Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical

by Chris Matthew Sciabarra

Author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged , Ayn Rand (1905–1982) is one of the most widely read philosophers of the twentieth century. Yet, despite the sale of nearly thirty million copies of her works, there have been few extended scholarly examinations of her thought. Ayn The Russian Radical provides the first comprehensive analysis of the intellectual roots and philosophy of this controversial thinker. Chris Sciabarra views Rand's "Objectivism" as a rejection—and affirmation—of key elements in the Russian tradition. Born in Russia during the Silver Age, Rand was educated at Leningrad University and studied with N. O. Lossky. She absorbed a dialectical method of inquiry that profoundly influenced her literary and philosophic project. Her distinctive libertarian synthesis is presented as a major contribution to radical social theory. Ultimately, Sciabarra challenges Rand's followers and critics to reassess her thought and its place in intellectual history. In writing this book, the author conducted original historical research, using materials from the Leningrad archives, interviews with Lossky's descendants and other Russian contemporaries of Rand, and an astounding diversity of sources within the vast written and oral tradition of Objectivism.

Genres: Philosophy, Biography, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir

496 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1995

Reviews

[Ilene Skeen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Objectivism in Context
By Ilene Skeen

Review of Ayn Rand: the Russian Radical by Chris Matthew Sciabarra

Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was a controversial novelist-philosopher, the founder of a new system of philosophy she called “Objectivism.” She remarked, “I am challenging the cultural tradition of 2,500 years.”

The Provocative Book Title
The title of Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s book is provocative, and Rand would have considered it insulting. I’m sure Sciabarra did not mean to insult, but did mean to provoke interest. Interest is good.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Rand lived through the Russian Revolution and rise of the Soviets. She despised Russia and everything about it. Rand immigrated to the US and became a proud American citizen.

Rand considered herself a radical for capitalism, meaning free-market, laissez-fare capitalism as protected by a properly limited government (Capitalism the Unknown Ideal). Her work included a revolutionary new concept of epistemology (Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology) and a new theory of ethics which rejects altruism (The Virtue of Selfishness) and is itself the foundation of Rand’s ideas on politics and art.

Most contemporary academic philosophers ignore Ayn Rand. To academia, the notion of a novelist-philosopher is unprecedented, even rude. The idea of an outsider inventing a philosophy that challenges everything since Thales is unacceptable to those inside the ivory towers.

Sciabarra’s Purpose
The purpose Sciabarra set is simple: “to provide an enriched appreciation of Ayn Rand’s contributions.” Ayn Rand: the Russian Radical (ARTRR) first appeared in 1995. The second edition (2013), added biographical materials relating to Rand’s early training in philosophy and her college transcript.

Sciabarra’s admiration for Rand is evident. He is storming the fortress of academic philosophy, by exploring how Ayn Rand’s thought relates to the academic philosophy that has thus far largely spurned her.

Purpose of the Review
My purpose in writing this review is to show the important ways in which Sciabarra succeeds. His work does increase the appreciation of Rand and spreads interest in her and the values of Objectivism to the culture. I will also show how his perceptive questions are valuable in that they are questions crying for answers, even when Sciabarra’s own answers may provoke hostility.

The Scope of Rand’s Achievement
Simply put, Ayn Rand acknowledged only three previous philosophers -- Plato, Aristotle and Kant. She acknowledged only Aristotle as an essential influence on her thinking. Sciabarra takes strong exception to Rand’s own view of essential influences, declaring that there are important connections between Rand’s thought and that of her Russian teachers.

Clearly, thanks to Sciabarra, a fuller understanding of Rand emerges -- not as merely a fourth giant among a great three, but as the one who saw through the lacks and mistakes of the hundreds of thinkers in the 2,500 years since the birth of philosophy.

Ayn Rand presented herself as a hero among three giants of thought. Sciabarra presents Rand as the hero among countless philosophers and writers.

