ObjectiBlog: Libertarianism, Politics and Objectivism

The Six Million Dollar Rand: Review of 100 Voices

2012-02-12T06:51:00.000-08:00

My review of 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, will appear in the December 2011 issue of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies.

Walter Block: Rothbard, Rand, Mises and Me

2011-11-11T05:26:00.000-08:00

A recent talk by Dr. Walter Block at the Von Mises Institute.

Ayn Rand and Evolution

2011-06-05T05:06:00.000-07:00

Note: An Essay from 2005

Introduction

As I argued in my essay “Ayn Rand, Objectivism, and Religion”,[1] Objectivism is a version of secular humanism. Ayn Rand accepts the atheism and naturalism of most secular humanist thought. While secular humanists are highly supportive of evolution, Rand stated that she was “neither its supporter nor opponent” and was for the most part silent on the issue. Her one-time associate Nathaniel Branden states in his well-known essay The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand:

I remember being astonished to hear her say one day, "After all, the theory of evolution is only a hypothesis." I asked her, "You mean you seriously doubt that more complex life forms — including humans — evolved from less complex life forms?" She shrugged and responded, "I'm really not prepared to say," or words to that effect. I do not mean to imply that she wanted to substitute for the theory of evolution the religious belief that we are all God's creation; but there was definitely something about the concept of evolution that made her uncomfortable.[2]

Rand discusses evolution a few times, but never mentioned Charles Darwin. Two major summaries of Rand’s thought, The Ayn Rand Lexicon and Leonard Peikoff’s Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, are silent. This essay will review some of Rand’s references to evolution and suggest reasons for Rand’s apparent hesitancy. A brief discussion of Rand’s view of human nature is first required.

Human Nature

Ayn Rand believed that human nature is fixed. What separates men from animals is their rationality. Although man is a physical entity, his mind cannot be reduced entirely to his brain or body.

Based on a review of her mature philosophy as expressed in Atlas Shrugged and her essays, Rand rejects the idea that man has innate instincts or drives.[3] In “Galt Speaks,” Rand defines “instinct” as “an unerring and automatic form of knowledge.” (Rand, For the New Intellectual, pp. 121-22.) Needless to say, she repeatedly rejected any automatic form of knowledge. She concedes that there is a “desire to live,” but asserts that it is not “automatic.” (p. 122.) She explicitly denies that man has a tendency to evil. (p. 137; see also p. 21.)[4] On the other hand, she likely rejected the concept that man has a tendency to good. And, it is important to realize, in spite of Rand’s optimistic view of human nature, her judgment on history was for the most part negative.

In her important discussion of the “Witch Doctor” and “Attila” in For the New Intellectual, Rand carefully avoids the using the word “instinct” to describe the values and actions of these two archetypes. In spite of their differences, they are both motivated by “feelings” and “whims.” (p. 19.) Rand’s rejection of instincts appears twofold. First, she is concerned that instincts, if they existed, would constitute an alternative (and potentially irrational) source of knowledge. Just as she destroyed the Witch Doctor’s epistemology by refuting all forms of mysticism, she had to destroy Attila’s epistemology. Second, instincts (which are often considered irrational drives) conflict with her concept of the “heroic man.”

Although Rand rejects the idea that man has instincts, she denies that man’s nature is completely fluid.

Man is born with an emotional mechanism, just as he is born with a cognitive mechanism; but, at birth, both are “tabula rasa.” It is man’s cognitive faculty, his mind, that determines the content of both. Man’s emotional mechanism is like an electronic computer, which his mind has to program—and the programming consists of the values his mind chooses. (Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 28.)

In “Racism,” Rand rejects the contention that a person’s character or intelligence is inherited or produced by his “internal body chemistry.” (p. 126.)

Randian man is in a unique position. Although he shares similarities with animals, he is set apart from them by his reason. One should keep in mind Rand’s frequent quotation of Bacon’s dictum: “Nature to be commanded, must be obeyed.” Man is part of nature, but in some sense transcends it. This leads to the question: how can man transcend nature if he is the product of millions of years of biological evolution?

“The Missing Link”

Rand mentioned evolution a few in her journals. She writes in 1945: “Perhaps we are really in the process of evolving from apes to Supermen—and the rational faculty is the dominant characteristic of the better species, the Superman.” (Harriman, ed., Journals of Ayn Rand, p. 285.) In her notes for Atlas Shrugged in 1946, she writes:

The supposition of man’s physical descent from monkeys does not necessarily mean that man’s soul, the rational faculty, is only an elaboration of an animal faculty, different from the animal’s consciousness only in degree, not in kind.” (pp. 465-466.)

Her most interesting comment on the implications of evolution may be the following, also from her notes for Atlas Shrugged:

We may still be in evolution, as a species, and living side by side with some “missing links.” [. . .] We do not know to what extent the majority of men are now rational. (They are certainly far from the perfect rational being, and all the teachings they absorb put them still farther back to the pre-human stage.) . . . . (Most men are rational beings, even if none too smart; they are not pre-humans incapable of rational thinking; they can be dealt with only on the basis of free rational, consent.) (p. 466-67.)[5]

She goes on the same entry to describe those incapable of rational life as “sub-human” who need to be “enslaved” and “controlled.” (p. 467.)

Rand discusses evolution twice in For the New Intellectual, published in 1961. In her discussion of Attila and the Witch Doctor, she states: “If a missing link between the human and the animal species is to be found, Attila and the Witch Doctor are that missing link—the profiteers on men’s default.” (pp. 21-22.) The second mention of evolution is in the discussion of Herbert Spencer’s philosophy, in which she makes clear her opposition to Spencer’s use of evolution as the organizing principle of philosophy. (p. 37.)

Rand’s most detailed published discussion of evolution is in her 1973 article entitled “The Missing Link,” which is reprinted in Philosophy: Who Needs It? Rand discusses the anti-conceptual mentality. Readers should keep in mind that Rand denies that animals think conceptually. In a passage that is somewhat hard to understand, she states:

I am not a student of the theory of evolution and, therefore, I am neither its supporter nor its opponent. But a certain hypothesis has haunted me for years; I want to stress that it is only hypothesis. There is an enormous breach of continuity between nature and man’s consciousness, in its distinctive characteristic: his conceptual faculty. It is as if, after aeons of physiological development, the evolutionary process altered its course, and the higher stages of development focused primarily on the consciousness of living species, not their bodies. But the development of a man’s consciousness is volitional: no matter what the innate degree of intelligence he must develop it, he must learn how to use it, he must become human by choice. What if he does not choose to? Then he becomes a transitional phenomenon—a desperate creature that struggles frantically against his own nature, longing for effortless “safety” of an animal’s consciousness, which he cannot recapture, and rebelling against a human consciousness, which he is afraid to achieve. (Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It?, p. 45.)

Although Rand presents this hypothesis tentatively, it appears that she places man himself as an agent of evolution along side the “evolutionary process.” Evolution took a different course because man chose to think “conceptually.” I take this passage to mean that Rand’s hypothesis consists of the following: (1) the evolutionary process was first focused on the development of animals’ bodies; (2) the evolutionary process then focused on animals’ consciousness; (3) man (or some version of him) had a body like ours, but a non-conceptual consciousness; and (4) finally, some men chose to think conceptually, thus completing the creation of man. What is must curious about Rand’s hypothesis is her statement that it has “haunted” her “for years.” One wonders if what haunted Rand is the implication of her theory (which she made explicit in her journals) that at least some non-rational human beings are literally sub-human.

Rand’s sentiments concerning evolution have an echo in her frequent statements in her essays that equate non-rational men to animals. It is striking how often Rand compares irrational people to non-human animals. Two examples must suffice:

Man cannot survive as anything but man. He can abandon his means of survival, his mind, he can turn himself into a subhuman creature. (Rand, The Virtue Of Selfishness, p. 24.)

To an animal, whatever strikes his awareness is an absolute that corresponds to reality. . . . And this is the Witch Doctor’s epistemological ideal, the most of consciousness he strives to induce in himself. (Rand, For the New Intellectual, p. 17.)

Professor Eric Mack notes that in a recent popular presentation of Objectivist ethics, parasitic people are described as literally dead. (Mack, “Problematic Arguments in Randian Ethics”, Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Vol 5., No. 1, p. 24.)[6]

Keeping in mind Branden’s point that Rand did not wish to replace evolution with creationism, it is nonetheless interesting to note that Rand’s view of the uniqueness of man (given the gulf that separates man and other animals) has a certain resemblance to anti-Darwinian religious thought. G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) wrote:

Most philosophers have the enlightenment to add that a third mystery attaches to the origin of man himself. In other words, a third bridge was built across a third abyss of the unthinkable when there came into the world what we call reason and what call will. Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution. (Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, p. 26.)

Rand likely would have agreed with Chesterton’s phrase “man is not merely an evolution but a revolution.”

Why Rand’s Hesitation About Evolution?

Rand’s hesitation about evolution calls for an explanation. As Rand must have been aware, many religious conservatives (who were a frequent target of hers) reject evolution. There are a few possibilities for this hesitation.

First, evolution is generally seen as a deterministic and ultimately hostile to free will. (Machan, Ayn Rand, pp. 142-43.) For example, evolutionist Ernest Haeckel (1834-1919) asserted that free will had to be rejected along with other “cherished ideas” such as human immortality and a personal god. (Schwarz, Creation, p. 7.) Even before the advent of Darwinian evolution, materialists from Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) forward often rejected free will.

Second, if biological evolution is true, then many areas of philosophy might need to be reexamined. For example, how can man have a qualitatively different value from animals if is every bit a part of nature as animals? Interestingly, a standard argument of religious conservatives against evolution is similar. God created man as the center of creation and reducing him to a part of the material universe on a similar plane as animals is condescending. The relationship between the brain and thought becomes more problematic in a Darwinian universe. Darwin wrote in his notebooks, “Why is thought, being a secretion of the brain, more wonderful than gravity, a property of matter.” (Jaki, Angels, Apes, and Men, p. 52.) In what sense can human nature be taken as fundamental to morality if man is exclusively part of the material work? One of La Mettrie’s (1709-1751) followers was the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) who argued that “If human passions are mere physiological itches, man’s proverbial dignity is a fraud, and there is nothing—not even our normal revulsion against rape and torture—to stand in the way of treating other human beings as sex tools. From the materialistic perspective, nothing can be entirely unnatural.” (Fleming, The Morality of Everyday Life, p. 107.)

Third, Rand may have been fearful of creating a biological or secular equivalent to original sin. Rand’s opposition to original sin is well known, but her opposition to original sin would apply to any argument that proposes a biological weakness in man’s will. A full recognition of man’s biological and psychological drives might lead to a pessimistic view of human nature. Indeed, many scholars have see parallels between original sin and Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic doctrines. According to intellectual historian Richard Webster, Freud employed biological evolution in developing a secularized version of original sin:

Freud genuinely believed that, by invoking evolutionary biology in the manner that he did, he was using science to sweep away superstition and introduce a new view of human nature. His real achievement in creating psychoanalysis, however, was to hide superstition beneath the rhetoric of reason, and by doing this succeed in reintroducing a very old view of human nature. By portraying the unconscious or the ‘id’ as a seething mass of unclean impulses, and seeing men and women as driven by dark sexual and sadistic impulses and a secret love of excrement which was associated with a compulsion to hoard money, Freud in effect recreated Swift’s Christian vision of “unregenerate man” as a Yahoo. By casting his intense moral vision in an ostensibly technical form he had, it would seem, succeeded in reinventing for a modern scientific age the traditional Christian doctrine of Original Sin.[7]

Fourth, it is also possible that Rand may have believed that biological evolution did not present any problems for Objectivism, but hoped that followers more knowledgeable in biology would resolve whatever tensions exist.

Conclusion

As Tibor Machan notes, the topic of “how evolutionary biology could be made compatible with free will and morality” is “missing from [Rand’s] works.” (Machan, Ayn Rand, p. 143.) It is hoped that this brief essay will encourage others to take up this topic and fill this lacunae in Rand’s thought.

[1] http://www.solohq.com/Articles/Parille/Ayn_Rand,_Objectivism,_and_Religion_(Part_1_of_4).shtml

[2] http://www.nathanielbranden.net/ayn/ayn03.html

[3] However, in her journal entries written before her mature philosophical works, she at times finds an instinctual basis for certain behaviors. See Journals at pp. 285 and 303.

[4] In her article “The Comprachicos” (published in The New Left), Rand repeatedly emphasizes that the various skills that a child develops are not innate.

[5] The bracket are those of the Journals’ editor.

[6] The book in question is Loving Life (2002) by Craig Biddle.

[7] http://www.richardwebster.net/freudsatanandtheserpent.html

Was Ayn Rand a Conservative?

2011-05-28T06:09:00.001-07:00

Note: A 2005 Essay from Rebirth of Reason

Introduction

Some years ago I consulted a biographical dictionary for information on Ayn Rand. The dictionary described Rand as a “conservative.” Rand, as we know, did not consider herself a conservative. She called herself a “radical for capitalism.” In addition, many of her views were contrary to those of mainstream conservatism. She was an atheist and a fierce critic of religion. She advocated abortion on demand and refused to support Ronald Reagan because of his ties to the religious right. (Letters of Ayn Rand, p. 666) Nor can one forget that National Review rejected Rand in 1957 with Whittaker Chambers’ scathing review of Atlas Shrugged, entitled “Big Sister is Watching You.” To Chambers, Objectivism was just another variation of atheistic materialism.

At the same time, the occasional references to Rand as a conservative call for explanation. As I hope to show, while the term “conservative” is inappropriate for Rand, her similarities to conservatism should not be ignored either. There is a broad “conservative ethos” which pervades Rand’s writings, particularly when read in the context of the Cold War and the 1960s.

Ayn Rand’s “Conservatism”

The idea that Rand was a conservative probably results from a focus on her advocacy of capitalism in isolation from the rest of her thought. Certainly, belief in free enterprise is a staple of most conservatives' thought, even if they don’t advocate consistent laissez-faire. In addition, Rand supported free enterprise because she believed in rational self-interest. She also thought that the individual pursuit of self-interest would lead to social and economic improvement. This theme (which goes back to thinkers such as Adam Smith) has echoes in conservative thought, with its opposition to a centrally planned economy. In addition to supporting free enterprise, Rand was staunchly opposed to communism, socialism, and the Soviet Union. During the charged days of the Cold War, anyone denouncing communism would likely be called conservative.

Another reason Rand might be considered a conservative is that some of her views on moral theory and individual moral issues also find echoes in conservative thought. Rand advocated moral absolutes and rejected cultural relativism. In spite of her irreligion and her contempt for supernatural ethics, many of her views were fairly conventional. She opposed homosexuality, considering it “immoral” and “disgusting.” She famously stated that a rational woman would not want to be president since “the essence of femininity is hero worship—the desire to look up to a man.” (The Voice of Reason, p. 268) And, say what you will about Rand’s affair with Nathaniel Branden, she was not a “libertine” in her private life.

It is also interesting to observe how Rand allies herself with the middle class in opposition to the intellectuals and the “counter culture.” In her essay “Apollo and Dionysus,” Rand discussed Apollo 11 and the Woodstock music festival, and placed herself on the side of the middle class. “[T]he people are reality-oriented, commonsense-oriented, technology-oriented ...” (Return of the Primitive (“ROP”), p. 102) She denounced the “hippies” who attended Woodstock. In fact, “hippie” seems to have been a favorite term of derision for her, used for both Kant (“the first hippie in history”) and anarcho-capitalists (“hippies of the right”). (ROP, p. 105)

There are other issues on which Rand sided with conservatives and the middle class. She opposed modern art for its reduction of “man’s consciousness to the level of sensations.” (Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto, pp. 76-77) The conservative critique of modern art is often similar. Richard Weaver discusses contemporary art's focus on the artist’s desire to escape “form,” “responsibility,” and “direction.” According to Weaver, much contemporary art is “nominalistic” and attempts to free the lower levels of the mind from constraint. (Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, pp. 87, 89, 90-91)

Rand also attacked progressive education and its chief theoretician, John Dewey, both frequent targets of conservatives. (ROP, p. 68) Incidentally, Russell Kirk begins a critique of John Dewey with a mention of Rand. Kirk’s description of Dewey is reminiscent of Rand’s critique of progressive education:

Dewey was bent, though perhaps only half-consciously, on creating an impersonal society: that is, a society in which strong personalities would be eliminated. For there is no personality, really, except inner personality, subjective personality; if, then, its perfection is denounced as rotten, human beings are expected to efface personality altogether. They become “other-directed men.” Lacking belief, loyalty, and self-reliance ... they are moved only by fad and foible, and are blown about by every wind of doctrine. Objectivity of this sort terminates in pusillanimity. (Kirk, Enemies of the Permanent Things, p. 159)

Not only did Rand denounce progressive education, but also sided with government authority and private property in the context of the student “rebellions” of the 1960s.

