Ayn Rand and the New Right of Knowledge: When the Deregulated Market Replaces Facts and the Seductive Danger of Individualism

Many ideas of libertarians, various conservative and neoconservative movements, and anti-gender movements found fertile ground in the philosophy of the American writer and philosopher of Russian origin, Ayn Rand (Alice O'Connor, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum).

Ayn Rand is a philosopher known for her position that individualism and capitalism are the highest forms of social organization, which she presented through the philosophy of Objectivism. Although Rand did not specifically address issues of gender or social norms regarding the family, her ideas eventually became an inspiration for conservative, neoliberal, and anti-gender movements, particularly regarding the ideals of individual freedom, the minimal role of the state, market deregulation, and the inviolability of private property.

The flourishing of this ideology began in the era of neoliberalism, the Reagan-Thatcher era of the eighties, when, on the one hand, Ronald Reagan abolished the largest union in the USA, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), in 1981, and Thatcher, through her managerialist way of ruling, destroyed public health, public enterprises such as the British Railways and began the marketization of the public sector of general social value and significance, a process that tragically ends in the era we live in with the deregulation of the market.

Ayn Rand believed that the individual is the basic unit of society and that individual freedom is above collective interests. This influenced conservative movements that oppose state regulation of family relations and gender issues. Proponents of anti-gender policies often use this argument of family freedom and sovereignty as a way of protecting “tradition” from alleged state influence, and today, it is the protection of tradition from the so-called woke movement. Woke is a term that denotes an awareness of social injustices and discrimination, especially related to race, gender, sexuality and class, but is often used pejoratively to describe excessive political correctness or oversensitivity in public discourses.

Rand was strongly opposed to any form of welfare state, believing that it was unfair to successful individuals and that it undermined society by rewarding the “incompetent”, that is, those who simply had less luck and opportunities in life. These views have become the basis for many conservative movements that oppose government programs and regulations. This includes opposition to subsidies and laws that protect the rights of minorities, including the LGBTIQ+ community, which is often seen as contrary to the ideals of meritocracy that Rand propagated. This reflects the lack of empathy towards the weaker, the unprotected and generally those who have had less luck in life, and celebrates individuality without responsibility towards others.

However, it is not difficult to understand the seductive appeal of her philosophy and novels: she exalts the individual, the hero, the winner, the man who fights against conformity, uniformity, mediocrity. Nazism and otherwise, a good part of the spectrum of fascism are very collectivist movements. On the other hand, communism and socialism are collectivist and it is clear that in the era of American red-scare alarms and McCarthyism, Ayn Rand sounded so good, so anti-communist. Because in this framework, any advocacy let alone the existence of a social welfare system smacks of communism. However, this departure into extreme individuality carries with it the danger of something else – narcissistic fascism imposed by power and money. And let's add that fascism (and communism) played on the cult of personality card. One individual, the bearer of the values ​​of the entire society, under which all others are conformed.

 

Many conservative foundations and think tanks (such as The Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Koch Foundation and Ayn Rand Institute) are inspired by her ideas. Although Rand disagreed with religious conservatives and rejected the traditional moral norms they defended, the idea of ​​free markets, individual responsibility, and a minimal role for the state resonated strongly with conservatives. Conservative foundations often use her arguments in favor of economic deregulation and reduction of tax policy, which aims to strengthen private capital and weaken state intervention.

Donald Trump once said that Ayn Rand was his favorite writer . Beware of the one-book man, someone said.

Rand believed that government measures requiring people to give their money and resources to others under the pretext of “common good” (read – taxes) were steps towards tyranny. In her opinion, it was much better for society to be based on autonomous, selfish and introverted individuals.

For her, the only community we truly share is that of family and friends—and only if it is based on voluntary action. If we want to be generous, Rand believed, that is fine—but no one should have the power to force us to be generous. Nothing outside the circle of our voluntary connections deserves our trust.

So, according to Rand, the only valid way to help society is generous philanthropic gifts where you think it should be – and these are often projects that reinforce the agenda of those with money and power – gifts to pro-life organizations, anti-gender and anti-science, anti-vaccination movements.

