Ending the Ayn Rand-ian Fantasy

[marmar]

"There are two novels that can transform a bookish 14-year-old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish daydream that can lead to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood in which large chunks of the day are spent inventing ways to make real life more like a fantasy novel. The other is a book about orcs.

The trouble is that the fellow travelers of Atlas Shrugged have been helming government for decades. As of 2008, their attempt to make the world into some imagined paradise of prices and egotism has come unstuck. Millions suffered the consequences during the course of the attempt, millions more when the experiment exploded, and possibly billions will suffer if our only way of dealing with the combined social, economic and environmental crises simply repeats the mistakes of the past.

Over the past 30 years, he accelerating pace of enclosure, and the increasing scale of the theft, have brought our planet to the edge of destruction. Internationally, environmental costs have been shunted from rich to poor, most notably though not exclusively from global warming. A recent report offers a very conservative estimate of the number of people harmed today by climate change at 325 million, every year. The number of deaths from weather changes alone is set to exceed 500,000 per year, and most of these deaths will happen among those who have had the least to do with causing the pollution, people whose countries were colonized by he very same powers that have caused this new catastrophe. This does not mean the polluters shouldn't pay and that carbon dioxide has to be free because there's no good way to price it. Handing the matter over to capitalism is, however, likely to prove as good an idea as asking the iceberg to fix the Titanic. These are conclusions that come from the two investigations into "free" goods in the first half of this book, where we looked at what happens when corporations provide free goods, and what happens when governments do the same. In both cases, the rigid property schemes, profit-driven markets and corporations we've allowed to flourish create a deeply flawed system for valuing the world.

So where do we start to rebalance market society? Once we decide that exchanges are governed by the rules of the market, it is incredibly hard to put the genie back into the bottle. Neuroeconomic and sociological studies about the irreversibility of monetary-transaction relations confirm that markets can be a social toxin: After all, the day someone leaves money for a lover in payment for sex is the day that relationship ends. We face a far harder task, not just of removing the taint of money from specific transactions, but of removing corporate rapacity from government, and the bleak weight of consumerism from our political imaginations."


- from The Value of Nothing by Raj Patel

[villager]

1. This post has made some stealth, Randian unreccer unhappy!

gosh...

[marmar]

2. The Neolibs have been in a tizzy lately......Reality is catching up with them.

nt

[ashling]

7. Get over the unrec thing already

Just because you have never accidentally clicked on the wrong link ...

[Donnachaidh]

9. funny how there seems to be swarms of unrecs on postings that don't lockstep

yeah, *accidently clicked the wrong link* :rofl: :rofl:

[bobbolink]

19. Aye, aye, Captain!

:patriot:

[bjobotts]

59. A neurotic Russian refugee with an axe to grind wrote with such shallow self serving insight for th

the greedy to justify their greed and selfishness. She would have been happiest as a hermit in Mayberry where government consisted only of the sheriff and his Barney-5 deputy where the masses of people never existed along with daily expansion and growth were in conflict with finite resources so sharing was not important. Where vision never exceeded the tip of your nose and poverty did not exist. To carry the name of Ryand was like the mark of Cain but only standing for shallow and stupidly selfish. The ego personified. Atlas didn't just shrug, he seizured.

[donquijoterocket]

91. Randy

I forget where I first saw it or whose aphorism it is that goes if authors were countries and BS were oil Ayn Rand would be Saudi Arabia.I try to use that combined with the LOTR comparison every time I encounter a Randyan.

[fasttense]

64. I made up for your accident by rec'ing. I don't usually rec.

I just don't think it's that important but to make up for your mistake I have rec'ed.

And yes I have accidental unrec'ed on other posts. I guess it's a fat mouse pointer or something. So, I understand where you are coming from.

[ashling]

92. You misunderstand

I did not accidentaly unrec, nor did I rec .. at least here

My point was that it happens (my eyesight is not good ~ legally blind in one eye, not to good with the other),

Actually, my main point was that and this supercillious concern about the issue is really a waste

[Enthusiast]

21. The unhappier the better.

IMHO.

[Duval]

72. Yeah, awwwwwww.... Guess the truth hurts!

[WCGreen]

3. I have always said that Ayn Rand is taken as an Author with something to say

by young man who have yet to have their first non-self inflicted orgasm...

After that, Lord of the Rings kicks in...

[Bigmack]

10. I'm stealing the "non-self-inflicted...." quote! Wicked! nt

[marmar]

11. +100

That's awesome.

[certainot]

78. self inflicted orgasms may have a lot to do with it!

as explained in this 2 minute you tube

[JDPriestly]

58. Loving another human being is incompatible with loving Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand is totally jealous and allows for no human affection, not for one's lover, not for one's parent, not even for one's child. To love Ayn Rand, to admire her philosophy is to live a loveless life -- a very lonely, if not sociopathic, life.

