Rand's psychopathic ideas made billionaires feel like
victims and turned millions of followers into their doormats.
The Guardian
ByGeorge Monbiot
It has a fair claim to be the ugliest philosophy the
postwar world has produced. Selfishness, it contends, is good, altruism
evil, empathy and compassion are irrational and destructive. The poor
deserve to die; the rich deserve unmediated power. It has already been
tested, and has failed spectacularly and catastrophically. Yet the
belief system constructed by Ayn Rand, who died 30 years ago this
month, has never been more popular or influential.
Rand was a Russian from a prosperous family who emigrated to the
United States. Through her novels (such as Atlas Shrugged) and her
nonfiction (such as The Virtue of Selfishness) she explained a
philosophy she called Objectivism. This holds that the only moral course
is pure self-interest. We owe nothing, she insists, to anyone, even to
members of our own families. She described the poor and weak as "refuse"
and "parasites", and excoriated anyone seeking to assist them. Apart
from the police, the courts and the armed forces, there should be no
role for government: no social security, no public health or education,
no public infrastructure or transport, no fire service, no regulations,
no income tax.
Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, depicts a United States crippled
by government intervention in which heroic millionaires struggle against
a nation of spongers. The millionaires, whom she portrays as Atlas
holding the world aloft, withdraw their labour, with the result that the
nation collapses. It is rescued, through unregulated greed and
selfishness, by one of the heroic plutocrats, John Galt.
The poor die like flies as a result of government programmes and
their own sloth and fecklessness. Those who try to help them are gassed.
In a notorious passage, she argues that all the passengers in a train
filled with poisoned fumes deserved their fate. One, for instance, was a
teacher who taught children to be team players; one was a mother
married to a civil servant, who cared for her children; one was a
housewife "who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of
whom she knew nothing".
Rand's is the philosophy of the psychopath, a misanthropic fantasy of
cruelty, revenge and greed. Yet, as Gary Weiss shows
in his new book, Ayn Rand Nation, she has become to the new right what
Karl Marx once was to the left: a demigod at the head of a chiliastic cult.
Almost one third of Americans, according to a recent poll, have read
Atlas Shrugged, and it now sells hundreds of thousands of copies every
year.
Ignoring Rand's evangelical atheism, the Tea Party movement has
taken her to its heart. No rally of theirs is complete without placards
reading "Who is John Galt?" and "Rand was right". Rand, Weiss argues,
provides the unifying ideology which has "distilled vague anger and
unhappiness into a sense of purpose". She is energetically promoted by
the broadcasters Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli. She is the
guiding spirit of the Republicans in Congress.
Like all philosophies, Objectivism is absorbed, secondhand, by people
who have never read it. I believe it is making itself felt on this side
of the Atlantic: in the clamorous new demands to remove the 50p tax
band for the very rich, for instance; or among the sneering, jeering
bloggers who write for the Telegraph and the Spectator, mocking
compassion and empathy, attacking efforts to make the word a kinder
place.
It is not hard to see why Rand appeals to billionaires. She offers
them something that is crucial to every successful political movement: a
sense of victimhood. She tells them that they are parasitised by the
ungrateful poor and oppressed by intrusive, controlling governments.
It is harder to see what it gives the ordinary teabaggers, who would
suffer grievously from a withdrawal of government. But such is the
degree of misinformation which saturates this movement and so prevalent
in the US is Willy Loman syndrome (the gulf between reality and
expectations) that millions blithely volunteer themselves as
billionaires' doormats. I wonder how many would continue to worship at
the shrine of Ayn Rand if they knew that towards the end of her life she
signed on for both Medicare and social security. She had railed
furiously against both programmes, as they represented everything she
despised about the intrusive state. Her belief system was no match for
the realities of age and ill health.
But they have a still more powerful reason to reject her philosophy:
as Adam Curtis's BBC documentary showed last year, the most devoted
member of her inner circle was Alan Greenspan,
former head of the US Federal Reserve. Among the essays he wrote for
Rand were those published in a book he co-edited with her called
Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal.
Here, starkly explained, you'll find the philosophy he brought into
government. There is no need for the regulation of business – even
builders or Big Pharma – he argued, as "the 'greed' of the businessman
or, more appropriately, his profit-seeking … is the unexcelled protector
of the consumer". As for bankers, their need to win the trust of their
clients guarantees that they will act with honour and integrity.
Unregulated capitalism, he maintains, is a "superlatively moral system".
Once in government, Greenspan applied his guru's philosophy to the
letter, cutting taxes for the rich, repealing the laws constraining
banks, refusing to regulate the predatory lending and the derivatives
trading which eventually brought the system down. Much of this is
already documented, but Weiss shows that in the US, Greenspan has
successfully airbrushed history.
Despite the many years he spent at her side, despite his previous
admission that it was Rand who persuaded him that "capitalism is not
only efficient and practical but also moral", he mentioned her in his
memoirs only to suggest that it was a youthful indiscretion – and this,
it seems, is now the official version. Weiss presents powerful evidence
that even today Greenspan remains her loyal disciple, having renounced
his partial admission of failure to Congress.
Saturated in her philosophy, the new right on both sides of the
Atlantic continues to demand the rollback of the state, even as the
wreckage of that policy lies all around. The poor go down, the
ultra-rich survive and prosper. Ayn Rand would have approved.George
Monbiot is the author Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning. Read
more of his writings at Monbiot.com. This article originally appeared
in the Guardian.
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
No comments:
Post a Comment