Londons Falling

I Didn't Know!

Rating: 5/5
Comments:
For the longest time I was against Capitalism. I had it all wrong. This book opened my eyes. I thought it was based on greed, but now I know it is based on competition. Now I see that this is what our forefathers were going for, and now I can understand why. But our Capitalist country has been taken away from us, bit by bit, starting with Roosevelt's New Deal. We voted for all the wrong things, and our representatives never stopped to explain to us that we were wrong. They liked the power. Now we have given them the power to be fascists. I just wish Ayn had written a book to teach us how to take back the mess we've made for ourselves. Sigh.

Randyness Is Highly Contagious

Rating: 1/5
Comments:
The following remark opens Ayn Rand's essay "What Is Capitalism," reprinted from THE OBJECTIVIST NEWSLETTER, Nov. & Dec., 1965, as the first chapter of CAPITALISM: THE UNKNOWN IDEAL: "The disintegration of philosophy in the nineteenth century and its collapse in the twentieth have led to a similar, though much slower and less obvious process, in the course of modern science." Yep, you got it: the end of civilization, courtesy of Ayn Rand.

Now, get a load of this: 'Thus Europe's thinkers did not notice the fact that during the nineteenth century, the galley slaves had been replaced by the inventors of steamboats, and the village blacksmiths by the owners of blast furnaces, and they went on thinking in such terms (such contradictions in terms) as "wage slavery" or "the antisocial selfishness of industrialists who take so much from society without giving anything in return"---on the unchallenged axiom that wealth is an anonymous, social, tribal product.'

Charitable critics might attribute such misrepresentation of history to mere ignorance. Sorry, no sale. Anybody with a ninth grade education in 1965 was equipped to see through the baloney Rand was purveying. "...Europe's thinkers did not notice..."? The industrial revolution of the 19th Century BEGAN in Europe, not in America. "...[W]age slavery..."? What does Rand even THINK she's talking about? At the time, America was still committed to the institution of LITERAL slavery. "...[I]ndustrialists who take...without giving...in return?" Read a history of the Gilded Age. For that matter, read a biography of Theodore Roosevelt to get a perspective on the treatment accorded their employees by 19th Century American industrialists.

Now, here's a quotation from Michael Reagan, "Restructuring the Corporate System," THE MANAGED ECONOMY (Oxford University Press, 1963): "One of the greatest myths of what passes for conservativism in America is the belief that, if government would just stop rocking the boat, the status quo of economic institutions and the economic system would be self-sustaining."

The "myth" of which Reagan speaks is black and white and Rand all over. If history has ANY lesson to teach us about capitalism, it's this: capitalism can't thrive without an enormous supply of cheap labor. 19th Century America's workforce fit the bill nicely: black slaves, women, children, immigrants. Of course, the American labor movement changed things a mite during the 20th Century. Once employers had to start PAYING their employees, cheap labor became scarcer, and capitalist wizards accordingly began outsourcing jobs to sweatshops in the Third World ("wage slaves," "industrialists who take...without giving...in return," anyone?). Naturally, Rand can't abide the idea of organized labor. Rand-World, after all, is a capitalist paradise in which industrialist big-shots have rights but workers don't (again: "wage slaves," anyone?). Rand-World, of course, is a JUST world: everybody actually gets what he really deserves. So in Rand-World, what one is actually paid is precisely what one OUGHT to be paid. Hence, anybody in Rand-World who thinks he's UNDERpaid is just an evil piece of crap who ought to know that he'd be paid more if he were WORTH more---which he isn't, because he's just one more mediocre rank-and-file schmuck rather than a capitalist Uebermensch. And, yes, everybody who's not a reality-denying Altruist retard accepts Rand's take on things, because nobody who's not a reality-denying Altruist retard can fail to discern that his/her employer is an enlightened capitalist savant. Come on, now! Don't try telling anybody that YOUR employer isn't a dyed-in-the-wool genius, isn't an infallible dispenser of social, economic, and personal justice! Surely your employer pays YOU precisely what you deserve and treats YOU exactly as you should be treated, right?

Ya gotta hand it to Rand: the lady has set the standard of megalomania for the entire world. Who else but Ayn Rand could blithely announce in 1965 the end of philosophy, science, and life as we know it for no reason more substantial than that none of them was subservient to the demands of her own cosmos-dwarfing ego? Like Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, and Ann Coulter, Rand has the temerity to dictate political, economic, and social policy for the whole world, without ever having shouldered the responsibilities of political office or holding a position of executive leadership in any industry, without ever having had to negotiate with labor or anyone else. Never mind that what Rand knew about philosophy and science could be written in large block letters on the back of a postage stamp. Aristotle excepted, she damned every thinker with whom she disagreed about anything. Contradict her in any way, and you were consigned to the flames of perdition. You see, for Ayn Rand there ARE NO opaque epistemic contexts; consequently, there are no such things as honest mistakes, only willful "denials of reality." Thus, according to Rand, you're never really wrong about anything---rather, you subscribe out of sheer perversity to views that you know perfectly well to be false.

CAPITALISM: THE UNKNOWN IDEAL splendidly exemplifies what almost certainly will be dubbed "Randyness" in the forthcoming psychiatric reference manual DSM-V. Randyness: the persistent delusion that one isn't nearly as stupid as one actually is; a degenerative psychopathology manifest in the professional excreta of Ayn Rand, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, and Ann Coulter, of Objectivists and other fanatics generally; characterized by incontinent messianic pronouncements accompanied by a complete disregard of any factor that might inhibit the patient's own grandiosity; a condition for which there is no known cure and for which the only treatment of demonstrated effectiveness is derisive marginalization in all theaters of life, public and private.

The Forgotten Ideal

Rating: 5/5
Comments:
Capitalism, by Ayn Rand, is a collection of 26 essays that discuss more than what the title would lead you to believe. Most articles were written by Rand, while a few were penned by others including a much younger Alan Greenspan. Rand opens the book with a chapter called "What is Capitalism." Greenspan writes on antitrust law and gold. Economics is rarely exciting, but the authors manage to make in interesting.

One editorial review posted on the Amazon.com page for Capitalism states that the book is, "An interesting relic of the past," and goes on to call it an "outlandish piece of propaganda," but this is actually a classic example of "Extremism or the Art of Smearing" as explained in Chapter 17. While the liberals at Amazon.com and the Library Journal might consider Rand an outlandish relic of the past, her books logically explains the philosophy and principles upon which our economic system rests. Because we have drifted away from our founding ideals and the government schools no longer teach United States history well, or economics at all, capitalism has become the forgotten ideal and younger generations must seek out their heritage in the books of Ayn Rand and others. That is why these books continue to sell well.

Rand was no friend of Judeo-Christian values, but she strongly believed in many values that most Americans once shared, limited government, laissez-faire economics and property rights. If you want a better understanding why these principles made America great you should read this and her other works.