The discrepancy between Rand’s view of her achievement and Sciabarra’s view of Rand is easy to explain. On the declaring of influences, Ayn Rand would have discarded as an influence, anyone whose basic premises were in contradiction to reality. Since of the three systems builders in the history of philosophy, only Aristotle based his thought on the primacy of reality, it is apropos that Aristotle is the only one Rand acknowledges.

However, for the student of the history of philosophy, Rand’s place among the top three as well as the hundreds of less important thinkers is not clear until one has the picture of the complexity of building a philosophical system, and the primacy of reality upon which to base it.

With a clearer understanding from Sciabarra of some of the methods employed, arguments, contradictions and failures over the centuries, Rand’s achievement becomes breathtaking in its comprehensiveness.

From my first reading in 1995 and again in 2017, I view the complex picture of philosophical exploration that emerges as the primary benefit of the book.

Ayn Rand’s Method vs the History of Philosophy
ARTRR includes a lengthy contrast of methods, principally dualism and the dialectic.

Sciabarra postulates that Ayn Rand’s method is consistent with her first encounters with philosophy in Russia where the influence of Marx dominated the philosophical landscape. Marx himself said that Aristotle was a dialectical thinker.

Ayn Rand did not directly address either dualism or the dialectic method in her epistemology. In her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, she started with active awareness and proceeded through cognition, consciousness, concepts, abstraction, definition, arriving at axiomatic concepts and identity.

Provocative Characterization of Rand’s Method
Sciabarra calls Rand’s method “dialectical libertarianism.” This designation takes considerable unpacking. It is important to mention that ARTRR is Sciabarra’s central book in a trilogy on this subject. Marx, Hayek, and Utopia is the opening book. Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism is the closing.

I find that the idea that Rand learned the dialectical method in Russia is a reasonable conclusion, but it is not a convincing label for Rand as a mature thinker. To be clear, I have not read Sciabarra’s full trilogy, and do not presume to speak to this idea in essence.

There is evidence that efforts to apply dialectical reasoning broadly have been in our culture for many years. For example, after WWII in the late 1950s, school children, myself among them, learned about the war dialectically: there was Communism (hypothesis--noble, but doesn’t really work), Nazism (antithesis—repugnant, killed 6 million Jews) and liberal Democracy (synthesis--the practical good, free countries of Europe and the US).

Libertarianism is a loosely organized movement, professing the ideology of freedom. Ayn Rand specifically rejected libertarianism as a movement without philosophical foundation. Clearly, Rand would consider Sciabarra’s labeling of her method as "dialectical libertarianism" insulting to her life, work and memory, as well as being irrelevant to her accomplishment.

The question Sciabarra raises for me, which I find riveting, even revolutionary, is what is there about Rand’s method that allows her to disregard all the methods and their many variations, and still wind up with a complete, cogent and organic philosophical whole?

To my knowledge, no other book intended for the lay market has stimulated that question, framed as Sciabarra has done, specifically with the history of philosophy as the background. The exploration of this question, which has interested me greatly, is the second most important benefit I have gleaned from ARTRR.

Ayn Rand as a Student at Petrograd State University
The new edition of ARTRR includes three appendices relating to Rand’s college education and the results of Sciabarra’s efforts to find, preserve and understand the historical facts of Ayn Rand’s introduction to philosophy as a student in Russia. Without Sciabarra’s efforts, this valuable information would otherwise have been lost. This benefit of Sciabarra’s work is clearly priceless.

The Contention of “Open” Objectivism
The concept of objectivism refers to a number of loosely defined philosophical attitudes that say that reality is real and consists of everything outside of the mind. The earlier manifestations of objectivism lack any cohesive theory or prominent theoretician.

No one is claiming that the concept of objectivism is closed – all concepts are open ended, as Rand herself pointed out. But Rand’s Objectivism is her specific work product. The law protects Rand’s work product under copyright until it comes into public domain.

By capitalizing the term for her system, Ayn Rand made Objectivism her “brand.” When modern scholars refer to “open” Objectivism, they refer specifically to the philosophy of Ayn Rand.

