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The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
AYN RAND BOOK
240 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published August 1, 1970
20 people are currently reading
846 people want to read
About the author
Ayn Rand
586 books10.3k followersPolemical novels, such as
The Fountainhead
(1943), of primarily known Russian-American writer Ayn Rand, originally Alisa Rosenbaum, espouse the doctrines of objectivism and political libertarianism.
Fiction of this better author and philosopher developed a system that she named. Educated, she moved to the United States in 1926. After two early initially duds and two Broadway plays, Rand achieved fame. In 1957, she published Atlas Shrugged , her best-selling work.
Rand advocated reason and rejected faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism as opposed to altruism. She condemned the immoral initiation of force and supported laissez-faire capitalism, which she defined as the system, based on recognizing individual rights, including private property. Often associated with the modern movement in the United States, Rand opposed and viewed anarchism. In art, she promoted romantic realism. She sharply criticized most philosophers and their traditions with few exceptions.
Books of Rand sold more than 37 million copies. From literary critics, her fiction received mixed reviews with more negative reviews for her later work. Afterward, she turned to nonfiction to promote her philosophy, published her own periodicals, and released several collections of essays until her death in 1982.
After her death, her ideas interested academics, but philosophers generally ignored or rejected her and argued that her approach and work lack methodological rigor. She influenced some right conservatives. The movement circulates her ideas to the public and in academic settings.
Fiction of this better author and philosopher developed a system that she named. Educated, she moved to the United States in 1926. After two early initially duds and two Broadway plays, Rand achieved fame. In 1957, she published Atlas Shrugged , her best-selling work.
Rand advocated reason and rejected faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism as opposed to altruism. She condemned the immoral initiation of force and supported laissez-faire capitalism, which she defined as the system, based on recognizing individual rights, including private property. Often associated with the modern movement in the United States, Rand opposed and viewed anarchism. In art, she promoted romantic realism. She sharply criticized most philosophers and their traditions with few exceptions.
Books of Rand sold more than 37 million copies. From literary critics, her fiction received mixed reviews with more negative reviews for her later work. Afterward, she turned to nonfiction to promote her philosophy, published her own periodicals, and released several collections of essays until her death in 1982.
After her death, her ideas interested academics, but philosophers generally ignored or rejected her and argued that her approach and work lack methodological rigor. She influenced some right conservatives. The movement circulates her ideas to the public and in academic settings.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
November 13, 2009
This is great because it pisses off hippies.
April 19, 2018
For most people, this 17,000-word essay is impossibly long and dense. However, from my personal perspective as an education reformer, it is wonderfully intelligent and accurate. Progressive education is, start to finish, an elaborate hoax in that what actually happens is that children, far from being educated, are confused and stupefied. That is the goal.
I write about this stuff all the time. I present the same answers as Ayn Rand. But I give her credit for being more aggressive and more decisive than I can generally afford to be. It is usually enough for me to point out where our public schools are always aiming, which is low. It does not add much to my typical article to point out that the Progressives are ruthless and evil. Ayn Rand wants to make sure you get it.
She found a passage in a Victor Hugo novel where he talks about unscrupulous people acquiring children in order to transform/deform them into dwarves, gymnasts, novelties of all kinds. Rand saw that this was an exact parallel with Progressive educators transforming children in our public schools. In both cases, the "comprachicos" (child-buyers) do whatever nasty tricks work.
That was in 1970. Rand saw that she had a wonderful literary moment she could use to explain the mysterious decline in K-12. Similarly, in 2018, when someone recommended this essay to me, I immediately saw that I had a wonderful literary moment I could use to explain why our students seem to get dumber each year. It ain't no accident.
I selected all my favorite quotes from this dense thicket and put an article on American Thinker titled "K-12: How Our Schools Make Monsters." People seem to enjoy it. The reason is that you get a lot of bang without working very hard. If you were in college and had to read Rand's essay and figure out what it is saying, that would be a great deal of work indeed.
Rand is extremely smart. She has a lush intelligence, in that she sees possibilities and options in every direction. Maybe she can carry all that in her brain but very few of her readers will be able to do that. I noticed, here on Goodreads, that many people indicated they liked this book and were reading it, but had not finished. That's easy to understand.
I'm sure the Education Establishment appreciated Rand's prolixity and density. Very few people would ever know what she had said. I'm a street hustler compared to Rand. I don't want to impress anybody with how smart I am. I want to change their minds.
The intelligence and insight provided by Rand are quite profound, and go a long way to explaining why despite ever more vast budgets, our schools get stupider and more destructive. A lot of smart and industrious people, subversives all, have made this happen. I hope everyone will savor Rand's information, whether her Olympian version or my quickie version. We have the same goal, defaming and debunking our Education Establishment.
I write about this stuff all the time. I present the same answers as Ayn Rand. But I give her credit for being more aggressive and more decisive than I can generally afford to be. It is usually enough for me to point out where our public schools are always aiming, which is low. It does not add much to my typical article to point out that the Progressives are ruthless and evil. Ayn Rand wants to make sure you get it.
She found a passage in a Victor Hugo novel where he talks about unscrupulous people acquiring children in order to transform/deform them into dwarves, gymnasts, novelties of all kinds. Rand saw that this was an exact parallel with Progressive educators transforming children in our public schools. In both cases, the "comprachicos" (child-buyers) do whatever nasty tricks work.
That was in 1970. Rand saw that she had a wonderful literary moment she could use to explain the mysterious decline in K-12. Similarly, in 2018, when someone recommended this essay to me, I immediately saw that I had a wonderful literary moment I could use to explain why our students seem to get dumber each year. It ain't no accident.
I selected all my favorite quotes from this dense thicket and put an article on American Thinker titled "K-12: How Our Schools Make Monsters." People seem to enjoy it. The reason is that you get a lot of bang without working very hard. If you were in college and had to read Rand's essay and figure out what it is saying, that would be a great deal of work indeed.
Rand is extremely smart. She has a lush intelligence, in that she sees possibilities and options in every direction. Maybe she can carry all that in her brain but very few of her readers will be able to do that. I noticed, here on Goodreads, that many people indicated they liked this book and were reading it, but had not finished. That's easy to understand.
I'm sure the Education Establishment appreciated Rand's prolixity and density. Very few people would ever know what she had said. I'm a street hustler compared to Rand. I don't want to impress anybody with how smart I am. I want to change their minds.
