ayn rand 00_sciabarra_fm_i-xvi.indd 1 07/08/13 5:08 PM ii ayn rand 00_sciabarra_fm_i-xvi.indd 2 07/08/13 5:08 PM introduction iii the pennsylvania state university press the pennsylvania state university press university park, pennsylvania university park, pennsylvania 00_sciabarra_fm_i-xvi.indd 3 07/08/13 5:08 PM Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sciabarra, Chris Matthew, 1960– Ayn Rand : the Russian radical / Chris Matthew Sciabarra.—Second edition. p. cm Summary: “Analyzes the intellectual roots and philoso- phy of Ayn Rand. Second edition adds a new preface and an analysis of transcripts documenting Rand’s education at Petrograd State University”—Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-271-06227-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Rand, Ayn. 2. Objectivism (Philosophy). 3. Dialectic. 4. Philosophers—Russia. 5. Philosophers—United States. I. Title. B945.R234S35 2013 191—dc23 2013027117 Second edition copyright © 2013 Chris Matthew Sciabarra Original copyright © 1995 Chris Matthew Sciabarra All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003 It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper for the first printing of all clothbound books. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of P aper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992. 00_sciabarra_fm_i-xvi.indd 4 07/08/13 5:08 PM To the memory of my Uncle Sam, for his guidance, loyalty, support, and love 00_sciabarra_fm_i-xvi.indd 5 07/08/13 5:08 PM 00_sciabarra_fm_i-xvi.indd 6 07/08/13 5:08 PM contents Preface to the Second Edition Acknowledgments Introduction part one: the process of becoming / 21 1 Synthesis in Russian Culture / 22 2 Lossky, the Teacher / 39 3 Educating Alissa / 62 4 The Maturation of Ayn Rand / 90 part two: the revolt against dualism / 115 5 Being / 116 6 Knowing / 143 vii 00_sciabarra_fm_i-xvi.indd 7 07/08/13 5:08 PM viii ayn rand 7 Reason and Emotion / 167 8 Art, Philosophy, and Efficacy / 189 9 Ethics and Human Survival / 215 10 A Libertarian Politics / 248 part three: the radical rand / 275 11 Relations of Power / 276 12 The Predatory State / 307 13 History and Resolution / 333 Epilogue / 359 Appendix I: The Rand Transcript (1999) / 363 Appendix II: The Rand Transcript, Revisited (2005) / 381 Appendix III: A Challenge to Russian Radical— and Ayn Rand (2013) / 393 Notes / 401 References / 469 Index / 489 00_sciabarra_fm_i-xvi.indd 8 07/08/13 5:08 PM preface to the second edition Nearly twenty years ago, Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical was published. In its wake came much controversy and discussion,1 which greatly influ- enced the course of my research in subsequent years. In 1999, I co-edited, with Mimi Reisel Gladstein, Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand, part of the Pennsylvania State University Press series on Re-Reading the Canon, which now includes nearly three dozen volumes, each devoted to a major thinker in the Western philosophic tradition, from Plato and Aristotle to Foucault and Arendt. In that same year, I became a founding co-editor of the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, a biannual interdisciplinary scholarly jour- nal on Ayn Rand and her times that, in its first twelve volumes, published over 250 articles by over 130 authors. In 2013, the journal began a new col- laboration with the Pennsylvania State University Press that will greatly expand its academic visibility and electronic accessibility. It therefore gives me great pleasure to see that two essays first published in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies—“The Rand Transcript” (1999c) and “The Rand Transcript, Revisited” (2005b)—have made their way into the pages of the second, expanded edition of this book, providing a more com- plete record of the fascinating historical details of Rand’s education from 1921 to 1924 at what was then Petrograd State University. In publishing the second edition of any book written two decades ago, an author might be tempted to change this or that formulation or phrase to render more accurately its meaning or to eliminate the occasional er- ror of fact. I have kept such revisions to a minimum; the only extensively revised section is an expanded discussion in chapter 12 of Rand’s foreign policy views, relevant to a post-9/11 generation, under the subheading “The Welfare-Warfare State.” Nevertheless, part of the charm of seeing a second edition of this book published now is being able to leave the original work largely untouched and to place it in a broader, clarifying context that itself could not have been apparent when it was first published. My own Rand research activities over these years are merely one small part of an explosive increase in Rand sightings across the social landscape: in books on biography, literature, philosophy, politics, and culture;2 film;3 and contem- porary American politics, from the Tea Party to the presidential election.4 ix 00_sciabarra_fm_i-xvi.indd 9 07/08/13 5:08 PM x ayn rand Even President Barack Obama, in his November 2012 Rolling Stone in- terview, acknowledges having read Ayn Rand: Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we’d pick up. Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we’re only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we’re considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity—that that’s a pretty narrow vision. It’s not one that, I think, describes what’s best in America. (in Brinkley 2012) The bulk of this book predates the president’s assessment, and yet it is, in significant ways, a response to assessments of that kind. First and fore- most, it is a statement of the inherent radicalism of Rand’s approach. Her radicalism speaks not to the alleged “narrow vision” but to the broad totality of social relationships that must be transformed as a means of resolving a host of social problems. Rand saw each of these social problems as related to others, constituting—and being constituted by—an overarching system of statism that she opposed. My work takes its cue from Rand, and other thinkers in both the liber- tarian tradition, such as Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, and Murray N. Rothbard, and the dialectical tradition, such as Aristotle, G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, and Bertell Ollman. From these disparate influences, I have con- structed the framework for a “dialectical libertarianism” as the only fun- damental alternative to that overarching system of statism. In this book, I identify Rand as a key theorist in the evolution of a “dialectical libertarian” political project. The essence of a dialectical method is that it is “the art of context- keeping.” More specifically, it emphasizes the need to understand any object of study or any social problem by grasping the larger context within which it is embedded, so as to trace its myriad—and often reciprocal— causes and effects. The larger context must be viewed in terms that are both systemic and historical. Systemically, dialectics demands that we trace the relationships among seemingly disparate objects of study or among disparate social problems so as to understand how these objects and problems relate to one another— and to the larger system they constitute and that shapes them. Historically, dialectics demands that we trace the development of these relationships over time—that is, that we understand each object of study or each social problem through its past, present, and potential future manifestations. 00_sciabarra_fm_i-xvi.indd 10 07/08/13 5:08 PM preface to the second edition xi This attention to context is the central reason why a dialectical approach has often been connected to a radical politics. To be radical is to “go to the root.” Going to the “root” of a social problem requires understanding how it came about. Tracing how problems are situated within a larger system over time is, simultaneously, a step toward resolving those problems and overturning and revolutionizing the system that generates them. The three books in my “Dialectics and Liberty trilogy”—of which Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical is the second part—seek to reclaim dialectical method from its one-sided use in Marxist thought, in particular, by clarify- ing its basic nature and placing it in the service of a radical libertarianism.5 The first book in my trilogy is Marx, Hayek, and Utopia, which I pub- lished in 1995 with the State University of New York Press (Sciabarra 1995b). It drew parallels between Karl Marx, the theoretician of communism, and F. A. Hayek, the Austrian “free market” economist, by highlighting their surprisingly convergent critiques of utopianism and their mutual apprecia- tion of context in defining the meaning of political radicalism. Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, the second book in the trilogy, details the approach of a bona fide dialectical thinker in the radical libertarian tradi- tion, who advocated the analysis of social problems and social solutions across three distinctive, and mutually supportive, levels of generality— the personal, the cultural, and the structural (see especially “The Radical Rand,” part 3 of the current work). The third book and final part of the trilogy, Total Freedom: Toward a Dia- lectical Libertarianism, was published in 2000 by the Pennsylvania State University Press (Sciabarra 2000). It offers a rereading of the history of dialectical thinking, a redefinition of dialectics as indispensable to any defense of human liberty and as a tool to critique those aspects of modern libertarianism that are decidedly undialectical and, hence, dangerously utopian in their implications.