Volume 6, No. 1 – Fall 2004 (Issue #11)
Centenary Symposium, Part I: Ayn Rand: Literary and Cultural Impact
A discussion of Ayn Rand’s literary and cultural impact.
This symposium is the first of two commemorating the centenary of Ayn Rand’s birth.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE ILLUSTRATED RAND, pp. 1-20
This article surveys the exponential increase in Rand references in scholarly and popular sources to illustrate her cultural ascendancy as an iconic figure. Special attention is paid to Rand’s impact on popular literature, television, cartoons, and illustrated media, including comics. Rand’s own involvement in illustrated presentations of her ideas is explored, as is her influence on such comic artists as Steve Ditko, Frank Miller, and others. Nathaniel Branden’s insights on the role of comics in projecting heroic values are also addressed.
PASSING THE TORCH, pp. 21-65
Holzer revisits her personal and professional relationship with literary mentor, Ayn Rand, as she reassesses the impact Rand had on her fiction-writing career. Demonstrating how Rand had a profound influence both on what she has written and how she has written it, Holzer gives concrete reality to her early experiences with Rand, turning provocative anecdotes and private conversations into a multifaceted series of revelations: part memoir, part fiction writer’s guide, part tribute.
COMPLETING RAND’S LITERARY THEORY, pp. 67-89
Ayn Rand’s literary theory is capable of significant development and extension. Particularly worthy of study are relationships between literary principles and literary practices, such as the creation of implicit or explicit patterns of meaning, the use of common experience and common sense, the provision of cognitive and emotional transformation, the application of control devices to guide readers’ understanding, and the assessment of literature in respect to standards of truth and taste.
AYN RAND’S INFLUENCE ON AMERICAN POPULAR FICTION, pp. 91-144
Though an examination of its history lends credence to C. S. Lewis’ s view that the concept “popular fiction” points more to a distinction among types of readers than among types of stories, it might still be argued both that Ayn Rand’s own fiction shares many of the characteristics associated with “popular fiction” and that she has exercised a substantial influence on a surprisingly diverse group of American writers of “popular fiction,” ranging from former acolytes like Kay Nolte Smith and Erika Holzer to Gene Roddenberry, Ira Levin, Terry Goodkind, and other contemporary purveyors of science fiction and crime fiction.
INTEGRATING MIND AND BODY, pp. 145-52
Objectivism holds that there is no mind-body dichotomy. Unfortunately, many fitness enthusiasts fail to adopt a rational fitness program. This article highlights champion bodybuilder Mike Mentzer’s application of Objectivist principles to integrating mind and body. In his books, Ayn Rand’s influence on Mentzer’s understanding of the science of bodybuilding is clear and incontrovertible. Since Mentzer became an outspoken advocate of Rand’s philosophy in the early 1990s, publishing books and numerous articles in several bodybuilding magazines, his impact in the health fitness world has been immeasurable.
THE POETICS OF ADMIRATION: AYN RAND AND THE ART OF HEROIC FICTION, pp. 153-83
Minsaas explores the role admiration plays in Rand’s literary theory. Seeing admiration as the emotional core of what Rand refers to as a moral sense of life, she first discusses the nature of admiration, focusing on the interrelation between its moral and aesthetic aspects. She then examines its specific significance in Rand’s heroic poetics, both in the structure of and in the response to heroic fiction. Finally, she points out certain problems pertaining to Rand’s rather partisan preference for heroic art, especially the danger of didacticism and Rand’s tendency to dismiss the value of other genres, such as tragedy.
THE RUSSIAN CULTURAL CONNECTION: ALEXANDER ETKIND ON AYN RAND, pp. 185-93
A 2001 book by Russian scholar Alexander Etkind, Tolkovaniye puteshestviy: Rossiya i Amerika v travelogakh i intertekstakh (The Interpretation of Travels: Russia and America in Travelogues and Intertexts), examines cross-cultural influences between Russia and America. One chapter is a study of two refugees from totalitarian regimes who became prominent in American intellectual life: Ayn Rand and Hannah Arendt. One of the first analyses of Rand’s work to appear in Russian literary criticism, it briefly examines Rand’s principal novels and a summary of her philosophy with a special focus on the influence of her Soviet background on her thought.
