Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.55 You Save: $4.44 (49%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.90 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
Book Review: I think that Rand would have liked the idea of "capatilism"
Summary: 5 Stars
In her earlier works, such as The Fountainhead, Rand wrote of a certain type of person, or personality type, which she named "second-handers." In fact, "second-handers was, for a while, to be the very title of her book "The Fountainhead." Although you will not find much on the subject of second-handers within the covers of Capitalism: the unknown ideal, you will, if you are an "objectively" minded individual, find plenty in the form of CONCEPTS in whatever you read. Rand distinguishes between the objectively minded individual and the second-handers by distinguishing between their respective cognitive approaches to their perceptions: The second-handers are concrete-bound; they exist in a perceptual world; they perceive images, shapes and sounds, they feel what others have decided is good or bad, right or wrong and they follow along never forming an OBJECTIVE opinion of their own, hence the name second-handers. They make much of perceptions (such as the spelling or misspelling of a word) without ever going beyond, that is: integrating their perceptions in to a concept and using in an attempt at problem solving. They are stuck at the perceptual level. Indeed, to them a misspelling of a word is a Great Big Deal: that is as far as their journey takes them; The conceptual meaning of a word isn't important to a second-hander, only the perceptual part matters, for that is the EXTENT of their understanding, Why, if you don't have that spelling correct, you must not know what you are doing! Implicit in the second-hander's "logic" is that if you could only spell everything correctly, keep all of your perceptual aspects in line, why you would, armed with such accomplishments, be able to surmount any and every problem that could come your way! As Rand makes clear in all of her writings, including Capatilism: the unknown ideal, (sic) the key to man reaching his goal, that is his individual happiness or individuality, is using his mind, in a very logical manner in solving the problems which befront him in his pursuit. The only way such obstacles, as one perceives in one's daily life, can be surmounted, is through CONCEPT FORMATION: the integration of one's perceptions in to a concept: a tool useful, to the reality of one's problems to serve as a means to a solution. This can be anything from a simple cause and effect relationship all the way to high level abstract mathematical reasoning. In any case it involves going beyond the obvious, beyond the immediately perceptive. It involves NOT being stuck at the perceptive level.Book Review: Unique defence of freedom
Summary: 5 Stars
This riveting compilation of 26 essays includes contributions by Alan Greenspan, Nathaniel Branden and Robert Hessen. It is primarily a treatise on the moral aspects of capitalism. The themes revolve around human nature and mankind's relationship to existence. Capitalism is advocated because it is the only system compatible with the life of a rational being.
Rand claims that the classical defenders and modern apologists of capitalism are by default responsible for undermining it. In her view, they are unwilling or unable to fight the battle on moral-philosophical grounds.
The essays provide a plethora of gripping insights and novel angles. Rand detests the idea of using altruism to defend capitalism. She proposes rationality instead, with a ruling principle of justice.
I do not necessarily agree with her on this but I enjoy Rand's scathing criticism of conservatism's perceived fallacies. Her vitriolic dissection of the 3 conservative strains is highly amusing! She identifies and attacks the Religious and the Traditionalists but really unleashes the sharp edge of her scorn on those who defend capitalism from the argument of mankind's depravity.
In the essay Requiem For Man, she savages the encyclical Populorum Progressio by Pope Paul VI, in which she also rips apart the reactions to it by publications like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine.
The book consists of two parts. The first is Theory And History, which includes essays on inter alia war, the persecution of big business, antitrust, gold and economic freedom, property status of the airwaves, and patents and copyrights.
Part two: Current State, includes essays on the anatomy of compromise, the art of smearing, rule by consensus as a form of fascism, and the student rebellion. The final two essays: Man's Rights and The Nature Of Government, appear in the appendix.
Whatever the flaws in Rand's Objectivist philosophy, this book remains a brilliant and unique defence of freedom and capitalism. Moreover, history has proved Rand a prescient thinker who was correct in many of her analyses.
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal ranks among the very best of her non-fiction works. It is highly engaging, thought-provoking and often quite amusing. The book concludes with an index and a bibliography listing titles by Henry Hazlitt, Isabel Paterson and Ludwig von Mises, amongst others.
Book Review: A Must Read for All Americans
Summary: 5 Stars
Wow! This book is powerful, and Ayn Rand is not at all afraid to let us know what is wrong with America, and what would be better if capitalism were truly laissez-faire in America, rather than our giving it over to a mixed economy.
The early articles are especially enlightening about the situation in the United States and how it evolved. She goes back to discussing the creation of the Federal Reserve and what was detrimental about it. She discusses the gold standard, and she takes on Franklin Roosevelt and how the Great Depression and his policies led us to becoming a mixed economy.
