Big Sister is Watching You (Whittaker Chamber's critique of Ayn Rand...)

National Review ^ | Dec. 28, 1957 | Whittaker Chambers

[Lurker]

I inherited a inculcated nature of selfishness..

Selfishness is a virtue, not a vice or a sin.

[Billthedrill]

Can you elaborate?

Sure. Pinging Publius to this because I'm stealing his links below. The topic had been referred to in a couple of places prior, but most of her impression of Original Sin was after Calvin and Augustine and not current Catholic doctrine, as we pointed out in the essay linked below, in Chapter 27, "This Is John Galt Speaking." The difference in interpretation is after the Pelagius/Augustine split in the early Church. Rand's interpretation is that it implied that Man is inherently committed to sin from birth no matter what actions the infant has or has not committed; Pelagius insisted that it only trended that way. (This is actually a disgraceful oversimplification - purists are probably cringing to hear me put it that way.)

The real point is that Rand was retracing the same steps tracked by the Medieval Schoolmen during that period of time Rand claimed was a fallow period for philosophy, the Dark Ages. And she hadn't caught up.

This sounds impossibly opaque to my ear. For a more comprehensive treatment please see chapter 27 (part III chapter 7) in the Atlas Shrugged FR Book Club threads:

FReeper Book Club: Introduction to Atlas Shrugged
Part I, Chapter I: The Theme
Part I, Chapter II: The Chain
Part I, Chapter III: The Top and the Bottom
Part I, Chapter IV: The Immovable Movers
Part I, Chapter V: The Climax of the d’Anconias
Part I, Chapter VI: The Non-Commercial
Part I, Chapter VII: The Exploiters and the Exploited
Part I, Chapter VIII: The John Galt Line
Part I, Chapter IX: The Sacred and the Profane
Part I, Chapter X: Wyatt’s Torch
Part II, Chapter I: The Man Who Belonged on Earth
Part II, Chapter II: The Aristocracy of Pull
Part II, Chapter III: White Blackmail
Part II, Chapter IV: The Sanction of the Victim
Part II, Chapter V: Account Overdrawn
Part II, Chapter VI: Miracle Metal
Part II, Chapter VII: The Moratorium on Brains
Part II, Chapter VIII: By Our Love
Part II, Chapter IX: The Face Without Pain or Fear or Guilt
Part II, Chapter X: The Sign of the Dollar
Part III, Chapter I: Atlantis
Part III, Chapter II: The Utopia of Greed
Part III, Chapter III: Anti-Greed
Part III, Chapter IV: Anti-Life
Part III, Chapter V: Their Brothers’ Keepers
Part III, Chapter VI: The Concerto of Deliverance
Part III, Chapter VII: “This is John Galt Speaking”
Part III, Chapter VIII: The Egoist
Part III, Chapter IX: The Generator
Part III, Chapter X: In the Name of the Best Within Us
Afterword and Suggested Reading

[AZLiberty]

Not only that, Rand is not as “materialistic” as Chambers makes out. She puts high value on music and other art forms — and on their “producers”.

[Billthedrill]

Not only opaque, but I didn’t even finish the sentence, sorry. The issue, as it did for Calvin, impacted directly on the fate/free will dichotomy. Rand was a fervent advocate of free will, her philosophy doesn’t work without it.

[Valpal1]

Well, I’m certainly going to suggest that 1984 has more complex characters and plotting. Rand was redundant and pedantic and her characters and plots were simplistic outlines, she never moved beyond script writing really.

Her understanding of human nature was limited by both her atheism and her narcissism, thus the world to her was very black and white, those who agreed with her and let her have her way were good and those who disagreed were bad.

Orwell said twice as much in less than half as many pages. If Rand were president she’d be the objectivist version of Obama, appearing on all the Sunday talkies to harangue and lecture us while calling dissenters “looters”.

Ultimately, like Obama, she is without substance beyond her own self interest and like him, she’s boooooring.

The libertarians will never move forward till they get over their juvenile romance with her work.

[r9etb]

But you’re not claiming Rand espoused capitalism without morality. Are you?

Well, no ... but I do think that Rand was spectacularly dishonest about the supposedly rational, logical roots of her philosophy.

Based on her attitude toward religion, I strongly suspect that Rand's philosophy started with a visceral, emotional, and ultimately childish atheism; and that her objectivism was an attempt to invent a way to get to the last six Commandments without having to deal with the implications of the first four.

I think, too, that Rand's beautiful, willowy heroines and assertive, masculine heroes were more a reflection of her own dumpy and unattractive self, who was married to a weak cuckhold. There is much of the wistful teenager about Rand's style and characters; and it carries over into her story-telling, not to mention her philosophical tenets.

Rand's philosophy often doesn't survive contact even with everyday matters. For example, her idea that idea of "man -- every man -- is an end in himself" fails to account for something as common as parenthood, wherein we are quite clearly morally obligated to be a means to our children's ends.

Chambers also understood real people much better than Rand did. Rand's idealized heroes were, of course, perfect -- but Chambers knew that the sort of power Rand would have granted to her heroic caste would ultimately corrupt them. Her philosophy, however well-intended, would in the real world ultimately devolve into one in which the "heroic caste" would despotically lord it over the less enlightened.

Ironically, given her stated distaste for for the man, Rand's heroes certainly bore a strangely strong resemblance to Plato's philosopher kings....

[Hank Kerchief]

“The biggest problem I had with Atlas Shrugged was it seemed to assume that capitalism, without moral underpinnings, still works.”

I do not know what you read, but it was not Atlas Shrugged. The novel is entirely about moral values and the consequences of a society that has none—like today’s society.

Capitalims is not a “system.” A free society under a limited government is a “system” (the one Rand and the founders of this country advocated.) Capitalism is essentially the actions of productive individuals who know enough not to consume all their seed corn, and have something to continue their prosperity. That kind of function is only possible in a free society with a free market, but there is no guarantee free men will behave as capitalists except when it is to their advantage, morally and fiscally. Most would.

Hank

[r9etb]

Not only that, Rand is not as “materialistic” as Chambers makes out. She puts high value on music and other art forms — and on their “producers”.

That's a good point, but I think what it really does, is highlight one of Rand's great weaknesses. Despite her attempts to define it as such, art is simply not an "objective" quantity -- at its best it deals strongly in the subjective realms of emotion and perception.

I think Rand knew what she liked; her problem seems to have been that she felt her own judgment on art was final, and she bent her philosophy of art to suit her own tastes.

[deks]

PING to all who missed this thread and like informative FReeper style debate.

[Welcome2thejungle]

I reread again what you wrote. And I agree 100% with it. I don’t think BHO is an incompetent clueless idiot. He knows exactly what he’s doing and precisely where he wants to take the country. He is no bumbling naive liberal idiot like Jimmy Carter. He is a radical Saul Alinsky trained community agitator determined to make America a socialist country.