International Journal of Social Economics

Ayn Rand versus Karl Marx

Tibor R. Machan,
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 International
Journal of Social
Economics
21,2/3/4
54
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International Journal of Social
Economics, Vol. 21 Nos. 2/3/4,
1994, pp. 54-67. © MCB
University Press, 0306-8293
Ayn Rand versus
Karl Marx
Tibor R. Machan
Auburn University, Alabama, USA
A unique feature of Ayn Rand’s antipathy towards Communism is that she
never considered Marx’s vision in the slightest degree appealing, unlike so
many who have ultimately found fault with it. Rand wrote several novels and
philosophical and political essays throughout her life outside the walls of
academe, only recently gaining some recognition from within those walls. She
was, most importantly, an unabashed champion of individualist capitalism,
indeed, the only modern defender of that system of political economy on
explicitly moral grounds. One may even safely suggest that Rand’s project is
best construed as establishing a rapprochement between the ancient and the
modern philosophical world views, that is, showing that the modern
achievements in science do not defeat the Greek conception of human nature
involving a telos or specific objective, namely, to live rationally[1].
Perhaps before anything else we should identify what few matters unite Rand
and Marx. Both were friends of science and technology. Both, also, saw
productive work as an essential element of the life of a human being. But Rand
saw this fact from the viewpoint of someone who rejected metaphysical
materialism and identified the faculty of reason as having the central role in
guiding human conduct, while Marx believed that productivity is prompted by
the environment in which we live – specifically the tools of production, which
shape consciousness. So Rand saw the Marxian version as turning the truth on
its head, ascribing achievement not to persons, in the last analysis, but to
impersonal forces in nature[2].
The most important element of Marxism to remember for purposes of
understanding Ayn Rand’s anti-Communism is Marx’s claim that “The human
essence is the true collectivity of man” (McLellan, 1970, p. 126). Even earlier
than this remark from the 1844 Manuscripts is Marx’s frank exclamation, in his
high school departure essay, that the greatest moral merit should befall those
who devote themselves to humanity, not to any artistic, scientific or similar
specialized achievement:
When we have chosen the vocation in which we can contribute most to humanity, burdens
cannot bend us because they are sacrifices for all. Then we experience no meager, limited
egoistic joy, but our happiness belongs to millions, our deeds live on quietly but eternally
effective, and glowing tears of noble men will fall on our ashes (Easton and Guddat, 1967,
p. 39)[3].
The author wishes to thank Mark Turiano and David Kelley for their criticisms of a previous
draft of this article.
 Marxian humanism is through and through collectivist. Human beings are not Ayn Rand
just essentially, à la Aristotle, but exclusively social – they are specie beings. versus
Their very identity is being part of the larger “organic whole” of humanity Karl Marx
(Marx, 1939-41). While, no doubt – as some will readily point out – Marx hoped
for and predicted the ultimate emancipation of the human individual[4], the new
human being for Marx was to be a collective being, one who lived through and
for humanity itself, not for his own welfare or excellence. 55
It is to this Marxism that Rand was thoroughly opposed. It was to Marxism
as an implicit and repugnant value theory and morality that Rand’s
Objectivism may be compared with profit. There might be other candidates –
for example, Marx’s economic determinism and scientism; his historicism and
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amoralism; his socialism and Communism. But these are not the most basic
aspects of Marxism with which Rand found fault. Rand could appreciate
someone who is intent on solving problems, even if those problems did not get
solved in the last analysis. What was unforgivable was Marx’s deep-seated,
reactionary, albeit often only implicit, altruism and collectivist politics. It is
when the individual human being got short shrifted that Rand found the theory
beyond redemption[5].
And clearly Marx demeaned the human individual when he projected that a
good society would consist of members who have renounced their own
happiness in favour of the collective welfare, their individuality in favour of
their specie being, their love of self for the love of humanity as a sort of concrete
universal to the welfare of which individuals may be sacrificed.
Of course, it may be opposed to the above that Marx, as he understood human
nature, was a champion of the human individual, rightly understood. He had
hoped for the human individual’s emancipation or development into a fully
mature version of what he is now. The specie being – or the political nature – of
every person is what, ever since Aristotle pointed it out, had been thought to be
part of human nature. In other words, one could claim that Marx simply
modernized or rendered scientifically comprehensible the ancient Greek notion
that man is a political, communal being.
