Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (70 page)

Would an Objectivist notion of “mental health,” for instance, be but another construction of the medical profession designed to control the nonconformists? Would the victory of Objectivism involve a quasi-Maoist
cultural
revolution
? Is such a totalitarian tendency inherent in
any
philosophy that proposes a totalistic transformation? Is there an identity between methodological
totalitarianism
and political totalitarianism?

Rand never answered any of these crucial questions directly. What must be emphasized here, however, is that Rand’s proposed cultural renaissance is not equivalent to a state-directed Maoist cultural revolution. Such a renaissance would seek to undermine statism, not bolster it. It would not be a tool of the state. It would lead to a cultural “counterhegemony,” to use a Gramscian phrase. By overturning the antirational premises of culture in each of its forms, it would create a broad context and necessary base for political change.

Once achieved, it is doubtful that an Objectivist society would use a form of psychological “conditioning” to control its citizens. Given Rand’s profound individualism and antistatism, she adamantly opposed the state’s involvement in medicine and mental health. Both Branden and Rand applauded the libertarian psychiatrist,
Thomas Szasz
, who fought against the involuntary institutionalization of mental patients. Psychiatry, stripped of its incestuous ties to the state, would be far less lethal.
⁵¹
Rand suggests that an Objectivist society would not seek to reproduce these repressive structures in the new age of freedom. It would leave people free to be irrational, even as it would deny them the structural means to violate the rights of others. More important, the Objectivist society would leave rational people free to discover and earn their own contextually objective values.

The central issue here is whether Rand’s vision of a totalistic revolution would necessarily translate into another form of totalitarianism. Like many classical liberals,
Popper
([1962] 1971, 133–34) has argued persuasively against any philosophy that seeks to collapse the “critical
dualism
” between “facts and standards.” He states that without this dualism, there is a tendency to “identify present might and right,” or “future might and right.” Those who claim to have discovered an objective ethos attempt to impose it on other people. Moreover, such an attempt is an inevitable by-product of any “grandiose philosophic system,” because such a system seeks to remake the totality in its own image.

Popper believed that Marx was the last, great philosophic system-builder. He hoped that Marx’s totality would never be replaced “by another Great System” seeking to achieve “monolithic social ends” (393). Such systems spell “the death of freedom: of the freedom of thought, of the free search for truth, and with it, of the rationality and the dignity of man” (396).

Popper’s identity of methodological and political totalitarianism is a stem warning, one that Rand would have respected. As I suggest in
Chapter 9
, Rand’s repudiation of theocratic and secular
collectivism
was
based on her belief that each had collapsed the dualism of facts and values by monistically emphasizing one sphere over another. Rand did not identify an a-contextual “intrinsic” or “social”
good
, nor did she seek to impose a vision of the good on an unsuspecting populace. The good was an aspect of reality in relation to man. It had to be defined within a specific context and related to the specific purposes of an individual beneficiary. Most of the great
philosophic
system-builders attacked the ontological priority of individuals and attempted to achieve a notion of the good that was unrelated to
reason
or reality. In Rand’s view, it was Aristotle who laid the foundation for a genuinely
rational
alternative based upon the primacy of existence and the necessity of reason. Rand believed that
Objectivism
would complete the Aristotelian revolution.

Rand’s philosophical system combined an emphasis on methodological totality with a commitment to individualist libertarianism. Since Rand never lost sight of the totality or the context, her
individualism
never dissolved into atomism. But her repudiation of
sobornost
’ was not a repudiation of the concept of
community
. Even as she revolted against the Russian
sobornost
’ in its
mystical
and Marxist incarnations, she sustained a belief in a conflict-free
society
of individuals united by their common love for the same values. Rand achieved a dialectical
Aufhebung
—a sublation of dualities that simultaneously abolished and absorbed, transcended and preserved elements of the Russian communitarian vision. In this respect, Rand’s philosophic project is infused with a communitarian impulse; a communitarianism that is neither mystical nor statist, but founded on the moral autonomy of the individual.

The integration of individual and social harmony in Rand’s thought has been noted by a number of commentators, including
Tibor Machan
,
Douglas Den Uyl
, and
Antony Flew
. Machan notes correctly that in Rand’s moral vision, “both aspects of each individual’s life,” “
humanity
and individuality,” are conjoined “equally and inseparably.”
⁵²
Den Uyl notes further that in Rand’s ideal society, much like in Plato’s
Republic
, the soul of the city is in harmony with the soul of the individual.
⁵³
For Flew, Rand was “like Marx” in her belief “that
human
nature and the human condition are such as to make possible a conflict-free utopia.”
⁵⁴
Each of these commentators has pinpointed significant communitarian themes in the Randian project.

In Rand’s view, the integrated,
rational
individual, living in a fully free society, will not experience any inherent conflicts with other people. This does not mean that all people will have the same personal tastes, opinions, desires, or thoughts. But it does mean that if people live
consciously
and rationally, they will recognize no inherent conflicts between one another.
This is a controversial contention in Objectivism that merits a study of its own.

Rand argued that genuinely integrated human beings do not detach their emotions from their thinking, nor do they detach their thinking from reality. Reality-based awareness means that people will not seek or desire the attainment of a contradiction. Rational persons pursue goals that are appropriate to the context of their knowledge. They do not divide their short-and long-run interests. They do not seek goals without considering the means of their achievement. They accept the responsibility of considering the interests and lives of other human beings. They accept that their decisions and actions will have consequences on the lives of others. They recognize that nothing in life can be achieved without effort.