THE RUSSIAN SUBTEXT OF ATLAS SHRUGGED AND THE FOUNTAINHEAD, pp. 195-225
Ayn Rand projected her experiences in Russia onto an American canvas. The collapse of the economy described in Atlas Shrugged actually happened in Russia between 1916 and 1921. The economic and political policies of the government in the novel resemble those of the Bolsheviks in the first decade of their rule. The protagonists of Atlas Shrugged reject Russian values and ideals, especially the mystique of suffering and self-sacrifice. The subtext of The Fountainhead is the intellectual and cultural milieu of the 1920s, the paradigmatic role of architecture, and the spiritual collectivism of prominent Christian opponents of “materialistic” Bolshevism.
DISCUSSION
REPLY TO KIRSTI MINSAAS: TOWARD AN AMERICAN RENAISSANCE, pp. 227-36
York responds to Kirsti Minsaas’s Fall 2003 review of her book, From The Fountainhead To The Future and Other Essays on Art and Excellence, and offers some thoughts on art, Romanticism and heroism. She also calls for a contemporary American Paideia based on the ancient Greek model in order to establish a foundation from which to chart a true renaissance for the United States, which, she claims, will be led by philosophy and the fine arts.
CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES
Stephen Cox is a Professor of Literature and Director of the Humanities Program at the University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, California 92093-0306. He is the author, most recently, of The Woman and the Dynamo: Isabel Paterson and the Idea of America (Transaction Publishers).
Erika Holzer, Juris Doctor, New York University Law School, was (with her husband) Ayn Rand’s lawyer in the mid- to late-60s. She and her husband co-produced and she co-scripted (with Duncan Scott) the 1941 Italian movie Noi Vivi/Adio Kira, based on Rand’s We the Living. A fulltime novelist/essayist, Holzer’s fiction includes Double Crossing (Putnam), human-rights espionage, and Eye for an Eye (St. Martin’s Press), vigilante “justice” — also a Paramount Pictures feature film (director: John Schlesinger; starring Kiefer Sutherland and Sally Field). Non-fiction books, co-authored with her husband, include: “Aid and Comfort”: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam (McFarland) and Fake Warriors (Xlibris).
Kirsti Minsaas, University of Oslo, Department of British and American Studies, P. O. Box 1003 Blindern, 0315 Oslo, Norway, is a senior lecturer in English literature at the University of Oslo. Her dissertation topic was on the role of Aristotelian catharsis in Shakespearean tragedy, and she is currently working on a project on the “exemplary hero” in English literature from 1590 to 1820. She has also lectured extensively on Ayn Rand’s fiction, both in Europe and in the United States.
Jeff Riggenbach is the author of In Praise of Decadence (Prometheus, 1998). He has been a practicing critic of imaginative literature since 1972, publishing widely in newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Jose Mercury News, Berkeley Monthly, Libertarian Review, Reason, and Inquiry. From 1996 to 2000, he taught courses in philosophy, music appreciation, popular culture, and writing at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco.
Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal is a Professor of History, Fordham University, Bronx, New York 10458. She received her Ph.D. in History at the University of California at Berkeley in 1970. She teaches Russian/Soviet History and Intellectual History of Europe, and has published widely on Russian intellectual and cultural history from the late nineteenth century to the present. She has edited anthologies such as Nietzsche in Russia (Princeton University Press) and Nietzsche and Soviet Culture: Ally and Adversary (Cambridge University Press), and is the author of New Myth, New World: From Nietzsche to Stalinism (Pennsylvania State University Press).
Chris Matthew Sciabarra received his Ph.D., with distinction, in political theory, philosophy, and methodology from New York University. He is the author of the “Dialectics and Liberty Trilogy,” which includes Marx, Hayek, and Utopia (State University of New York Press, 1995), Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), and Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000). He is also coeditor, with Mimi Reisel Gladstein, of Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), and a founding coeditor of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (1999–present). He has written over a dozen encyclopedia entries dealing with Objectivism and libertarianism, given over 50 interviews published in such periodicals as The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Village Voice, and The Economist, and published over 150 essays, which have appeared in publications as diverse as Critical Review, Reason Papers, Liberty, Reason, The New York Daily News, Film Score Monthly, Jazz Times, Just Jazz Guitar, and Billboard.
Matthew Stoloff holds a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Cincinnati, a Masters in Labor Relations and Human Resources from the School of Labor and Industrial Relations at Michigan State University, and a Masters in Criminal Justice from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. His current research interests include labor law, corporate campaigns, and corporate crimes. He authors an online guide to Rand scholarship.
Alexandra York is an internationally published author of books (one a Book of the Month Club selection), magazine and newspaper articles, book and movie reviews, poetry and essays. Published by Macmillan, McGraw-Hill, Ballentine, Berkley-Jove, and Van Nostrand, she has also written and hosted TV and network radio shows. Her work has appeared in publications as varied as Reader’s Digest, Vogue, USA Today, The Intellectual Activist and Vital Speeches of the Day. She is former editor of ART Ideas, an arts and cultural magazine published by American Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century (ART), a New York-based nonprofit foundation of which she is the founding president.
