Back in the 1970s I had a roommate who was really into Ayn Rand, so I read all of her books to see what she was about. I was appalled. If an anti-humanist existed, Rand was it. The only thing I liked about Objectivism was its atheism, which is pretty funny since Marxists, of which I am one, are also atheists. But everything else Rand wrote, with her main characters being portrayed as some kind of super beings who were "destined" to rule over the plebes of the world, was depressing.
In the TV series "Person of Interest" one of the main villain entities in this sci-Fi crime show is an all-seeing, all-knowing machine that wants to take over the world. Much of the dialogue of the villains comes straight out of Ayn Rand.
In her life, Rand was also a liar and hypocrite. She wrote about her husband, a failed artist, as though he was Rembrandt, which he wasn't. In fact, her actual husband was a wimp, not like her he-man John Galt. She was completely opposed to state health and social services but she duly signed up to receive Social Security nevertheless. Her family were Russian bourgeois before the Revolution and she never got over it. We see many like her in the corporate and tech universe, and it is disgusting. Eventually, even my one-time roomie stopped supporting her.
We can do the jitterbug with Ayn Rand all we want but plain and simple this is the social collapse that marks the end of empire. Biden, Trump, Netanyahu are just symptomatic of the larger and devastating social collapse after decades of moral and political corruption, along with social fragmentation.
In the early 1970s I read both books - it seemed topical - they were long books - they'd been mentioned by others - so I followed up on that - but I think I saw them only as "airport bookshop" volumes which could fill in hours while travelling. I never understood them as other than fiction (but I had a very limited experience upon which to draw, to tell the truth) and then I moved on - to Catch-22 and finally to literary classics (though that was where I had begun - with Dickens, especially in my early teens - and the Bible - and out of a fundamentalist Protestant sect which was in essence a kind of "Do as Jesus did" 'philosophy'! Definitely not selfish individualism. A rightwing cousin in the US who espouses thinking very much of that kind sees "socialism" as supping with the Devil. I wonder what he imagines socialism is - he uses it as a kind of pejorative. Brilliant piece of writing. Thank-you for making plain what I read so long ago!
Bibi and Trump fantasies aside, this reflection on Ayn Rand reminded me of a younger self.
"Who is John Galt?" I was intrigued and eagerly read ATLAS SHRUGGED and quickly became a convert—perhaps Rand's target audience is pubescent teen agers. I read the book by myself, so had no kind of feedback from any adults, no critical input. So, I carried John Galt to Stanford with me.
However, I was shaken to reality by learning of JFK's assassination. In one moment, old John was gone. Later, when I read Marx and Veblen in 'History of Western Civilization', I found philosophy that actually made sense.
"....There is one thing one ought to keep in mind as these kinds of people cite Rand and her books. In almost all cases they have not read Rand. It is a little like the market fundamentalists who have the habit of citing Adam Smith: Very few have actually read An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Smith’s famous 1776 work. This is obvious from the prevalent ignorance among these people of what Smith actually wrote. Read in an historical context, he was not an advocate of free markets in the way the fundamentalists among us assume. His name simply acquired, over years of citing-him-without-reading-him, a sort of totemic significance....."
Exactly!
I have always thought that abut Ayn Rand: it's some kind of cult in which people just say things, and they know nothing. Because if most people actually had READ her books, like "Atlas Shrugged", there is no way they would get through that rambling nonsense and actually venerate it. No way. They haven't read it. It's a cult of "Alan Greenspan said Ayn Rand said". Absolutely bizarre.....
The same is true of Adam Smith - it's just bizarre cherry picking. But surely anyone who took basic economics classess should have actually read "Wealth of Nations" cover to cover, and if so there is no way they should have this one-eyed viewed of what's there?
Well spotted: people dont read anymore. They just engage in uninformed meta conversation about nothing.
And think we have been in this situation for a few decades now since the TV era - its not just an internet era phenomenon....
What’s even worse about the misrepresentation of Adam Smith is that he considered himself first and foremost a moral philosopher, and he cherished as his greatest work “The Theory of Moral Sentiments.” As few of the neoliberal cultists who have actually read “The Wealth of Nations” may indeed be, the number who have read Smith’s avowed magnum opus approximates to zero.
