as we achieve psychological visibility and an expanded awareness of self in our interactions with other human beings, so too, can we best actualize our unique potentialities in a social context. But for Rand, the full development of human capacities requires a specific social context. A social system must be consistent with our species identity and with the requirements of human survival.

  While Rand acknowledged the sociality of human being, much of her politics is designed to clarify the very meaning of the concept “social.” Throughout her writings, it is possible to find vastly different connotations attached to it. At times, Rand exhibited an almost knee-jerk reaction against the very notion that we have a “social” nature. From her earliest journal entries, she questioned whether human beings are born “social,” and whether they must remain so. She asked: “If man started as a social animal—isn’t all progress and civilization to be directed to making him an individual?”3 In later years, her polemical tracts insist that “there is no such entity as ‘society,’” and that “society” is merely “a number of individual men.”4 And although she most emphatically rejected solipsism, she denied on one occasion that human beings are social animals. Society as such does not make us distinctly human, since it is possible to find communal living even among apes (N. Branden 1967T, lecture 13). Rand argued instead that the human being “is a contractual animal,” who must plan long-range, make choices, and trade with other individuals on the basis of reliable voluntary agreements.5

  Abstracted from the totality of Rand’s works, these statements reek of reification. Indeed, by characterizing a human being as a “contractual” animal, Rand conjured up images of vulgar, “economic man” as a transhistorical constant. And yet Rand never ceased to criticize society and social institutions. From a purely methodological vantage point, Rand clearly believed that the concept of the “social” was a legitimate abstraction. Rand saw “society” as a relational concept, as peoples’ “relations to each other … men in relation to men.”6 In such a relational construction, Rand committed neither the fallacy of composition nor division. In composition, we discover a fact that is true of a part, and mistakenly conclude that it is also true of the whole as the whole.7 Division, by contrast, applies what is true of the whole to each of its individual constituents taken separately (Peikoff 1974T, lecture 3). Objectivism recognizes that both the part and the whole have analytical integrity within a specifically defined context. In Rand’s view:

  You are permitted to regard as an entity, for purposes of study, a collection of human beings such as a society, but you are not permitted then to say that metaphysically it is an organism, tied together by some ineffable means. You cannot say it is anything other than a group of a certain kind of entities, living beings, and you regard them as one entity only from a certain aspect. (“Appendix,” 272)

  Thus, for Rand, society has no autonomous existence apart from the individuals who compose it.8 By stressing the ontological priority of individuals, Rand rejected the metaphysical basis of organic collectivism.

  Rand’s opposition to organic collectivism was a by-product of her Russian youth. In its thrust toward dialectical synthesis, the history of Russian philosophy centered on the conflict between the individual and society. But in contrast to the Western-Hobbesian view that people must be forced into a social whole to avoid the war of all against all, most Russian thinkers resolved the conflict through mysticism. Nearly every major Russian philosopher, from Solovyov to Lossky, embraced the theme of sobornost’. This Russian concept accommodated the interests of the individual and of the collective through a mystical conciliarity. In their unity, each person was both the source and product of the whole. Each person reflected the organic social whole while being an inseparable constituent of it. This union was typically achieved
through an ineffable, mystical process. Many Russian Marxists absorbed the collectivistic thrust of sobornost’, and sought to achieve unity through the coercive power of the state.

  It is within this context that we can understand Rand’s hostility toward most things “social.” Outside of its analytical usefulness, the “social” became a euphemism for the subordination of the individual, the dissolving of the unique human personality into an undifferentiated mass. In all of Rand’s early writings, there is a sustained attack against this social determinism, whether of a religious or secular variety. By the 1940s and 1950s, Rand was swimming against the currents of modern Western sociology. She had unabashedly rejected what Dennis Wrong would call the “oversocialized conception of man.”

  Wrong’s famous essay scolded contemporary sociologists for their “one-sided” view of man as a “disembodied, conscience-driven, status-seeking phantom.” Most sociologists projected an image of human beings as fully pliable, disciplined automatons whose chief goal was conformity and stability. Wrong (1961, 183, 190) argued that sociology had merely replaced one dualistic view of human being with another. In place of the hedonic, utilitarian calculus of bourgeois, economic man, sociology had created another undialectical, one-dimensional, “reified abstraction.” For Wrong, human sociality did not mean that human beings were entirely the product of socialization.