There's a new book on Ayn Rand called Goddess of the Market, by Jennifer Burns. The author isn't quite zeroed in on Intellectual property as such, but she provides enough information to document the fact that for Rand the issue of her intellectual property became increasingly important throughout her life. She documents how Rand's royalties from her work Night of January 16th gave her the first taste of financial independence, and how she later came to believe that she had not received enough. With each successive negotiation for book royalties and film rights, her terms became ever higher and ever more strict.

Rand had perfectly sound instincts (a person should charge as much as he or she can for first run) but Rand's rationale was rooted in this modern notion of intellectual property, a theory, shared by nearly all her contemporaries, on which she was never once challenged. In fact, to a great extent, her philosophy exalted the role and rights of the creator more than any, probably, in the history of ideas. This is a great contribution, but she took the notion too far — for Rand, intellectual rights trumped real rights.

This comes through not only in her writings (The Fountainhead can be given a property-rights spin but ultimately it is about intellectual rights) but also in her personal relationships. Here, property in her ideas became a source of conflict with friends such as Isabel Paterson, with whom Rand was friends for many years. Tensions entered into the friendship when Rand accused Paterson of taking her ideas in the writing of God of the Machine. Paterson responded that Rand's contribution to the ideas in this book was minimal. They wrote back and forth and argued over specific instances of who said what to whom. They sorted through events in their associations, attempting to reconstruct them and divvy the ideas.

In truth, what had happened to Rand and Paterson is called a "conversation." One person says something, and another elaborates, which prompts new thoughts, new directions, new comments — a consensus — which then gets interrupted by new thoughts, points of departure, new elaborations, a new consensus, and so on. And if you know how Rand was, staying up all night in these detailed discussions of theory, you know that it would be simply impossible to sort out who owned what.

You can try this yourself with a friend. Talk for 15 minutes and then attempt to draw an ownership map of ideas. See if you can come to a consensus. Then see what the attempt does to your friendship.

Reading through the history of Rand's relationships with people, we find that this dynamic was pervasive — again, I'm not saying this as accusation but merely observing that it as an extension of her theory concerning the ownership of ideas.

This is particularly a problem for a theory of life that exalts independent thinking and creativity. What if the idea that one should be independent and creative itself actually came from someone else? One must constantly acknowledge one's debts. And, moreover, one should be cautious about remixing the ideas, lest the property right in the idea of being creative be stained and marred.

Marrying the idea of intellectual property to the notion of being independent generates extreme dependence and mandatory intellectual compliance.

The famed role of Nathaniel Brandon in the Rand circle was to be not only a teacher of her theories but also an enforcer of Rand's intellectual property rights, which involved excluding people as much as it did including people. He was caught on the horns of a dilemma in many ways. On the one hand, he was seeking followers for Rand's ideas. On the other hand, he wanted to protect her ideas from being stolen (he probably wanted to maintain his own monopolistic possession of them).

What kind of person, then, are you willing to tolerate as part of the inner circle? It would have to be a person who would repeat the ideas of Rand exactly, without alteration, and constantly cite Rand for her innovation — and assert her right to the idea. Taken far enough, one can imagine the result: a drone army of people who footnoted nearly every phrase coming out of their mouths.

It was in the pursuit of intellectual property that Nathaniel intervened in Objectivist clubs to prevent them from using the word Objectivist, to prevent them from using quotes from John Galt, to prevent them even from advertising lectures on the topic by students of her ideas. As Burns demonstrates — but without clarity of causal explanation — the movement for Rand's ideas only really took off after Nathaniel Brandon had been cast out of the inner circle. The monopoly on her ideas was no longer possible to maintain. They were set free (not fully open source, but at least far less restricted), and thereby flourished.

Rand was not entirely happy about this transition. Her impression was not entirely invalid that people were "robbing" her of her thoughts: Rand was having a huge influence. Like the professors discussed above, however, she turned away from an open-source model and into IP enforcement. Of the Libertarian Party, for example, she wrote, "it's a bad sign for an allegedly pro-capitalist party to start by stealing ideas." But this raises the question, Would it have been better had the libertarians not been influenced by Rand? From her perspective, yes: it is even worse when ideas are stolen and then mixed with ideas with which she disagreed.