But there are problems with this suggestion. For Marx, the “scientific”
socialist, the development of the social-political nature of the human species, is
a historical process and ultimate necessity[6]. For Aristotle that development is
in large measure an individual accomplishment (Hardie, 1965). The social
nature of any person would have to be realized as a matter of right reason,
choice, virtue. It is not something that will come about in time, as the
development of fruit-bearing comes about for a fruit tree or the development of
old age comes about for each of us. Moreover, the social nature of a human being
is to be realized for the sake of that human being, for his or her eudemonia or
happiness in life, not for the sake of humanity at large[7].
Because of the economic and historical determinism in Marx’s philosophy, the
role of individuality in human social and political life has to be seen as minimal
(Acton, 1967).
 International Marx contrasted his humanism to the atomic individualism that he linked to
Journal of Social the classical liberal tradition of political economy[8]. This neo-Hobbesian
Economics conception of the human individual was deterministic and embraced a purely
subjective theory of values. In our own time, too, this is the most prominently
21,2/3/4 advanced and focused on defence of the kind of society that is the most
welcoming host to capitalist economic arrangements – e.g. free trade, freedom
56 of contract, competition, in short, laissez-faire economics[9].
It is also notable that both the classical liberal supporters and the Marxist
critics of capitalist society embraced, implicitly at least, utilitarianism. Adam
Smith, for example, did not defend the free market system because it expressed
the importance of the individual and his or her prospect for happiness. Mill,
although not oblivious to individual concerns, defended liberalism on grounds
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that it was the most effective way to advance the greatest happiness of the
greatest number. Even Herbert Spencer argued for a kind of rational
utilitarianism. And since the heyday of classical liberal ideas this basic element
of the support for its tenets has not changed significantly. Ludwig von Mises
advanced a subjective theory of value; F.A. Hayek was a sort of Humean
utilitarian, who stressed how the free marketplace would be best at generating
progress; Milton Friedman is essentially a neoclassical value subjectivist or
sceptic who defends liberty because he prefers it and considers it most
supportive of political freedom; and Robert Nozick, though in some respects a
Kantian, argued for his version of libertarianism on grounds that a system of
Lockean rights is most congruent with our moral intuitions that favour
personal autonomy and with the pursuit of essentially subjective personal
goals[10].
None but Ayn Rand has ever defended the free market system on grounds
that it is an essential feature of a just system of community life, one that is
suitable to the achievement of the objectively understandable and specifiable
happiness of the human individual. Rand was an out and out ethical egoist, not
a subjectivist or hedonist or psychological egoist. It is this insistence on her part
that what counts for most in life is one’s own happiness as a human individual
– not some kind of general welfare or public interest or global human progress
or service to others – that makes her a distinct and unique opponent of
Marxism.
It is, of course, not all that interesting to make note of Rand’s distinctive point
of view without considering whether it has merit. One can assert all sorts of
propositions against Karl Marx, Jesus Christ or anyone else but fail to come up
with sufficient support, not to mention a better alternative, to make it worth
considering. Rand’s radicalism – in that she is perhaps the only major author in
the modern age who does defend a robust ethical egoism – would be just an
oddity if it had little more going for it besides her fierce and passionately
utilized linguistic powers. Her novels[11] are eloquent and forceful affirmations
of her form of individualism, no doubt. They have found a resonance with
millions of readers and continue to do so even while many authors who have
been critically acclaimed have fallen by the wayside[12].
 But there is much more to her ideas than just their radical voice. We will see Ayn Rand
in a moment that they have considerable philosophical merit. But first we need versus
to mention some aspects of the history of Rand’s anti-Communism, one that Karl Marx
would itself make a fascinating topic of a book-length treatment[13].
We the Living is the one novel that has Rand speaking directly about the
Soviet manifestation of Communism. It is not deeply philosophical, although it
touches on the crucial features of Marxian social, economic and political 57
thought. Interestingly, one of the most appealing characters in the work begins
as a committed, loyal Communist whose virtue of honesty and sincerity Rand
identifies in the novel and builds upon in her plot. Yet the main character, Kira,
is a fierce and natural individualist who speaks some of the early renditions of
Ayn Rand’s ethics and politics. It is remarkable that this book, published in 1936
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when Rand was only a young woman struggling with the English language as
well as to establish herself as a novelist, gained Rand nothing but scorn and
derision in the Western literary world[14]. And even to date no one within the
prominent literary establishment has said anything about how wrong it was to
have paid Rand no attention when she was delineating, in fictional form, the
horrors that are now commonly acknowledged about the former Soviet Union.
It would be too much to ask, one may suppose, to have some member of the
cultural élite express genuine regret about the lack of respect accorded Rand
when nearly everyone at that echelon of society was beaming with enthusiasm
about the New World.
