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<\/a><\/p>\nJoe Carter<\/em><\/p>\n There once was a time when I was enamored by the philosophy of Ayn Rand. An \u00e9migr\u00e9 from the Soviet Union, the influential novelist and founder of the philosophy Objectivism had an enthusiasm for market capitalism and a hatred of communism that I found entrancing. I discovered her two major philosophical novels,\u00a0The Fountainhead<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Atlas Shrugged<\/em>, in my early years in college as I was beginning to wake from my enchantment with liberalism. I was instantly hooked.<\/p>\n Rand\u2019s ideas were intriguing, yet she harbored sentiments that made it difficult for a young Christian to accept. She was an atheist who despised altruism and preached the \u201cvirtue of selfishness.\u201d She believed that rational self-interest was the greatest good and sang egoism\u2019s praises.<\/p>\n In retrospect, it appears obvious that any attempt to reconcile these ideas with my orthodox evangelicalism was destined to fail. Still, I thought there might be something to her philosophy and was particularly intrigued by her defense of capitalism. My understanding of our capitalist economic system was rather immature, though, and I failed to recognize that Rand had an almost complete misunderstanding of capitalism. She confused self-interest with selfishness.<\/p>\n Many people, of course, share this profound misunderstanding. For some peculiar reason they act as if Adam Smith\u2019s invisible hand has the Midas touch that can alchemically transform the vice of avarice into the great goods of capitalism. Like most proponents of capitalism, Rand never explains how this magical process occurs. Instead she just accepts this sleight of hand as a matter of brute fact.<\/p>\n It is true, of course, that self-interest is the engine that drives capitalism. But self-interest is not the same as selfishness, at least not in the way that Rand would use the term. In her novel\u00a0The Fountainhead<\/em>, Rand\u2019s protagonists are portrayed as the epitome of the capitalist intellectual hero. In fact, they rarely act like actual capitalists, choosing instead to behave like spoiled, egotistical\u00a0artistes<\/em>.<\/p>\n Consider, for example, the novel\u2019s main character, an architect named Howard Roark. In one particularly illuminating passage, Roark is told that his job as an architect, the primary purpose of his work, is to serve his clients. Roark responds by affirming, \u201cI don\u2019t intend to build in order to serve or help anyone. I don\u2019t intend to build in order to have clients. I intend to have clients in order to build.\u201d<\/p>\n While such egotistical bluster may make for an interesting fictional character, Roark\u2019s attitude can hardly be considered a solid foundation for capitalism. As the libertarian economist\u00a0Mark Skousen<\/a>\u00a0observes in a critique of Rand:<\/p>\n The goal of all rational entrepreneurship must be to satisfy the needs of consumers, not to ignore them! Discovering and fulfilling the needs of customers is the essence of market capitalism. Imagine how far a TV manufacturer would get if he decides to build TVs that only tune into his five favorite channels, the consumer be damned. It wouldn\u2019t be long before he would be on the road to bankruptcy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This leads us to one of the primary misunderstandings held by many of Rand\u2019s admirers. Although she is widely praised for her defense of capitalism (she was famous for wearing a gold brooch in the shape of a dollar sign), she viewed it as subservient to a greater ideal:<\/p>\n I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows. This\u2014the supremacy of reason\u2014was, is and will be the primary concern of my work, and the essence of Objectivism. (\u201cThe Objectivist\u201d, September 1971)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n On this point Rand was quite mistaken. Reason, applied consistently, doesn\u2019t lead us down a straight path to egoism, much less to capitalism. Examined closely, we would find that her entire Objectivist philosophy is founded on this simple question-begging premise. Rand claimed that it was a self-evident truth. But this requires us to believe that no one who ever came to a different conclusion was following reason where it leads. She might have no problem accepting such a conclusion\u2014she was never one to tolerate dissent\u2014but we don\u2019t have sufficient justification for doing so.<\/p>\n This veneration of egoism also led her to consider altruism to be evil. As she explains in\u00a0The Virtue of Selfishness<\/em>:<\/p>\n Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one\u2019s own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value\u2013and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n At first glance it appears that she has built a strawman by redefining \u201caltruism\u201d in a way that is not commonly used. But she does have justification for her claim, for her idea of altruism is based on the ethical system of Auguste Comte and English positivists. Comte\u2019s system, which considered that only actions that benefited others could be considered moral, was both ethical and religious. As the\u00a0Catholic Encyclopedia<\/a>\u00a0explains Comte\u2019s thought:<\/p>\n Not only is the happiness to be found in living for others the supreme end of conduct, but a disinterested devotion to Humanity as a whole is the highest form of religious service. His ethical theory may be epitomized in the following propositions.<\/p>\n \u2013The dominion of feeling over thought is the normative principle of human conduct, for it is the affective impulses that govern the individual and the race.<\/p>\n \u2013Man is under the influence of two affective impulses, the personal or egoistic, and the social or altruistic.<\/p>\n \u2013A just balance between these two is not possible, one or other must preponderate.<\/p>\n \u2013The first condition of individual and social well-being is the subordination of self-love to the benevolent impulses.<\/p>\n \u2013The first principle of morality, therefore, is the regulative supremacy of social sympathy over the self-regarding instincts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To bring about the reign of altruism Comte invented a religion which substituted for God an abstraction called Humanity.<\/p>\n If Howard Roark was the incarnation of Rand\u2019s egoistic ideal, then her character Ellsworth M. Toohey was the exemplar of Comte\u2019s religion of Humanity. Toohey, the antagonist in\u00a0The Fountainhead<\/em>, embodied all that Rand would consider most base and unworthy in a person. His altruistic behavior and self-sacrifice is portrayed as loathsome. The reader is meant to despise him as weak and unmanly and, thanks to Rand\u2019s powers as a novelist, we have no trouble seeing him in this way. By rejecting Toohey, we reject altruism.<\/p>\n Those who fail to notice the way Rand defines altruism often mistake her critique as an argument against Christian morality. This isn\u2019t surprising when we consider that Rand herself seems to make the same error. But the Christian view of altruism is not predicated on an obligation to love others more than we love ourselves. While there may be instances where such self-sacrificial love is appropriate, it is not an absolute duty. What we are commanded to do is love others\u00a0just as<\/em>\u00a0we love ourselves. We are to love other humans in the same way, taking into account their interests and needs. We are not to treat them, as Comte would have us, in a disinterested manner.<\/p>\n Rand\u2019s views ultimately congeal into a fatally flawed philosophy. Even when stripped of its atheistic elements, Objectivism\u2019s focus on radical individualism cuts it off from reality and causes it to wither under scrutiny. And as much as we might admire Rand\u2019s deep-rooted hatred of collectivism, her philosophy is still just another utopian dream, a transvalued Marxism.<\/p>\n Ultimately, Rand\u2019s egoism is irreconcilable with both Christianity and capitalism. In fact, since the system fails to have any true explanatory value, it\u2019s difficult to find any reason to adopt Objectivism at all. Fortunately, we don\u2019t have to buy into Rand\u2019s philosophical errors in order to appreciate her fiction. We just have to keep in mind that instead of reading a \u201cnovel of ideas\u201d, we are reading a work of fantasy.<\/p>\n