Ayn Rand is one of the most controversial thinkers of the 20th century.
In this episode, we'll explore her philosophy of Objectivism, which champions rational self-interest and free-market capitalism, and discuss why her ideas remain divisive today.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is the third part in our three-part philosophical mini-series.
[00:00:26] In case you missed them, in part one we learned about the philosopher king, or perhaps more aptly the philosopher emperor, Marcus Aurelius.
[00:00:36] In part two, which was one of our member-only episodes, we learned about one of the grumpiest and most pessimistic men to walk the earth, the 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.
[00:00:47] And in our final episode, part three, we are going to talk about the controversial 20th century author and philosopher, Ayn Rand.
[00:00:56] To some, she is a voice of reason, the only person prepared to articulate the truth of how people really see the world.
[00:01:05] To others, she offers a misguided and foolish interpretation of humanity, one in which there is no love, compassion or charity, only selfish self-interest.
[00:01:17] So, let’s get right into it, and learn about the queen of capitalism, Ayn Rand.
[00:01:24] What is the meaning of life?
[00:01:26] We’ve talked about this a lot in this mini-series, and of course it is a question that thinkers and philosophers have grappled with for centuries, are still grappling with today, and will continue to grapple with until the end of time.
[00:01:41] If you asked Marcus Aurelius, he would probably have said something like “to live a virtuous life in accordance with the rules of nature”.
[00:01:50] If you asked Arthur Schopenhauer, if he hadn’t simply walked away or looked down at you like you were wasting his time, he might respond by telling you that “life has no meaning, only death”.
[00:02:02] If you asked Karl Marx, he would probably say something like solidarity between men, class struggle, and self-realisation through labour.
[00:02:13] If you asked Ayn Rand, however, you would get a very different answer.
[00:02:19] The meaning of life, according to Rand, was rational self-interest, doing whatever was best for you as an individual, free of interference from others.
[00:02:32] You might think, “oh, well that doesn’t sound so controversial, doing what is best for me doesn’t sound like such a terrible way to live my life.”
[00:02:43] But the controversy and radicalism in Rand’s philosophy was the extent to which she took this to its logical extreme.
[00:02:53] For Rand, the individual came at the centre of everything.
[00:02:58] This meant that any external requests on the individual were wrong.
[00:03:03] Nobody should tell anybody else how to live their life or force them to do anything that they didn’t want, because the individual needed to put their own interests first.
[00:03:15] Now, we’ll get to the intricacies of this philosophy in a minute, and what it means from a practical basis, but let me first give you some background to Ayn Rand.
[00:03:28] Like Marcus Aurelius and certainly like Arthur Schopenhauer, it is not difficult to see how their life experience shaped their view of the world.
[00:03:38] Ayn Rand, as you might have guessed, wasn’t her real name. It was Alice O'Connor.
[00:03:44] And even that wasn’t her birth name, it was Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum. She was born in Russia, in 1905, to a bourgeois Jewish family.
[00:03:56] Now, Russia at the start of the 20th century wasn’t a great place to be, it was a particularly bad place to be a Jew, and it was an even worse place to be a Jew from a bourgeois family, as Ayn Rand was.
[00:04:12] There was a new wave anti-Semitic pogroms, riots against Jewish people, which went on from 1903 to 1906, and then in 1917 the Rosenbaum family’s life was turned upside down after the Russian Revolution, which did not turn out well for the Russian bourgeoisie.
[00:04:32] Her family's pharmacy was nationalised, her family had to flee, and–like tens of millions of other Russians at the time–she endured terrible hardship, poverty and starvation as Communist Russia started its experiment with collectivism.
[00:04:49] And in 1926 she arrived in America. She had been given a visa to visit relatives, but she had no intention of returning to her country of birth; her real plan was to escape and become a screenwriter. This was the early days of Hollywood, and Ayn Rand was intent on hitting it big.
[00:05:12] The first problem was one I imagine you might be familiar with: she needed to work on her English.
[00:05:19] She took an English course, and made her way out west, to Hollywood, where after a few years of rejection, she found some success.
[00:05:29] In 1935, after managing to sell a script to Broadway, she started work on what would become her first major commercial success, and outline her philosophy. It was called The Fountainhead, and was rejected by 12 different publishing houses before eventually being published in 1943.
[00:05:52] The novel follows the story of a heroic architect, Howard Roark, and explores his struggles between conformity and independence. It isn’t a philosophical treatise, a manifesto, but a novel through which Rand presents her philosophy, a way of viewing the world which would come to be called “Objectivism”.
[00:06:15] It was an immediate success, a cult hit, but soon after she got to work on her new book, the even more successful and controversial Atlas Shrugged, which was eventually published in 1957.
[00:06:31] Atlas Shrugged was even longer, 1,200 pages, and further developed the themes that she had touched on in The Fountainhead. Principally, individualism, property rights, the role of government, libertarianism, and capitalism.
[00:06:47] It was to be her magnum opus, her greatest work, but it was not universally well-received.
