Ayn Rand
|
| Born: |
February 2 1905(1905--)
St. Petersburg, Russia |
| Died: |
March 6 1982 (aged 77)
New York City |
| Occupation: |
novelist, philosopher, playwright, screenwriter |
| Influences: |
Aristotle, John Locke, Thomas Aquinas, Friedrich Nietzsche, Victor Hugo, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ludwig von Mises, Isabel Paterson |
| Influenced: |
James Clavell, John Hospers, Harry Binswanger, Nathaniel Branden, Barbara Branden, Allan Gotthelf, Leonard Peikoff, George Reisman, John Ridpath, Tara Smith, Alan Greenspan, Terry Goodkind, Anton LaVey |
Ayn Rand (IPA: /ˈaɪn ˈrænd/,
February 2 [O.S. January
20] 1905 – March 6 1982),
born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum (Russian: Алиса Зиновьевна
Розенбаум), was a Russian-born American novelist
and philosopher,[1] known for creating a philosophy she named "Objectivism" and for writing the novels
We the Living, The Fountainhead,
Atlas Shrugged and the novella
Anthem. Her influential and often controversial ideas have attracted both
enthusiastic admiration and scathing denunciation.
Introduction
Rand's writing (both fiction and non-fiction) emphasizes the philosophic concepts of objective reality in metaphysics, reason in epistemology, and rational
egoism in ethics. In politics she was a proponent of laissez-faire capitalism and a staunch defender of individual
rights, believing that the sole function of a proper government is protection of individual rights (including
property rights).
She believed that individuals must choose their values and actions solely by reason, and that "Man — every man — is an end in
himself, not the means to the ends of others." According to Rand, the individual "must exist for his own sake, neither
sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own
happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life."
Rand decried the initiation of force and fraud, and held that government action should consist only in protecting citizens
from criminal aggression (via the police) and foreign aggression (via the military) and in maintaining a system of courts to
decide guilt or innocence and to objectively resolve disputes. Her politics are generally described as minarchist and libertarian, though she did not use the first term and
disavowed any connection to the second.[2]
Rand, a self-described hero-worshiper, stated in her book The Romantic
Manifesto that the goal of her writing was "the projection of an ideal man." In reference to her philosophy,
Objectivism, she said: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a
heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and
reason as his only absolute." (Appendix to Atlas Shrugged)
Early life
Childhood and education
Rand was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and was
the oldest of three daughters (Alisa, Natasha, and Nora)[3]
of Zinovy Zacharovich Rosenbaum and Anna Borisovna Rosenbaum, agnostic and largely
non-observant ethnic Jews. Her father was a chemist and a
successful pharmaceutical entrepreneur who earned the privilege of living outside the Pale.[4] From an early age,
Alisa displayed an interest in literature and film. She started writing screenplays and
novels at the age of seven.[citation needed]
Her mother taught her French and subscribed to a magazine featuring stories for boys, where Rand found her first childhood
hero: Cyrus Paltons, an Indian army officer in a Rudyard Kipling-style story by
Maurice Champagne, called "The Mysterious Valley".[5] Throughout her youth, she read the novels of Sir Walter Scott, Alexandre Dumas, père and other Romantic
writers, and expressed an interest in the Romantic movement as a whole. She discovered
Victor Hugo at the age of thirteen, and later called him the "greatest novelist in world
literature."[6] Rand wrote the ideal educational curriculum
would be "Aristotle in philosophy, von Mises in
economics, Montessori in education, Hugo in
literature."[7]
Rand was twelve at the time of the Russian revolution of 1917, and her
family life was disrupted by the rise of the Bolshevik party. Her father's pharmacy was
confiscated by the Soviets, and the family fled to Crimea to recover financially. When Crimea
fell to the Bolsheviks in 1921, Rand burned her diary, which contained vitriolic anti-Soviet writings.[5] Rand then returned to St. Petersburg
("Petrograd") to attend university.[8] She studied
philosophy and history at the University of Petrograd. Her major
literary discoveries were the works of Edmond Rostand, Friedrich Schiller and Fyodor Dostoevsky. She admired
Rostand for his richly romantic imagination and Schiller for his grand, heroic scale. She admired Dostoevsky for his sense of
drama and his intense moral judgments, but was deeply against his philosophy and his sense of life.[9] She completed a three-year program in the department of Social Pedagogy that
included history, philology and law, and received Certificate of Graduation (Diploma No. 1552) on 13
October 1924.[10] She
also encountered the philosophical ideas of Nietzsche, and loved his exaltation of
the heroic and independent individual who embraced egoism and rejected altruism in Thus Spake Zarathustra, but later rejected his philosophical center of "might is right" when
she discovered more of his writings.