The intelligence and insight provided by Rand are quite profound, and go a long way to explaining why despite ever more vast budgets, our schools get stupider and more destructive. A lot of smart and industrious people, subversives all, have made this happen. I hope everyone will savor Rand's information, whether her Olympian version or my quickie version. We have the same goal, defaming and debunking our Education Establishment.
November 3, 2020
Part V of a multi-part review series.
Essays regarding ‘60s developments. Disappointing for a Rand effort--which is to say that it is as usual godsawful, just manifestly horrible, as though the abyss burped something up after a night of heavy drinking--but that its awfulness is not simultaneously awesomeness, as in Virtue of Selfishness or Romantic Manifesto, which are both so godsawful that one receives maximum lolarious return on readerly investment and the negative criticism writes itself. This one by contrast is tedious, annoying, childish--so wasteful that it fails to provide even cautionary examples or an advertisement for termination of pregnancy.
The subtitle suggests primitivism, which she was ready to associate with the left in Anthem. I’m not seeing much alleged primitivism on display in the objects of her tantrums here, except in a couple essays (certainly she proves no real primitivism). In “The Left: Old and New,” wherein she courageously exposes “anti-pollution--i.e., anti-technology--crusaders” (88): when most people think that environmental activists “just want to clean up the smog and the sewage,” Rand sees through the lies! “Well, Hitler, too, announced his abstract principles and goals in advance” (id.). Let’s be clear: wanting to clean up smog and sewage = Hitler. Understood? (Odd also that cleaning up smog and sewage is an abstract principle for Rand.)
In “The Anti-Industrial Revolution,” she opens with a “fiction” (131) wherein technology is banned and everyone has to work harder, &c., all because the collectivist ecologists want to destroy capitalism because they are envious of it (no shit--the motivation is mere envy because, says Rand, collectivism just can‘t produce anything). Restricting technology is restricting the mind, &c. (145-47). Apparently, the anti-industrial revolution is led by someone with “the blank stare of [a] housewife” and the “snarling mouth of a hippie” (150). So, yeah, definitely not her A-game.
This essay reveals two nasty flaws for Rand and Randites: first, a comical contradiction with Virtue of Selfishness, which ridicules the notion that leisure, recreation, entertainment are human rights; here, the text insists that “A life of unrelieved drudgery, of endless, gray toil, with no rest, no travel, no pleasure--above all, no pleasure. Those drugged, fornicating hedonists do not know that man cannot live by toil alone, that pleasure is a necessity, and that television has brought more enjoyment into more lives than all the public parks and settlement houses combined” (148). Okay…hippies take pleasure out of people’s lives but capitalism can alleviate endless gray toil…with television. Good job! More significantly, the essay nonsensically accuses "fornicating hedonists" of being against pleasure--it's almost as though the pure etymological definition of hedonism were not understood. One might entertain a reasoned debate between Epicurus and Aristippus, say--but they will still both be focused on pleasure.
Second, “according to one scenario, the planet is already well advanced toward the phenomenon called ‘the greenhouse effect.’" (136). “This is what bears the name of ‘science’ today.” (137). NB: no refutation of climate change theory. She presents the global warming theory and simply suggests that it is ridiculous because other scientists have suggested global cooling from increased albedo. Turns out she’s dead wrong on this--but we didn’t need confirmation--she was dead wrong when she wrote it because her climate change denial is simple dogmatism.
Opening essay takes on the hippie menace. To take down the hippies, she strings together dogmatic mantras: “the obliteration of reason obliterates the concept of reality, which obliterates the concept of achievement, which obliterates the concept of the distinction between the earned and the unearned” (47).
Another essay employs the apollonian/dionysian distinction, drawn crudely from Nietzsche, in order to refute Woodstock. In attacking a mass culture event, she finds it relevant to announce “Kant was the first hippie in history” (65), which is, yaknow, beyond asinine.
Standard randroid BS otherwise: surplus citations to her novels, as though that proved anything, but very few citations to anything else, other than newspaper articles; severe Dunning-Kruger effect (e.g., “If you observe that ever since Hume and Kant […] philosophy has been striving to prove that man’s mind is impotent” (108)). Fairly plain that she hasn’t really read anything serious in comments like “Yet for many decades past […] there has been no such thing as political philosophy--with the stale exception of Marxism, if one can call it a philosophy” (109), which indicates a failure to have read and understood anything.
Her lack of principle is manifest in her approval of the sentimental presentation of soviet dissidents who had “thrown off the leading conformity of the only society they have known” (116). When US dissidents do likewise, though, they are “self-made puppets in search of a master, dangling and jerking hysterically at the end of strings no one wants to pick up, begging and demanding to be taken care of--these exhibitionists who have nothing to exhibit, who combine the methods of a thug with the candied platitudes of a small-town evangelist, whose creative self-expression is as stale as their unwashed bodies, with drugs eating away their brains, obscenities as the voice of their souls, and an all-consuming hatred as their only visible emotion” (122-23). Of course, these hippies are “products of a decadent culture” (122)--so, neo-spenglerian pessimism.
Last essay attempts to take on educators, with the routine shrill dogmatic mantras.
One of the worst books by one of the worst writers. Knock your lights out!
Essays regarding ‘60s developments. Disappointing for a Rand effort--which is to say that it is as usual godsawful, just manifestly horrible, as though the abyss burped something up after a night of heavy drinking--but that its awfulness is not simultaneously awesomeness, as in Virtue of Selfishness or Romantic Manifesto, which are both so godsawful that one receives maximum lolarious return on readerly investment and the negative criticism writes itself. This one by contrast is tedious, annoying, childish--so wasteful that it fails to provide even cautionary examples or an advertisement for termination of pregnancy.
The subtitle suggests primitivism, which she was ready to associate with the left in Anthem. I’m not seeing much alleged primitivism on display in the objects of her tantrums here, except in a couple essays (certainly she proves no real primitivism). In “The Left: Old and New,” wherein she courageously exposes “anti-pollution--i.e., anti-technology--crusaders” (88): when most people think that environmental activists “just want to clean up the smog and the sewage,” Rand sees through the lies! “Well, Hitler, too, announced his abstract principles and goals in advance” (id.). Let’s be clear: wanting to clean up smog and sewage = Hitler. Understood? (Odd also that cleaning up smog and sewage is an abstract principle for Rand.)
