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Atlas Shrugged

, postmodernism and the persistence of modern

philosophy in late capitalism

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Acknowledgements

I acknowledge that I have read and understood the University of Amsterdam’s Regulations on Fraud and Plagiarism. I am fully aware that failure to conform to these regulations may result in severe penalties. I confirm that this thesis has been written independently, and that any and all sources have been credited in the text.

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Table of Contents

Abstract………..4

Introduction……….5

Chapter 1: History and Dialectics………..8

Chapter 2: The Individual and Rationality………..22

Chapter 3: Culture and the Author………..35

Conclusion……….46

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Abstract

The postmodern era, which Frederic Jameson argues is inexorably linked to late capitalism, is often viewed as a radical break from the modern era, both philosophically and aesthetically. However, the influence of Ayn Rand's work on influential figures in the current era of late capitalism is both widespread and pernicious. This thesis will examine Rand's construction of a capitalist ideology, and its reliance on modern philosophers such as Hegel and Kant, in an attempt to demonstrate that there is a model of late capitalism that arguably functions better by relying on these philosophers, rather than by breaking with them. By doing so, it will also demonstrate the room within postmodernist philosophy to construct an opposition to Rand's ideology.

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Introduction

In recent years, there has been a major upheaval in the state of late capitalism that has dominated the world since the late 1980s. This change is a supposed rediscovering of Ayn Rand: as esteemed Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek has noted “One of the weird consequences of the 2008 financial meltdown and the measures taken to counteract it[…]was the revival in the work of Ayn Rand, the fullest ideological expression of radical ‘greed is good’ capitalism: the sales of her magnum

opus Atlas Shrugged exploded” [CITATION Ziz14 \p 34 \l 2057 ]. This resurgence of interest in Rand is,

however, not a phenomenon confined to academia, but has exploded into politics, as demonstrated by the journalist Jonathan Freedland’s article in The Guardian in which he states “Her novel The Fountainhead is one of the few works of fiction that Donald Trump likes and she has long been the darling of the US right. But only now do her devotees hold sway around the world” (Freedland). The Professor of Philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Firmin DeBrabander, notes that

“Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has said Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” is his favorite book. Mike Pompeo, head of the CIA, cited Rand as a major inspiration. Before he withdrew his nomination, Trump’s pick to head the Labor Department, Andrew Puzder, revealed that he devotes much free time to reading Rand. Such is the case with many other Trump advisers and allies: The Republican leader of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, famously made his staff members read Ayn Rand. Trump himself has said that he’s a “fan” of Rand and “identifies” with Howard Roark, the protagonist of Rand’s novel, “The Fountainhead,” “an architect who dynamites a housing project he designed because the builders did not precisely follow his blueprints.” As a philosopher, I have often wondered at the remarkable endurance and popularity of Ayn Rand’s influence on American politics. Even by earlier standards, however, Rand’s dominance over the current administration looks especially strong.” (DeBrabander)

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Rand’s influence extends to the increasingly powerful technological sector of Silicon Valley, whose executives seem to model themselves after her heroic capitalist individuals: one article in Vanity Fair, by journalist Nick Bilton describes her influence, writing that

“For those who follow the Valley, this isn’t all that surprising. Perhaps the most influential figure in the industry, after all, isn’t Steve Jobs or Sheryl Sandberg, but rather Ayn Rand. Jobs’s co-founder, Steve Wozniak, has suggested that Atlas Shrugged was one of Jobs’s “guides in life.” For a time, Kalanick’s Twitter avatar featured the cover of The Fountainhead. Peter Thiel, whose dissatisfaction with a Gawker story led him to underwrite a lawsuit that eventually killed off the site, and who made the outré decision to publicly support Donald Trump, is also a self-described Rand devotee.”

This support for Rand from figures such as Donald Trump is surprising, given the accusation from the media that he represents a “post-truth” or “postmodern” politician. Postmodernism is often

inextricably linked with late capitalism, with this link being most famously articulated by Frederic Jameson, who asserted that postmodernism is “the cultural dominant of the logic of late capitalism” (Jameson 224). Postmodernism is also often configured as a radical break or schism with the

philosophical base for the Western tradition, the modern philosophy configured by G.W.F Hegel, Immanuel Kant and Rene Descartes, amongst others. It is this break, supposedly, that has allowed late capitalism to deregulate markets, undermine political power and bring about, in the words of Jameson, a “whole global, yet American, postmodern culture” (Jameson 192) that is “the internal and superstructural expression of a whole new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the world” (Jameson 192).

However, Jameson’s account underestimates the impact of the influence of Rand on this late capitalism. Writing for her Objectivist Newsletter, Alan Greenspan rails against any form of interference in the market by governments, stating both that “Government regulations do not eliminate potentially dishonest individuals, but merely make their activities harder to detect or easier

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to hush up” (Greenspan 130), and that “the entire structure of antitrust statutes in this country is a jumble of economic irrationality and ignorance” (Greenspan 71) and that the “effective purpose, the hidden intent, and the actual practice of the antitrust laws in the United States have led to the condemnation of the productive and efficient members of our society” (Greenspan 72). The importance of Greenspan as Rand’s most loyal disciple cannot be stated more emphatically, given the fact that he served as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987-2006, key years in both the development of late capitalism and postmodernism.

This thesis will examine the extent to which Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism influenced late capitalism, and the way in which it represents a continuation, or potential corruption, of modern philosophy. It will also demonstrate how postmodernism breaks with this tradition, and how Rand’s philosophy contrasts with that put forward by postmodernist thinkers. It will achieve this goal by undergoing a literary analysis of Rand’s most famous work, Atlas Shrugged, which is defined by Todd McGowan as “the leading treatise of capitalist ideology” (McGowan 74). By engaging in this critique, it will also demonstrate the way in which Objectivism serves as the cultural backdrop to late

capitalism, and how postmodernism could be constructed as an opposing philosophical movement to both Objectivism and late capitalism.

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History and Dialectics

One key area of concern for postmodern theorists is the nature of human history, or rather, the ways in which this history and notions of progress are constructed. Rand’s novel shows a similar concern with the future trajectory of human civilisation, as demonstrated by her use of a future setting for the novel Atlas Shrugged. However, Rand’s views on history differ greatly even from the most right-wing of postmodernist critics, and demonstrate a far more radical and pessimistic view of civilisation and progress than those critics. By examining Rand’s depiction of humanity’s future through the lens of postmodernist thought, this chapter will demonstrate the origins of Rand’s ideas surrounding history and the advances of civilisation, as well as the ways that these ideas contradict major postmodernist critics, such as Frederic Jameson and Jean-Francois Lyotard, and the ways that some of these critics define the state of Western history in late capitalism. Through this critique, this chapter will also serve to exemplify how the state of late capitalism that has existed from the mid-1990s through to the 21st century has relied on a Randian notion of historical progress to justify its

excesses and failures, and how postmodern theory has often served as an early warning system for these catastrophes. By engaging in such a critique, it will become evident that a key component of the dominant ideological force behind late capitalism is, in fact, an Objectivist movement towards the supposed utopia of a worldwide Galt’s Gulch, and that postmodernist theory, far from being the dominant cultural force in an era of late capitalism, is in fact a antithesis to this philosophy that resists this movement, by engaging in the philosophical strategies of criticising and demonstrating the folly of all such utopian movements. In doing so, postmodern philosophers can be seen to write against the absolute objectivity that dominates both Rand’s construction of history and late

capitalism’s portrayal of deregulated world markets as a method of providing freedom to all humanity.