Cathy Young was born in Moscow, Russia in 1963 and emigrated to the United States in 1980. She graduated from Rutgers University in 1988 with a degree in English. After writing a weekly op-ed column for The Detroit News from 1993 to 2000, she became a weekly columnist for The Boston Globe. She is also a columnist for Reason magazine and a research associate with the Cato Institute.
Volume 6, No. 2 – Spring 2005 (Issue #12)
Centenary Symposium, Part II: Ayn Rand Among The Austrians
A discussion of Ayn Rand’s relationship to and engagement with the Austrian school of economics.
This symposium is the second of two commemorating the centenary of Ayn Rand’s birth.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: AYN RAND AMONG THE AUSTRIANS, pp. 241-50
CHRIS MATTHEW SCIABARRA AND LARRY J. SECHREST
This article surveys Rand’s relationship to key thinkers in the Austrian school of economics, including Ludwig von Mises, Murray N. Rothbard, and F. A. Hayek. Austrian theory informs the writings of Rand and her early associates (e.g., Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, and George Reisman) on topics ranging from monopoly to business cycles. Some post-Randian thinkers (e.g., Richard Salsman), however, have repudiated many of these insights, thus constituting a movement away from the historically close relationship between Objectivism and Austrianism. This symposium explores the distinction between these approaches and the possibilities for a shared vision.
AYN RAND AND LUDWIG VON MISES, pp. 251-58
Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises share the distinction of being the leading advocates of laissez-faire capitalism in the twentieth century, and, indeed, in any century. Their ideas are complementary and mutually reinforcing. The differences that exist between them are essentially minor and superficial. The serious and comprehensive study of both authors is essential to the educated advocacy of capitalism.
AYN RAND AND AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS: TWO PEAS IN A POD, pp. 259-69
Ayn Rand highly recommended the economic writings of the Austrian school, particularly those of Ludwig von Mises. At least insofar as regards antitrust, money, and government, for the most part, paradoxically, the subjectivist Austrians, and the objectivist Randians, are as two peas in a pod. On the first two of these three, moreover, Rand and Murray Rothbard are on similar sides of the argument, at least vis-a-vis Mises and F. A. Hayek. With regard to the third, there is disagreement amongst the Austrians, and this is matched by ambivalence on the part of Rand herself.
ALAN GREENSPAN: RAND, REPUBLICANS, AND AUSTRIAN CRITICS, pp. 271-97
This paper has two principal components. First, it provides a sketch of Alan Greenspan’s life, with emphasis on his attraction to Objectivism in the 1960s and his “public service” since 1974. This sketch is based primarily on three recent biographies of Greenspan — books by Bob Woodward, Jerome Tuccille, and Justin Martin — which are themselves reviewed. Second, it explains why Austrian business cycle theory is crucial to a proper assessment of Greenspan’s performance as head of the Federal Reserve. The paper concludes that that performance has been significantly overrated by almost everyone except Austrian economists.
PRAXEOLOGY: WHO NEEDS IT, pp. 299-316
Despite her admiration for the economic theories of Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand rejects Mises’s central concept of “praxeology,” the science of human action. Yet the features of Misesian praxeology that Rand finds most objectionable — its aprioristic methodology, its value-subjectivism, and its claims about motivational psychology — can be reinterpreted in ways that make them congenial to Rand’s philosophical principles while still preserving the essential points that Mises wishes to make.
SUBJECTIVISM, INTRINISICISM, APRIORISM: RAND AMONG THE AUSTRIANS? pp. 317-35
With its features of subjectivism, intrinsicism and apriorism, how could one possibly integrate Austrian economics with Ayn Rand’s Objectivism? This paper does not argue that it is possible; rather, it sets out similarities on some central tenets, and suggests means to resolve the apparent obstacles. Possible directions for future thought are outlined with an emphasis on the works of Carl Menger, Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk, and others.
MENGER, MISES, RAND, AND BEYOND, pp. 337-74
By combining and synthesizing elements found in Austrian economics, Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, and the closely related philosophy of human flourishing that originated with Aristotle, we have the potential to reframe the argument for a free society into a consistent reality-based whole whose integrated sum of knowledge and explanatory power is greater than that of its parts. The Austrian value-free praxeological defense of capitalism and the moral arguments of Rand, Aristotle, and the neo-Aristotelians can be brought together, resulting in a powerful, emergent libertarian synthesis of great promise.