In “The Anti-Industrial Revolution,” she opens with a “fiction” (131) wherein technology is banned and everyone has to work harder, &c., all because the collectivist ecologists want to destroy capitalism because they are envious of it (no shit--the motivation is mere envy because, says Rand, collectivism just can‘t produce anything). Restricting technology is restricting the mind, &c. (145-47). Apparently, the anti-industrial revolution is led by someone with “the blank stare of [a] housewife” and the “snarling mouth of a hippie” (150). So, yeah, definitely not her A-game.
This essay reveals two nasty flaws for Rand and Randites: first, a comical contradiction with Virtue of Selfishness, which ridicules the notion that leisure, recreation, entertainment are human rights; here, the text insists that “A life of unrelieved drudgery, of endless, gray toil, with no rest, no travel, no pleasure--above all, no pleasure. Those drugged, fornicating hedonists do not know that man cannot live by toil alone, that pleasure is a necessity, and that television has brought more enjoyment into more lives than all the public parks and settlement houses combined” (148). Okay…hippies take pleasure out of people’s lives but capitalism can alleviate endless gray toil…with television. Good job! More significantly, the essay nonsensically accuses "fornicating hedonists" of being against pleasure--it's almost as though the pure etymological definition of hedonism were not understood. One might entertain a reasoned debate between Epicurus and Aristippus, say--but they will still both be focused on pleasure.
Second, “according to one scenario, the planet is already well advanced toward the phenomenon called ‘the greenhouse effect.’" (136). “This is what bears the name of ‘science’ today.” (137). NB: no refutation of climate change theory. She presents the global warming theory and simply suggests that it is ridiculous because other scientists have suggested global cooling from increased albedo. Turns out she’s dead wrong on this--but we didn’t need confirmation--she was dead wrong when she wrote it because her climate change denial is simple dogmatism.
Opening essay takes on the hippie menace. To take down the hippies, she strings together dogmatic mantras: “the obliteration of reason obliterates the concept of reality, which obliterates the concept of achievement, which obliterates the concept of the distinction between the earned and the unearned” (47).
Another essay employs the apollonian/dionysian distinction, drawn crudely from Nietzsche, in order to refute Woodstock. In attacking a mass culture event, she finds it relevant to announce “Kant was the first hippie in history” (65), which is, yaknow, beyond asinine.
Standard randroid BS otherwise: surplus citations to her novels, as though that proved anything, but very few citations to anything else, other than newspaper articles; severe Dunning-Kruger effect (e.g., “If you observe that ever since Hume and Kant […] philosophy has been striving to prove that man’s mind is impotent” (108)). Fairly plain that she hasn’t really read anything serious in comments like “Yet for many decades past […] there has been no such thing as political philosophy--with the stale exception of Marxism, if one can call it a philosophy” (109), which indicates a failure to have read and understood anything.
Her lack of principle is manifest in her approval of the sentimental presentation of soviet dissidents who had “thrown off the leading conformity of the only society they have known” (116). When US dissidents do likewise, though, they are “self-made puppets in search of a master, dangling and jerking hysterically at the end of strings no one wants to pick up, begging and demanding to be taken care of--these exhibitionists who have nothing to exhibit, who combine the methods of a thug with the candied platitudes of a small-town evangelist, whose creative self-expression is as stale as their unwashed bodies, with drugs eating away their brains, obscenities as the voice of their souls, and an all-consuming hatred as their only visible emotion” (122-23). Of course, these hippies are “products of a decadent culture” (122)--so, neo-spenglerian pessimism.
Last essay attempts to take on educators, with the routine shrill dogmatic mantras.
One of the worst books by one of the worst writers. Knock your lights out!
October 23, 2007
Ayn Rand is a lot like George W. Bush. They both think from the gut. So when Rand rambles for tens of pages in The Comprachicos, the (thankfully) concluding story in her compendium, The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, you will quickly realize that her discourse on the cognitive development of the human child is nothing more than thinking from the gut. Her psycho-epistemological overview is a self-inflicted wound that the reader subjects him/herself to with every turn of the page. It is absolutely devoid of any reference to scientific or medical studies that hint at the actual neural workings of the child in his/her development. Instead, Rand works backwards from her deistic praising of reason and rationality into developing a systematic program of concept identification, percept formation, and logical sequencing. To establish a framework through which the brain develops and neural processes mature should require the assistance of neuroscientists and cognitive theorists. Ayn Rand is neither and though she holds rationality in the most magnanimous of lights, fails to abide by her own standards with such a hideous piece of ideological smut.
Rand's non-fiction is loathsome. According to her, there are two people: rational and irrational. The irrational have along the way never gained access to the divine light of reason and Rand fails to deliver hypotheses as to why this is the case. Instead, she accepts her own 'amoral' hierarchy and abuses those that don't.
The reader will surely empathize with Rand when she explains how the mental deterioration of a child is more likely than not due to Progressivism, Collectivism, early exposure to cavalier philosophers like Kant or Rousseau or Marx, or a heavy injection of 'fear.' The word 'fear,' like 'rat pack,' 'thug,' 'brute,' 'parasite,' and 'misfit,' is one of those words that comprise about 50% of the content of the average Rand story, whose collective erasure might point to the extinction of a comprehensible Rand piece. In sum, Rand is unpleasantly disappointing in this collection of stories that for whatever unknown reason, were never published until Signet pulled them all together.
Rand's non-fiction is loathsome. According to her, there are two people: rational and irrational. The irrational have along the way never gained access to the divine light of reason and Rand fails to deliver hypotheses as to why this is the case. Instead, she accepts her own 'amoral' hierarchy and abuses those that don't.
The reader will surely empathize with Rand when she explains how the mental deterioration of a child is more likely than not due to Progressivism, Collectivism, early exposure to cavalier philosophers like Kant or Rousseau or Marx, or a heavy injection of 'fear.' The word 'fear,' like 'rat pack,' 'thug,' 'brute,' 'parasite,' and 'misfit,' is one of those words that comprise about 50% of the content of the average Rand story, whose collective erasure might point to the extinction of a comprehensible Rand piece. In sum, Rand is unpleasantly disappointing in this collection of stories that for whatever unknown reason, were never published until Signet pulled them all together.
Currently reading
August 4, 2011In this collection of essays, Rand provides substance to a recollection from my childhood that the radical left, which morphed into the "Green Movement", were fundamentally anti-industrial and anti-technical progress. Quite an act for people who today call themselves "Progressives". While we have forgotten that the impetus for much of the left's acts today stem from the efforts of communists beginning in the 1930's, Rand prescient pen quickly redraws the reality of this fact.
November 25, 2015
Every educator and parent should read this insightful essay.