Ok, I can see how you can make this connection — Ayn Rand — …..and I am also aware of claims that her thinking influenced Silicon Valley masters…..but could the toxic individualism that has won over our liberal societies be an outcome of this one individual? That is really a question.
Of course not, but Rand was a pernicious influence on a great many people, including the entire Chicago school of economics. She had help from people like the traitor Allen Dulles and his CIA, which incorporated the spy network of Nazi Reinhard Gehlen after the end of WWII, and who was responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, among others including Patrice Lumumba of the Congo.
I am not sure if I go as far back as Ancient Roman governance, but I would surely reread the beginning of liberal thought, where the idea of individual started.
I recall seeing a copy of “Atlas Shrugged” on my parents’ bookshelf when I was still a child. Thankfully I didn’t read it because it was so intimidatingly large, in contrast to Orwell’s “1984” which I (inappropriately, in my opinion) picked off their shelf as an 11 year old — THAT was plenty disturbing enough, but at least it wasn’t drivel.
My only other exposure to Rand were the “Students of Objectivism” at my university during undergraduate. They were such self-evident loons as to permanently inoculate me against any infection by Randian ideas for the rest of my life. I consider myself fortunate …
Hollywood created the 007/electronic zeitgeist, and we always thought WE were 007. But 007 became somebody else, and we turned into Goldfinger? Sow it, reap it? Even at the peak of "normalcy" [but not too far beyond McCarthy] for us to buy into this mythology there must have been a certain level of boredom in the land. Or lack of more basic things to do together?
I guess, though, if Larry Wilkerson is right, it was mostly the U.S. that wanted all this (Israeli expansion). There are probably too many variables I'm not aware of for ME to make some judgement re who provided the greater impetus. And if it comes to look like the U.S. and Israel have BOTH ended up James Bond the winner, then I suppose there's a chance we could both end up the loser.
While I understand the critique of Rand on a macro level revealing her and her ideological followers to be fraudulent, I am mystified by conflating individualism (read self reliant) as something malevolent. My experiences early in my life with groups, teams, clubs or assemblies of more than two people, did not end well for me. What invariably resulted was the formation of hierarchies that seemed to result in some degree of rank down. As a result I set a course for myself to make choices in my life (current age 70) to avoid large organized groups and putting ann emphases on resourcefulness and self reliance. Riddle me this. Why is individualism being used as a pejorative?
I'll second the sentiment that, in isolation, individualism - or "self-reliance", as you term it - is by no means a bad thing, and in fact the basis of any local community is just that: connections among a small group of individuals that ultimately got to rely on themselves. As it happens, the secluded "Atlantis" that Rand envisions for her any-man-or-woman-for-themselves utopia functions in much the same way - the (surviving) world as a village, if you will.
I, a middle-aged German, first read "Atlas Shrugged" during the years of the "Corona regime" - that's what those dreary years - years! - between 2020 and 2022 were officaciously called hereabouts, too, do look it up - and I couldn't help but observe that the dreary fiction she created of a mendacious, malicious, worse than nihilistic bureaucracy and academia that creates enough laws that it becomes impossible to follow them, thereby binding everyone to themselves, that sees the world driven against the wall could not even match up to the truth of the day.
Miss Rosenbaum - "Rand" - herself emphatically said as much of her characters in the book, that assuredly they were all too real, and in that time of emergency rule and the mad time of the eve of another great European war now I cannot help but agree that such rank evil can very much exist. What she fails to consequently observe is that even such "titans of industry" as she idolizes with someone like Rearden, another key character of the book, can very much go down that selfsame destructive route as we can observe today.
While I read "Atlas Shrugged" in English, its translation into German is quite fascinating: "Atlas wirft die Welt ab", Atlas throws off the world. To shrug is an act of indifference, and yes, that is definitely one of the monstrous consequences of Rosenbaum's philosophy followed to the letter: the abandonment of the world with all the misery that comes with it. In the face of that, making mercy and compassion the chief imperatives is very much a requirement to not drift off into despair.