It is important to remember that most of Rand’s philosophical essays were published in the 1960s and therefore during the Cold War and the rise of the “counter culture.” In this context, someone such as Rand who defended private property, educational standards, and self-restraint was likely to be seen as conservative, if not reactionary. A superficial reading of Rand probably led many conservatives to believe that Rand was a fellow traveler or even a fellow conservative. In fact, a member of the Young Americans for Freedom wrote to Rand in 1965 asking for permission to name a chapter of the YAF after her, which she refused. (Letters, p. 635)

Anti-Egalitarianism

In my essay “A Common Thread: Anti-Egalitarianism in Objectivism, Conservatism, and Libertarianism,” I argued that Rand, along with conservatives and libertarians, holds human inequality to be fundamental. She argues that in a free society, those with superior ability will inevitably form something of an elite based on merit. This hierarchy, however, does not work to the detriment of the less able: in fact, it works to their benefit. She called this the “pyramid of ability” principle. The following statement, by British conservative W. H. Mallock in 1894, could have been written by Rand:

Equality benefits no one. It frustrates men of talent; and it reduces the poor to a poverty still more abject .... For inequality produces the wealth of civilized communities: it provides the motive which induces men of superior benefit to exert themselves for the general benefit. (Mallock, Labour and the Popular Welfare, p. 233)

A belief in hierarchy is central to conservative thought as well. In Continental thought, Church and aristocracy are predominant; in its American version the self-made man (often a businessman) is upheld for praise. I recall that, during the 1980s, the Left denounced Ronald Reagan for his “Horatio Alger” belief that the “little guy” could rise to the level of a successful businessman. Rand, of course, disagreed with traditional state-imposed hierarchies such as existed in Europe. An Objectivist society would be a hierarchy of merit, but it would be no less hierarchical.

The State

Libertarians, particularly those of the anarcho-capitalist variety, have on occasion called Rand a conservative. Rand advocated laissez-faire capitalism and a minimal state. She was, to use the recently coined term, a “minarchist.” She considered anarchy highly impractical and ridiculed the idea of “competing governments” as worse than a “floating abstraction.” (The Virtue of Selfishness, pp. 131-32)

Rand certainly was not an apologist for the state. At the same time, her discussions of government don’t reveal the depth of hostility (or even skepticism) toward the state that characterizes many libertarians. Consider the well-known statement of Albert Jay Nock:

Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.

It is difficult to find a statement by Rand as critical of the state as this one, and many Objectivists have adopted her attitude.[1] Contrary to anarcho-capitalists, Rand viewed the state as an improvement over anarchy. (See Nicholas Dykes, “Anarchism and Objectivism,” JARS, Vol. 7, No. 1)

In libertarian critiques of Rand as a conservative, reference is often made to Rand’s belief that big businessmen were America’s “persecuted minority,” and the essay of that name published in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. As her libertarian critics point out, it is difficult to describe big businessmen—with their tax-subsidies, restrictive tariffs, and the like—as “persecuted.” Leftist and libertarian historians have shown that many interventions in the economy were first introduced at the behest of big business. Murray Rothbard argues that most big businessmen have long made their peace with big government out of self-interest. As Rothbard concludes:

Persecuted? With a few honorable exceptions, big business jostles one another eagerly to line up at the public trough. Does Lockheed, or General Dynamics, or AT&T, or Nelson Rockefeller feel persecuted? (For a New Liberty, Rev. ed., p. 309)

It should be mentioned, however, that at times Rand was skeptical about the goals of businessmen. In essays such as “The Roots of War” and “The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus,” she understood the role many businessmen played in undermining capitalism and advocating imperialism. Rand may seem conservative to many libertarians [2], but as a description of her political theory this is imprecise. Chris Sciabarra has shown that Rand’s views on this question are reasonably close to the standard libertarian critique. He urges Objectivists to reclaim Rand’s “radical” legacy.

Conclusion

Ayn Rand was not a conservative. However, certain conservative themes pervade her work.[3]

[1] Consider, for example, that much of Official Objectivism accepts the government’s rationale for the war in Iraq.

[2] For example, Rand’s support for intellectual property, laws against slander and libel, and (from what I’ve read second-hand) compulsory subpoenas probably place her on the “conservative” spectrum of minarchist opinion.

[3] Rand’s limited conservatism is not unusual in the libertarian movement. Ludwig von Mises was something of a social conservative, as was Murray Rothbard. Friedrich von Hayek famously wrote an essay entitled “Why I Am Not a Conservative.” Yet when asked by how he would classify his politics, he responded “Old Whig.” (Russell Kirk, The Sword of Imagination, pp. 198-99)

A Common Thread: Anti-Egalitarianism in Objectivism, Conservatism, and Libertarianism

2011-05-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

A 2004 Essay From Rebirth of Reason

Introduction

Matthew Humphreys, in an interesting article, draws attention to the fact that many Objectivists and libertarians feel a greater affinity to the contemporary Right than the Left. Mr. Humphreys notes that there are various “currents of thought” found in the Right with which Objectivists and libertarians can make common cause.
One current of thought (which Mr. Humphreys doesn’t discuss) between these three traditions is their opposition to egalitarianism. Although not an easy concept to define, I take egalitarianism to mean the belief that all people are (or can be) equal in intelligence and worth and that society should attempt to promote equality (particularly of income) among people. On a cultural level, egalitarians often assert that all societies and cultures are of equal value.
I will discuss the opposition to egalitarianism focusing on the works of three American authors who each represent one tradition: Russell Kirk, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard. In spite of their differences on many issues of fundamental importance, there is a common thread of anti-egalitarianism running throughout their writings.

Conservatism: Russell Kirk

The twentieth century’s leading American conservative author was Russell Kirk (1918-1994). Although Kirk was a frequent critic of Rand and Rothbard, his critique of egalitarianism was similar. In one of his later essays, Kirk rejects the concept of “equality of condition” by which he means the “equality of incomes and other awards.” (Kirk does not reject the idea that people should be equal before the law.) [Kirk, Redeeming the Time, p. 217.] He states:

In short, I have been arguing that it is profoundly unjust to endeavor to transform society into a table land of equality. It would be unjust to the energetic, reduced to equality with the clack and indolent; it would be unjust to the thrift, compelled to make up losses of the profligate; it would be unjust to those take the long view, forced to submit to the domination of a majority interested chiefly in short-run results. [Id., p. 225.]

According to Kirk, the drive for equality has resulted in high taxation, a decline in educational standards, and multiculturalism.

Objectivism: Ayn Rand

Needles to say, Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was not an egalitarian. Her novels depict a world divided between the good and the evil, the intelligent and the stupid, and the strong and the cowardly. Although she was skeptical of genetic and racial differences in character and intelligence, she was clear that human beings and cultures differ in many respects and equality was neither possible nor desirable.
Perhaps Rand’s fullest exposition of her anti-egalitarianism is found in her 1971 essay “The Age of Envy.” Her criticism of egalitarianism is somewhat similar to Kirk’s and she sees similar consequences, including multiculturalism (although she didn’t use the term) and a decline in educational standards. [Rand, Return of the Primitive, pp. 140-49.]
In “Galt Speaks,” Rand advances what Objectivists call the “pyramid of ability principle,” namely that those less capable benefit when the more capable are allowed to advance to the limit of their abilities. [Rand, For the New Intellectual, pp. 185-86.] This concept is not unique to Rand, and Kirk quotes the British conservative W. H. Mallock to the same effect in his 1894 book Labour and the Popular Welfare: “Equality benefits no one. It frustrates men of talent; and it reduces the poor to a poverty still more abject. . . . For inequality produces the wealth of civilized communities: it provides the motive which induces men of superior benefit to exert themselves for the general benefit.”

Libertarianism: Murray Rothbard

Murray Rothbard (1926-1995), the last century’s most important libertarian thinker, was likewise a staunch opponent of egalitarianism, who attributed to egalitarianism many of the same ills as Kirk and Rand. Indeed, two of Rothbard’s most important essays were “Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature” and “Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor.” Rothbard sees similar results flowing from the egalitarian agenda:

Equality of condition would reduce humanity to an anthill existence. Fortunately, the individuated nature of man . . . makes the ideal of total equality unattainable. But an enormous amount of damage – the crippling of individuality, as well as economic and social destruction – could be generated in the attempt.

[Rothbard, Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, and Other Essays, p. 279.]
Throughout Rothbard’s vast cultural criticism, he exposed the egalitarian fallacies behind “Women’s Liberation,” multiculturalism, and “progressive education.” In particular, his attack on progressive education mirrors Rand’s critique, focusing on the political, cultural, and “epistemological” aspects of this movement. [Rothbard, Education: Free and Compulsory, pp. 53-55.]

Conclusion

How this common opposition to egalitarianism “plays out” in contemporary politics is beyond the scope of this brief article.[1] Yet, anti-egalitarianism constitutes a common thread among the Objectivist, libertarian, and conservative traditions.

[1] Likewise, there is not space to discuss the common influences on these thinkers. Kirk, Rothbard, and Rand each read (and approved) of Ortega y Gasset's The Revolt of the Masses. They also read Schoeck's Envy (although Rand didn't appear to approve of it, judging from the Marginalia).

Can Objectivism Be Criticized?

2011-05-07T06:51:00.001-07:00

Recently, on Diana Hsieh’s podcast, a listener asked Hsieh and her co-host Greg Perkins a question about criticisms of Objectivism and their opinion of Scott Ryan’s 2003 work, Objectivism and the Corruption of Rationality. Hsieh holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Colorado. Both Hsieh and Perkins are (or were) supporters of the Ayn Rand Institute.

Hsieh said she hasn’t read Ryan’s book. Perkins said that with “no exception” all the criticisms he had read of Objectivism are either “blatantly dishonest” or “based on a misunderstanding.” Perkins went on to say that he read parts of the book and concluded that Ryan was not dishonest but rather, you guessed it, didn’t understand Objectivism.

Hsieh said that criticisms of a philosophy have limited value. What is most important is whether a philosophy corresponds to the “facts of reality” and whether its principles fit with “my experience.” She did make the point that, regardless of what one thinks about established philosophies such as Kantianism and Utilitarianism, there are certain legitimate criticisms that provide a good jumping off point for discussion. On the other hand, she maintains, Objectivism hasn’t been around long enough for good critiques to develop. She then agreed with Perkins that none of Rand’s critics understand Objectivism well enough to critique it.

This is a rather striking assertion. Objectivism has been a complete philosophy since at least 1968, when the essays making up Rand’s Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology were published. In the forty-three years following Objectivism has been studied by numerous supporters, sympathizers and critics. Many of these people have Ph.D.s in philosophy. Is it really the case that no one other than a philosopher associated with the ARI understands Objectivism well-enough to comment on it? Rand’s supporters always tell us (as Leonard Peikoff put it) that Rand was the greatest “salesman” philosophy ever knew. She wrote in a clear language understandable to the common man. Yet at the same time her writings are apparently so difficult to understand that not even professional philosophers can understand them. Which is it? I’d also add that it’s not as if Rand wrote a tremendous amount of pure philosophy. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology is 163 pages. The Virtue of Selfishness is 144 pages. The Romantic Manifesto is 187 pages. Throw in Galt’s Speech and the non-dated pieces in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and it’s not more than 800 pages. Compare this to the vast corpus of John Dewey (thirty seven volumes in the collected works) and Bertrand Russell, two writers on which Rand opined without reading more than a small fraction of their relevant work. Most of Rand’s critics have probably read her key essays several times over, so if they don’t understand them maybe it’s because Rand isn’t as clear as her acolytes claim.

That being said, I think it’s the case that two of the earliest critiques of Objectivism by philosophers, William O’Neill’s With Charity Toward None (1971) and John Robbins’ Answer to Ayn Rand (1974), did not always show the best understanding of Objectivism. However, things got much better with 1986’s The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand, a collection of essays edited by Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen. All of the essays were written by professional philosophers, some of whom are well-known such as Antony Flew and Wallace Matson. In 1999 the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies began publishing, providing a forum for scholars of diverse perspectives to dialogue on Rand’s philosophy and related matters. In 2002 Greg Nyquist published Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature. In 2003 Scott Ryan published Objectivism and the Corruption of Rationality: A Critique of Ayn Rand’s Epistemology. While neither is a professional philosopher, both are well read in philosophy and, in their own ways, expand on the various critiques others have made.

I won’t summarize all the criticisms of Objectivism, but I think there are a number of stock objections put forward by more than one philosopher that are reasonable based on any “objective” reading of Rand’s philosophy

1. Theory of Concepts. This has been one of the most commented on aspects of Objectivism, in part because it is supposedly Rand’s greatest breakthrough. Just some of the objections: Rand presents no evidence that her theory is true; Rand provides no evidence to support her speculations about how the mind of children and animals work; Rand confuses the problems of universals with the different question of abstraction and concept formation; Rand’s theory of measurement omission cannot explain how certain abstract concepts such as “justice” are formed, nor can it explain the formation of mathematical or logical concepts.

2. Epistemology. Rand’s epistemology doesn’t seem all that well developed. However a standard critique is that Rand’s use of the stolen concept fallacy may show that skepticism is self-refuting; it does not show that the senses are generally reliable or provide us with the means of determining when our judgments about the external world are accurate. (As at least a couple of critics have mentioned, Rand herself became irate when informed by Joan Blumenthal that the tree she thought she saw outside her hospital window was really an IV pole.)

3. Ethics. This has gathered a lot of attention as well since it may be the most novel part of Objectivism. The standard critique is that Rand switches between life as the standard of value and a certain kind of life (rational and non-parasitic) as the standard. Rand is thus able to ignore obvious counterexamples such as the rational parasite who lives off the independence and intelligence of others. It also leads Objectivists to the rather odd conclusion that certain people who are apparently alive and well are “not really living” or even “dead.”

4. Politics. Perhaps the most common objection is that Rand’s advocacy of selfishness cannot provide a foundation for respecting the rights of others. There are various other criticisms such as whether voluntary contributions are sufficient to fund even a minimal state and why anarcho-capitalism is not more consistent with Rand’s politics than limited government.

5. Religion. Here the standard objection is that Rand (and most of her followers) don’t understand religion and theistic arguments well enough to critique them. Rand’s positive arguments for naturalism are weak, e.g., “existence exists” doesn’t preclude the existence of God or gods.

There is, I think, a more fundamental problem. Although Objectivists tell us how stunningly original Rand was, most of her ideas and even the way she defends them are quite similar to other thinkers and schools of philosophy. For example, as Harry Binswanger once admitted, “Objectivism is a version of empiricism.” As such it is subject to the standard criticisms of empiricism, in particular the difficulty of explaining necessity, mathematics and logic without the aid of a priori knowledge. Another example is Rand’s belief that man’s mind is tabula rasa, which makes it subject to various objections from evolutionary psychology.

As I final point, in light of all the schisms, excommunications and denunciations in Objectivism since 1968 it’s not clear who really does understand Objectivism. Recently Leonard Peikoff denounced historian of science John McCaskey over the application of Rand’s theory of concept formation to the problem of induction and its role in the history of science. Travis Norsen, who holds a Ph.D. in physics, came to McCaskey’s defense. If an Objectivist historian of science and an Objectivist physicist can’t get issues right in their own field whereas Leonard Peikoff (who has expertise in neither) can, what’s the hope for the rest of us? Indeed Peikoff has in recent years said that Objectivists who believe Moslems have a right to build an Islamic community center containing a Mosque in New York City or were considering voting Republican or abstaining in 2006 don’t understand Objectivism. Apparently Hsieh doesn’t understand Objectivism because she dissented over the Mosque issue and at least partially sided with McCaskey. Peikoff slammed Hsieh in a statement he since removed from his website.

I would mention that Hsieh and Perkins are a little extreme even by orthodox Objectivist standards here. As readers of ARCHN blog might recall, ARI scholar Onkar Ghate debated philosopher Michael Huemer a couple of years ago over Rand’s ethics. Last year saw the publication of a first volume in a series of papers arising out of Ayn Rand Society meetings. The first volume, edited by orthodox Objectivist Allan Gotthelf and James Lennox contains essays by non-Objectivists Paul Bloomfield, Christine Swanton, Helen Cullyer and Lester Hunt. ARI associated scholars Tara Smith and Darryl Wright engage in friendly dialogue with their essays.

Edwin Locke Critiques Goddess of the Market

2011-03-20T05:53:00.000-07:00

Edwin Locke has critiqued Jennifer Burns’ 2009 intellectual biography of Ayn Rand. In general, I think the review is very unfair. Here are some of the problems.