It is worth recalling here, also, that on the literary front Rand was unique in
a very specific respect. If one contrasts her with the two major novelists who
addressed the problems of totalitarian collectivist community life, namely
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984, one notices a
vital point of departure. Both Huxley and Orwell at least implicitly credit such
systems with the ability to develop and maintain a highly advanced form of
technology and industrialization. Rand, however, refuses to be so inconsistent.
She denies that one can have both massive oppression of human individuality
and the creativity needed for a prospering scientific society. Of course, the mere
repetition of past technologies is not impossible in an oppressive society, yet
even that would require some organization inventiveness, something that
totalitarian societies would lack and fictional renditions of them ought to take
note of.
This clear awareness of the connection between human individuality and
creativity alone indicates Rand’s depth of understanding of the flaws of
totalitarian collectivism. It was, without much doubt, far greater than those of
other literary figures who addressed the topic in their fictional works. Rand
realized from the beginning of her career that one of the main failings of such
systems is that they squash human creativity, something that is necessarily
linked to human individual liberty[15]. Rand, in short, sees that slavery is bad
in part because it undermines the will to innovate, to build, to advance. Her
novella Anthem is a beautiful testament to the link between individual liberty
and a community life that enjoys the fruits of human creativity by showing that
 International totalitarian collectivism is not only cruel, harsh, nasty, brutish but, alas, also
Journal of Social bland and boring.
Economics It is fair, I think, to recall in this connection that one of the major
characteristics of Soviet society was its backwardness in simple technology,
21,2/3/4 excepting only those parts of it which were stolen from the West or produced by
the small class of extremely pampered scientists and artists. (Rand at one time
58 noted that although she is a fierce anti-Communist, she did not believe that the
USSR needed to be feared all that much militarily since one cannot really expect
a slave society to keep up a technology what would make it militarily
competitive with societies that enjoyed substantial individual liberty.)
Yet Rand did not indicate her understanding of the nature of human
community life only by means of the action of her literary creations. She went
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on to produce a body of work that explicated her ideas and ideals about human
life. She explained this by noting, in her essay “The Goal of My Writing” (Rand,
1971), that in view of the absence of a comprehensive philosophy of human life
that made heroes possible, she had to undertake to produce such a philosophy.
And she did offer at least a substantial outline which she called Objectivism.
It will not be possible to do more here than indicate some of the salient
features of Objectivism[16]. I will focus on those that have the promise of giving
Marxism a powerful challenge where other philosophies, especially within the
classical liberal tradition, have failed to do so.
To begin with, Objectivism takes the existence of reality as axiomatic – an
undeniable fact, one the challenge of which only reaffirms. Existence exists –
which is a very wide but comprehensive axiomatic piece of knowledge we may
all rely on to start with in any investigation. As a foundationalist philosophy,
Objectivism provides us with what I have called a minimalist or very thin
metaphysics[17]. But this approach saves it from the relentless objections of
anti-foundationalists, from Kant to Richard Rorty.
In epistemology Objectivism rests the power to grasp reality in the hands of
individual rational beings, such as ourselves, who possess the kind of faculty
that has the capacity to think, to form general ideas based on the information
that the sensory organs can provide. While this faculty of thinking is in need of
being put into active form – one must choose to think, it is not automatic – its
kind of activity, we can be confident, need not distort what one sets out to grasp.
(Here the German word Begriffen might be kept in mind so as to appreciate
what conceptual knowledge can amount to: namely, the unimpeded
understanding of what there is, somewhat as, when we grasp or grab some
object, this need by no means involve changing what it is[18].) The Kantian and
subsequent worries about objectivity are fended off, essentially, by
understanding knowledge itself as requiring contextual completeness and
consistency in rendering the object of knowledge for the human mind.
(Knowing is not mirroring or representing or describing, although it can involve
those. It is sui generis, a way of relating to the world for human beings that
brings the world as it actually is to be present as something known in their
consciousness.) The scepticism so rampant in our last three centuries stems, in
 large part, from the conceptualization of knowledge itself as having to be the Ayn Rand
same kind as what is known. So that, for example, of course I then cannot know versus
what it is to be a black slave or an abused wife, since to know it would have to Karl Marx
involve being it and, needless to say, most of us wanting to know what it is to be
a slave or an abused wife are not slaves or abused wives. But if knowledge is
seen as coming to be aware of reality, not to be identical with it, then scepticism
no longer looms large on the horizon. 59
For Objectivism, logic is a tool of knowing, derived from the axiomatic facts
of reality. Logic involves the widest necessary means to knowing and bona fide
violation of logic must misguide us in our efforts to know. Logic stands in no
way opposed to emotions – emotions being psycho-physiological responses to
the world, to what we have learned about it, to our experiences of it, etc.