In order to critique Rand’s construction of history, it is first necessary to define the

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“with the advent of modernity history takes on a whole new meaning and value” (Malpas 81). Traditionally history has been treated as a discipline which merely records events, a viewpoint influenced by Aristotle’s assertion that “poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history; for while poetry is concerned with universal truths, history treats of particular facts” (Aristotle 43), a viewpoint which persisted through to the Renaissance period through the work of thinkers like Sir Philip Sidney (Malpas 82). However, with the advent of

modernity, the role of history in society underwent a serious re-evaluation, and began to, as Malpas writes, “combine the tasks that Aristotle allots to the poet and the historian, or that Sidney allots to those two and the philosopher, in order to record the particular things that have happened while, at the same time, demonstrating their necessity, universality, and their relations to one another and to the whole future progress of humanity” (Malpas 82). This unification of historian and philosopher, and of particular facts with universal truths, is most readily seen in the philosophy of Hegel.

As noted by Malpas, “The most influential thinker of the modern grand narrative is

Hegel[…]There is not a single argument in his work that is not concerned with becoming, growth and progress, and the ways in which the world’s continual transformation can be rationally

comprehended” (Malpas 83). Despite her refusal to acknowledge a debt to any philosopher barring Aristotle (Curtis), much of Rand’s philosophy is built on the bedrock of rationality set forth by Hegel. To summarise his work, Hegel asserted that reason is built upon dialectical thinking, which operates as a progression to absolute rationality and freedom. Dialectics, which originated as a form of debate designed to resolve the conflicts that arise when two opposing concepts are set against each other, was developed by ancient Greek thinkers such as Socrates and Plato, and was later reworked by Hegel into a description of the process that occurs in argumentation that results in the emergence of a new, more rational idea. Roger Scruton defines this process as

“a concept is posited as a starting-point. It is offered as a potential description of reality. It is found at once that, from the standpoint of logic, this concept must bring its own negation with it: to

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the concept, its negative is added automatically, and a “struggle” ensues between the two. The struggle is resolved by an ascent to the higher plane from which it can be comprehended and reconciled: this ascent is the process of “diremption” (Aufhebung), which generates a new concept out of the ruins of the last. This new concept generates its own negation, and so the process continues, until, by successive applications of the dialectic, the whole of reality has been laid bare” (Scruton 164).

The aggregate form of the thesis is what Hegel dubbed the “Spirit” of the age, a collection of theses that comprise the philosophical grounding from which the shared values, customs and ideas that typify the epoch arise. The “Spirit”, which became the cornerstone of Hegel’s thought, is described by Malpas as “the way a particular culture or period sees the relations between subjects and the world, the structures of their knowledge and morality, and the political organisations that govern their action” (Malpas 84). For Hegel, history is

“a conscious, self-mediating process….This Becoming presents a slow-motion succession of Spirits, a gallery of images, each of which, endowed with all the riches of Spirit, moves thus slowly just because the Self has to penetrate and digest this entire wealth of its substance….The realm of Spirits which is formed in this way in the outer world constitutes a succession in Time in which one Spirit relieved another of its charge and each took over the empire of the world from its predecessor. Their goal is the revelation of the depth of Spirit, and this is the Absolute” (Hegel 492).

This movement in philosophy transforms history from a mere recording of facts to an explanation of the succession of world-views, each one fully incorporating and resolving the contradictions of the last, in a movement towards a unified, universal “Spirit” which is absolutely rational, or a system in which “all contradictions and oppositions between ideas and realities are reconciled in a system of philosophical knowledge” (Malpas 85). As such, Hegel’s philosophy also serves to transform history into a teleological movement, based broadly on the Christian road to salvation; history no longer merely describes the events that have taken place, it contextualises them

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into a narrative with an endpoint, specifically a utopia based on, in Hegel’s case, a system in which a single philosophy accurately describes the entirety of an objective reality. This is the formulation of the modern grand narrative, a concept which has influenced the majority of Western thought and politics since Hegel first conceived of it.

This movement towards a rational society pervades Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, both in the narrative structure of the book and also through the figure of Hank Rearden. The fictional teleology of the book is as follows: the world, including America, is governed by political systems that

subscribe to the notion of collectivism; ostensibly in the name of a greater good but in reality the result of a conspiracy between failing businessmen to produce profit without effort (Rand 44-50). Against the backdrop of this failing economic system, there are multiple cases of businessmen, philosophers and artists who refuse to engage in this system disappearing, often after destroying their businesses and holdings. The protagonist, Dagny Taggart, discovers this is part of a plan enacted by John Galt, a near-mythical figure in her society whose name recurs throughout the novel, to demonstrate to society that it is reliant on innovative producers and inventors, who should be allowed to live only for themselves, not others. As the situation in America worsens, and other parts of the world succumb to collectivism, society eventually crumbles without the input of these creators, who have developed a utopian community somewhere outside the United States, based strictly on an individualist philosophy which can be summarised by the oath its inhabitants take upon entering said society: “I SWEAR BY MY LIFE AND MY LOVE OF IT THAT I WILL NEVER LIVE FOR THE SAKE OF ANOTHER MAN, NOR ASK ANOTHER MAN TO LIVE FOR MINE” (Rand 731). Upon the collapse of the political and economic structure of America, the inhabitants of this society – named Galt’s Gulch – opt to return to America to recreate a society in the image of Galt’s Gulch – a world predicated solely of Rand’s theory of rationality, and rational self-interest, as the only morality (Rand 1168). This overarching view of the historical origins of this utopian society implied by the ending of Rand’s novel is mirrored in the viewpoint of Hank Rearden, who undergoes a philosophical

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Initially, Rearden is confronted by the irrationality of the dominant political opinion in Rand’s future setting; the collectivist philosophy which is now widespread in the United States. This is demonstrated when his family is introduced for the first time, his wife, mother and brother belittle and ridicule him in the name of affection; his wife asserts that his gift of a bracelet made from a new metal he has invented is “the chain by which he holds us all in bondage” (Rand 43), his mother states that