4. p. 11: Burns says Ayn Rand “escaped into French children’s magazines.” Ayn Rand’s love of (certain) fiction was not escapism but part of her search, even as a young girl, for interesting plots and the ideal man. This is explained clearly in Shoshana Milgram’s chapter (“Who Was John Galt? The Creation of Ayn Rand’s Ultimate Ideal Man”) in Robert Mayhew’s edited book Essays on Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” (which book Burns must have read because she mentions it in her Notes).

Oh for crying out loud. The context was that Rand didn't have a particularly happy childhood in part because she was too intellectual to connect with other children. Burns goes on to point that Rand was writing stories at the time and entertaining her sisters with her latest tales. She was even able to get the respect of her fellow students.

5. p. 16: Burns cites a quote from a cousin of Ayn Rand’s who said: Nietzsche “beat you to all your ideas.” But Burns does not mention here that the claim was not true. Even later in the book Burns indicates she does not get it (p.303-4, Note 4). Ayn Rand’s view of Nietzsche was made clear in her introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of The Fountainhead. For a time when she was younger she admired Nietzsche, but as she developed her own
philosophy, she came to totally reject Nietzsche’s philosophy, because was it mystical and irrational—the complete antithesis of her own philosophy. She admired certain quotes from Nietzsche such as “the noble soul has reverence for itself.” Ironically, such a quote could not even be rationally defended without Ayn Rand’s philosophy at its base. Nietzsche’s alleged individualism had nothing in common with Ayn Rand’s which was based on reason. Nietzsche may have called for a new morality, but he did not provide one. Ayn Rand did.

I suggest people read the entire note that Locke references. I don't have time to type it all in, but Burns does mention the profound difference between Rand and Nietzsche. I'll quote the final two sentences:

Yet I approach the question of influence from a different angle, focusing primarile on Nietzsche's transvaluation of values and his call for a new morality. From this perspective, though, Rand's reliance on Nietzsche lessened over time, her entire career might be considered a '"Nietzsche phase."

6. p. 22: Burns discusses Ayn Rand’s rejection by a Russian boy named Levy and concludes: “To desire was to need, and Rand wanted to need nobody.” Bad writing aside, this is an equivocation about the meaning of need. Ayn Rand argued that to have a successful romantic relationship, you need self-esteem—you need to have a self (see The Fountainhead and Galt’s speech). Others cannot not fill the void of zero self-esteem for you. But, given that base, Ayn Rand certainly believed strongly in romantic love (and friendship)—as her life and her novels clearly demonstrated. For example, Howard Roark says to Dominique in The Fountainhead (p. 376), “I’ve given you, not my sacrifice or my pity, but my ego and my naked need.” Ayn Rand’s long and loving relationship with her husband has been well documented (e.g., see Mary Ann and Charles Sures’ Facets of Ayn Rand).

This is in the context of a letter written by Rand's mother to Rand while she was in Chicago reporting her anger that Rand didn't write in several months.

So Rand's feelings concerning a highschool crush gone unfulfilled and tensions with her family are to be explained by novels written decades later?

7. p. 42: In a very brief reference to Ayn Rand’s ethics, Burns writes that AynRand exalted “a psychological mindset utterly divorced from anything outside the self.” This totally misstates Ayn Rand’s position. Taken literally, Burns’s view would detach the mind from reality which would be a state of psychosis.

What Ayn Rand held was that in every issue of one’s life one should think for oneself and not sacrifice one’s mind, one’s judgment and one’s life to others. Thinking requires that one focus on reality, including the value of other people whom one deals with.

Here I agree that this is an imprecise characterization of Rand's thought. That being said, Burns' discussion is much better.

Actually this is not a "very brief" reference to Rand's ethics - it is at least a couple pages long, which may explain Locke's concern. For example, Burns reference her previous discussion of Rand's admiration of William Hickman, a murderer who dismembered his victim.

9. p. 63: Burns says that Ayn Rand viewed capitalism as “the solution to all ills.” Clearly, Burns is taking conventional literary license here, but again, it is a careless formulation. What Burns should have said here is that Ayn Rand held that capitalism is the solution to poverty or, more broadly, the only means of large-scale wealth creation. (Of course, more fundamentally, Ayn Rand regarded it as the only moral economic system.) The closest thing to a solution to all ills would be her entire philosophy.

Actually, the reference here is to Rand's 1930's piece "Manifesto of Individualism" written around the time of the Wilkie campaign and not a description of her mature philosophy. This piece hasn't been published. Has Locke read it?

15. p. 90: Burns describes The Fountainhead as “a strange book . . . moody, and feverish.” No reasons are given for these assertions. In contrast, Burns presents quotes showing why people loved the book. Somehow readers failed to see the book in the snide way Burns did. No explanation for these conflicting views is given.

Here is what Burns wrote in full:

That Bobbs-Merrill failed to anticipate the book's success is understandable. The Fountainhead is a strange book, long, moody, feverish. Even after Rand's last-minute editing it took up nearly seven hundred pages.

What was it that readers found in The Fountainhead's pages? At the most basic level the book told an exciting story, and told it well. When freighted with Rand's symbolic connotations, architecture became exciting and lively.

1. Looking at the material that Locke omits it's clear that "strange" isn't equivalent to bad, as Locke implies. It's more like "unusual."

2. There is no contrast between an allegedly negative evaluation of the book by Burns and a positive evaluation of the readers. Burns likes the book and shares Rand's readers' admiration for it.

17. p. 97: The heading of Part ll of Burns’s book is “From Novelist to Philosopher.” Again this is seriously off the mark. If Burns had studied Ayn Rand more carefully, she would have known that Ayn Rand’s literary goal was to present the ideal man (or woman). She recognized, unlike most, if not all, other writers, that to present an ideal you had to have a philosophy. Ayn Rand was philosophical from an early age. So her development was not one of
going from novelist to philosopher, but rather of formulating her philosophy more clearly and in more detail as she wrote her novels. Her philosophy is at the base of all of her books. It was the full development of her philosophy that enabled her to characterize the heroes (and villains) in Atlas Shrugged and to formulate the book’s theme.

Actually, the heading of Part II is "From Novelist to Philosopher, 1944-1957"

It's just a heading.

20. p. 128: Burns writes, “Rand’s theory of natural rights was based on fiat, on her stating it must be so.” This is totally false. Her theory was not a theory of “natural rights” in the Lockean sense at all. She does not derive it from man in a state of nature. Her theory of rights was based on man’s nature as a rational being, the morality of egoism, and the requirements of man’s survival in society. She wrote two whole articles on rights (see The Virtue of Selfishness and see also Galt’s speech, both of which Burns knew about). This is just poor scholarship."

A couple points here.

1. This is in a context of a letter from Isabel Paterson to Rand, long before her mature theory of rights was worked out.

2. In fact, I think the claim that Rand's theory was "based on fiat" is Paterson's evaluation of it. Two sentences later read, "Paterson concluded her letter with another snide remark."

22. pp. 151ff: Burns gives a great deal of press to Murray Rothbard, who showed an early interest in Ayn Rand’s ideas but who later came to advocate anarchism. Burns indicates that Ayn Rand disagreed, but Burns does not make clear in this part of the book Ayn Rand’s full view: that anarchism as a political system is totally irrational and can only lead to dictatorship. (Apparently Rothbard also believed in instincts and the primacy of emotions [p.153], which is further evidence of his irrationality.) Perhaps Rothbard’s most egregious error is the claim that “the good stuff in Ayn Rand’s system is not Ayn’s original contribution at all.” This is totally false but Burns never says so. There is a special issue of The Objectivist Forum, edited by Harry Binswanger (which magazine Burns evidently did not discover in her research) that shows Ayn Rand’s original contributions in every sphere of philosophy (and even other fields like psychology). Burns also includes many snide comments by Rothbard, calling her students (who were known, in jest, as “The Collective”) as “a group of lifeless acolytes” and a “passive, dependent group.” Now I happen to personally know some of the people in this group, though not all of them. Their goal was quite simple: to learn from someone whose philosophical knowledge was light years above theirs. This required them to have active, questioning minds. Passive acceptance would not have enabled them to learn anything. Rothbard was an irrationalist and a subjectivist, but for Burns all ideas are treated as pretty much equal.

1. "But who later came to advocate anarchism." According to Rothbard's semi-autobiographical work he was an anarchist by the time he met Rand.

2. "Apparently, Rothbard also believed in instincts . . ." Big deal. Objectivists are just about the only ones I know who don't think human beings have instincts. In fact, Rothbard denied that human beings have innate knowledge

3. "and in the primacy of emotions." It's not clear from Burns' book whether "primacy of emotions" was Rothbard's term. Emotions are more like "tastes" taken in the context of the discussion. According to Rothbard, to deny this is to deny individuality. She quotes Rothbard as saying that, based on Rand's ethics, "there is not reason . . . why Ayn shouldn't sleep with Nathan." (I'm reminded of George Reisman's quote that Rand could have a rational reason for preferring vanilla to chocolate ice cream.)

4. "Perhaps Rothbard’s most egregious error is the claim that 'the good stuff in Ayn Rand’s system is not Ayn’s original contribution at all.' This is totally false but Burns never says so. There is a special issue of The Objectivist Forum, edited by Harry Binswanger (which magazine Burns evidently did not discover in her research) that shows Ayn Rand’s original contributions in every sphere of philosophy . . . . "

Well Locke is entitled to disagree, but Burns had access to Rand's papers and is entitled to conclude (if she does) that Rand wasn't as original as she claimed. This is the view of every non-Objectivist intellectual historian I know.

5. "Burns also includes many snide comments by Rothbard, calling her students (who were known, in jest, as 'The Collective') as 'a group of lifeless acolytes' and a 'passive, dependent group.'

Well, Rothbard seemed to have some first-hand knowledge of the students. I think everyone would agree there was a conformist attitude in the 50's and 60's. In the ARI-sponsored 100 Voices there is someone interviewed who says that Rand's students all bought the same type of kitchen set as Rand and another interviewee who said everyone was smoking cigarettes and acting like Rand and Dagney.

6. "Rothbard was an irrationalist and a subjectivist . . . " Locke presents no proof of this and if he had read Rothbard's works he would know better.

7. "but for Burns all ideas are treated as pretty much equal." What is the justification for this statement? That Burns appears to believe that Rand's philosophy is not completely unique and falls within a liberal or natrual law tradition doesn't mean that she believes all ideas are "pretty much equal."

23. p. 156: Burns says Ayn Rand wanted to keep her affair with Branden secret due to having “a streak of cultural conventionality.” Anyone who seriously studied Ayn Rand would have to know that she had no such streak. The obvious reason for keeping the affair secret was to protect her privacy.

1. How does Locke know that Rand kept the affair secret to protect her privacy?

2. Rand had no streak of cultural conventionality? Well, she denouced homosexuality as "disgusting and immoral," described her enemies as "hippies," kept her adulterous affair secret, described nurses who took care of her as "kids in miniskirts," voted for Richard Nixon etc. Sounds rather conventional to me.

37. p. 223: Burns reports that Branden’s affair with Patrecia Wynand “lit the fuse that would blow Objectivism sky high.” But this affair did not affect the philosophy of Objectivism one iota. It simply upset some people. Somehow Burns cannot separate Objectivist ideas from the irrational actions of specific individuals.

Oh give me a break. Burns is obviously referring the Objectivist movement centered around the NBI. Is Locke really so "concrete bound"?

39. pp. 234–5: Burns seems to think that Ayn Rand should have presented her philosophical ideas as one opinion, then presented other opinions, then claimed uncertainty, and then let the students figure it out for themselves. But why would Ayn Rand even consider this if she knew she was right (and had proved it)? Clearly Burns resents the idea of certainty, in line with current intellectuals. But denying certainty would have made Objectivism into a useless joke. Imagine Ayn Rand starting a lecture with: “Here are the axioms of philosophy and here is how I validate them—but, hey, maybe I am wrong so you decide.” Burns thinks certainty promotes dogmatism (p. 237), but in reality dogmatism is the enemy of real (rational) certainty, because dogmatism necessarily relies on the arbitrary, e.g., belief on the basis of faith, which can only be sustained by evasion.

The discussion referenced by Locke is lengthy and I can only encourage people to read what Dr. Burns writes and compare it to what Locke says Burns "seems to think." It is the least chartiable reading of something I can imagine.

Burns' point is not that Rand shouldn't claim certainty for her ideas. Rather, Burns thinks that Rand's attitude discouraged the kind of give and take that helps people learn independently and ultimately arrive at certainty by their own thought process.

42. p. 242: Burns claims Barbara Branden was rejected by Ayn Rand because Barbara tried to defend Nathan after the affair with Patrecia was uncovered. This may be Barbara’s story, but in fact, she turned against Ayn Rand when it became clear to her that she could no longer use her association with Ayn Rand to make money. Why did Burns choose to believe Barbara’s story and not Ayn Rand’s when Burns admits (in her “Essay on Sources”) that the
Brandens had revenge motivation and had biases and false statements in their books? (Burns presents no evidence that Ayn Rand was anything but 100 percent honest.)

1. How does Locke know that Barbara's story is wrong, but Rand's is right? What work has he done in the archives? Has he even read her book, or just relied on Valliant's BS?

2. "Why did Burns choose to believe Barbara’s story and not Ayn Rand’s when Burns admits (in her “Essay on Sources”) that the Brandens had revenge motivation and had biases and false statements in their books? "

This is what Burns says: http://jenniferburns.org/blog/...

In my first stage of research, one of my primary goals was simply verifying if the essentials of the Brandens’ stories were correct. I was surprised to discover how accurate both books were. I did not discover any major errors or distortions in basic chronology or timing. I viewed the first series of correspondence between Rand and Nathan Blumenthal, and Barbara Weidman’s letters to Rand when she was away from her (the two later changed their names to Barbara and Nathaniel Branden). All of this material matched the accounts in the memoirs: here was the story of early difficulties in the relationship between Barbara and Nathan, for the reasons described; Nathan’s turbulent relationship with his family; the inflammatory letter he wrote to the UCLA newspaper (which I quote in my book), and so forth.

3. "Burns presents no evidence that Ayn Rand was anything but 100 percent honest." Actually she does. She credits Henry Holzer's statement that Rand's claim in To Whom It May Concern about Nathaniel's alleged financial fraud were untrue.

43. p. 244: About the split with the Brandens, Burns quotes one student as saying, “The rationally ordered universe NBI students sought and found in Rand was no more.” Wasn’t it? Where did it go? The rationally ordered universe was not based on people but on ideas. The ideas were there, on paper, for anyone who wanted them.

Another mistake. This is straight Burns, not a quote from a student. The previous sentence does contain a quote about To Whom It May Concern, but is from a "fan."

In any event, does Locke dispute that many young people tried to find "new home" (for lack of a better expression) in the NBI subculture and had doubts about Objectivism when the Split happened?

46. p. 269: “Rand had become increasingly unpleasant, querulous, and rigid as the years progressed.” There is no documentation for this claim. I only met her late in her life. I was fortunate enough to take her non-fiction writing course and had two conferences with her regarding papers I had written. She was unfailingly gracious and delighted to answer questions about her novels and philosophy. If she disagreed with something I wrote, she always politely explained her reasons. Ayn Rand, of course, could get angry (though she did not at me). But Burns does not understand why. Ayn Rand took ideas seriously; most people do not. She also understood in the most fundamental terms the consequences of irrational ideas for man’s life; for most people wrong ideas were just floating abstractions disconnected from reality.

Furthermore, Ayn Rand withstood decades of smears and denunciations from the intellectual establishment. In 100 percent of the instances that I am aware of, they misrepresented her ideas, often in the most grotesque manner (e.g., claiming her views were the actual opposite of what they were). Nevertheless, she never became bitter, never refused to explain her ideas (as long as the questioner was polite) and never deviated from her philosophy. She was inflexible in holding to her rational convictions against the most outrageous attacks. This is an aspect of her greatness—an aspect that Burns does not see at all.

Burns' evaluation of Rand's difficult side in later years may not be documented at this point in the book (or even in other places) but it is in fact documented. Just read that account of Allan and Joan Blumenthal in The Passion of Ayn Rand. (Not even Jim Valliant disputes the Blumenthals' report.)

No one disputes that Rand was a nice person most of the time. The evidence indicates the closer one got to Rand's inner circle the more difficult, controlling and demanding she became. There is no reason to think Locke would have witnessed much of this.

Obviously Burns understands the Peikovian take on Rand's anger (she was only upset at the irrationality in the world). Her years in the Archives an interviews with Rand's associates has led to a different conclusion.

