What are some anti-Randian things I can read?

[Questionable]

I'm preparing to debate a Rand follower and I need some materials to support my argument. I've read The Fountainhead and some other short philosophical pieces and I know she basically takes Marx's materialism and tries to say that humans who are rational are the best and deserve everything or something, but I need something a little more organized than that of course. What's something I can check out?

[Crux]

I'm preparing to debate a Rand follower and I need some materials to support my argument. I've read The Fountainhead and some other short philosophical pieces and I know she basically takes Marx's materialism and tries to say that humans who are rational are the best and deserve everything or something, but I need something a little more organized than that of course. What's something I can check out?
Her philosophy has nothing to do with Marx materialism, as far as I can tell.
My tip would be to bring a copy of Atlas Shrugged and slowly shred it page by page during the debate.

[white picket fence]

what are the parameters of the argument?

You might want to look up critiques of libertarianism while you are at it because there really isn't alot of serious content to rand's ideas, Predictably they are going to rely on alot of smarmy comebacks about socialism and all the usual nonsense. I took a quick look at google and i started reading through lists of pages upon pages of "critiques of objectivism" i'm sure you can find everything you want there.

i would take a gander at the wikipedia articles on libertarianism, objectivism and whatnot, to see if you can't systematically take down each of their arguments, then go on youtube and argue with some idiots to see if you can't uncover some of the more moronic arguments people will fire at you, non-sequiturs, fallacies and whatnot.

good luck i hope you destroy him

[Questionable]

Her philosophy has nothing to do with Marx materialism, as far as I can tell.
My tip would be to bring a copy of Atlas Shrugged and slowly shred it page by page during the debate.

You didn't notice the same anti-idealistic, "reality exists" vibe going on? I even remember an article talking about how she got her philosophical ideals from a Soviet university yet refused to credit Marx.

Hell, all the rhetoric about the hard work of individuals being ripped away by a group of parasites can be easily twisted to become a dig at the bourgeoisie.

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

Have you read this (http://www.thenation.com/article/garbage-and-gravitas) article? If nothing else, I found it to be a very amusing critique of Rand.

[Thirsty Crow]

Hell, all the rhetoric about the hard work of individuals being ripped away by a group of parasites can be easily twisted to become a dig at the bourgeoisie.
No it can't, since then you would be wrongly representing the "Randian" (actually - mainstream bourgeois!) notion of work or labour, which encompasses both the "labour" of a capitalist and his workers', and most importantly, it represents both as necessary, though it clearly values one much more than the other.

You can actually go for that since this is probably the strongest moment in the otherwise batshit crazy set of ideas:

1) you could demonstrate how, within the existing social relations of production, it doesn't follow that the role, the "work" of the capitalist is actually necessary in an ahistorical way; to strenghten this side of the argument, you can demonstarte that all of the functions of the capitalist can be performed by workers themselves, and employing radically different parameters (use value vs. exchange value, the reduction of labour time in favour of the fuller personal development, new and healthier patterns of sociability)

2) you can even argue that the work capitalists do is not "labour proper" so to speak - that it creates no value, and is merely the domination of others' value production and the appropriation of the surplus

Why do I say "even"? Because, although this is Marxist critique of political economy 101, going that route can lead you to a pure confrontation of theories, where not much space is left for debating on a more or less common ground. I know, it's probably foolish to hope for that in case of a debate with a randroid, but if the person is at least a bit reasonable, she could be argued rationally with.

I'd advise approach 1), and if it doesn't work, full blown attack with 2) with lots of irony and sarcasm.

[Philo]

Since they are quite possibly going to focus a lot on "objective" property rights, it might be useful to read Proudhon's What Is Property?

In terms of broader critiques of right-"libertarianism," I'd suggest:

-The following three works by G.A. Cohen: On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, and History, Labour, and Freedom.

-Philosophy and Real Politics by Raymond Geuss

-Anti-libertarianism by Alan Haworth

-Between Anarchism and Libertarianism by Jeff Draughn

-Liberalism at Wit's End by Stephen Newman

-Property and Contract in Economics by David Ellerman

-The Myth of Natural Law by L.A. Rollins

-An Enquiry into Political Justice by William Godwin

-The Ego and Its Own by Max Stirner. A sophisticated philosophical egoism that completely takes apart the capitalist egoism of Rand and others. Must read.

In terms of works to go through to critique their arguments, far more useful than one of Rand's novels would be Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia. This is basically the most sophisticated defense of right-wing "libertarianism" out there.

