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The Rand Renaissance?
A new group of young people are inspired by Ayn Rand’s free-market objectivism, but is it a lasting ideology or just a trend?
By Pema Levy
November 10, 2009
Crowds gathered for Libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul last year included quite a few young people. (AP/David J. Phillip)
Last October, in what should have been one of the last nails in the coffin of Ayn Rand’s cultural legacy, Rand’s most famous pupil and former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan admitted he’d “found a flaw” in laissez-faire capitalism. “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder’s equity—myself especially—are in a state of shocked disbelief,” Greenspan confessed to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
One year later, Greenspan’s concession—that deregulation may not be the way toward a fairer, better America—seems to be nothing more than an anomaly. Instead of inspiring his minions to follow his lead, the economic giant’s words seem to have fallen on deaf ears. Against all odds, Randian free-market theory is experiencing a modern renaissance amongst nascent political thinkers. Jennifer Burns, author of the new book Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, likes to say, “Ayn Rand is the ultimate gateway drug to life on the right.” But will experimentation lead to a true Rand resurgence?
In November 2008, young people came out to the polls in record numbers and voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama, but the other candidate who captured the hearts and minds of youth voters was Ron Paul, hardly a GOP stalwart. The candidate who built his campaign on an opposition to war and a libertarian ideology earned 10 percent* of the vote in Iowa’s caucuses in 2008, thanks mostly to young people who turned out for him. Paul said Rand influenced him greatly when he was younger.
It is impossible to discuss the influence of Randian thought without first discussing the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, when, as Burns argues in Goddess, Rand’s insistence on laissez-faire capitalism kept a burgeoning libertarian youth movement firmly moored to the political right.
Beginning in the 1950s, Rand, then the well-known author of The Fountainhead, built up a sizeable following of young people, New York college students who called themselves the “Class of ‘43,” a reference to the year The Fountainhead was published. Rand shaped her “cadre of thinkers” in her objectivist world view, which anchored itself on an absolute adherence to rationality, individualism, and free-market capitalism.
The 1960s were Rand’s heyday, and nowhere were her ideas more popular than on college campuses nationwide. While Rand’s atheism evoked the ire of top conservatives like William F. Buckley, students were willing to overlook her hostile attitude toward religion. Randian libertarianism began to grow in influence, even within Buckley’s own youth organization, Young Americans for Freedom, until splitting from YAF in 1969. Rand never endorsed the Libertarian Party (founded in 1971) but her work inspired it.
Four decades later, Randian theories are once again inspiring musings on campus. In 2007, libertarian think tank the Cato Institute created Cato on Campus to deal with the increased student traffic on Cato.org, with 2,000 students reportedly applying for internships at Cato annually. And the New York Times recently ran a piece on John Allison, CEO of BB&T bank, who has spent millions working to bring Rand into college classrooms.
Alexander McCobin, founder and Executive Director of Students for Liberty, asserts that, contrary to what you may think, the economic crisis has drawn young people to laissez-faire thinking, not repelled them. In a phone interview, McCobin tells me that, along with the Fed, “it was government intervention, not capitalism” that caused the financial crisis.
Students for Liberty is the fastest growing libertarian student organization in America. Instead of operating on a chapter model, SFL provides a network of support for “pro-liberty student organizations” from the College Libertarians to the Austrian Economics and Objectivists. When SFL held its first conference in February 2008, about 100 students from 42 “pro-liberty student groups” showed up. Today, SFL says that it supports over 200 organizations. This rapid growth has been “astonishing and inspiring,” McCobin says. “There are literally hundreds out their now … making a difference on their campuses.” Founded months before the financial collapse, McCobin feels the financial crisis actually helped SFL get off the ground. “Libertarianism gave them something to latch onto.”
Like their ancestor, the student libertarian movement of the late 1960s, SFL and similar organizations do not fit into either the liberal or conservative category. Instead, they seek to reside in a separate space entirely, loyal to the ideals of free markets, limited government, and individual liberties. To McCobin, the big government of the Democrats is just as alienating as current Republicanism. About Obama and Bush, he casually tosses off, “Same guy, same problems.”