[liberation]

94. ... ironically your tongue in cheek comment (awesome BTW) may also explain...

... the fact that most die hard "randian libertarian free market uber alles I got mine fuck you" types tend to look like the type of peeps who don't get laid that often.

[JitterbugPerfume]

4. I wish I could convince my Rand loving friends and family

to read Raj Patel's "The Value of Nothing" but it just ain't going to happen!

[defendandprotect]

31. Are they independently wealthy? Don't need health insurance?

Have no unemployed children?

Unfortunately, all of these things will probably be catching up with them!!

:)

[MrScorpio]

5. DUer, Telly Savalas said it best...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4973593#4975243

[Shining Jack]

56. Thanks for the link.

That's really a great post.

[FSogol]

70. +100. Yup, that was a classic. n/t

[Robeson]

77. Thanks for the link...

...that was a tour de force!

[DissedByBush]

85. The religious right hates her

She was a very outspoken atheist.

Being a hard-core "conservative" these days produces some very contradictory positions.

Especially "minimal government" vs. enforcing their morality over everyone.

You can't enforce that without an all-powerful, intrusive government.

[liberation]

96. There is a difference between the actual "conservatives" and the morons they use

among other things to inflate their actual representation in order to further their agenda.


Conservative is defined as the ethos concerned with one thing and one thing alone: the preservation of traditional power structures and the concentration of that power.

Given that traditional power structures are pyramidal in nature: i.e. a few people at the top as elites and most people at the bottom making the whole thing work. The only ones who would think of seriously supporting such a system, are no doubt those at the top. The problem for them is that means that when it comes to actual numbers, the elites/rich/powerful are just a handful of individuals and their families. And that does not play well when it comes to representative governmental systems like democracies. Given each individual gets one vote, it would mean that the ultra rich would have far less votes than the poor (given that there are thousands of poor people per each really wealthy individual). So what do you do? Easy... use better marketing.

So the genius of the handful of actual real conservatives is to convince untold numbers of morons to support them. They very powerful are not interested in the needs of the many, they are only concerned with the interests of the few (them) first and foremost. That is why religious people, who are among the easiest to manipulate segments of the population, tend to be the "market segment" targeted by conservative platforms.

It looks a bit of a logical dissonance, but really the conservative spectrum of politics is made of 1% of the elites managing to convince 49%+ of the rest of the population to vote against their own interests. And that is why conservatives are so good at walking in lock step: they hate to think, they love to be told what to do. Ergo they are the fertile ground to grow crops via the massive doses of manure fed to them by the 1% using them like the idiots they are.

That is also why liberals tend to resemble more a herd of cats, since independent, intelligent, and educated people (no need to have been to college to be intelligent, there are other levels of intelligence other than booksmarts), are for the most part very self aware. Which means people may have different opinions, and can deal with the concept of other people disagreeing with them. So they are not as good as conservatives in presenting a single monolithic block. And that is ironically how Conservatives manage to neutralize the overwhelming advantage that liberals should have theoretically... in any truly representative system. And this is nothing new, "divide and conquer" is as applicable to what the modern conservative movement is really about, as it was applicable to what the Romans did to extend their empire.


All this to basically say, that what we should truly define as "conservatives" are just the few incredibly wealthy and powerful individuals at the top brokering the power structures of our country. What some define as the "religious right" or the conservative majority, or whatever... should be instead being named for what they really are, they are not "conservatives" they are "useful idiots." That is why there is such a logical dissonance between the supposed message of Jesus, and whatever warped interpretation the majority of the "religious right" came up with. It is no accident.

(Also that is why I have no qualms when it comes to define myself as a progressive, liberal, whatever). I am not at the apex of the power structure in society, and sure as fuck I have no interest in defending their interests... everyone does better when everyone does better, not when just a few assholes at the top are laughing it up)

Sorry for the rant.

[liberation]

95. Actually an awesome read, thank you very much for the link

And also thanks to the original writer.

[Hekate]

6. KnR. LOTR is one of those works I would advise any kid to read as early as 4th grade....

It is chock-full of ethics and a strong sense of right and wrong, of small people caught up in world-shattering events, and eventually triumphing over evil. Ecological destruction and restoration is an integral part of the plot. Not bad for a story with elves and orcs in it. Some of it would be over a young kid's head, but no matter.

I remember when I read LOTR the first time. I was 17 and it was in its first mass market paperback edition, which my dad brought home from work in a box full of other used F&SF books that he and the guys passed around. At the time I thought it was a good genre book -- but it stuck with me the way others didn't. Yes, I made sure to put it in the hands of my own kids at an early age.

Atlas Shrugged was around the house, too, the summer I read LOTR; my mom was an eclectic reader. If I picked it up then, I don't really remember, but I do remember she was scathing in her review. At some point in the next few years I did read all or part of Atlas, but found it uninteresting and even distasteful. It's not even all that well-written. Cripes, what is the attraction? "...Some imagined paradise of prices and egotism..." indeed. It's not something I'd ever recommend as reading for the unformed mind.