April 18, 2020
Ayn rants
July 8, 2013
THE NEW LEFT
AYN RAND
Good. Mostly interesting, thought-provoking. Although there is much I cannot agree with, there is much I can. Her fault seems to be in generalizations, exaggerations, and making issues black and white i.e. simplifying (distorting.) to reach simple answers.
Also a great deal of hate and bitterness seems to pervade her writing. For example:
"the unwashed face and snarling mouth of a hippie".
All in all it gives much to think about.
Don't expect to agree with everything in this book, but expect to get a different viewpoint, one that might surprise you.
More great non-fiction
AYN RAND
Good. Mostly interesting, thought-provoking. Although there is much I cannot agree with, there is much I can. Her fault seems to be in generalizations, exaggerations, and making issues black and white i.e. simplifying (distorting.) to reach simple answers.
Also a great deal of hate and bitterness seems to pervade her writing. For example:
"the unwashed face and snarling mouth of a hippie".
All in all it gives much to think about.
Don't expect to agree with everything in this book, but expect to get a different viewpoint, one that might surprise you.
More great non-fiction
March 3, 2015
Comprachicos, or "child-buyers", were 17th century associations that intentionally disfigured children for others' amusement. This is a 1970 Ayn Rand essay on educational methods that seems to have been prompted by the student unrest of the time.
The essay's themes are more relevant than ever today. Rand deplores modern education's focus on feelings vs. facts/reason, and its emphasis on pleasing the group vs. developing capable individuals. Montessori gets a gold star. Kant, Hegel, Marcuse, Dewey, existentialism, deconstruction and critical theory all get taken to the woodshed.
The essay's themes are more relevant than ever today. Rand deplores modern education's focus on feelings vs. facts/reason, and its emphasis on pleasing the group vs. developing capable individuals. Montessori gets a gold star. Kant, Hegel, Marcuse, Dewey, existentialism, deconstruction and critical theory all get taken to the woodshed.
March 11, 2015
If you hate hippies and all youthful, optimistic, dumb "counter cultures" that participate in self-induced brain trauma by drug and alcohol abuse (I am not going to lie, I participated in that in my youth and am currently drunk); read the "Apollo and Dionysus" article. I have not read a more accurate description of the fraudulence, conformity, and bullshit surrounding the hippie movement than in this article. It is as if you could take a youth involved with a "counter culture" today and interchange them with a hippie from 50 years ago. The similarities are frightening and depressing...
Though sometimes engaging in pseudo-psycho-babble, prepare for a mind f*ck in "The Comprachicos".
Apollo and Dionysus
"Avowed anti-materialists whose only manifestation of rebellion and of individualism takes the material form of the clothes they choose to wear, are a pretty ridiculous spectacle. Of any type of nonconformity, this is the easiest to practice, and the safest. But even in this issue, there is a special psychological component: observe the hippies' choice of clothing. It is not intended to evoke admiration, but to evoke mockery and pity. One does not make oneself look like a caricature unless one intends one's appearance to plead: Please don't take me seriously. And there is a kind of malicious wink, a contemptuous sneer, in the public voices acclaiming the hippies as heroes. This is what I would call "the court-jester premise". The jester at the court of an absolute monarch was permitted to say anything to insult anyone, even his master, because the jester had assumed the role of a fool, had abdicated any claim to personal dignity and was using self-abasement as his protection. The hippies are a desperate herd looking for a master, to be taken over by anyone; anyone who would tell them how to live, without demanding the effort of thinking,. Theirs is the mentality ready for a Fuhrer. The hippies are the living demonstration of what it means to give up reason and to rely on one's primeval "instincts", "urges", "intuitions", and whims."
"One of them (promoter of Woodstock) stated openly: "Maybe the best way to define the Underground Industrial Complex...is materialistic people of the underground trying to make money off of a generation of underground kids who feel they aren't materialistic."
The Comprachicos
(Whoa, if you want to know how to raise a kid, read this Comprachicos article. It illustrates the downfall in modern education. It is better than Rousseau's Emile, which argued to stick a child in hot and then cold water to create a "primitive vigor")...
"He learns that regardless of what he does- whether his action is right or wrong, honest or dishonest, sensible or senseless- if the pack disapproves, he is wrong and his desire is frustrated: if the pack approves, then anything goes. Thus the embryo of his concept of morality shrivels before it is born."
"He (a child) learns that it is no use starting any lengthy project of his own- such as building a castle out of boxes- it will be taken over or destroyed by others. He learns that anything he wants must be grabbed today, since there is no way of telling what the pack will decide tomorrow. Thus his groping sense of time-continuity- of the future's reality- is stunted, shrinking his awareness and concern to the range of the immediate moment. He is able (and motivated) to perceive the present; he is unable (and unmotivated) to retain the past or to project the future."
"But even the present is undercut. Make-believe is a dangerous luxury, which only those who have grasped the distinction between the real and the imaginary can afford. Cut off from reality, which he has not learned to fully grasp, he is plunged into a world of fantasy playing. He may feel a dim uneasiness, at first: to him, it is not imagining, it is lying. But he loses that distinction and gets into the swing. The wilder his fantasies, the warmer the teacher's approval and concern; his doubts are intangible, the approval is real. He begins to believe his own fantasies. How can he be sure of what is true or not, what is out there and what is only in his mind? Thus he never acquires a firm distinction between existence and consciousness: his precarious hold on reality is shaken, and his cognitive processes subverted."
Bukowski read Rand I bet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qup1B...
"At the age of five and a half, he is ready to be released into the world: an impotent creature, unable to think, unable to face or deal with reality, a creature who combines brashness and fear, who can recite its memorized lessons, but cannot understand them- a creature deprived of its means of survival, doomed to limp or stumble or crawl through life in search of some nameless relief from chronic, nameless, incomprehensible pain. "
Now I am convinced Bukowski read Rand:
"No better method than this type of grading could be devised to destroy a child's individuality and turn him into a stale little conformist, to stunt his unformed sense of personal identity and make him blend into an anonymous mob, to penalize the best, the most intelligent and honest children in class, and to reward the worst, the dull, the lethargic, the dishonest."
"The independent children, who resist the conditioning and preserve some part of their rationality, are predominately shunted, or self-exiled, into the physical sciences and allied professions, away from social, philosophical or humanistic concerns. The social field- and thus society's future- is left to the "adjusted," to the stunted, twisted, mutilated minds the comprachicos' technique was intended to produce."