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Emotions are not actual tools of knowing, although they are themselves often
clues to some of the facts of reality – e.g. how well one is doing in one’s
marriage, work, friendships, and other relationships to reality.
Ethics for Objectivism identifies what it takes to do well at living the kind of
life that we are, that is, human life. It answers the question, “How should I live?”.
It is explained as something required for human life in view of certain features
of human nature and reality.
Ethics arise because we are unique among the living things we know of in the
world in not possessing instinctual means for guiding our lives to success. We,
unlike other living beings, need to take the initiative – exercise our free will – so
as to learn how to do well at living. To begin this enquiry, we must first grasp
that we ourselves have to discover a standard for acting successfully in our
lives. This is where Rand’s ethical (what I like to call “classical”) egoism first
makes its appearance, at the level of explaining the need for ethics or
morality[19]. Next we need to identify what sort of beings human beings are,
what is our nature, so that we can use this as the standard for successful
conduct. Obstacles to this naturalism lie mainly in the field of epistemology,
where it has been concluded by many sceptically-minded thinkers that
knowledge of the nature of something is impossible since it would involve
knowing something timeless, unchanging, perfect. But the Objectivist theory of
knowledge shows what is wrong with that conception of knowledge. So
knowing human nature does not require knowing a kind of Platonic form of
human being. Rather, it requires getting an essential grasp of what justifies the
classification of human beings into a distinctive group.
Human nature, in turn, comes to being a volitionally rational animal, a
biological entity that needs to activate its form of consciousness in order to
succeed at living its form of life. The ought, thus, is an aspect of what human
nature is. Human nature (because we are alive) is inherently normative and a
purely descriptive account of it must be false. That is to say, the account of
human goodness, based on the understanding we can obtain of the objective
reality of human nature, implies that every human being ought to act so as to
live his or her life in accordance with rational principles. These principles are
derived from what one learns about oneself – what kind of being one is, as well
 International as what attributes, opportunities, history, location, etc. constitute who one is.
Journal of Social From this approach to answering the question of ethics one can begin the
Economics journey of learning the rights and wrongs of living one’s life. Of course, the
answer one will discover will include some very general principles – virtues –
21,2/3/4 one ought to practice along with everyone else (honesty, justice, prudence,
courage, honour, generosity, moderation) as well as distinct guidelines or
60 imperatives that pertain to special and individual attributes, some of which are
shared with many others, some with a few and some with none.
This ethical egoism that Rand identifies is based on an understanding of
human nature and indicates that ethics is an objective discipline, even though it
can yield extremely diverse, often non-universalizable, answers.
When we turn to politics, we also see that Rand’s Objectivism departs from
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the traditional approaches to arguing for classical liberalism or

libertarianism[20]. Unlike classical liberals of the subjectivist bent, whose
support of their own preferred system cannot be defended as an objective,
sound, rational choice but must remain a subjective, personal preference,
Rand’s position aims to secure objective grounds for choosing certain
constitutive elements of a human community. Ironically, just as the neo-classical
economists, including some major Austrians, have no objective normative
grounds that they can adduce to support the free society, so some recent
opponents of capitalism find themselves unable to offer any foundations to
support their opposition. One such critic, Richard Rorty, notes that all we can do
in support of our values is to stand up for them. What this leaves us with is the
tragic prospect that concerning the most vital aspect of our lives, namely, how
we ought to live, including how we ought to organize our communities, we
cannot call into use our reasoning, cognitive faculty.
In any case, although I will not try here to establish fully the objectivity of
any particular moral or political judgement, value or principle, it will help to
sketch the case for the free society that emerges from Rand’s philosophy. By
Rand’s account, the institution of the right to liberty is an objective value for
human beings in their community existence.
Earlier it was noted that human nature can be identified because there is
objective evidence of similarities and differences in reality and human beings
are capable of identifying these by means of their reasoning faculties – their
senses and their minds[21]. Reality gives evidence of certain facts about human
beings and a process of analysis – via logic and the material of perceptual
knowledge – leads to the conclusion that what makes them human is their being
reasoning animals, or, as Rand puts it, “beings of volitional consciousness”[22].