Finally, to deal with their bullshit epistemology and such, I cannot recommend Kant too highly. Objectivists often complain about "Kantianism" in people's thought, and there's a reason why. For an excellent overview of his ideas that will probably be at a level more than sufficient for this debate, see The Basic Writings of Kant, a collection put out by The Modern Library. It's edited by Allen Wood, one of the foremost (sympathetic) experts on Kant and Marx.

Good luck!

[Mr. Natural]

I don't mean to step on the worthwhile posts made by others, especially that impressive reading list from Anarcho-Fox.

I despise Ayn Rand as a person and a "philosopher," and especially detest her continuing, rising popularity in the US as the far right advances. Ms. Randy is an apostle of capitalism and the capitalist personality. She reeks of "Screw you, Jack and Jill, I'm gonna get mine!"

So in your "debates" with Randians, you might ask them if they are selfish, predatory shits as Dear Ayn was and promoted. If so, you may leave with all the honors. If not, then you might be able to open up a discussion of capitalist relations and values and the sort of person such a system manufactures.

My red-green, hating Ayn today and every day best.

[Philo]

I don't mean to step on the worthwhile posts made by others, especially that impressive reading list from Anarcho-Fox.

I despise Ayn Rand as a person and a "philosopher," and especially detest her continuing, rising popularity in the US as the far right advances. Ms. Randy is an apostle of capitalism and the capitalist personality. She reeks of "Screw you, Jack and Jill, I'm gonna get mine!"

So in your "debates" with Randians, you might ask them if they are selfish, predatory shits as Dear Ayn was and promoted. If so, you may leave with all the honors. If not, then you might be able to open up a discussion of capitalist relations and values and the sort of person such a system manufactures.

My red-green, hating Ayn today and every day best.

She's also an awful philosopher. Like vomit-inducingly awful.

[The Jay]

I bought Anarchy, State, and Utopia but haven't read it yet. I'm glad that you don't think it was a waste of money because I was fearing that.


As for the OP, I would focus on arguing the legitimacy of their conception of property rights. Stay away from money in politics, because without taking out their views on property rights they will destroy you in their eyes.

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

She's also an awful philosopher. Like vomit-inducingly awful.
Honestly, most philosophy professors I've talked to would be hard-pressed to refer to Rand as a "philosopher". They regard Objectivism as a joke. I haven't read that much of Rand besides part of Atlas Shrugged, but if her philosophy is anything like that book then I would have to agree.

Marxism is more than capable of doing away with Rand as a thinker. But unfortunately even if we do that her ideas will not disappear so easily. For that reason I'm not sure Marxists are justified in "hating" Rand in the sense that simply hating her would debunk her or Objectivism. It's true that her ideas have left some stains on the US populace. These stains go beyond the carpet, so to speak; they are deeper than they appear. In that case, perhaps we should really engage Objectivism by first trying to understand its appeal, and how this appeal is reflected in the minds of ordinary people.

In dealing with Objectivism we confront the very entrenched bourgeois interpretations of human needs and their implications in class society. For example, I remember intensely debating with somebody about the nature of "selfishness". Without going into too much detail, it can be a can of worms if you're not prepared.

[Ocean Seal]

One thing that might be useful is describing how arbitrary the notion that one deserves something is, and talking about collective selfishness. How the fate of one's class benefits one.

[Philo]

Honestly, most philosophy professors I've talked to would be hard-pressed to refer to Rand as a "philosopher".

We are in agreement, this is what I was trying to say. There's actually a joke in my school that the philosophy department considers Rand an author, and the literature department considers her a philosopher - no one wants anything to do with her.

[Thirsty Crow]

We are in agreement, this is what I was trying to say. There's actually a joke in my school that the philosophy department considers Rand an author, and the literature department considers her a philosopher - no one wants anything to do with her.
That's true, as I can say as a student of literature that she's a terribly bad writer (I didn't manage to fo through Atlas Shrugged in its entirety, I must admit), wouldn't want to have anything to do with her, the Philosophy Dpt. can indeed have her :D

[The Jay]

I tried to read that huge speech in Atlas Shrugged but I felt like I was getting cancer. If it was worth something I would have read the entire book, but since the pivotal part of the entire work was lacking I say, "hell no."

[Philo]

That's true, as I can say as a student of literature that she's a terribly bad writer (I didn't manage to fo through Atlas Shrugged in its entirety, I must admit), wouldn't want to have anything to do with her, the Philosophy Dpt. can indeed have her :D

Noooo! Take her away! :laugh:

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

Perhaps I could request that my university start a brand new "Incinerator Department" just for her. And others, should they wish to join.

[Teacher]

If you have some extra energy I would recommend digging a hole in your yard as deep as you can and filling it back up before I'd recommend debating a Randian.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

If you've read her drivel, that is really all that you need. That this shit passes for "philosophy" only tells us the depraved ignorance of the US right. Her moronic take on Neoplatonic thinking should be embarrassing to anyone that thinks it makes sense and provides the basis for a political program. These are fairy tales where the moral of the story is that selfishness and greed are the highest virtues. This is not philosophy.

