Ayn Rand 1905-1982

The rise of fascism and communism in the 20th century led many thinkers in the West to reconsider the role of the state in the lives of individuals. The Russian-born American philosopher, novelist and conservative, Ayn Rand (1905-82), was one of them. Rand's response was objectivism, a libertarian philosophical system that advocates the virtues of rational self-interest and maintains that individual freedom supports a pure, laissez-faire capitalist economy. These ideas were publicised chiefly through Rand's novels The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957).

Altruism is interpreted as sacrificing yourself for the interests and lives of others and therefore is irrational . Self-seeking individuals will naturally support free-market capitalism as they will want to earn and trade as they choose . In The Fountainhead, architect Howard Roark argues that altruism creates dependence and ideas of the common good lead to dictatorships . He refuses to alter or simplify the designs of his buildings . Rand was an atheist, calling for a ‘complete separation’ similar to that of church and state in France . She also believed in a very limited government, whose only role would be to protect the individual by using threats of force . In that way Rand was not an anarchist as she did see the state as having a role in terms of police, army and legal systems . The government itself, however, has no rights and status ‘except the right delegated to it by the citizens’ . Rand developed the idea she called ‘objectivism’, which is the highly individualistic belief that ‘man exists for his own sake’, an idea many entrepreneurs have found very exciting and which may explain why Trump is such a fan .

The rise of fascism and communism in the 20th century led many thinkers in the West to reconsider the role of the state in the lives of individuals. The Russian-born American philosopher, novelist and conservative, Ayn Rand (1905-82), was one of them. Rand's response was objectivism, a libertarian philosophical system that advocates the virtues of rational self-interest and maintains that individual freedom supports a pure, laissez-faire capitalist economy. These ideas were publicised chiefly through Rand's novels The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957).

Objectivism was Rand's most important contribution to political thought. She claimed that it offered a set of principles covering all aspects of human life, including politics, economics, culture and human relationships. In her view, reason provided the fundamental basis of human life and this led her to endorse a form of ethical individualism that claimed that the rational pursuit of self-interest was morally right. Rand's justification for this position, which she called 'the virtue of selfishness.

Any attempt, said Rand, to control or regulate an individual's actions corrupted the capacity of that person to work freely as a productive member of society, mainly by undermining his or her practical use of reason. For example, she rejected government welfare and wealth redistribution programmes because the state, in her view, relies on the implicit threat of force, to ensure that people contribute to such schemes through taxation. Rand referred to this opposition to external coercion of the individual as the 'nonaggression principle'. Rand also condemned all forms of personal altruism (the idea that an individual should put the well-being of others first) because such acts created an 'artificial' sense of obligation and expectation, and did not accord with an individual's rational self-interest.

A self-proclaimed 'radical for capitalism', Rand argued that the unrestricted expression of human rationality was entirely compatible with the free market. She called for 'a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire' economy, maintaining that this was morally superior to the rest because it fully respects the individual's pursuit of rational self-interest and is fully consistent with the nonaggression principle. Under such economic arrangements, free individuals can use their time, money, and other resources as they see fit, and can interact and trade voluntarily with others to their mutual advantage. For these reasons, she concluded, libertarian conservatives 'must fight for capitalism, not as a practical issue, not as an economic issue, but, with the most righteous pride, as a moral issue'