[00:06:55] One critic described it as “1,000 pages of ideological fabulism”, while another called it “unpleasant, daft and deeply flawed”.
[00:07:06] But it was a great success commercially, selling millions of copies and turning Rand into a rich and successful author.
[00:07:16] After its publication she focussed on developing her philosophy rather than writing more fiction, dedicating her life, selfishly she would probably say, to furthering her ideas.
[00:07:29] So, what did Rand believe, what were some of the core ideas of Objectivism, and where did these come from?
[00:07:38] The first point is that reality exists independently of consciousness, that there is an objective reality external to the mind. The world is not how we think it is, with everyone experiencing a slightly different reality. There is an objective reality, a way the world is that doesn’t require anyone to take anything for granted.
[00:08:05] Secondly, the way we should understand this world is through reason. Man needs to think and act rationally, according to the reality that is in front of him.
[00:08:18] And what does this mean in practice?
[00:08:21] It means rational self-interest, acting according to your best interests. Sacrificing your interests for others or the collective is considered immoral, wrong.
[00:08:35] At the centre of everything should come the individual, the single human being. No group should have any claim over the rights of any individual, nobody should be able to force anyone else to do anything that is not in their best interest.
[00:08:52] Now, this has all been quite theoretical, so what would this mean in practice? What would a world look like in which Objectivism reigned supreme?
[00:09:04] It would be the most extreme form of laissez-faire capitalism, a society in which economics and state are separated, and where there is zero government interference in the affairs of the individual.
[00:09:18] Taxation is a form of theft, according to Rand, because it forces the individual to give up something that is theirs–their money–in order to benefit other people.
[00:09:31] Taxation is by default not in the best interest of the individual, and therefore tax is morally wrong, according to Rand at least.
[00:09:41] Now, if there is no taxation, who pays for the things that governments typically provide for their citizens, you might be asking?
[00:09:50] Well, the individual, because that person will act in their own best interest. If you drive a car on a road, you pay a toll, if you want to borrow a book from a library, you pay a fee, if you get ill, you pay the doctor.
[00:10:06] You would only pay for what was in your best interest, not a penny more and not a penny less.
[00:10:13] Rand did agree that there needed to be some form of government, but in Objectivism its function was reduced to purely law and order: enforcing property rights, protecting citizens from crime, and protecting the nation from foreign invaders.
[00:10:31] What an ideal society looked like, in Rand’s eyes, was one with practically zero state interference, and unbridled free-market capitalism.
[00:10:42] After all, capitalism by default rewards self-interest.
[00:10:47] People buy products and services because they have a selfish desire for them.
[00:10:52] You buy bread because you are hungry and you want to eat it. You buy an English course because you want to improve your English. You buy a family holiday because you want to sit on a beach or visit a new country or do whatever it is that you want to do.
[00:11:09] Capitalism encourages people to produce things that people want to buy.
[00:11:14] You might think that some of these things are morally questionable, whether that’s gambling, alcohol, cigarettes, or even heroin, but there is a clear demand for it, people are acting in their own self-interest, and therefore they should be allowed to do whatever it is they want.
[00:11:35] Capitalism is not just the superior economic system, it is morally right, according to Objectivism.
[00:11:43] Now, for someone to propose this position with such conviction and integrity was something of a novelty, and as you might expect, it was controversial.
[00:11:56] In a 1959 interview, Ayn Rand was introduced as an intellectual who was involved in a “new and unusual philosophy which would seem to strike at the very roots of our society”.
[00:12:09] And clearly, it did.
[00:12:12] Most societies around the world, regardless of religion or culture, tend to include some kind of expectation that people with more support those with less, which typically happens through taxation.
[00:12:26] Rand rejected this, dismissing it as altruistic and morally wrong, because it was not in the rational self-interest of the individuals.
[00:12:37] She also, as you might imagine, completely dismissed faith and religion.
[00:12:42] There was none, Rand said, the world is objectively as it is, and to pretend that there is some divine being, a God, that controls everything is not simply misguided, it is not backed up by any evidence.
[00:12:58] Now, in terms of her impact, it has been vast. Atlas Shrugged has sold 10 million copies, and as of 2022, more than 37 million copies of her writings have been sold worldwide.
[00:13:14] Her critics disparagingly suggest that she is most popular with teenage boys, who read Atlas Shrugged and avidly adopt her worldview, only to realise its impracticality as they grow up.
[00:13:28] Or, to tell you a popular wisecrack, a joke about Ayn Rand:
[00:13:33] There are two books a lot of boys discover when they are in their early teens. Atlas Shrugged and The Lord Of The Rings. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other is Lord Of The Rings.
[00:13:55] The idea is that Ayn Rand presents a view of the world that just seems to just click for certain people. It is a simple and utterly rational explanation, breaking everything down to first principles, and it doesn’t require anyone to believe anything that they cannot see with their own eyes.
[00:14:15] But, the morality and worldview that Rand presents is simply unworkable in a world in which altruism and compassion are considered to be virtues, regardless of religious or cultural background.
