Mr. Tucker speculated that perhaps Rand, who was not a native English speaker (she was born Alisa Rosenbaum in Russia in 1905), really meant to defend “self-interest” rather than selfishness. I agree wholeheartedly that Rand was defending self-interest in the sense that (to borrow Tucker’s words) “there is no inconsistency between what’s good for the individual and what is good for society” as long as everyone’s rights are respected and aren’t violated.
However, unlike Mr. Tucker, I believe that Rand used the term “selfishness” quite deliberately. I’m convinced that she wasn’t making a semantic mistake due to an imperfect mastery of her adopted language, but that she was fully aware of the powerfully negative connotations of that word. With her typical scorn for and defiance of sloppy thinking, she threw the word “selfishness” right back in the faces of those native-English speakers who so routinely distort reality by misusing language. Rand was mocking them openly.
To more fully understand Rand’s thoughts about “selfishness,” I refer you to a key scene in “Atlas Shrugged”: the trial of the hugely successful, fabulously wealthy entrepreneur/industrialist/inventor, Hank Rearden. In the novel, the mediocrities who dominate government, the media, and the so-called “intellectual” class despise Rearden for the very achievements that generated his great wealth. They deem his spectacular success “unfair,” since most people are incapable of such extraordinary accomplishments. Oozing envy and resentment, they denounce Rearden as “antisocial” and “selfish.”
Rearden’s testimony, however, shows why those criticisms aren’t just a bit off-target, but are vilely dishonest. When a judge asks him, “Are we to understand that if the public deems it necessary to curtail your profits, you do not recognize its right to do so?” Rearden surprises the judge by answering in the affirmative: “Why, yes, I do. The public may curtail my profits at any time it wishes—by refusing to buy my product.” Touché!
Here Rearden explicitly endorses the fundamental truth of a free market—namely, that the consumer is sovereign and no entrepreneur can amass wealth unless he’s able to provide more value to the customer than his competition can. The economic reality is that entrepreneurs are utterly dependent on their customers for their success. The fact that Rearden’s metals were as wildly popular as they were was prima facie proof that his business activities were for the benefit of others, and hence the exact antithesis of “selfish” or “antisocial.”
Rand’s goal (not just in “Atlas Shrugged,” but in much if not all of her writings) was to demonstrate to her readers how grossly distorted the word “selfishness” was as used by various socialists, wannabe social planners, and envy-driven individuals who feel threatened by their own inferiority. I daresay that Rand achieved that goal in thousands and thousands of cases.
One of the many brilliant lessons contained in “Atlas Shrugged” is that if what Rearden was doing in business—helping masses of his fellow human beings—was “selfishness,” then our society needs more “selfishness.” Indeed, all of us, for our own sake, individually and socially, should do everything we can to protect and defend such “selfish” individuals as successful entrepreneurs, for they’re our benefactors, the economic heroes of society.
“Atlas Shrugged” is a novel with an amazing plot, but if you prefer nonfiction, let me recommend the first book I ever read by Ayn Rand. It was a collection of essays with the arresting title “The Virtue of Selfishness” (which was the first essay in the collection). I was 22, a newly reborn Christian who had just dropped out of an elite law school, and I remember thinking, as I held the book in my hands, “If I were an atheist, this is what I would believe.”
Rand was indeed an atheist, but her atheism no more interferes with her pellucid analysis of socialist economies and her principled defense of individual rights than did Einstein’s Jewishness color his theory of relativity. To not read Rand because you have a different religious orientation would be to deny yourself the opportunity to examine the ideas of a clear, stimulating thinker.
By the way, in his article Mr. Tucker recommended her shortest novel, “Anthem,” if you want to read a shorter novel, but I would recommend instead her first novel, “We the Living.” In that book she shares her first-hand observations of the wrenching transformation of Russian society when the Bolsheviks seized power. She was there (in St. Petersburg) living that nightmare. There’s great historical value in seeing the up-close-and-in-person reality of imposed socialism in that novel. In fact, when you hear contemporary progressives/socialists preaching radical transformation of American society, the insights in “We the Living” can provide timely cautionary lessons for us today.