48. p. 280: In her epilogue, Burns sinks into maliciousness (see also points 49 and 50). She argues that the Showtime television movie about Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden, written by an enemy, Barbara Branden, “destroyed the vaunted image of Ayn Rand as an intellectual paragon who lived by rationality alone.” I noted earlier that Ayn Rand was never anti-emotion.
But more important, a less than C--grade, trashy movie written by an enemy who nonetheless wanted to exploit her connection to Ayn Rand, cannot be taken seriously by anyone—and it wasn’t. We have no way of knowing what events in the movie really occurred and which Barbara Branden made-up.

Barbara Branden did not write or approve the movie script. Burns says that Branden's books was "transformed" into an "HBO" (not Showtime) movie.

The entire paragraph should be read. Burns says that many people got a very negative impression from Rand after reading the Branden biography and that this impression was further "reinforced" by the movie. It should be remembered that Burns (and also Barbara Branden) have many positive things to say about Rand.

50. p. 281: Burns claims that the Ayn Rand Institute has a “poor reputation.”
Again, she gives no documentation. Poor according to whom? The institute is skyrocketing in growth, popularity and influence (see its websites). No other allegedly Objectivist organization even comes close.

I think the ARI's poor reputation is so well-known that it doesn't need documentation. Who, other than a few ARI insiders, supports the ARI's rewriting of Rand's papers, as well the purges, excommuncations and fatwas by de facto chairman Leonard Peikoff? In 2007, Texas State University turned down an Anthem Foundation fellowship, it being common knowledge of the dogmatism that plagues the ARI.

BTW, what does Dr. Locke think of the rewriting of Rand's papers?

Larry Sechrest Discusses Objectivist Richard Salsman's Essay on the Great Depression

2011-02-12T05:10:00.000-08:00

Missing the Mark: Salsman's Review of the Great Depression. published in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies.

Here is Sechrest:

In effect, Salsman condemns virtually all economists as being deeply misguided and anti-business: Marxists, Keynesians, Progressives, Institutionalists, monetarists, even Austrians. This last constitutes a major departure from past orthodox Objectivist2 doctrine, since Ayn Rand (1967, 339–40) herself praised the economic theories—though not necessarily the philosophical stance—of Austrians such as Ludwig von Mises and Henry Hazlitt. Obviously, though he never states this explicitly, Salsman must think that Rand was gravely in error to have had high regard for Austrian economists.

Salsman has become prominent in Objectivist circles (some of his material is sold by the ARI's bookstore), so it will be interesting to see if Objectivism will develop its own economic theory now that George Reisman was booted out of the movement by Leonard Peikoff. However, Reisman's student Brian Simpson appears Austrian.

The McCaskey Schism, Part 2

2010-12-14T04:59:00.001-08:00

Two months ago I gave the lowdown on the latest schism in Objectivism. I suggested that the schism had not yet reached the level of the David Kelley split in the 1980s. In two short months we’ve reached Kelley levels and may be heading for a schism of Brandenesque proportions.

By way of background, it should be noted that Leonard Peikoff is not on the Board of Directors of the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) and does not appear to have the legal authority to veto its decisions. Rather, as the heir of Rand’s estate, the owner of her copyrights and the owner of her papers, a decision by Peikoff to separate from the ARI would probably hamper its day to day operations if not require its dissolution.

On October 24, Diana Hsieh published her evaluation of the McCaskey schism. Hsieh, who has a doctorate in philosophy, is the most prominent Objectivist blogger and podcaster. She is an interesting character. A long-time Objectivist, she was for ten years a supporter of David Kelley’s the Objectivist Center (now the Atlas Center). She was no admirer of Leonard Peikoff, criticizing his magnum opus Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (OPAR) and alleging that Peikoff lied in claiming Rand designated him her “intellectual heir.”

In 2004, however, Hsieh had a conversion experience to orthodox Objectivism in which all her previous criticism of the ARI and Leonard Peikoff suddenly became “inoperative.” In order to make up for lost time, she launched numerous attacks on the “false friends” of Objectivism. These included not just the usual suspects such as David Kelley and the Brandens, but her old friend Chris Sciabarra. Sciabarra is particularly loathed in ARI circles for his work Ayn Rand the Russian Radical, a book which puts Rand in historical context. In 2006, Hsieh, using private emails from Sciabarra without his permission, wrote a nasty hit piece. She repudiated her previous work. Leonard Peikoff now became a god in Hsieh’s eyes, even endorsing his 2006 fatwa on the moral obligation to vote for the Democratic Party.

Hsieh’s attempt to become Objectivism’s avenging angel worked, at least for a time. In a 2009 podcast, Leonard Peikoff said he respected her work. However, in June 2010 she disagreed (as did many Objectivists) with Peikoff’s contention that Moslems do not have the right to build an Islamic Community Center (which contains a mosque) near “ground zero” in New York City. (This was a dangerous position to take because Peikoff, as with the 2006 voting fatwa, had equated his position with Objectivism as such.) Nonetheless, she tried to be as respectful as possible to Peikoff, urging Objectivists not pester the Grand Old Man at the summer Objectivist Conference. Curiously, Hsieh reported, in September, that her proposal for a lecture at the 2011 ARI-sponsored Objectivist Conference (OCON) was rejected.

In preparation for her October 24 piece on the McCaskey schism, Hsieh wrote a couple letters to Peikoff asking for clarification concerning his now notorious email which, she said, “looked very bad on its face.” Peikoff did not respond or acknowledge the emails. She also spoke to McCaskey and ARI president Yaron Brook to get their side of the story. The most interesting bit of information in Hsieh’s piece was a letter that David Harriman sent to Hsieh’s husband, Paul (a medical doctor).

Date: Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 1:30 PM

From: DAVID HARRIMAN

To: Paul Hsieh

Subject: Re: Question about McCaskey's criticisms of your book?

Dear Paul:

I don't think you need access to private emails in order to reach a judgment on this conflict.
Professor McCaskey has published a negative review of my book on Amazon. He has also published articles expressing some of his own views on induction, and praising the ideas of William Whewell (a 19th century Kantian). Anyone who is interested can read my book, read the writings of McCaskey, and come to their own judgment.

I realize that most people know little about the history of science, and so they may believe that they lack the specialized knowledge required to make a judgment in this case. But I do not think the basic issues are very complicated.

McCaskey claims that Galileo discovered the law of free fall without even understanding what is meant by "free fall" (since Galileo allegedly had no clear concept of friction). Likewise, Newton discovered his universal laws of motion without understanding the concepts of "inertia," "acceleration," and "momentum." In effect, scientists stumble around in the dark and somehow discover laws of nature before they grasp the constituent concepts. This view is typical of academic philosophers of science today. I am well acquainted with it; in my youth, I took courses from Paul Feyerabend at UC Berkeley. But how believable is it?

In short, I ask you which is more believable -- that Isaac Newton was fundamentally confused about the difference between "impetus" and "momentum," or that John McCaskey is confused about this issue?

A favorite pastime among academics today is to find "feet of clay" in great men. But that is not the purpose of my book.

Sincerely,
David

Of course contempt for academics and the claim that all non-Objectivists are “Kantians” is vintage Peikoff. And who needs expertise in the history of science to evaluate a book on the history of science when a little “thinking in essentials” will do the trick?

Hsieh’s piece generated lots of comments. The most interesting was from physicist Travis Norsen, who revealed that he had been critical of the Harriman book for quite some time, resulting in a “cooling” of his relationship with the ARI.

Now, ironically, during this same period, a dear friend convinced me to consider trying one last time to submit an OCON course proposal; in particular I was assured that, this time, such a proposal would receive a fair hearing. So, despite doubting that a proposal by me could possibly be accepted, I did end up submitting something. To my pleasure and surprise, it was accepted, and so I was slated to teach a course at the summer 2007 conference (in Colorado). But then, a couple months later (in December of 2006), I was informed by ARI that they were withdrawing the invitation for me to speak, based on the “views on induction generally and on Dr. Peikoff’s lectures more specifically” that I had posted here.
Norsen also reported that he was told that the ARI had need for only one lecturer on physics, and that was David Harriman.

Hsieh didn’t reach many conclusions in her piece, claiming that there wasn’t enough information available to determine just what Peikoff was up to in his “moral condemnation” of McCaskey. Trying not to get into too much trouble, she urged everyone to be understanding of Peikoff and acknowledge his contributions to Objectivism.

If Hsieh’s failure to support Peikoff 100% was surprising, things got even more surprising a couple weeks later when, on October 29, Craig Biddle attacked Peikoff for his “nonobjective” and “unjust” attack on McCaskey. Biddle publishes The Objective Standard (TOS), an Objectivist magazine that publishes only orthodox Objectivists and has close ties to the ARI. McCaskey is on the masthead along with ARI president Yaron Brook. TOS had published excerpts from Harriman’s book. You’d think Biddle would be the last person to turn on Peikoff. Just a few weeks previous Biddle published a fawning review of James Valliant’s now debunked The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics, even though it is out of print and orthodox Objectivists such as Hsieh have long stopped mentioning it. In his 2002 book Loving Life he called OPAR “one of the most important books ever written.”

Biddle removed Brook from the masthead of TOS, duly noting that he respects Brooks and does not want to sever ties with ARI writers. Lot of good that did him, because the next day he posted on Face Book that the ARI had cancelled his speaking engagements at several universities.

By now people were asking lots of questions, in particular students at the Objectivist Academic Center (OAC), a graduate program run by the ARI. Perhaps fearing that a decision by Peikoff to take his marbles and go home would result in OAC becoming another Founders College, they demanded a conference call with the ARI, which apparently took place in early November. The call was confidential.

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any weirder, Peikoff returned from on high on November 5 to settle scores. First he denounced McCaskey. Lest there be any doubts, he said was morally condemning McCaskey. (This had been disputed by certain Objectivists, apparently forgetting that virtually every condemnation is moral in Peikoff’s eyes).

Because some people have turned the dispute into a moral issue, I should state the full truth, which is not stated in the letter: I have, for years, long before Harriman’s book, condemned McCaskey morally: I regard him as an obnoxious braggart as a person, and a pretentious ignoramus as an intellectual. Had I held a more positive estimate, I would have attempted first of all not to demand his resignation, but to discuss the book with him, understand his viewpoint, and see if together we could resolve and/or delimit his problems with it. But given my opinion of him, intellectual discussion was impossible to me.
Next, he reminded people that as the one who allegedly best understands Objectivism, he is entitled to trump any decision of the ARI, notwithstanding the fact that he is not even on its Board of Directors.

Ultimately, someone has to decide who is qualified to hold such positions and where the line is to be drawn. An organization devoted to spreading an ideology is not compatible with “freedom” for its leadership to contradict or undermine that ideology. In theory, the best judge of such contradiction would be the person(s), if he exists, who best understands and upholds the ideology, as evidenced objectively by his lifelong intellectual consistency, philosophic attainments, and practical results. In practice, the best judge would be the person, if he is still alive, who founded the organization and defined its purpose, in this case as a step in carrying out a mandate given him by Ayn Rand. On both counts, only one individual qualifies: me. (I have retired from books, classes, and official position, but not from perception and evaluation.)

Next, he pointed out that he is on terms of “personal enmity” with “a few” Board members and doesn’t speak to them. Since there are eight Board members, Peikoff apparently isn’t on speaking terms with at least 40% of the Board.

Finally, in case anyone was wondering against whom Peikoff was directing his invective, he closed with “if . . . my detractors in this issue represent a sizable faction within the Objectivist movement whose spokesmen include magazine founders and PhDs with podcasts– then God help Objectivism, too.”

By now things had reached critical mass. With a “sizeable faction” of ARI supporters having questions about what little amount of intellectual freedom remains in orthodox Objectivism and a possible fall-off of contributions to the ARI, Yaron Brook decided to speak. The upshot of Brook’s press release is that Peikoff threatened to walk away from the ARI and the Board caved.

The substantive issue that Dr. Peikoff raised—whether a person who does not support a central ARI project should sit on the Board—was itself a very serious one. In addition, the Board had the practical, moral, and fiduciary responsibility to avoid needlessly damaging our important relationship with Dr. Peikoff. Dr. Peikoff founded ARI, served as its first Board chairman, and has continued to provide ARI with moral, financial, and practical support over the 25 years of ARI’s existence. As Ayn Rand’s heir, he has been very generous in giving Ayn Rand’s materials to the ARI Archives, with much more planned for the future. In these and many other ways, Dr. Peikoff’s ongoing support is important to ARI; we are certainly interested in hearing his thoughts and analyses, and we give them due weight in our deliberations

I won’t go into the details of Brook’s statement, which was brilliantly dissected by one “Saul” on Diana Hsieh’s blog. Of note, however, is that Brook does not say whether he considers Peikoff’s criticisms of McCaskey’s person (an obnoxious braggart and ignoramus) appropriate in light of McCaskey’s years of devotion to the ARI. Most importantly, we are never told why McCaskey had a “conflict of interest” as a Board member because he is unable to support the ARI-sponsored The Logical Leap. Is McCaskey obligated to support a work that is, at most, an extension of Objectivism? I don’t get the impression that McCaskey was out to publicly “trash” The Logical Leap or the ARI for sponsoring it. Rather it looks like he intended on keeping his criticism private.

We now have more information about this schism, although there is a great deal we don’t know. Most importantly we know that Peikoff’s denunciation of McCaskey is the culmination of his attempt to make David Harriman the official Objectivist expert on physics and science, notwithstanding his eccentric view on relativity theory and some other matters. In my initial piece I raised the suspicion that Peikoff’s anger might have something to do with the Archives granting access to Jennifer Burns for her critical biography of Rand. I thought that ARI supporters might be angry over Burns’ revelation that the ARI, apparently at Peikoff’s direction or at least consent, has rewritten Rand’s posthumously published material. That doesn’t appear to have been a factor.

The McCaskey schism is the logical culmination of Peikovianism. When Peikoff excommunicated David Kelley he implicitly put his interpretation of Objectivism on par with Rand’s stated positions. This was made explicit in the 2006 Fatwa and the New York City Mosque podcast. Now with the McCaskey auto-da-fe Peikoff has made his extension of Objectivism into an area on which Rand wrote nothing as much a part of Objectivism as anything that Rand wrote. If the DIM Hypothesis ever appears will Objectivists be free to express the mildest disagreements?

Leonard Peikoff Answers My Question On Immigration

2010-10-09T09:02:00.001-07:00

I thank Dr. Peikoff for answering my question.

The Objective Standard Reviews The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics

2010-09-27T03:44:00.000-07:00

Five years after it was published and a year or two since it’s been out of print, James Valliant’s The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics (PARC) finally got reviewed in The Objective Standard (TOS), the house organ of the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI). The reviewer is the relatively unknown Roderick Fitts. Fitts, a mechanic in the Air Force, has never published on Rand's life. He is certainly an odd choice to review a book about Rand, given that the ARI has many folks with expertise in this area, including Jeff Britting, Shoshana Milgram (the official Ayn Rand biographer) and Dina Schein.

Early on Valliant’s opus got some positive attention from ARI supporters. In 2006 Diana Hsieh wrote, “In my view, Jim Valliant's case against Nathaniel and Barbara Branden in The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics is overwhelming that no honest person can read it without dramatically changing their judgment of the Brandens for the worse -- and of Ayn Rand for the better.” In early 2007 Edward Cline wrote, “I must commend Valliant on a feat of detective work that would have daunted any career detective novelist. . . . In my mind, Rand never needed exoneration for her actions, and his book more than vindicates my position.”

It’s been pretty much downhill since then for PARC. Hsieh didn’t mention PARC when she noted the publication of the two new Rand biographies. Nor did Cline. (Curiously, TOS was going to publish a review of Anne Heller’s Ayn Rand and the World She Made written by Cline. Cline finished the review but apparently TOS decided not to publish it.) TOS did publish a negative review of Jennifer Burns’ Goddess of the Market by Robert Mayhew. Burns, it will be recalled, identified Mayhew as among those who have rewritten Rand’s posthumously published material. Mayhew didn’t mention PARC.

Getting back to Fitts’ review. It’s brief and doesn’t go into much detail about Valliant’s charges. Nonetheless it appears that the wagons are being circled. Fitts implicitly endorses all of Valliant’s claims, including those about Frank O’Connor’s drinking. Fitts even approves of Valliant inserting his hectoring comments around (and sometimes right in) Rand’s journals. There is not a word of criticism* and Fitts even goes beyond Valliant in claiming that Rand and O’Connor were “happily married.” He makes the absurd claim that Valliant’s book is “well-researched.”

The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics is well-researched and covers a wide range of articles, audio recordings, books, movies, and interviews with individuals who knew Rand for years, if not decades. Although the book focuses primarily on the Brandens’ claims and the evidence against them, it also includes interesting details about aspects of Rand’s philosophy (such as her little-known concept “meta-selfishness”) and fills many gaps in the history of her life.

Just what are the wide range of interviews covered in PARC? The Archives has done over one hundred and twenty with people who knew Rand. Valliant didn’t consult one.