But their reasoning is an activity that must be initiated, started by them, at least
in their adult years. The process of thinking is not something that can be
understood without appreciating that it is volitional – without this factor, the
impossible prospect of being rational automatically, determined by forces
outside of us, would face us. It is impossible, since a hallmark of reasoning or
thinking is the possibility of making a mistake, of failing to do it right, in short,
of malpractice[23]. Human beings are rational but must actualize this capacity
 by their own initiative, lest the very idea of thinking be rendered incoherent. For Ayn Rand
thinking is a normative process – there are right and wrong ways of doing it. versus
One ought to be consistent and ought not to entertain contradictions; one ought Karl Marx
to follow logic and not be illogical; one ought to argue properly and avoid
arguing fallaciously. But if one ought to do something, it follows also that one is
free to fail to do it. For example, one is free to fail to think rationally, to observe
the principles of sound thinking. If one were determined to think as one does, 61
there would be nothing wrong with thinking badly, nothing right with thinking
well. And that is obviously an intellectual dead end – no discussion on any topic
could make progress if that were the case, since anything said about anything
would simply have to have been said about it, including whether a fallacy was
committed or not[24].
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It is, then, an objective fact of human nature that people (who are not crucially
incapacitated, i.e. essentially deficient) are choosing, thinking, biological entities.
This means, in part, that they are best off when their nature is enhanced, when
they flourish as the kind of beings they are. This is simply an application of the
general truth that it is by fulfilling its nature that any living being flourishes –
whether it be a tomato, zebra, heart, onion, or tennis match. By achieving
consistency and completeness – i.e. full integrity – as the kind of being it is, it
does the best it can do, it achieves its excellence. And when it comes to human
beings, whose excellence involves their own choice to do well at being human,
this excellence takes on the added dimension of having moral significance –
involving self-responsibility for doing or failing to do well.
We know this to be so[25] from experience and from the fact that no
alternative account of what it is to be good makes as much sense. We know it
when we shop for a home, when we look for flowers or a racehorse, when we
judge the functioning of the kidneys or heart of any living being, when we
appraise the quality of a redwood tree or a certain kind of endangered animal.
In judging human beings and their conduct, we need also to consider first
their nature, and then assess how well a given person or some given conduct
accords with human nature – whether it is rational. But since human beings are
(also) unique individuals, not carbon copies of one another, what will be rational
for one may not be rational for another. Both the fact that a person is a human
being and that he or she is a given individual must be considered in evaluating
that person and his or her conduct. And the same applies to human institutions.
Yet, because of the fundamentality of rationality in human life, and because
rationality presupposes freedom of thought, it is evident that the right to
freedom is proper for human beings in a social context[26]. Since others are free
to intrude or abstain from intrusion, they ought to abstain and the community
ought to be so organized that such abstention is secured to the highest possible
degree.
The objectivity of the value of the right to liberty is, then, established by
reference to the place of reason and freedom in human life. Given that these are
essential, indispensable for the functioning of anyone’s life as a human being,
they are proper to secure for them in a community. They are just.
 International Now, because of the essential role their individuality plays in the
Journal of Social determination of what is objectively good for human beings, and because of the
Economics essential role that his or her sovereignty in selecting what is to be done has for
the moral goodness of any person, the market economy is just right for human
21,2/3/4 community life. And this also indicates why the analytic approach of neo-
classical and Austrian economics, which invokes the essential individuality of
62 most values to be realized in commercial exchanges, is perfectly consistent with
the basic principles of a just society. Although it is not the task of analytical
economics to establish that the economic system it invokes as its model for
understanding commerce is compatible with justice, it is good to know that it is.
Just as it is well for an engineer to know that the structure he or she is
constructing will not only hold up but also ought to be constructed, so the
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economic analyst benefits from knowing that the mode of understanding they
use to understanding economic affairs is helpful towards the appreciation of the
nature and constitution of a just human community.
Let us now make note of some of the central differences between Rand and
Marx, as well as of why the position Rand developed is so potent in showing
Marxism to be wrong.
To start with, Rand’s metaphysics does not owe much to Hegel but to
Aristotle. She embraces very few ontological laws – only those of the Law of
Identity and the Law of Non-contradiction. These are implicit in the
fundamental axiom she identified, existence exists, existence is identity, and
consciousness is identification. Marx’s metaphysics, to the extent that one may
hold that he embraced at least some of what Engels said in this field, commits
him to a substantive ontology of dialectical materialism. This is the best way to
make sense of Marx’s claim that history develops towards maturation – that the
“organic body (or whole)”[27] that humankind is must develop towards
Communism (which is not some ideal but a real development). Although some
claim this view is empirically based, that is highly doubtful – no one could
observe evidence that is best organized to indicate such a historical
materialism. It is the result of a certain kind of analysis based on the ontological
status of the dialectic.