“Another man would bring her a diamond bracelet, if he wanted to give his wife a present, because it’s her pleasure he’d think of, not his own. But Henry thinks that just because he’s made a new kind of tin, why, it’s got to be more precious than diamonds to everybody, just because it’s he that’s made it. That’s the way he’s been since he was five years old-the most conceited brat you ever saw-and I knew he’d grow up to be the most selfish creature on God’s earth” (Rand 37)

and his brother, upon receiving an offer of ten thousand dollars for his political group that represents the collectivist bent that Rand’s fictional society operates under, asks Rearden to “give me the money in cash[…]Friends of Global Progress are a very progressive group and they have always maintained that you represent the blackest element of social retrogression in the country, so it would embarrass us, you know, to have your name on our list of contributors” (Rand 42). Confronted by these assaults on his character, despite having provided for his wife, offered his mother “unlimited means to live as and where she pleased” (Rand 37) and having “sent Philip through college” (41), Rearden

experiences a crisis of sorts, asking the question “What did they seek from him?[…]what were they after? He had never asked anything of them; it was they who pressed a claim on him-and the claim seemed to have the form of affection, but it was a form which he found harder to endure than any sort of hatred” (Rand 37) and stating that “He could not condemn them without understanding; and he could not understand” (Rand 38). In this chapter then, we see Rand’s thesis of self-interest and rationality, embodied in Rearden, encounter one of its negations, the attitudes of his family, who produce nothing and live only by the fruits of his labour. In this initial meeting, the process of

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resolving the contradictions and negations that confront Rand’s thesis begin; while his family make emotional demands of him, Rearden attempts to analyse these obstacles to his own happiness and, in a metaphorical sense, the path towards the rational society of Galt’s Gulch.

Later in the novel, before his trial, Rearden begins to understand the true nature of his family and the world’s ideas and begins to identify this viewpoint as the antithesis to his own; upon

recognising this, he is then able to begin rejecting the negations of his own philosophy by realising that these negations gain power only as a result of his own lack of conviction. During a dinner with his wife, mother and brother, Rearden is asked “Don’t you think it’s time you made an effort to adjust yourself to the conditions of our age?” (Rand 463), a question which provokes him into considering their position and asking “what was the code on which she acted? What sort of code permitted the concept of a punishment that required the victim’s own virtue as the fuel to make it work?” (Rand 465). When he responds to their criticisms of him by acknowledging their positions as his

dependents, stating that “I thought that any human being who accepts the help of another, knows that good will is the giver’s only motive and that good will is the payment he owes in return. But I see that I was wrong” (Rand 469) he effectively renders them silent. Through this exchange, he begins to understand the relationship between their worldview and his own, as demonstrated when Rand writes

“Through all the years past, his consideration for them had brought him nothing but their maliciously righteous reproaches. Where was their righteousness now? Now was the time to stand on their code of justice – if justice had been any part of their code. Why didn’t they throw at him all those accusations of cruelty and selfishness, which he had come to accept as the eternal chorus to his life? What had permitted them to do it for years? He knew that the words he heard in his mind were the key to the answer: The sanction of the victim” (Rand 470).

By this, Rand means that in order for the antithesis to Rearden’s philosophy to flourish, it must be accepted as true by Rearden. By rejecting this philosophy, Rearden has successfully nullified

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its power; as seen in his trial, where his refusal to “recognise my action as a crime [and] your right to control the sale of my Metal” (Rand 477) results in a suspended sentence and a minor fine (Rand 482), rather than the sentence predicted by his wife, that of ten years imprisonment (Rand 462).

In the final sections of the novel, Rearden eventually comes to fully resolve the negation of the philosophy that he and his fellow producers abide by. One important moment of note comes when he is finally confronted by a group of shady industrialists, including Jim Taggart, who exist within the novel to serve as the exact opposites of Rearden and the inhabitants of Galt’s Gulch. Upon hearing their pleas for him to live according to their code of morality, Rearden notes that

“He knew that the specific reason behind the Plan was Orren Boyle; he knew that the working of an intricate mechanism, operated by pull, threat, pressure, blackmail-a mechanism like an irrational adding machine run amuck and throwing up any chance sum at the whim of any moment-had happened to add up to Boyle’s upon these men to extort for him this last piece of plunder. He knew also that Boyle was not the cause of it or the essential to consider, that Boyle was only a chance rider, not the builder, of the infernal machine that had destroyed the world, that it was not Boyle who had made it possible, nor any of the men in this room” (Rand 983).

In this acknowledgement, Rand makes it clear that this process of dialectics that will eventually lead to a utopian future is impersonal, and that the people who identify with the

antithetical premise that Rearden has confronted throughout the novel are merely an obstacle for his enlightened philosophy of self-interest and rationality to overcome. This view of history of an

unstoppable, objective process is seen in Hegel’s writing, most notably when he defines history as an “altar on which individuals and entire nations are immolated” (Hegel 212). Within Rand’s master narrative, this metaphorical immolation is displayed brazenly, both in the destruction of America by John Galt’s strike and in the imagery displayed at the end of Part 1, when Rand states that “the hill of Wyatt Oil was a solid sheet of flame” (Rand 336) after one of the strikers leaves the country.

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Another key component of Rearden’s movement towards embodying Rand’s thesis of absolute rationality is his relationship with Dagny Taggart. Through this relationship between the two characters, Rand explores how the “Spirit” of the age can resolve contradictions by accepting dissenting viewpoints and incorporating them into the eventual synthesis, reconciling these contradictions by accepting the errors in the initial thesis. Dagny and Rearden’s initial sexual encounter disturbs Rearden, who cannot reconcile his sexual desires with his rational mind, announcing to her that

“What I feel for you is contempt. But it’s nothing, compared to the contempt I feel for myself. I don’t love you. I’ve never loved anyone. I wanted you as one wants a whore-for the same reason and purpose[…]I’ve given in in to a desire which I despise. It is a desire which has reduced my will, my being, my power to exist into an abject dependence upon you” (Rand 254).

In contrast to this, Dagny tells him “If I’m asked to name my proudest attainment, I will say: I have slept with Hank Rearden” (Rand 256). This initial conflict between Rearden, who embodies the initial thesis of rational capitalism, and Dagny, whose attitude towards sex is a contradiction to Rearden, is resolved within the novel through Rearden processing and digesting her attitude, and eventually incorporating into his own worldview, eventually admitting to her that “the things I said to you that morning in Ellis Wyatt’s house. . .I think I was lying to myself” (Rand 428). Through this use of dialectical reasoning, both on a micro- and macro scale, in her novel, Rand creates a plausible and convincing system that can be seen as an ideological grounding for the state of late capitalism, a system that can still operate under the modern philosophy of Hegel by using the notion of rational progress to justify its worst excesses.