Fitts’ review doesn’t betray any indication of having been run by the Archives. It doesn’t mention the two new biographies, both of which side with the Brandens on numerous questions with which Valliant took issue.

It’s always hard to figure out what is going out in ARI-land, but I wonder if Leonard Peikoff is happy with the help the Archives gave to Burns and Heller and Burns’ revelation about the posthumously published material. While Peikoff’s auto-da-fe of John McCaskey doesn’t mention the Archives, it does indicate a frustration level about his position in orthodox Objectivism.

Fortunately things are looking up for those who are interested in Ayn Rand’s life. The Archives will publish 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand on November 2. On October 19 the paperback version of Anne Heller’s biography appears.

*On Fitts’ website, where a lengthier review of PARC appeared, Fitts offered this minor criticism:

Generally, I'm satisfied with Valliant's quoting and sources, and will say that he should have been less liberal how he quoted others (bordering on paraphrasing, like in the case of John Hospers), and should been more careful in citing his sources, like in the case of Rothbard. If he ever publishes a second edition, I'd certainly like to help in any editing he would need.

The McCaskey Schism

2010-09-19T09:38:00.000-07:00

There is a new Objectischism brewing, and this one might be the biggest since the David Kelley excommunication in the 1980s. Thus far only John McCaskey has been excommunicated from the movement, but it could be a sign of growing Objectivist frustration with Leonard Peikoff and the tone of orthodox Objectivism.

John McCaskey is a well credentialed Objectivist scholar. He holds a doctorate from Stanford University in the history of science, where he currently teaches. He was, until recently, on the board of directors of the Ayn Rand Institute. He has written for the Objective Standard, the house organ of the ARI. He has spoken at Objectivist Conferences. McCaskey appears to be tight with Allan Gotthelf and Harry Binswanger, but has “rarely spoken” to Peikoff.

McCaskey founded The Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship in 2001. The Foundation, which was so closely tied to the ARI that it was absorbed by it in 2008, may be the most interesting “special ops” of the ARI. The Foundation sponsors Objectivist professors (always orthodox) at universities through the United States. Intentionally or not it gives the illusion of greater Objectivist penetration in the academic world than it probably has. The Foundation received national attention in 2007 when Texas State University at San Marcos turned down a Foundation grant because of the dogmatic nature and intolerance of orthodox Objectivism.

The roots of this latest schism go back a ways. According to orthodox Objectivism, Rand solved the problem of universals in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. The biggest remaining problem in philosophy was the problem of induction, a thorny question which, by common consent, no completely satisfactory solution has been given. Peikoff, Rand’s self-proclaimed “intellectual heir,” teamed up with physicist David Harriman to solve the problem and show how induction worked in science. The result was Peikoff’s 1999 lecture course Induction in Physics and Philosophy which “present[s], for the first time, the solution to the problem of induction—and thereby complete[s], in every essential respect, the validation of reason.” The solution apparently built on Rand’s theory of concepts and, if true, would be a significant extension of Objectivism.

Peikoff and Harriman were for a time collaborating on a book on induction; however Peikoff dropped out of the project deciding to spend more time on his “DIM Hypothesis” book (which, like some other Peikoff book projects, hasn’t appeared). In July 2010, Harriman’s book – The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics – was finally published. The book contains an introduction by Peikoff, who calls it “the first mayor application of Ayn Rand’s philosophy to a field other than philosophy.” Harriman states that theory of induction and concept formation in the book is Peikoff’s. He also acknowledges that the book was funded by the ARI. The history of science isn’t my strong suit, but the Harriman book follows the general Objectivist view of intellectual history: good guys with good (i.e., proto-Objectivist) ideas, bad guys with bad ideas, good ideas leading to good results, bad ideas leading to failure. All contrary evidence is ignored or explained away, as when Harriman claims that Galileo’s notes in his journals that suggested he was a rationalist who used “thought experiments” don’t accurately convey what Galileo was doing. (Harriman, as we will see, is apparently an expert when it comes to what people really mean in their journals.)

Harriman is controversial in Objectivist circles for his (at least partial) opposition to relativity theory and quantum mechanics. He also thinks the big bang theory is a “creation myth” (duly noting that it was developed by Catholic priest). He edited The Journals of Ayn Rand which, according to Jennifer Burns, he rewrote in the process to make it conform to Objectivist orthodoxy. As summarized by Laissez Faire Book’s review:

Burns writes, “On nearly every page of the published journals an unacknowledged change has been made from Rand’s original writing. In the book’s foreword the editor, David Harriman, defends his practice of eliminating Rand’s words and inserting his own as necessary for greater clarity. In many case, however, his editing serves to significantly alter Rand’s meaning.” She says that sentences are “rewritten to sound stronger and more definite” and that the editing “obscures important shifts and changes in Rand’s thought.” She finds “more alarming” the case that “sentences and proper names present in Rand’s original …have vanished entirely, without any ellipses or brackets to indicate a change.”

The result of this unacknowledged editing is that “they add up to a different Rand. In her original notebooks she is more tentative, historically bounded, and contradictory. The edited diaries have transformed her private space, the hidden realm in which she did her thinking, reaching, and groping, replacing it with a slick manufactured world in which all of her ideas are definite, well formulated, and clear.” She concludes that Rand’s Journals, as released by ARI, “are thus best understood as an interpretation of Rand rather than her own writing. Scholars must use these materials with extreme caution.”

In 2000 he ganged up with Leonard Peikoff to attack Allan Gotthelf’s incredibly fawning On Ayn Rand for its overly academic style. Harriman holds masters degrees in philosophy and physics. He would be a second-tier figure in the Objectivist world if it weren’t for his association with Peikoff.

Orthodox Objectivism has well credentialed physicists such as Keith Lockith (Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin) and Travis Norsen (Ph.D. from the University of Washington). Both have lectured at Objectivist Conferences and have lectures sold by the ARI’s bookstore.

Although Rand didn’t write anything on the philosophy of science, oral tradition has it that she was skeptical of what little she knew of modern physics. Peikoff doesn’t appear to know much about physics and what little he knows is from Harriman. (In Peikoff’s 2006 DIM lecturers Peikoff said he had never heard of Richard Feynman, probably one of the few household names in physics in recent years.) It’s been rumored that there is discontent with the preeminent position Harriman and Peikoff have when it comes to physics.

The first sign a schism was on July 25, when Norsen’s review of The Logical Leap appeared on Amazon. He called it “valuable but disappointing” and gave it three starts (out of five). The review is lengthy, and takes aim specifically at chapter 1 (which is Peikoff’s contribution):

To begin with, I think the three key ideas presented in chapter 1 are important and correct. There *are* first-level generalizations which support and make possible the higher-level sorts of generalizations that scientists are (and unfortunately most philosophers concerned with induction have been) primarily concerned with. And as a matter of epistemological methodology, it is right to focus on these simplest, foundational cases to construct a theory to guide us in the more complex cases. I also think it is profoundly true that causal connections are sometimes perceivable, and Harriman is absolutely right to stress this as the fundamental answer to the skeptical views that emerge ultimately from a Humean, sensationalist account of perception. I would even go so far as to say that this idea (which, however, is not novel -- see for example the important book "Causal Powers" by Madden and Harre) is the key to solving the problem of induction. And second, the idea that generalizations are formed -- i.e., propositions are rendered general -- via the application of (open-ended) concepts to particular causal instances, strikes me as very interesting and pregnant.

However, even at the level of dealing with examples like "balls roll," I find that the book does not go far enough in clarifying and developing these ideas. I see rather large gaps in the account of first-level inductions presented in chapter 1, and these gaps seriously undermine the project of showing, through the subsequent history-of-science case studies, how induction works in physics.

Something must have been “going down” because on August 11 and August 23 Gotthelf (of all people) and Binswanger posted brief five-star reviews on Amazon praising Harriman’s book. Prior to these reviews Gotthelf and Binswanger had a combined eleven reviews on Amazon going back to 1999.

It now turns out that McCaskey had for some time been critical of The Logical Leap, although he never discussed his concerns with Peikoff. Peikoff however got wind of McCaskey’s criticism and took it as a personal attack on him. In an incredible email dated August 30 from Peikoff to ARI legal counsel Arline Mann (and cc’d to ARI director Yaron Brook) Peikoff made it clear that someone had to go and it wasn’t going to be him:

When a great book sponsored by the Institute and championed by me – I hope you still know who I am and what my intellectual status is in Objectivism – is denounced by a member of the Board of the Institute, which I founded someone has to go and will go. It is your prerogative to decide whom.
I do understand how much money M has brought to ARI, and how many college appointments he has gotten and is still getting. As Ayn would have put it, that raises him one rung in Hell, but it does not convert Objectivism into pragmatism.

Three days later McCaskey resigned from the ARI and the Foundation he started.
The next day McCaskey reviewed The Logical Leap, giving it three stars. The money quotes:

Readers of the book should be aware that the historical accounts presented here often differ from those given by academic researchers working on the history of science and often by the scientists themselves.

* * *

Generally, scholars who try to recreate the development of scientific concepts in the minds of great scientists are struck by how successful these scientists are in making propositional generalizations while still forming--and often themselves never fully forming--the concepts that constitute the generalizations. The narrative these scholars present (using Harriman's metaphor, not theirs) is not that a fully formed concept comes into the mind of the scientist who then uses it as a green light to an inductive propositional generalization, but that a partly formed concept serves as a flickering greenish light to a partial generalization, which acts as a less flickering, somewhat greener light to a better concept, which in turn improves the generalization, which then improves the concept, and so on, until well-defined concepts and associated propositional generalizations emerge fully formed together (at which point, the subjectivist says, "See, it's all just a matter of definitions.") Most scholars find the process of scientific progress less linear than Harriman indicates and much more iterative and spiral.
I cannot say that the conventional narratives (or my own) are all correct and Harriman's all wrong--certainly they are not--nor do I want to say how any inaccuracies would affect the theory of induction presented in The Logical Leap. I merely want to alert readers unfamiliar with the field that Harriman's narratives are often not the ones accepted by other scholars who research the conceptual development of great scientists and often not the ones that the scientists themselves give.
The theory of induction proposed here is potentially seminal; a theory that grounds inductive inference in concept-formation is welcome indeed. But the theory is still inchoate. If it is to be widely adopted, it will need to be better reconciled with the historical record as the theory gets fleshed out and refined.

What to make of this latest schism? It’s never easy to determine what is really happening in the noumenal realm of orthodox Objectivism. Even long-time Objectivism watchers with degrees in Kremlinology are having a hard time here. But let’s make some guesses:

1. Now that Harriman’s book is out and Peikoff has given the imprimatur to Harrimanesque physics, orthodox ARI physicists have decided that they aren’t going to let a philosopher with little knowledge of physics dictate how their work is done.

2. Objectivists are getting tired of Peikoff’s reign. With Peikoff’s retirement from the daily affairs of the ARI and his age they think can get along just fine without him.

3. Peikoff’s behavior has become increasingly erratic. In 2006 he issued a fatwa against anyone who was considering not voting Democratic, going so far as to claim that they didn’t understand Objectivism. He recently made a similar statement concerning Objectivists who believe that Moslems have a legal right to build a Mosque near the site of the September 11 attacks in New York City. He has called for a nuclear attack on Iran. He’s so self-important that when he speaks at an Objectivist Conference a disclaimer is published that his attendance doesn’t mean he agrees with everything other speakers say.

4. Peikoff, for whatever contributions he has made to Objectivism, has actually hurt Rand’s reputation. For example, in 2005 he sponsored James Valliant’s cracked The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics, a book which, far from rescuing Rand, made her look worse. He has permitted people like Harriman to rewrite the published versions of Rand’s posthumous material in classic cult of personality fashion. Peikoff said in 1987 that Barbara Branden’s biography of Rand was “arbitrary” and would eventually be countered by an authorized biography. No such biography has appeared, but two independent biographies were published in 2009 both generally supportive of Branden’s. It must be increasingly obvious to younger Objectivists that the Peikoff line that Rand’s only character flaw was occasionally blowing her top was dishonest.

In 1968, Rand kicked out Nathaniel Branden (a psychologist). In 1977 she so harangued Alan Blumenthal (a psychiatrist) that he quit. Shortly before her death she booted out Robert Hessen (a historian). Leonard Peikoff has excommunicated not only David Kelly but George Reisman (an economist) and his wife Edith Packer (a psychologist). The McCaskey excommunication continues a trend of Rand and Peikoff breaking with independent thinkers who for ideological or personal reasons don’t toe the party line.

New Book: The Power and the Glory

2010-08-14T04:46:00.000-07:00

Burgess Laughlin, an Objectivist, has published The Power and the Glory. I haven't purchased the book yet, but based on the pages available it looks interesting.

What I found curious is that the disscussion of Rand's life is based on ARI Archivist Jeff Britting's hagiographic and brief Ayn Rand. There is no mention of the two new Rand biographies (by Anne Heller and Jennifer Burns) or Barbara Branden's 1987, The Passion of Ayn Rand.

Laughlin even recommends the now-discredited The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics by James Valliant.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Ayn Rand

2010-06-12T08:21:00.000-07:00

Roderick Long and Neera Badhwar have writtent is entry on Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand and Taxation

2010-04-17T05:21:00.001-07:00

It's occasionally said (and I believe I said it) that Ayn Rand thought that taxation should be voluntary, or more accurately, that she believed government should be funded by voluntary contributions.

That, however, is somewhat misleading. Look at what she said in "Government Financing in a Free Society":

As an illustration (and only as an illustration), consider the following possibility. One of the most vitally needed services, which only a government can render, is the protection of contractual agreements among citizens. Suppose that the government were to protect--i.e., to recognize as legally valid and enforceable--only those contracts which had been insured by the payment, to the government, of a premium in the amount of a legally fixed percentage of the sums involved in the contractual transaction. Such an insurance would not be compulsory; there would be no legal penalty imposed on those who did not choose to take it--they would be free to make verbal agreements or to sign uninsured contracts, if they wished. The only consequence would be that such agreements would not be legally enforceable; if they were broken, the injured party would not be able to seek redress in a court of law.

Such an arrangement would hardly be voluntary. A makes a contract with B for a million dollars. A is afraid that B might default or otherwise refuse to pay. The only way A may enforce his contract is by paying a fee to the government. Even if the contract contained an arbitration clause, the arbitration agreement could not be enforced (as such agreements are today under the American Arbitration Act) by enforcing it in court.

Marx v. Smith

2010-03-14T13:21:00.000-07:00

An excellent talk by Prof. James Otteson.

Why Rand's Critics "Overcompensate"

2010-02-13T06:17:00.001-08:00

Objectivists quite rightly complain that much criticism of Rand and Objectivism is unfair. For whatever reason people often find it difficult to fairly discuss ideas with which they agree. Most Christians shake their heads when they read Objectivist critiques of their views, I imagine.

Here are a few reasons why I think Objectivism is easy to misrepresent or, perhaps better put, for critics to "overcompensate" in their criticism.

1. Rand is the greatest thinker since Aristotle. While I admit that she is worth reading and even important, some of the claims about her genius and originality are overstated. And is everything Rand said worthy of great praise? I think of Leonard Peikoff's claim that Rand's diagnosis of the streaker at the Academy Awards as a Kantian nihilist as the summit of cultural criticism.

2. Rand is a great novelist and Atlas Shrugged is the greatest work of fiction ever. Like many people I enjoy The Fountainhead but think Atlas Shrugged brought out some of her worst tendencies, such as using characters as a soap box.

3. Rand's style. It strikes me as hectoring in the extreme and does to many others as well. Of course that doesn't mean someone should call her a "fascist" or "totalitarian."

4. Rand's life. Unless Rand's three biographers (Barbara Branden, Jennifer Burns and Anne Heller) got it completely wrong, Rand had a cruel and eccentric side and encouraged what, with some exaggeration, might be called a "cult." Rand's critics might not know the controversy about Rand's character, but aren't they entitled to rely on these books (in particular those written by non-insiders, Burns and Heller)? When Peikoff tells us that Rand's only character flaw was occasionally blowing her top (which he tries to turn into a virtue) aren't Rand's critics justified in concluding that maybe orthodox Objectivism has something to hide?

5. Rand's movement. The denunciations of fellow advocates (Peikoff's attack on Gotthelf's 2000 book Ayn Rand for example), the splits, Harry Binswanger's loyalty oath, the rewriting of Rand's journals and other material (first revealed by Burns) to conform to Rand's reports about herself, etc. make Objectivism look a little eccentric.

6. Altruism. Rand's jeremiad against altruism just doesn't "resonate" with most people. For example, in Burns' book there some discussion of Rose Wilder Lane's interaction with Rand. Lane grew up on the frontier when people just "helped out." She could never understand why all behavior should be motivated by self-interest or why Rand couldn't appreciate the difference between coercive and non-coercive altruism.