The book also takes a lot of time pointing out why capitalism is superior to communism. While we now live after the Cold War--Rand lived during it and was herself a fugitive from the Soviet Union--the points about communism are still highly relevant, not just because communist countries remain but because communism has seeped into American culture in the form of collectivist thinking--the idea that the individual matters less than what is for the greater good. Ayn Rand gives many examples of this, such as taxpayers without children having to fund public education, and the United States providing assistance to other countries--Vietnam in her day--I'm sure she would be opposed to Iraq in ours. She suggests that our trying to raise up those other countries will only pull us down, and she blasts the idea that we must be charitable and look out for our brothers in other lands.
More than any other writer of the twentieth century, Rand was not afraid to speak her mind. She takes on one of Pope Paul VI's encyclicals, she speaks out against the philosophy of Existentialism, and she explains how our culture's unwillingness to stand up for the American ideal and to have a clear philosophy about life has led to the confusion of the younger generations.
Everyone will not agree with Ayn Rand on every point, but no one will go away from this book without being more knowledgable and a better thinker. Again! Why are her philosophies not given equal place in fields of study? Why are philosophy classes always ready to talk about Kant, Sartre and existentialism and not objectivism? If we ignore her voice of reason, we will be headed for a welfare, collectivist society ourselves--as she points out, we're already half-way there. Read this book!
- Tyler R. Tichelaar, author of Iron Pioneers and The Queen City, available on Amazon
Book Review: Myth mashing of the highest order.
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is a wonderful collection of 26 articles written by Ayn Rand (20 articles total), Nathaniel Branden (2), Alan Greenspan (3) and Robert Hessen (1). The 26 count includes the two articles in the appendix by Ayn Rand: "MAN'S RIGHTS" and "THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT". I do have one criticism of this book but I will save it until the end here. All 26 articles relate in one way or another to the theme that 100% Laissez-faire Capitalism is the best Political-Economic system for mankind and that this fact is unknown to most people in the World --including most people in the United States. The first 13 articles deal with the THEORY AND HISTORY of Capitalism along with the opening article being true to form Ayn Rand: she defines her terms right away. Here she does it by positing and then answering the question: "WHAT IS CAPITALISM?". The next 12 articles deal with and destroy so many myths about capitalism that it is probably safe to say that anyone who reads this book will find at least 12 of their own myths about capitalism somewhere within the book. The next 11 articles (#14 through #24) deal with the CURRENT STATE of the United States in the mid 1960's and it is amazing how pertinent and informative these articles still are today. For example, for pertinence see article #20, "THE NEW FASCISM: RULE BY CONSENSUS", and for the informative see and discover the correct definition of 'freedom' on the first page of the article titled "CONSERVATISM: AN OBITUARY". There is simply too much good in this book to cover it all in one short review. It is a must read for anyone who is serious about politics and economics. Even if you disagree you will be compelled to think about your own position and attempt to solidify your thoughts about it after reading this book. The two ending (APPENDIX) articles speak for themselves and either alone is worth the price of the book. All the articles in the book were written and copyrighted in the 1960's and the book itself as collection of these articles was first published in 1967. Back then, and this is my only criticism, back then Capitalism WAS an Unknown Ideal, but today thanks to Ayn Rand and others, including the contributors to this book, Capitalism is now the KNOWN ideal, consequently the books title is not quite as accurate as it was when first published.Book Review: Moral case for capitalism?
Summary: 5 Stars
Now let's see: Rand was wrong about government financing, and she was wrong to be averse to "violent civil resistance" -- arguing that government requires a territorial monopoly on the legal use of force, in direct conflict with the Second Amendment specifically and the logic of federalism generally. So if we put her view of government into practice, we'd have a totalitarian State that couldn't pay for itself out of voluntary contributions, and we'd have an unarmed citizenry that wasn't allowed to resist. So the State would do . . . what? And this is moral? On what planet? (Am I the only one who sees an "Ominous Parallel" here?)She also invoked "rational selfishness" as the moral basis of capitalism, leaving out any "garbage" about the "common good." Now, that latter phrase ordinarily means the good literally common to all human beings (usually within a single society). In leaving out such "garbage," Rand would appear to have left out a powerful argument for capitalism: that it serves our _genuine_ "common good," by providing a society in which the rights of _each_ person are protected and respected. (Rand _did_ claim to have provided an "egoistic" foundation for those rights, but (a) it mostly isn't in this volume, and (b) it mostly isn't any good. I won't critique it here since it's in _The Virtue of Selfishness_.)
As for "rational selfishness" as the moral foundation for capitalism: the free market provides economic checks and balances on _all_ behavior involving exchangeable goods -- including "altruistic" behavior like philanthropy and charitable contributions. As a moral foundation, "rational altruism" would have worked just as well. In fact the entire egoism/altruism dichotomy is beside the point; it's the "rational" part that's essential. (And I beg to doubt that Rand's understanding of "rationality" was adequate anyway.)
Hmm. There doesn't seem to be all that much left of Rand's _moral_ case for capitalism.
Nevertheless, as I've stated in my previous reviews, I still think this is her best book for quite other reasons, and she does do a fair job of cutting through some _other_ people's nonsense. Just be careful with her own.