Date: Mon, 26 Jun 1995 13:52:58 -0700
From: JDevine-AT-lmumail.lmu.edu (James Devine)
Subject: Ayn Rand a fascist?


Again, this message didn't get posted for some reason.

Maybe this is naive, but what _is_ a "fascist"? Marxists see 
fascism as a societal phenomenon (a violent way to defend 
capitalism, when that system is in severe crisis), but that 
definition can't fit an individual or her ideology.  Wilhelm 
Reich (before he went off the deep end) saw fascism as a certain 
kind of "mass psychology." Maybe that perspective would help. Or 
what about Umberto Eco's definition in the recent NEW YORK REVIEW 
OF BOOKS? 

I doubt that Ayn Rand was a "fascist," but she sure was an 
ideological lunk-head, producing a "libertarian" distorted 
mirror-image of the stalinist "Marxism" that she learned. (She 
and her followers aped left sectarianism, too.)  And look at her 
attitude toward people with physical disabilities in THE 
FOUNTAINHEAD!  

Rand seems a petty-bourgeois version of Nietzsche, promoting 
Babbitt as Superman. Hardly a libertarian, either. Her 
"libertarianism" promotes the liberty of corporations and capital 
markets. 

for socialism from below, 

Jim Devine   jdevine-AT-lmumail.lmu.edu
"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and 
let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.


     --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

     ------------------