Ayn Rand, Jack London, and a Fountainhead of Philosophy

                                                                 An Earth Manifesto publication by Dr. Tiffany B. Twain  

                                                                                                                      November 11, 2011

Two of the most fascinating novelist-philosophers of the twentieth century were Jack London (1876 – 1916) and Ayn Rand (1905 – 1982).  Both of them had dramatically-defining experiences in their early lives which powerfully influenced their worldviews.  They both idealized masculine heroes and identified with heroic ambition and accomplishment.

Jack London created a character in Martin Eden whose semi-autobiographical persona could almost have described one of the protagonists in an Ayn Rand novel:

“He wanted to glorify the leaders of forlorn hopes, the mad lovers, the giants that fought under stress and strain, amid terror and tragedy, making life crackle with the strength of their endeavor.”

Both Ayn Rand and Jack London were provocative and passionate intellectuals and philosophers.  Because of the fact that people’s beliefs are so strongly affected by the circumstances of their early lives and upbringing and experiences, it is understandable how these two famous writers arrived at distinctly different political philosophies.  This is fascinating, since both of them championed and highly valued individualism. 

Jack London grew up in poverty in California.  He set off at an early age to earn a living by working on sailing ships.  He became intimately concerned later in his life with the rights of working people, and he concluded that socialism was the best political philosophy.  Ayn Rand, on the other hand, considered any form of “collectivism” to be anathema, so she passionately opposed any kind of socialism.

Ayn (rhymes with ‘mine’) was born in Russia.  She was 12 years old when a revolution by working people brought the repressive Czarist era to an end in February 1917.  This revolution began in Petrograd where she lived with her family (the city is now known as St. Petersburg).  This was a revolution caused by deep frustration and anger at the terrible economic and social conditions that pertained in Russia at the time.  These conditions were made significantly worse by the country’s extraordinarily costly efforts to fight the aggression of industrialized Germany during World War I.  This revolution spread throughout Russia and resulted, among other things, in the disbanding of the repressive czarist police and the repeal of all limitations on freedom of opinion and association and the press.

Later in 1917, this worker revolution was co-opted by the Bolshevik Party and its leader, Vladimir Lenin.  The nascent movement to establish parliamentary democracy was overthrown by this communist faction because pressing problems had not been resolved.  Economic disorganization and a food crisis and the calamitous war were amongst these problems.  Desperately needed reforms had not been made to the economy, and all land was owned by entitled classes.

Propaganda disseminated by the Bolshevik Party advocated a “proletarian dictatorship”.  Lenin instigated armed insurrection in October 1917.  A civil war ensued as the communist movement asserted control.  A treaty was signed that ended the Soviet involvement in World War I, and this agreement gave up the Baltic States and Finland and Poland and Ukraine.  Soon thereafter, a campaign began to ruthlessly crush all domestic opposition.

Ayn Rand’s disgust with the pathetic state of affairs in Russia was accompanied by her idealistic views of the United States as a beacon of freedom and individualism and fair opportunities and protected rights.  She took a ship to New York in late 1925, and regarded her departure as a breaking of the chains that had enslaved her in oppressive Russia.  She was ready for a life of freedom of expression and the embrace of important things in life.

Ayn believed strongly in “Objectivism”.  This is an idea which holds that the physical reality of the universe exists independently of our perceiving of it.  She asserted that we attain objective knowledge of reality by using our senses to perceive it, and our logical and rational abilities to make sense of it.  She felt that the proper moral purpose in the life of any human being is to pursue one’s own happiness and rational self-interest.  She believed dogmatically that the only social system that is consistent with this morality is one that fully respects individual rights.  She asserted that laissez-faire capitalism is the best way to achieve selfish goals. 

In championing individualism, and in harboring her deep antipathy toward any form of what she termed ‘collectivism’, Rand was ideologically uncompromising.  She became disillusioned by the politics of the United States in the 1930’s because she regarded the New Deal as a form of despicable socialism.  And she regarded selfishness as a great virtue.

In fact, in 1964, she wrote a book entitled The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism.  The title was one of the most controversial elements of the book.  She acknowledged that the term selfishness, as it is typically used, does not describe a virtuous behavior, but that what she meant by selfishness was more precisely that it is a “concern for one’s own interests” that should be regarded as an overarching virtue.  This argument was an ethical contention that was strongly correlated with economic fundamentalist doctrines which asserted that an Invisible Hand always operates for the greater good in laissez-faire capitalist economic systems.  This, of course, turns out to be demonstrably untrue in a wide variety of ways.