Intriguing perspectives AW. I can't take away from you your experiences but I will argue with your definition. Or proffer a different take - that individualism for me equates with selfishness and that attaches itself to greed. I am more attuned to a sense of community - that what I am is a part of society and that I am better when the whole organism of society is a linked and positive thing - no one being disrespected. I grew up in a fundamentalist sect (long long ago abandoned) - a kind of focus on what Jesus would do - and so - at the same time unable to join sporting teams because most games were scheduled on the Sabbath. That largely preserved me from "pecking orders" and the hierarchies of teams to which you refer. Resourcefulness was better accomplished not alone but together. Individualism - it is a kind of pejorative - now that you raised the idea - nobody achieves anything great without others - supporting, encouraging, believing, financing, promoting, whatever the way. Individualism as I see it does not acknowledge the shoulders of those upon which it invariably stands. I am not arguing that conformity is the default position - we need those who see differently, who go against the grain as it were. I am just a smidgen older than you - so I see us contemporaries - maybe it has to go back to the kinds of societies within which we grew up - me in the southern hemisphere - on the edge of the Pacific - you?
Ayn Rand is an example of a scientist that tries to go against its own nature and reason. Not clever of her to presuppose a moral stance in which the “structure” of community—and what it stands for—still arises. For, I would ask her, “what stops me from decapitating you?” I bet the answer would invoke objective rights and a minimal state empowered to prevent the initiation of force; is it not, then, the emancipation of something that resembles community, for there is not only an agreement between two persons, but a village, or a town? Would she dare move the goalposts and presuppose community to be erected in whatever hierarchical position in reference to individualism? The past holds the answer to my question.
Not, I think, an accurate thinker.
As for concern over modern times, all there is for me to share—for the article was illuminating enough—is that there is a moment in future time where moral correction arrives. It comes both from nature, mainly concerning our behavior and the mental gymnastics we perform toward the living and toward ourselves—and one another.
Yes, Rand was high profile but she was much less important in real terms than many other thinkers, writers and teachers.
Francis Stonor Saunders and later Gabriel Rockhill's work on how since the very start of the Cold War the foundations (Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie) and not much later the CIA strove to achieve precisely this manipulation of the direction of intellectual thought and discussion is hugely enlightening and very important.
All the leading lights of first the Frankfurt and then the French Schools were on the Empire's payroll in some way or another. It was a deliberate campaign to capture the minds of Western youth and steer them away from anything remotely threatening to Power. You might say it started with Marcuse and Adorno, continued with Lacan, Foucault et al went through the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll era with Leary et al (with Tavistock in the UK) and supposedly came to end with Fukuyama, when even discussion of alternatives to capitalism and imperialism was deemed pointless.
They succeeded in creating Western Marxism and promoting it throughout the commentariat, especially academia and the media. It was robbed of all scientific analysis of the actual mechanisms of power. An anti-Marxism diverted into identity politics and individualism, into division and alienation rather than towards any real understanding of the functioning of neo-liberal capitalism, of class warfare and imperialism. But of course this was just the first of an unstoppable landslide of -isms...
Look at all the thinkers, writers and teachers who secure prominent positions and get promoted heavily now..They are all those that continue this very same diversion and subversion, all pied pipers (payed pipers) who happily lead the children under the hill.
It is time to recapture the debate and throw out all the junk their Theory Industry created then and continues to create now..(techno-consumerism, transhumanism, AI, singularity, accelerationism etc etc..)
I haven't read even a summary, but I had one of those teenage friends that got into Atlas Shrugged. Fifty seven years ago I did TRY to get into it but don't think I got through two chapters. Jumping around through these comments it looks like most of us weren't impressed enough back then to think about joining up. If you call it "luck," I'd say we were VERY lucky. Escaping a given amount of moral injury I guess.
It seems the gung ho capitalists dislike the people their system kicks to the curb, the latter per Rene Girard being scapegoats. Of course there is undifferentiation...too many in the system are like people in the Truman Show...for a huge number of them creativity disallowed, thus shoved away to their shadows. Sometimes I wonder if in a way there's undifferentiation [and competition] going on between Trump and his followers.
