Ayn Rand is probably one of the major influences on the free market movement in the past century. She solidly defined many ideals that gave many people a second glance at what they normal and gave us all a new perspective at looking how we interact with individuals and the government. Her political philosophy was idealist, but very practical in terms of achievement. She saw government intervention for what we all should see, in that it was disruptive to the natural forces and especially to the overall wealth and prosperity of everyone.
She had serious issues with what she called collectivism, where people would group together for a common good forsaking their own wants and desires. Throughout her works and philosophies, she denounced the welfare state and demonstrated just how corrupting it was. She defined a framework for limited government and a philosophy that held up the individual.
But, like all great philosophers, she fell short on some things. Like many atheist philosophers, she never really accounted for human nature. I read through Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
The problem with that assumption is that it denies the what is so clearly the natural tendency of man: to behave irrationally and to do what is evil. A child never learns how to misbehave, it merely does it. Parents have to discipline their children into doing what is right. This suggests that the Christian notion of evil, sin, is innate in al of us. Most parents, believer or not, never teach their children to lie, cheat, steal, murder, and any other number of bad things that we do. Yet every murderer has a mother and I doubt that she is a murderess herself, most of the time.
Her highest held virtue then, selfishness, becomes a vice instead when you start from that framework. Now, I am not condoning people who act selfishly, as I usually expect people to behave in that manner myself and I really do not care so long as they do not harm others in the process. But with our predisposition to sin, we usually end up harming those in our selfish quests for happiness.
I am a firm supporter of what I refer to as rational self interest. The apostle Paul wrote to Timothy that anyone who does not take care of themselves and their household first is worse than an unbeliever. This is certainly true because people who put others ahead of themselves usually only breed resentment toward those they help. You have to make sure you are in good health before you can help others, after all. You cannot treat the sick when you are sick yourself.
While I am sure that Ayn Rand addressed all this, as I admit to not being intimately familiar with her ideas, I believe that she underestimated people’s preference for sin. This is probably what led to one of the greatest tragedies in her life.
Nathaniel Brandon was a man who helped to market her ideas to the public. He shared her views on the world and in time they both fell in love. At the time, both of them were married, but their spouses consented to the affair, which was rather unusual to say the least. I suppose this was in line with their ethics that they had carved out. In any case, Nathaniel Brandon was younger than her and eventually he went off and had his own affair with a younger woman himself. Ayn was devastated and exiled him from her circle.
Her mistake in the matter was to trust that Nathaniel would remain faithful to her until they both decided to call it off. Unfortunately, she did not account for human nature to sick in. When he left, her organization lost a very good source of marketing and her ideas never got very far, especially in politics where they are still to this day most needed. Nathaniel Brandon would go on to denounce her stating that while her ideas were sound, her followers were irrational drones who never bothered to critically think for themselves. Another miscalculation on the part of the Objectivists as people always look to a leader, unless they truly are individuals in the first place.
This was Ayn Rand’s folly in that selfishness only is virtuous if the individual behaves in a rational manner. But human beings are never 100% rational every day of their lives. It is unfortunate that she never apparently could comprehend this as she probably would have never engaged in the affair to begin with. After all, any man willing to leave his wife will probably leave his mistress as well. Any rational mind could easily correlate that.