Rand continued to write short stories and screenplays. She entered the State Institute for Cinema Arts in 1924 to study
screenwriting; in late 1925, however, she was granted a visa to visit American
relatives.
Immigration and marriage
In February 1926, she arrived in the United States at the age of 21, entering by ship
through New York City, which would ultimately become her home. She was profoundly moved by
the city's skyline, later describing it in one of her novels, The
Fountainhead: "I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline, the sky over New York and
the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself
into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body."[11]
After a brief stay with her relatives in Chicago, she resolved never to
return to the Soviet Union, and set out for Hollywood to become a screenwriter. Already
using Rand as a Cyrillic contraction[12] of her surname, she then adopted the name Ayn, an adaptation of a "Finnish feminine
name", most likely "Aino" or "Aina".[12]
Initially, Rand struggled in Hollywood and took odd jobs to pay her basic
living expenses. A chance face-to-face meeting with famed director Cecil B. DeMille led
to a job as an extra in his film King of
Kings, and subsequent work as a script reader.[13] She also worked as the head of the costume department at RKO
Studios.[14] While working on the
film, she intentionally bumped into an aspiring young actor, Frank O'Connor, who
caught her eye. The two married on April 15, 1929, and remained
married for fifty years, until O'Connor's death in 1979 at the age of 82. In 1931, Rand became a naturalized American citizen; she was fiercely proud of the United States, and in later years said to the
graduating class at West Point, "I can say - not as a patriotic bromide,
but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political and aesthetic roots - that the United
States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of
the world."[15]
Fiction
Rand viewed herself equally as a novelist and a philosopher, as she said "(I am) both, and for the same reason." It has been
suggested that Rand's practice of presenting her philosophy in fiction and non-fiction books aimed at a general audience, rather
than publications in peer-reviewed journals, has encouraged a negative
view.[citation needed] Rand's defenders note that she
is part of a long tradition of authors who wrote philosophically rich fiction - including Dante, John Milton, Fyodor
Dostoevsky and Albert Camus, and that philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre presented their philosophies in both fictional and non-fictional forms.
In an article about Rand, that appeared in The Economist in 1991, it is stated that
"Rand’s novels sell some 300,000 copies a year, exhorting readers to think big about themselves, build big and earn big. New
editions of all her books carry postcards for readers who might be inclined to learn more about Objectivism, the author’s credo,
a blending of free markets, reason and individualism."[16]
Early works
Her first literary success came with the sale of her screenplay Red Pawn in 1932 to Universal Studios: "Von Sternberg later considered it for
Dietrich, but Russian scenarios were out of favour and it was ditched."[17] Rand then wrote the play The Night of January 16th in 1934, which was produced on Broadway. The play was a courtroom drama in which a
jury chosen from the audience decided the verdict, leading to one of two possible endings.[18]
Rand then published the novel, We the Living (1936), and the novella,
Anthem (1938): "Rand described We the Living as the most autobiographical
of her novels, its theme being the brutality of life under communist rule in Russia."[19] Its harsh anti-communist tone met with mixed reviews in the U.S., where the
period of The Great Depression was sometimes known as
"The Red Decade" in reference to the high-water mark of sympathy for socialist ideals.
Stephen Cox, at The Objectivist Center, observed that We the Living "was
published at the height of Russian socialism's popularity among leaders of American opinion. It failed to attract an
audience."[20]
Frank O'Connor and Ayn Rand spent the summer of 1937 in Stony Creek,
Connecticut, while Frank worked in summer stock theatre,[20] and Ayn planned Anthem, a dystopian vision of a futuristic society where collectivism has triumphed. Anthem did not find a
publisher in the United States and was first published in England.
