As evidenced by the recent election of avowed socialists as mayors of NYC and Seattle, the cumulative failures of our education system and the mass media’s and academia’s intense hatred of free markets seem to have reignited an infatuation with socialism. Accordingly, this may be an appropriate moment to repost my essay regarding Ayn Rand, presented here some eleven years ago. As stated there, while I do not believe her Objectivism to be a cogent moral philosophy, I certainly admire her for being one of the first intellectuals to warn the West regarding the horrors of communism.
Moreover, I praised her for being an acute observer of human psychology, and diagnosing the motivations underlying humanity’s attraction to collectivism. To quote from my essay:
Nevertheless, Atlas Shrugged is a compelling read, and I believe that the key to its enduring success is Rand’s keen understanding of human psychology as expressed in the political realm. I believe that the key to the novel’s appeal is the author’s skill in graphically depicting how a society can implode when it fails to internalize the “meta-legal doctrine” that Hayek refers to as the rule of law. See The Constitution of Liberty, chapter 10. In a nutshell, Hayek’s political ideal requires the state to maintain strict neutrality between different groups of citizens, acting only to establish and enforce the “rules of the road” that all members of the community can use to guide them in pursuing their individual projects.
When, instead, citizens view the state not as a neutral referee but as a vehicle for redistributing wealth, they can be blinded by the authorities regarding the extent to which government’s own policies have impoverished them, both materially and morally. They will develop habits of mind that incline them to see the successful entrepreneur not as a precious asset, responsible for enriching society and creating opportunities for others, but as a source of plunder to be taken for the “greater good.” As illustrated in Atlas, this envy will in turn lead to governmental interventions that discourage entrepreneurship, and when taken to the extreme, kill it.
With our younger voters so afflicted, I fear dangerous times ahead.