The opening paragraph you quote from Raj Patel puts the matter in elegant perspective. :thumbsup:

Hekate

[Lorien]

26. LOTR is about friendship, self sacrifice for the greater good, the seductive nature of power

and, as you noted, environmentalism and the importance of living in harmony with nature. In many ways it's the anti- Altas shrugged.

[defendandprotect]

34. Never read it -- isn't there a movie?

[Lorien]

80. The movies focus more on action, adventure and monsters. The other messages are

still there if you look for them, but they aren't as central to the story as they are in the books.

[ProudDad]

88. Oh, for a second there I thought you meant the Atlas Shrugged movie

Never mind...

[Tutankhamun]

84. Those LOTR movies all put me to sleep.

[Jackpine Radical]

37. I think it's perfectly targeted at the adolescent stages of cognitive development.

That is the age at which kids first start to think in abstractions (think Piaget's Formal Operations stage). The frontal lobes are not completely myelinated until about 14. So you have all these young, inexperienced minds eager to explore their new world of abstractions. Because of that inexperience , the kids are first drawn to simple, black-and-white abstractions. Rand made a lot of sense to me at 14 or 15 or whatever, but a few years later, after a college education and a little more practice in thinking, I was amazed to think I had ever seen anything in it. It is the cerebral excretion of a narcissistic psychopath.

[Odin2005]

41. The One Ring represents the corruptable nature of power.

It is a warning against using authoritarian means for good ends, no matter how good the ends are, because the means will ALWAYS corrupt you, they even corrupted Frodo at the end.

Tolkien was a WWI veteran who became horrified by Industrial Age Authoritarianism and it's power to destroy. Although he went to far in damning Industrialization and romanticizing the Feudal past his essential point remains.

The "Demonic" nature of power corrupting the desire to do good is so much a reoccurring theme in Western society that German historian Oswald Spengler called our society "Faustian", after the Goethe character that sells his soul to the Devil for power.

[AtheistCrusader]

50. Please, by the 4th grade I was chewing my way through the Foundation trilogy.

Then again, my parents had to kick me out of the house so I would stop reading and play, so maybe I'm not a normal benchmark.

[Hekate]

60. Probably not, but then neither was my family. We were all prolific readers...

... and I expected my kids would be too. So they are.

Hekate

[dhill926]

8. enthusiastic K&R..........

[Lars77]

12. Just ordered that book

Looks promising!

[Richard Steele]

13. K&R

[Blue_Tires]

14. kick

[DailyGrind51]

15. A letter in the Chicago Tribune made similar observations.

Ayn Rand was a selfish embittered atheist who would have preferred a tsarist Russia, catering to the privileged while oppressing the proletariat. She thought herself one of those exceptional individuals being ignored by a society which indulges the mediocre, like the 12-year-old who becomes angry when he doesn't get an "A", or get called on just because her hand was raised. Her works were simplistic and indicative of her inadequately formed personality, fixated by events precipitated by the material losses suffered by her family in Russia. Rand should be pitied, rather than admired.
________________________________________________________________________________________



Time to grow up

This is in response to columnist George Will's "Ron Johnson: What the tea party looks like" (Commentary, May 27). I have been astonished and dismayed to discover, in the last two years or so, that Ayn Rand's novels, especially "Atlas Shrugged," are and have been such a strong influence on people we have trusted and on certain people who are running for public office. I was introduced to Ayn Rand by a journalism teacher I had in high school, about 1963. Being very young at the time, I remember being entranced with Rand's books. Her philosophy of everyone carrying his or her own weight, being strong and self-reliant, appealed to me very much.

But then something strange happened. I grew up.

I looked around at Rand's world, and I saw that there were no old people there, and no children. No one was sick. No one was physically or mentally handicapped. And I realized that the real world consists of all kinds of people, smart and not so smart, weak as well as strong, generous and greedy, foolish and wise. In other words, the real world consists of human beings, and every one of them contributes whatever he or she can, in his or her own way, to the society we all live in, and depends on that society to provide him or her with what he or she needs. None of us was raised in a cave, and none of us can say that we got where we are entirely by our own efforts.

And so I grew up, and repudiated Ayn Rand and her "philosophy." And until recently, it never occurred to me that any adult could still be influenced by her. I am sorry to find out that I was wrong.

— Barbara Lipkin, Naperville

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-vp-0609voicelettersbriefs-20100609,0,1140664.story

[laughingliberal]

16. Excellent! Thanks for posting that! nt

[Joe Chi Minh]

22. I noticed this timorous apologia re Rand and all her works by some poor dolt,

in the other thread someone cited, above: 'I don't particularly see eye to eye with Ms Rand these days, but she did make a few good points.'

That could only be said by some poor soul who had quite unwittingly been seamlessly incorporated into the Monty Python tableau of right-wing America.

