Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (55 page)

Rand’s assault on contemporary statist
relations
of
power
focuses attention on these theoretical and existential components. Her social criticism follows in the footsteps of her formal philosophy by repudiating dualism in all of its cultural incarnations. Her analysis can be comprehended on three distinct levels. While it is possible to abstract and isolate these various aspects, it must be understood that they are interrelated constituents of a single totality.

On Level 1, Rand examined
relations
of
power
between persons. She focused on the psycho-epistemological and ethical principles at work in
exploitative
interpersonal relations. The psycho-epistemic and normative aspects are two, coextensive vantage points on the same phenomenon. These aspects are so closely related that they constitute a double-edged
sword. On this first level of analysis, Rand comprehended the significance of the
master-slave
duality and the “
sanction of the victim
.” Within this context, important constructs are integrated into the Objectivist corpus, including “
pseudo-self-esteem
,” “
social
metaphysics,” and “
alienation
.”

On Level 2, Rand considered many of these distortions in social interaction as by-products and reflections of cultural practices. She argued that modern intellectuals have mounted an assault on the integrity of
concepts
and
language
that has had the effect of ideologically legitimating social, political, and economic exploitation. She traced the impact of such conceptual and linguistic subversion on every area of
culture
, including art, literature, music, education, religion, sex, and race.

On Level 3, Rand reviewed exploitative social relations within the structural context of statist interventionism.
⁵
The relations of power at this level are mediated through a variety of economic and political structures and institutional processes. Rand examined the essential role of the predatory state in creating conditions of economic dislocation, class (or intergroup) struggle, social fragmentation, and brutality.

Each of these three levels of analysis seeks to uncover another facet of modern statist power relations. Each is internally related to and implicit in the others. Each level incorporates personal, cultural, and structural dimensions. Each level is a relation between real people. Thus:

•   The codependency relationship (master and slave) of Level 1 is reproduced on the cultural and structural levels.

•   The distortion of concepts and language (Level 2) provides ideological legitimation for the codependency relationship (Level 1) and for the structural context within which it occurs (Level 3).

•   The sustenance of the predatory state (Level 3) requires individuals whose autonomy has been fundamentally thwarted (Level 1) and whose conceptual and linguistic practices have been distorted (Level 2).

What must be emphasized is that for Rand, the goal of all social analysis is emancipation. In each aspect of her developed critique, change and transcendence beckon. Rand proudly declared that she was a philosophical “innovator” and a
“radical”
for
capitalism
, with everything that this implied. She wore these labels as terms “of distinction … of honor, rather than something to hide or apologize for” (Rand, 1964b, 15). In keeping with her revolutionary fervor, she sought to uncover the “fundamental” roots of contemporary social problems, “boldly proclaiming a full, consistent, and radical alternative” to the status quo.
⁶

MASTER AND SLAVE

As we have seen,
The Fountainhead
provided Rand with the first opportunity to present a complex psychological portrait of those individuals whom she described as “second-handers.” As she puts it, speaking through Roark: “The second-hander acts, but the source of his actions is scattered in every other living person” (607). The second-hander seeks fame and admiration, a greatness in the eyes of others. The second-hander’s existence is partial, incomplete, and fundamentally dependent on those who possess self-sufficing egos. Whereas creators necessarily think and work alone, second-handers live through other people. They must rob,
exploit
, and rule others upon whom their sustenance depends. As parasites of both body and mind, they exist “through the persons of others” (606–7, 683). In attempting to rule others, they subjugate their victims by keeping them on a spiritual leash. But “a leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends.” Rand recognized that exploitation ultimately destroyed both the slave
and
the master, both the victim
and
the executioner (683, 661).

At this stage in her intellectual development, Rand did not fully recognize the extent to which the creators participated in their own destruction. She argued that the second-hander’s attempt to exploit the creator required a legitimating ideology. As Toohey observes, those who seek to rule the creators don’t “need a whip.” The creators will often provide their own “and ask to be whipped” (636). Such self-subjugation was achieved through psychological manipulation. Roark exclaims: “When the first creator invented the wheel, the first second-hander responded. He invented
altruism
” (684).

The creed of self-sacrifice provided the second-hander with a veneer of moral action. But Rand warns us, “Don’t bother to examine a folly—ask yourself only what it accomplishes.” While this dictum is uttered by Toohey, one of Rand’s grand-villains, it expresses Rand’s own views about
the political utility of certain culturally accepted
ethical
doctrines. Toohey tells Keating, one of his victims:

“Every system of ethics that preached sacrifice grew into a world power and ruled millions of men. Of course, you must dress it up. You must tell people that they’ll achieve a superior kind of happiness by giving up everything that makes them happy. You don’t have to be too clear about it. Use big vague words. ‘Universal Harmony’—‘Eternal Spirit’—’Divine Purpose’—‘Nirvana’—‘Paradise’—‘Racial Supremacy’—‘The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.’ … It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.”
⁷

