Neoliberal Theater of Cruelty

“Mean Girl – Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed,”by Lisa Duggan, 2019

“Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.” (Walter Sobchak, The Big Lewbowski)   This book shows how neo-liberal capital since the 1970s used a Randian ‘ethos’ to give corporations, the Republican Party and CEOs an ideology beyond profits.   On the other hand, the loyal Democratic Party opposition has no consistent ideology, as the leadership dips into Randist neo-liberalism themselves.  No wonder they get run over again and again.  

‘Freedom,’ ‘individualism,’ wealth, power, reason, the inferiority of the lower classes and sexiness are all celebrated by Rand.  ‘Sexiness’ should surprise you, as it did me.  As an historian and literary critic, Duggan digs into Rand’s life and texts so you don’t have to.  Rand started as an upper-class Jewish girl from St. Petersburg, Russia named Alissa Rosenbaum, fascinated with Hollywood and the movies and violently antagonistic to socialism.

Ayn Rand's Romantic Side

Her books “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” have been printed in almost as many copies as the Bible.  They are basically capitalist potboilers, endorsed by a long list of Republican politicians, corporate CEOs and Hollywood stars.  Our ‘ubermensch!’  Alan Greenspan, who piloted the economy into the ditch in 2007-2008 as head of the Federal Reserve, was in Rand’s inner circle of ‘Objectivists.’

Duggan notes that Rand’s atheism, distaste for domestic womanhood and reticence about being openly racist does not endear her to conservative Southern Baptists and other evangelicals.  Rand was also a long-time user of Benzedrine, i.e. ‘speed,’ so drugs were not foreign to her.  Rand’s love of ‘reason’ seems to make sense, but it is contradicted by emotional and sexual class themes.  Her fiction (and life) contain constant psycho-sexual tropes – lusty romances involving love triangles, divorce, homoeroticism, missing marriages and children, strong handsome corporate men, beautiful or mysterious women and even rape.  All these themes track with Hollywood movie scripts. 

Duggan details how Rand admired a sociopathic serial killer as a model for one of her heroic characters.  In fact, you might say all her heroes are sociopaths, not cowboys. Duggan calls Rand’s approach “cruel optimism” or “optimistic cruelty.”  This is what unites the various right-wingers who support Randism.

Rand’s libertarianism is used to attack all varieties of socialism, mixed economies, the capitalist welfare state and the social-democratic state, as she saw them as varieties of the same thing. This gives consistency to her philosophy and to neoliberal economic ‘theory.’  “Individualists of the World Unite!” was her slogan in “The Individualist Manifesto,” copying Marx.  What should have been added was “You have everything to gain unless they lose their chains!”  What this reveals and what Duggan does not say is that underneath the variety of political battles there are only two philosophic choices – socialism or capitalism. Especially in the present period of the decline of capital.

Duggan shows how Rand’s romantic love of tall, blond, muscular Aryan men fits with white nationalist themes. Her social-Darwinist fantasies of wealth and a capital strike of the ‘job-creators’ fit quite neatly into growing capitalist inequality.  In her fiction, Rand always pictures the ‘mob’ as ugly, bestial, ignorant and violent, starting in her first novel about Soviet Russia ‘We The Living,' then transferring the theme to the U.S. working-class.  In her dystopian book 'Anthem' she lied about Marxism's attitude to technology.  She opposed Roosevelt and supported the McCarthyite movement after moving to the U.S., poorly testifying on ‘Communist influence’ in Hollywood.  She supported Goldwater, opposed the Vietnam war but also opposed the Civil Rights Act as a ‘restraint on trade.’ She ended up running a philosophic cult of ‘objectivists’ in New York.  Reagan and the Tea Party later took up her character John Galt.

Who are the voting cattle thrilled by this farce?  The lower ranks of Randian libertarians are mostly male, ‘white’ aspiring businessmen – ‘entrepreneurs,’ sole proprietors, freelancers, independent contractors, sellers of their personal capital, perhaps living as personal ‘brands.’  Or just precarians.  One day they will figure out that ‘many are called few are chosen.’ In the U.S. small businesses suffer an 85% failure rate after 18 months.

Here are some choice quotes from the book:

1.    “Rand’s mad adoration of capitalism, her excessive overidentification with it, only serves to make its inherent ridiculousness clearly perceptible.” (Zizek, 1980)

2.    “Rand’s complicated notoriety as … kitschy public figure (often posed with a cape and a huge dollar sign pin as well as a cigarette holder)…”

3.    “She rewrote the vast canvas of social, economic and political conflict underlying the Russian Revolution … into a stark melodramatic clash between worthy individuals and the mob. Not a surprising reductive analysis for a sheltered and privileged twelve-year-old caught in the swirl of overwhelming events.”

4.    Rand was a “unique combination of Adam Smith, Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacqueline Susann.”  (J. Hoberman, Village Voice)

5.    “The Fountainhead offered simultaneously eroticized and moralized character studies embedded in a heroic romance plot, for the purpose of generating desire for capitalism.”

6.    Regarding Rand: “Trolls walk the American night.” (Gore Vidal, 1961)

7.    To Rand:  “The poor were not a class, but a collection of individual failures.”

8.    Trump: “His cabinet and donor lists are full of Rand fans.”

9.     “I am the CEO of ME, Inc.” (NYU)

Rand, a heavy smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1974, though she denied the connection between smoking and cancer.  Not so reasonable.  She did sign up for Medicare and Social Security. Not so consistent.  Rand died of heart failure in 1982. 

Other reviews on this topic below.  Use blog search box, upper left: “Who Is Ron Paul?” “Rich People Things,” "libertarianism" or the term ‘neoliberalism / neo-liberalism’ 

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

August 2, 2019