No-one in Europe would fail to spot instantly that the woman was a haplessly inept psychopath, incapable of any contribution to society, however humble or limited. A mute, inglorious baddie from a Batman-type comic: the REAL Joker. Or a Mike Myer parody of a Bond film villain.

Someone even remarked ruefully that some schools in the South still taught about Rand. That ANY school EVER taught about her is beyond Python, beyond surreal, beyond any possibility of satire.

By the way, when are the Republicans going to co-opt the Monty Python team, I mean the real deal, to replace your current oligarchy? I believe you have a woman in Alaska with a living-room vista of Russia who could take over the reins, once they'd properly trained her. Rich raw material. The closest we've come in the UK to such a luminary would be Blair, I suppose, beavering away in the Middle East spreading peace and religious faith. It doesn't get much better than that if you have any kind of dark sense of humour.

[lolly]

33. Psychopath--or at least a wannabe

From an article on Alternet a few months ago:

The best way to get to the bottom of Ayn Rand's beliefs is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt. Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten with Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation -- Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street -- on him.

Ayn Rand, Hugely Popular Author . . . Was a Big Admirer of Serial Killers

[Enthusiast]

25. Very good!

Excellent letter by Barbara Lipkin.

[DailyGrind51]

75. Barbara Lipkin resides in the very Republican DuPage County!

[Enthusiast]

81. Well then,

she is surrounded by insanity. I appreciate her.

[DailyGrind51]

93. You bet! Lipkin is a bright light of wisdom in the cavern of ignorance.

[treestar]

30. good point, she just could not face the fact that everyone is not

Hollywood beautiful and young and strong.

I read all her stuff just to see what it said - and definitely got the impression that she just did not want to deal with reality. Everything had to be perfect and like a movie.

She even defended smoking! She liked it and it looked glamorous and she just didn't want to deal with the unfortunate effect it had on people's health.

[DailyGrind51]

74. I encourage all objectivists and libertarians to smoke!

Eventually, their number will be diminished and their ideology will be relegated to the ash heap of history.

[JDPriestly]

61. Beautiful. I read Ayn Rand around the same time, maybe in 1962.

The books are seductive to the mind of a Sophomore in college. Survival of the fittest, the strongest, the smartest, the most heartless.

But, after I read Ayn Rand, I fell in love. And suddenly I understood that survival of the fittest is not the only or even the most important law of nature.

In fact, the survival of our species is only possible if we who are far from perfect, far from the strongest, as well as those who are perfect and strong, mate and reproduce.

We humans cannot insure the survival of even the most perfect of our offspring unless we nurture them a long time. Contrary to Ayn Rand's teachings, our species requires love and loyalty as well as strength and determination to survive.

As we are discovering, Ayn Rand's model does not present a strategy for survival.

[DailyGrind51]

76. Most mature beyond Rand's philosophy. Unfortunately, those who don't also vote and draft policy.

[Fokker Trip]

73. Great post

I wonder if the fact that woman actually bear new life means they have a better compass when it comes to self correcting in life.

As a man, I think perhaps that men can more easily get stuck at the point of thinking Rand's ideas are the ideal. The way that US culture has for a long time promoted the idea that men are tough individuals, heroes who have saved to world over and over contributes to this, as does the prohibition on males expressing emotion. Rand gives these people a framework to cling to and they stop developing because they see no need to.

That said I suspect she was a psycopath, or at least very, very damaged. The Russian culture is vasly alcoholic and has suffered massive PTSD nationwidefor a long time(well more than 50 milion killed between the late 1800's and the 1940's) and anyone from an alcoholic family (me included..) has been very badly damaged and has a tendancy not to grow up very eassily or well (without a lot of work to correct the damage).

Perhaps it has become a handbook for the psycopaths in our culture to move into positions of power in a credible way. It allows them to commit terrible acts and justify it. Our current prime Minister has completely dead eyes (I always thought GWB had the same dead eyes) and is an ultra right wing theocrat who loves Rand and the libertarians.

[MisterP]

83. she was infatuated with a guy who Black Dahlia'd a 12-year-old

http://www.michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm

fortunately, she died before Richard Ramirez became a cult figure

[lolly]

17. Race and Randianism?

I've had several "Objectivist" students in my classes, and they were all white.

Are there any African-American or Hispanic Randians?

The whole "philosophy" certainly seems to dovetail nicely with racism, even though I don't think it specifically mentions race.

[Jakes Progress]

18. Personality disorder and Randiism.

Randism appeals to those with large vocabularies and small self-esteem. Deep inside they know their libertarian clap-trap is full of shit, but they think they can fool everyone into thinking they are bright by being obscure and contrarian. They usually have a coterie of feeble thinkers who lack perception and personality.

[lolly]

24. hmmm--you think so?

My experience (OK, I'm not a psychologist, so this isn't a clinical observation) is that all of these students have been quite pleased with themselves.