For postmodernist theorists, however, the concept of history in the age of late capitalism represents a significant break from the traditions of modern philosophy, such as Hegel. Both Francois Lyotard and Frederic Jameson, two of the most influential of these theorists, demonstrate a

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economies of the late twentieth century. In his landmark work The Postmodern Condition: A Report

on Knowledge, Lyotard states that, in its course of seeking a unified theory, science “produces a

discourse of legitimation with respect to its own status, a discourse called philosophy” (Lyotard xxiii) and then defines the term modern as referring to “any science that legitimates itself with reference to a metadiscourse of this kind making an explicit appeal of this kind to some grand narrative, such as the dialectics of Spirit [and] the emancipation of the rational or working subject” (Lyotard xxiii). With this, Lyotard clearly identifies the work of Hegel, and thus Rand’s story of a rational teleology, as a product of the modern age, one that has been supplanted by the postmodern, which he briefly summarises as “incredulity towards metanarratives” (Lyotard xxiv).

For Lyotard, late capitalism operates as a knowledge economy, an economic system where “The relationship of the suppliers and users of knowledge to the knowledge they supply and use is now tending, and will increasingly tend, to assume the form already taken by the relationship of commodity producers and consumers to the commodities they produce and consume – that is, the form of value” (Lyotard 4). Under this system, the progression towards a unified system of

knowledge, which for Hegel was a goal to be pursued in order to create a truly rational philosophy, has ended – in postmodern late capitalism, Lyotard notes, “Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorized in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange. Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself, it loses its “use-value”“ (Lyotard 5). This system of production is at work in Rand’s novel; notably in the figures of Dagny and Rearden, who have achieved economic success as the result of, respectively, her business acumen and his metallurgic knowledge, but most prominently in the speech given by John Galt at the end of the novel, in which he states

“Man’s mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without a knowledge of food and of the

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way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch – or build a cyclotron – without a knowledge of his aim and of the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think” (Rand 1012).

Through this monologue, and the strike of “the men of the mind” (Rand 1010), Rand has accurately depicted the state of late capitalism as a knowledge economy.

Lyotard notes that, under this system of postmodern late capitalism, that the

“mercantilization of knowledge is bound to affect the privilege the nation-states have enjoyed, and still enjoy, with respect to the production and distribution of learning” (Lyotard 5), adding that “The ideology of communicational “transparency,” which goes hand in hand with the commercialization of knowledge, will begin to perceive the State as a factor of opacity and “noise”“ (Lyotard 5). Ultimately for Lyotard, the end of Hegel’s philosophical project, and its subsequent transformation into a system of knowledge as commodity, has created a situation in which “economic powers have reached the point of imperilling the stability of the State through new forms of the circulation of capital that go by the generic name of multi-national corporations” (Lyotard 5), in a similar fashion to the strike called by John Galt in the novel. Most notably, in the novel, when John Galt and his compatriots are confronted with a regulatory state, they withdraw from the country entirely, in a pattern that bears no little resemblance to the ability of multinational corporations to, as Simon Malpas writes, “move quickly away from any society that seems likely to prove expensive” (Malpas 108) which results in a political situation wherein “the ability of states to regulate their economies and distribute welfare to their citizens is eroded” (Malpas 108). In Rand’s system of capitalism, the withdrawal of knowledge leads to the collapse of the American state. However, this withdrawal is done in the name of a Hegelian master narrative, or metanarrative, an attempt to make the world operate under a rational system of knowledge. Through this, Rand’s construction of capitalist philosophy manages to use Hegel’s philosophy to help depict itself as a historical inevitability, whilst gaining the power to undermine democratic systems that Lyotard ascribes to the antipathy that postmodern society holds against Hegel’s dialectical process. Ironically enough, one method of resisting the horror of Rand’s

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supposed utopia, a world where the rich and powerful are free to do as they please without restraint, would be to interrogate her use of Hegelian dialectics as the foundation of a constructed teleology within her novel, using the postmodern scepticism towards master narratives that Lyotard makes note of in his work.

Similarly, Jameson too seems to mourn the death of the modern project of history put forward by Hegel. Writing in 1984, he notes that

“The last few years have been marked by an inverted millenarianism, in which premonitions of the future, catastrophic or redemptive, have been replaced by senses of the end of this or that (the end of ideology, art or social class; the “crisis” of Leninism, social democracy, or the welfare state, etc., etc.,): taken together, all of these perhaps constitute what is increasingly called postmodernism” (Jameson 188).

He also states that “The case for its existence depends on the hypothesis of some radical break or

coupure, generally traced back to the end of the 1950s or the early 1960s. As the word itself

suggests, this break is most often related to notions of the waning or extinction of the hundred-year-old modern movement (or to its ideological or aesthetic repudiation)” (Jameson 188). For Jameson, this postmodernism, which represents a wholesale rejection of Hegel’s dialectical history, has resulted in “a consequent weakening of historicity, both in our relationship to public History and in the new forms of our private temporality” (Jameson 198). This break from Hegelian thinking has, according to Jameson, created a state in which “Cultural production is thereby driven back inside a mental space which is no longer that of the old monadic subject, but rather that of some degraded collective “objective spirit”: it can no longer gaze directly on some putative real world, at some reconstruction of a past history which was once itself a present; rather, as in Plato’s cave, it must trace our mental images of that past upon its confining walls” (Jameson 208). For Jameson,

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postmodernism and its break with the modernist project of rational progress has eliminated the possibility of dissent against late capitalism. Instead of a sense of teleological movement towards a better world, the society of the late twentieth century is caught in a situation where postmodernism is “the cultural dominant of the logic of late capitalism” (Jameson 224), a form of capitalism which he defines as “the purest form of capital yet to have emerged” (Jameson 216). As with Lyotard, the parallels and contradictions in his view of late capitalism to the model proposed by Rand and implemented by her disciples in the late twentieth century are striking; Rand’s system represents a form of capitalism that is not only the model of production in society but also the dominant force in society, throwing off all shackles and regulations placed upon by democratically elected

governments. This Randian capitalism is strikingly similar to the model of capitalism described by Ernest Mandel in Late Capitalism: a model described by Jameson as “a purer stage of capitalism than any of the moments that preceded it” (Jameson 190). However, this model of capitalism is heavily reliant on the modern formulation of history as a justification for its overpowering dominance and it justifies itself almost solely through the view of history as proposed by Hegel; in Rand’s model, this unrestricted capitalism is not a result of a break with Hegel, nor does it produce cultural works that have broken with the modern project.