For example, none of the admirers of Ayn Rand, including those favoring “open” objectivism would confuse Rand’s philosophy with “logical objectivism.” This is the idea that logical truth does not depend upon the contents of human ideas but exists independent of human ideas. The independence of ideas from the humans who have them is a variant of Platonism, which Rand rejected.

Webster’s dictionary defines “objectivism” as “any of various theories asserting the validity of objective phenomena over subjective experience.” The American Heritage Dictionary goes somewhat further: “One of several doctrines holding that all reality is objective and external to the mind and that knowledge is reliably based on observed objects and events.”

In sum, I believe that Sciabarra comes down on the wrong side of the question of “Open” Objectivism when he declares Rand’s philosophy open.

However, the question is moot. The genuine concern should be to answer the question of what will happen to Ayn Rand’s Objectivism when the copyright runs out.

Ayn Rand died in 1982, but her work lives on and her reputation is growing. How will history remember her? Will philosophy absorb Objectivism into the miscellany of variations purporting to be reality based, but actually founded on Platonic or Kantian principles? Will philosophy succeed in burying Objectivism entirely? Will Objectivism supplant the all the other objectivist theories and capture the ivory citadel as well as the culture?

In Conclusion
In the space of this review, my intention was to convey to the reader a taste of the immense context-expanding value I found in ARTRR.

Chris Matthew Sciabarra has rewarded me with a refined sense of the enormity of the task before us. Truly, despite my sometimes harsh sounding criticisms, I believe that Sciabarra, like myself is working and living by Ayn Rand’s principles, and has come not to bury her, but to praise her.

Independent thought and spirited discussion will be crucial elements in spreading Ayn Rand’s Objectivism to philosophy qua philosophy. Infighting, passion and controversy can be great incentives for the next generations to expand on philosophy’s unanswered questions.

[Jenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A study of ideas and of great mind in history, and analyze the development of their sense of life and psycho-epistemology; compared to the degree that their ideas and discoveries were (further) developed and implemented by themselves and others.

This book is worth reading if you wanted to be expose to a different category of philosophers in different era of our time.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is brilliant. Sciabarra has managed to reverse engineer Objectivism and place it into its proper historical context.

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

In some ways this is a surreal book. The author makes a mountain out of a molehill, and completely avoids obvious parallels between Rand and specific anarcho-communist thinkers.

The mountain out of a molehill: Lossky. NO Lossky was an anti-communist professor whose relatives apparently ran the school she went to. Rand told Barbara Branden, who was writing a hagiography of her, that Lossky was how he wasn't, and an expert in what he wasn't, yet she totally took his course that didn't exist and isn't in her transcripts.

The author claims this non-existent relationship is why a person from Russia didn't have a broken-brained Western outlook. It wasn't the Orthodox Church's influence on society. It had to be specific unrelated people for some reason. Makes zero sense.

My reinterpretation: according to every Objectivist outside of Branden's book, Rand ONLY knew the history of philosophy because Peikoff taught her. You can't be a professional in something, then learn it while doing it from your student. Rand said Lossky was her professor to say she already knew philosophy, wasn't taught by communists and faced persecution (We The Living tie-in). This is a hole in the story that Rand tried to patch, and upon further review further evidences the fact that her backstory is 100% false. Yes, her backstory is 100% made up, just read Jeff Walker's book. Rand looks like she was a plant, which would explain why her life story being fake is glossed over just like all of the other fake names and PhDs in objectivism.

On the AC influence: the Benevolent Universe Premise is 100% lifted from Pyotr Kropotkin. Literally grab a pdf of Mutual Aid off Project Gutenberg and type in "benevolen" to show uses of benevolent and benevolence. Read the accompanying paragraphs and be amazed. It's the EXACT same idea.

Read On Anarchism by Emma Goldman, and hold it up next to Anthem. Same thing. Just made into a story.