Jeff Riggenbach: Ayn Rand and the Early Libertarian Movement

2010-01-18T06:24:00.000-08:00

Here is a discussion by Jeff Riggenbach on the two new biographies of Rand from the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Robert Mayhew Reviews Goddess of the Market

2009-12-13T07:17:00.000-08:00

Orthodox Objectivist Robert Mayhew recently reviewed Goddess of the Market in The Objective Standard, a magazine associated with the Ayn Rand Institute. It is probably the harshest review of this excellent new biography of Ayn Rand.

Perhaps the most sensational claim in Goddess is that the published version of archival material has been rather heavily rewritten to conform to the Objectivist view of Rand. Rand is rewritten to sound more definitive, for example. One of the perpetrators named by Burns is none other than Robert Mayhew, in his Ayn Rand Answers, a selection of her question and answers. Robert Campbell has confirmed the rewrite by comparing what Rand said to what Mayhew claims Rand said. The amount and nature of the changes are truly stunning. It would have been nice for Mayhew to inform his readers that he is specifically criticized by Burns.

In any event, Prof. Mayhew's review leaves a lot to be desired. Let's discuss Mayhew's central points.

1. Mayhew asserts that Burns believes in historical determinism and that she alleges that Rand's ideas are a product of her environment. Nonetheless Mayhew is nice enough to claim that Burns is not "generally Marxist." Yet neither of the quotes from Goddess which Mayhew reproduces show that Burns is a determinist. In fact the two quotes describe merely the influence of Rand's early environment on her thought. Mayhew is also upset that Burns implies that some of Rand's ideas were "caused by her encounter with other thinkers." Indeed she does. Burns gives solid evidence for this, including the influence of Herbert Spencer, Isabel Paterson and H.L.Mencken. The obvious question here is, so what? While Mayhew might be correct that Burns should he discussed these influences in more detail, it's not as if a strong case can't be made that Rand was influenced by others more than she let on. For example in Shoshana Milgram's essay in Mayhew's Fountainhead anthology, she shows the strong influence of Nietzsche on Rand's thought. We may grant that Rand didn't take various ideas from other thinkers and pluck them at random in her thought, but it's not as if there aren't similarities. Does Mayhew believe Rand is diminished if one contends that other thinkers influenced her?

2. Mayhew next complains that Burns ignored Rand's philosophy when it comes to her politics. As an example he mentions Burns' brief discussion of Rand's rejection of environmentalism. Burns writes that Rand was unable to accept the motives of environmentalists at "face value." I generally think Burns is correct here. Rand often searched for hidden agendas instead of confronting ideas head on. One thinks of Rand's critique of religion. She was much more concerned with the alleged motivations of religious thinkers than their actual ideas. A classic example of this is Rand's contention that a streaker at the Academy Awards
was a Kantian nihilist instead of a someone pulling a prank. That Rand's critique of environmentalist was somewhat prescient (and here I agree with Mayhew) doesn't mean that Burns hasn't put a finger on an occasional weakness in Rand's thought.

3. Mayhew attacks the book for its selectivity. I was surprised, like Mayhew, with the amount of discussion of Rand's private life. However Mayhew goes overboard in his claim that this is addressed to the detriment of Rand's political ideas. I think the reader of Goddess would understand quite well why Rand disagreed with conservatives and non-Objectivist libertarians. In my opinion Burns strikes close to the right balance between Rand's ideas, her life, and her influence on the conservative and libertarian movements. I would have preferred a bit more and detailed discussions of her political philosophy.

4. Mayhew puts a jab in a footnote about the supposed errors in the book touching on Rand's life. Without telling us what these are it's hard to evaluate this claim. Does Mayhew consider Burns' contention that Frank drank too much to be an error? Does he claim that Burns is wrong to suggest that Rand was not entirely candid about her early life? Mayhew does write that Burns exaggerates Rand's use of amphetamines; however there is reason to conclude that Rand's use was excessive and exacerbated her difficult side.

Finally, one can't but help noting the religious tone that opens the review. Mayhew compares Rand to Jesus, her followers to his disciples, and Nathaniel and Barbara Branden to Judas!

"The Greatest Novel Ever Written"

2009-11-19T04:04:00.000-08:00

This link contains letters from Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard to Ayn Rand praising Atlas Shrugged. That Murray Rothbard would praise Rand so highly, in spite of their differences and his problems with her movement, is an obvious testimony to her charisma.

Material About Rand, the New Bios, and the PARC Wars

2009-11-07T07:35:00.000-08:00

Over at SOLOPASSION I have started a post with a number of links to material about Rand, the new biographies and the PARC wars. The PARC wars material is not meant to be comprehensive, but only to allow readers to get some background on the controversies about Rand's life.

Goddess of the Market (Amazon Review)

2009-09-26T06:48:00.000-07:00

My Amazon review of Goddess of the Market:

Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was a pivotal figure in the modern libertarian movement. What is most interesting is that her influence was also great on the conservative movement, notwithstanding her atheism and secularism. Jennifer Burns, a professor of history at the University of Virginia, has written an outstanding intellectual biography of Rand, one that focuses on Rand’s political ideas and activism.

As anyone who has been following the buzz about this book knows, Prof. Burns (who is not an Objectivist) was granted almost complete access to material at the Ayn Rand Archives, which is associated with the Ayn Rand Institute. There has always been a bit of controversy about the Archives. Questions have been raised about the accuracy of the material released (such as the Journals). Prof. Burns was able to compare published versions with the originals. The suspicions raised by scholars such as Chris Sciabarra were fully justified, in particular with respect to the published version of Rand’s journals. As Prof. Burns writes, “On nearly every page of the published journals an unacknowledged change has been made from Rand’s original writing. In the book’s foreword the editor, David Harriman, defends his practice of eliminating Rand’s words and inserting his own as necessary for greater clarity. In many case, however, his editing serves to significantly alter Rand’s meaning.” She adds, “similar problems plague Ayn Rand Answers (2005), The Art of Fiction (2000), The Art of Non-Fiction (2001), and Objectively Speaking (2009).”

Rand said she developed her philosophy at age two and one-half and it remained essentially the same. The historical record has been rewritten to accord with Rand’s self-mythologizing. (This is not cast aspersion on the current archivists, who are very much aware of – and upset at – the jiggery pokery sanctioned by Rand's estate.)

Given the rewriting of the historical record by the estate, what does that say about the accuracy of the ARI-sanctioned description of Rand set forth by Leonard Peikoff in his 1987 Ford Hall Forum address and James Valliant in his 2005 The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics? Peikoff and Valliant claimed that Rand’s only flaw was occasional anger, which they attempted to justify as Rand’s righteous rage against a relativistic world. The Peikoff and Valliant view is, to say the least, misleading. Prof. Burns confirms Rand’s abusive treatment of the Collective, her mistreatment of her husband, and her tendency to sever relationships over minor matters, among other things. Although Prof. Burns doesn’t label Rand’s husband an alcoholic, the evidence that he drank more than one should is quite strong. She also concludes that Rand’s behavior was likely affected by decades of amphetamine use.

Nothing in this book shows the portrayal of Rand in Barbara Branden’s 1986 biography of Rand (The Passion of Ayn Rand) to be wrong in any substantial regard, much less deliberately dishonest. Prof. Burns does find fault with certain aspects of The Passion of Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden’s memoirs.

The value of Goddess of the Market, however, is not the light it sheds on various Objectivist controversies, but in the fascinating story it tells. Rand’s life intersected with many of the best known people in the conservative and libertarian movement such as Albert Jay Nock, Isabel Paterson, Ludwig von Mises, and Murray Rothbard. Prof. Burns shows Rand’s gradual disillusionment with the conservative movement over its embrace of religion. She never felt at home with the libertarian movement, which she as saw almost exclusively as anarchist and subjectivist. Perhaps she saw libertarianism as a competitor (she could never decide whether she had nothing in common with them, or if they plagiarized her ideas).

Burns also highlights Rand’s involvement in politics. She worked for Wendell Wilkie’s campaign and attempted to organize a movement to fight the spread of collectivism. Much of this was known before, but Prof. Burns tells the story with new details and corrects the record on various matters, such as Rand’s split with Isabel Paterson.

Goddess of the Market breaks new ground in Ayn Rand scholarship. Hopefully the new openness of the Archives will permit scholars to delve more deeply into Ayn Rand’s life and her intellectual development.

September 11, 2001

2009-09-11T17:13:00.000-07:00

Where were you? I was visiting Indian ruins in Argentina.

Where were you when the world stopped turnin'that September day?
Out in the yard with your wife and children;
Or working on some stage in L.A.?
Did you stand there in shock at the sight of that black smoke Rising against that blue sky?
Did you shout out in anger in fear for your neighbor
Or did you just sit down and cry?
Did you weep for the children that lost their dear loved ones?

Did you pray for the ones who don't know?
Did you rejoice for the people who walked from the rubbleand sob for the ones left below?
Did you burst out in pride for the red white and blue
And the heroes who died just doin' what they do?
Did you look up to heaven for some kind of answer?
And look at yourself for what really matters?

I'm just a singer of simple songs;I'm not a real political man
I watch CNN, but I'm not sure I can tell you the difference in Iraq and Iran
But I know Jesus and I talk to God
And I remember this from when I was young
Faith, Hope and Love are some good things He gave us
And the greatest is Love.

Where were you when the world stopped turning that September day?
Teaching a class full of innocent children;
Driving down some cold interstate?
Did you feel guilty 'cause you're a survivorin a crowded room did you feel alone?
Did you call up your mother and tell her you love her?
Did you dust off that bible at home?
Did you open your eyes hope it never happened;
And close your eyes and not go to sleep?
Did you notice the sunset the first time in ages;
Or speak to some stranger on the street?
Did you lay down at night and think of tomorrow;
Go out and buy you a gun?
Did you turn off that violent old movie you're watchin'
And turn on "I Love Lucy" reruns?
Did you go to a church and hold hands with some strangers?
Stand in line and give your own blood?
Did you just stay home and cling tight to your familyThank God you had somebody to love?

I'm just a singer of simple songs;
I'm not a real political manI watch CNN,
but I'm not sure I can tell you the difference in Iraq and Iran
But I know Jesus and I talk to God
And I remember this from when I was young
Faith, Hope and Love are some good things He gave us
And the greatest is Love.I'm just a singer of simple songs;
I'm not a real political manI watch CNN,
but I'm not sure I can tell you the differencein Iraq and Iran

But I know Jesus and I talk to GodAnd I remember this from when I was young
Faith, Hope and Love are some good things He gave us
And the greatest is Love.And the greatest is Love.
And the greatest is Love.

Where were you when the world stopped turnin'that September day?

-Alan Jackson

©2001 EMI Music / Tri-Angels Music (ASCAP)

Judgment Day

2009-09-09T16:05:00.000-07:00

Murray Rothbard's review of Nathaniel Branden's Judgment Day is now available.

Economic Reasoning: The Most Common Fallacies

2009-08-18T13:27:00.001-07:00

This lecture by Dr. David Gordon has a few comments on Objectivism.

Retouching Rand

2009-08-16T08:14:00.000-07:00

I posted this piece over at Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature. Probably my hardest-hitting piece. For those few viewers of my blog I should note that I have a relatively high opinion of Rand, certainly higher than my posts would indicate. I hope to do a series on the things I like about Rand starting in September.

You Can't Fake Reality

2009-08-02T07:15:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Burns' forthcoming intellectual biography of Ayn Rand is called Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right.

Of particular note is that Prof. Burns was given full access to Rand's papers at the Ayn Rand Archives (which is associated with the Ayn Rand Institute). According to this review, the skepticism that many have had with respect to the accuracy of material put out by the ARI (see here and here) is fully justified. In fact, things may have been worse than suspected.

Under the influence of Rand’s heir, Leonard Peikoff, the archives were
off-limits to many scholars for years. Peikoff has a history of wanting to
protect Rand’s reputation, even if that means giving facts short-shift. That Burns had full access to Rand’s papers is a good sign for future Rand-related scholarship—though Burns does warn that scholars who were involved in “Objectivist controversies” may still find themselves barred from seeing the papers.

Because of her access, Burns was able to document the influence of Nietzsche on Rand. One of the great modern myths, regarding Rand, is that she emerged from Russia with a fully formed philosophical system, at least in all the essentials. Burns is able to document that Rand was in the process of forming her ideas over a period of decades. And while I found her discussion of Nietzsche’s influence on Rand fascinating, I thought she should have given equal emphasis to the whys and hows of Rand shifting away from Nietzsche.

* * *

One other area that I found of significant interest is Burns discussion of the various problems surrounding Rand documents made public by the
Ayn Rand Institute, Leonard Piekoff’s organization. There has been a great deal of controversy over indications that ARI doctored documents. Some of this doctoring was admitted by ARI, which asserted that they merely made clarifications consistent with what Rand had intended to say. Burns, who has seen the originals, says this is not the case.

She does say that the letters of Rand, that have been released, “have not been altered; they are merely incomplete.” But the same is not true for other works of Rand, including her Journals. Burns writes, “On nearly every page of the published journals an unacknowledged change has been made from Rand’s original writing. In the book’s foreword the editor, David Harriman, defends his practice of eliminating Rand’s words and inserting his own as necessary for greater clarity. In many case, however, his editing serves to significantly alter Rand’s meaning.” She says that sentences are “rewritten to sound stronger and more definite” and that the editing “obscures important shifts and changes in Rand’s thought.” She finds “more alarming” the case that “sentences and proper names present in Rand’s original …have vanished entirely, without any ellipses or brackets to indicate a change.”

The result of this unacknowledged editing is that “they add up to a different Rand. In her original notebooks she is more tentative, historically bounded, and contradictory. The edited diaries have transformed her private space, the hidden realm in which she did her thinking, reaching, and groping, replacing it with a slick manufactured world in which all of her ideas are definite, well formulated, and clear.” She concludes that Rand’s Journals, as released by ARI, “are thus best understood as an interpretation of Rand rather than her own writing. Scholars must use these materials with extreme caution.”

The bad news is that “similar problems plague Ayn Rand Answers (2005), The Art of Fiction (2000), The Art of Non-Fiction (2001), and Objectively Speaking (2009).” Burns says all these works were “derived from archival material but have been significantly rewritten.” Rand scholars have long suspected such manipulation of documents; Burns confirms it with evidence she herself saw.
Certainly an explantion for this is required. For a number of years we have been told that the Archives will be publishing a collection of oral history entitled 100 Voices. I would recommend that the ARI make the actual interviews available on the web and provide access to non-ARI scholars.

New Books on Rand -- Early Reviews

2009-08-02T07:09:00.001-07:00

The first reviews of the new books on Ayn Rand by Anne Heller and Jennifer Burns are in. It appears that the books will be outstanding.

Here are the two reviews of Prof. Burns' book: here and here.

Here is the first review of Anne Heller's book.

Test Your Knowledge, Number 8

2009-07-25T19:51:00.001-07:00

Identify:

1. Piers Paul Read

2. Paul Prudhomme

3. Pierre Paul Prudh’on

4. Louis-Marie Prudhomme

As:

A. Contemporary Novelist

B. Painter

C. Cajun Chef

D. French Leftist Journalist

Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right

2009-07-01T17:59:00.001-07:00

Here is an interview with Jennifer Burns, author of the forthcoming Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right.

Hessen on The Objectivist and The Ayn Rand Letter

2009-05-09T06:06:00.000-07:00

Robert Hessen discusses the The Objectivist Newsletter, The Objectivist and The Ayn Rand Letter in Ronald Lora, The Conservative Press in Twentieth Century America. Go to page 349.

Szasz on Rand and Branden

2009-04-19T16:47:00.000-07:00

This is an incredibly harsh attack on Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden by Thomas Szasz from his book Faith in Freedom. Go to page 123.

Greenspan: The Man Behind Money

2009-04-19T08:31:00.000-07:00

Google books has made available a generous selection of Justin Martin's 2000 book Greenspan: The Man Behind Money. Martin has a lengthy discussion of Greenspan's involvment with Rand on pages 35-53.

Taking Ideas Seriously, Part II

2009-04-15T03:39:00.000-07:00

[Cross-posted at Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature]

In part one of this essay I discussed some of the problems with the Objectivist theory of history. Here I will discuss Leonard Peikoff’s The Ominous Parallels, in which Peikoff applies Rand’s philosophy of cultural change to a concrete historical episode.