[Orange Juche]

Am I alone in finding it absurd that it's clearly ludicrious to argue for systems like absolute monarchy or feudalism in modern society (which is why I've not heard of a single person doing such) yet somehow "objectivism" is growing in popularity to the point where it's becoming normal yet nobody points out it's equally absurd?

Am I living in backwardsland? Is there a blue pill and/or suppository I need to take to come back to some kind of rational reality?

[Jimmie Higgins]

You didn't notice the same anti-idealistic, "reality exists" vibe going on? I even remember an article talking about how she got her philosophical ideals from a Soviet university yet refused to credit Marx.

Hell, all the rhetoric about the hard work of individuals being ripped away by a group of parasites can be easily twisted to become a dig at the bourgeoisie.

Personally I think there is a connection to Marxist ideas in that I think she was coming from a perspective of how to refute Marxist as well as Keynesian ideas: which is why her "philosophy" is such crap, she was trying to apologize for capitalism and create an ideological justification for the problems that marxism points out about capitalism. As Marx said, philosophers merely study the world, the point is to change it, but Ayn didn't even do that, she flips philosophy on it's head by not observing greed or inequity and looking for why it occurs, but seeing a philosophical apology for it. Maybe this is why these ideas have become more popular: unlike some neo-liberalists who just pretend that the market makes everything great for everyone, Rand acknowledges the problems but then says that they are actually virtues. It's also why her ideas are like the philosophy of sociopathy and so repulsive to anyone who doesn't wear their own colon for a hat.

So on one level her ideas are drenched in idealistic assumptions such as individual market success reflecting merit. But she does present her ideas as being materialist, but as a mechanical materialist on principle. Her famous B.S. formulation is A=A which means everything is what it is and there are no other connections. Basically: a rich man is rich because he is smart and works hard and this has no relationship with the poverty of others or the way society is set up. This is in direct opposition to Marx's materialism which sees the world as a fluid and ever-changing place where dynamic relationships create unexpected and unpredictable outcomes (of course not without fundamental driving forces that can be located and more importantly changed where the forces are social in nature).

Of course the main thing that most of her self-important fanboys adopt is the concept of the collective vs. the individual. These are total abstractions since of course collectives are groups of individuals - and more importantly, society doesn't operate on an individual level, capitalism is "collectivist" in production and everything else... it's just a collective process run by a minority of atomized individuals who share class interests but also compete.

[Blasphemous Apostate]

As a recent convert to Marxism and a newbie here on RevLeft as well, I myself would be interested in finding out about critiques of Any Rand's ideology from specifically socialist and Marxist perspectives.

From a more general standpoint, however, "Is Objectivism a Religion?" by Dr. Albert Ellis (New York, Lyle Stuart, 1968) remains the definitive critique, and should give you enough hard-hitting ammunition to make most any randroid's head explode. This book was reprinted in 2007 with the somewhat longer title "Are Capitalism, Objectivism, And Libertarianism Religions? Yes!: Greenspan And Ayn Rand Debunked".

Another good one that's already becoming somewhat of a classic is "The Ayn Rand Cult" by Jeff Walker (Chicago: Open Court, 1998), which also goes into some of the biographical details of the personality cult that surrounded Rand in her lifetime.

An excellent new book is "Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul" by Gary Weiss (New York: St.Martin's, 2012), which also goes into her influence on the Tea Party and other reactionary movements.

Some other recent books I haven't read yet but that seem worth a look include "Why Ayn Rand Is Wrong (and Why It Matters)" by Levi Asher (CreateSpace, 2011), and "Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature" by Greg Nyquist (iUniverse, 2001).

Finally, "The Water Thief" by Nicholas Lamar Soutter (CreateSpace, 2012) presents a chilling dystopian fictional rebuttal to "Atlas Shrugged" with several thematic nods to Orwell. The horror that capitalism could evolve into if its own contradictions failed to destroy it.

Good luck! :thumbup1: Hope this helps!

[Blasphemous Apostate]

The following is something I wrote this past spring in an alumni message board for my High School graduating class, in response to a post by a fellow alumnus who had discovered Ayn Rand's novels late in life and was waxing enthusiastic over them. Hopefully this may also be of use in the present discussion:

--- Snip, Snip, Snip---

I was a big fan of Ayn Rand when I was in High School, but it didn't take me too many years afterward to become thoroughly disillusioned with her and her ideology.

