Errors of Ayn Rand

In years 1997-2000, I read the works of Ayn Rand and developed a great respect for what I was reading. But having seen the effect of her political views, I was less than impressed with the outcome. I have since then taken a critical inventory of Ayn Rand's statements and am writing here an analysis of her main errors in hope that the people see them and not be taken by them. 

Ayn Rand's worst error was her approach to nature. She saw nature as only resources; and that is in no way a rational stance to take. As anyone who has studied biology to any level of depth knows, the complexity and richness found in nature is beyond anything that humanity has created, and to blindly destroy what one cannot recreate is to leave the world poorer for oneself having been in it. The stance that thinks it rightful to burn down environments containing millions of unique lifeforms in order to ranch there for two years, after which the land becomes unusable and one must clear more of this environment, is a swinish and damnable stance. Nature must be respected and valued for possessing a richness and intricacy beyond anything that man has created. And human economic activity must be done in a way that is minimally destructive - and when possible restoring or adding - to nature, through use of higher-intelligence higher-technology solutions that fulfil and power the world of civilization that man has created while treading lightly on the world of nature that man has not created and cannot at this time recreate. 

Another major error was that of blaming the ugly social dynamics she saw - repression of sexuality, abuse of excellence, violence against passion and genius, and condemnation of individuality and ingenuity - with socialism. In fact, these do not come from socialism or from anywhere in the Left; rather they pre-exist the Left by many centuries. The origin of these is conservative Christianity. In the West, it is the Left that has done the most to fight these wrongs and has taken the brunt of the battle to a far greater extent than have Objectivists or Ayn Rand. 

Another error consisted of equating rational interest solely with property acquisition. Here, she had an incomplete concept of rationality. A scientist who is driven by acquisition of usable knowledge is just as rational as is the businessperson who is driven by interest in creating and enjoying prosperity. A teacher who is driven by interest in nurturing the minds of the future generations, or the day care worker who is driven by interest in helping their development, is just as rational as either of the preceding. Ayn Rand saw economic interest as the whole of rational interest. It clearly is not. 

Her most famous error - as well as her most famous stance - is that of claiming man's true nature to be self-interest. This is simply not the case. According to evolution - which Ayn Rand embraced - human beings have evolved as the species as much as they have evolved as their tribes and as themselves. Which means that human beings will naturally have interest toward all of these things; and different people will have different mixes of these and at different times in their lives. Furthermore, coming out of nature, people will be expected to have interest toward nature as well, especially when the matter concerns preservation of climate and health of the planet instead of blindly destroying it with no eye toward the future. To claim self-interest to be the whole of human nature is just as wrong as it is to claim service to humanity to be the whole of human nature. It is a part of human nature; for many people a very important part of human nature; but in no way the totality of human nature or the universal, exclusive, ideal. 

Based on this was another erroneous claim: That self-interest is always good and collective interest always evil. In fact, both can be good, bad, indifferent, or a mix. Nature was not created by people, meaning that it is not based on their moral standards and will have zero correlation with them. Zero correlation means: Tendency toward good, bad, indifferent, or a mix, will exist in all of the components. Existing as part of nature, these orientations will therefore have the capacities for all of these outcomes; and history has shown that to be exactly the case. Just as group identity can result in collaboration or war - just as nature identity can result in national parks or anti-technology movements - just as humanity orientation can result in space program or gulags - so can self-interest result in Apple Computers or rainforest deforestation and expensive sneakers being marketed to the ghetto so that people must deal crack in order to purchase them. So it is just as wrong to glorify self-interest and prosecute collective interest as it is to extol collective interest and prosecute self-interest. Both have destructive as well as constructive potentials; both can go toward outcomes good, bad, indifferent, or a mix. 

A related error has been that of equating service with servitude and altruism with totalitarianism. Here again Ayn Rand was wrong. Service done willingly is not servitude; it is a willingly made choice. And it is choice that can be very fulfilling to the person who does it, as it was was fulfilling to me to work as a tutor and to volunteer at a charity. Truly altruistic organizations are nothing like totalitarianism, and there is nothing totalitarian about American Red Cross or Medicins Sans Frontiers. And having done both regular for-profit work and volunteering and charitable work, I did not find the organizations where I did volunteering and charitable work to be more authoritarian than the for-profit businesses. Indeed I found the greatest authoritarianism in for-profit corporations located in the Midwest. 

It is undeniable that Ayn Rand made valid points, in some cases uniquely valid. Her affirmation of genius, innovation, creative freedom, passionate love, individual's right to one's life, and portrayal of feelings as having a rational logic to them rather than being seen as "inferior function," are noble and beneficial stances. But these stances have been de-emphasized by today's Objectivists, while the errors have been aggressively embraced. Which means that today's Objectivism is more a force for harm than it is for good, and true rationality demands doing away with these errors and developing and practicing a more inclusive understanding of the world.