"He (high school graduate) assumes the pose of an authority on the latest, journalistic issues in politics (part of his "class projects") and recites the canned bromides of third-rate editorials as if they were his original discoveries. He does not know how to read or write or consult a dictionary. He is sly and "wise"; he has the cynicism of a decadent adult, and the credulity of a child. He is loud, aggressive, belligerent. His main concern is to prove that he is afraid of nothing- because he is scared to death of everything".
Now I am convinced no one cares...
Though sometimes engaging in pseudo-psycho-babble, prepare for a mind f*ck in "The Comprachicos".
Apollo and Dionysus
"Avowed anti-materialists whose only manifestation of rebellion and of individualism takes the material form of the clothes they choose to wear, are a pretty ridiculous spectacle. Of any type of nonconformity, this is the easiest to practice, and the safest. But even in this issue, there is a special psychological component: observe the hippies' choice of clothing. It is not intended to evoke admiration, but to evoke mockery and pity. One does not make oneself look like a caricature unless one intends one's appearance to plead: Please don't take me seriously. And there is a kind of malicious wink, a contemptuous sneer, in the public voices acclaiming the hippies as heroes. This is what I would call "the court-jester premise". The jester at the court of an absolute monarch was permitted to say anything to insult anyone, even his master, because the jester had assumed the role of a fool, had abdicated any claim to personal dignity and was using self-abasement as his protection. The hippies are a desperate herd looking for a master, to be taken over by anyone; anyone who would tell them how to live, without demanding the effort of thinking,. Theirs is the mentality ready for a Fuhrer. The hippies are the living demonstration of what it means to give up reason and to rely on one's primeval "instincts", "urges", "intuitions", and whims."
"One of them (promoter of Woodstock) stated openly: "Maybe the best way to define the Underground Industrial Complex...is materialistic people of the underground trying to make money off of a generation of underground kids who feel they aren't materialistic."
The Comprachicos
(Whoa, if you want to know how to raise a kid, read this Comprachicos article. It illustrates the downfall in modern education. It is better than Rousseau's Emile, which argued to stick a child in hot and then cold water to create a "primitive vigor")...
"He learns that regardless of what he does- whether his action is right or wrong, honest or dishonest, sensible or senseless- if the pack disapproves, he is wrong and his desire is frustrated: if the pack approves, then anything goes. Thus the embryo of his concept of morality shrivels before it is born."
"He (a child) learns that it is no use starting any lengthy project of his own- such as building a castle out of boxes- it will be taken over or destroyed by others. He learns that anything he wants must be grabbed today, since there is no way of telling what the pack will decide tomorrow. Thus his groping sense of time-continuity- of the future's reality- is stunted, shrinking his awareness and concern to the range of the immediate moment. He is able (and motivated) to perceive the present; he is unable (and unmotivated) to retain the past or to project the future."
"But even the present is undercut. Make-believe is a dangerous luxury, which only those who have grasped the distinction between the real and the imaginary can afford. Cut off from reality, which he has not learned to fully grasp, he is plunged into a world of fantasy playing. He may feel a dim uneasiness, at first: to him, it is not imagining, it is lying. But he loses that distinction and gets into the swing. The wilder his fantasies, the warmer the teacher's approval and concern; his doubts are intangible, the approval is real. He begins to believe his own fantasies. How can he be sure of what is true or not, what is out there and what is only in his mind? Thus he never acquires a firm distinction between existence and consciousness: his precarious hold on reality is shaken, and his cognitive processes subverted."
Bukowski read Rand I bet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qup1B...
"At the age of five and a half, he is ready to be released into the world: an impotent creature, unable to think, unable to face or deal with reality, a creature who combines brashness and fear, who can recite its memorized lessons, but cannot understand them- a creature deprived of its means of survival, doomed to limp or stumble or crawl through life in search of some nameless relief from chronic, nameless, incomprehensible pain. "
Now I am convinced Bukowski read Rand:
"No better method than this type of grading could be devised to destroy a child's individuality and turn him into a stale little conformist, to stunt his unformed sense of personal identity and make him blend into an anonymous mob, to penalize the best, the most intelligent and honest children in class, and to reward the worst, the dull, the lethargic, the dishonest."
"The independent children, who resist the conditioning and preserve some part of their rationality, are predominately shunted, or self-exiled, into the physical sciences and allied professions, away from social, philosophical or humanistic concerns. The social field- and thus society's future- is left to the "adjusted," to the stunted, twisted, mutilated minds the comprachicos' technique was intended to produce."
"He (high school graduate) assumes the pose of an authority on the latest, journalistic issues in politics (part of his "class projects") and recites the canned bromides of third-rate editorials as if they were his original discoveries. He does not know how to read or write or consult a dictionary. He is sly and "wise"; he has the cynicism of a decadent adult, and the credulity of a child. He is loud, aggressive, belligerent. His main concern is to prove that he is afraid of nothing- because he is scared to death of everything".
Now I am convinced no one cares...
June 25, 2012
I recommend to anybody to read this book. It's actually very good :) In Rand's composition she explained, and Identified the integral evils of the New Left and their movement, gang, group, and etc. Although I didn't like or (mis-used) a couple of words that she mentioned I assumed that she has some reasons. For example like she's praising the Montessouri school which is totally different from the present Montessouri school.
As my understanding the present Montessouri school is now become progressive nursery school which is a progressive liberal mind set, she definitely denounce or criticize being "comprachicos", when she's written this book back then its more like her description of the old Montessouri school......and secondly the word she mentioned about the benevolent Universe. I think word benevolence is not the right word, coz how could be a universe being benevolence or even malevolent when universe does not have consciousness......it doesn't have any intent..... because nature is.
For people who'd like to attempt to derive or appreciate the state of American culture....Return of the Primitive or The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution is a good book to read.
As my understanding the present Montessouri school is now become progressive nursery school which is a progressive liberal mind set, she definitely denounce or criticize being "comprachicos", when she's written this book back then its more like her description of the old Montessouri school......and secondly the word she mentioned about the benevolent Universe. I think word benevolence is not the right word, coz how could be a universe being benevolence or even malevolent when universe does not have consciousness......it doesn't have any intent..... because nature is.
For people who'd like to attempt to derive or appreciate the state of American culture....Return of the Primitive or The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution is a good book to read.