Patrick's piece here is so informing. Yes, we're led "into the spheres of psychology and pathology." Reading "Meeting the Shadow..." (Zweig & Abrams) pushes me a little further along the road John A. Sanford put me on. But I could stand some more light on some matters, folks! Wrote the following a couple days back and put it up on another blog. But for sure I could use some input from others on the true mechanics of all this. It went as follows...
I think Trump understands transferring social program money to ICE punishes types he's prejudiced against; plus by doing it, unlike with funding Medicaid, he creates a thing he can CONTROL himself. If he weren't in the White House, Americans would have to deal with their shadows themselves [more at least]; but now that he's there he's throwing back at them [at least his fans] their collective shadow (which follows from it was put on him prior in the process). So a wild conjecture would be that around 40% among us are not dealing with their individual shadows (not that the system hasn't stymied the rest of us a bit also in this endeavor). He thinks he knows what he's doing, but it seems to me unconscious elements are simply whipping up a "two minutes hate" [Orwell]. And it also seems plausible [I think like Bandy Lee says] that HIS OWN SHADOW is projected onto his followers [B.L. calls it narcissistic symbiosis]. To me it looks like a chain reaction doomed to escalate...until the duo of master-and-followers completely dominate the scapegoats, or until vice versa that, or until a third group enters the picture and gains dominance over the model-and-his/her-imitators.
The above was just an attempt I guess to speculate on how shadow "mechanics" meshes with Girard's ideas.
It's a dreary, rambling book. How it got published, I dont know. Shockingly poor. I'd imagine that of the few that have actually picked it up to read it, few have completed it. It's that bad.
Frankly, yeople should be forced to read it, so they don't end up pepetrating the illusion that the author was a genius or had any insights whatsoever.
Back in the 1970s I had a roommate who was really into Ayn Rand, so I read all of her books to see what she was about. I was appalled. If an anti-humanist existed, Rand was it. The only thing I liked about Objectivism was its atheism, which is pretty funny since Marxists, of which I am one, are also atheists. But everything else Rand wrote, with her main characters being portrayed as some kind of super beings who were "destined" to rule over the plebes of the world, was depressing.
In the TV series "Person of Interest" one of the main villain entities in this sci-Fi crime show is an all-seeing, all-knowing machine that wants to take over the world. Much of the dialogue of the villains comes straight out of Ayn Rand.
In her life, Rand was also a liar and hypocrite. She wrote about her husband, a failed artist, as though he was Rembrandt, which he wasn't. In fact, her actual husband was a wimp, not like her he-man John Galt. She was completely opposed to state health and social services but she duly signed up to receive Social Security nevertheless. Her family were Russian bourgeois before the Revolution and she never got over it. We see many like her in the corporate and tech universe, and it is disgusting. Eventually, even my one-time roomie stopped supporting her.
We can do the jitterbug with Ayn Rand all we want but plain and simple this is the social collapse that marks the end of empire. Biden, Trump, Netanyahu are just symptomatic of the larger and devastating social collapse after decades of moral and political corruption, along with social fragmentation.
It is the likes of of writers like Ayn Rand who helped create the social collapse after upholding the empire and its crimes for decades. Read Marx.
Education.
In the early 1970s I read both books - it seemed topical - they were long books - they'd been mentioned by others - so I followed up on that - but I think I saw them only as "airport bookshop" volumes which could fill in hours while travelling. I never understood them as other than fiction (but I had a very limited experience upon which to draw, to tell the truth) and then I moved on - to Catch-22 and finally to literary classics (though that was where I had begun - with Dickens, especially in my early teens - and the Bible - and out of a fundamentalist Protestant sect which was in essence a kind of "Do as Jesus did" 'philosophy'! Definitely not selfish individualism. A rightwing cousin in the US who espouses thinking very much of that kind sees "socialism" as supping with the Devil. I wonder what he imagines socialism is - he uses it as a kind of pejorative. Brilliant piece of writing. Thank-you for making plain what I read so long ago!
Bibi and Trump fantasies aside, this reflection on Ayn Rand reminded me of a younger self.
"Who is John Galt?" I was intrigued and eagerly read ATLAS SHRUGGED and quickly became a convert—perhaps Rand's target audience is pubescent teen agers. I read the book by myself, so had no kind of feedback from any adults, no critical input. So, I carried John Galt to Stanford with me.