Rand was an intellectual, and her ideas are well constructed, but her biases were such that she essentially rationalized behaviors which helped enable economic policies that have had extremely damaging impacts on people and our political system and the environmental commons.

The ideology that equates self-concern with virtue essentially presupposes that self-interested motives and ego drives are an expression of noble and pure aspects of the human soul and spirit.  Hogwash!  Those who are intimately familiar with the motivations and activities of successful people recognize that success itself is a measure that is frequently associated with vice more than it is with virtue, especially in the dog-eat-dog ruthlessness of unfair competition and political and economic corruption. 

Success, as John Steinbeck was so acutely aware, and as he so poignantly expressed in his writings, is often the result of behaviors that are far from virtuous.  Readers of Cannery Row, for instance, are often surprised by the observations of the book’s central character that the traits leading to success in our society are often vices such as greed, meanness, egotism and preoccupations with self-interest, while the traits leading to failure may be the result of virtues like kindness, honesty, openness and generosity. 

Howard Roark, Ayn Rand’s principal character in her famous novel The Fountainhead, gave a dramatic speech:  “Look at history.  Everything we have, every great achievement has come from the independent work of some independent mind.  Every horror and destruction came from attempts to force men into a herd of brainless, soulless robots.  Without personal rights, without personal ambition, without will, hope, or dignity.  It is an ancient conflict.  It has another name: the individual against the collective.  Our country, the noblest country in the history of men, was based on the principle of individualism.  The principle of man’s inalienable rights.”

As a critique of Rand’s extreme philosophies, it is hard in all sincerity to imagine that anyone could regard capitalism as a system that “demands and rewards the best in every man”, as Ayn did. 

Jack London saw things differently because he viscerally recognized the extensive social ills associated with industrialization and worker repression and urbanization and widespread corruption in politics.  He saw that “out of the decay of self-seeking capitalism,” an idealized Brotherhood of Man did not arise.  Appallingly, “capitalism, rotten-ripe, sent forth that monstrous offshoot, the Oligarchy.”  This rule by the Few crushed labor movements and subjected workers to ever-more difficult circumstances and economic insecurity in order to give more and more power and privileges to the wealthy, who ruled with an ‘Iron Heel’.  This was far from ideal for individual freedoms or self-respect or fair justice.

Ayn Rand believed that ‘collectivism’ and taxation were forms of slavery.  She saw them as being a form of oppression of successful industrialists and creative non-conformists and others that she regarded as noble.  Jack London was more intimately familiar with the scandalously ruthless gambits of ‘robber barons’ during the Gilded Age, and with their distinctly less-than-virtuous exploitation of workers and their use of the capitalist system to make enormous profits at the expense of workers and society.

J.P. Morgan, for instance, had gained vast wealth after the Panic of 1857 by investing in depreciated securities.  He also indulged in profiteering during the Civil War, as revealed in the “Hall Carbine Affair”.  This gambit involved the purchase of thousands of dangerously defective rifles and their later resale to the government as new carbines, even though they tended to blow up in the face of those who used them.  Many such unethical ruses by ruthless financiers and industrials resulted in the accumulation of enormous quantities of wealth, but it could hardly be said that these were noble acts or that those who perpetrated them were particularly deserving of their wealth.

According to J.P. Morgan, riches are “the reward of toil and virtue.”  Ha!  Anyone who closely studies some of the unethical means by which J.P. Morgan gained his riches would strongly disagree.  The dastardly “Hall Carbine Affair” was just the start of a career that involved significant breaches of the public trust.  Another rich guy, John D. Rockefeller supported J.P.’s Morgan’s idea, going so far as to state that riches are “a gift from Heaven signifying, <This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.>”  Oh, right, sure they are!

Eugene Debs scoffed at these self-congratulatory perspectives.  Debs, the labor leader who ran for president five times in the early twentieth century, once stated, “Riches are the savings of many in the hands of a few!”  This characterization sounds much more accurate to me than the presumption that those who have most of the wealth in the world are mainly virtuous people who God likes best!

Ayn Rand has become a hero to the Tea Party and the political right wing today, as evidenced by the recent opening of a movie version of her 1957 novelistic ode to unfettered capitalism, Atlas Shrugged.  This is ironic because many in the conservative movement actually loathed her during her lifetime.  For conservatives of today to lionize Ayn Rand, they indulge in dishonest historical revisionism.  Rand was, after all, an atheist, and a feminist, and an outspoken supporter of abortion rights, and an opponent of the Vietnam War, and a critic of crony capitalism.  The film Atlas Shrugged was financed by a wealthy CEO, and it has been targeted to appeal to anti-government zeal and the Tea Party demographic. 