While Rand did not openly address gender norms, her followers today often use her economic individualism as a basis for rejecting legislative initiatives for gender equality, such as policies that encourage the employment of women or protect the rights of LGBTQ+ people. Anti-gender movements use her arguments to challenge legislative initiatives that treat gender equality as a collective issue, appealing to individualism and individual responsibility.

Otherwise, this individualism and neglect of the collective good is the basis of many currently fashionable motivational speakers who try to convince us that personal success and dreams are greater and more important than the pursuit of a socially just system and a system of equal opportunities, especially for education, social justice and health care. Today, everything is reduced to the enormous effort of the individual and the celebration of personal success, which is either based on a better starting position or on the fact that someone succeeded despite all the adversities (illness, poverty) without criticizing and trying to improve the system that brought that individual to such a position.

Ayn Rand is known for her novels ” The Fountainhead” and ” Atlas Shrugged” , which are the carriers of her philosophy of objectivism .

In the novel Top of the Spring , Ayn Rand presents the character of the architect Howard Roark as the ultimate genius who refuses any compromise with society, institutions and collective values. Roark's inflexibility and arrogance are portrayed not as weaknesses, but as moral virtues—which is the crux of the problem with Randa's worldview. Instead of exploring the complexity of the relationship between the individual and the community, the novel offers a caricature of society as a mass of mediocrity oppressing the “superman”. Roark's individualism is not a call for free thinking, but a glorification of narcissism that rejects empathy, solidarity and any social responsibility. It is a manifesto of the idea that talented people are justified in trampling everything in front of them – as long as they follow their “vision”.

Her novels are nothing more than a celebration of corporate fascism, which today flourishes among the silicon tech-brothers.

Of course, some will read this novel as a struggle of a brilliant individual against collectivism, the rules that hold him back, and the novel is certainly appealing to many from the world of corporations, venture capitalism, and management.

Atlas Shrugged further radicalizes that message. In this novel of questionable artistic value but a brilliant philosophical pamphlet of Objectivism, all those who create value—industrialists, innovators, bankers—go on strike because society “takes too much from them.” But Rand does not see the workers, teachers, nurses—the people who make up the fabric of everyday life—as important.

For Rand, only commercially useful, financially powerful individuals have moral legitimacy . You have capital – you are worth it. The novel idealizes a world in which egoism, market logic and self-sufficiency are the pinnacle of ethics, and the public good and community are synonymous with weakness. Behind the pomp and heroism is actually an ideology that fits perfectly into the neoliberal narrative that society is an obstacle, not a framework for human freedom. In a time of climate crisis, inequality and the collapse of public services, Rand's view seems not only anachronistic, but also dangerous.

None of these novels actually have artistic value, but are rather pamphlets.

As Robert Reich pointed out on his Substack , in a piece about Ayn Rand's connection to current political and social upheavals, ” Our fundamental identity — the most precious legacy left to us by previous generations — is the ideals we share, the good we hold in common. If we are losing our national identity, it is not because we are becoming darker-skinned or speaking more languages ​​than we once did. It is because we are losing our sense of the common good. ”

In fact, the film American Psycho is an excellent dissection of this worldview. The Mad Men series also has elements of Ayn Rand's philosophy – especially in the character of Don Draper, who we can declare a Randian character, but also in the broader depiction of American capitalism, individualism, and the advertising industry of the 1960s. Although Mad Men is not an ideological manifesto of Ayn Rand, the series does play with themes that are close to her philosophical direction and often presents them through a critical and ironic prism.

As a small curiosity in this text, we should also mention the electrical engineer and physicist Petar Beckmann (1924–1993), who went to cranks. In the sixties, he defected from Czechoslovakia to the USA, where he met Ayn Rand and soon became an ardent follower of her philosophy (Randroid). In addition to his own scientific work, he often tried to challenge the work of others, especially Albert Einstein. Under the influence of Rand and the objectivists, he developed skepticism towards the theory of relativity. He has written extensively in Randa's publications and in his own writings on libertarianism, the free market, opposition to environmentalism, and criticism of modern physics.

Peter Venkmann from Ghostbusters was inspired by this pseudoscientist, and Rand Ridley from Inside Job was named after either Ayn or Senator Paul Rand.

By the way, no modern philosopher sees Ayn Rand's objectivism as a serious direction worth studying. Objectivism exists only in the minds of libertarians and some CEOs.