Rand’s extreme capitalism may have led libertarians into a “marriage of convenience” with Republicans in the 1970s, but this new generation of libertarians won’t be taken for granted by the right. The newly formed Year of Youth organization seeks to elect libertarian politicians in 2012. If conservatives want to keep young libertarians as electoral allies, they will have to reassess their values and priorities.
Paul Courtney, chair of the College Republicans chapter at Georgetown University, hopes that the Republican Party moves in this direction, emphasizing fiscal responsibility over wedge issues like gay marriage. Regardless of the recent wins in Virginia and New Jersey, Courtney feels that the GOP lacks an overarching national direction. “Michael Steele and Sarah Palin are kind of a joke,” he admits, adding that, despite his university’s Jesuit affiliation, “[the Georgetown College Republicans] are more concerned with economics than social issues.”
In the modern age of social media, McCobin’s Facebook profile would make Rand proud. Under favorite books, he lists Atlas Shrugged; under religious views it reads, “Half Irish, Half Athiest.” McCobin explains that this is a joke; he’s actually more agnostic than atheist. But the joke hits close to home. Within libertarianism, religion is sometimes a source of tension. But according to the Pew Research Center, young people today are the most socially tolerant generation. “We want to get over past divides and religion just isn’t a big concern,” he says.
Libertarianism today is diverse, he continues. While Rand’s rational objectivism leads to atheism, libertarianism today is much broader than Rand. McCobin himself may be one of those guys who read Atlas Shrugged in high school and never went back, but he emphasizes the centrality of other figures such as F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman to the libertarian outlook.
When asked about his ideological leanings, McCobin says, " I feel as close to the left as I do to the right.” Regardless of what he calls it, McCobin is part of a conservative movement—it just doesn’t resemble the current Republican Party. As surveys suggest, young Americans do not identify with the culture wars that define the GOP, and many right-wing youth are as disillusioned with Iraq as the rest of us. It’s for these people that Rand’s ideas provide an ideological framework to condemn Bush’s extravagant spending while heralding the greed that defines an unregulated free market. Despite the deep flaws in libertarianism, it seems as if young conservatives have found a new approach to politics. Whether the “pro-liberty” youth will reinvent the right, or simply estrange themselves from an outdated GOP, only time will tell.
Pema Levy is an editorial intern at The American Prospect. She graduated from Georgetown University in 2009.
- This number has been corrected from the original. We regret the error.
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Is “extreme capitalism” a pseudonym for laissez-faire in the way that extreme socialism is a pseudonym for communism? Barry Goldwater spoke highly of extremism a few years ago, if you can recall.
— Curtis Plumb - Nov 10, 05:45 PM - #36 percent? that was Obama. Paul got 9 I believe. it wasn’t double digits.
— cult of skaro 24 - Nov 10, 09:16 PM - #Also, fresh from encyclopedia dramatica…..