[00:14:28] We have had tens of thousands of years of human society in which communities have independently converged around the idea that it is a “good” thing to care for others, and–to Rand’s critics at least–even if she has a rational explanation for why self-interest should always come first, most people reject this idea.
[00:14:51] Nevertheless, she has plenty of fans who are not teenage boys.
[00:14:55] Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, was a close friend of Rand’s.
[00:15:02] The tax-cutting former president, Ronald Reagan, wrote to a friend that he was a fan of Rand’s ideas, and she continues to be cited by many US Republicans today.
[00:15:14] Her ideas have never been fully embraced to the extent that she advocated for, but they have certainly had an impact on business people and policymakers all over the world.
[00:15:25] On the flip side, to her critics, who are primarily found on the political left, but can also be found on the right, she is a pariah, a dangerous and compassionless individual who presents the antithesis of a happy, healthy society.
[00:15:42] What kind of world would it be, her critics argue, if there is no sense of society as a whole, just of a collection of individuals acting in their own self-interest?
[00:15:53] There would be no public health system, no public education, no public infrastructure, no government regulation.
[00:16:01] Not only would it be a morally bankrupt society, but it would lead to the collapse of society, a dystopia where the rich and powerful grow more rich and powerful, and those without money or power are left with nothing.
[00:16:16] The social contract we all implicitly engage in by paying taxes and obeying government laws keeps society afloat. Taxpayer money goes towards supporting those who are less able to support themselves, and government legislation exists to protect individuals from the worst excesses of capitalism, so the argument goes.
[00:16:38] Both to her critics and her greatest supporters, there seems to be little middle ground.
[00:16:45] Rand’s most ardent supporters tend to reject any criticism of her ideals, arguing that Objectivism is a worldview that you embrace in totality or not at all, which, to be fair, is Rand’s position.
[00:17:00] Objectivism provides a framework for seeing the world and making decisions, and if you use a framework, you can’t pick and choose, that isn’t rational.
[00:17:11] On a personal level, Ayn Rand was able to find the occasional compromise, or at least, find reasons for what other people would claim was a compromise.
[00:17:21] She was a heavy smoker her entire life, and in her late 60s she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
[00:17:28] Her treatment was expensive, and although she had made a lot of money through book sales, it all went on healthcare bills. She was practically broke, and she needed help from the state.
[00:17:41] She initially rejected social security benefits and medicare, the state-provided pension and healthcare, as this went against everything she believed in.
[00:17:51] But she then changed her mind, as she had been paying in her entire life through government-mandated taxes, so now was her time to take something out.
[00:18:01] It wasn’t charity, it was rational.
[00:18:05] Ayn Rand died in 1982, at the age of 77.
[00:18:10] 42 years have passed, but she has just as many followers and is just as controversial in 2024 as when she was alive.
[00:18:20] One thing is for sure.
[00:18:22] She was a visionary, she presented a completely different way of seeing the world, an utterly new blueprint for the meaning of life.
[00:18:31] And whether you agree with it or not, on that basis alone, she deserves to be discussed and remembered.
[00:18:39] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Ayn Rand, the unashamed champion of free-market capitalism, and the founder of Objectivism.
[00:18:48] And with that comes the end of this philosophical mini-series. In case you missed them, part one was on Marcus Aurelius and part two, which was one of our member-only ones, was on Arthur Schopenhauer.
[00:19:00] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:19:03] Have you read any Ayn Rand? What do you think of her work? Would you like to live in the kind of society she championed?
[00:19:10] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:19:13] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds. You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:19:26] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is the third part in our three-part philosophical mini-series.
[00:00:26] In case you missed them, in part one we learned about the philosopher king, or perhaps more aptly the philosopher emperor, Marcus Aurelius.
[00:00:36] In part two, which was one of our member-only episodes, we learned about one of the grumpiest and most pessimistic men to walk the earth, the 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.
[00:00:47] And in our final episode, part three, we are going to talk about the controversial 20th century author and philosopher, Ayn Rand.
[00:00:56] To some, she is a voice of reason, the only person prepared to articulate the truth of how people really see the world.
[00:01:05] To others, she offers a misguided and foolish interpretation of humanity, one in which there is no love, compassion or charity, only selfish self-interest.
[00:01:17] So, let’s get right into it, and learn about the queen of capitalism, Ayn Rand.
[00:01:24] What is the meaning of life?
[00:01:26] We’ve talked about this a lot in this mini-series, and of course it is a question that thinkers and philosophers have grappled with for centuries, are still grappling with today, and will continue to grapple with until the end of time.
[00:01:41] If you asked Marcus Aurelius, he would probably have said something like “to live a virtuous life in accordance with the rules of nature”.
[00:01:50] If you asked Arthur Schopenhauer, if he hadn’t simply walked away or looked down at you like you were wasting his time, he might respond by telling you that “life has no meaning, only death”.
[00:02:02] If you asked Karl Marx, he would probably say something like solidarity between men, class struggle, and self-realisation through labour.
[00:02:13] If you asked Ayn Rand, however, you would get a very different answer.