The Fountainhead
-
Rand's first major professional success came with her best-selling novel The
Fountainhead (1943), which she wrote over a period of seven years. The novel was rejected by twelve publishers. It was
finally accepted by the Bobbs-Merrill Company publishing house, thanks mainly to a
member of the editorial board, Archibald Ogden, who praised the book in the highest terms ("If this is not the book for you, then
I am not the editor for you.") and finally prevailed.[21] Eventually, The Fountainhead was a worldwide success, bringing Rand fame and financial
security. In 1949 it was made into a major motion picture by Warner Brothers with Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal; Rand wrote the screenplay. In the sixty years since it was published, Rand's novel has sold
six million copies, and continues to sell about 100,000 copies per year.[21]
Following the success of The Fountainhead, Rand wrote screenplays for two movies, Love Letters and You Came Along.
Atlas Shrugged
-
Rand's magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, was
published in 1957. Due to the success of The Fountainhead, the initial printing was 100,000 copies,[22] and the book went on to become an international bestseller. (The frequent
claim[23] that Atlas Shrugged was later found to
be the "second most influential book in America, after The Bible,"[24] may be an exaggeration of the findings of one 1991 survey; however, it has been
cited in numerous interviews as the book that most influenced the subject.)[25][26]
Atlas Shrugged is often seen as Rand's most extensive statement of Objectivism in any of her works of fiction. In its
appendix, she offered this summary:
- "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life,
with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."
The theme of Atlas Shrugged is "The role of man's mind in society." Rand upheld the industrialist as one of the most
admirable members of any society and fiercely opposed the popular resentment accorded to industrialists. This led her to envision
a novel wherein the industrialists of America go on strike and retreat to a mountainous
hideaway. The American economy and its society in general slowly start to collapse. The government responds by increasing the
already stifling controls on industrial concerns. The novel, which includes elements of mystery and science fiction, deals with
issues as wide-ranging as sex, music, medicine, politics, philosophy, industry, and human ability.
Philosophy
-
Objectivism: Ayn Rand's philosophical system
Rand's philosophical system, Objectivism, encompasses positions on
metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and aesthetics. While
there have been "objectivist" theories in the past, Rand's Objectivism uses the term in a new way: it treats knowledge and values as neither subjective, nor
intrinsic in existence (the traditional meaning of "objective") but rather as the factual identification, by Man's
mind, of what exists. For a more detailed description of Ayn Rand's philosophical system, see Objectivism (Ayn Rand) and subsidiary articles on Objectivist metaphysics, Objectivist
epistemology, and Objectivist ethics.
Philosophical influences
She was greatly influenced by Aristotle. Some have observed parallels with Nietzsche, and she was vociferously opposed to some of the views of Kant. Rand also claimed to share intellectual lineage with John Locke,
who conceptualized the ideas that individuals "own themselves," have a right to the products of their own labor, and have
natural rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and property,[27] and more generally with the philosophies of the
Age of Enlightenment and the Age of
Reason. She occasionally remarked with approval on specific philosophical positions of, for example, Baruch Spinoza and St. Thomas Aquinas. She seems also to have
respected the 20th-century American rationalist Brand Blanshard, who, like Rand,
believed that "there has been no period in the past two thousand years when [both reason and rationality] have undergone a
bombardment so varied, so competent, so massive and sustained as in the last half-century."[28]
Aristotle
Rand's greatest influence was Aristotle, especially Organon ("Logic"); she considered Aristotle the greatest philosopher.[29] In particular, her philosophy reflects an Aristotelian epistemology and metaphysics – both Aristotle and Rand argued that
"there exists an objective reality that is independent of mind and that is capable of being known."[30] Although Rand was ultimately critical of Aristotle's ethics,
others have noted her egoistic ethics "is of the eudemonistic type, close to
Aristotle's own...a system of guidelines required by human beings to live their lives successfully, to flourish, to survive as
'man qua man.'"[31] Younkins argued "that her
philosophy diverges from Aristotle’s by considering essences as epistemological and contextual
instead of as metaphysical. She envisions Aristotle as a philosophical intuitivist who declared the existence of essences within
concretes."[32].
