Why does lit/ hate Ayn Rand. I enjoyed her work and believe in her philosophy (objectivism)
Well Ayn Rand was an intellectual midget but she's hated not because of that but because she rightly pointed out that the American Left, which is the American government and culture itself practically speaking, are crypto-Communists.
I'm a Christian and I think her philosophy is literally Satanic. It's of the Devil.
>>7895053
Bait?
If this is real, read Aristotle and Cicero. They're level 95 Charizards to her starter Charmander.
As a virtue ethicist and author Rand has some merit. As a political philosopher, she's sort of "baby's first".
>>7895053
I see you have a low IQ. Try /pol/.
>>7895064
How so, everyone succeeds when you focus on yourself and your family.
>>7895053
I’m not a native english speaker but am really good at it though, read a lot of books and have no trouble doing so but her vocalbulary I find realy difficult. You got any reccomandations as to improving it?
Are all those words like statism and epistemological explained in basic dictionary?
Period crazed Adam Smith, dime store Nietzsche.
A lot could have been salvaged about her had she only received the D sooner and on less pathetic terms.
>>7895078
You Eastern European?
>>7895053
Rand is a terrible writer. She only achieved "success" because her works served the narrative of America during the Cold War, and they elevated her to relevance because of a retarded capitalist fetish.
>>7895082
Icelandic
Most of you have not read her works. I believed in the criticism against her until I gave her a chance.
1/10
she is disliked because she presumed to be a writer
she has nothing worth saying, says a lot, and does it all poorly
>>7895089
>>7895085
Sæl(l), erfitt með svefn?
>>7895088
I've tried. It's obvious from the outset she has no talent, her writing is dry, inorganic, and long winded. Of course no-one has read her, who wouldn't say fuck this in the middle of a 40 page speech on onanism.
>>7895095
lol ertu íslenskur?
>>7895094
>since I seem like quite the retard
lol. No you just missed an article so I gave a guess based on that.
>>7895089
((( mega-cringe )))
>>7895083
This. If she wasn't an ex patriot Ruskie pandering in the US so she could serve as a symbol against the communist menace, no-one would have given her a second look. I honestly don't even believe the sociopath millionaires in their ivory towers can enjoy her prose, regardless of how much it suites their insane ideology.
>>7895103
>>7895099
Já manns. Gengur illa að snúa við sólahringnum eftir næturvaktir.
>>7895094
You are clearly an uneducated dumbfuck, which is why Rand appeals to you in the first place.
>>7895106
>I honestly don't even believe the sociopath millionaires in their ivory towers can enjoy her prose, regardless of how much it suites their insane ideology.
I think the Ivory Tower millionaire sociopaths are typically Communists actually.
>>7895113
here's your you
>>7895114
Bonus page.
>>7895111
Not op.
>>7895111
Actually not the case, just not a pretentious fucktard on the internet - like you, trying to talk down to other people in order to make them believe you’re smart since it obviously doesn’t work in real life for you.
>>7895113
What's so wrong with her philosophy that makes you say that. She's a realist is all and I guess lit is full of idealist.
I consider myself liberal/leftist etc, but I have never read Rand. Is it worth picking up the Fountainhead to get a good sense of her, or should I just stick to wikipedia?
>>7895124
duuuurrrp!
>>7895126
Start with Anthem you'll be able to read it in less than an hour and get a better sense of her.
>>7895126
Don't even bother. If you want a taste of right-libertarianism, read someone coherent like Robert Nozick.
>>7895132
this
watch the movie if you must, fuck her prose for real
I remember having to read anthem in high school. The teacher gave me a low grade when I wrote that Anthem was a reaction against communism. Wat. Later on I found out that teacher was a big fan of Harry Potter.
Richard Bach the guy who pretty much started the New Age movement and wrote Jonathan Livingston Seagull also loves Ayn Rand.
>>7895074
She makes a virtue out of selfishness and despises charity. There isn't a more anti-Christian strain of thought in Western civilization, even the literal Satanists aren't this bad.
>>7895124
she's retardly laissez faire, like to the point where she thinks the government doesnt need money it just runs on hopes and dreams
40 / 10 / 12 / 1
Jesus OP, is the only one you can bait yourself?
I think the idea that all the rich deserve their wealth and are worthy of running the world as a result is completely ridiculous. Plenty of rich people are hardworking and intelligent, but plenty just inherent their wealth or get lucky. They shouldn't be allowed to exploit everyone else because of that.
>>7895201
Wouldn't you won't a better life for your children. That's the whole motive why people work it's so they can leave something when they die.
>>7895201
i think one of the biggest lies of AS was that a teen coal-shoveler ended up the CEO through his "hard work n dedication"
>>7895201
but how are the rich exploiting the poor? Don't they subsidize their existence through taxes? Seems like the opposite to me
>>7895207
if that's the motivation to work then why do you need capitalism and profit incentive? People will just work for their kids according to you.
>>7895210
in real life he just gets lung cancer or blown up by dynamite in the mines
>>7895212
in socialism they subsidize the poor through taxes. In capitalism there are not taxes.
>>7895212
Everyone subsidizes the existence of the rich by allowing the fiction known as "property rights".
>>7895217
Capitalism is a set of historical economic systems and is not related to whether the State decides to tax or redistribute wealth.
>>7895059
>Well Ayn Rand was an intellectual midget
this made me belly laugh
>>7895226
You're saying if a group of people build a house together they are not entitled to their house? Who does the house belong to?
>>7895053
She failed to reject all spooks- she understood the primacy of the ego and realized that morality and god were irrational constructs, but held on to the spooks of government and private property. She could have been a Stirner for the modern era, but instead fell into typical right-libertarianism.
>>7895235
Wow, you really can't think beyond your capitalist programming, can you?
"Belonging to" presupposes ownership, which presupposes the existence of property rights. Property rights do not exist in nature, they are invented by the State. Their purpose is to empower the government to use violence to protect the wealth of the few from the many.
>>7895250
Yes. Explain civilization without this? This is a consequence of markets, which are as old as man. You can't escape the free market any more than you can escape gravity.
>>7895250
Do you agree or disagree that the house belongs to them? And nature certainly understands property rights. Like in human societies it is force, violence, power, etc. that determines property or territory. Or in certain civilized societies it is mutual agreement to not act like savages.
>>7895256
Complete and utter nonsense.
Markets cannot function without state protection of property rights. Landholding cannot exist without state sanction.
>>7895267
That "mutual agreement not to act like savages" is precisely why it is incorrect to say that the rich "subsidize" the poor when subjected to progressive taxation and redistribution of wealth. Without state intervention, Bill Gates wouldn't be rich in the first place. So you could equally claim that the poor subsidize the rich.
>>7895256
>markets are as old as mankind, next to Lucy we found a prehistoric bag filled with stocks and american express
>if you jump out the window, you inevitably enter market transactions
tell me, can I at least escape them in space? or is the market even more Dar reacging then gravitation?
>>7895268
>this is my land
>step on it and I will kill you
pretty simple desu
>>7895284
Scarcity friend. They've found remnants ice age trading posts, every barbarian tribe the Romans encountered bartered to some extent, if anything is fundamentally human, trading for shit is certainly it.
Socialists are good fun, as you could argue that we make buildings even though gravity topples them without maintenance, but on average communist market-deniers are tinfoil-hat tier retarded.
>Poor people are stupid and ugly
Summed up Atlas Shrugged for you there, pal.
>>7895304
Nobody is "denying markets", you drooling imbecile.
>>7895303
Not if I kill you first.
See how that works, dumbass?
>>7895068
This isn't true at all.
>>7895053
Her entire philosophy was born out from being traumatized by seeing all her well off families stuff bring expropriated in the name of the masses by the bolsheviks. It's literally emotional acting out against the big bad commies.
>>7895235
Capitalistic property is accumulated in transferable paper legal claims which can be indefinitely accumulated and further capitalized upon.
Seriously the whole Lockean notion of the emergence of ownership as an institution is just historically inaccurate and has no basis in reality:
http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/veblen/ownersh
>>7895256
>Yes. Explain civilization without this? This is a consequence of markets, which are as old as man. You can't escape the free market any more than you can escape gravity.
Markets definitely are not as old as mankind, I don't think there is any serious modern anthropologist that would even claim that
Civilization (which historically emerged relatively recently in human history) and markets go together but they were largely on the periphery of society and not central until even more recently in history
https://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/35622950/Each-Man-for-Himself
>>7895053
Her fiction is awful, and her philosophy, objectivism, is even worse than utilitarianism, as it explicitly endorses laissez-faire capitalism, which, as anyone who isn't rolling in money knows, is terrible.
>>7895910
What is a trading post? How many furs should I trade this deer I just carried back to camp?
But I concede the point, reliance on markets for subsistence is a characteristic of civilization or rather human inter-reliance , not necessarily humanity itself. Though I think my point still stands: it's better to figure out how to bend markets to serve us than to go North Korea about it.
>>7895984
Barter doesn't arise until very late in development, you already must have some basis for value abstraction and free determination has to arise. Informal credit economies must pre-date money and barter economies.
>>7895114
>claims to reject emotionalism
>goes on a emotional and vindictive rampage to "wipe out" any trace of a lover that was unfaithful to her
Jeeze what a bitch
>>7895059
this. ingsoc and all
>>7895250
if property rights don't exist in nature, watch what happens when one animal tries to move into another's den.
>>7895336
...what's your point? That's the fundamental premise of all property. What is government but the organized threat of violence.
>>7895070
Never change /lit/
>>7895113
>American moderate conservatives advocate a lack of government involvement in the economy and letting millionares make business practices for their own benefit
>communists advocate economic egalitarianism and returning power to the workers
No anon, those people usually are not anything like communists
>>7895124
You have no idea what realism and idealism are, both in political theories and metaphysics.
>>7895336
So the property transfers to the hands of the usurper. That doesn't negate its nature as property
>>7896219
Communists actually advocate and apologize for genocidal lunatics and violent revolution from the comfort of their academic positions and wealth.
>>7896266
the fuck are you saying mang
>>7896194
LEGITIMATE violence. There is no property without state, how can one argue against this is beyond me. Are you some sort of christian essentialist?
>>7896271
That you're as disgusting as a neo-nazi and in a revolution you'd be the first against the wall when the inevitable tyrant took advantage of the chaos you created.
>>7896275
Good thing your groundless thinking does not matter at all. Next time try to come up with arguments instead.
>>7896278
Or look at every example of revolution for 'the people' since the 1700s. Murder, chaos, tyranny, genocide, famine. You are condoning this and you are a repulsive piece of shit for it.
>>7896283
You should calm the fuck down and stop spewing out all those fallacies.
>example of revolution for 'the people' since the 1700s
You mean the American Revolution & the French Revolution, or the basis of our modern democracies?
>>7896274
The state here is the relation between weak and strong, if you must have it said explicitly somehow.
>>7896293
The American revolution was a slight alteration of the British monarchical constitution at the time, it did not create a society wholesale, it simply codified the existing one in the colonies.
The French Revolution was a historical abomination and the three quarters of a century that followed it filled with despotism and chaos.
>>7896297
The nature of the social contract matters not in this argument, we are talking about the source of property.
Also, "weak" and "strong" are convenient by-words. Strength, or political power, is part of a struggle and always relative.
>>7896302
>The French Revolution was a historical abomination
kay, i guess we are done arguing there.
You can get back to your burke, spengler and ebola mumbo jumbo
the romantic manifesto is alright, not much else. laissez-faire economics is a teenage libertarian myth which she caught by coming to america from the ussr
>>7896304
What can I say, you're an overly literal retard. The fact that people can throw around all of these formal ideas with a total inability to process their fundamentals because it hasn't been formalized as some mainstream concept is tragically hilarious.
>>7895097
>who wouldn't say fuck this in the middle of a 40 page speech on onanism
you clearly haven't read Infinite Jest. leave /lit/ now
>>7896316
Regardless of your ideological convictions, it was objectively a historical abomination. It caused huge amounts of suffering for decades.
>>7896322
>What can I say
so, nothing.
>>7896304
>hurr durr property only comes from the govt
>social contract irrelevant
do you know what forms governments?
>>7896326
I've said all that need be said, I am not here to argue with retards, I am here to be right and call them retards.
>>7896328
The social contract. What is your point?
Are you trying to say that there is such a thing as "property", without proper form of government, law, and organized police force?
Do you also believe that the constitution grows on a tree?
>>7896324
>implying anyone has actually read infinite jest
>>7896335
>government = social contract
>social contract != government
> ? ? ?
>>7896343
I said "the nature" of the social contract was irrelevant in respect to our discussion. I guess reading is hard...
>>7896348
certainly not as easy pedantic red herrings
>>7896378
Let me put this down to you. It doesn't matter whether the social contract is only an oppression of the majority, a representative democracy, absolute power, or anything else. What mattered to the discussion was that this social contract give existence to property.
Is that better? Can you understand, now?
>>7896293
Modern democracy was the beginning of the end. A deviation from the natural order where the masses accept the dominance of the aristocratic elite. Contrary to your PC programing, some people are indeed cleverer and nobler than others. This was known since furthest antiquity, from the reign of the God Kings of Sumer and on to the Tsarist autocracy
>>7896417
6/10, i actually fell for it
>>7896417
There's no point explaining this to them, the people living through the decline of Rome were also convinced they were in a golden era of progress.
>>7896387
>repeating yourself over and over despite saying irrelevant garbage
I guess reading is hard!
>>7896451
>accusing others of red herring
>not making any point at all
>>7896454
I've already stated my point. I don't feel the need to repeat it over and over without any development, that might be a good "argument" for you, but needless to say I disagree.
>>7896387
>What mattered to the discussion was that this social contract give existence to property.
are you saying it does or doesn't?
>>7896190
they start paying rent?
>>7896466
They do in a sense, it's called symbiosis.
>>7896477
that's how the first fish-monkeys evolved into people-monkeys societies, right?
>>7895250
By agreeing to argue your position in lieu of using force, you are in fact accepting the principles of self-ownership and non-aggression, which in turn justify private property and homesteading and expose the illegitimacy of taxation and statism.
>>7896466
Kek
>>7895114
>tfw a milfy ayn rand will never lock you in her sex dungeon and punish you for fucking another girl
>she will never edge you through your cock cage for hours while reciting that godawful 40 page speech
>she will never leave you sweaty and wanting after getting you to give her the oral pleasure
>she will never concoct devious sexual predicaments based on her philosophy for you
>>7896745
>milfy
>Ayn Rand
>>7896767
it's a fantasy I'm allowed to think whatever I want
bonus points: being dommed by a sexually repressed, semi-frigid 3/10 milf virgin would turn me on, considering
please find attached another fantasy of mine
Well,if anything she was right about commies
>make it your life's work to glorify the power of the individual, vilify poverty, and condemn government while stressing personal responsibility
>die a poor old fraud using government safety nets to cling to life
KEK
>>7897541
wow, her and literally half of the entire world
quite the prediction
>>7895053
Adhering to only objectivism is inherently limiting, and will only carry someone as far as the first two steps on the hierarchy of needs.
It's a tempting way of thinking with how much it can appeal to and soothe an ego, but it ignores a large part of how humans act as social animals. I'm sure Rand didn't mean for her writings to be taken in such a way, but it's like a drug for assholes who think objectivism is a great way of justifying acting like narcissistic pricks.
she was parading her philosophy around like objective truth
when it was just reactionary rantings from a person who escaped communism to the west.
wanted to get attention
so just played the angel of evil pinko commy devils are bad because they don't operate under "natural law" of objectivism.
and all american capitalism and democracy does
>>7895113
Only as a generalized insult with no actual meaning other than "someone who holds bad political views and is probably a bad person", not real communists, that's for sure.
>>7895126
>liberals
>leftists
>>7896417
Neo-Monarchists are some of the most autistic people on this site.
>>7895068
>aristotle
Bait?
>At first I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magical, but then I read this: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of shit, I am never reading again.
- O. Barbrady
>>7895079
Where are these from?
Her logic is too simple and her philosophy declares this innate characteristically evil makeup of a person. It's just immature to be honest, dressing itself up as serious and intellectually contrarian.
>>7899414
>implying a benevolent dictator couldn't set all the world right
>>7895212
>but how are the rich exploiting the poor?
By extracting their surplus value from the produce of their labour, while paying them a wage that is below what the amount of money they are bringing in. This is basic Marxian economics, get with it senpai.
>>7900344
and who would that benevolent dictator be? i hope not sme retard wanking to chinese anime in his mother's basement all day long
>>7900427
the rich actually perform skilled coordination and entrepreneurship labor that makes everything possible. that's why they deserve a bigger slice of the cake, laborers are a dime a dozen, but a true businessman is hard to find
>>7900344
You should read "Reasons of State" by Carpentier.
Hint: Your benevolent dictator cannot exist because to gain power he must by necessity be non-benevolent and willing to break some eggs to get resistant elements under his control.
Pic related, its the ultimate in "benevolent dictatorship"
>>7900442
>Your benevolent dictator cannot exist
pic related is a based patrician and probably higher IQ than any cuck western politician, would accept autocratic yoke/10
>>7900451
>implying there isn't a huge real property bubble in China about to burst
>implying Xi Jinping isn't corrupt as hell
>implying the President isn't tied by CCP absurd bureaucracy
>
>
you must be some retarded, uninformed american
>>7900451
>Turns anti-corruption probe into maoist purge of high officials
>reaction to economic unrest is political and media restrictions
>increases insularity in single party government apparatus
>threatens minor neighbors already in economic sphere of influence with overboard naval expansion
Truly a man of the world, and this doesnt even mention the huge fucking ghost cities built on government credit. The NYRB cover story was on his bullshit this month. At use pre-immigration Merkel as an example.
>>7900451
>IQ as a metric of leadership and effectiveness
Woodrow Wilson, Bill Clinton and John Adams send their regards
>>7900442
>>7900433
the machinations necessary to attain power do not preclude benevolence
the modern man is so adverse to violence he cannot conceive of it as anything but an evil, one he fears and denies on an almost visceral level, this leads not to the elimination of violence but its abstraction, the whole thing is utterly unnatural and the cause of society's unnatural degenerate state
>>7900433
God's chosen ones (i.e., prophets, successors of prophets, and the messiah)
>>7900542
>society's unnatural degenerate state
Cato was saying the same shit 2100 years ago. Maybe society as viewed through television is degenerate but if you dont watch TV its families, people working, people doing their daily business. "Benevolent dictators" just lead to wastelands and starvation. Get your head out of a book and out of the basement.
>>7900667
b-but anon, that would imply losing virginity first. how can i read evola if im no longer a virgin?
Can anybody recommend some papers refuting Objectivism? I read some books about the philosophy in high school until I found something I thought was logically wrong with it in college, but I'm not even confident that what I found was a good point.
I'd like to hear the opinions and arguments of actual philosophy professors, but I don't think any of them take it seriously enough to argue against it. Kind of sucks when you get threads like these which are just broad refutations based off of mostly opinions.
>>7900879
>I don't think any of them take it seriously enough to argue against it
This. It's like arguing against flat-earthism. Where do you even start?
>>7900898
See, posts like this give me the impression that nobody has read any Rand, or looked into her philosophy past Atlas Shrugged (which, to be fair, is full of vague arguments, not solid ones). The philosophy is actually pretty well codified, and it builds on itself in such a way that a person would only have to attack some of the first few points in order to bring the whole philosophy down.
>>7900922
>The philosophy is actually pretty well codified
I've seen it - it's a pile of garbage. She presents it all in a pseudo-"logical" style to fool the uncritical minds out there. The whole thing reminds me of Scientology.
>>7900879
here you go. not only is nozick a well respected philosopher, but he is also a defender of free-market capitalism, so his criticisms are not ideologically motivated. he just recognizes that rand was an incompetent philosopher
http://www.nowandfutures.com/large/On-the-Randian-Argument-Nozick.pdf
>>7900987
Thanks a lot, anon. Very excited to read this.
>>7900615
here we go again. will you go back to pol, or where you belong?
