Hunter Baker, at The Federalist, thinks Ayn Rand has gotten a raw deal from her critics; his defense of her beliefs, however, is underwhelming.
“Christians, in particular,” writes Baker, “have a deep ambivalence about Ayn Rand that probably draws as deeply from the facts of her biography as from her famous novels. When the refugee from the old Soviet Union met the Catholic William F. Buckley, she said, “You are much too intelligent to believe in God.” Her atheism was militant. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t believe in God as she was actively against the whole idea. If God existed, she felt, man suffered a degradation. Her heroic man, who tamed fire at his fingertips with a stylish and pleasure-giving cigarette, stood on top of creation and didn’t kneel for anyone. Rather than venerating the cross, Rand took the dollar sign as her holy symbol. Why? Because the dollar was a proxy for economic value. And for her, economic value was the primary pursuit of a life properly lived.”
So—a militant atheist who worshiped the dollar and believed that the worth of people’s lives was measured by their economic productivity: for “Christians, in particular,” what’s not to like about that?
Well, for one thing, as Baker admits,
“Rand did have disdain for some people, but her lack of respect was not based on physical weakness, class, or color so much as it was aimed at those she thought lacked virtue. Contempt may have its place if it aims at a form of evil.2 The author certainly saw herself as wielding scorn in exactly that fashion.”
I’m sure that Ms. Rand did see herself as being utterly justified in her “disdain for some people,” among whom one would have to include, based on the testimony of those who knew her, pretty much anyone who isn’t Ayn Rand. It’s good to know that Ms. Rand saved her contempt for those who deserved it, at least according to her own idiosyncratic (and blatantly un-Christian) measure of value. Pace Mr. Baker, if one has a confused or distorted notion of what constitutes “evil,” then one’s scorn is entirely misplaced; and further, if one is a Christian (as Ms. Rand was not but Mr. Baker apparently is), one is not supposed to “disdain” anyone at all.
Hunter Baker is willing to let all that slide, because the important thing, for him, is that Ms. Rand believed in “productivity,” albeit almost entirely of the economic and material kind:
“As Rand explained in her lectures on ethics, she saw production as the one great life-affirming activity. Man does not automatically or instinctively derive his sustenance from the earth or the sun. He must labor and produce. This was Rand’s bedrock and explains why she had such disdain for those who try to gain wealth through political arrangements. She saw this parasitism on multiple points of the economic spectrum from the beggar to the bureaucrat to the purveyor of incestuous corporatism. In the Randian view, a person with integrity creates value and exchanges it with others in an open and honest way. One does not cleverly reserve either a wage or a market. One earns them.”
So the beggar is equated with the crony capitalist, and the bureaucrats and the unproductive poor are parasites: how exactly does one, specifically addressing Christians, square any of this with the recorded teachings of Jesus? One does not. One simply ignores the discrepancy and soldiers on in defense of the indefensible:
“Rand extols the captains of industry, the men and women who have a drive to change the world for the better and to get rich in the bargain. That much is certain. But the novels also make clear her love for any man or woman who performs a job well. She sees dignity, joy, and love in work rather than in wealth per se.”
Hunter Baker is all but unique in finding “love” and “joy” in Ayn Rand’s novels; most readers (over the age of fifteen) find them grim, didactic, and oppressive. In the end, though, even Baker can’t pretend that Rand’s “Objectivism” isn’t fundamentally at odds with Christianity, which preaches “love” and “joy” for distinctly different reasons:
“The critical tension between Rand and Christian theology is on human worth. Christians affirm the inherent and very high value of individuals because of their creation in the image of God. Rand values human beings primarily for their achievements. A person who does not offer value (specifically, economic value) gets dubbed a “moocher” and “looter.” The language is inflammatory to most people, but rankles Christians even more so due to their devotion to the idea of the human being as a bearer of God’s image.”
Yes, one could say that Randian language “rankles,” but despite that, Mr. Baker returns to defending Ms. Rand—sort of:
“Rand was an atheist and clearly had an insufficient appreciation for (and accounting of) human solidarity, but she loved freedom and she understood the importance of work for human flourishing. Rand’s atheism, materialism, and reduction of the human being’s value to economic productivity are all reasonable targets of critique for a variety of good reasons. Let those arguments continue to be made, though perhaps with less rancor. But it is important to be clear about the charges for which Rand should not have to answer. She was an atheist and clearly had an insufficient appreciation for (and accounting of) human solidarity, but she loved freedom and she understood the importance of work for human flourishing. And finally, although some accused her of fascism, she ardently opposed the cut-rate philosophy that makes an idol of the state.”
On the one hand, then, "atheism, materialism, and reduction of the human being’s value to economic productivity”; on the other hand, “she loved freedom and she understood the importance of work…” I don’t have access to Hunter Baker’s Rand-colored glasses, but in my view this isn’t even a close call: Ayn Rand’s philosophy was and is appalling—and I’m not even a Christian. Freedom, as Christians are supposed to know, is an instrumental value and not an end in itself—what is freedom for? is a question Mr. Baker seems uninterested in posing, perhaps because Ms. Rand’s answer—Freedom is for displaying one’s Promethean abilities and for obtaining (or seizing, if necessary) one’s rightful material rewards and status—might prove “inflammatory to most people”. 3
Baker concludes with the faintest sort of praise imaginable:
“Ayn Rand deserves some of the opposition she has received from Christians and many others. But she also deserves better.”
Frankly, I don’t see why Rand deserves, according to Hunter Baker’s own logic, anything other than contempt and disdain. But if she does deserve “better” treatment, she’ll need a far more capable advocate than Hunter Baker to get it for her.
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2 I await Mr. Baker’s upcoming monograph on “Contempt: The Overlooked Virtue”.
3 "Freedom" is the iconic word of choice on the American Right, including the Christian Right; oddly, it's a word that Jesus rarely used, hung up as he was on things like love of neighbor and compassion for the poor, the suffering, and the outcast. He did quote from Isaiah: "God has sent me to bring freedom to the prisoners," so there's that.
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