However, I was shaken to reality by learning of JFK's assassination. In one moment, old John was gone. Later, when I read Marx and Veblen in 'History of Western Civilization', I found philosophy that actually made sense.
"....There is one thing one ought to keep in mind as these kinds of people cite Rand and her books. In almost all cases they have not read Rand. It is a little like the market fundamentalists who have the habit of citing Adam Smith: Very few have actually read An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Smith’s famous 1776 work. This is obvious from the prevalent ignorance among these people of what Smith actually wrote. Read in an historical context, he was not an advocate of free markets in the way the fundamentalists among us assume. His name simply acquired, over years of citing-him-without-reading-him, a sort of totemic significance....."
Exactly!
I have always thought that abut Ayn Rand: it's some kind of cult in which people just say things, and they know nothing. Because if most people actually had READ her books, like "Atlas Shrugged", there is no way they would get through that rambling nonsense and actually venerate it. No way. They haven't read it. It's a cult of "Alan Greenspan said Ayn Rand said". Absolutely bizarre.....
The same is true of Adam Smith - it's just bizarre cherry picking. But surely anyone who took basic economics classess should have actually read "Wealth of Nations" cover to cover, and if so there is no way they should have this one-eyed viewed of what's there?
Well spotted: people dont read anymore. They just engage in uninformed meta conversation about nothing.
And think we have been in this situation for a few decades now since the TV era - its not just an internet era phenomenon....
What’s even worse about the misrepresentation of Adam Smith is that he considered himself first and foremost a moral philosopher, and he cherished as his greatest work “The Theory of Moral Sentiments.” As few of the neoliberal cultists who have actually read “The Wealth of Nations” may indeed be, the number who have read Smith’s avowed magnum opus approximates to zero.
Ok, I can see how you can make this connection — Ayn Rand — …..and I am also aware of claims that her thinking influenced Silicon Valley masters…..but could the toxic individualism that has won over our liberal societies be an outcome of this one individual? That is really a question.
Of course not, but Rand was a pernicious influence on a great many people, including the entire Chicago school of economics. She had help from people like the traitor Allen Dulles and his CIA, which incorporated the spy network of Nazi Reinhard Gehlen after the end of WWII, and who was responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, among others including Patrice Lumumba of the Congo.
Ayn Rand's seed fell upon the fallow ground of Capitalism, remember.
Nor is her approach much different from Ancient Roman governance: every man for himself.
I am not sure if I go as far back as Ancient Roman governance, but I would surely reread the beginning of liberal thought, where the idea of individual started.
I think I am right in saying that at the end of her life, Ayn Rand received Social Security and died with NO friends.
She was a narcissist and when I read The Fountainhead at age 21 I threw it against the wall. I am not American and not easily manipulated.
I recall seeing a copy of “Atlas Shrugged” on my parents’ bookshelf when I was still a child. Thankfully I didn’t read it because it was so intimidatingly large, in contrast to Orwell’s “1984” which I (inappropriately, in my opinion) picked off their shelf as an 11 year old — THAT was plenty disturbing enough, but at least it wasn’t drivel.
My only other exposure to Rand were the “Students of Objectivism” at my university during undergraduate. They were such self-evident loons as to permanently inoculate me against any infection by Randian ideas for the rest of my life. I consider myself fortunate …
Concerning: the McKinseyfication of Europe.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-13/france-s-macron-raises-defense-budget-says-europe-under-threat
Terrifying: Heritage Foundation comes calling.
https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/politics/right-wing-push-to-dismantle-the-eu-heritage-foundations-private-workshop/
https://baptistnews.com/article/with-42-of-project-2025-enacted-heritage-foundation-turns-toward-europe/
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/m-le-mag/article/2025/06/22/the-heritage-foundation-sets-its-sights-on-europe_6742608_117.html#
The beepers.
Hollywood created the 007/electronic zeitgeist, and we always thought WE were 007. But 007 became somebody else, and we turned into Goldfinger? Sow it, reap it? Even at the peak of "normalcy" [but not too far beyond McCarthy] for us to buy into this mythology there must have been a certain level of boredom in the land. Or lack of more basic things to do together?
