Part 2 of a Discussion of Peter Foster’s Why We Bite the Invisible Hand Chapter 5 “The Passion of Ayn Rand”
I am not sure how I ended up reading, We the Living, but I am really glad I did. It was the first novel Ayn Rand wrote but it was not widely read at the time. It was her third novel, The Fountainhead, that gained her fame.
I recommend reading it because it is such an interesting look at a real life event — what life was like after the Russian Revolution as communism took hold.
Plus, it is much shorter than the two novels she is most known for. At a little over 400 pages it is slightly more than half the length of The Fountainhead and a little over a third as long as Atlas Shrugged, which was nearly 1200 pages.
Rand has stated that this novel is the closest she will get to writing an autobiography. The protagonist, Kira, is the daughter of a bourgeois textile manufacturing company. It is 1922 so her father’s company has been nationalized. Their homes have been taken, too.
The part about the home I can still remember. First, the government moves in one family. Then another. And another. The original family is moving to fewer and fewer rooms in the house. The idea that the government could dictate such a thing stunned my young mind.
This was a Bolshevik policy, kommunalka, based on abolishing private property, punishing the bourgeoisie, and establishing communist thinking even in your private life.
Many of the details of Kira’s life matched Rand’s:
- Her father’s business was nationalized, though he was a pharmacist not a manufacturer.
- They fled St. Petersburg during the revolution and returned to the then renamed Petrograd years later, facing harsh circumstances often short of food.
- She attended college but was purged by the Party. Unlike Kira, she did get reinstated and graduated.
However, fortunately for Rand, she did manage to get a visa and left Russia in 1926.
Overall, the novel is a tale of the corruption of Communism. Realizing Rand lived through something like this makes it more clear how and why she developed the philosophy, Objectivism, that I wrote about in the previous blog.
Having lived through such an injustice is perhaps where she developed her uncompromising nature. Or, maybe it was just her personality. However, this history does make her rigidity easier to understand.
She hated collectivism, the foundation of Communism.
She hated the lies of Communism.
She hated the corruption inherent in the system.
Contrast all that to all her protagonists’ ideal to live in truth no matter the cost.
Foster notes how her life infused her work and philosophy.
Rand’s personal experience were also crucial to the development of her thought, as [Adam] Smith’s was to his. She was, as one biographer claimed, “the Russian radical.” She came from the city in which Lenin had seized power. She saw her father’s pharmacy business grabbed by the Communists as the “property of the people.” She witnessed university professors and fellow students hauled off, never to return. (p. 111)
In reaction to seeing the evils of a powerful state which justified its actions for the collective, she creates Objectivism, a philosophy that valued rational thinking, objective facts, and radical individualism. It is easy to see why she believed in limited government.
Rand realized — as Adam Smith had done — that any defense of minimal government and free enterprise as not merely efficient but good had to lie in its fit with human nature. However, seeing altruism — which she defined as irrational self-sacrifice — and mysticism as the great enemies of free markets and societies, Rand took the ultra-rational approach, rejoicing in that supposed “virtue of selfishness.” (p. 110)
Both Adam Smith and Rand promoted free enterprise, but they got there from very different positions.
Smith was a virtue ethicist, which means developing virtues such as courage, justice, temperance, prudence, and benevolence were the path to living a moral life.
While Smith is often cast these days as only caring about prudence, it seems that may fit Rand better with her views on radical individualism and selfishness.
Rand’s reliance on the supremacy of rationality would have seemed naive to Smith, who, like Hume, noted the limits of reason and the power of emotion. However, Smith and Rand were also asserting the value of freedom and free enterprise against very different opponents. (p. 111)
Foster notes that Smith was opposing mercantilism in his day while Rand was fighting against communism. Both are strong state governments, but Foster notes that mercantilism could be “pragmatic” while Rand faced a more formidable foe.
Rand’s enemy was Communism, a quasi religion that demanded adherence and sacrifice for ends that could not be questioned. (p. 111)
It is true Rand was fighting against an evil, uncompromising system, so it makes sense she, too, refused to compromise. You cannot compromise with evil without becoming evil.
Instead, Rand left the Soviet Union in hopes of finding a place where she could live in freedom and truth.
She had headed for what she thought was the land of freedom but found U.S. authorities in the 1930s describing the Soviet Union as a “noble experiment.” (p. 111)
In today’s language, that had to trigger her. No wonder she ruthlessly fought against the collectivism that had ruthlessly taken over her home country.
Reference: Foster, Peter, 2014. “The Passion of Ayn Rand” Chapter 5 of Why We Bite the Invisible Hand, Pleasaunce Press.