The ideas around alienation and property you see in the second hander ideas are what you'd find in The Unique and Its Property. The author insists upon Nietzsche, who is Dime Store Max Stirner, but this could be read either way. Rand (possibly choosing to) market it as Nietzsche makes it an easier buy for conservatives, since Stirner was friends with Marx and Engels until they lost the argument. Nietzsche is more saleable, which the author would have to agree to, given his references to the Nietzscheanized Christianity. Aside from Provo Kid, there's no Stirner Christianity. Yeah, there are other anarchisms where you'd find it, but that's what occurred to me.

Since Marx is mentioned, Rand sounds an awful lot like Marx in her labor theory of value. Like, it's a totally solipsistic special boy approach to how society functions that's designed to facilitate revolutionary discontent. Something facilitated by Branden's self-esteem. Gloria Steinem is a big fan of self-esteem, as are the humanistic psychologists out from the Esalen Institute, a major culture creation hub.... wasn't Rand from Hollywood, which does the same? Huh. Crazy. Anyways, this shouldn't be a surprise since Marx was propped up by wealthy people to crush the middle class for the rich's benefit... a lot like Rand's ideas seem to do (see my essay, and the effects of the mass movement of people on the standard of living/monopoly capitalism).

The last thing worth mentioning before my take is that: Rand had the exact same special exceptions that every promoted ideology has. Look at Rand, Campbell, and Jordan Peterson's foreign policy, for example. Islam is always "confused" and Israel is always God. Why are they all built around what the state says?

My take on Rand's strange set of positions:

Honestly, Rand looks like a pastiche of leftist positions that atomize and unmoor people for future abrogations and abuse. That's also papered over with a number of right-wing points to sell it to conservatives by managing their "pain points". Aristotle, iNdiViDuAliSm, the soul, the state, capitalism, being useful, etc. If you don't believe me on how nonsensical these right wing ideas existing in her left-anarchist system are, just look at Block saying Rand's arguments for capitalism apply perfectly to the state functions she ropes off. No reason for her to exempt them, yet she does because conservatives wouldn't buy if she didn't. Total scam.

This system smashes the right up and carries things more freely in the controlled dialectic towards neo-feudalism. This intervention applied through Rand, and amplified by state media organs, did exactly what was intended, just as was the case with Campbell and their synthesis in Jordan Peterson's IDW/ARC.

Stepping stones to the Religion of the Future.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably one of the best academic studies of Rand out there. Scibarra takes Rand seriously, and thinks she is a great philosopher. Refreshingly, however, he is not an idol-worshiper like so many objectivists, and his treatment of here is worth of the title of serious intellectual history. He traces Rand's intellectual development to prevalent philosophical trends in Rand's Silver-Age St. Petersburg childhood milieu. He further argues that most of her distinctive claims are based on a dialectical method that owes its distant roots to Hegel. Interesting at least in its challenge to Rand's own claim to be a follower of no one but Aristotle.

James Lennox perceptively criticises this book for speculating (albeit with evidence) that Rand was a student of Silver-Age Russian philosopher N.O. Lossky, and then assuming quite definitively that Rand was Lossky's student for the remainder of the book. Were this thesis the best or most interesting thing about the book, I would consider this analysis destructive; but the Lossky connection is not the most interesting thing about the book, and the objection is therefore not destructive in my eyes.

What is the most interesting thing about the book is its richly erudite background in philosophy and intellectual history. This allows something rare in discussions of Ayn Rand, a halfway "objective" comparison of Objectivism with other philosophies, both analytic and continental. It is worth noting that Scibarra makes an impressive case for Objectivism, showing it to be a coherent philosophical system that also has very impressive breadth. He is unique, however, in addressing objections from the rest of philosophy in a respectful and informed way. He honestly tries to give the best case for Rand's philosophy without the condescension and smugness found in Objectivist apologists like Leonard Peikoff. If you like Rand, or are curious about her, and don't want to read about her from one of her many adoring fans, this book is about the only way to go.