I guess, though, if Larry Wilkerson is right, it was mostly the U.S. that wanted all this (Israeli expansion). There are probably too many variables I'm not aware of for ME to make some judgement re who provided the greater impetus. And if it comes to look like the U.S. and Israel have BOTH ended up James Bond the winner, then I suppose there's a chance we could both end up the loser.
While I understand the critique of Rand on a macro level revealing her and her ideological followers to be fraudulent, I am mystified by conflating individualism (read self reliant) as something malevolent. My experiences early in my life with groups, teams, clubs or assemblies of more than two people, did not end well for me. What invariably resulted was the formation of hierarchies that seemed to result in some degree of rank down. As a result I set a course for myself to make choices in my life (current age 70) to avoid large organized groups and putting ann emphases on resourcefulness and self reliance. Riddle me this. Why is individualism being used as a pejorative?
I'll second the sentiment that, in isolation, individualism - or "self-reliance", as you term it - is by no means a bad thing, and in fact the basis of any local community is just that: connections among a small group of individuals that ultimately got to rely on themselves. As it happens, the secluded "Atlantis" that Rand envisions for her any-man-or-woman-for-themselves utopia functions in much the same way - the (surviving) world as a village, if you will.
I, a middle-aged German, first read "Atlas Shrugged" during the years of the "Corona regime" - that's what those dreary years - years! - between 2020 and 2022 were officaciously called hereabouts, too, do look it up - and I couldn't help but observe that the dreary fiction she created of a mendacious, malicious, worse than nihilistic bureaucracy and academia that creates enough laws that it becomes impossible to follow them, thereby binding everyone to themselves, that sees the world driven against the wall could not even match up to the truth of the day.
Miss Rosenbaum - "Rand" - herself emphatically said as much of her characters in the book, that assuredly they were all too real, and in that time of emergency rule and the mad time of the eve of another great European war now I cannot help but agree that such rank evil can very much exist. What she fails to consequently observe is that even such "titans of industry" as she idolizes with someone like Rearden, another key character of the book, can very much go down that selfsame destructive route as we can observe today.
While I read "Atlas Shrugged" in English, its translation into German is quite fascinating: "Atlas wirft die Welt ab", Atlas throws off the world. To shrug is an act of indifference, and yes, that is definitely one of the monstrous consequences of Rosenbaum's philosophy followed to the letter: the abandonment of the world with all the misery that comes with it. In the face of that, making mercy and compassion the chief imperatives is very much a requirement to not drift off into despair.
Intriguing perspectives AW. I can't take away from you your experiences but I will argue with your definition. Or proffer a different take - that individualism for me equates with selfishness and that attaches itself to greed. I am more attuned to a sense of community - that what I am is a part of society and that I am better when the whole organism of society is a linked and positive thing - no one being disrespected. I grew up in a fundamentalist sect (long long ago abandoned) - a kind of focus on what Jesus would do - and so - at the same time unable to join sporting teams because most games were scheduled on the Sabbath. That largely preserved me from "pecking orders" and the hierarchies of teams to which you refer. Resourcefulness was better accomplished not alone but together. Individualism - it is a kind of pejorative - now that you raised the idea - nobody achieves anything great without others - supporting, encouraging, believing, financing, promoting, whatever the way. Individualism as I see it does not acknowledge the shoulders of those upon which it invariably stands. I am not arguing that conformity is the default position - we need those who see differently, who go against the grain as it were. I am just a smidgen older than you - so I see us contemporaries - maybe it has to go back to the kinds of societies within which we grew up - me in the southern hemisphere - on the edge of the Pacific - you?
Good read.
Ayn Rand is an example of a scientist that tries to go against its own nature and reason. Not clever of her to presuppose a moral stance in which the “structure” of community—and what it stands for—still arises. For, I would ask her, “what stops me from decapitating you?” I bet the answer would invoke objective rights and a minimal state empowered to prevent the initiation of force; is it not, then, the emancipation of something that resembles community, for there is not only an agreement between two persons, but a village, or a town? Would she dare move the goalposts and presuppose community to be erected in whatever hierarchical position in reference to individualism? The past holds the answer to my question.
Not, I think, an accurate thinker.