May 18, 2013
It's been a while since I read a Rand book. This is a collection of essays she wrote, most in the last 60's and early 70's in response to hippie movements and Progressive education. Her comment on the sit-in's at Berkley: "Rule by pressure groups is merely the prelude, the social conditioning for mob rule. Once a country has accepted the obliteration of moral principles, of individual rights, of objectivity, of justice, of reason, and has submitted to the rule of legalized brute force, - the elimination of the concept "legalizes" does not take long to follow. Who is to resist it - and in the name of what?" In "The Comprachicos" she compares the effect and motives of Progressive education to the physical processes employed by comprachicos and in other cultures. Children are reared to follow the group and not to experience any connection between independent thought and success. Eventually they stop trying to see this connection and live a life without purpose, unable even to see the paradigm into which they've been molded.
March 4, 2015
This is terrible. I admit that I was in it for the laughs, but there wasn't much laughs to be had, except when she calls hippies thugs and brutes (whaaat?). In this compilation Ayn Rand is absolutely hysterical (and bitter too), her ideas about the environment are downright criminal... but instead of having proper arguments, she resorts to insults and the most ridiculous "straw man' tactics in the history of sophisms.
You may think it's still worth to check out, especially if you find, as I did, a 1 dollar copy at a thrift store, but you will just lose your time.
Still, it says a lot about the intellectual capacity of libertards who find this book illuminating. Just mind-boggling.
You may think it's still worth to check out, especially if you find, as I did, a 1 dollar copy at a thrift store, but you will just lose your time.
Still, it says a lot about the intellectual capacity of libertards who find this book illuminating. Just mind-boggling.
July 5, 2022
“The New Left: Anti-industrial revolution”
Ayn Rand
Review by jazthedigital
5.07.2022
Read on Kindle Paperwhite 4.
The book reads as a screeds series that consist of „observations” just based of generał U.S. bland anti-communism rethorics, popular media at the time including newspapers and TV reports.
Rand as in many of her fictional works, wants to win reader over by a vision of regression, moral decay in her eyes- forms of altruism, collectivism and well things like government aids. She doesn’t try to attempt even fair arguments, with scientific methods, presentation of ideas like Marxism then commenting on it. It’s all a bit rant spectacle that gives reader no tools to rethink her positions, because she thinks readers at the time and forward in time will just “notice her genius”. It’s arrogant for a writer and not that engaging, when there’s no part of discussion.
Just hyperbolic “open-shut case” from the start with a sense of triumph through-out. It’s not didactically satisfying in a slightest.
Hyperboles and black-and-white reductionism are all over this work. Even such interesting and nuanced thing as industrial revolution of 19th century is just presented as great example of capitalism’s inherent progress factor. But based on what? It’s not entirely fought over argument, Rand acts as if she won an argument, but takes no effort to present multiple points and convince us.
Also some rhetorics is just less condensed McCarthyism and a vision of American Exceptionalism, plus romanticisation of the “culturally superior” Europe. But Rand doesn’t see how it stirs in a bit imperialist way of thinking. Oh the irony.
Rand as in the title paints New Left movements as highly critical of industrialisation. And so she equals criticism of this as a vote towards primitivism. Anti-technology, anti-progress. Wow... such nuance and strawman argument. Rand jumps from conclusion to conclusion, patting herself on a back. But not looking back that her train of thought has holes and loses causality element. She doesn't explore it throoughly. She just "knows".
Also she looks not just sceptical at environmentalists but views them as evil, malicious wall that wants to limit people's freedom and capitalist "advancements" (she doesn't explain what she means by that.) when she draws a line between this groups and... Hitler. A nazi fascist dictator scum responsible for WWII, Holocaust (Rand is Jewish, remember? That's pretty weird comparison of her.) is as bad as people that want to clean up the planet, secure natural resources, limit exploitation of nature, that's part of our reality and survival on this Earth. Sure... Sure, Rand.
She just dismisses a climate change dangers, bringing "the greenhouse effect" phenomenon. It goes about like this: "There's this position that environmentalists hold about upcoming dangers of pollution etc. But other scientists claim it's no biggie and that we have global cooling, so I'm no this second side." That's not how science works. It's not choosing a Democratic or Republican optic of things. It's environment! It's complex, it's bigger than us! Rand chooses simple dogmatism. Such for a power of grand reason.
Also Rand considers U.S. hippies as “brutal”(what? Anti-war hippies? Seriously?) cohesive one left group. As if hippies weren’t partially rich white kids with liberal performative call for “freedom”, nomad cosplayers, partially evolution of beatniks. With some leftist parts, mini-groups that were actually guided by for example Marxist theory. So... she doesn’t get that hippies we’re not homogeneous group. Also repeats non-nuanced conservative talking points.
She doesn’t introduces the reader to some of societal elements, class divide, element of imperialism, indigenous exploitation that led to Industrial Revolution. Britain known for its colonialism, fetishisation of idea of monarchy is not so surprising as a country that put-out new forms of intense labour. Forms and problematic conditions that were meant to fasten production, but ultimately made workers work harder and not earn that much in comparison to previous status quo.
She doesn’t bring this perspectives, at all!
Also calls Immanuel Kant a "first hippie in history"... What brought you to this conclusion? Kant was conservative in many ways. Nonsense.
Again dismissing points of her ideological oppositions and injecting lengthy (just as unnecessary stretched-out, self-congratulatory speeches of characters of hers like John Galt) rants about the New Left. Presenting it, disingenuously as a part that has some big political power in states. Rather than being what it was back then, a marginalised group, that wants to achieve pro-social goals without approval or co-operation of the state that’s interests often aren’t met with goals and needs of people.
But Rand is too proud in herself to even acknowledge and study things she discusses here. Thinking that her experience as a child in Russia during October Revolution is enough and even more credible sourced contempt towards collectivist ideas and leftist sentiments, than any academic approach of systematic analysis and criticism with a method.
On top of all that, Rand is so proudly oblivious of the environmental effects of Industrial Revolution to the planet.
It should be titled “The Red Scarce Rant of Ayn Rand”. Not much substantial. I believe many reactionaries will gladly adapt this book as “prophetic” because it conforms their narrow-mindset and tabloid levels of dull “discourse”.
What a joke. It feels like a stream of consciousness written in first draft.
1 out of 10.
Ayn Rand
Review by jazthedigital
5.07.2022
Read on Kindle Paperwhite 4.
The book reads as a screeds series that consist of „observations” just based of generał U.S. bland anti-communism rethorics, popular media at the time including newspapers and TV reports.
