Ayn Rand died on March 6, 1982. But if you go by how many criticisms of Rand you might find in any given week over the last couple of years—40+ years after she was buried—you’d swear she was still alive and kicking.
In today’s comprehensive Substack essay, “The Russian Radical Eludes Ayn Rand’s Critics,” I discuss the growing scholarly industry around Rand studies as well as my contributions to it.
My contention is not just that the critics have failed to grapple with the arguments presented in Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical; they have failed to comprehend Ayn Rand as a Russian radical. My work provides a distinctive lens for interpreting the nature of Rand’s radicalism—offering an in-depth examination of her intellectual origins and its dialectical rebuke to both the socialist ‘left’ and the conservative ‘right’.
This wide-ranging piece offers substantive analyses of recent critics of Rand: Thom Hartmann, Lisa Duggan, and Geoffrey Picketts, and a shout-out to Ben Burgis.
The essay takes up many controversial subjects including the 23-year-old Rand’s dark fascination with murderer William Hickman, and Rand’s parallels and differences with Nietzsche, Marx, Dostoyevsky, Wilde, and Goldman.
It also explores Rand’s understanding of human sociality, language, and social relations of power, and contrasts Rand’s capitalist “unknown ideal” with the system’s “known reality.”
If you haven’t read my work on Rand, consider today’s essay a Primer.
Check it out on Substack!