For all her talk about Reason she was really just a hack ideologue who stitched together a patchwork quilt of those aspects of several popular mass movements of her time that had the most emotional appeal. Her main artistic achievement was her ability to make the resulting product appear original and seamless as well as emotionally intoxicating.

The "Who is John Galt?" stuff was borrowed from the "Who is Howard Scott?" slogan of the Technocracy movement of the 1930s which aimed to put smart people in charge who knew how to make technology work. Rand left out the part that Scott and his Technocrats meant the scientists and the engineers, NOT businessmen and financiers.

From German romanticism, Wagner, Nietzsche (and even the Nazis to a degree) she borrowed the aesthetic of chest-beating heroism, unshakable faith in the absolute righteousness and ultimate triumph of her own cause, and the pure, unredeemable degeneracy and evil of its opponents.

Finally from the propaganda of the business establishment and the laissez-faire economists she got the functional core of her ideology, which she dressed up in the most emotionally intoxicating elements she borrowed from the other two.

It can even seem convincing if you don't look too closely at its historical roots and antecedents. Unfortunately it continues to fool many people even today and to cast its baleful shadow over American society and politics.

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

Personally I think there is a connection to Marxist ideas in that I think she was coming from a perspective of how to refute Marxist as well as Keynesian ideas: which is why her "philosophy" is such crap, she was trying to apologize for capitalism and create an ideological justification for the problems that marxism points out about capitalism. As Marx said, philosophers merely study the world, the point is to change it, but Ayn didn't even do that, she flips philosophy on it's head by not observing greed or inequity and looking for why it occurs, but seeing a philosophical apology for it. Maybe this is why these ideas have become more popular: unlike some neo-liberalists who just pretend that the market makes everything great for everyone, Rand acknowledges the problems but then says that they are actually virtues. It's also why her ideas are like the philosophy of sociopathy and so repulsive to anyone who doesn't wear their own colon for a hat.

So on one level her ideas are drenched in idealistic assumptions such as individual market success reflecting merit. But she does present her ideas as being materialist, but as a mechanical materialist on principle. Her famous B.S. formulation is A=A which means everything is what it is and there are no other connections. Basically: a rich man is rich because he is smart and works hard and this has no relationship with the poverty of others or the way society is set up. This is in direct opposition to Marx's materialism which sees the world as a fluid and ever-changing place where dynamic relationships create unexpected and unpredictable outcomes (of course not without fundamental driving forces that can be located and more importantly changed where the forces are social in nature).

Of course the main thing that most of her self-important fanboys adopt is the concept of the collective vs. the individual. These are total abstractions since of course collectives are groups of individuals - and more importantly, society doesn't operate on an individual level, capitalism is "collectivist" in production and everything else... it's just a collective process run by a minority of atomized individuals who share class interests but also compete.

I agree that the concept of the individual vs. the collective is a prominent theme of Rand's work, but I think it deserves a second look. Corey Robin, the author of the critique that I linked to earlier (http://www.thenation.com/article/garbage-and-gravitas), had this to say:

However much [Rand] liked to pit the genius against the mass, her fiction always betrayed a secret communion between the two. Each of her two most famous novels gives its estranged hero an opportunity to defend himself in a lengthy speech before the untutored and the unlettered. Roark declaims before a jury of "the hardest faces" that includes "a truck driver, a bricklayer, an electrician, a gardener and three factory workers." John Galt takes to the airwaves in Atlas Shrugged, addressing millions of listeners for hours on end. In each instance, the hero is understood, his genius acclaimed, his alienation resolved. And that's because, as Galt explains, there are "no conflicts of interest among rational men"—which is just a Randian way of saying that every story has a happy ending.

The chief conflict in Rand's novels, then, is not between the individual and the masses. It is between the demigod-creator and all those unproductive elements of society—the intellectuals, bureaucrats and middlemen—that stand between him and the masses. Aesthetically, this makes for kitsch; politically, it bends toward fascism. Admittedly, the argument that there is a connection between fascism and kitsch has taken a beating over the years. Yet surely the example of Rand—and the publication of two new Rand biographies, Anne Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made and Jennifer Burns's Goddess of the Market—is suggestive enough to put the question of that connection back on the table.
I found this interpretation compelling because Rand's own concept is used against her--by ignoring the social dynamics that would obviously have taken place between the individual and the collective, an absolute dichotomy is impossible. She seemingly catches herself in a fatal contradiction here. Do you have an opinion on this?

[PetyaRostov]

I tried to read that huge speech in Atlas Shrugged but I felt like I was getting cancer. If it was worth something I would have read the entire book, but since the pivotal part of the entire work was lacking I say, "hell no."

I was sixteen. I literally banged my forehead on the dining room table half-way through.

read Anthem uncritically :)