The Ominous Parallels (“OP”) was published in 1982 with a preface by Ayn Rand. Peikoff’s thesis is that the rise of the Nazis was the direct result of the influence of Immanuel Kant on German philosophy and culture. Kant inspired even more irrational philosophers as Hegel and Fichte, who went on to influence twentieth century German speaking irrationalists such as Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Karl Barth, Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger (most of whom, curiously enough, were anti-Nazi). This intellectual climate paved the way for the Nazis to take control of Germany in 1933. Peikoff gives short shrift to the Great Depression, the Treaty of Versailles, and mistakes made by anti-Nazi politicians to mount an effective resistance to Hitler as explanations for the rise of Nazism.

The most obvious problem for Peikoff is that Kant was not a Nazi or even a proto-Nazi. His political views were generally of the classical liberal variety. The second formulation of the categorical imperative (which Peikoff never quotes in his lengthy discussion of Kant’s ethics) is the rather un-Nazi sounding “act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end.” For any number of reasons, Kant seems particularly ill-suited as the intellectual godfather of Adolph Hitler.

A larger problem is Peikoff’s assumption that the influence of ideas flows one way (from bad to worse) and that later thinkers will inevitably draw the conclusions that Objectivists assert must be drawn from bad ideas. Peikoff does not establish (or even attempt to establish) that his and Rand’s idiosyncratic understanding of Kant was accepted by German philosophers and intellectuals. In addition, Peikoff does not show (or again even attempts to show) that German intellectuals drew the political conclusions that he thinks are inevitable from Kantian philosophy. Such a demonstration would require the review of an enormous amount of literature (most of it untranslated) by German intellectuals from Kant to 1933. If Kant’s immediate followers were not collectivists of the Nazi variety, any claim that Kantianism leads inevitably to collectivism or Auschwitz (which Peikoff alleges was Kant’s “dream”) is rather debatable.

We shouldn’t be surprised, then, that there are only a couple of Nazis whom Peikoff cites as finding support in Kant. The first is Lothar Gottlieb Tirala. Peikoff calls him a “philosophically trained Nazi ideologist” who believed that Aristotle was non-Aryan. (OP, pp. 57, 65-66.) I suspect that Tirala first came to Peikoff’s attention through von Mises’ works Human Action and Omnipotent Government. Von Mises discusses him as a representative advocate of “polylogism,” the belief that different classes or races employ different logic. Tirala was a physician who headed the Nazi’s Institute for Racial Hygiene. He was seen as something of an eccentric even by most Nazis because of his theory that proper breathing could cure a host of diseases. He does not appear to have been taken seriously as a philosopher. (Best I can tell, his only work translated into English was The Cure of High Blood Pressure by Respiratory Exercises.)

The second is Adolph Eichmann. Peikoff relies exclusively on Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, her famous account of his 1961 trial. According to Peikoff, “[h]e was a faithful Kantian Adolph Eichmann told his Israeli judges.” (OP, p. 96.) As Fred Seddon shows, Peikoff’s use of Arendt is highly misleading.

As David Ramsay Steele notes, one of the presuppositions of Objectivist theory is that there is a “tight fit” between metaphysics and epistemology on the one hand and ethics and politics on the other. However, the one theme running through Nazi ideology is not Kantianism or even philosophy, but biology and race. Fanciful theories of Aryan supremacy were probably accepted by the average Nazi not because of epistemology but because of the all too human need to find scapegoats in a time of crisis. Peikoff is aware that the rise of the Nazis took place simultaneously with the acceptance by many intellectuals of esoteric racial theories of Aryan superiority, but makes the dubious claim that these ideas were believed only because bad philosophy paved the way for them. Of course many German philosophers such as Hegel and Fichte were ardent nationalists, but it does not appear that they advocated proto-Nazi racial ideas. Even the most prominent philosopher who was a member of the Nazi party (Martin Heidegger) did not accept Nazi racial theories completely. If one had asked the average Nazi (or even Nazi intellectual) why he believed in racist ideology I would be surprised if he gave reasons having anything to do with the philosophies of Kant, Hegel or Fichte.

Interestingly enough, probably the most widely quoted philosopher by the Nazis was Friedrich Nietzsche. Unlike the obscure and abstruse Kant, Nietzsche actually sounds like a Nazi, at least at times. His philosophy is also tinged with racial and biological overtones. This is not to say that he would have approved of the Nazism, but if Nazism should be laid at the feet of any thinker (a dubious proposition) it would be Nietzsche. As readers of this blog know, Rand admired Nietzsche and echoes of his philosophy show up even in her later works. So we shouldn’t be surprised that Peikoff (always eager to defend Rand) tells us that his influence on the rise of the Nazis is “debatable.” (OP, p. 43.)

The Passion of James Valliant's Criticism

2009-03-24T14:32:00.000-07:00

This is the Scribd document:

The Passion of James Valliant's Criticism The Passion of James Valliant's Criticism neil.parille4975 The Passion of James Valliant's Criticism is a critique of The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics, published in 2005. In The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics, Valliant argues that the biographies and memoirs of Barbara Branden (The Passion of Ayn Rand) and Nathaniel Branden (Judgment Day and My Years with Ayn Rand) paint a false and dishonest picture of Rand. Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was the author of The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and works of philosophy and politics.

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Other Research leonard peikoff frank oconnor

Robert Hessen: In Defense of the Corporation

2009-03-11T15:44:00.000-07:00

It's occasionally said that Leonard Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels (1982) is the first book on Objectivist philosophy. However, it would appear that Robert Hessen's In Defense of the Corporation (1979) was earlier.

Taking Ideas Seriously, Part I

2009-02-17T07:09:00.000-08:00

Objectivists claim to “take ideas seriously.” According to Rand and her followers it is ideas (more specifically abstract philosophical ideas such as metaphysics and epistemology) that determine the course of history. As Rand put it in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (“ITOE”) concerning “the problem of universals”: “[T]he fate of human societies, of knowledge, of science, of progress and of every human life, depends on it. What is at stake here is the cognitive efficacy of man’s mind.” (ITOE, p. 3.) Yet despite the supposedly supreme importance of ideas in the Objectivist schema, how well do they deal with intellectual history in practice?

Rand’s first work following Atlas Shrugged was a lengthy essay entitled “For the New Intellectual” which appeared in a book of the same name published in 1961. In this essay Rand traced the history of philosophy and its generally deleterious effects on history through brief (and not entirely accurate) descriptions of thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hume, Kant and Spencer. The first book written by an Objectivist philosopher other than Rand was Leonard Peikoff’s The Ominous Parallels in which Peikoff blamed Nazism on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.

Although Objectivists often present their views dramatically and hyperbolically, the Objectivist claim about the influence of philosophers on the course of history is not new with Rand (nor, in a rare display of modesty, did she claim it was). For example, the historian Christopher Dawson wrote in his 1953 work Understanding Europe: “What we all tend to forget, however, is the way in which even the most irrational phenomena in the modern world . . . have been conditioned and in some sense created by the ideologies of the past, so that behind the modern demagogue and dictator there stands the ghost of some forgotten metaphysician.” (Dawson, Understanding Europe, p. 152.) Other examples are Richard Weaver’s contention that Western culture got off the wrong track with medieval nominalism and Eric Voegelin’s thesis concerning the influence of Gnosticism on revolutionary ideologies.

The Objectivist version of intellectual history is problematic on a number of grounds:

First, is it really the case that the fate of knowledge depends on the right theory of concept formation? History doesn’t bear this out. To take one example, consider the “fate” of mathematics in the twentieth century. No one can deny the tremendous progress that mathematicians made even though there was no agreement as to the conceptual foundation of mathematics or even the definition of a number. Nor does it appear that physics and chemistry (both heavily mathematical) suffered as a result of this conceptual logjam, contrary to what Objectivist “super logic” might suggest if knowledge is rigidly contextual and hierarchical. Is there any reason to doubt that science and technology will continue to make progress even if the Objectivist theory of concept formation remains unheralded?

In addition, a review of individual thinkers and scientists would likely show that a substantial majority did not sympathize with Objectivist or proto-Objectivist ideas. No less than the twentieth century’s greatest scientist, Albert Einstein, considered himself a Kantian. Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead made seminal advances in logic in their massive Principia Mathematica. Whitehead went on to found the school of thought known as “process theology” writing, among other works, Religion in the Making. Another example is Nicholas Copernicus, who famously advanced the heliocentric view of the solar system in 1543’s De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium. Copernicus was a Catholic prelate trained in scholastic theology. Upon a visit to Italy he came under the influence of neo-Platonist mathematicians. It doesn’t appear that Copernicus’ philosophic background prevented him from making one of the most important discoveries in astronomy.

Of course, one could easily conjure up various philosophies that would be destructive of scientific progress (such as the belief that studying the natural world is immoral), but history shows that science is compatible with a variety of philosophical approaches and that a certain eclecticism in method might even be desirable.

Second, Objectivists often look for philosophical explanations for rather mundane events. In a 2007 post I drew attention to Peikoff’s defense of Rand’s claim that the streaker at the 1974 Academy Awards was a Kantian nihilist, when in fact he was a publicity seeker intent on making a statement about public nudity.

Third, Objectivists tend to reduce historical change to a few philosophical ideas and ignore other, non-philosophical factors. For example, in The Ominous Parallels, Peikoff barely mentions the Treaty of Versailles, which fueled German resentment. This, combined with mistakes made by anti-Nazi German politicians and the Great Depression, were far more responsible for the rise of the Nazis than the influence of Kant.

Fourth, for all the Objectivist bluster about “taking ideas seriously,” Objectivism is destructive of the understanding and enjoyment of ideas. The Objectivist approach simplifies and caricatures the history of ideas to such an extent that one wonders at times why Objectivists would study ideas other than their own. This point was made by David Gordon is his review of The Ominous Parallels:

“There is, I think, a deeper flaw in Peikoff's approach to intellectual history than his errors, however grave, about a particular thinker. One has no sense, when reading Peikoff, that Kant (or any of the other thinkers he condemns) was responding to serious intellectual problems. If, for example, Kant differed with Aristotle, the thought never seems to have occurred to Peikoff that he may have had some legitimate reasons for doing so. Peikoff gives us a history of philosophy with the arguments left out. Someone unfortunate enough to derive all his knowledge of Kant from Peikoff's pages would have no conception at all of why Kant's successors regarded him as a profound thinker rather than the proponent of ‘a perverted theory that no one could mean.’”

Fifth, there is a tendency in Objectivist circles to make the thought of various thinkers conform to what the Objectivist theory of history would suggest rather than letting them speak for themselves. To take just one example, Objectivists often portray the ancient Greeks (whom they admire) as secularists when their society was religious to an extent hard to appreciate today.

In the second part of this post I will compare Leonard Peikoff’s The Ominous Parallels with Christopher Dawson’s discussion of Hegel in Understanding Europe and Ludwig von Mises’ discussion of the rise of Nazism in Omnipotent Government.

Seasteading

2009-02-11T16:15:00.000-08:00

This is an interesing article from Wired Magazine dealing with seasteading.

I have heard about this once or twice. Apparently, some libertarians believe that one might establish a "stateless" society outside of a nation's territorial waters (apparently 200 miles). I wonder how many people it would take for such a mini city to constitute a nation for purposes of the UN membership (not that most libertarian nationists would want to become "member states" of the UN).

According to the article, the first such colony (or primitive version thereof) was created by an admirer of Ayn Rand, one Werner Stiefel.

The Good Life of Murray Rothbard

2009-01-25T08:25:00.000-08:00

This talk was given by Murray Rothbard's wife Joey in 1996. There is an interesting discussion of Ayn Rand and the Objectivist movement.

Tombstone Every Mile by Dick Curless

2009-01-03T11:56:00.000-08:00

This song made Dick Curless famous. They didn't call him "the baron of country music" for no reason. Too bad most of his songs are hard to come by.

Chick Inspector by Dick Curless

2009-01-01T18:10:00.001-08:00

We waited a long time for this classic to show up on the web.

The Passion of James Valliant's Criticism

2008-12-25T06:38:00.000-08:00

The completed version of my critique is now available.

Objectivism and Religion

2008-12-01T03:15:00.000-08:00

[Cross-Posted at Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature]

Ayn Rand and her followers have a bee in their bonnet when it comes to religion. In particular, contemporary Objectivists often fret about the influence on the Religious Right on politics. It doesn’t appear, however, that they have spent much time studying the topic of religion because the same old chestnuts keep popping up again and again. Here I’ll discuss a couple quotes that appear frequently in Objectivist literature and an additional claim made by Leonard Peikoff.

“Judge Not, That You Be Not Judged”

This is from Matthew 7:1 and is part of Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount. It first entered the Objectivist lexicon with Rand herself:

The precept: ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged’ . . . is an abdication of moral responsibility: it is a moral blank check one gives to others in exchange for a moral blank check one expects for oneself.

It is mentioned most recently in Andrew Bernstein’s just published Objectivism in One Lesson.

The full quote (KJV) is:

“(1) Judge not, that ye be not judged. (2) For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”

Objectivists, proud of Rand’s moralism, see in Christianity a precursor to the non-judgmentalism present in the post-modern world. (Objectivism must be one of the few philosophies in history which finds Christianity insufficiently judgmental.)

But does Jesus prohibit judging? This appears unlikely, if for no other reason than that Jesus was quite judgmental and judging is a part of life. A couple standard commentaries might help. According to Craig Keener (A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, pp. 240-41):

As noted above, the issue is not failure to discern, but hypocrisy in judging others for one’s own faults. Later rabbis declared that one should ‘remove [one’s] own blemish first,’ giving the example of a rabbi who deferred a case to correct his own behavior before he ruled that another must do the same. Greek and Roman sages offered similar wisdom: for example, one must solve one’s own problems, and only then in turn to criticize others accurately; we see others’ faults more quickly than our own. Likewise, ‘Practice nothing in your deeds for which you condemn other in your words’ which seems to have become part of the common moral wisdom. (Citations omitted.)

Donald Hagner (Matthew 1-13, p. 169) agrees: “[T]he way one judges others will be the way one is judged by God . . . .”

Rand says that, in judging, one must “possess an unimpeachable character,” so perhaps Rand is saying something similar to Jesus and the ancients.

“I Believe It Because It is Absurd”

This is another chestnut appearing in, among other places, Leonard Peikoff’s Religion Versus America.

What if a dogma cannot be clarified? So much the better, answered an earlier Church father, Tertullian. The truly religious man, he said, delights in thwarting his reason; that shows his commitment to faith. Thus, Tertullian's famous answer, when asked about the dogma of God's self-sacrifice on the cross: ‘Credo quia absurdum’ (‘I believe it because it is absurd’).

Tertullian didn’t say “credo quia absurdum.” (Peikoff is not the most accurate of intellectual historians.) As one writer puts it:

Credo quia absurdum is, of course, a misquote. Tertullian's words are credibile est, quia ineptum est (De carne Christi 5.4). The difference between the imputed and actual words is striking and important. James Moffatt in a sadly neglected article of a half-century ago discovered the clue to the interpretation of the words in observing that here Tertullian ‘follows in the footsteps of that cool philosopher Aristotle.’ In Rhetoric 2.23.22 Aristotle shows that an argument from probability can be drawn from the sheer improbability of a story: some stories are so improbable that it is reasonable to believe them. On this view, the words presuppose a tidy correlation between faith and reason, and a consideration of Tertullian's aims in the treatise in which they are found supports this interpretation.
Tertullian recognizes, however, that in spite of its distortions, pagan philosophy has often enjoyed glimpses of the truth. In recalling his quotable strictures against philosophy, we must not forget his equally quotable Seneca saepe noster (De anima 20.1). In the Ad nationes, an early work, Socrates becomes a forerunner of the Christian martyrs, because he suffered, as they suffer, on behalf of the truth at the hands of those ignorant of it (1.4.6-7). If there is a change of tone in the more artful Apologeticum, Tertullian still grants that Socrates aliquid de veritate sapiebat deos negans (46.5).

Those Secular Greeks

Leonard Peikoff, again in Religion Versus America, makes the following claim:

Ancient Greece was not a religious civilization, not on any of the counts I mentioned. The Gods of Mount Olympus were like a race of elder brothers to man, mischievous brothers with rather limited powers; they were closer to Steven Spielberg's extra-terrestrial visitor than to anything we would call ‘God.’ They did not create the universe or shape its laws or leave any message of revelations or demand a life of sacrifice. Nor were they taken very seriously by the leading voices of culture, such as Plato and Aristotle. From start to finish, the Greek thinkers recognized no sacred texts, no infallible priesthood and no intellectual authority beyond the human mind; they allowed no room for faith. Epistemologically, most were staunch individualists who expected each man to grasp the truth by his own powers of sensory observation and logical thought. For detail, I refer you to Aristotle, the preeminent representative of the Greek spirit.