Nietzsche
In her early life, Rand admired the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, and did share
"Nietzsche's reverence for human potential and his loathing of Christianity and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant,"[33] but eventually became critical, seeing his
philosophy as emphasizing emotion over reason and subjective interpretation of reality over actual reality.[33] There is debate about the extent of the relationship
between Rand's views and Nietzsche's, and over what seemed to be an evolution of Rand's view of Nietzsche. Allan Gotthelf, in On Ayn Rand, describes the first edition of We the Living as very
sympathetic to Nietzschean ideas. Bjorn Faulkner and Karen Andre, characters from The Night of January 16th, exemplify
certain aspects of Nietzsche's views. Ronald Merrill, author of The Ideas of Ayn Rand identified a passage in We the
Living that Rand had omitted from the 1959 reprint: "In it, the heroine entertains (though finally rejects) sentiments
explicitly attributed to Nietzsche about the justice of sacrificing the weak for the strong."[34] Rand herself denied a close intellectual relationship with Nietzsche and
characterized changes in later editions of We the Living as stylistic and grammatical.
The destruction of Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead is an example of her later
view, a rejection of Nietzsche, that the great cannot succeed by sacrificing the masses: "her [1934] journals suggest a rejection
of traditional false-alternative ethics. Her May 15 entry, for example, identifies the error of
Nietzscheans such as Gail Wynand: in trying to achieve power, they use the masses, but at the cost of their ideals and standards,
and thus become 'a slave to those masses.' The independent man, therefore, will not make his success dependent upon the
masses."[33] Although Rand disagreed with many of
Nietzsche's ideas, the introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of The
Fountainhead concludes with Nietzsche's statement, "The noble soul has reverence for itself."
Kant
- See also: Critique of Pure
Reason
Her interpretation of Kant's views on metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics led Rand to consider him a "monster."
Rand was deeply opposed to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Their divergence is
greatest in metaphysics and epistemology, particularly
with regard to Kant's analytic-synthetic dichotomy, rather than the ethics of Kant's well known
categorical imperative (her critique of Kant's ethics is directly rooted in
Kant's metaphysics and epistemology). Rand and Kant had significantly different theories of concepts, identity and consciousness:
In Objectivist epistemology, reason is the highest virtue, and reason and logic
can be used to understand objective reality. Kant believed that we cannot have certain knowledge about the true nature of reality
("things-in themselves"), but only of the manner in which we perceive reality. For example, we can know for certain that we are
unable to conceive of an object which is not extended - i.e., occupies physical space - but it does not follow that no object
that is not extended can exist. Rand believed that if an object has an effect upon the senses, then that effect upon the senses
gives us knowledge about the object itself. At the most basic level, it informs us that that object is of a particular character
such that when it interacts with one's sense organs it causes a particular sensation, and that is knowledge about a quality of
the object itself. In Rand's view, Kant's dichotomy severed rationality and reason from the real world. In Rand's words,
"I have mentioned in many articles that Kant is the chief destroyer of the modern world... You will find that on every
fundamental issue, Kant's philosophy is the exact opposite of Objectivism."[35]
In the final issue of The Objectivist, she further wrote,
"Suppose you met a twisted, tormented young man and... discovered that he was brought up by a man-hating monster who worked
systematically to paralyze his mind, destroy his self-confidence, obliterate his capacity for enjoyment and undercut his every
attempt to escape... Western civilization is in that young man's position. The monster is Immanuel Kant."[35]
A more complicated difference between Ayn Rand's metaphysics and that of Immanuel Kant is the reality of space, time and
number. For Kant, these are merely built into the human mode of perception, and we cannot know whether or not they are present in
any thing-in-itself. One might hope that the following analogy applies: Color is not present in an object, but is purely a
construct of our minds. Yet this is not enough for Kant, because color corresponds to some objective quality (quality of the
object) while space, time and number have no such relationship to objectivity. (See Critique of Pure Reason B38-B45.) Rand
would most certainly have disagreed with this concept, taking the fact that our faculty of perception has a particular (limited)
identity not to be a charge against it, but a demonstration of its objectivity.