[JP · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's refreshing to see someone address the gap in scholarly assessments of Rand's work. The author's thesis concerns Ayn Rands roots in Russian philosophy and the areas where she agreed with key thinkers that preceded her, often extending to a different conclusion. In particular, there are strong parallels between [return]her ideas and those of Nietzsche and Marx. Her dialectic approach also resembles Hegel. [return]Along the way, the author covers most of Rand's philosophy: the 4 keys, the roots in epistemology,[return]that existence is consciousness, and the practical application that is nearly unique to Rand.[return]He also covers her philosophical upbringing in Russia, reconstructing her probable teachers, mentors,[return]and courses as best as possible. Rand's characters are very similar in style to those of other [return]Russian writers in the way they embody extreme traits. Also regarding her philosophy, the author[return] exposes the resulting ethics, such as the idea that virtue without regard to context is fatal. In drawing the [return]comparison to Marx, he even shows the emphasis both placed on the use of architecture as illustrative (p248). Finally, he addresses the cult-like following the early objectivists achieved and the somewhat negative reflection cast on such otherwise independent thinkers. His treatment of Brandon is fair and consistent with his overall approach, distinguishing Brandon from Rand, but realizing that their thinking continued and has been extended subsequent to Rand.

[Dave Franklin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chris Matthew Scibarra's "Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical " examines Rand's intellectual development as a philosopher. The book provides a comprehensive-albeit ponderous-study of the origins of Rand's ideas and the influence of N.O. Lossky on her education at Petrograd University. His treatment is a serious history that Rand readers will find beneficial.

Like Nikolai Berdayev, Rand struggled after the October Revolution. Berdayev was appointed by the Bolsheviks to a chair of philosophy at the University of Moscow, and he soon fell into disfavour for his philosophical opinions. In 1922, he was exiled from the country. He first moved to Berlin. Later, he moved to Paris, where he led a movement of Christian existentialists. Rand left Christianity behind, and became an American, Berdayev could not.

Rand' s ethics are Aristotelian, Berdayev's "The Destiny of Man" is Christian. Rand is eudaemonian; contrariwise, Berdayev gives us a profound glance at the Christian drama of human existence, a study into the ultimate purpose and meaning of life. Berdyaev discusses freedom, creativity, and the spirit, exploring the tension between the llife-world and transcendence. While Rand faces questions of ethics, absent God, Berdayev inhabits a world of faith, morality, and human destiny in an environment of uncertainty and spiritual longing.

[Bill Churchill · Rating 5 out of 5]

The real low-down on the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and how she came by it. For instance, she owed a lot more debt to Emmanuel Kant than she might have been willing to admit in her own mind. This is not a book for true believers in "objectivism." It shows the weave of her though, as well as its philosophical and historical context. If you want to understand the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and its antecedents, this is the book for you.

[Paul Crider · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chris Matthew Sciabarra interprets Ayn Rand's fictional and philosophical works in light of her background education in Russian, including Marxist, dialectics. The lengthy background on Russian dialectical philosophy is a little tedious for the reader who wants to get into the meat of Rand's thought, but it's necessary and it pays off.

Sciabarra is comprehensive, exploring how key themes evolve from her earliest fiction writings and journal entries to her nonfiction, as well as expositions of Objectivist thought by Branden, Peikoff, and other major figures in the movement. Sciabarra covers virtually every philosophical topic from epistemology to aesthetics and philosophy of race.

The most interesting parts of the book explore Rand's idiosyncratic Aristotelianism, from which she develops a peculiar version of virtue ethics. Her approach to virtue as derived from human reason and human orientation toward achieving flourishing (though Rand talks of "survival" rather than flourishing) also puts her into much closer proximity to Marx than one might initially imagine would be the case. For both Marx and Rand, "human beings affirm themselves objectively as they appropriate nature's substances to human requirements. By acting on material reality, human beings change it and actualize their own nature as conscious and social animals." One might even see Atlas Shrugged as one long argument against the alienation of the labor of industrialists, inventors, and other "men of the mind," to use Rand's favored masculinist phrase.