Second, Marx proposes an epistemology of reflectivism. (It was developed in
some detail by Lenin, but the basics are there in Marx’s works.) The human
mind, as he argues, reflects reality. The phantoms that reach the brain implant
in our consciousness a picture of reality. As a result, what we believe is
imprinted on us and will vary depending on when this imprinting occurs and
the circumstances to which we are exposed. Thus, by Marx’s account, the
consciousness of human beings is determined by their economic class
membership, since it is that class membership that places them in certain
material environments. Accordingly, also, members of classes, as a general rule,
must have the beliefs they have and no argument, only revolution, can alter their
relationship to members of other classes. (This is where Marx’s dialectics enters
the realm of political economy – the clash of outlooks eventually leads to major,
unavoidable social upheavals that propel us to a new development of humanity.)
 For Marx, thus, the individualist-capitalist way of understanding human Ayn Rand
social life reflects a given phase of historical development. It is not that Locke, versus
Smith, Ricardo et al. were all wrong in what they thought in connection with Karl Marx
economic and political life. They were mistaken to have generalized it, but then
they could not really help themselves. Capitalism is true – for a given time in
human history – but it will be overthrown, abolished, superseded, just as
adolescence in an individual’s biological-psychological life is superseded by 63
young adulthood, which itself leads, necessarily, to maturity. By Marx’s
account, humanity proceeds along similar lines[28].
Rand, in contrast, sees the mind as actively engaging the world, reaching out
to grasp it, not passively responding to it. So human beings as such – not just
Communists, as in Marx – can escape their limited, historically conditioned
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understanding of reality. They can grasp fundamental, stable principles in

various disciplines of the study of different spheres of reality, including the
sphere of political economy. As long as human nature exists – as long as there
are bona fide human beings, something that is ascertainable by studying the
world – certain ethical and political principles will be applicable to their lives;
we can gradually, in good time, grasp these principles and implement them; but
we might not – sometimes we may do it well, at others we might miss a great
deal (so that the Ancient Greeks and the American Founders grasp it more or
less well enough, while others failed to do so). For Rand, ironically again, one
can be genuinely politically correct, while for Marxists and their philosophical
brethren that is really impossible, since for all we can tell there will always be
some new ones that will supersede the currently “true” principles of political
life.
In general terms, then, Ayn Rand has been perhaps the one major critic of
Marxism who affirmed (against it) what Marx himself directly rejected and
wanted the world to reject, namely, the individualist capitalist order. Yet Rand
was not as hostile to Marx as some might believe. She found Marx more
congenial, because of his secularism and naturalism, than another one of Marx’s
critics whose prominence and anti-Communism is praised both on the Left and
the Right, namely, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Rand has criticized Solzhenitsyn for
wanting to lead Russia into a period of anti-modernism, one that would rekindle
the era of serfdom and mindlessness one associates with some of the most
deeply religious epochs of human history. In contrast to that, one might
suppose Rand thought Marx was a liberator.
What Ayn Rand should be remembered for in connection with Communism
is her profoundly philosophical answer to Marx’s ideas. If Marx is secularism’s
greatest defender of collectivism, Ayn Rand is its greatest champion of
individualism. And this individualism, unlike those heretofore, is not plagued
by narrowness and severe paradox, such as the ones which were provided by
Hobbes and his followers.
Whether the reigning intelligentsia will ever honour Rand for her
achievement remains a question. Too many today would have to eat their earlier
words in favour of one type of collectivism or another. Too many are still hard
 International at work resurrecting some version of the collectivist dream – via “market
Journal of Social socialism”, “democratic socialism”, or “communitarianism”[29]. Rand still
Economics stands as the most serious radical thinker who, maybe with a little help from her
philosophical supporters, could effectuate a lasting challenge of 2,500 years of
21,2/3/4 group-think in our world, a kind of social philosophy that to our day has not
stopped producing some of the most vile, catastrophic results for human
64 community life. It may be most appropriate, therefore, to have the last word in
this comparison between her and Karl Marx, recent history’s most often
invoked political philosopher. Here is perhaps the essence of Rand’s political
thought:
I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of them shall deserve of me. And
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to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born. I do not grant my love
without reason, nor to any chance passerby who may wish to claim it. I honor men with my
love. But honor is a thing to be earned.
I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only
such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we
shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire. For in the temple of his
spirit, each man is alone. Let each man keep his temple untouched and undefiled. Then let him
join hands with others if he wishes, but only beyond his holy threshold (Rand, 1946).