Objectivist movement
-
In 1950 Rand moved to 120 East 34th Street[36] in
New York City, and formed a group (jokingly designated "The Collective") which included future Federal
Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, a young psychology student named Nathan Blumenthal (later Nathaniel Branden) and his wife Barbara, and Leonard Peikoff, all of whom had been profoundly influenced by The Fountainhead. According to
Branden, "I wrote Miss Rand a letter in 1949... [and] I was invited to her home for a personal meeting in March, 1950, a month
before I turned twenty."[37] Rand launched the
Objectivist movement with this group to promote her philosophy.
The group originally started out as informal gathering of friends who met with Rand on weekends at her apartment to discuss
philosophy; later the Collective would proceed to play a larger, more formal role, helping edit Atlas Shrugged and promoting Rand's philosophy through the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI), established by him for that purpose. Many Collective
members gave lectures at the NBI and in cities across the United States, while others wrote articles for its sister newsletter,
The Objectivist.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Rand developed and promoted her
Objectivist philosophy through both her fiction and non-fiction works, and by giving talks at several east-coast universities,
largely through the NBI: "The Objectivist Newsletter, later expanded
and renamed simply The Objectivist contained essays by Rand, Branden, and other associates... that analyzed current
political events and applied the principles of Objectivism to everyday life."[38] Rand later published some of these in book form.
After several years, Rand's close relationship with the much younger Branden turned into a romantic affair, with the consent
of their spouses. It lasted until Branden (having separated from Barbara) entered into an affair with the young actress
Patrecia Scott, whom he later married. The Brandens hid the affair from Rand, and when
she found out, she abruptly ended her relationship with both Brandens and with the NBI, which closed. She published a letter in
The Objectivist repudiating Branden for dishonesty and "irrational behavior"[39], never disclosing their affair. Both Brandens remain personae non gratae to the mainline Objectivist movement, particularly the group that formed the
Ayn Rand Institute.
Political and social views
Rand held that the only moral social system is laissez-faire capitalism. Her political views were strongly individualist and hence
anti-statist and anti-Communist. She exalted what
she saw as the heroic American values of rational egoism and individualism. As a champion of rationality,
Rand also had a strong opposition to mysticism and religion,
which she believed helped foster a crippling culture acting against individual human happiness and success. Rand detested many
prominent liberal and conservative
politicians of her time, including prominent anti-Communists, such as Harry S. Truman,
Ronald Reagan, Hubert Humphrey, and
Joseph McCarthy. She opposed US involvement in World War
I, World War II[40] and the Korean War, although she also strongly denounced
pacifism: "When a nation resorts to war, it has some purpose, rightly or wrongly, something to
fight for – and the only justifiable purpose is self-defense."[41] She opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War,
"If you want to see the ultimate, suicidal extreme of altruism, on an international scale, observe the war in Vietnam – a war in
which American soldiers are dying for no purpose whatever,"[41] but also felt that unilateral American withdrawal would be a mistake of
appeasement that would embolden communists and the Soviet Union.[40] She said also that she considered the anti-Communist John Birch Society "futile, because they are not for capitalism but merely against
communism."[42]
Rand is considered one of the three founding mothers (along with Rose Wilder Lane
and Isabel Paterson) of modern American libertarianism, although she rejected Libertarianism and the Libertarian movement. [1] .
Economics
She expressed qualified enthusiasm for the economic thought of Ludwig von Mises and
Henry Hazlitt. The Ludwig von Mises
Institute says that "it was largely as a result of Ayn's efforts that the work of von Mises began to reach its potential
audience."[43] Later Objectivists, such as
Richard Salsman, have claimed that Rand's economic theories are implicitly more
supportive of the doctrines of Jean-Baptiste Say, though Rand herself was likely not
acquainted with his work.