What is crucial about this statement is Rand’s grasp of altruism as a tool of exploitation used by political and religious forces alike. She conflated several images that are ordinarily kept separate and distinct: the religious fundamentalist, the Nazi racist, and the Bolshevik agitator. Each of these historical figures was involved in a similar game of spiritual or material exploitation. Each used the language of sacrifice to a “higher” purpose. Altruism destroys creators by duping them into putting their virtues at the service of their destroyers. Altruism institutionalizes what Rand would later call, the “
sanction of the victim
.”
⁸

The most subversive political implication of
Atlas Shrugged
, is that individual freedom is possible only to those who are strong enough, psychologically and morally, to withdraw their sanction from any system that coercively thrives off their productive energies. In the novel, Rand examined the process by which the creators tacitly collaborate in their own enslavement by granting moral legitimacy to their exploiters. The exploiter must count upon the virtue of his subject and “use it as an instrument of torture.” He practices “blackmail with the victim’s generosity as sole means of extortion,” in which “the gift of a man’s good will” is transformed “into a tool for the giver’s destruction” (465). Rearden recognizes that the political authorities who choose to deal with him “by means of compulsion,” do not fully realize that they need his voluntary cooperation in order to succeed in their tasks. One of his most revelatory experiences is grasping that it is the victim’s own volition that makes the exploiters’ survival possible. Rearden tells his enslavers:

“Whatever you wish me to do, I will do at the point of a gun. If you sentence me to jail, you will have to send armed men to carry me
there—I will not volunteer to move. If you fine me, you will have to seize my property to collect the fine—I will not volunteer to pay it. If you believe that you have the right to force me—use your guns openly. I will not help you to disguise the nature of your action.” (479)

Rearden refuses to participate in his own martyrdom. He refuses to condone the seizure of his property, and lays bare the naked aggression of his enslavement.

Though Rand developed her notion of the “sanction of the victim” and of the reciprocity between master and slave in her own unique style, these concepts were not entirely new to intellectual history. As far back as 1577, Étienne de
la Boetie
wrote A
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude
, which argued that political tyranny ultimately rested on popular consent. La Boetie believed that most citizens obeyed authority out of sheer habit and custom, duped by the tyrant who promoted a benevolent view of his rule.
⁹
But even before La Boetie, hints of the master-slave duality could be found in Aristotle, who recognized that each term is “reciprocally connected with that in
relation
to which it is defined.” For Aristotle, such “correlatives” as “master” and “slave” must “come into existence simultaneously.”
¹⁰

In the history of philosophy, however, it was Hegel who dealt most explicitly with the codependency of master and slave. As
Heilbroner
explains, this definition of the master and slave each in terms of its “
contradiction
” or “negation” is not a violation of Aristotelian logic: “The
logical
contradiction (or ‘opposite’ or ‘negation’) of a Master is not a Slave, but a ‘non-Master,’ which may or may not be a slave. But the
relational
opposite of a Master is indeed a Slave, for it is only by reference to this second ‘excluded’ term that the first is defined.”
¹¹

For Hegel, the emergence of master and slave (Hegel uses the terms “lord” and “bondsman”) is a component of the evolution of
consciousness
. Hegel sketches the development of selfhood from the first confrontational moments between one self and another. In this initial encounter, the Self seeks to assert its own existence by annihilating the Other. Ultimately, however, each Self manifests a form of dependency. The master and slave use each other in their attempts to achieve self-consciousness. The master sees in the slave an instrument for the achievement of his or her own goals, while the slave sees the master as someone who will care for his or her needs. Masters need slaves to maintain their status as masters, whereas the servant requires the master to perpetuate his slavery. Each is in “
reciprocal self-surrender
” to the other. In their self-alienation, each fails to achieve genuine independence (Hegel [1807] 1977, 134).

At first, masters appear to be independent. They seem to live only for themselves, whereas slaves appear to live only for their masters. But in
reality, the conditions of each consciousness interpenetrate the other. The master’s self is “mediated” through the slave’s consciousness. The master appropriates the material
products
of the slave’s labor and depends on the slave for survival. As such, masters fail to recognize slaves as legitimate persons, and deprive themselves of the mutual recognition that their consciousnesses require.

By contrast, the slave seems to be an abject dependent. And yet, as slaves master their crafts, they objectify themselves through material production. It is they who most adequately anticipate “the
truth
of the independent consciousness.” By consummating their purposes in the production of material goods, they become conscious of what they truly are. Even as the master reaps the benefits, and alienates the product of the slave, it is the slave who moves gradually toward the full integration of a genuinely human consciousness (115–19).

For Hegel, the slave does not achieve independence by merely negating the existence of the master. The reciprocal
relationship
of authority and obedience cannot be broken by reproducing the structure of codependency. It is only in the final phase of Universal Self-Consciousness that slaves stop tying their will to the authority of the Other. They attain full independence, appropriating the products of their own efforts and seeing in others a full, mutual recognition of Self.
¹²

Hegel’s insights served as the model for Marxian theory. In Marx’s view, the worker is the slave for the capitalist master. Capitalists expropriate the worker’s products for their own use, as workers are forced to sell their alienated labor-power on the market. For Marx, communism replaces Hegel’s Universal Self-Consciousness. The communist society is one in which workers realize their potential as producers, emerging as fully integrated, self-conscious, social beings in mutual, benevolent interrelations with others.