My first clue that a student is an "Objectivist" is that they make it clear that they are too smart to be in my class, that they are far beyond the regular college freshman. They are contemptuous of me and of the other students, acting bored in class and condescending when asked to work with classmates.

Their papers often (but not always) do have an advanced vocabulary, and even a few quite complex ideas, but none of them has any discernible organization or focus.

Pretty much every time I have a student who matches these characteristics, I find out eventually that the student is a Rand groupie.

[treestar]

32. That's interesting that you can pick them out without them specifically

saying so - but it is no surprise they consider themselves smarter than everyone else. that's a by-product of course of believing that, naturally, one who subscribes to that has to believe themselves part of the elite.

Though Ayn Rand tried with characters who knew they were not, but still believed that "their betters" deserved their higher statuses. She often used the phrase, "their betters."

and of course they don't want to work with others, because that is a "collective," a word Rand thought was obscene in some way!

[pnwmom]

39. Egotistical behavior often masks low self-esteem. n/t

[Odin2005]

43. Sounds like mild sociopathy and Narcissistic Personality Disorder to me.

I get the feeling that Rand's drivel appeals to a certain type of bright teen that feels he/she is "not appreciated" for whatever reason, or feels "held down" by those "less intelligent" them him/her, and in their minds the "stupid rabble" need to be shoved out of the way.

[lolly]

52. Exactly

They are all bright--just not nearly as bright as they think they are.

[SemperEadem]

66. in other words

they are cultivating an overblown sense of entitlement through an artificial construct of their own imagination.

[Jakes Progress]

45. I had them in classes too.

Surface-wise they could come off as smug and smart. If they worked on projects (like newspaper or magazine) I got to see them implode when faced with real world situations. They loved to be too smart for school, but the abstract classroom is their only safe domain. Now I run across the same types in my local pub. They exhibit the same swagger and need for acknowledgment of their brilliance. They surround themselves with the less bright and love finding the most obscure sources to "prove" their point.

The current craze is the play the intellectual contrarian and attack the concept of climate change. Here is where the inability to organize or focus or judge that you mentions come in. They will place faith in the most obviously sloppy sources, unable to discern sane from gibbering evidence.

On the occasions when someone takes the time to refute them (it takes a patient and generous mind to put in the tedium necessary to do so) they always fall back on accusing the patient soul as stupid and their arguments fall to the level of "oh yeah". They pout and usually stop coming for a month.

Inside, they know they are not up to snuff. That is why they swagger. Back in my teaching days, I had more than one embarrassing episode of seeing their swagger reduced to bawling and threats of suicide. They are sad cases and could be pitied but for their insufferable behavior.

[lolly]

53. Ah, yes, the pouting

And the barely concealed eye-rolling.

And the absenteeism.

Haven't had the suicide threats, thank heaven.

I suppose it's possible I've had students who were Randians who didn't behave like that; I've just noticed that pretty much all of the ones who DO behave like that end up revealing themselves.

(If you're ever wondering about a specific student, check Facebook at the end of the semester. Randians are pretty proud of their intellectual superiority, and tend to brag about their affiliation and put Fountainhead quotes on their pages.)

[DissedByBush]

86. Not racist

There are a lot of things wrong with it, but Objectivism goes only on individual merit, so rejects racism since it isn't based on merit.

[DissedByBush]

20. Looks like someone has been reading another fantasy novel

One that too many believe in until it's too late.

One that has led to the actual deaths of tens of millions of people.

One that has led to the worse environmental disasters in history.

Das Kapital

[defendandprotect]

36. Capitalism has created Global Warming . . .

and if you read the article, you understand many have already been harmed --

indeed, our ability to survive on this planet has been harmed -- and perhaps

the planet itself.

Capitalism is a ridiculous "King-of-the-Hill" system intended to move the wealth

and natural resources of nations from the many to the few.

Unregulated capitalism is merely organized crime --

[DissedByBush]

38. You're funny!

China is building two coal power plants a week! And this is part of a ten year program.

One thousand more coal power plants. Exactly how much CO2 would that be?

Stalin starved millions of farmers, who were of course helping with CO2 by farming, in order to industrialize the Soviet Union on a vast scale with no regard for the environment, only the glory of the State.

Russia got a free pass in Kyoto because all they had to do was not pollute as bad as the Soviets did, which was pretty easy to do.

I've been to the Czech Republic just after the fall of communism. The industrial areas were not pretty, worse than any I've seen in a capitalist country.

Communism is a ridiculous system that creates a tragedy of the commons to an extreme degree and the worst mass-scale human rights violations.

"Unregulated capitalism is merely organized crime"

I won't argue against the idea that capitalism needs to be regulated.

Both Atlas Shrugged and Das Kapital were pipe dreams, completely unrealistic in a society of humans, the rantings of a mad woman and mad man, respectively.