Trolling Ayn Rand FansTrolling Randroids is as easy as breathing as they will engage in it actively since refuting Wog arguments with deeply embedded dogma, and then being congratulated by its comrades, is the Randroid’s raison d’etre and only source of self-esteem. If Libertarians are the gay of politics, then Objectivists are the bottoms. Since Objectivism is ZOMG TEH ONYL TURLY OBJEKCTIVE WRODLVIEW ZOMG, any dissent is viewed as ignorance and, the more strongly worded, the more humorous a response it will provoke. Some of the lulziest methods for trolling include:
General Trolls
* Imply that Ayn Rand’s philosophy was anything less than logically consistent. Since all of them worship her as a deity, this will be viewed by them as the highest form of blasphemy and typically results in comical overreactions and ad hominems in retaliation. * Force them to note that Rand was a philosopher, by definition someone who produces nothing. Try and get them to name one thing Rand “invented, produced or built”. Watch out for the sparks. * Ask them why Ayn Rand was so obsessed with masculinity, never had children and treated her husband as a lap dog. Be sure to imply self-hatred.For Republicans
* Point out that you make more money than they do. Since all of them are fat basement dwellers who subsist on income from their parents (LOL IRONY), this is inevitable as long as you hold a job or have more than one dollar in your checking account.For Liberals
* Accuse them of supporting passive murder and/or sociopathy for arguing that these people should not expect the support of society. * Point out that no capitalist system in history has ever employed its full population, and that modern American cities’ homeless problem demonstrates that private charity alone is not enough to counteract the inability of the unemployed to work. * Point out that if they follow Howard Roark’s example, they will soon be joining the homeless population that they once looked down on. * Tell them that Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx had more enduring posthumous careers and that this is because of their superior intellects and philosophies, not because of some batshit conspiracy by college professors.For Anarcho-Collectivists
* Point out that property ownership in modern society is based on the threat of force, as no consensual society of free-thinking rationalists would arrange such a richly imbalanced set of property distribution. Thus, Ayn Rand and, therefore, Objectivists in general hate freedom for everyone except the rich. This one will really piss them off. * Point out that it is impossible to be a completely autonomous individual in a capitalist society. * Even if you are one of the minority who do own property, you must still enter into collective agreement and trade with other people. If you do not own property then you will be compelled to spend your life getting raped in the world of employment. * Then tell them that that only way to be %100 autonomous and reliant on one’s self would be as a primitive man who hunts his own food and lives in a forest. Expect to be called a Marxist and a totalitarian for making these point.For Libertarians
* Go up to one of these basement dwellers and call them a libertarian. This will render said-objectivist so angry that he will go on an hour-long rant about how he’s nothing like “those people.” That, or he’ll try to shoot you (note: most objectivists are too cowardly and broke due to bullshit cult schemes to own a gun). It is not recommended that you do this if you are alone with the libertarian objectivist. * Remind them that their only knowledge of economics comes from a one semester class in high school. — cult of skaro 24 - Nov 10, 09:21 PM - #For Deep Thinkers about life
* Point out that our perception of the world is purely phenomenal. Use Russell and Kant to illustrate this point. * Remind them that Descartes demonstrated that the existence of an objective universe exterior to the mind is not objectively demonstrable, since the sensory perceptions upon which we rely as “evidence” of its existence are inherently subjective and unreliable QEDConclusion/Expectations
It’s the closest experience you’ll have to arguing with a Communist during the late 60s: Don’t expect even the slightest pretense of acknowledgment of your points, much less a pretense of rational debate; instead, you’ll be called a communist, a socialist, a Chomskyite, or worse.
www.encyclopediadram…
This says it much better than I ever could
— cult of skaro 24 - Nov 10, 09:25 PM - #Point out that no capitalist system in history has ever employed its full population, and that modern American cities’ homeless problem demonstrates that private charity alone is not enough to counteract the inability of the unemployed to work.
Do massive government programs prevent homelessness? Cures for some mental ills by evil pharma companies does more in this regard. As does a competitive free market which delivers more for less. Maybe if the government stopped regulating and focused more on punishment of fraud and harm after the fact, we’d be in better shape. By being deeply involved in regulating, government becomes the plaything of unions and corporations who use it to protect their own interests. Instead of being a neutral arbitrator, government becomes like a teacher who gives sanction to a bully in the classroom and playground. Further, by getting out of the charity business, we would not enfeeble society when it comes to private charity. Government has virtually driven private charity out of existence in Europe.
Try and get them to name one thing Rand “invented, produced or built”.
Ideas. Mostly of the right kind.
Ask them why Ayn Rand was so obsessed with masculinity…
Are you afraid of strong women?
...never had children…
What is your problem with that specifically? You’re sounding more and more like a misogynist.
...and treated her husband as a lap dog.
She had flaws. Was your hero Marx, whose philosophies lead to the death of millions at the hands of tyrannical governments, without flaw?
“Point out that property ownership in modern society is based on the threat of force, as no consensual society of free-thinking rationalists would arrange such a richly imbalanced set of property distribution.”
By “consensual” you really mean “collective”. Yet another TinkerBell fantasy that a few elite can set things right.
