There is little question that Ayn Rand has been a defining figure and a polarizing one in the decades since her work entered the American corpus. Conservatives, in the wake of Barack Obama’s ascension to the Presidency, threaten to “go Galt,” and quote Rand in the same tone they would use for the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, or the speeches of Ronald Reagan. Liberals, for their part, frequently invoke the name of Ayn Rand when they wish to accuse a political figure of being heartless, greedy, or economically fallacious. Her works frequently appear on school reading lists, and her intellectual acolytes have risen as high as the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve. Whatever one’s view of Rand, an awareness of her ideas has become almost a necessity of political discourse.
Rand is mostly known for a variety of novels and short stories, of which Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead are the most familiar. All of her fiction centers thematically on the glorification of the individual and the self-centered ethic, and occurs in a benevolent universe understandable through reason and in which the ultimate victory of goodness is inevitable. Slightly lesser-known are her collections of essays, such as Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and The Virtue of Selfishness which elaborate more on the specifics of the underlying philosophy of her work as applied to the real world.
As might be expected, Rand’s emphasis on the capitalist economy, minimalist government, and individualism make her beloved by American conservatives and right-libertarians. Leftists, who generally distrust capitalism, see government as broadly trustworthy, and tend to think of ethics in terms of interdependence, understandably, rarely have a positive view of Rand.
What conservatives rarely acknowledge about Rand, however, is that she regarded her philosophy as transcending the linear left/right spectrum. Her absolute belief in the objectivity of reality and the primacy of the rights of the individual led her to many views generally associated in America with liberalism as well; she was an ardent atheist who viewed the intrusion of religion into public life just as negatively as the intrusion of government, and she viewed abortion as an absolute right of women regardless of the circumstances. She also trusted intellectualism far more than populism—the Republican Party of her time had not yet fully harnessed the political power of religious social conservatives instrumental in the Reagan Revolution, nor had it embraced the folksy average-Joe attitude of Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber, and the Tea Party movement; but even the more cerebral conservatism of Goldwater seemed to her to lack a sound intellectual basis (and the goal of much of her writing was to provide it with that basis).
But to be clear, it is not the goal of this blog to argue that Rand was actually a secret liberal. That the specifics of Rand’s own political ideas were conservative, that her social circle was effectively entirely conservative, and that what little political action she engaged in or encouraged her readers to engage in was entirely directed towards conservative candidates or causes is indisputable. Rather, the intent is to examine the synergies that might exist between the philosophy underlying Rand’s politics, and that underlying liberal politics; and to consider ways in which Rand’s thinking was influenced by liberal thinkers who preceded her, of which even she herself may have been unaware.
Rand believed that philosophy followed a strict and inexorable hierarchy of metaphysics informing epistemology, epistemology informing ethics, and ethics informing politics (as well as other areas such as aesthetics and sexuality). Given her ethic of individualism and self-interest, she believed that there was no conclusion that could be rationally drawn in politics other than the necessity of the free market and the minimal state. If there is one area of inquiry that unites the topics examined in this blog, perhaps it is questioning the inevitability of that idea. In other words, can one begin with Randian metaphysics, Randian epistemology, and Randian ethics, and derive from them a liberal view of politics?
I believe that one can, and that the left is wrong to cede Rand’s ideas to conservatism. They have been wrongly co-opted by CEOs, Wall Street traders, Fox News demogogues, and other such parasites; let us reclaim them.
Reclaiming Rand 