Those who follow them are either ignorant sheep or the power-hungry who want to leverage those ideas to their own gain.

[defendandprotect]

40. You're not -- !!

China is building two coal power plants a week! And this is part of a ten year program.

One thousand more coal power plants. Exactly how much CO2 would that be?

Yep -- Global Warming is obviously China's fault --

I remember Newt Gringrich telling us that! "The Chinese are Coming!"

There's also a 50 year opening delay in Global Warming -- i.e., the effects we have been

feeling only represent our activities up to 1960.

Nor can anyone guess how all of the effects may compound, especially in that we have altered

weather systems/patterns.

Stalin starved millions of farmers, who were of course helping with CO2 by farming, in order to industrialize the Soviet Union on a vast scale with no regard for the environment, only the glory of the State.

Russia got a free pass in Kyoto because all they had to do was not pollute as bad as the Soviets did, which was pretty easy to do.


The net concensus on both capitalism and communism was: "A pox on both their houses!"

Yes -- America threw nuclear waste in the Pacific -- Russia threw it in the North Sea --


I've been to the Czech Republic just after the fall of communism. The industrial areas were not pretty, worse than any I've seen in a capitalist country.

Strip mining -- waste from mining -- thrown into our rivers/steams --

factory farming --

No matter who is pounding down natural resources and exploiting nature it is destructive.

Keep that in mind as Obama advances us back into nuclear power plants --

THINK CHERNOBYL.


Communism is a ridiculous system that creates a tragedy of the commons to an extreme degree and the worst mass-scale human rights violations.

Of course, we had no human rights violations in America -- ??!!

We had no system of organized slavery for hundreds of years --

and didn't follow it up with 100 years of enforced Segregation, Inc. after that, either !!

And, US government didn't begin by wiping out the native American!

We're still running a prison system that mainly incarcerates African Americans --

and a prison system larger than any, anywhere!


"Unregulated capitalism is merely organized crime"

I won't argue against the idea that capitalism needs to be regulated.

Good for you --

Both Atlas Shrugged and Das Kapital were pipe dreams, completely unrealistic in a society of humans, the rantings of a mad woman and mad man, respectively.

Those who follow them are either ignorant sheep or the power-hungry who want to leverage those ideas to their own gain.


Agree with you re Ayn Rand -- and, from what we have seen of capitalism over and again and its

criminality, any nation which continues on using it as an economic base is insane if not suicidial.

Most of us can work that out for ourselves, without benefit of Marx!





There's an old Russian joke which goes something like this . . .

"Q: What's the difference between capitalism and communism?

A: Under capitalism man exploits man.

Under communism it is just the reverse."

[ProudDad]

89. China is a pristine example of State Capitalism (n/t)

[liberation]

97. If you are pretending that Das Kapital and Atlas Shrugged are similar works...

... in any shape way or form. It means that you lack a big deal of intellectual sophistication. That lack is big enough to most definitively disqualify you from casting assessments regarding optimality of such complex concepts as socioeconomic organizations.

[DBoon]

51. Das Kapital is *not* a fantasy novel

It is an exercise in extreme tedium disguised as 19th century economics

The folks responsible for "the actual deaths of tens of millions of people" and "the worse environmental disasters in history" would not know Das Kapital if it fell out of the sky and hit them on the head

[DissedByBush]

82. Ah, a "no true Scotsman"

I always hear that, how communist countries aren't really communist. A true communist country would be a paradise.

Then it is kind of strange how apparently despite all the attempts, nobody has done it "right" yet.

My belief is that doing it "right" is simply a practical impossibility. All attempts will result in the horrible conditions we've seen.

But I'd like to remind you that in the US at least we have never had a true capitalist economy either.

Our government has seriously been involved in business, not only at a regulatory level, but in collusion.

Businesses seek and get government favor and granted monopoly, by which they no longer have to compete in true capitalism.

[ProudDad]

90. The only nation on Earth with the capability to be self-sustaining

in a long-term sustainable way is a "communist" country -- Cuba.

[liberation]

98. Yeah, but you are too still stuck in a fallacy

The proponents that Marx was always correct and it was the dictatorships which tried to implement his ideals... the only ones who were tragically wrong. Then indeed by them doing so, they're incurring in a "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

Pretending that the flaws of communism somehow validate capitalism, specially when you go right away to list the flaws of capitalism, is also a fallacy. Communism being flawed does not mean that capitalism, which is also deeply flawed, is "more" correct. It simply means that both capitalism and communism are flawed. We need to understand as a species that correlation does not imply causation.

It would be ironic if the actual answer looked something unlike capitalism and communism, and we've just been stuck in a local minima because most people are stuck in a false dichotomy of thought,

[DBoon]

99. Das Kapital is irrelevant to any communist regime, past or current

I doubt if any leader after Lenin has actually read Das Kapital. I'd bet money not even Fidel Castro has read it. Das Kapital is not a call to revolution - it is a call for the drones of academia to engage in endless pseudo economic minutia.