“Thus, Ayn Rand and, therefore, Objectivists in general hate freedom for everyone except the rich. This one will really piss them off.”
Nah, just LMAO at the sheer ignorance.
“Then tell them that that only way to be %100 autonomous and reliant on one’s self would be as a primitive man who hunts his own food and lives in a forest.” Being self-reliant doesn’t avoiding beneficial transactions.
— Filby - Nov 11, 11:39 AM - #Rand nowhere talks about being 100% autonomous. Misrepresentation makes for poor argument. Again, LMAO at the depth of ignorance revealed here.
Comment about this article on facebook: “Greed is an unfortunate aspect of human nature that is found in all human institutions, including regulated markets. It’s fair to say that the celebration of greed is unique to laissez faire capitalism, but greed itself manifests itself in socialist economies as much as it does in capitalist ones.”
— Emily Ekins - Nov 11, 08:40 PM - #The gutter ad hominem argument – and its typical variants, most frequently the ever-popular Poisoning the Well – have been the standard-default “argument” of the vestigial, recidivistic collectivist for decades, and nowhere is that tedious regurgitation of illogic more a saturation trait than among the Rand-bashers – comedic cases-in-point being the collected works of skaro and, to a degree, Levy, above.
It’s gotten to the point where one wishes in vain that just one of these well-educated folk would present something resembling a cohesive argument in favor of: collectivism’s inherent and inescapable Stolen Concept; of gun-muzzle coercion; of a 20th century landscape littered with shattered economies; of its mountain of human corpses in excess of 100,000,000; of Gulags; of gas chambers; of killing fields; of cultural revolutions; of the religion of environmentalism and its demand for a return to the intellectual and material squalor of the Middle Ages; of Obama/Pelosi/Reid’s pompous, straight-faced embrace of retro-fascism; of the whole hoary concept of gunpoint altruism that makes all of the preceding possible…
I mean, then we’d at least have something solid to bite into in context of edifying debate, beyond obvious technical disqualifiers. Not particularly difficult to unravel philosophically – collectivism being what it is – but if they’d at least take a break, a courageous stab if you will, at constructing an argument that lifts itself above the stagnant muck of Beavis & Butthead ad hominems? Just once? One grows weary of expecting to slay dragons only to illuminate bullhorn-toting roaches racing back to the nearest crevices – and yeah, I’m paraphrasing Rand’s salient point on “the contemptible smallness of the enemy” here. It’s true.
One standard Rand-basher line – echoed yet again in Levy’s piece, above – is the one about Rand’s work being “something you read in your teens as a kind of adolescent phase,” etc. The reason I continue to subscribe to Rand’s philosophic framework some thirty years after first encountering it, is precisely because I have never heard a valid, tenable argument against any significant element of it. The more that time goes on, the more it becomes evident that the reason for this curious void is that there simply is no valid argument in support of its antithesis, collectivism. Hence the name-calling, the artful evasion, the equivocation, the conceptual scattershot, etc.
I’ll continue to employ a true wealth of, ahh, charitable forbearance in waiting for the demonstrably impossible to show up, but…ipso facto, I see no persuasive reason to ditch reality, reason, individualism or liberty.
Is there?
— WowbaggerT.I.P. - Nov 12, 02:09 AM - #Do massive government programs prevent homelessness? Cures for some mental ills by evil pharma companies does more in this regard
yeah, if homeless people have the money to afford the drugs, which they generally get from free clinics. And whille they may not cure it comepletely, they do a better job than what you guys define as the “free market”. See WPA, CCC, WW2, various public works in Europe, Water Projects in Arizona, State run programs in Chile, after the Chicago boys were kicked out, the list goes on.
_ As does a competitive free market which delivers more for less. Maybe if the government stopped regulating and focused more on punishment of fraud and harm after the fact, we’d be in better shape_
Okay you got me there. If only we had deregulated the financial market we could have avoided this current mess. If only an ayn rand fan, indeed a man who was a member of her inner circle and maybe served on the CEA, had been in charge of the financial markets, and freed it from the tyranny of govt oversight, if only we just stopped trying to prevent economic crises and waited until after they…..oh wait
By being deeply involved in regulating, government becomes the plaything of unions and corporations who use it to protect their own interests.
as opposed to Rands beloved individuals, who would never use the government? You know, it can also be used to keep feces out of our meat, poison out of our water, etc.