Notes
1. The contrast between the ancient and modern viewpoints is discussed by, among many
others, Strauss (1972).
2. I thank David Kelley for reminding me of this point of similarity and difference between
Rand and Marx.
3. This passage must be kept clearly in mind as one assesses Marx’s view of values,
including his conception of the good society. Marx’s position is, indeed, reactionary – it is
but a secular rendition of Western religions whereby we must be altruists through and
through – not just benevolent, generous and charitable on some occasions – in order to
fulfil our moral mission, and wherein dualism prevails between our biological and our
species being, etc. See, in this connection, Machan (1984).
4. See Acton (1967). Marx says “The individual and the species-life of man are not
different…” Selected Writings (1970, p. 91).
5. While Rand was no nominalist individualist, such as Hobbes and his neoclassical
followers in economic science, she did endorse a form of metaphysical individualism
whereby what exists in the world are individual beings not, ultimately, concrete universals.
See the discussion of this in Machan (1989, Ch. 1).
6. Marx, K., Das Kapital, ch. 1, fn. 15: “My standpoint, from which the evolution of the
economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any
other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains,
however much he may subjectively raise himself above them” (McLellan, 1970, p. 417). This
“economic formation of society”, it must be recalled, is the foundation of human life – the
crux of Marx’s economic determinism.
7. This position is well developed in Norton (1976), and Rand develops her ideas in this
ethical realm in Rand (1961). See also Machan (1983, pp. 206-23).
8. See Marx’s famous essay “On the Jewish Question”, (McLellan, 1970). Marxists have
continued to link such atomism with some justification to the classical liberal social
philosophy, at least if they focus only on the economic analysis of capitalism.
 9. It is in the neoclassical economic tradition that this legacy is most evident, including the Ayn Rand
two public policy divisions of that tradition, the public choice and law and economics
schools. For more, see Machan (1990). versus
10. See von Mises (1949); Hayek (1961); Friedman (1962); Nozick (1974). (Nozick joins Karl Marx
utilitarians only in his subjectivism, whereby the meaning our life has must be given to it
by us.)
11. The Fountainhead (1943), Bobbs-Merrill; Atlas Shrugged (1957), Random House; and, to
start her literary career, Anthem, New American Library (1946) and We the Living (1936) 65
(Macmillan revised Random House, 1959).
12. Rand’s The Fountainhead was ranked second only to the Bible as the most popular book in
the United States of America, in a 1990 survey by the Book of the Month Club.
13. Books on Rand have been authored mostly by admirers, past associates and philosophical
students of her thinking. The élite of the literary community have scoffed at her for her
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political views and have not bothered to analyse her writing, let alone her insightfulness
about political matters. If there is anyone who has been uniformly politically incorrect
during her lifetime, it has been Ayn Rand. It is not for nothing that Camille Paglia, the
enfant terrible of anti-feminism, is compared to Rand by Paglia’s critics and friends alike.
A good example of a pejorative work is Baker (1987).
14. For biographical details on Rand, see Branden (1986). For some of the philosophical and
literary themes, see Merrill, 1991.
15. To link individual liberty – or, more precisely, the legal system that protects the right of
every individual to liberty of thought and action – and human creativity is not to disparage
co-operative creative efforts, contrary to what contemporary communitarians and socio-
economists have tended to maintain (see, for example, Spragens 1992). It is, however, to
realize that such efforts will succeed if and only if the various participants individually
choose to partake of and are not coerced into it.
16. Rand’s most philosophically developed work is Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
(1990), 2nd ed., New American Library. She has also written what should probably be
called philosophical essays, collected in such works as The Virtue of Selfishness (1961),
The Romantic Manifesto (1971), Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1967), New American
Library; and Philosophy: Who Needs It (1982), Bobbs-Merrill.
17. For details of this aspect of Rand’s view, see Machan (1992). It should perhaps be noted
that, as with many other thinkers, scholars attending to their work and drawing from it are
not in full accord as to how to understand it. Such followers of Rand – whom Rand herself
said should be her intellectual executors – as Leonard Peikoff and Harry Binswanger, claim
the exclusive moral right to explain Rand’s views. Others, such as David Kelley, Douglas
Rasmussen, Douglas J. Den Uyl and I, find it more useful to participate in what might be
called the natural market process of intellectual development and not to aim for some kind
of restriction on who may speak out on Rand’s ideas, pro or con. The same kind of
disputation surrounds, of course, the works of any major thinker – Karl Marx, especially!