While postmodernism is often viewed as a break with the utopian movement of Hegel’s dialectic, there are voices within the sphere of postmodern cultural criticism who still invoke a master narrative that seems uncannily similar to the one that Rand deploys in her novel. Most notable amongst these voices is Francis Fukuyama who, in his work The End of History and the Last

Man, formulates a seemingly postmodern theory about the end of the Hegelian dialectic. Within this

work, Fukuyama claims that the “Universal History of mankind was nothing other than man’s progressive rise to full rationality, and to a self-conscious awareness of how that rationality expresses itself in liberal self-government” (Fukuyama 60) and that “For Hegel, the embodiment of human freedom was the modern constitutional state, or again, what we have called liberal democracy” (Fukuyama 60). He justifies this reasoning in two ways, firstly by claiming that laissez-faire capitalism

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“makes possible the limitless accumulation of wealth, and thus the satisfaction of an ever-expanding set of human desires” (Fukuyama xiv), and secondly by linking this unregulated capitalism to “Hegel’s non-materialist account of History, based on the “struggle for recognition”“ (Fukuyama xvi). For Fukuyama, the element of democracy within a completely free market creates a state in which “every citizen recognizes the dignity and humanity of every other citizen, and where that dignity is recognized in turn by the state through the granting of rights” (Fukuyama xviii). In this way,

Fukuyama apparently breaks from the tradition of Hegelian historical thought by declaring that this historical process has reached its final point, much like the end of Rand’s novel. Fukuyama deftly avoids the criticism that Jameson and Lyotard have aimed at late capitalism, which perpetuates itself through a slow dismantling of the state, by writing that “The desire for recognition, then, can provide the missing link between liberal economics and liberal politics” (Fukuyama xviii) whilst

simultaneously admitting that a Randian economic system, in which capital is the only source of recognition is possible, noting that “there is no economically necessary reason why advanced industrialisation should produce political liberty” (Fukuyama xv). In this admission, Fukuyama demonstrates the same thing that Rand’s fictional teleology does; that it is completely possible, and even probable, that the system of late capitalism that developed in the late twentieth century is entirely capable of existing alongside the modern philosophy of history that Hegel developed, through its identification of unregulated capitalism as the rational utopia that Hegel’s philosophy predicts.

In conclusion, it is apparent that the utopian teleology of Rand’s Objectivist philosophy has been a useful tool for late capitalist thinkers to convince the political powers of the world to abdicate their powers in favour of financial institutions driving societal change, using the Western march towards absolute freedom that is the core of both Hegelian dialectics and Randian Objectivism as justification for these changes. Although these economic powers have fallen short of outright calling for the abolition of democratic government that Rand insists is necessary for the creation of a truly free world, their reduction of political power and use of economic clout to influence and sway

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political leaders has resulted in a pronounced diminishing of democracy in the Western world. It also becomes evident that this diminishing of the state is far from the ideal put forward by the most Randian of the postmodernists, Fukuyama, and that key thinkers in the era of postmodernity, like Jameson and Lyotard, have attributed this phenomenon to a perceived backlash against Hegel, rather than a philosophy that made liberal use of his ideas. However, postmodern theory does offer some useful tools to resist this late capitalist dialectic, mainly in the form of Leotard’s concept of the postmodern as scepticism to Hegelian master narratives. As Lyotard himself wrote, it is perhaps time for postmodernists to “wage a war on totality” (Lyotard 82) – more specifically, a war of the totalising master narrative of Rand’s capitalist vision.

The Individual and Rationality

Another key area of concern for both Rand and postmodernist thinkers is the status of the individual in late capitalism. Within Atlas Shrugged, a clear link can be seen between Rand’s

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philosophical thought regarding the character of the modern human being and the creation of the modern human subject that occurred under the auspices of the modern philosophical project, through her engagement with issues and concepts first formulated by Descartes and Kant. Through this transformation of both Cartesian and Kantian philosophy regarding the human subject, Rand is capable of generating a model of late capitalism that operates under the assumption of its own inherent rationality and morality. In contrast to this, postmodernist thought has often interrogated the rational, bound subject that modern philosophy and Rand have constructed within their works. This chapter will examine Rand’s engagement with and resolution of philosophical questions raised by Descartes and Kant, in order to situate her work within the tradition of modern philosophy. By then contrasting this viewpoint with postmodernist thought, and demonstrating the prevalence of the modern human subject in today’s late capitalist society, it will also serve to prove the influence of Rand on the system of late capitalism that functions today, as well as how certain schools of thought that can be considered postmodern could function as critiques of late capitalism. By engaging in such a critique, it will also serve to demonstrate the potential of postmodernism as an oppositional philosophy to late capitalist thinking, potential that could be fully realised with a broadening of the definition of the term “postmodernist” and some rehabilitation of postmodernist theory. In this way, a new construction of postmodernism can be thought of, one that serves as a philosophical ground to resist the ever-increasing presence of the spectre of late capitalism, instead of a philosophy that is the inevitable result of, and cultural justification for, the worst aspects of late capitalism.

In The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism, Stuart Sim offers a brief description of the importance of the individual in the Western tradition, writing that, for modern philosophy “the subject has been a privileged being right at the heart of cultural process. Humanism has taught us to regard the individual subject as a unified self, with a central “core” of identity unique to each

individual, motivated primarily by the power of reason[…]Rights and privileges could be ascribed to that subject, whose development and self-realisation came to be regarded as a central objective (if not the central objective) of Western culture” (Sim 57). This focus on the individual is perhaps seen

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most clearly in the works of Rene Descartes, and Immanuel Kant. Roger Scruton describes Rene Descartes as “the principal founding father of modern philosophy” (Scruton 27) and it is within Descartes” work that the first attempt at defining the modern individual, or human subject, is formulated. Simon Malpas writes that before Descartes” works on subjectivity, “the human subject tended to be conceived as the product of external forces and plans – usually those of a divine being – subjected to the tides of providence or fate” (Malpas 58). With the use of a thought experiment he describes in Meditations, Descartes set out to discover the true nature of certainty, writing that “I will devote myself seriously and freely to this general overturning of my beliefs” (Descartes 18).

Within this thought experiment, Descartes” methodology is as follows; that “since reason already convinces us that we should withhold assent just as carefully from whatever is not completely certain and indubitable as from what is clearly false, if I find some reason for doubt in each of my beliefs, that will be enough to reject all of them” (Descartes 18) and that “as soon as foundations are undermined everything built on them collapses of its own accord, and therefore I will challenge directly all the first principles on which everything I formerly believed rests” (Descartes 18-19). Descartes goes on to express doubt about the material universe, writing that “I will imagine that the sky, air, earth, colours, shapes, sounds and everything external to me are nothing more than the creatures of dreams by means of which an evil spirit entraps my credulity. I shall imagine myself as if I had no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood, no senses at all, but as if my beliefs in all these things were false” (Descartes 22). Through this radical act of scepticism, Descartes eventually formulates a proposition that he can prove beyond any doubt; namely, that despite the fact that “I convinced myself that there is nothing at all in the world [and] There is some unidentified deceiver, however, all powerful and cunning, who is dedicated to deceiving me constantly” (Descartes 23-24), “I certainly did exist, if I convinced myself of something [and] it is indubitable that I also exist, if he deceives me(Descartes 24))”. In summary, Descartes reaches the realisation that “it must be finally stated that this proposition “I am, I exist” is necessarily true whenever it is stated by me or conceived in my mind” (Descartes 24). This philosophical proposition, which would later became the epigram “I

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think, therefore I am”, represents the beginning of the concept of the modern individual, as it identifies the core of the human subject as their thinking, rational mind. Thus, Descartes constructs a fixed point – the human individual with an identity that cannot be rationally doubted – around which drastic political and historical change can take place. Descartes also uses the solidity of this concept to generate a faith in a benevolent deity that relies on rational thinking, writing that “from the mere fact that I exist and that I have some idea of a most perfect being – that is, of God – that it is very clearly demonstrated that God also exists” (Descartes 42). Through this justification for the existence of God, Descartes finally resolves the key issue in his philosophy – the impossibility of objective knowledge when all sensory information can be doubted and set aside – by noting that “it is impossible that God would ever deceive me. All deception and fraud involves some imperfection, and although being able to deceive seems to be in favour of cleverness or power, it is undoubtedly true that the wish to deceive is evidence of malice or foolishness and therefore it cannot belong to God” (Descartes 44). In this work, then, Descartes formulates two of the most important concepts in modern philosophy; the stable identity of the individual, and a schism between the mind and body, also known as Cartesian mind-body dualism.