As Nick Bilton wrote for Vanity Fair in 2016 (incidentally mentioning that Atlas Shrugged was also a guiding book for Steve Jobs), “ At their core, Randi’s philosophies suggest that it’s okay to be selfish, greedy, and self-centered, especially in business, and that a win-at-all-costs mentality is just the price of changing social norms . As one startup founder recently told me, ‘We should rename her books It’s Okay to Be a Sociopath!’ And yet, most tech entrepreneurs and engineers seem to live by one of Randi’s defining mantras: It’s not a question of who’s going to let me; it’s a question of who’s going to stop me. ”

Another consequence of Randian individualism and such a view of the world is the refusal of vaccination in order to create collective immunity. Randian individuals do not feel that they need to protect the community from infectious diseases and pathologically advocate that their personal right to freedom of choice trumps any child's right to health care for the greater good of the community, reducing the spread of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases.

Rand argued that the free market is the fairest possible system, because it “rewards merit”. With this, she gave a moral argument for capitalism. Peter Thiel, co-founder of the big-data company Palantir openly supports this logic: in his world, democracy is often an obstacle to innovation, and the free market is the only fair mechanism. Thiel funds projects that promote post-democratic and anarcho-capitalist ideas , following an agenda given by blogger and tech-philosopher Curtis Yarvin, which all fits perfectly with a radical reading of Randa's objectivism.

For those who don't know, the company Palantir uses big data for surveillance, cooperates with governments and government agencies such as the FBI and CIA, and recently several high-ranking CEOs of this company became military officers , along with several other CEOs from Meta and Open AI. The impact of a completely deregulated and free market in data and technology, companies that can extract any of your data, anytime, anywhere combined with military resources and serving a system that almost screams ‘kakistocracy!’ it's no joke and a peaceful dream.

If we return to the mentioned Curtis Yarvin, he is also a follower of Ayn Rand's philosophy and in his manifestos he brought her thought to the extreme dystopian limits. Both Rand and tech libertarians harbor a deep distrust of the state, universities, and the “public interest . ” Curtis Yarvin goes a step further: he advocates the abolition of democracy in favor of the CEO model of state management – an elite that “knows better”. His anti-democratic elitism and techno-feudalism share the same ground with Randa's disdain for the “masses” and glorification of the competent minority.

This is the kind of meritocracy that no one in their right mind wants – a bunch of rich people who are self-proclaimed geniuses, with essentially no institutional education and need to run some government systems like they run their own companies. Meritocracy sounds great on paper – you get a position in society based on merit, knowledge and achievement, not based on birth privileges. This is also a system where perhaps the smartest would rule the country. In addition to the fact that probably many Nobel Prize winners would not actually be good politicians, meritocracy in the conditions of kakistocracy as a basis would mean that anyone can be declared meritorious for an issue, including the issue of state management.

It is often said that meritocracy is “just”, but many philosophers and sociologists (e.g. Michael Sandel in his book The Tyranny of Merit claim today that meritocracy is also a form of injustice – because even when it functions “properly”, it creates a society of winners who despise losers and losers who hate themselves because they believe they are not good enough.

Ayn Rand is not the only intellectual figure shaping the world of the tech elite, but her philosophy provides the perfect justification for a system in which the rich, powerful, and “visionaries” and self-proclaimed fixers of the world believe they owe nothing to anyone . And that they don't have to pay taxes and that they don't need to be taxed more for the greater good – for scholarships for underprivileged students or health care. In this sense, she is the ideological godmother of Silicon Valley : an invisible but ever-present ideologue of absolute freedom without the moral restraints of any kind of society there. This is a philosophy that believes that society needs to die, that the homeless are always to blame for their own homelessness (one of the tropes of neoliberalism and libertarians, the so-called cricket and ant trope) and that if you want something you can always do it, that only the sky is the limit, not conscience.

Nota Bene: the finger of fate or her own hypocrisy and inconsistency of thought wanted Ayn Rand to depend on state welfare in her old age , and she said so much that this was an unfair distribution of goods.

More:

The new age of Ayn Rand: how she won over Trump and Silicon Valley

Atlas Shrugged is Boring and Silly

Silicon Valley’s Most Disturbing Obsession