[00:02:19] The meaning of life, according to Rand, was rational self-interest, doing whatever was best for you as an individual, free of interference from others.
[00:02:32] You might think, “oh, well that doesn’t sound so controversial, doing what is best for me doesn’t sound like such a terrible way to live my life.”
[00:02:43] But the controversy and radicalism in Rand’s philosophy was the extent to which she took this to its logical extreme.
[00:02:53] For Rand, the individual came at the centre of everything.
[00:02:58] This meant that any external requests on the individual were wrong.
[00:03:03] Nobody should tell anybody else how to live their life or force them to do anything that they didn’t want, because the individual needed to put their own interests first.
[00:03:15] Now, we’ll get to the intricacies of this philosophy in a minute, and what it means from a practical basis, but let me first give you some background to Ayn Rand.
[00:03:28] Like Marcus Aurelius and certainly like Arthur Schopenhauer, it is not difficult to see how their life experience shaped their view of the world.
[00:03:38] Ayn Rand, as you might have guessed, wasn’t her real name. It was Alice O'Connor.
[00:03:44] And even that wasn’t her birth name, it was Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum. She was born in Russia, in 1905, to a bourgeois Jewish family.
[00:03:56] Now, Russia at the start of the 20th century wasn’t a great place to be, it was a particularly bad place to be a Jew, and it was an even worse place to be a Jew from a bourgeois family, as Ayn Rand was.
[00:04:12] There was a new wave anti-Semitic pogroms, riots against Jewish people, which went on from 1903 to 1906, and then in 1917 the Rosenbaum family’s life was turned upside down after the Russian Revolution, which did not turn out well for the Russian bourgeoisie.
[00:04:32] Her family's pharmacy was nationalised, her family had to flee, and–like tens of millions of other Russians at the time–she endured terrible hardship, poverty and starvation as Communist Russia started its experiment with collectivism.
[00:04:49] And in 1926 she arrived in America. She had been given a visa to visit relatives, but she had no intention of returning to her country of birth; her real plan was to escape and become a screenwriter. This was the early days of Hollywood, and Ayn Rand was intent on hitting it big.
[00:05:12] The first problem was one I imagine you might be familiar with: she needed to work on her English.
[00:05:19] She took an English course, and made her way out west, to Hollywood, where after a few years of rejection, she found some success.
[00:05:29] In 1935, after managing to sell a script to Broadway, she started work on what would become her first major commercial success, and outline her philosophy. It was called The Fountainhead, and was rejected by 12 different publishing houses before eventually being published in 1943.
[00:05:52] The novel follows the story of a heroic architect, Howard Roark, and explores his struggles between conformity and independence. It isn’t a philosophical treatise, a manifesto, but a novel through which Rand presents her philosophy, a way of viewing the world which would come to be called “Objectivism”.
[00:06:15] It was an immediate success, a cult hit, but soon after she got to work on her new book, the even more successful and controversial Atlas Shrugged, which was eventually published in 1957.
[00:06:31] Atlas Shrugged was even longer, 1,200 pages, and further developed the themes that she had touched on in The Fountainhead. Principally, individualism, property rights, the role of government, libertarianism, and capitalism.
[00:06:47] It was to be her magnum opus, her greatest work, but it was not universally well-received.
[00:06:55] One critic described it as “1,000 pages of ideological fabulism”, while another called it “unpleasant, daft and deeply flawed”.
[00:07:06] But it was a great success commercially, selling millions of copies and turning Rand into a rich and successful author.
[00:07:16] After its publication she focussed on developing her philosophy rather than writing more fiction, dedicating her life, selfishly she would probably say, to furthering her ideas.
[00:07:29] So, what did Rand believe, what were some of the core ideas of Objectivism, and where did these come from?
[00:07:38] The first point is that reality exists independently of consciousness, that there is an objective reality external to the mind. The world is not how we think it is, with everyone experiencing a slightly different reality. There is an objective reality, a way the world is that doesn’t require anyone to take anything for granted.
[00:08:05] Secondly, the way we should understand this world is through reason. Man needs to think and act rationally, according to the reality that is in front of him.
[00:08:18] And what does this mean in practice?
[00:08:21] It means rational self-interest, acting according to your best interests. Sacrificing your interests for others or the collective is considered immoral, wrong.
[00:08:35] At the centre of everything should come the individual, the single human being. No group should have any claim over the rights of any individual, nobody should be able to force anyone else to do anything that is not in their best interest.
[00:08:52] Now, this has all been quite theoretical, so what would this mean in practice? What would a world look like in which Objectivism reigned supreme?
[00:09:04] It would be the most extreme form of laissez-faire capitalism, a society in which economics and state are separated, and where there is zero government interference in the affairs of the individual.
[00:09:18] Taxation is a form of theft, according to Rand, because it forces the individual to give up something that is theirs–their money–in order to benefit other people.
[00:09:31] Taxation is by default not in the best interest of the individual, and therefore tax is morally wrong, according to Rand at least.
