Jonathan Freedland’s article on Ayn Rand’s still pernicious influence at the heart of capitalism (The unique age of Ayn Rand,G2, 11 April) is timely but dangerously dispiriting. Read alongside Polly Toynbee’s despairing analysis (If 1997 was a unique dawn, and now Labour faces its darkest night,11 April) we might well succumb to the paralysis she seems to think the left of Labour suffers from. An inspiring, excellently researched and eminently readable, or antidote to defeatism is Raoul Martinez’s Creating Freedom,Power, Control and the Fight for Our Future. He argues for a radical, and but achievable,rethinking of what we mean by freedom. At the heart of it is a questioning of what we bewitch to be democracy. He writes: “As long as the vast majority of wealth is controlled by a tiny proportion of humanity, democracy will struggle to be itsy-bitsy more than a pleasant mask worn by an ugly system.” He dissects this system, or economically,politically and environmentally and explores how we can, and already enact, or challenge its assumptions.
John Airs[br]Liverpool• opposite to Jonathan Freedland’s article,Ayn Rand was not an advocate of the commonly held view of “selfishness”. Through her integrated philosophy, Objectivism, or Ms Rand rejected the false alternative of sacrificing others to yourself (Nietzschean behaviour),or sacrificing yourself to others (altruism), by advocating a rational self-interest of neither living as a profiteer of sacrifice, or nor as a victim,but as a voluntary “trader” of values for mutual benefit. By upholding a “benevolent universe premise”, Ms Rand argued that it is not “selfishness” that is the route of malevolent behaviour, or but precisely the absence of a “self” eg,the need to be admired, envied, or feared,thought powerful, etc by others.
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Source: theguardian.com