The Leninist variant of Marxism owes more to Lenin than Marx, as well as to Russian nationalism and other strange ideologies.

I'd argue the true heirs of Marx are the European Social Democrats - Engels actually presided over the founding of the German Social Democratic Party. Marx never saw socialism arising from marginal agrarian societies like Russia, Chine, and Cuba. I'd argue the European Social Democrats have "done it right" - their programs were the essence of Marx sought. My opinion is that Lenin was a barbaric aberration. Were it not for WWI, Lenin would be a footnote in history.

Lastly, Das Kapital is so dense and impenetrable, it makes anything Ayn Rand wrote look like an light-hearted adventure novel. Someone inspired by that book is sorely lacking in excitement in their life.

[jeff47]

54. Tip: One does not have to choose only between two idiotic extremes (nt)

[WinstonSmith4740]

23. And they took her seriously...

I always thought it was a damn shame that Ayn Rand didn't live long enough to see what happens when you DE-regulate everything, and the "looters" are in charge. In her world, only those on the left side of the political spectrum were flawed and/or evil. There was a real "throw-away" line in her manifesto that particularly intrigued me. I'm paraphrasing here, because I don't have a copy in front of me, but the set-up was that Hank Reardon was talking to the head of the union at his plant. The union head, was of course, a titular title because Hank "always treated his workers fairly, and paid them above the industry average." Uh-huh. Just like all captains of industry. I guess that's why unions became necessary...working conditions were ALWAYS good and safe. Workers were treated well, paid fairly, and had great benefits like vacations and health care. She really did create a fantasy world of right wing supermen.

Oh, and ever notice what these rugged individualists, who hated government intervention, and could always be trusted to do the right thing, actually DID do when they dropped out of society? Yep, THEY JOINED A COMMUNE!!!

Ah, conservatives. Hypocrites to the end.

[lefty2000]

27. I was an objectivist

It was fun when I was 26, but then I met a real woman and I had to grow up. No regrets.

[Starry Messenger]

28. The first line is a killer.

:thumbsup:

[defendandprotect]

29. Ayn Rand and Greenspan, etal deserve a stake thru the heart --

but she's just another bit of RW propaganda used by the GOP and elites

to cover what they've actually been doing --

Just as they have traditionally used organized patriarchal religion from day one --

"pie in the sky when you die" -- male superiority - "Man's Dominion Over Nature" --


While I wholehearted agree with Patel, it isn't just the last 30 years --

We've had 50 years of right wing political violence unacknowledged by our "free press."

Scientists also understood by the late 1888's the damage that the industrial revolution

was doing to nature.


By 1957 we understood Global Warming -- thanks to scientists and models of the planet --

and we understood the chemical soup we were making -- thanks to Rachel Carson.

In large part, IMO, that's why the political violence became so overt.


The core of capitalism is exploitation -- not only of nature which is a totally suicidal

concept - but also of humans, directly and indirectly as we are part of nature.

You can't harm nature without harming ourselves.


It is understanding the true predatory nature of capitalism which will help us --

Patriarchy/Organized patriarchal religion/Capitalism = One Unholy Trinity of destruction.

[patrice]

35. They're going to be experiencing the same kind of withdrawal as they blamed Avatar for, difference

is that all of us know that there are no flying dragons and freepers don't.

[Odin2005]

42. The computer game Bioshock is a brilliant example of Randianism gone Bad.

[Occulus]

63. I'll second this

From the intro:

"I am Andrew Ryan, and I’m here to ask you a question: Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?

No, says the man in Washington; it belongs to the poor.
No, says the man in the Vatican; it belongs to God.
No, says the man in Moscow; it belongs to everyone.

I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible.

I chose... Rapture.

A city where the artist would not fear the censor. Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality. Where the great would not be constrained by the small... and with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."

Bioshock ranks near the top of the list of "greatest games ever". It was warped, it was twisted, it was insane (I'm looking at you, Dr. Steinman*), and it was visually just beautiful. The deliberate and multiple Randian Objectivist takedowns were a thing of beauty to see put into practice, and the canvas they used really drove the point home.

---

*My favorite boss fight setup ever (BigMcLargeHugh SPOILER ALERT): "What can I do with this one, Aphrodite? She wont! Stay! Still! I want to make them beautiful, but it always turns out wrong!! That one- too fat! This one- too tall! This one- too symmetrical!"

[SemperEadem]

68. Ha! It's interesting that that guide's name is Atlas.

[SemperEadem]

67. exactly.

[WileEcoyote]

44. Every Randian type I ever met was a spoiled rich kid

Without exception.

[JCMach1]

46. Tolkien as anti-dote?

From a DU article I wrote in 2001.