Within the context of a free society, in which social relations are nonexploitative, Rand argued that there is no inherent conflict between two people seeking the same job, or the same romantic partner. If employers make decisions based on rational criteria, they will choose the most capable person for a given job. Persons not chosen have not been sacrificed. They will not be psychologically damaged by the rejection, and will have ample opportunity to search for other jobs for which they will be qualified. Likewise, in spiritual matters, a rational person who enters into a relationship with one individual does not sacrifice the interests of others who are not so engaged. Rand argued: “
Love
is not a static quantity to be divided, but an unlimited response to be earned.” The love of one friend does not compromise the love of another friend. And a rational individual who chooses one romantic partner rather than another, makes that choice not on a comparative basis, but within the context of his or her own interests and happiness. Rand observed: “The ‘loser’ could not have had what the ‘winner’ has earned.”
⁵⁵

What must be stressed is that such decisions are nonsacrificial only among rational people living in a free society.
In a free society, it is possible to avoid those who are irrational. Rand emphasized that none of these observations pertain to human relations “in a nonfree society.” Under statism, “no pursuit of any interests is possible to anyone; nothing is possible but gradual and general destruction” (56).

Here, the validity of Rand’s formulations is not at issue. But it is difficult to grasp the Randian ideal if only because today’s world is composed of many different types of people, many—if not most—of whom are
not
rational. This observation, however, only underscores the extraordinary radicalism of Rand’s project. Rand envisions a society that banishes the master-slave duality on every level of human discourse—in personal, cultural, and structural relations among individuals.

For Rand, the social world is necessary to human
flourishing
. People naturally seek and give visibility to those whom they
love
and with whom they communicate. Independence breeds benevolence. Individuality breeds sociality. Those who are not afraid to show their excitement, passion, and integrity will encourage others to do the same. As Nathaniel Branden (1983b) explains, to honor the self is to provide the foundation for a community of individuals who honor one another: “
Individualism
is not the adversary of community but its most vital pillar” (143).

In the Objectivist
society
, voluntary, mutually beneficial relations among autonomous individuals is indispensable to the achievement of a genuinely
human
community. Rand wrote: “
National
unity, like love, is not a primary, but a consequence and must come voluntarily or not at all.” One does not engender communal benevolence by forcing people into social relations they seek to avoid. The predatory use of force creates and perpetuates social fragmentation and dualism. Politically, the doctrine of individual rights is the only moral vehicle for peaceful “human coexistence,” because it bars physical force from social relations. It sanctions a plethora of voluntary material and spiritual exchanges by which people earn the values that sustain their lives.
⁵⁶
“Universal” brotherhood is not achieved on the sole basis of species identity or even kinship ties, but on the basis “of holding the same values.”
⁵⁷
Despite her differences with modern communitarian critics of liberalism, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Rand recognizes similarly that a free society is not merely a voluntary association of disparate individuals; it is a “community of values” that is the necessary ingredient “of any successful relationship among living beings.”
⁵⁸

I close this chapter—and this book—with one final, lengthy passage written by Ayn Rand, the novelist and philosopher. It is from
The Fountainhead
.
It portrays, in a single instant of time, the Randian ideal of the human community. On trial for destroying a public housing project, Howard Roark takes the oath. As he prepares for his self-defense, Roark stands before his peers:

He stood by the steps of the witness stand. The audience looked at him. They felt he had no chance. They could drop the nameless resentment, the sense of insecurity which he aroused in most people. And so, for the first time, they could see him as he was: a man totally innocent of fear.

The fear of which they thought was not the normal kind, not a response to a tangible danger, but the chronic, unconfessed fear in which they all lived. They remembered the misery of the moments when, in loneliness, a man thinks of the bright words he could have said, but
had not found, and hates those who robbed him of his courage. The misery of knowing how strong and able one is in one’s own mind, the radiant picture never to be made real. Dreams? Self-delusion? Or a murdered reality, unborn, killed by that corroding emotion without name—fear—need—dependence—hatred?

Roark stood before them as each man stands in the innocence of his own mind. But Roark stood like that before a hostile crowd—and they knew suddenly that no hatred was possible to him. For the flash of an instant, they grasped the manner of his consciousness. Each asked himself: do I need anyone’s approval?—does it matter?—am I tied? And for that instant, each man was free—free enough to feel benevolence for every other man in the room. (678–79)

Ultimately, it is this exalted moment of human benevolence that Rand’s project seeks to universalize.

EPILOGUE

Some of you may know the story of the four travelers who on a moonless night chanced upon an elephant and came away separately convinced that it was very like a snake, a leaf, a wall, a rope. Not one could persuade any other to change his mind, for each had touched a different part. Not one could resolve their differences for none of them knew the entire elephant.

The moral of the story is not the inevitability of subjectivism. Rather, it is a lesson in the fallacy of
reification
. Each traveler abstracted a part of the whole and reified that part into a separate entity, which was identified as the totality. Reification is possible because no one—and no human being—can achieve a synoptic vantage point on the whole. Our definition of what is
essential
depends on a specific context.

I have approached Ayn
Rand
’s legacy in a self-consciously one-sided fashion, with an emphasis on its historical roots. I do not have the intellectual hubris to propose that my perspective is the
only
legitimate vantage point on
Objectivism
. But as scholarship on Rand’s thought progresses, different perspectives will necessarily bring into focus aspects formerly obscured from view.

The importance of Objectivism then, in this context, does not lie merely in its repudiation of formal
dualism
or its insistence on the primacy of existence. Objectivism is a seamless conjunction of method and content—of a
dialectical
method and a realist-egoist-individualist-libertarian content. This synthesis is Rand’s most important contribution to twentieth-century radical
social theory
.