Even though Peikoff qualifies his statement somewhat, it is still more than a little misleading. As a leading scholar of ancient Greek religion explains:

The paradox is that, although Greek religion seems to lack so many of the things which characterize modern religions and which require degrees of personal commitment and faith from their followers, Greeks were involved with religion to a degree which is very hard nowadays to understand. . . . The Greek household had its shrine to Hestia or to Zeus Ktesios . . . . At a meal a libation or drink-offering to the gods was an automatic custom . . . . The great landmarks of human life – birth, coming of age, marriage and death – were all marked by rituals with religious significance. . . . it is against this background of a way of life interpenetrated by an enormous variety of religious ritual, practice and belief . . . that the questioning of religion was seen as a dangerous threat. (J.V. Muir, “Religion and the New Education” in P.E. Easterling and J.V. Muir, Greek Religion and Society, pp. 194-95.)

Even the supposedly enlightened Athenians consulted the oracle at the shrine dedicated to Apollo at Delphi and made military decisions based on what they were told.

The Passion of James Valliant's Criticism, Part V

2008-11-29T06:54:00.000-08:00

The Passion of James Valliant's Criticism, Part V is now up. This completes my critique, although I am taking the five parts and turning it into a stand-alone critique. If anyone wants a copy, please email me.

James Valliant on "The Exploiters and the Exploited," Part V

2008-11-15T09:09:00.000-08:00

Financial Exploitation

Rand accused the Brandens of financial exploitation. With respect to Nathaniel Branden she asserts that he authorized an improper loan from The Objectivist to NBI, and implies that there were additional improprieties. (TWIMC, pp. 4-5.) With respect to Barbara Branden, she implies that Branden proposed a business plan for a reorganized lecture service that was financially so unreasonable that is was little more than an attempt to cash-in on her name. (TWIMC, pp. 6-7.) We shall see that there is no evidence to support these claims.

Valliant supplements Rand’s allegations in an additional way. He alleges that the Brandens’ deception of Rand concerning Nathaniel’s affair with Patrecia was motivated by financial concerns. Had Rand learned the truth, she would have broken with one or both of them, thus cutting off their “meal ticket.” In addition, he asserts that Nathaniel Branden was gradually drifting away from strict adherence to Objectivism and his failing to disclose this to Rand constituted continued exploitation. I will discuss Branden’s alleged departure from Objectivism later, but I find Valliant’s claim of financial exploitation unpersuasive.

The Brandens’ business relationship with Rand was likely beneficial to all parties, but there is no reason to think that their deception of Rand about Nathaniel’s affair with Patrecia was motivated primarily by financial concerns. It is more likely that they feared Rand’s volcanic temper and the shattering of the Objectivist movement if the relationship was disclosed. As even Valliant concedes, Nathaniel Branden’s finances improved dramatically when he moved to California and went into private practice full-time. (PARC, p. 108.) Branden writes in his memoirs that after the break, NBI was liquidated and the amount after debts was $45,000 – which was split among him, Barbara Branden and Wilfred Schwartz. He adds that “[t]his was all that was left of ten years of work. I had no other personal savings.” (MYWAR, p. 354.) Barbara Branden doesn’t discuss her financial situation at the time of the break, but it doesn’t appear to have been strong. In any event, it was Rand’s intention of naming Barbara Branden her heir that prompted Branden to disclose the truth to Rand (which Valliant, bizarrely, attempts to turn into further evidence of her alleged exploitation of Rand). (PAR, pp. 342-43; PARC, p. 119.) People as talented as Nathaniel and Barbara Branden no doubt could have established themselves in stable careers by 1968 had money been their life’s ambition.

This chapter is an additional example of Valliant’s one-sided writing. In his attempt to convince readers that the Brandens were motivated by a desire to cash-in on Rand’s name there is little, if any, mention of the countless hours of uncompensated time that they spent advancing (if not creating) the Objectivist movement. Instead (in keeping with Rand’s 1968 denunciation), their contributions are slighted:

A couple of years later, a newsletter—to be replaced by a magazine—was founded by Branden and Rand to publish Rand’s speeches and essays and essays, as well as the essays of Rand’s students, including the Brandens’, applying Objectivism to the questions of the day and the Questions of the Ages.

These activities soon became the Brandens’ full-time employment.

Rand's novels were really the only advertisement NBI ever needed. While the lectures at NBI -- including those of Leonard Peikoff and Alan Greenspan -- provided important applications and amplifications of Rand's ideas, it was her novels which recruited the students at NBI, not vice versa . . . . Whatever the quality of the work done at NBI, it was Rand who had pulled the students through the door in the first place--every time.

The same must be said of The Objectivist, which gave Branden and other young students of Objectivism a publishing outlet which they needed far more than Rand did at the time. (PARC, pp. 88-89.)

The Brandens were merely students and employees of Rand.

In an interview with Barbara Branden, Rand said the following (as reported by Mrs. Branden):

As cultural signs, I think the thing that really changed my whole mind is NBL. [Nathaniel Branden Lectures was the original name of Mr. Branden's organization.] It's the whole phenomenon of Nathan's lectures. As you know, when he first started it I wasn't opposed to it, but I can't say that I expected too much. I was watching it, in effect, with enormous concern and sympathy for him, because I thought there was a very good chance of it failing... Since the culture in general seemed totally indifferent to our ideas and to ideas as a whole, I didn't see how one could make a lecture organization grow . . . But with the passage of time . . . I began to see how even the least promising of Nathan's students . . . were not the same as they were before they started on the course, that Nathan had a tremendous influence on them, that they were infinitely better people and more rational, even if they certainly were not Objectivists yet... What I saw is that ideas take, in a manner which I did not know... The whole enormous response to Nathan gave me a preview of what can be done with a culture. And seeing Nathan start on a shoestring, with the whole intellectual atmosphere against him, standing totally alone and establishing an institution, that was an enormously crucial, concrete example of what can be done

Likewise, one certainly wouldn’t know the substantial role that Nathaniel Branden played in turning Rand’s ideas into the mature philosophy of Objectivism. In For the New Intellectual, Rand thanked Nathaniel Branden for his contribution of the “Attila” and “Witch Doctor” archetypes. In the forward to “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology” published in The Objectivist in 1966 (which her followers consider her most important writings), she acknowledged the importance of Branden’s article “The Stolen Concept.” One need only consider the seminal essays Branden wrote such as “The Psychology of Pleasure.” In fact, his “Basic Principles of Objectivism” course was the first systematic presentation of Rand’s ideas and was listened to by countless thousands of students throughout the United States. Branden may have been a “student” of Rand’s, but he was the first teacher of Objectivism.

Barbara Branden devoted more of her time to the business side of the Objectivist movement, but she contributed articles to The Objectivist and presented a lecture series entitled “The Principles of Efficient Thinking” at NBI. Rand’s slight of Branden in TWIMC (“I cannot say as much for Barbara Branden” in comparison to Nathaniel’s “waste” of “human endowment”) was entirely unfair given her years of devotion to Objectivism and Rand’s previous praise of her talents and character (which she compared to the heroes of her novels).

James Valliant on "The Exploiters and the Exploited," Part 4

2008-11-09T05:28:00.000-08:00

According to Valliant, Rand’s defense in TWIMC was accurate whereas the Brandens’ responses were “dishonest . . . relying on direct personal slander.” (PARC, p. 90.) However, Valliant concedes that “Rand was not telling her readers everything.” (PARC, p. 95.)

It is evident from reading TWIMC that there was an undisclosed “personal” matter that provided the backdrop for the dispute. For example, Rand says that she was “shocked to discover that he [Branden] was consistently failing to apply to his own personal life. . . the fundamental principles of Objectivism . . . .” (p. 3.) She says that Barbara Branden later disclosed that Branden “suddenly confessed that Mr. Branden had been concealing from me certain ugly actions . . . in his private life . . . .” (p. 4.)

Although Rand did not say what these “ugly actions” were, she did reference Branden’s letter of July 1968. She wrote, “Mr. Branden presented me with a written statement which was so irrational and so offensive that I had to break my personal association with him.” (p. 3.) Left unsaid was that this statement was a several page letter which Nathaniel wrote to Rand explaining that their difference in age prevented him from resuming a sexual relationship with her. (JD, p. 375.) Branden reports that Rand was furious when he hand-delivered the letter to her. (JD, pp. 376-77.) Rand spent numerous pages in her diaries denouncing Branden and the letter. (PARC, pp. 311-69.)

Branden’s response to this claim about the letter was the following:

In writing the above, Miss Rand has given me the right to name that which I infinitely would have preferred to leave unnamed, out of respect for her privacy. I am obliged to report what was in that written paper of mine, in the name of justice and of self-defense.

That written statement was an effort, not to terminate my relationship with Miss Rand, but to save it, in some mutually acceptable form.

It was a tortured, awkward, excruciatingly embarrassed attempt to make clear to her why I felt that an age distance between us of twenty-five years constituted an insuperable barrier, for me, to a romantic relationship.

It is tempting to say, as does Valliant, that this portion of the Branden’s response was, if not gratuitous, at least misleading. In my opinion, the most natural implication of what Branden says is that Rand wanted to start a relationship. I don’t think most readers would conclude that Rand and Branden had a relationship which she wanted to restart. However, one must consider the context. At the beginning of the affair, all parties agreed to keep the affair secret. Rand, by mentioning the letter, in effect broke the agreement. By wording his response the way he did, Branden was able to keep his word and respond to the substance of TWIMC.

An additional matter is the addendum to TWMIC from signed by four lecturers at the NBI (Allan Blumenthal, Alan Greenspan, Leonard Peikoff, and Mary Ann Sures) who announced that they were breaking all ties with the Brandens and “condemn[ing]
them “irrevocably.” Of these four, Rand told only Allan Blumenthal of the affair. I find it a bit unfair for Rand to ask (or allow) these three people to sign such a statement without telling them know the complete story.

In hindsight it would probably have been better for Rand to write a short statement that she was ending her association with the Brandens for personal and professional reasons. By launching such a personal attack on the Brandens and indirectly referencing the affair, I find the Brandens’ response measured.

Stop Fact Checking and Start Reporting

2008-11-04T15:14:00.000-08:00

Nothing annoys me more than the media claiming that it will "fact check" the various advertisements and claims of the candidates. Let's face it, members of the media will vote overwhelmingly for Sen. Obama. Yet when they profess to neutrally check facts, I'm supposed to take it at face value?

I'm no pomo-wonker who claims that "all facts are interpreted," but if some member of the media is going to assert that candidate x got his facts wrong I'd like to know if he is voting for or against candidate x.

Take for example one Calvin Woodward of the AP. Today he discusses (among other things) the McCain campaign's claim that Obama was too close to terrorist William Ayers.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081103/ap_on_el_pr/fact_check_campaign_s_most_wanted

GUILT BY ASSOCIATION

William Ayers, a University of Illinois education professor and former member of the radical Weather Underground, was front and center in Republican claims that Obama was "palling around with terrorists," as Palin put it. Ayers had a meet-the-candidate event in his home for Obama early in the Democrat's political career.

The two served on the board of the Woods Fund. And they live in the same Chicago neighborhood.

McCain and Palin stretched the extent of that relationship to link Obama with shadowy figures.

Beyond that, they falsely implied that Ayers used the occasion of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to wish even greater harm. "We don't care about an old washed-up terrorist and his wife, who still, at least on Sept. 11, 2001, said he still wanted to bomb more," McCain told a rally.

This distortion originated in Hillary Rodham Clinton's play book during the primaries, when she criticized Obama for the same relationship.

Ayers, Clinton said, made comments "which were deeply hurtful to people in New York and, I would hope, to every American, because they were published on 9/11, and he said that he was just sorry they hadn't done more."

By coincidence, The New York Times published a story on the day of the attacks about Ayers and what he called his fictionalized memoirs. The story was based on an interview he had done earlier, in Chicago, in which he declared, "I don't regret setting bombs," and "I feel we didn't do enough," even while seeming to dissociate himself coyly from the group's most destructive acts.

Note the heading: "Guilt By Association." Is this "unbiased"? And where is the proof that Ayers' memoirs were "fictionalized"? Ayers still believes it was OK to "set[] bombs," so how is the McCain campaign wrong in claiming that Obama palls around with an unrepentant terrorist? "Shadowy figures"? How does Mr. Woodward propose to describe someone who was in hiding for years because he knew he was facing charges for planting bombs? "Dissociate himself coyly from the group's most destructive acts"? What does Ayers have to do to become a radical in Mr. Woodward's eyes, serve as Camp Commadant of the Gulag Archipelago? Being a commie terrorist isn't destructive enough?

Mr. Woodward: stop "fact checking" and start reporting.

James Valliant on "The Exploiters and the Exploited," Part 3

2008-11-02T06:48:00.000-08:00

Financial Wrongdoing

Perhaps Rand’s most serious charge against Nathaniel Branden is her contention that he financially exploited her. The centerpiece of this claim concerns a loan for $22,500 (or $25,000, depending on whom you believe) that Branden authorized from The Objectivist to NBI.

By way of background, The Objectivist (which was co-owned by Rand and Branden) and NBI (which was owned by Nathaniel Branden) were separate corporations. They shared a common business manager, Wilfred Schwartz. In September 1967, NBI secured a fifteen-year lease at the Empire State Building. The Objectivist was a subtenant, paying $6,000 a year to NBI. NBI’s rent was due yearly. From time to time Branden had authorized loans from The Objectivist to NBI. The Objectivist was profitable and the loans had been paid back. This much is agreed upon, or at least not disputed.

In July 1967, Branden authorized a loan from The Objectivist to NBI for $22,500. (Rand claimed that it was $25,000.) In any event, the loan included the $6,000 payment for The Objectivist’s lease, making it in effect a $16,500 (or $19,000) loan. It appears that this loan was greater than previous loans. It was repaid shortly before the break, probably in August 1968. According to Rand, the loan was made without her knowledge, in violation of the articles of incorporation, constituted almost the entire cash reserves of The Objectivist, and was not repaid until she insisted.

Here is Branden’s version of events:

Contrary to Miss Rand's claim, I never told her that I wished to borrow money from The Objectivist for the rent "because NBI did not have quite enough." At the time of the conversation to which Miss Rand refers, I had no reason to doubt that she already had knowledge of the loan, since there was regular communication between Mr. Schwartz and Miss Rand concerning the move to the Empire State Building, since The Objectivist's own Circulation Manager had prepared the check, and since the loan was entered on the books of The Objectivist. My passing reference to the loan was entirely perfunctory; it was intended, in effect, as a reminder, since I knew of Miss Rand's disinterest in business matters. When I mentioned the loan, Miss Rand said nothing to indicate that she was hearing of it for the first time; she uttered some casual expression of assent, said "So long as you pay it back" (or words to that effect), and waved her hand in a characteristic gesture, dismissing the subject.

Miss Rand states that "the original amount of the loan had represented the entire cash reserve of this magazine." The magazine's own financial statements do not support her assertion. The loan was made on July 6, 1967. The audited statement of the magazine, immediately preceding the loan, that of March 31, 1967, shows total assets in excess of $44,000 and cash in the bank in the amount of $33,881; the audited statement of March 31, 1968, shows total assets in excess of $58,000 and cash in the bank in the amount of $17,438, in addition to the $16,500 loan receivable from NBI (for which NBI was paying a higher rate of interest than The Objectivist obtained from its investments elsewhere).

Valliant alleges that this constitutes an admission by Branden that the loan in question constituted “the depletion of most of the cash reserves of the Objectivist . . . .” This is his reasoning:

He [Branden] does not tell us what The Objectivist had in the bank at the time of the loan, but as of March 31, 1968, the amount was $17,434 he says. The amount of money transferred to NBI, he alleged, had only been $22,500, not the $25,000 Rand had claimed, and, of this only $16,500 was “borrowed.” . . . . [B]ut no matter how Mr. Branden slices it, the loan still required the depletion of most of the cash reserves. . . . (PARC, p. 108.)

I’m no accountant, but I am at a loss to see how Valliant reaches this conclusion. While we don’t know the cash in the bank at the time of the loan, approximately four months prior it was $33,881. Valliant doesn’t mention this amount. Approximately eight months after the loan was made (but before it was paid back) it was $17,438. (Valliant mentions only this later amount, and gets it slightly wrong.) What is the evidence that this loan depleted the cash reserves of The Objectivist? I can only assume that Valliant believes that $17,438 contains funds from the repaid loan ($17,438-$16,500= $938), but the loan wasn’t paid until months later.

Concerning whether the articles of incorporation required consent of both Rand and Branden for such transactions, I can’t comment since I have not seen the document. Valliant doesn’t say whether the Archives has a copy. Valliant alleges that Branden admits in his Judgment Day that at the time of incorporation there was an “oral agreement” that there would be “mutual agreement on all decisions.” (PARC, p. 109.) Actually, Branden says only that there was an oral agreement that The Objectivist would not publish something the other opposed and if there was a falling out The Objectivist would cease publication. (JD, p. 291.)