Notablog readers should check out a critical essay on Liberal Currents by Paul Crider that discusses “Liberalism versus Reaction in Ayn Rand“. Paul writes on Facebook:
Finally published my big essay on Ayn Rand. I’m very sympathetic to Rand and I encourage folks to see what people find so inspirational in her work. It’s all there.
BUT I do two—I think—novel things. First, I troubleth the idea that Rand fits within the liberal tradition, even classical liberal. Her perfectionism precludes the political contestation that is necessary for political liberalism. Atlas Shrugged itself is a kind of vanguardist integralism (though her real life activism differs from AS). Her hierarchical way of thinking masquerades as meritocracy but ultimately upholds traditional social hierarchies and reacts against upstarts—hence she’s much more a heterodox conservative than any kind of liberal. Second, I explore the possibility of a Randian left liberalism. I would say “left Objectivism” but the ARI would probably sue me. A Randian social liberalism seems like a contradiction in terms, but it draws on expressivist individualism of unfolding human potential and the concept of “truly human flourishing” (think Smith, Marx, Mill, and Nussbaum) that very much pervade her philosophy.
I read the essay and wrote on Facebook:
I very much enjoyed your essay, and I’m extremely sympathetic to a left-liberal reading of Rand, as anyone who is familiar with my attempts (in Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical) to link Rand to a dialectical mode of analysis can attest. (A more recent article of mine extends this to an alignment of Rand with a certain form of left-libertarian anarchism.)
I think that, like most thinkers, Rand embraces views that are sometimes at odds with her core values. I’d certainly count among these her views on Native Americans, homosexuality, and feminism. My coedited volume with Mimi Gladstein (Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand) includes contributions from those who take Rand rightfully to task for many of her anti-feminist views, while also arguing that her philosophy was fully consonant with a certain kind of individualist feminism.
As for Rand’s views on homosexuality, I’ve argued (in Ayn Rand, Homosexuality, and Human Liberation) that many post-Randian thinkers have attempted to correct for her blind spots. And I’ve also argued that Rand has important things to say about race and class in ways that would surprise both her acolytes and her critics (see, for example, my post on the ‘ominous parallels’ between CRT and Rand’s analysis of systemic racism).
Since I’ve plugged some of my own writings in this note, let me plug The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies—which would welcome thoughtful essays like yours into our pages.