Instead of being a neutral arbitrator, government becomes like a teacher who gives sanction to a bully in the classroom and playground.
Not at all like the market. which neutrally puts as much power as possible in the hand of employers, who never EVER act like bullies
Further, by getting out of the charity business, we would not enfeeble society when it comes to private charity. Government has virtually driven private charity out of existence in Europe.
Doctors without borders, Oxfam, need I continue? Such gross hyperbole. Perhaps if it seems like GVT spending has reduced charity, it’s because the welfare state has reduced the NEED for it.Ideas. Mostly of the right kind.
Right wing kind of ideas perhaps. Again, philosopher. did not produce anything tangible by her own standards (architecture, steel mills, whatever the capitalist heroes of her books made).
Are you afraid of strong women?
Ones that propagated F-ed up personality cults due to their own insecurities. yes.
What is your problem with that specifically? You’re sounding more and more like a misogynist.
None, i have no problem with childless women, or single women, or promiscuous women. I posted a guide for TROLLING in case you didn’t notice.
I would have thought a Rand fan would understand the concept and purpose of trolling…a bit of a miscalculation it would seem, as it posits on them having a sense of self-awareness and introspection.
She had flaws. Was your hero Marx, whose philosophies lead to the death of millions at the hands of tyrannical governments, without flaw?
Yes. U are correct sir :)
But seriously, do Nietzsche fans catch this much crap for Hitler supposedly being inspired by him? i think not. I don’t recall Marx mentioning the Cheka or Gulag in “Critique of Hegel’s philosophy”. Or Adam Smith mentioning Latin American or Chilean Death Squads for that matter. Rand explicitly calls for indirectly killing poor people in Atlas Shrugged, because (and I may be paraphrasing) “parasites who avoid purpose perish as they should” ehh?
By “consensual” you really mean “collective”
No, I really don’t. consensual means; sans force, by ones own volition… which I thought Rand fans were for? Collective would be Society. May I recommend you put down the Rand and check into the writings of Merriam and Webster instead?
Yet another TinkerBell fantasy that a few elite can set things right.
:(....(Headdesk).....the irony of this statement is so thick….Rand’s philosophy is nothing BUT capitalist elites fixing everything and creating a magical Utopia just for people like them? Great googely moogely, I believe you have missed the enire point of your own philosophy sir. Her philosophy centers around the notion that individuals can create their own utopia if only us lefties and the govt would get out of the way and let them run everything according to what satisfies their ego. Although I suppose you have a point in that they lack even the pretension of giving a crap about other people
Nah, just LMAO at the sheer ignorance.
Sir that would be impossible as Objectivists have no true sense of humor. Also i notice that Rand doesn’t seem to have much sympathy for the poor, in her book, or for the circumstances that may have put them there. But in retrospect I must agree with you. The author of the original piece made a mistake in adding the “freedom for”. Life, happiness, well being, money, they may hate these perhaps but not freedom.
Rand nowhere talks about being 100% autonomous. Misrepresentation makes for poor argument. Again, LMAO at the depth of ignorance revealed here.
Again i didn’t write it, but I found it consistent in her rejection of “collectivism” and embrace of “INDIVIDUALISM” and rejection of “force”. She embraces selfishness to the point of writing that even reciprocal altruism is immoral. She seems to reject cooperation as ever being in our interest, despite Biologists demonstrating that blind egoism (selfishness) is generally an evolutionary dead end. Not to mention empiricism, consistency, etc.
Noticed the parts about Deep Thinking pretty much ignored. Not to mention passive murder, etc. Shall I assume concession. Or perhaps you consider yourself above addressing such trivial issues her views on reality.
— cult of skaro 24 - Nov 21, 08:37 PM - #