18. Because conceptual knowledge is unique in the world, as far as we know, it will be nearly
impossible to find an adequate analogy to it in the rest of nature. Grasping will only be a
suggestive analogy – it pertains to the possibility of our contacting something as it is
without the necessity of distorting it in the slightest. Of course, there is the risk of
distortion – if one grasps too firmly on something that is too delicate, etc. That, too, can
help us to appreciate the nature of knowledge: if we understand while in the grips of
prejudice and some kind of emotional intrusion, our understanding can be distorted.
Still, this does not give an account of the process of knowledge, of just what is going on
as we know something. Arguably, such an account will need to be given by some branch of
science, not philosophy per se. For a response to the widespread intersubjectivism in our
post-Kantian era, see Machan (1993).
 International 19. Rand’s version of egoism is very different from that of other egoist, such as Hobbes, Stirner
and, especially, those often caricatured in ethics text books, mainly in virtue of the fact that
Journal of Social Rand takes “to my benefit” to mean not, “what I happen to wish for”, but “whatever is good
Economics and right for me as the kind of being I am”.
21,2/3/4 20. Rand has always called herself a capitalist and has explicitly denounced libertarians. Yet it
would be hard to dispute that the central tenet of libertarianism, namely, that the highest
political principle in a human community is the right to individual liberty in all realms of
66 human action, is exactly what her politics amounts to.
21. Rand’s position on this is developed in considerable detail by Kelley (1986).
22. As Rand puts it, in The Virtue of Selfishness (1961), “Man’s particular distinction from all
other living species is the fact that his consciousness is volitional” (pp. 19-20). It needs to be
noted here that what defines a human being, that is, human nature, is something more,
namely, that such a being is a biological entity with volitional consciousness. Human
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nature includes both what links people to and what makes them distinctive among other
living beings. It is because of her awareness of this crucial difference between the
distinctive essence and the nature of something that Rand’s ethics escape the problems of
Platonic/Aristotelian intellectualism. For more, see Machan (1989).
23. It is notorious how such thinkers as Marx attempted to have it both ways – people can do
things wrong in life – including, of course, all those who disagreed with him
philosophically and as far as political or revolutionary policy were concerned – and they
are also caught in a deterministic flow of historically necessitated events. Rand saw clearly
that if one accepted the former, one had to reject the latter. She also avoided the error of
Immanuel Kant, namely, to think that human moral responsibility requires a dualistic
world of noumena and phenomena. For Rand the moral nature of human beings is a fact of
nature proper.
24. For a detailed discussion of the nature of free will within the context of a naturalist account
of the world (one that does not posit a supernatural realm and must be in full accord with
science), see Machan (1974, 1989).
25. But “knowing” does not mean having a final picture of it, so knowing it to be so does not
foreclose future disclosures, further development, the possible need for modification. See
Rand (1990).
26. There has been a lot of dispute as to just how we are to understand the claim that such a
right exists. What is the ontological status of such a right, for example, and what is the
scope of a purported natural right. I discuss these and related matters in Individuals and
Their Rights (1989). At this point let me just dogmatically assert that having such a right
means, in the Randian framework, that it is objectively warranted to hold that when
human beings interact in a social context – where “politics is possible”, to recall Locke’s
point – it is right for them to treat one another as ends in themselves, not as means to
other’s goals and purposes, unless they agree to being treated as such means (but waiting
to obtain such agreement from others as a matter of principle is to treat them as ends).
27. “Organic whole” is McLellan’s translation, while “organic body” is preferred by others.
28. The author discusses these points of Marxism in more details in his Marxism: A Bourgeois
Critique (Machan, 1988).
29. The current revisionist trend in the USA, of introducing collectivism via the benign-
sounding label “communitarianism”, is led by Amitai Etzioni. See, most recently, his book
The Spirit of Community (1993). For communitarianism to triumph as a social philosophy,
however, it is evidently necessary to distort the true nature of individualism by
caricaturing it in terms used mainly by positivist, neo-Hobbesian economists. See, for
example, Spragens (1992), wherein nearly all the claims made about the nature of classical
liberal politics are false, most importantly the idea that this social philosophy “fails to ‘see’
the legitimate role that moral equality, fellow feeling, and obligation play in a good
democratic society”. In fact, the classical liberal tradition, most notably Rand’s works,
 points clearly to the view that only when community and fellow feeling are not coerced can Ayn Rand
they reap positive results instead of mostly tyrannizing the citizenry. (The Responsive
Community is edited by Amitai Etzioni.) versus
Karl Marx
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