Over one hundred years after Descartes first synthesized his concept of the rational

individual, Immanuel Kant began his attempt to take Descartes” concept, which relies heavily on the tautological argument for God’s existence it contains as rationale for both the existence of objective knowledge and morality, and create a new framework for this concept that could, in the words of Andrew Bowie, “describe the shared structures of our subjective consciousness which are the “condition of possibility” of objective knowledge[…]without having recourse to divinity who guarantees the order of the world” (Bowie 2). For Kant, the Cartesian argument that the senses accurately depict the world because of God’s good will is an assumption that must be challenged. Kant does this by arguing that, rather than accepting the concept that the sensory information the individual receives is an exact copy of reality, objective knowledge relies on the idea that, as Kant himself writes, “If intuition must conform to the constitution of the objects, I do not see how we

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could know anything of the latter a priori; but if the object (as object of the senses) must conform to the constitution of our faculty of intuition, I have no difficulty in conceiving such a possibility” (Kant 22). In this way, Kant seeks to construct an objective universe that makes its presence known through a set of universal constants that every human subject can perceive. This results in the individual being configured as a constant, fixed point of perception due to the idea that, as Michael Rohlf writes, “Since no particular content of my experience is invariable, self-consciousness must derive from my experience having an invariable form or structure, and consciousness of the identity of myself through all of my changing experiences must consist in awareness of the formal unity and law-governed regularity of my experience” (Rohlf). For Kant, the individual is someone whose knowledge is based on “the relation between mental concepts and physical perceptions” (Malpas 60). Therefore, knowledge is reliant on experience, and experience is only gained within the material universe.

Another strand of Kant’s philosophy involves the issue of ethics without a divinity to enforce such rules. For Kant, the idea of a moral action is an action taken in accordance with a notion he called the “categorical imperative”, which the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines as “an objective, rationally necessary and unconditional principle that we must always follow despite any natural desires or inclinations we may have to the contrary” (Johnson and Cureton). In this way, ethics and rationality are fused together in Kant’s concept of the individual, as any violations of the categorical imperative are immoral, irrational and are a result of the individual taking action driven by a motive that they do not wish to see used unilaterally by the entirety of society. Kant therefore defines a “good” person as someone who has “possession of a will that is in a certain way

“determined” by, or makes its decisions on the basis of, the moral law” (Johnson and Cureton). Through this reasoning, Kant has successfully placed ethics both in the hands of the individual, and has also transformed it into a principle guided by rationality. However, he has created another schism, similar to Descartes, in the human subject. As Simon Malpas notes, “Kant[…]distinguishes between concepts, which are based on experience, and ideas, which provide the conditions for

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concepts but do not have corresponding objects” (Malpas 61). As such, “the categorical imperative is an idea rather than a concept: it is the condition of possibility for freedom and moral action but does not have a corresponding object” (Malpas 61). Therefore, human morality exceeds Kant’s “limits of experience”, as it would seem that the categorical imperative cannot be demonstrated to the

individual. Kant attempted to reconcile this split between the two branches of his philosophy with his work on the beautiful and the sublime, but, as Malpas writes, “According to the vast majority of critics, neither of these discussions manages to reconcile the differences between the first two

Critiques, and this leaves the Kantian system, the subjectivity it generates and the modernity that

follows from it open to continual conflict” (Malpas 62).

Rand’s work can therefore be seen as a continuation of both Descartes” and Kant’s work on the individual, both through her use of their concepts in her glorification of the individual, and in the resolutions she appears to offer both of their schisms: the mind-body split in Cartesian thought and the issue of morality versus knowledge in Kant’s work. The majority of Rand’s philosophy concerning the individual is delivered through two characters that she uses as mouthpieces for her thought: Francisco d”Anconia and John Galt. Through Francisco’s speech on sexual desire that he delivers to Hank Rearden, Rand seeks to resolve the split between the mind and body that pervades Cartesian philosophy, as seen when Francisco says to Rearden “Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life[…]sex is[…]an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and to accept his real ego as his standard of value” (Rand 489-490). Francisco then goes further and directly links this viewpoint of sex to Cartesian dualism by saying “Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest love is born, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values, but in response to flaws – and he will have cut himself in two” (Rand 490). Francisco also articulates a view of sexuality that unifies body and mind, stating to Rearden that “The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest[…]He does not seek to

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gain his value, he seeks to express it. There is no conflict between the standards of his mind and the desires of his body” (Rand 490). In Rand’s formulation, then, Cartesian dualism is resolved by asserting that physical desires and other sensory experiences run parallel to the rational thoughts of the subject. In contrast to this, Rand gives the reader an image of a subject in which the dualism remains unresolved, writing that, without her philosophical solution to Descartes” problem, these individuals are “creatures cut in half who keep swinging desperately to one side or another” (Rand 491) doomed to “feel nothing for the women he respects, but finds himself in bondage to an irresistible passion for a slut from the gutter” (Rand 491) or a man who derives no satisfaction from his endless pleasures, for “What glory can there be in the conquest of a mindless body?” (Rand 492). In this way, Rand’s work positions itself as an answer to Descartes” philosophy and a continuation of the modern philosophical project regarding the subject, rather than a drastic break with this

tradition. The figure of the unified individual is seen most prominently in Dagny, who, when

threatened with blackmail over her affair with Rearden, states that “For two years, I had been Hank Rearden’s mistress. Let there be no misunderstanding about it: I am saying this, not as a shameful confession, but with the highest sense of pride.[…]We are those who do not disconnect the values of their minds from the actions of their bodies, those who do not leave their values to empty dreams, but bring them into existence, those who give material form to thought, and reality to values” (Rand 852-3). With this statement, Rand equates rational thought with material reality, and defines the sensory experience of pleasure as one that correlates with the rational, thinking mind that Descartes asserted was the core of the individual.