TWO WORLDS AT ONCE: RAND, HAYEK, AND THE ETHICS OF THE MICRO- AND MACRO-COSMOS, pp. 375-403
Although both Rand and Hayek supported capitalism, their ethical systems were distinctly different. This paper explores these differences and how they apply to the institution of the family. It concludes that Rand’s ethical system matches very well with what Hayek sees as necessary in the “Great Society” of the macro-cosmos, but that our understanding of the institution of the family seems better suited to a more altruistic ethical code. The challenge for a Hayekian ethics that pays attention to institutional contexts is how to ensure that the complex process of making those distinctions is learned as children pass into adulthood.
OUR UNETHICAL CONSTITUTION, pp. 405-44
In this article, the political ethics of Ayn Rand and Austrian economist Murray N. Rothbard are compared. Rand and Rothbard championed nearly identical fundamental principles of political ethics – chiefly, the right of every person to control his own life. Both Rand and Rothbard argued that the American system of government was originally intended to be grounded in this individual rights ethic. However, examination of historical and contextual factors demonstrates that the U.S. Constitution fails to embody the political ethics espoused by Rand and Rothbard.
TEACHING ECONOMICS THROUGH AYN RAND: HOW THE ECONOMY IS LIKE A NOVEL AND HOW THE NOVEL CAN TEACH US ABOUT ECONOMICS, pp. 445-65
The effective teaching of the principles of economics requires both a clear presentation of the logic of economic argumentation and the evidence of economic forces at work in the real economy. One of the most effective ways to communicate these principles is through the telling of a memorable story. The skillful telling of economic history is one way to accomplish this, but so is the use of literature. Ayn Rand’s novels (especially Atlas Shrugged) are a prime example of how an economically literate author can construct meaningful and memorable stories that illuminate the principles of economics and political economy.
DISCUSSION
REPLY TO WILLIAM THOMAS: AN ECONOMIST RESPONDS, pp. 467-71
Yeager thanks William Thomas for a generally favorable review of his Ethics as Social Science, but he does reply to a not-quite-explicit charge of vague, wishy-washy, middle-of-the-roadism.
REJOINDER TO LELAND B. YEAGER: CLARITY AND THE STANDARD OF ETHICS, pp. 473-76
Thomas clarifies his basic criticism of Yeager’s book, Ethics as Social Science, emphasizing his concern about lack of clarity of argument rather than style. Thomas discusses the role of ethical standards in contextual moral reasoning and defends Rand’s rejection of ethical altruism against criticisms that it represents a “corner solution” or an unrealistic slippery-slope argument.
CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES
Walter Block is the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair in Economics at Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana 70118. He is also Adjunct Scholar at the Mises Institute and at the Hoover Institution. He has previously taught at the University of Central Arkansas, Holy Cross College, Baruch (C.U.N.Y.) and Rutgers Universities, and has worked in various research capacities for the Fraser Institute, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Tax Foundation, The Financial Post, and Business Week magazine. Having earned his Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University, he has published numerous popular and scholarly articles on economics. An economic commentator on national television and radio, he lectures widely on public policy issues to university students, service, professional and religious organizations. He is the editor and the author of seven more (the most famous of which is Defending the Undefendable). He has served as editor for The Journal of Labor Economics, Cultural Dynamics, The Review of Austrian Economics, The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, The Journal of Accounting, Ethics and Public Policy and The Journal of Libertarian Studies. He was converted to libertarianism by Nathaniel Branden and Ayn Rand, whom he first met when the latter lectured at Brooklyn College, where he was an undergraduate.
Peter J. Boettke is the Director of Graduate Studies (Ph.D. Program) and Deputy Director of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy at George Mason University, Professor of Economics, George Mason University, MSN 3G4, Fairfax, VA 22030. He is the editor of The Review of Austrian Economics.
Steven Horwitz is an Associate Dean of the First Year and Professor of Economics, St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York 13617. He is the author of two books, Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective (Routledge, 2000) and Monetary Evolution, Free Banking, and Economic Order (Westview, 1992). He has written extensively on Austrian economics, Hayekian political economy, monetary theory and history, and macroeconomics. His work has been published in professional journals such as History of Political Economy, Southern Economic Journal, The Review of Austrian Economics. Horwitz currently serves as the book review editor of The Review of Austrian Economics and is past president of the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics.
