Ayn Rand

The books to be reviewed

1. Rand, Ayn (1996). Atlas Shrugged. London: Signet Books. 

2. Rand, Ayn (1963). For the New Intellectual. London: Signet Books. 

3. Rand, Ayn (1967). Capitalism – the Unknown Ideal. London: Signet Books.

4. Rand, Ayn (1964). The Virtue of Selfishness. London: Signet Books. 

Abstract

If there had to be only one word to describe Rand’s thinking, it should be: Brutish. Because that’s how not only her clear, unadorned language, but also her thinking is perceived by many, especially those who oppose her thinking, the school of thought she has sparked through her plentiful tomes of fictional writ-ing and the couple of essays, two of which I will consider as noted in the box under the headline, although the second book must rather be understood as a collection of excerpts from her fictional writing, introduced with an essay of hers—one that fits the single-word description about her aptly—and summing up the nonfictional virtue of all of her books. 

Yet before we start, a short foreword on what we are going to see, assuming you will not skip this review because you either have made up your mind on her and are not interested in reading about her, for risk of either wasting your time on reading what you agree or disagree with, or because what you have heard about her or read from her already grew you tired of this woman. We are not going to review all of her books separately but instead use them as points of ref-erence to quote from in order to grasp a full picture of her philosophy, which many of her critics and haters might prefer to see placed between quotation marks. We are going to discuss this in such great detail as I am capable of. We are also not going to concern ourselves with her “Romantic Manifesto” as we are not interested in her views on romantic relationships and how we, according to her, should dedicate ourselves to the people that are truly important to us. We could consider coming back to it with reference towards the relation between Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden, but possibly not as this is not a subject in politics but inter-human relationships, something that must be figured out be-tween the private persons and no-one else. 

Photo by David Vives on Unsplash

Some could take a pernickety offence in the disorder of the listing inside the box, given that I refused to order the books chronologically. But this is only interesting to, well, nitpickers. As I have mentioned above, we are not going to review them separately but place them inside a mishmash of homogenous information as there were few distinguished themes in Rand’s writing. As the anonymous philosophical cartoonist “Existential Comics” once summed it up in the well-known derogatory fashion: “Ayn Rand wrote like 10,000 pages about how there were two kinds of people: ‘producers’, and ‘moochers’. Moochers make nothing, but merely sponge off society. The amazing thing is that landlords were apparently in the ‘producer’ category.” The comments, if one should venture to search for the Facebook post, which I cannot recommend, are less interesting with regards to Rand’s philosophy. Common accusations and miscomprehensions up to downright vitriol or ridicule against her are abundantly found there. Even the longer comment in the forefront is not worth it, claiming that it was a sign of wit to read the Marquis de Sade, or John Cleland’s “Fanny Hill”. It only shows what are the true intentions in degrading her impact or thoughts on Libertarianism as a school of thought. Alas, even Feminists would not run to her rescue as there were too many grudges held against her philosophy of Individualism, so that there is a weighing between the universal merit of equalisation and who to support and who to drop like a hot potato. But to this we shall come back in a moment as we will firstly raise our focus on Atlas Shrugged to place it as a lodestar, due to its recognition as either her masterpiece or a harangue against the people. One can choose one’s status for it. Without further ado, let’s dive into this abyss! 

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Download the full review under the following link: »Google Drive« (PDF, approximately 68 pages)