[00:09:41] Now, if there is no taxation, who pays for the things that governments typically provide for their citizens, you might be asking?
[00:09:50] Well, the individual, because that person will act in their own best interest. If you drive a car on a road, you pay a toll, if you want to borrow a book from a library, you pay a fee, if you get ill, you pay the doctor.
[00:10:06] You would only pay for what was in your best interest, not a penny more and not a penny less.
[00:10:13] Rand did agree that there needed to be some form of government, but in Objectivism its function was reduced to purely law and order: enforcing property rights, protecting citizens from crime, and protecting the nation from foreign invaders.
[00:10:31] What an ideal society looked like, in Rand’s eyes, was one with practically zero state interference, and unbridled free-market capitalism.
[00:10:42] After all, capitalism by default rewards self-interest.
[00:10:47] People buy products and services because they have a selfish desire for them.
[00:10:52] You buy bread because you are hungry and you want to eat it. You buy an English course because you want to improve your English. You buy a family holiday because you want to sit on a beach or visit a new country or do whatever it is that you want to do.
[00:11:09] Capitalism encourages people to produce things that people want to buy.
[00:11:14] You might think that some of these things are morally questionable, whether that’s gambling, alcohol, cigarettes, or even heroin, but there is a clear demand for it, people are acting in their own self-interest, and therefore they should be allowed to do whatever it is they want.
[00:11:35] Capitalism is not just the superior economic system, it is morally right, according to Objectivism.
[00:11:43] Now, for someone to propose this position with such conviction and integrity was something of a novelty, and as you might expect, it was controversial.
[00:11:56] In a 1959 interview, Ayn Rand was introduced as an intellectual who was involved in a “new and unusual philosophy which would seem to strike at the very roots of our society”.
[00:12:09] And clearly, it did.
[00:12:12] Most societies around the world, regardless of religion or culture, tend to include some kind of expectation that people with more support those with less, which typically happens through taxation.
[00:12:26] Rand rejected this, dismissing it as altruistic and morally wrong, because it was not in the rational self-interest of the individuals.
[00:12:37] She also, as you might imagine, completely dismissed faith and religion.
[00:12:42] There was none, Rand said, the world is objectively as it is, and to pretend that there is some divine being, a God, that controls everything is not simply misguided, it is not backed up by any evidence.
[00:12:58] Now, in terms of her impact, it has been vast. Atlas Shrugged has sold 10 million copies, and as of 2022, more than 37 million copies of her writings have been sold worldwide.
[00:13:14] Her critics disparagingly suggest that she is most popular with teenage boys, who read Atlas Shrugged and avidly adopt her worldview, only to realise its impracticality as they grow up.
[00:13:28] Or, to tell you a popular wisecrack, a joke about Ayn Rand:
[00:13:33] There are two books a lot of boys discover when they are in their early teens. Atlas Shrugged and The Lord Of The Rings. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other is Lord Of The Rings.
[00:13:55] The idea is that Ayn Rand presents a view of the world that just seems to just click for certain people. It is a simple and utterly rational explanation, breaking everything down to first principles, and it doesn’t require anyone to believe anything that they cannot see with their own eyes.
[00:14:15] But, the morality and worldview that Rand presents is simply unworkable in a world in which altruism and compassion are considered to be virtues, regardless of religious or cultural background.
[00:14:28] We have had tens of thousands of years of human society in which communities have independently converged around the idea that it is a “good” thing to care for others, and–to Rand’s critics at least–even if she has a rational explanation for why self-interest should always come first, most people reject this idea.
[00:14:51] Nevertheless, she has plenty of fans who are not teenage boys.
[00:14:55] Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, was a close friend of Rand’s.
[00:15:02] The tax-cutting former president, Ronald Reagan, wrote to a friend that he was a fan of Rand’s ideas, and she continues to be cited by many US Republicans today.
[00:15:14] Her ideas have never been fully embraced to the extent that she advocated for, but they have certainly had an impact on business people and policymakers all over the world.
[00:15:25] On the flip side, to her critics, who are primarily found on the political left, but can also be found on the right, she is a pariah, a dangerous and compassionless individual who presents the antithesis of a happy, healthy society.
[00:15:42] What kind of world would it be, her critics argue, if there is no sense of society as a whole, just of a collection of individuals acting in their own self-interest?
[00:15:53] There would be no public health system, no public education, no public infrastructure, no government regulation.
[00:16:01] Not only would it be a morally bankrupt society, but it would lead to the collapse of society, a dystopia where the rich and powerful grow more rich and powerful, and those without money or power are left with nothing.
[00:16:16] The social contract we all implicitly engage in by paying taxes and obeying government laws keeps society afloat. Taxpayer money goes towards supporting those who are less able to support themselves, and government legislation exists to protect individuals from the worst excesses of capitalism, so the argument goes.
[00:16:38] Both to her critics and her greatest supporters, there seems to be little middle ground.
[00:16:45] Rand’s most ardent supporters tend to reject any criticism of her ideals, arguing that Objectivism is a worldview that you embrace in totality or not at all, which, to be fair, is Rand’s position.