The rest of the story played out as we might expect. She ended up feeling robbed and looted by everyone who was influenced by her. My own reading of her biography is that her belief in the property of her ideas led to her experiencing unnecessary grief. After all, it didn't have to be this way.

My impression about Rand was that during the later years of her life, she turned more and more deluded, surrounding herself with sycophants and creating a de-facto cult of personality around herself. She doesn't strike me as too agreeable a person during that phase.

Rand did give a pretty good argument in favor of ethical egoism. But that was really the extent of her contributions to anything in my opinion.

I get the impression based on what I have read of her that she was suffering from depression by this point and was seeking a means of alleviating it and thought sycophants were it. A common mistake unfortunately.

She got incredibly jealous certianly though when she saw anyone else holding ideas similar to her own, she had to be the one true prophet of truth and noone else could take her throne. Which is ironic given how much she pilfered from everyone else. There can't be one original word in her "philosophy".

Far from the personality cult of the Stalinist era, her idea of communism was a society where the idea of the self is abolished, and people are taught to think with a hive mind. That's what she promoted as the dystopian vision of a post-capitalist society. These arguments that communism abolishes individuality are so old they are addressed in The Communist Manifesto itself.

So while the "democracies" were promoting the idea that communism represented dictatorship and oppression of the people, Ayn Rand argued the opposite. That communism is the dissolution of the self into the collective mass. That's what she really taught her followers and readers to fear.

Wow, sure sounds like Rand was a real nutter.

Who knew?

This is an edited version of something I wrote about Rand and originally posted at epinions.com in 2001. It's a little biased, but what the fuck!

Enjoy.

RED DAVE

Who wrote this?

Ouch - Rand utterly despised those sort of people. I wouldn't bother with anything book concerning Rand's personal life. It's more of a soap opera than anything else and there's more mythology surrounding Rand than surrounded most biblical figures - most of it is probably guff. Apparently, she worked for the Illuminati and I doubt that too.
I doubt you've read enough to come to that conclusion. It's a mixed bag - but certainly not devoid of originality. I've heard that sales of her books have risen sharply thanks to the current crisis. She was no economist, though. Hopefully her readers will take an interest and look for others (Mises, Hayek) who can explain the source of the crisis with more accuracy.

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It's not really your sort of book anyway; no pictures.

That never seemed to stop her associating with them though, did it? Disagreeing with her was enough to be permanently expelled from her company. Even associating with someone who had been so expelled was sufficient.
Believing some of the things you do (Austrian economics as mainstream for instance), you are in little position to conjecture as to what others may know. Certainly I cannot think of anything original at all in what passed for Rand's belief system. If you think you can, feel free to name it. Though I must point out that it is very easy for those who know little philosophy to think she was original, as she almost never gave credit to others for the ideas she lifted. Hence unless you recognise them from elsewhere, you won't necessarily realise that they aren't her original work.

And God knows where to start with the notion that Mises could possibly explain the economic crises. Please don't embarrass yourself by trying to claim any knowledge o economics again. What you do is come up with a set of rather nasty beliefs, and then try to retroactively find some theory to justify it, the best you can find being weak a priori dogmatics. You then try and pass this off as a valid argument. Not going to work I am afraid.

Wait ... Ayn Rand was in the Commie Club?

No but she would have fit right in. The CC is exactly like her circle in many ways.

Though to be fair the worst the CC does is harass you a bit on a message board nobody is forcing you to post on. Rand and her cronies could deprive you of your friends and sometimes even turn your closest family members against you.

When did I say that?
When you haven't read anything besides wikipedia, I guess that can be a challenge. I believe she came up with a novel solution to the analytic/synthetic dichotomy and the fact/value dichotomy. Rand is contraversial anyway. You don't become contraversial by being unoriginal.