Candice E. Jackson, Esq., Jackson & Shoemaker, Inc., A Professional Law Corporation, 1411 Fifth Street, Suite 400, Santa Monica, California 90401, is an attorney in southern California. After serving as Litigation Counsel in the California office of Judicial Watch, Inc., she began her own law practice, Jackson & Shoemaker. She also co-authors articles with economist William L. Anderson critiquing the federal criminal justice system. Their articles have appeared in The Independent Review, Reason magazine, and The Freeman. Her forthcoming book from World Ahead Publishing, Inc. explores the connection between former President Clinton’s leftist ideology and his rampant mistreatment of women (expected Spring 2005).
Richard C. B. Johnsson earned his Ph.D. in economics 2003 from University of Uppsala, Sweden. His address is: Katarina Jagellonikas väg 14, SE-193 31 Sigtuna, Sweden. He has been published in top mainstream economics journals, while secretly pursuing his interest in political and economic freedom. He has been working as a researcher at The Ratio Institute, Stockholm, Sweden during 2003-2004 and is currently contemplating the historical evidence of extraterritorial constitutions, personal law, and panarchy as a freelance reader.
Roderick T. Long is an Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, 6080 Haley Center, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama 36849, A.B. Harvard 1985, Ph.D. Cornell 1992. He is the author of Reason and Value: Aristotle versus Rand (The Objectivist Center, 2000) and Wittgenstein, Austrian Economics, and the Logic of Action: Praxeological Investigations (Routledge, 2006). He edits The Journal of Libertarian Studies; runs a fledgling think tank, the Molinari Institute; blogs at Austro-Athenian Empire; and is currently engaged in translating some of the works of Gustave de Molinari (1819-1912), the originator of free-market anarchism.
George Reisman is a Professor of Economics at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management, 6100 Center Drive, Los Angeles, California 90045. He is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Jameson Books) and The Government Against the Economy (Jameson Books). He received his doctorate under Ludwig von Mises and is the translator of Mises’s Epistemological Problems of Economics (Van Nostrand/Mises Institute).
Chris Matthew Sciabarra received his Ph.D., with distinction, in political theory, philosophy, and methodology from New York University. He is the author of the “Dialectics and Liberty Trilogy,” which includes Marx, Hayek, and Utopia (State University of New York Press, 1995), Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), and Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000). He is also coeditor, with Mimi Reisel Gladstein, of Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), and a founding coeditor of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (1999–present). He has written over a dozen encyclopedia entries dealing with Objectivism and libertarianism, given over 50 interviews published in such periodicals as The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Village Voice, and The Economist, and published over 150 essays, which have appeared in publications as diverse as Critical Review, Reason Papers, Liberty, Reason, The New York Daily News, Film Score Monthly, Jazz Times, Just Jazz Guitar, and Billboard.
Larry J. Sechrest is a Professor of Economics and Director of the Free Enterprise Institute, Sul Ross State University, Alpine, Texas 79832. He is the author of Free Banking: Theory, History, and a Laissez-Faire Model (Quorum Books). His research interests include free banking, business cycles, history of economic thought, economic history, maritime history, law and economics, and the philosophical foundations of economics.
William Thomas is the Director of Programs, The Objectivist Center, 11 Raymond Avenue, Suite 31, Poughkeepsie, New York, 12603. He earned an M.A. in economics from the University of Michigan (1991), where he taught the economic history of the United States and China. He is the editor of the Objectivist Studies series of philosophical monographs, and is the editor of The Literary Art of Ayn Rand (2005). His essays on topics in literature, politics, ethics, and epistemology have appeared in publications such as Ideas on Liberty, The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, and Navigator, where he is a contributing editor. His essay “Ayn Rand: Radical for Capitalism” was recently published in History of American Political Thought, Frost and Sikkenga, eds. (2003).
Leland B. Yeager, Department of Economics, College of Business, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama 36849-5242, is Paul Goodloe McIntire Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Virginia and Ludwig von Mises Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Economics at Auburn University. His most recent book is Ethics as Social Science: The Moral Philosophy of Social Cooperation (Edward Elgar, 2001).
Edward W. Younkins, Professor, Department of Business, Wheeling Jesuit University, 316 Washington Avenue, Wheeling, West Virginia, 26003, is the author of numerous articles in accounting and business journals. In addition, his many free-market-oriented articles and reviews have appeared in a variety of publications. He is the author of Capitalism and Commerce: Conceptual Foundations of Free Enterprise (Lexington Books, 2002). He also edited a collection of Michael Novak’s articles and essays entitled Three in One: Essays on Democratic Capitalism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001). His newest book, Philosophers of Capitalism: Menger, Mises, Rand, and Beyond will be published by Lexington Books in 2005.
The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 