Rand as in many of her fictional works, wants to win reader over by a vision of regression, moral decay in her eyes- forms of altruism, collectivism and well things like government aids. She doesn’t try to attempt even fair arguments, with scientific methods, presentation of ideas like Marxism then commenting on it. It’s all a bit rant spectacle that gives reader no tools to rethink her positions, because she thinks readers at the time and forward in time will just “notice her genius”. It’s arrogant for a writer and not that engaging, when there’s no part of discussion.
Just hyperbolic “open-shut case” from the start with a sense of triumph through-out. It’s not didactically satisfying in a slightest.
Hyperboles and black-and-white reductionism are all over this work. Even such interesting and nuanced thing as industrial revolution of 19th century is just presented as great example of capitalism’s inherent progress factor. But based on what? It’s not entirely fought over argument, Rand acts as if she won an argument, but takes no effort to present multiple points and convince us.
Also some rhetorics is just less condensed McCarthyism and a vision of American Exceptionalism, plus romanticisation of the “culturally superior” Europe. But Rand doesn’t see how it stirs in a bit imperialist way of thinking. Oh the irony.
Rand as in the title paints New Left movements as highly critical of industrialisation. And so she equals criticism of this as a vote towards primitivism. Anti-technology, anti-progress. Wow... such nuance and strawman argument. Rand jumps from conclusion to conclusion, patting herself on a back. But not looking back that her train of thought has holes and loses causality element. She doesn't explore it throoughly. She just "knows".
Also she looks not just sceptical at environmentalists but views them as evil, malicious wall that wants to limit people's freedom and capitalist "advancements" (she doesn't explain what she means by that.) when she draws a line between this groups and... Hitler. A nazi fascist dictator scum responsible for WWII, Holocaust (Rand is Jewish, remember? That's pretty weird comparison of her.) is as bad as people that want to clean up the planet, secure natural resources, limit exploitation of nature, that's part of our reality and survival on this Earth. Sure... Sure, Rand.
She just dismisses a climate change dangers, bringing "the greenhouse effect" phenomenon. It goes about like this: "There's this position that environmentalists hold about upcoming dangers of pollution etc. But other scientists claim it's no biggie and that we have global cooling, so I'm no this second side." That's not how science works. It's not choosing a Democratic or Republican optic of things. It's environment! It's complex, it's bigger than us! Rand chooses simple dogmatism. Such for a power of grand reason.
Also Rand considers U.S. hippies as “brutal”(what? Anti-war hippies? Seriously?) cohesive one left group. As if hippies weren’t partially rich white kids with liberal performative call for “freedom”, nomad cosplayers, partially evolution of beatniks. With some leftist parts, mini-groups that were actually guided by for example Marxist theory. So... she doesn’t get that hippies we’re not homogeneous group. Also repeats non-nuanced conservative talking points.
She doesn’t introduces the reader to some of societal elements, class divide, element of imperialism, indigenous exploitation that led to Industrial Revolution. Britain known for its colonialism, fetishisation of idea of monarchy is not so surprising as a country that put-out new forms of intense labour. Forms and problematic conditions that were meant to fasten production, but ultimately made workers work harder and not earn that much in comparison to previous status quo.
She doesn’t bring this perspectives, at all!
Also calls Immanuel Kant a "first hippie in history"... What brought you to this conclusion? Kant was conservative in many ways. Nonsense.
Again dismissing points of her ideological oppositions and injecting lengthy (just as unnecessary stretched-out, self-congratulatory speeches of characters of hers like John Galt) rants about the New Left. Presenting it, disingenuously as a part that has some big political power in states. Rather than being what it was back then, a marginalised group, that wants to achieve pro-social goals without approval or co-operation of the state that’s interests often aren’t met with goals and needs of people.
But Rand is too proud in herself to even acknowledge and study things she discusses here. Thinking that her experience as a child in Russia during October Revolution is enough and even more credible sourced contempt towards collectivist ideas and leftist sentiments, than any academic approach of systematic analysis and criticism with a method.
On top of all that, Rand is so proudly oblivious of the environmental effects of Industrial Revolution to the planet.
It should be titled “The Red Scarce Rant of Ayn Rand”. Not much substantial. I believe many reactionaries will gladly adapt this book as “prophetic” because it conforms their narrow-mindset and tabloid levels of dull “discourse”.
What a joke. It feels like a stream of consciousness written in first draft.
1 out of 10.
March 15, 2012
The best chapter in this book is titled "The Age of Envy". In it she discusses something even darker than envy, something she names "hatred of the good for being the good." Considering all the public conversation the past fifty years regarding hatred of blacks, women, Jews, homosexuals, foreigners and so on, it is surprising that so little attention has been paid to what must be the worst bigotry of them all.
May 28, 2024
RAND’S MUSINGS ON THE STUDENT REBELLIONS OF THE ‘60s AND ‘70s
Ayn Rand wrote in the Foreword to this 1971 book, “this book is intended for college students---for those among them who ARE seeking ‘a voice of reason to turn to.’ It is intended also for those who are concerned about college students and about the state of modern education… [Most] articles in this book… appeared originally in my magazine ‘The Objectivist.’”