...The War Against Totalitarianism did not end with the Third Age of Middle-Earth. It did not end with the war against Hitler and Hirohito. It didn't end with the collapse of Stalin and his disciples. It exists in a System that coerces people to conform to its power and directives: that is the magic of the Ring. In one of the more telling scenes in the trilogy, Frodo offers to give Galadriel the One Ring. She resists the temptation and points out that instead of a Dark Lord, she would have become a Dark Queen - as beautiful as she was terrible. America, Lady Liberty herself, has much to learn from hobbits. http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/01/11/26_hobbits.html

[NAO]

47. Article by her disciple Branden on Hazards of Philosophy of Ayn Rand

From Ms. Rand's anointed disciple turned lover turned excommunicated heretic Nathanial Branden:

The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand
http://www.nathanielbranden.com/catalog/articles_essays/benefits_and_hazards.html

Abstract: For eighteen years I was a close associate of novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand whose books, notably “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged,” inspired a philosophical movement known as objectivism. This philosophy places its central emphasis on reason, individualism, enlightened self-interest, political freedom—and a heroic vision of life’s possibilities. Following an explosive parting of the ways with Ayn Rand in 1968, I have been asked many times about the nature of our differences. This article is my first public answer to that question. Although agreeing with many of the values of the objectivist philosophy and vision, I discuss the consequences of the absence of an adequate psychology to support this intellectual structure—focusing in particular on the destructive moralism of Rand and many of her followers, a moralism that subtly encourages repression, self-alienation, and guilt. I offer an explanation of the immense appeal of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, particularly to the young, and suggest some cautionary observations concerning its adaptation to one’s own life.

Branden never did get it about the evils and falsehoods of economic libertarianism.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

48. "Plugging the Gulf oil leak with the works of Ayn Rand."

I generally think Facebook is, well, idiotic, but this group is pretty entertaining:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Plugging-the-Gulf-oil-leak-with-the-works-of-Ayn-Rand/125031037519289?ref=ts

[tblue37]

49. Don't forget _Steppenwulf_! Teens seem to love that one. nt

[loudsue]

55. So true.

She started something really awful.

[Shining Jack]

57. K&R

Great post !

[chillspike]

62. Rand Illusion

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/221335/march-11-2009/the-word---rand-illusion

[SemperEadem]

65. I recommended it just on the title alone.

and the rest of it backs up that move. Thanks for posting this.

[old mark]

69. I read some of her work in the early '50's when I was a lad....Didn't think much of it then...

Not now, either.
BUT...if a simple idea is dumb enough and repeated endlessly, people are sure to believe it and embrace it.
Ask Hitler.

mark

[Duval]

71. Her "democracy", "theocracy", "plutocracy" is without a soul.

Thanks for posting this. I read Atlas Shrugged in the 60s, and was left feeling uncomfortable with her philosophy. And I was chagrined that it was being applied so well by so many.

[krispos42]

79. I just read the Wikipedia article about "Atlas Shrugged"

From this awesomely high pillar of iron-clad knowledge, I'll make the following observation:


It's a fuck of a lot easier to be a genius at banking to get ahead than a genius of industry to get ahead. They genius who figures out how to make a better mousetrap has to actually make the mousetraps, so there is a definite limit to how many there can be, and the dollar amount produced. The genius that figured out how to make a better financial derivitive doesn't actually have to make anything at all, and there is no limit to how many dollars can get tangled up in it. It's how we got $600 trillion dollars worth of CDO's in a country with a $14 trillion GDP.

Success in industry is based on concrete, solid results. Banking depends as much on bullshit and psychopathic behavior as actual performance.

Yeah, industry needs banking... it's how you sell what you make, it's how the money flows from customers and to employees and suppliers.

But banking doesn't need industry... it needs geniuses at bullshit-making, at spinning perception, at manipulating emotions and facts. Hucksters, in other words. And that kind of talent is much easier to find than the industrial kind.

It tooks hundreds, thousands of nuclear geniuses around the world over a decade to produce a commercial nuclear power plant. It took a handful of brilliant hucksters in Texas a couple of years to throw the entire energy industry into chaos and to rape away uncountable billions of dollars in productivity.

Sorry, Rand, but the labor-market manipulation of organized labor is far less expensive than the energy-market manipulation of the banking industry. And the people who benefit from organized labor are far more numerous and far more benefitted than the people that benefit from energy-market manipulation.



I'll get down from my pillar of knowledge now.

[DissedByBush]

87. You did just find one of the many holes

She assumes that those with ability will act in the best interests of the economy.

Her protagonists are hard-working people who produced for society, her antagonists those who don't want to be productive, instead steal from the productive through their collective power of government.

Sounds great on the surface, but falls apart in reality.

Those two types do exist, that's true.

However, in reality we also have the rich who produce for nobody but themselves, and at the direct expense of society, and the poor who aren't that way because of a lack of productive will or ability, but because of luck (and in instances, they're that way directly because of the rich criminals).