Ayn Rand and threats in our economic and political lives

Bill McKibben, author of “Falter: has the human game begun to play itself out?” writes two somewhat contradictory comments about Ayn Rand.

Sea level rising

On one hand he suggests that the novelist may have been one the most influential influences on the “Money Men” like Alan Greenspan, avatar of neoliberalism and the chief architect of the world’s economy in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and on the other hand that Rand might well have written with a crayon.

 Her ideas about the world are simple minded, one dimensional, and poisonous.Rand called her theory “objectivism”. It’s emotional core, channeled by Rand, is simple. Government is bad. Selfishness is good. Watch out for yourself. Solidarity is a trap. Taxes are theft. You are not the boss of me.1

Even without knowing how her influence was spread by people like Greenspan through the Thatcher-Reagan years, and became part of the formation of Paul Ryan, Rex Tillerson, and Mike Pompeo we can see this “philosophy” has permeated much of our political and social attitudes. McKibben comments that Donald Trump told USA Today that Rand’s first novel, “The Fountainhead”, was his favourite book.

Some kinship directions

The need for an attitude to existence not based on selfishness is becoming clearer to us in this time of COVID-19. Our understanding of kinship needs to be expanded to include as “kin” all humanity and indeed all of nature as we address the real threats to species survival where coronavirus stands with devastation of water resources, forced global migration, and climate change as existential threats.

Reference

1McKibben, B. (2020). Falter: has the human game begun to play itself out? New York: Henry Holt and Company.