Though I must point out that it is very easy for those who know little philosophy to think she was original, as she almost never gave credit to others for the ideas she lifted. Hence unless you recognise them from elsewhere, you won't necessarily realise that they aren't her original work.

Which ideas - aside from the political? She claims Aristotle, and that's certainly true but IIRC she did credit him. I don't know about anyone else. Philosophy isn't really my thing. Most of it's bunk anyway.

Yes, let's not pay any attention to people who win Nobel Prizes for predicting when these sort of things occur and instead listen to the militants whose systems are reknown failure and whose explanation doesn't extend far beyond "it were capitalism what done it."
I was going to say exactly the same thing about yours.

Anyway, when it comes to failed predictions, I'm afraid you're right up there with Nostradamus and the Jehovas Witnesses.

When you claim that capitalism is on the brink of collapse for a century and a half, don't be surprised when people eventually stop listening.

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LOL! Here Robert, have slice of win.

I'm calling bullshit on this. I know how cults can turn people against their own family, but how did they manage to turn people's own friends and family members against them? I don't buy that. Your friends and family have far closer ties to you than some Randian who just came waltzing into your life.

Where are the sources for this information?

Result of a quick search: http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...7&postcount=98
This was made in response to myself claiming Austrian economics was largely ignored or outright dismissed by mainstream economists.
A lot of it is, but that isn't relevant here. Plagairism is still plagairism if you plaigarise bunk
Ah, the Nobel prizes. The thing is few Austrians actually won them and when they did it was during the time when Assar Lindbeck chaired the prize committee, rather undermining the integrity of the prize.

Besides the significant award: Hayek's, was shared with Gunnar Myrdal, an economist about as far from the Austrian school as you can go and was given for their work regarding the connections between economic and social phenomena.

It has to be acknowledged that Hayek actually was quite a good economist when he wasn't promoting his nasty political views but tellingly many, even most, Austrians disown him.

Still, the Nobel prize has been given to a wide variety of economists, many of whom have been on the left and have rather more credible explanations for what is happening than the Austrians.

Indeed I don't think many Austrians today really understand their own theories. You will soon find them coming back to fiat money, but in reality the banking crises just now isn't really relevant to that. The way banks work under capitalism is centred around the fractional reserve system and that is as much a part of the gold standard as it is of fiat money.
I don't think many have said it is forever on the brink of collapse, rather explained its flaws and how it causes economic ruin. Predictions that are borne out again and again and again.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html

And here I constantly stick up for you and thank your posts. Ah well.

I know this is kind of out of line for this thread, but do any of you find Ayn Rand the least bit sexy?

Back in 07' when I was a commie dropping tons of 'cid, I saw Rush in concert and for some reason decided to go out and buy Atlas the next day. After reading that, I got some strong ideas - namely: Individualism, which stands opposed to the kind of homogenized consumer culture that we have today. Rand's work is about personal struggles against the norm - 'revolutionaries' should definitely identify with that if they hope to do anything but bellyache on internet forums. Rand also goes to great lengths to communicate the importance of critical thinking - something the people who run FOX don't want you to do.

Add to that her wicked skill as a writer, and I find that little anarchist russian babe pretty damn hot.

Nobody's perfect, but you have to take the good with the bad. Mao was a polygamist and chairmao of a supposedly communist party at the same time WTF? What about Che's obsession with violence?... Or Kim Il Sung's insistence on making his brat kid leader of a country?

I do

Oh yes, that was back in the good old days when you an Nutter were calling libertarianism fascism, defending the LTV and attacking the concept of self-ownership - and before I realised that academia was as corrupt as everywhere else.
For example?

Let's face it, when you advocate taking from one group and giving to another and then think that everyone is going to just carry on as before, then you're pretty much finished.

It says in the link you posted:

It says that Randians were manipulated to abandon their family, not the other way round. In other words, not what you claimed.

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I seem to recall her saying that fascism and communism were two versions of the same political system, or words to that effect.
News to me. When? Where?
Wasn't it businessmen that were the most persecuted minority.

But don't left the facts get in the way of a cheap rant. It never bothered you in the other thread.