Gender, sex, and race
Rand's views on gender roles have created some controversy. While her books championed
men and women as intellectual equals (for example, Dagny Taggart – the protagonist of Atlas Shrugged – was a hands-on
railroad executive), she thought that the differences in the physiology of men and women led to fundamental psychological
differences that were the source of gender roles. Rand denied endorsing any kind of power difference between men and women,
stating that metaphysical dominance in sexual relations refers to the man's role as the prime mover in sex and the necessity of
male arousal for sex to occur.[44] According to Rand, "For a woman qua woman, the essence of femininity is
hero-worship – the desire to look up to man." (1968)
Rand's theory of sex is implied by her broader ethical and psychological theories. Far from being a debasing animal instinct,
she believed that sex is the highest celebration of our greatest values. Sex is a physical response to intellectual and spiritual
values – a mechanism for giving concrete expression to values that could otherwise only be experienced in the abstract. In
Atlas Shrugged, she writes "Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of
life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself."[45]
In a Playboy magazine interview, Rand stated that women are not psychologically suited to be
President and strongly opposed the modern feminist movement, despite supporting some of its
goals.[46] Feminist author Susan Brownmiller called Rand "a traitor to her own sex," while others, including Camille Paglia and the contributors to 1999's Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand, have noted
Rand's "fiercely independent – and unapologetically sexual" heroines who are unbound by "tradition's chains... [and] who had sex
because they wanted to."[34]
In Atlas Shrugged, Rand writes that the "band on the wrist of [Dagny's] naked arm gave her the most feminine of all
aspects: the look of being chained." This novel, along with Night of January 16th (1968) and The Fountainhead
(1943), features sex scenes with stylized erotic combat that borders on rape. Rand herself noted
that what The Fountainhead clearly depicted was "rape by engraved invitation." In a review of a biography of Rand, writer
Jenny Turner opined,
"the sex in Rand’s novels is extraordinarily violent and fetishistic. In The Fountainhead, the first coupling of the
heroes, heralded by whips and rock drills and horseback riding and cracks in marble, is ‘an act of scorn ... not as love, but as
defilement’ – in other words, a rape. (‘The act of a master taking shameful, contemptuous possession of her was the kind of
rapture she had wanted.’ In Atlas Shrugged, erotic tension is cleverly increased by having one heroine bound into a plot
with lots of spectacularly cruel and handsome men.)[17]
Another source of controversy is Rand's view of homosexuality. According to remarks at
the Ford Hall forum at Northeastern University in 1971, Rand's personal view was
that homosexuality is "immoral" and "disgusting."[47] Specifically, she stated that "there is a psychological immorality at the root of homosexuality"
because "it involves psychological flaws, corruptions, errors, or unfortunate premises."[48] A number of noted current and former Objectivists have been highly critical of
Rand for her views on homosexuality.[49] Others, such as
Kurt Keefner, have argued that "Rand’s views were in line with the views at the time of the general public and the psychiatric
community," though he asserts that "she never provided the slightest argument for her position, [...] because she regarded the
matter as self-evident, like the woman president issue"[50] although in her article "About a Woman President" Rand said that that issue was not
self-evident.
In the same appearance, Rand noted, "I do not believe that the government has the right to prohibit [homosexual behavior]. It
is the privilege of any individual to use his sex life in whichever way he wants it."[47]
Rand defended the right of businesses to discriminate on the basis of sexual
orientation, race, or any other criteria. Rand's defenders argue that her opposition to
government intervention to end private discrimination was motivated by her valuing individual
rights above civil (due to a rejection of the concept of "collective rights") and
therefore her view did not constitute an endorsement of the morality of the prejudice per se. Rand argued that no one's
rights are violated by a private individual's or organization's refusal to deal with him, even if the reason is irrational.
Rand did oppose ethnic and racial prejudice on moral grounds, in essays like "Racism" and "Global Balkanization," while still
arguing for the right of individuals and businesses to act on such prejudice without government intervention. She wrote,
"Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism... [the notion] that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the
characters and actions of a collective of ancestors,"[51]
but also opposed governmental remedies for this problem: "Private racism is not a legal, but a moral issue – and can be fought
only by private means, such as economic boycott or social ostracism."[52]
See also: Objectivism, Ayn Rand, and
homosexuality
