They both represent something that is past and discredited. The completely unfettered supremacist capitalism advocated by Ayn Rand is as over as Lenin's state ownership and central planning dictatorial socialism. The current economic meltdown pulled down the old road signs. The old 20th century ideological road map with everything going left and right doesn't work anymore. Moving to a static center isn't a real option either.Maybe we could start by throwing away the map, and looking at the road in front of us.
Oh please don't throw away the map. Someone will only come and write it again from the beginning and there'll be no-one there to point out that it isn't going anywhere.
ReplyDeleteRand has not been discredited. She said, more than once and fairly explicitly, that what she called capitalism had never actually been practiced in history, at any time or in any place:
ReplyDelete"A pure system of capitalism had never yet existed, not even in America; various degrees of government control had been undercutting and distorting it from the start." (The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 37)
She was as much a Utopian as Marx.
She would have been as disgusted by most of what is now going on as you are. She viewed the nexus of business and government as a source of corruption and a possibly lethal danger to genuine business enterprise. She didn't like regulation for two reasons: first, she thought it didn't really work and merely got in the way of honest businesspeople; second, she felt that regulation always became a way for big businesses and the politically connected to suppress competition and game the system to their benefit. You don't agree with the first reason, but I suspect you would agree with the second reason.
But what's going on now does not in the least discredit Rand; she would have said it actually validates her ideas, by showing what happens when people don't follow her version of capitalism to
She said, more than once and fairly explicitly, that what she called capitalism had never actually been practiced in history, at any time or in any placeCome now, kishnevi, EVERY idealogue says the same: "My system has never failed, it's the damn people who failed to carry My Grand Scheme out that failed!"
ReplyDeleteFeh.
Christianity is different, only because Jesus only promised us . . . a cross. Daily. How right He was! :-/ [JCF, on a Jesus-Kick tonight. If it bothers y'all, know it'll probably pass...]
"But what's going on now does not in the least discredit Rand; she would have said it actually validates her ideas, by showing what happens when people don't follow her version of capitalism to"
ReplyDeleteThe aging Communists who gather every May Day on a corner in Tompkins Square Park to sing the Internationale would say the same thing about Lenin. True Marxist-Leninism remains untried.
"She was as much a Utopian as Marx."
And that is precisely the problem with both.