Rand’s view of the individual is most clearly articulated through the monologue that her most eminent mouthpiece, John Galt, delivers near the end of the novel. Although Rand is unwilling to admit her influence as an author, her concept of the individual has clearly been formed in the tradition started by Descartes and continued by Kant. In this monologue, Rand writes that “man is a

being of volitional consciousness” (Rand 1012), reasserting the notion that the thinking mind is the

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that the maxim that john Galt and his compatriots live by is “the axiom that existence exists” (Rand 1015). Expanding upon this, she then gives a definition of this axiom that appears to be a

philosophical reply to Descartes and a continuation of Kant’s work, stating that “Existence exists–and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists. If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not exists, what you possess is not

consciousness” (Rand 1015). With this statement, Rand restates and inverts Descartes” epigram, asserting that thinking is simultaneously the proof of existence of the individual and the proof of existence of the external world. Her focus on consciousness as the key tool in generating objective knowledge through perception also echoes Kant’s views on the possibility of objective knowledge’s existence. She reasserts this Kantian view later in the monologue, as seen when John Galt says “Man cannot survive except by gaining knowledge, and reason is his only means to gain it. Reason is the faculty that perceives, identifies and integrates the material provided by his senses. The task of his senses is to give him the evidence of existence, but the task of identifying it belongs to his reason, his senses tell him only that something is, but what it is must be learned by his mind” (Rand 1016). This passage clearly demonstrates Rand’s individual as a primarily Kantian figure, for which the proof for universal and objective constants is derived from sensory experience. Rand clearly also places her human subject within Kant’s “limits of experience”, stating that the two components of her primary axiom are “the irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any part of your

knowledge and in its sum, from the first ray of light you perceive at the start of your life to the widest erudition you might acquire at its end. Whether you know the shape of a pebble or the structure of a solar system, the axioms remain the same: that it exists and that you know it” (Rand 1016).

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Rand’s work also shows a preoccupation with Kant’s thought surrounding the individual and morality. Much like Kant, Rand attempts to generate a morality that is predicated on objective reality, rather than a divinity’s censure, as seen in Galt’s radio broadcast when he says “You have heard no concepts of morality but the mystical or social. You have been taught that morality is a code of behavior imposed on you by whim, the whim of a supernatural power or the whim of society, to serve God’s purpose or your neighbour’s welfare, to please an authority beyond the grave” (Rand 1011). Galt then goes ahead to assert Rand’s moral philosophy, stating that “There is a morality of reason, a morality proper to man, and Man’s Life is its standard of value. All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil” (Rand 1014). Rand reasserts this doctrine that the moral is indistinguishable from the rational when Galt states “If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man’s only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a “moral commandment” is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments” (Rand 1018). Here, Rand is discussing morality as a force driven by rationality, similar in concept to the categorical imperative that Kant based his morality on. However, she resolves the schism implied in Kant’s philosophy between a universal morality and a human subject who must live within the confines of his experience, by conflating rational morality with knowledge gained by experience, writing that “man’s reason is his moral faculty” (Rand 1017) and that “Man’s life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose. If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man-for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life” (Rand 1014). Rand uses this argument to both further Kant’s idea of a moral individual as “one who is committed only to make decisions that she holds to be morally worthy and who takes moral considerations in

themselves to be conclusive reasons for guiding her behavior” (Johnson and Cureton), and to develop Kant’s categorical imperative. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Rationality, Kant thinks, can issue no imperative if the end is indeterminate, and happiness is an

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indeterminate end” (Johnson and Cureton). However, Rand combines happiness and rationality, stating that “Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values[…]But neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims” (Rand 1014). Rand therefore recreates the categorical imperative as one founded on rational interest, rather than one that views self-involvement and financial gain as “natural and non-moral motives” (Johnson and Cureton). The combination of Rand’s view of the individual as inherently driven by rationality and of morality as the self-preservation of one’s life, to which all values should be dedicated, results in a modern

philosophical subject that is completely unified, a subject capable of sweeping aside any

contradictions and living in accordance with their morals simply by acting in their own self-interest. Rand builds upon the ideas of Descartes and Kant in order to generate a model of the individual that is, in the words of Simon Malpas, “the bearer of responsibilities and rights[…]and a freely acting agent of change” (Malpas 65).

In contrast to the modern philosophical view of the individual that Rand’s work is based upon, postmodernism often puts forward a view of the individual as a fragmented, divided creature that is subject to influence from societal and historical change. Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle make note of the way in which the shared concept of the individual has changed, writing that “The idea of the “I” or “me”, in other words, is not unchanging and unchangeable. It is many respects historically and ideologically different from the way in which “I” was thought about and defined in, say, seventeenth-century France by Rene Descartes” (Bennett and Royle 132). The most notable proponent of this tendency to undermine the unified subject is Sigmund Freud, and the tradition of psychoanalytic criticism that he fathered which Bennett and Royle define as “the most obvious way of illustrating the changes over the past century in thinking about thinking, and in thinking about the model of the rational subject” (Bennett and Royle 132). Although not traditionally considered to be part of postmodern philosophy by the majority of critics, psychoanalysis does share many

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third definition, which states that postmodernism can be seen as “a kind of work, a long, obstinate, and highly responsible work concerned with investigating the assumptions implicit in modernity” (Lyotard, 1992, 79-80). For Freud, the modern philosophical project makes one key assumption in its construction of the individual: it assumes that the conscious mind is the only force at work within the human subject. Freud formulated a model of the individual that was divided between its conscious and unconscious mind, writing that “Unconsciousness is a regular and inevitable phase in the processes constituting our psychical activity; every psychical act begins as an unconscious one, and it may either remain so or go on developing into consciousness” (Freud 1984). Freud’s unconscious is therefore a factor within the individual that Simon Malpas argues “is alien to our conscious self-identity, irreducible to the “I think”, and yet influences and even at times determines our thoughts and actions” (Malpas 67).

This Freudian view of a split subject persists well into the period of late capitalism, as seen through the works of Freud’s most influential disciple in the twentieth century, Jacques Lacan, who postulated an alternative, and potentially postmodern, rewriting of Descartes” axiom: “I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think[…]I am not wherever I am the plaything of my thought; I think of what I am where I do not think to think” (Lacan 166). For Lacan, the self or individual is created by what Simon Malpas calls “a desiring intersubjectivity” (Malpas 68). Lacan defines desire as “the desire of the Other” (Lacan 264), with the term “Other” meaning “the “symbolic order”, the realm of language and culture in which we all exist” (Malpas 68). The divided psychoanalytic subject can therefore be seen to stand in opposition to the Randian individual, whose desires are a result of their fully conscious mind, which is the foundation for the entirety of their existence. Another challenge to the modern individual that Rand’s work glorifies is seen in the work of Lyotard, who writes about the issue of the modern individual’s survival in late capitalism. Unlike Rand’s characters, who thrive in a system of unregulated late capitalism and are weakened by collectivist state politics, Lyotard argues that the form of technology-based capitalism that Rand’s book predicts and

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rehumanize it at a different level of normative capacity” (Lyotard, 1986, 63). In contrast to this, Rand’s work declares that the creators of this technological revolution are the only true humans, as they are both unified in body and mind, and live according to a morality that they would see applied universally. Lyotard’s solution to the ill effects of late capitalism on the human subject is profoundly psychoanalytic; he argues that the resistance to late capitalism’s effects on the subject necessitates the creation of another dehumanized force; the force generated by “the anguish of a mind haunted by a familiar and unknown guest which is agitating it, sending it delirious but also making it think” (Lyotard, 1991, 2), otherwise known as the unconscious mind that is the hallmark of psychoanalysis. Therefore, the postmodernist subject can only resist the force of capitalism undermining their humanity by, in the words of Simon Malpas, “rejecting the stable identity of the modern humanist subject” (Malpas 77).