The main reason conservatives have embraced Ayn Rand in recent years is because of her idea that all taxation should be voluntary.  Conservatives also love her philosophical opposition to the regulation of industry and government financing for roads or other infrastructure, and to all forms of welfare, unemployment insurance, and support for the poor and middle class.

Unsurprisingly, Rep. Paul Ryan (R – WI), the lead architect of the Republican Party’s 2012 budget plan, is a devotee to Ayn Rand’s fiscal ideas and her anarchic capitalistic philosophies.  Ryan’s plan comports closely with Rand’s worldviews.  It would gut Medicare, Medicaid and a whole host of housing, food and educational support programs.  It would leave the middle class and the poor and the most vulnerable Americans with far less support.  In addition, about half of the savings that would be achieved by this radical plan would be given to the wealthiest people in the form of even lower tax rates than they pay today.

Our national politics has been a kind of perverted one-party system in many ways.  Big Money has pervasive influence in our politics and national decision-making.  As a result, in really big issues, it does not matter too much which party is in power.  Big Money is the deciding influence in all matters related to environmental protections and banking regulation and the social safety net and tax policy for multi-millionaires and billionaires.

But a radical contrast has materialized today between the Republicans and the Democrats as regards the future of our nation.  Republicans are pandering to the super-rich so blatantly that they propose to slash taxes on rich people even further, despite the fact that tax rates on rich people have been reduced repeatedly in the past few decades until they are now the lowest in more than 80 years.  To couple this overarching strategy of pandering to the wealthy with deep cuts in the social safety net and public education and social programs that help protect people and the environment may be shrewd, but it is wrong-headed and astonishingly risky.  It is outrageous to see Republicans embrace such narrow and unfair ideas for the future.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, has finally put a stake in the ground on tax breaks for rich people.  He now proposes a vision of wiser investments and public policies that are fairer and more progressive for the vast majority of Americans. 

Students, young people, racial minorities, women and the most vulnerable Americans are being abandoned by Republicans, who are undermining public education and national infrastructure and the social safety net in order to advance a narrow-minded agenda.  This GOP strategy is another form of power abuse by the rich.  It should stoke a revolutionary zeal in Americans to oppose such initiatives.

The Occupy Wall Street movement in the U.S. and abroad is now tapping into anger and hope that the 99% of people can use the power of their numbers to prevent the richest 1% from gaining ever-lower tax rates and ever-more representation than the 99% of the people.

Until recently, the most vociferous element on the American political scene was the Tea Party, which has ironically been supporting this wrongheaded approach.  The propaganda of billionaires like the Koch brothers is partially to blame for this misguided error of perception and energy.

The Tea Party is considered a grassroots movement, but deeper inspection reveals it to be “astroturfing”, a form of deceptive political advocacy and propaganda that disguises the efforts of rich people to orchestrate support for their self interests at the expense of those they dupe into supporting them in politics.  A poll shows that 40% of Tea Party supporters are 55 or older, 79% are white, 61% are men, and 44% identify themselves as “born-again Christians”.  Such a demographic can hardly be regarded as ideal in formulating policies for the greater good of our country, or of the world!

Jack London was a passionate advocate of collective bargaining rights and other worker rights, and of power for those oppressed in the class struggle.  There is a wide variety of problems in today’s twenty-first century societies, and it would be most sensible for us to embrace fairer and more open-minded ideas to cope with them most effectively.

Better education is called for in our schools and legislative bodies.  American citizens must be given a better grasp of truths and realities, instead of repeated doses of extreme ideologies and propaganda.  Jeffrey Sachs noted in Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet that better education in science and statistics is need, declaring, “The subject is basic and universal.  It transcends our many differences in religion and political ideology.”

Conclusion

Ayn Rand would have ridiculed the old philosophical question, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make any noise?”  A falling tree naturally propagates sound waves, and if a human being is nearby to hear it, that person would surely confirm that the falling of the tree made noise.  Without any person or animal there to perceive the sound and subjectively identify it as noise, it would not alter the objective absolute that the sound waves had been propagated.  This conundrum presents a kind of false dichotomy, for sound is neither exclusively a characteristic of the event nor in the mind separate from the event. 

Philosophy is vitally important when it addresses crucially important ideas.  Questions of the nature of whether or not falling trees make noises, or of abstruse epistemological and logical questions, are diversions from the importance of striving to honestly comprehend matters using philosophical introspection, intuitive understandings, and big picture ideas.

I heartily recommend that readers peruse other Earth Manifesto publications!

        Truly,

             Dr. Tiffany B. Twain       

                  SaveTruffulaTrees@hotmail.com