Her Aristotelian, eudaimonic ethics also places her within the "expressive individualist" strain of liberal thought (Humboldt, Mill, Green, Nussbaum) in her thick, comprehensive vision of the good even as her favored policies far more closely resemble those of the "possessive individualist" strain (Locke, Mises, Nozick). Peikoff, for example, "argues that at the core of Objectivism is a belief in the actualization of human potentialities." Indeed Rand's followers would point to the collapse of this binary—the resolution of the contradiction (after checking our premises of course!)—as Rand's signature genius.

Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical is a philosophically dense volume, but it's worth the effort for anyone who really wants to understand Rand's ideas and their relationship to other philosophers on a deeper level. This is crucial with Rand, who along with her devoted followers significantly downplayed her debts to influences of other thinkers. Sciabarra clearly admires Rand, but Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical is a work of thorough, dispassionate scholarship that should be appreciated by friends and foes of Rand's philosophy alike.

[Michael Morrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ayn Rand was, to a large degree, a self-created being.
She was a refugee to these United States from Soviet Russia, where she suffered like everybody else -- everybody else who was not connected.
There are stories of how hungry her family often was, despite being, before the revolution, middle-class people who owned their own pharmacy.
As our economy declines in August of 2022, seemingly headed to the depths the Russians suffered, or the depths United Statesians suffered in the 1930s, we can, to some degree, empathize with her sufferings and deprivations.
But the drive, the discipline, the brilliant imagination of the young woman who became Ayn Rand is probably beyond the reach of most of us.
However, even in this generally favorable biography, we, or at least I, can see that Ayn Rand was not necessarily a very pleasant person to be around, though from a comfortable distance, we, or at least I, can not help admiring and respecting her talent as a writer, and her almost unbelievable brilliance and creativity as a thinker.
Yes, as a philosopher.
That she and her philosophy are not more widely admired, or even accepted, is likely because of a couple of immediately identifiable factors: Most of the condemners have not actually read her work, in my own experience, and most of her condemners are aghast that a lone Russian female DARE to go against maybe 6,000 years of ... well, probably we can't say "thought," so let's say "belief systems."
In fact, at one sales meeting at a publishing house, a salesman made exactly that point.
Probably none of the sales people expected to make much money off her books ... but, boy, did the book-buying public fool them!
Ayn Rand has been dead about four decades now and her books, fiction and non-fiction, are still selling in the thousands, all across the world!
This book, by Chris Matthew Sciabarra, deserves also to sell in the millions. Its subject is worthy of at least a million new readers, and author Sciabarra's own skill and artistry deserve at least another million. Or two.
In fact, "Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical" should be carefully preserved and kept on the shelf -- AFTER careful reading -- along with your other reference books.
It's not only a good book, it's an important book, one I will re-read frequently.

[Frank Spencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has good explanation of Rand's philosophy. Her early education, with Lossky, is highlighted. The effect on her of Nietzche is also noted. The way in which Objectivism updates Aristotle is explained. Those interested in thinking will find a lot here. The author says that Rand believed that "thinking is the essential root of human production and survival." (pg 361) Rand's criticism of education and Dewey's effect thereupon is presented around page 326. Support of Szasz's ideas is noted. Values (reason, purpose, and self-esteem) are contrasted with virtues (rationality, productiveness, honesty, integrity, independence, justice, and pride). You get a stronger idea of her criticisms of dualisms. The only unsettling part for me was when I was trying to get the idea of the New Left Counterculture, as Rand described it. It dawned on me at one point that I was part of that little part of history. Time marches on.

[John Harder · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chris Sciabarra has written an in depth analysis of Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy, with a focus on the origins and influences on her intellectual development. This book is only for the die-hard Randite. For one who has not read her fiction and also read representative smattering of her non-fiction, this work is a tough slog. Even with an established knowledge of Rand’s principals this work leans to the dry side. Take a pass on this.

[Shoomg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sometimes interesting, sometimes bizarre analysis of Ayn Rand's ideas.

[Madeleine Morrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're interested in Ayn Rand, fucking read this book. The only complaint I have is that Sciabarra completely ignores the countless criticisms of Rand's minarchism.