Speaking of Marxists?
Mark Rudd (cofounder of the Students for a Democratic Society -SDS) once faulted Abbey Hoffman (cofounder of the Youth International Party --aka the Yippies) for not having read Marx's tome DAS KAPITAL.
"I refuse to read it until it's put into CLASSIC COMIC form," was his retort.
I don't think I knew anybody who waded through DAS KAPITAL.
What's the point?
It is the musings of a man whose POV was based on a world that not only no longer exists, but one that never really existed to begin with.
Marx was as mad as Ayn Rand.
Both totally missed the mark because both don't get human nature OR social psycology.
They both blinded themselves with their ideologically theories.
No, both
True dat.
By imagining that the LOSERS are going to go away quietly and die for the continued pleasure of the capitalist winners.
That assumption is as goofy as Marx's notion that people are going to become good communists and all learn to live in workers paradise
Well that complaint I didn't lodge because I wasn't faulting her prose style, but you are 100% on the mark there.
What parts of Rand's work support your conclusion?
Her unspoken but obvious presuppositions about Libertopia, amigo
The presumption that capitalism can exist outside the framework of a functional society.
The presumption that greed is good and inevitably leads to good outcomes.
The presumption that cream inevitably rises to the top.
The presumption that capitalism is a kind of meritocracy.
These are some of her assumptions that I can recall just off the top of my head, of course, since I haven't bothered to read that crazy lady's musings in 40 years or so.
But her goofy notions about how to create a utopian society certainly impressed me when I was 14 and didn't really know jackshit about the real human condition or how men operate in society.
So I guess you could say that I was a Randian objectivist libertopian when I was a child, but then I grew up.
You have drawn lessons from Rand that I missed.
I did not get from her that the losers would go quietly away. Rather, I got that the creative and the visionaries are the driving force behind progress and society as a whole pretty much uses them up and casts them aside. Notable exceptions are folks like Edison and Gates, although, it could be argued successfully that Gates in effect stole MSDOS from its real creator and profited much like the villains in "Atlas Shrugged".
Libertopia? Never read that word in her books. She had a well founded and richly justified distrust of Big Government. She believed it was wasteful. She believed that its cast of charachters is given to self agrandizement and that the sheer weight of the cash flow bends even the most scrupulous to willing thievery and deciet. I have seen nothing in my life that would disuade me from that belief.
Capitalism exists outside of a society? Again, I did not get that from my reading of her work. Capitalism, though, is not a governemtal system nor is it a societal system. It is an economic system. Governmental systems like a Republican Democracy and Societal constructs like Socialism can ride on top of the wealth created by Capitalism, but Capitalism is not and never has been either a societal construct or a form of government. I personnaly don't think that Capitalism can co-exist with a totalitarian form of government, but that's just me.
Greed is good. It is the only thing that we can depend on. Self interest is the only reliable guage of any thing's popularity. If a person's Greed manifests in gathering and keeping wealth, he should be allowed to do so. If it manifests in gathering and keeping friends, he should be allowed to do so. Mother Theresa was greedy for the rewards of Heaven. She should no more be condemned for relentlessly pursuing her greed than Bill Gates should be for even more relentlessly pursuing his.
Cream rises to the top? In my reading of her work, she seemed to be saying that "Cream" rising to the top is hindered by most people and most events. She also seemed to expouse that only through determined and continuing effort could the "Cream" avoid the traps and pitfalls of society and rise to the goals they sought. Most of the charachters in her books did not have the commitment and drive to do this.
Capitalism as a meritocracy? Again, this is not what I read. In Atlas Shrugged, the truly gifted were invited by John Galt to join him in a Utiopian village which they did. They actually abandoned society and Capitalism so they could pusue their passions and create engines that ran on air and houses designed perfectly for the setting. This village was as closely related to a Communist society as any one might imagine.
In the Fountainhead, Roarke went on for pages in pusuit of a explanation of what he was motivated by. He did not claim to be entitled to any reward outside of the ones that he set for his work. If that set payment was not offered and accepted, he did not feel that it was due to him. By the same token, if the payment for anything else was offered by others to others, he did not feel compelled to join in the payments.
Roarke felt that his work was his and he could sell it as he saw fit to anyone for an agreed upon compensation. Lacking that compensation, the work was not purchased and therefore remained his.
I didn't see Atlas Shrugged as a recipe for creating a Utopian society but rather as a cautionary tale about the abuse of those upon whom we depend to advance as a society technologically, organizationally and spiritually. It's interesting that those who are the successfully gifted or enlightened are villified today by the media and oustracised by the power brokers exactly as they were in her book. This is also a repeating theme in literature. "Contact" with Jodi Foster is an example of this.
Apparently, not much has changed in the last 70 or so years.
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