[00:17:00] Objectivism provides a framework for seeing the world and making decisions, and if you use a framework, you can’t pick and choose, that isn’t rational.
[00:17:11] On a personal level, Ayn Rand was able to find the occasional compromise, or at least, find reasons for what other people would claim was a compromise.
[00:17:21] She was a heavy smoker her entire life, and in her late 60s she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
[00:17:28] Her treatment was expensive, and although she had made a lot of money through book sales, it all went on healthcare bills. She was practically broke, and she needed help from the state.
[00:17:41] She initially rejected social security benefits and medicare, the state-provided pension and healthcare, as this went against everything she believed in.
[00:17:51] But she then changed her mind, as she had been paying in her entire life through government-mandated taxes, so now was her time to take something out.
[00:18:01] It wasn’t charity, it was rational.
[00:18:05] Ayn Rand died in 1982, at the age of 77.
[00:18:10] 42 years have passed, but she has just as many followers and is just as controversial in 2024 as when she was alive.
[00:18:20] One thing is for sure.
[00:18:22] She was a visionary, she presented a completely different way of seeing the world, an utterly new blueprint for the meaning of life.
[00:18:31] And whether you agree with it or not, on that basis alone, she deserves to be discussed and remembered.
[00:18:39] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Ayn Rand, the unashamed champion of free-market capitalism, and the founder of Objectivism.
[00:18:48] And with that comes the end of this philosophical mini-series. In case you missed them, part one was on Marcus Aurelius and part two, which was one of our member-only ones, was on Arthur Schopenhauer.
[00:19:00] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:19:03] Have you read any Ayn Rand? What do you think of her work? Would you like to live in the kind of society she championed?
[00:19:10] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:19:13] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds. You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:19:26] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is the third part in our three-part philosophical mini-series.
[00:00:26] In case you missed them, in part one we learned about the philosopher king, or perhaps more aptly the philosopher emperor, Marcus Aurelius.
[00:00:36] In part two, which was one of our member-only episodes, we learned about one of the grumpiest and most pessimistic men to walk the earth, the 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.
[00:00:47] And in our final episode, part three, we are going to talk about the controversial 20th century author and philosopher, Ayn Rand.
[00:00:56] To some, she is a voice of reason, the only person prepared to articulate the truth of how people really see the world.
[00:01:05] To others, she offers a misguided and foolish interpretation of humanity, one in which there is no love, compassion or charity, only selfish self-interest.
[00:01:17] So, let’s get right into it, and learn about the queen of capitalism, Ayn Rand.
[00:01:24] What is the meaning of life?
[00:01:26] We’ve talked about this a lot in this mini-series, and of course it is a question that thinkers and philosophers have grappled with for centuries, are still grappling with today, and will continue to grapple with until the end of time.
[00:01:41] If you asked Marcus Aurelius, he would probably have said something like “to live a virtuous life in accordance with the rules of nature”.
[00:01:50] If you asked Arthur Schopenhauer, if he hadn’t simply walked away or looked down at you like you were wasting his time, he might respond by telling you that “life has no meaning, only death”.
[00:02:02] If you asked Karl Marx, he would probably say something like solidarity between men, class struggle, and self-realisation through labour.
[00:02:13] If you asked Ayn Rand, however, you would get a very different answer.
[00:02:19] The meaning of life, according to Rand, was rational self-interest, doing whatever was best for you as an individual, free of interference from others.
[00:02:32] You might think, “oh, well that doesn’t sound so controversial, doing what is best for me doesn’t sound like such a terrible way to live my life.”
[00:02:43] But the controversy and radicalism in Rand’s philosophy was the extent to which she took this to its logical extreme.
[00:02:53] For Rand, the individual came at the centre of everything.
[00:02:58] This meant that any external requests on the individual were wrong.
[00:03:03] Nobody should tell anybody else how to live their life or force them to do anything that they didn’t want, because the individual needed to put their own interests first.
[00:03:15] Now, we’ll get to the intricacies of this philosophy in a minute, and what it means from a practical basis, but let me first give you some background to Ayn Rand.
[00:03:28] Like Marcus Aurelius and certainly like Arthur Schopenhauer, it is not difficult to see how their life experience shaped their view of the world.
[00:03:38] Ayn Rand, as you might have guessed, wasn’t her real name. It was Alice O'Connor.
[00:03:44] And even that wasn’t her birth name, it was Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum. She was born in Russia, in 1905, to a bourgeois Jewish family.
[00:03:56] Now, Russia at the start of the 20th century wasn’t a great place to be, it was a particularly bad place to be a Jew, and it was an even worse place to be a Jew from a bourgeois family, as Ayn Rand was.
[00:04:12] There was a new wave anti-Semitic pogroms, riots against Jewish people, which went on from 1903 to 1906, and then in 1917 the Rosenbaum family’s life was turned upside down after the Russian Revolution, which did not turn out well for the Russian bourgeoisie.