She states, “Observe the ideological precedents which the Berkeley rebels were striving to establish… The main issue was the attempt to make the country accept mass civil disobedience as a proper and valid tool of political action… Civil disobedience may be justifiable, in some cases… But there is no justification, in a civilized society, for the kind of mass civil disobedience that involves the violation of the rights of others---regardless of whether the demonstrators’ goal is good or evil… the forcible occupation of another man’s property or the obstruction of a public thoroughfare is so blatant a violation of rights that an attempt to justify it becomes an abrogation of morality.” (Pg. 38-39)
She observes, “The rebels’ notion that students… should run universities and determine their curricula is a crude absurdity. If an ignorant youth comes to an institution of learning in order to acquire knowledge of a certain science, by what means is he to determine what is relevant and how he should be taught?” (Pg. 47)
She suggests, “the essence of a genuine feeling of human brotherhood [is] the brotherhood of VALUES. This is the only authentic form of unity among men---and only values can achieve it.” (Pg. 60)
She asserts, “The hippies are the living demonstration of what it means to give up reason and to rely on one’s primeval ‘instincts,’ ‘urges,’ ‘intuitions’---and whims… they are unable to grasp even what is needed to satisfy their wishes… [At Woodstock] Where would they be without the fifty doctors, rushed from New York to save their lives… without all the achievements of the technological civilization they denounce? Left to their own devices, they literally didn’t know enough to some in out of the rain.” (Pg. 78-79)
She argues, “There is a great deal that philosophers could do about the war in Vietnam… But a philosophical approach would consist of tracing the IDEOLOGICAL history of how we got into that war… what basic premises created that policy and how they should be corrected… the basic premises of our foreign policy were … reinforced by the United Nations and by every peace and One-World group ever since; the premises that we owe a duty to the rest of the world, that we are responsible for the welfare of any nation anywhere on earth, that ISOLATIONISM is selfish…” (Pg. 111)
She states, “Envy is regarded by most people as a petty, superficial emotion… Mankind has … been ravaged by it for countless centuries, yet has failed to grasp its meaning and to rebel against its exponents. Today, that emotion … is all around us… yet men continue to evade its existence and are peculiarly afraid to name it… That emotion is: hatred of the good for being the good.” (Pg. 152-153)
She contends, “It is obvious---historically, philosophically, and psychologically---that altruism is an inexhaustible source of rationalizations for the most evil motives, the most inhuman actions, the most loathsome emotions. It is not difficult to grasp the meaning of the tenet that ‘the good is an object of sacrifice---and to understand what a blanket damnation of anything living is represented by an undefined accusation of ‘selfishness.’” (Pg. 163)
She proposes, “What is the weapon one needs to fight such an enemy? For once, it is I who will say that ‘love is the answer’---love in the actual meaning of the word, which is the opposite of the meaning they give it---love as a response to values, love of the good for being the good… What fuel can support one’s fire? Love for man at his highest potential.” (Pg. 185-186)
Somewhat “dated” now, this book is certainly not one of Rand’s “greatest works”---but it contains useful elaborations of some aspects of her political philosophy that are not found elsewhere.
Ayn Rand wrote in the Foreword to this 1971 book, “this book is intended for college students---for those among them who ARE seeking ‘a voice of reason to turn to.’ It is intended also for those who are concerned about college students and about the state of modern education… [Most] articles in this book… appeared originally in my magazine ‘The Objectivist.’”
She states, “Observe the ideological precedents which the Berkeley rebels were striving to establish… The main issue was the attempt to make the country accept mass civil disobedience as a proper and valid tool of political action… Civil disobedience may be justifiable, in some cases… But there is no justification, in a civilized society, for the kind of mass civil disobedience that involves the violation of the rights of others---regardless of whether the demonstrators’ goal is good or evil… the forcible occupation of another man’s property or the obstruction of a public thoroughfare is so blatant a violation of rights that an attempt to justify it becomes an abrogation of morality.” (Pg. 38-39)
She observes, “The rebels’ notion that students… should run universities and determine their curricula is a crude absurdity. If an ignorant youth comes to an institution of learning in order to acquire knowledge of a certain science, by what means is he to determine what is relevant and how he should be taught?” (Pg. 47)
She suggests, “the essence of a genuine feeling of human brotherhood [is] the brotherhood of VALUES. This is the only authentic form of unity among men---and only values can achieve it.” (Pg. 60)
She asserts, “The hippies are the living demonstration of what it means to give up reason and to rely on one’s primeval ‘instincts,’ ‘urges,’ ‘intuitions’---and whims… they are unable to grasp even what is needed to satisfy their wishes… [At Woodstock] Where would they be without the fifty doctors, rushed from New York to save their lives… without all the achievements of the technological civilization they denounce? Left to their own devices, they literally didn’t know enough to some in out of the rain.” (Pg. 78-79)
She argues, “There is a great deal that philosophers could do about the war in Vietnam… But a philosophical approach would consist of tracing the IDEOLOGICAL history of how we got into that war… what basic premises created that policy and how they should be corrected… the basic premises of our foreign policy were … reinforced by the United Nations and by every peace and One-World group ever since; the premises that we owe a duty to the rest of the world, that we are responsible for the welfare of any nation anywhere on earth, that ISOLATIONISM is selfish…” (Pg. 111)
She states, “Envy is regarded by most people as a petty, superficial emotion… Mankind has … been ravaged by it for countless centuries, yet has failed to grasp its meaning and to rebel against its exponents. Today, that emotion … is all around us… yet men continue to evade its existence and are peculiarly afraid to name it… That emotion is: hatred of the good for being the good.” (Pg. 152-153)
She contends, “It is obvious---historically, philosophically, and psychologically---that altruism is an inexhaustible source of rationalizations for the most evil motives, the most inhuman actions, the most loathsome emotions. It is not difficult to grasp the meaning of the tenet that ‘the good is an object of sacrifice---and to understand what a blanket damnation of anything living is represented by an undefined accusation of ‘selfishness.’” (Pg. 163)
She proposes, “What is the weapon one needs to fight such an enemy? For once, it is I who will say that ‘love is the answer’---love in the actual meaning of the word, which is the opposite of the meaning they give it---love as a response to values, love of the good for being the good… What fuel can support one’s fire? Love for man at his highest potential.” (Pg. 185-186)
Somewhat “dated” now, this book is certainly not one of Rand’s “greatest works”---but it contains useful elaborations of some aspects of her political philosophy that are not found elsewhere.
August 13, 2022
[...] reason is man's only means of grasping reality and of acquiring knowledge - and, therefore, the rejection of reason [by the New Left] means that men should act regardless of and/or in contradiction to the facts of reality.
January 23, 2018
Enjoyed Rand's essays, however I found those written by Schwartz to be of lower quality (not very interesting nor current). Many of Rand's critiques of the left (and right) still apply today.
August 31, 2024
much of it feels like it could have been written yesterday. quite odd
April 25, 2010
I am by and large an admirer of Rand's writing and philosophy--it was literally life-changing. The relatively low rating simply represents the fairly low place of this book among the works by her I've read--by the time I got to this collection of essays, little in it represented anything new. That said, I can see its influence in my thinking--and there are a couple of gems in here I still remember vividly decades after first reading them--in particular, "Apollo and Dionysus" and "The Comprachicos." Anyone who reads the last and doesn't believe Rand felt compassion for her fellow human beings is willfully misunderstanding her. Mind you, she could be obstreperous--and often what comes across is the outrage towards those she feels do harm, then that compassion for the harmed--but it's there.
Read
September 23, 2010The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution by Ayn Rand (1993)
January 3, 2014
This turned out to be just a rehash of her other books and articles . nothing new for me.
May 3, 2008
yeah she's a total bitch but great essays to think about
January 8, 2013
Ayn Rand at her finest.
May 20, 2016
God damn Collectivists. Quotes Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged a lot.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews