Anarchists are not defenders of capitalism, they are collectivists.They’re a group of publicity seekers who rush into politics prematurely.Capitalism is the one system that requires absolute objective law, yet they want to combine capitalism and anarchism. That is worse than anything the New Left has proposed. It’s a mockery of philosophy and ideology. They sling slogans and try to ride on two bandwagons. They want to be hippies, but don’t want to preach collectivism, because those jobs are already taken. But anarchism is a logical outgrowth of the anti-intellectual side of collectivism. I could deal with a Marxist with a greater chance of reaching some kind of understanding, and with much greater respect. The anarchist is the scum of the intellectual world of the left.
The Libertarian Party plagiarizes some of my ideas, mixes it with the exact opposite—with religionists, anarchists, and just about every intellectual misfit and scum they can find—and they call themselves Libertarians, and run for office. It is the last insult to ideas and philosophical consistency. They are perhaps the worst political group today, because they can do the most harm to capitalism, by making it disreputable.
I think it’s a bad beginning for an allegedly pro-capitalist party to start by stealing ideas.Libertarians are a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people: they plagiarize my ideas when that fits their purpose, and they denounce me in a more vicious manner than any communist publication, when that fits their purpose. They are lower than any pragmatists, and what they hold against Objectivism is morality. They’d areintellectual cranks.
Besides the fact that it’s purely an ad hominem? It’s very Marxian really: never address the points, but stick to wild accusations and personal attacks.
I personally think anarchists particularly rankled Rand because they exposed some of her contradictions. She held her consistency very highly, so this was unforgivable.
I don’t understand Rand, I loved her major works, I loved 90% of her premesese but the moment she started talking about the real world she became a total bitch
Rand is wrong because she’s claiming all anarchists are the same. I reckon she hates anarchists because they expose the contradictions in her inconsistent minarchism.She seemed to think objectivism could cure every problem including government She attacked anarcho-capitalism as a theory of “competiting governments” completely missing the point.I really don’t get why she’s loved so much.
Roy A. child’s even tried to convince her that anarcho-capitalism was more consistent with her other positions on aggression ,collectivism etc but she wasn’t having any of it. She continually refused to associate with libertarians and dismissed their ideas offhand as third rate and plagarism of her ideas.She seems to have considered the history of philosophy to have been aristotle,thomas aquinas and her. She knew very little of philosophy,history, economics or anything else. Her views on war were hawkish to say the least.
Rand was far too rabid especially against religion and I’m saying that as an atheist. I’m with rothbard ,individual objectivists may be good and moral and very reasonable but the members of organised objectivism act like robots and it is conducted like a cult.
Doesn’t her economic philosophy basically restate what Adam Smith wrote? What a jerk…
Basically in many ways yes. She completely ignores the issue of corporatism and ignores the whole natural law/natural rights tradition except locke(probably because of it’s religious especially christian associations). She also completely ignores american individualist anarchism.She seems to think her ideas originated from her own head when theres a long tradition of all the different elements of her views.It’s more like she plagarised them .
As a off topic side point, as much as I hate postmodern art I think her idea of objective based aesthetics is absurd.It just goes round in circles.
She doesn’t understand the subjective value theory.
She is as inconsistent as her adversaries when it comes to her belief in government. She violates A=A when insisting that no coercion is involved in her limited government.
I will admit it is the least extensive part of her philosophy, but nothing about it is absurd. Many people completely misunderstand her aesthetic theory, as in they’re under the impression the only objectively good art in Rand’s opinion is “romantic realism”, but that simply isn’t true.
Also, subjective value theory is not a normative theory of values. All values are subjective, i.e. personal, but it is proper for them to be objectively decided upon (as in not simply decided upon because it "feels right’). I have heard of no time where she discussed SVT, so I don’t know if you can say she did or didn’t understand SVT as Austrian’s understand it.