[00:04:32] Her family's pharmacy was nationalised, her family had to flee, and–like tens of millions of other Russians at the time–she endured terrible hardship, poverty and starvation as Communist Russia started its experiment with collectivism.
[00:04:49] And in 1926 she arrived in America. She had been given a visa to visit relatives, but she had no intention of returning to her country of birth; her real plan was to escape and become a screenwriter. This was the early days of Hollywood, and Ayn Rand was intent on hitting it big.
[00:05:12] The first problem was one I imagine you might be familiar with: she needed to work on her English.
[00:05:19] She took an English course, and made her way out west, to Hollywood, where after a few years of rejection, she found some success.
[00:05:29] In 1935, after managing to sell a script to Broadway, she started work on what would become her first major commercial success, and outline her philosophy. It was called The Fountainhead, and was rejected by 12 different publishing houses before eventually being published in 1943.
[00:05:52] The novel follows the story of a heroic architect, Howard Roark, and explores his struggles between conformity and independence. It isn’t a philosophical treatise, a manifesto, but a novel through which Rand presents her philosophy, a way of viewing the world which would come to be called “Objectivism”.
[00:06:15] It was an immediate success, a cult hit, but soon after she got to work on her new book, the even more successful and controversial Atlas Shrugged, which was eventually published in 1957.
[00:06:31] Atlas Shrugged was even longer, 1,200 pages, and further developed the themes that she had touched on in The Fountainhead. Principally, individualism, property rights, the role of government, libertarianism, and capitalism.
[00:06:47] It was to be her magnum opus, her greatest work, but it was not universally well-received.
[00:06:55] One critic described it as “1,000 pages of ideological fabulism”, while another called it “unpleasant, daft and deeply flawed”.
[00:07:06] But it was a great success commercially, selling millions of copies and turning Rand into a rich and successful author.
[00:07:16] After its publication she focussed on developing her philosophy rather than writing more fiction, dedicating her life, selfishly she would probably say, to furthering her ideas.
[00:07:29] So, what did Rand believe, what were some of the core ideas of Objectivism, and where did these come from?
[00:07:38] The first point is that reality exists independently of consciousness, that there is an objective reality external to the mind. The world is not how we think it is, with everyone experiencing a slightly different reality. There is an objective reality, a way the world is that doesn’t require anyone to take anything for granted.
[00:08:05] Secondly, the way we should understand this world is through reason. Man needs to think and act rationally, according to the reality that is in front of him.
[00:08:18] And what does this mean in practice?
[00:08:21] It means rational self-interest, acting according to your best interests. Sacrificing your interests for others or the collective is considered immoral, wrong.
[00:08:35] At the centre of everything should come the individual, the single human being. No group should have any claim over the rights of any individual, nobody should be able to force anyone else to do anything that is not in their best interest.
[00:08:52] Now, this has all been quite theoretical, so what would this mean in practice? What would a world look like in which Objectivism reigned supreme?
[00:09:04] It would be the most extreme form of laissez-faire capitalism, a society in which economics and state are separated, and where there is zero government interference in the affairs of the individual.
[00:09:18] Taxation is a form of theft, according to Rand, because it forces the individual to give up something that is theirs–their money–in order to benefit other people.
[00:09:31] Taxation is by default not in the best interest of the individual, and therefore tax is morally wrong, according to Rand at least.
[00:09:41] Now, if there is no taxation, who pays for the things that governments typically provide for their citizens, you might be asking?
[00:09:50] Well, the individual, because that person will act in their own best interest. If you drive a car on a road, you pay a toll, if you want to borrow a book from a library, you pay a fee, if you get ill, you pay the doctor.
[00:10:06] You would only pay for what was in your best interest, not a penny more and not a penny less.
[00:10:13] Rand did agree that there needed to be some form of government, but in Objectivism its function was reduced to purely law and order: enforcing property rights, protecting citizens from crime, and protecting the nation from foreign invaders.
[00:10:31] What an ideal society looked like, in Rand’s eyes, was one with practically zero state interference, and unbridled free-market capitalism.
[00:10:42] After all, capitalism by default rewards self-interest.
[00:10:47] People buy products and services because they have a selfish desire for them.
[00:10:52] You buy bread because you are hungry and you want to eat it. You buy an English course because you want to improve your English. You buy a family holiday because you want to sit on a beach or visit a new country or do whatever it is that you want to do.
[00:11:09] Capitalism encourages people to produce things that people want to buy.
[00:11:14] You might think that some of these things are morally questionable, whether that’s gambling, alcohol, cigarettes, or even heroin, but there is a clear demand for it, people are acting in their own self-interest, and therefore they should be allowed to do whatever it is they want.
[00:11:35] Capitalism is not just the superior economic system, it is morally right, according to Objectivism.
[00:11:43] Now, for someone to propose this position with such conviction and integrity was something of a novelty, and as you might expect, it was controversial.
[00:11:56] In a 1959 interview, Ayn Rand was introduced as an intellectual who was involved in a “new and unusual philosophy which would seem to strike at the very roots of our society”.
[00:12:09] And clearly, it did.