Leftists hate her because she's an easy target and typfies everything they WANT to imagine the right is. She's *just* well argued enough for them to be able to lie to each other that they aren't arguing against a strawman.
That said she's sort of silly -
I asked once on an objectvist forum, if we are meant to be 'selfish,' why shouldn't be steal or rob our fellow man? Why shouldn't we be 'looters?' The only answer I got was that this wouldn't ultimately be selfish as you would 'dishonour yourself' and thereby somehow lose out in the long run.
>>7900439
while it may be hard to quantify "skill," I don't think a "rich" man deserves 10,000% the yearly income of a worker for the dubious distinction of being born in the upper-middle class and attending prep school for 12 years and harvard for 6. take Rand's pussy out of your mouth.
>>7895059
what
>>7901004
No leftist care about Ayn Rand past highschool.
>>7900922
it's really not philosophy, man. AS is 1000 pages of each main character (somehow all genius businessmen / innovators) giving the same speech.
>A=A
>government needs to protect property rights
>government can't tax us because that would be looting
>looters are bad
>A=A
>don't give a fuck about workers
for that last point, just look at the scene where Hank goes back to his factory and the place is rioting
>>7901033
grad students on my facebook regularly post about her aha
/lit/ can't stop talking about her
>>7900667
the prosperity of the west is subsidized by the suffering of less developed nations
and all governments everywhere are rife with corruption and steal from their own people
a godlessness pervades all society as all children are conditioned into being consumerist narcissists incapable of real relationships
everything is not fine, this whole, we're just regular people doing their best is less than a platitude, it is the diffusion of responsibility through the apathetic mentality of a slave
the world can be put in order
This thread is fucking cancerous.
>>7895053
Because I am an authoritarian. Therefore, I disagree with her points about pure individuality. Don't get me wrong, pure collectivism like The Borg from Star Trek is just a hivemind, but a majority collectivist society is not a bad thing.
You are part of a collective, whether you like it or not. It is therefore your responsibility to contribute to it by, for example, reproducing.
Because hating Ayn Rand is a fucking meme. It's one of those things that you're supposed to blindly take at face value without actually knowing anything about her philosophy beyond a cursory glance at the Wikipedia page, if that.
Ayn Rand did nothing wrong.
>>7895053
She died on welfare, she couldn't even follow her own half baked philosophy
>>7895070
Serious question: do you genuinely believe you're smart just for browsing /lit/? For posting on a board where college-aged, unpublished, and overall terrible "writers" congregate to discuss memes and their unoriginal freshman-tier takes on famous philosophers? Do you really think you're smart?
As for Ayn Rand, she's fallen into the Literally Hitler designation; people who know nothing about her besides the often-regurgitated opinion that she's "evil" call her so, without actually knowing why or doing any research into her ideas or opinions.
>>7899581
Action Philosophers!, issue # 2.
It's a pretty rad comic book series, but don't expect it to go in depth or be authoritative.
>>7901322
>black augustine
rrrreeeeeeeeeeeeee
>>7901322
>St, Augustine was black because he was born in North Africa
>>7901358
>>7901368
Or, you know, tan. Because Africa is hot and sunny.
>>7895212
Income is taxable but most of the really rich people have their wealth in non taxable forms. Rich people pay proportionally much less tax than poorer people. It's the lower and middle classes that prop up the rich by paying the vast majority of taxes.
>>7895210
I'm pretty sure that character was loosely modeled off of Andrew Carnegie whose parents were relatively poor. He started off as a bobbin boy though not a coal-shoveler. He built the largest steel company in the world (the bulk of what became U.S. Steel Corporation). Of course, he also created 3000 public libraries around the Anglosphere among other philanthropic acts. I don't think Ayn would have much to say about that part.
>>7895059
>>7895068
baitmaster
>>7895068
>implying gateway philosophers aren't necessary
She's an Aristotelian and Aristotle is the man.
Fuck Playdo and his magical pixie forms.
>>7895053
Ayn Rand is a fucking joke, her whole philosophy was created because she wanted recognition.
If you'd research her life you'd quickly see this theme playout as a major part of her life. There exists no real thought behind her work apart from making it different so she can be seen as a unique thinker.
