The Key To Ayn Rand's Failure: Assessing Her 'Objectivism' Versus Reality
Equating The Personal With The Society
Though Rand did an excellent job of of formulating, and explaining in easily understandable terms, the libertarian philosophies of Self Reliance and Self Determination (showing that self interested, self reliance, is in many ways a vital philosophy to adopt as an individual in one’s own life) Rand, and other libertarians who follow her, then make the huge error of assuming that a society is best served by adopting that same philosophy of self interest, as its core mechanism.
She applied this personal philosophy (which works beautifully to empower people to emancipate themselves) to the higher group level of society and community governance where it clearly doesn’t work.
Ruthlessness Prevails When Self Interest Rules
As we have seen ever since Reagan and Thatcher, using this philosophy as a guide to community and global governance is a recipe for absolute disaster, because in societies and markets which are run via pure self interest as their core (and essentially only) mechanism, the most ruthless and irrationally selfish individuals inevitably beat out all competitors and become monopolist tyrants.
That Rand and her successors (such as Milton Friedman) could not recognize this patently obvious inevitable outcome, made the application of her theories to higher level group interactions abjectly foolish, and profoundly destructive to billions of other human beings.
The Results, In The Real World
A quick examination shows the dismal failure of Milton Friedman’s very first test case in allowing unfettered self interest to reflexively ‘coordinate’ national and global affairs, the genocidal Pinochet regime in Chile. Pinochet received direct guidance from Friedman as a Randian laissez-faire capitalist economist. The result was authoritarian tyranny and mass murder by the regime, and crippling mass poverty, unemployment, and wealth disparities for the people of Chile.
And the failures of this model have continued to cascade upon and maul the world ever since, as if the entire planet has been made into a domino toppling theme park circled with endlessly rebuilt, circuitous, and macabrely acrobatic runs of explosives-rigged ‘free market’ dominoes.
Rand’s Absurd Assumption That Reason Prevails In The Post ‘Enlightenment’ Age (As If By Natural Selection)
Rand and so many others like her, so fetishize, and erroneously rely on, Enlightenment Rationalism as a given natural human evolution, that they fail to recognize the perpetually present small handful of extremely unethical and irrational narcissists who will always completely dominate in a society that is run with self interest as its core tenet.
Rand took the position that pure self interest was now the optimum strategy for running human affairs, because since the Age of Enlightenment, we are all somehow now guided in our self interest by personal Reason and ethics, as if by Adam Smith’s ‘Invisible Hand’.
Predictable Subjugation Of Reason In Rand’s Distortion Of Smith’s ‘Free Market’
It is nothing short of jaw-droppingly unfathomable that Rand did not acknowledge the simple reality, that not all people pursuing self interest will choose to adopt Enlightenment Reason and ethics, and that those who do not, will most easily profit at the expense of all others because they are the most ruthless - especially in the brutal unfettered competitive capitalist economy she favored, which by design rewards sociopathic selfishness.
It is essential to understand that foundational economist Adam Smith was very clear in his “Wealth Of Nations” (which demagogues like Rand and Friedman cite as their inspiration) that markets must be regulated in order to prevent unfettered greed and monopolization from ruining them.
The Devotees Of Rand, As Perpetual Teenagers
As to Rand’s ardent starry-eyed followers (Friedman foremost among them) our reality is that in their own minds (unbeknownst to themselves) they are akin to little boys who never grew up. What 17 year old boy fails to fall in love with Rand’s fairytale message “If you just follow your own personal selfish interest, everyone around you, and the whole world, will be better off.”
As I’ve noted, this is clearly a deeply flawed assumption by which to run society, and no libertarian who has become adult in their thinking, believes such nonsense.
Which is why so many mature, evolved libertarians, outright scoff at Rand..
--
Eric Brooks is a full time grassroots organizer specializing in the interplay of global capitalist economics and war, with energy policy, the climate and extinction crisis, and environmental justice.
Not only all of that, BUT it doesn't even work for yourself unless you have enough cash.