[00:12:12] Most societies around the world, regardless of religion or culture, tend to include some kind of expectation that people with more support those with less, which typically happens through taxation.
[00:12:26] Rand rejected this, dismissing it as altruistic and morally wrong, because it was not in the rational self-interest of the individuals.
[00:12:37] She also, as you might imagine, completely dismissed faith and religion.
[00:12:42] There was none, Rand said, the world is objectively as it is, and to pretend that there is some divine being, a God, that controls everything is not simply misguided, it is not backed up by any evidence.
[00:12:58] Now, in terms of her impact, it has been vast. Atlas Shrugged has sold 10 million copies, and as of 2022, more than 37 million copies of her writings have been sold worldwide.
[00:13:14] Her critics disparagingly suggest that she is most popular with teenage boys, who read Atlas Shrugged and avidly adopt her worldview, only to realise its impracticality as they grow up.
[00:13:28] Or, to tell you a popular wisecrack, a joke about Ayn Rand:
[00:13:33] There are two books a lot of boys discover when they are in their early teens. Atlas Shrugged and The Lord Of The Rings. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other is Lord Of The Rings.
[00:13:55] The idea is that Ayn Rand presents a view of the world that just seems to just click for certain people. It is a simple and utterly rational explanation, breaking everything down to first principles, and it doesn’t require anyone to believe anything that they cannot see with their own eyes.
[00:14:15] But, the morality and worldview that Rand presents is simply unworkable in a world in which altruism and compassion are considered to be virtues, regardless of religious or cultural background.
[00:14:28] We have had tens of thousands of years of human society in which communities have independently converged around the idea that it is a “good” thing to care for others, and–to Rand’s critics at least–even if she has a rational explanation for why self-interest should always come first, most people reject this idea.
[00:14:51] Nevertheless, she has plenty of fans who are not teenage boys.
[00:14:55] Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, was a close friend of Rand’s.
[00:15:02] The tax-cutting former president, Ronald Reagan, wrote to a friend that he was a fan of Rand’s ideas, and she continues to be cited by many US Republicans today.
[00:15:14] Her ideas have never been fully embraced to the extent that she advocated for, but they have certainly had an impact on business people and policymakers all over the world.
[00:15:25] On the flip side, to her critics, who are primarily found on the political left, but can also be found on the right, she is a pariah, a dangerous and compassionless individual who presents the antithesis of a happy, healthy society.
[00:15:42] What kind of world would it be, her critics argue, if there is no sense of society as a whole, just of a collection of individuals acting in their own self-interest?
[00:15:53] There would be no public health system, no public education, no public infrastructure, no government regulation.
[00:16:01] Not only would it be a morally bankrupt society, but it would lead to the collapse of society, a dystopia where the rich and powerful grow more rich and powerful, and those without money or power are left with nothing.
[00:16:16] The social contract we all implicitly engage in by paying taxes and obeying government laws keeps society afloat. Taxpayer money goes towards supporting those who are less able to support themselves, and government legislation exists to protect individuals from the worst excesses of capitalism, so the argument goes.
[00:16:38] Both to her critics and her greatest supporters, there seems to be little middle ground.
[00:16:45] Rand’s most ardent supporters tend to reject any criticism of her ideals, arguing that Objectivism is a worldview that you embrace in totality or not at all, which, to be fair, is Rand’s position.
[00:17:00] Objectivism provides a framework for seeing the world and making decisions, and if you use a framework, you can’t pick and choose, that isn’t rational.
[00:17:11] On a personal level, Ayn Rand was able to find the occasional compromise, or at least, find reasons for what other people would claim was a compromise.
[00:17:21] She was a heavy smoker her entire life, and in her late 60s she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
[00:17:28] Her treatment was expensive, and although she had made a lot of money through book sales, it all went on healthcare bills. She was practically broke, and she needed help from the state.
[00:17:41] She initially rejected social security benefits and medicare, the state-provided pension and healthcare, as this went against everything she believed in.
[00:17:51] But she then changed her mind, as she had been paying in her entire life through government-mandated taxes, so now was her time to take something out.
[00:18:01] It wasn’t charity, it was rational.
[00:18:05] Ayn Rand died in 1982, at the age of 77.
[00:18:10] 42 years have passed, but she has just as many followers and is just as controversial in 2024 as when she was alive.
[00:18:20] One thing is for sure.
[00:18:22] She was a visionary, she presented a completely different way of seeing the world, an utterly new blueprint for the meaning of life.
[00:18:31] And whether you agree with it or not, on that basis alone, she deserves to be discussed and remembered.
[00:18:39] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Ayn Rand, the unashamed champion of free-market capitalism, and the founder of Objectivism.
[00:18:48] And with that comes the end of this philosophical mini-series. In case you missed them, part one was on Marcus Aurelius and part two, which was one of our member-only ones, was on Arthur Schopenhauer.
[00:19:00] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:19:03] Have you read any Ayn Rand? What do you think of her work? Would you like to live in the kind of society she championed?
[00:19:10] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:19:13] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds. You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:19:26] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