Rand’s view of the individual as an independent, self-bound and private phenomenon works only to promote the agenda of late capitalism. Evidence of its persistence can be seen in the

antipathy towards state power that the proponents of late capitalism espouse. Rand puts forward a view of human relations as profit-driven, asserting that “The symbol of all relationships amongst such men, the moral symbol of respect for human beings, is the trader.” (Rand 1022). In his book

Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets, Todd McGowan asserts a similar view of

capitalism, albeit without the implicit support that Rand lends the idea. He writes that “Even when capitalism requires that subjects interact with each other in relations of production, distribution, and consumption, it demands that they do so as private beings” (McGowan 51) and that such a model of relations between subjects is justified by late capitalism’s insistence that “it produces a society that succeeds solely on the basis of individuals pursuing their private interest” (McGowan 52). For McGowan, however, this is a deception on the part of the late capitalist system, as he asserts that the subject constructed by psychoanalysis is “inherently a public being: its subjectivity forms through its interaction with the desire of the Other” (McGowan 52). McGowan then demonstrates what late capitalism does to this subject, it “obscures the role the Other has in forming the subject and works

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to convince the subject that it exists first and foremost as a private being and that public interactions occur only on the basis of this privacy. In other words, capitalism reverses the actual chronological relationship of public and private. The subject first comes into existence as a public being and subsequently establishes a private world” (McGowan 52). The political ramifications of this conceptual world of private individual traders are apparent in the end of Rand’s novel, which sees the collapse of political power. As McGowan writes, “The transformation of politics into private concerns about life and the body is the elimination of politics[…]This transformation[…]is intrinsically connected to the development of capitalism” (McGowan 55). However, this model of the rational subject is at odds with the irrational, destabilised subject of psychoanalysis, and is in fact a

construction designed to shield the subject from their own irrationality. McGowan accurately depicts this when he writes that “The great deception of the capitalist system is that it convinces us that we are self-interested beings when we are in fact beings devoted to imperilling and even destroying our self-interest[…]Capitalism’s picture of the psyche is actually too flattering, not too pessimistic. Capitalism allows us to believe that we find satisfaction in what we successfully accumulate and not in our unending pursuit of failure” (McGowan 57).

In summary, then, it becomes clear that philosophical projects working against the modern view of the human subject seek to destabilise the type of individual that Rand presents as the epitome of human virtue. This destabilisation and fragmentation of the human subject can then be put to work as a criticism of late capitalism, which mainly functions through its insistence on the inherent rationality of the human beings that make up financial markets. As markets are made up entirely of supposedly rational creatures, the implication is that massive deregulation of financial matters will generate colossal wealth with no drawbacks, as late capitalism insists that the market of rational human subjects will generate its own order. As demonstrated in this chapter however, this notion of the human subject as fundamentally rational is dubious at best, and late capitalism recognises this – although the state of late capitalism uses the Randian figure of the rational late capitalist as its idol, it relies heavily on the irrational and disrupted subject of postmodernist thought.

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However, a movement towards the Randian ideal will not resolve the issues of late capitalism; it will instead result in a state where humanity denies one of the cornerstones of its own identity. Instead, to resist late capitalism, it is time to remove the postmodernist subject from the shadow of the Randian capitalist individual, so that society in general can begin to realise the necessity of dismantling the hierarchy between rationality and irrationality. In doing so, it may be possible to begin a critique of late capitalism that focuses on how seemingly rational systems of wealth generation are in fact reliant on irrationality, thus removing the ideological justification for these systems. In a definitively postmodern ironic twist, the movement towards a more reasonable society of human subjects may only be possible by recognising and reconciling the divided human subject with its own irrationality.

Culture and the Author

The previous two chapters of this thesis have discussed the gulf between Rand’s depictions of history and the individual and the postmodernist view of these two concepts. By engaging in this discussion, those chapters have hopefully demonstrated that Rand’s work generates a model of late capitalism that is neither a radical break with modern philosophy, nor an attempt to challenge its assumptions. Culture could be said to be the space in which the individual’s private world meets the

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shared universe of history. This chapter will examine Rand’s thought regarding the role of the author in late capitalism, the aesthetics of Rand’s work, and the type of culture generated by Randian authors and aesthetics. It will then contrast the views put forward by Rand in her work with the notion of a postmodern culture. Through the examination of these topics, it will demonstrate Rand’s work as an attempt to formulate a model of capitalist culture that does not necessarily rely on postmodernist theory or aesthetics, a model that is widely spread amongst the world today. The totalising effect of late capitalism on multiple cultures across the world is most sharply critiqued by the very postmodernists whose philosophy is viewed as the philosophical justification for late capitalism. By re-evaluating the content of the cultural criticism deemed postmodernist, it may be possible to recuperate this thought into a new construction of postmodernism, one that is capable of successfully engaging in a critique of the Randian capitalism that is the current cultural dominant. As demonstrated in the overall conclusion to this thesis, overturning this philosophical and economic project may be the only way to avoid the dystopian future that Rand asserts is the result of collectivist politics.

The key assertion that Rand makes about her work, both as a philosopher and an author, is that her work and ideas came “Out of my own mind, with the sole acknowledgement of a debt to Aristotle, who is the only philosopher that ever influenced me. I devised the rest of my philosophy myself” (Curtis 01:18-01:30). By announcing this, Rand asserts a dominant ownership over her work, and implies that it is her property. This focus on property is also seen clearly in Atlas Shrugged, as seen during Hank Rearden”s trial and John Galt’s broadcast. When asked what principles he is fighting for, Rearden replies “I am fighting for my property. Do you know the kind of principle that represents?” (Rand 479). Rearden then identifies property rights as freedom, most specifically “the freedom to make money” (Rand 480) – defining the capitalist system as one in which businessmen “deal as equals by mutual consent to mutual advantage” (Rand 480). Property rights, then, form the core of Randian philosophy, as demonstrated during John Galt’s didactic speech near the end of the novel. In this speech, Rand defines property rights as the agent that translates the abstract concept

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