As for concern over modern times, all there is for me to share—for the article was illuminating enough—is that there is a moment in future time where moral correction arrives. It comes both from nature, mainly concerning our behavior and the mental gymnastics we perform toward the living and toward ourselves—and one another.
Yes, Rand was high profile but she was much less important in real terms than many other thinkers, writers and teachers.
Francis Stonor Saunders and later Gabriel Rockhill's work on how since the very start of the Cold War the foundations (Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie) and not much later the CIA strove to achieve precisely this manipulation of the direction of intellectual thought and discussion is hugely enlightening and very important.
All the leading lights of first the Frankfurt and then the French Schools were on the Empire's payroll in some way or another. It was a deliberate campaign to capture the minds of Western youth and steer them away from anything remotely threatening to Power. You might say it started with Marcuse and Adorno, continued with Lacan, Foucault et al went through the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll era with Leary et al (with Tavistock in the UK) and supposedly came to end with Fukuyama, when even discussion of alternatives to capitalism and imperialism was deemed pointless.
They succeeded in creating Western Marxism and promoting it throughout the commentariat, especially academia and the media. It was robbed of all scientific analysis of the actual mechanisms of power. An anti-Marxism diverted into identity politics and individualism, into division and alienation rather than towards any real understanding of the functioning of neo-liberal capitalism, of class warfare and imperialism. But of course this was just the first of an unstoppable landslide of -isms...
Look at all the thinkers, writers and teachers who secure prominent positions and get promoted heavily now..They are all those that continue this very same diversion and subversion, all pied pipers (payed pipers) who happily lead the children under the hill.
It is time to recapture the debate and throw out all the junk their Theory Industry created then and continues to create now..(techno-consumerism, transhumanism, AI, singularity, accelerationism etc etc..)
I haven't read even a summary, but I had one of those teenage friends that got into Atlas Shrugged. Fifty seven years ago I did TRY to get into it but don't think I got through two chapters. Jumping around through these comments it looks like most of us weren't impressed enough back then to think about joining up. If you call it "luck," I'd say we were VERY lucky. Escaping a given amount of moral injury I guess.
It seems the gung ho capitalists dislike the people their system kicks to the curb, the latter per Rene Girard being scapegoats. Of course there is undifferentiation...too many in the system are like people in the Truman Show...for a huge number of them creativity disallowed, thus shoved away to their shadows. Sometimes I wonder if in a way there's undifferentiation [and competition] going on between Trump and his followers.
Patrick's piece here is so informing. Yes, we're led "into the spheres of psychology and pathology." Reading "Meeting the Shadow..." (Zweig & Abrams) pushes me a little further along the road John A. Sanford put me on. But I could stand some more light on some matters, folks! Wrote the following a couple days back and put it up on another blog. But for sure I could use some input from others on the true mechanics of all this. It went as follows...
I think Trump understands transferring social program money to ICE punishes types he's prejudiced against; plus by doing it, unlike with funding Medicaid, he creates a thing he can CONTROL himself. If he weren't in the White House, Americans would have to deal with their shadows themselves [more at least]; but now that he's there he's throwing back at them [at least his fans] their collective shadow (which follows from it was put on him prior in the process). So a wild conjecture would be that around 40% among us are not dealing with their individual shadows (not that the system hasn't stymied the rest of us a bit also in this endeavor). He thinks he knows what he's doing, but it seems to me unconscious elements are simply whipping up a "two minutes hate" [Orwell]. And it also seems plausible [I think like Bandy Lee says] that HIS OWN SHADOW is projected onto his followers [B.L. calls it narcissistic symbiosis]. To me it looks like a chain reaction doomed to escalate...until the duo of master-and-followers completely dominate the scapegoats, or until vice versa that, or until a third group enters the picture and gains dominance over the model-and-his/her-imitators.
The above was just an attempt I guess to speculate on how shadow "mechanics" meshes with Girard's ideas.
It's a dreary, rambling book. How it got published, I dont know. Shockingly poor. I'd imagine that of the few that have actually picked it up to read it, few have completed it. It's that bad.
Frankly, yeople should be forced to read it, so they don't end up pepetrating the illusion that the author was a genius or had any insights whatsoever.
After The Fountainhead I was not interested.