The Atlas Society stands for an open, benevolent, intellectually tolerant approach to Objectivism in which philosophical disagreements are dealt with through civil discussion and intellectual exchange. We adopted this approach partly in contrast to an approach that has led to many unnecessary conflicts and schisms among adherents of Ayn Rand’s philosophy over the years, as discussed in David Kelley’s book, Truth and Toleration in Objectivism (1990, 2019).

The Ayn Rand Institute recently published a long article addressing this history of schisms—the first official comment on the issue from that wing of the Objectivist movement in many years. The article rehearses selective details of some disagreements among Objectivists in an attempt to vindicate the many bridges ARI has burned over the decades. Yet along the way, it ends up embracing the key ideas The Atlas Society has been advocating all along.

First, ARI acknowledges that it is not the definitive representative or arbiter of the philosophy of Objectivism.

ARI does not regard itself as the leader of an organized Objectivist movement:

ARI…does not pretend to be a spokesman for Ayn Rand or Objectivism…. ARI seeks a “movement” only in the sense that Rand describes above: independent individuals and organizations working on the task of spreading ideas—specifically, on increasing awareness and understanding of Objectivism—who cooperate when they find it mutually beneficial to do so and who otherwise go their separate ways.

Moreover, they concede that after Ayn Rand’s death, “She was no longer there to police the use or misuse of her name or philosophy, to declare who is an authorized representative and who is not. And no one could reasonably regard any existing individual or organization as a spokesman for a person now deceased.”

As to whether this is how ARI has actually conducted itself over the years, those who have been in the movement can consult their own memories of the various past disagreements and decide for themselves. Rather than revive these debates, we choose simply to accept this implicit acknowledgement that the questions of what the philosophy of Objectivism means, what principles are essential to it, and what new ideas are consistent with it are to be evaluated by every individual Objectivist based on his own judgment. No person or organization has a central role or special authority. To which we can only say: “Amen.”

Second, ARI acknowledges that ideological disagreement within a movement, even sometimes deep and bitter disagreement, is normal and natural.

It is entirely normal for a movement that is engaged in bringing important new knowledge to the world to have leaders who disagree, often vehemently, about the meaning and application of that knowledge.

If disagreement is normal, it should be treated as such and addressed through the ordinary norms of intellectual debate, not through division into warring camps along with warnings against sanctioning each other’s sanctioners. We are glad to see that such demands have now been conspicuously dropped and ARI has nominally adopted the more benevolent approach of “going our separate ways” as and when we disagree.

That leads us to the final point of interest in this article, which is its repeated use of the phrase “other Objectivists,” including “other Objectivist intellectuals or organizations,” to describe the counter-parties of the various breaks and schisms. It is an implicit recognition that despite our disagreements, we are all advocates of the same philosophy and that there is a multiplicity of Objectivist voices.

Objectivism is and should be a movement of “independent individuals and organizations…who cooperate when they find it mutually beneficial to do.” We agree and are glad to see the Ayn Rand Institute endorsing the same idea. There is still a great deal that needs to be done to make this happen, rationally and benevolently, in practice. But we are happy to see it acknowledged in theory.

The Atlas Society has been putting these principles into practice for many years, and to the extent others choose to follow that lead, we can all move forward into a new and more productive era in the Objectivist movement.

The Atlas Institute

Observe that the philosophical system based on the axiom of the primacy of existence (i.e., on recognizing the absolutism of reality) led to the recognition of man’s identity and rights. But the philosophical systems based on the primacy of consciousness (i.e., on the seemingly megalomaniacal notion that nature is whatever man wants it to be) lead to the view that man possesses no identity, that he is infinitely flexible, malleable, usable and disposable. Ask yourself why.

“The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made,”
Philosophy: Who Needs It, 28

¶

They want to cheat the axiom of existence and consciousness, they want their consciousness to be an instrument not of perceiving but of creating existence, and existence to be not the object but the subject of their consciousness—they want to be that God they created in their image and likeness, who creates a universe out of a void by means of an arbitrary whim. But reality is not to be cheated. What they achieve is the opposite of their desire. They want an omnipotent power over existence; instead, they lose the power of their consciousness. By refusing to know, they condemn themselves to the horror of a perpetual unknown.

Galt’s Speech,
For the New Intellectual, 151

Observe that the philosophical system based on the axiom of the primacy of existence (i.e., on recognizing the absolutism of reality) led to the recognition of man’s identity and rights. But the philosophical systems based on the primacy of consciousness (i.e., on the seemingly megalomaniacal notion that nature is whatever man wants it to be) lead to the view that man possesses no identity, that he is infinitely flexible, malleable, usable and disposable. Ask yourself why.

“The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made,”
Philosophy: Who Needs It, 28

¶

They want to cheat the axiom of existence and consciousness, they want their consciousness to be an instrument not of perceiving but of creating existence, and existence to be not the object but the subject of their consciousness—they want to be that God they created in their image and likeness, who creates a universe out of a void by means of an arbitrary whim. But reality is not to be cheated. What they achieve is the opposite of their desire. They want an omnipotent power over existence; instead, they lose the power of their consciousness. By refusing to know, they condemn themselves to the horror of a perpetual unknown.

Galt’s Speech,
For the New Intellectual, 151

ness to be an instrument not of perceiving but of creating existence, and existence to be not the object but the subject of their consciousness—they want to be that God they created in their image and likeness, who creates a universe out of a void by means of an arbitrary whim. But reality is not to be cheated. What they achieve is the opposite of their desire. They want an omnipotent power over existence; instead, they lose the power of their consciousness. By refusing to know, they condemn themselves to the horror of a perpetual unknown.

Galt’s Speech,
For the New Intellectual, 151

¶

It is important to observe the interrelation of these three axioms [existence, consciousness, and identity]. Existence is the first axiom. The universe exists independent of consciousness. Man is able to adapt his background to his own requirements, but “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed” (Francis Bacon). There is no mental process that can change the laws of nature or erase facts. The function of consciousness is not to create reality, but to apprehend it. “Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.”

The philosophic source of this viewpoint and its major advocate in the history of philosophy is Aristotle. Its opponents are all the other major traditions, including Platonism, Christianity, and German idealism. Directly or indirectly, these traditions uphold the notion that consciousness is the creator of reality. The essence of this notion is the denial of the axiom that existence exists.

Then I saw what was wrong with the world, I saw what destroyed men and nations, and where the battle for life had to be fought. I saw that the enemy was an inverted morality—and that my sanction was its only power. I saw that evil was impotent—that evil was the irrational, the blind, the anti-real—and that the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it. Just as the parasites around me were proclaiming their helpless dependence on my mind and were expecting me voluntarily to accept a slavery they had no power to enforce, just as they were counting on my self-immolation to provide them with the means of their plan—so throughout the world and throughout men’s history, in every version and form, from the extortions of loafing relatives to the atrocities of collectivized countries, it is the good, the able, the men of reason, who act as their own destroyers, who transfuse to evil the blood of their virtue and let evil transmit to them the poison of destruction, thus gaining for evil the power of survival, and for their own values—the impotence of death. I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win—and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent. I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was “No.”

— Ayn Rand

version of this article was first published in 2005. Capitalism Magazine is republishing it again because its message still remains relevant today.

Born over 100 years ago in Holy Mother Russia and educated under the Soviets, Ayn Rand became the quintessential American writer and philosopher, upholding the supreme value of the individual’s life on earth. She herself led a “rags to riches” life, wrote best-selling novels that championed individualism, and developed a philosophy of reason that validates the American spirit of achievement and independence.

The story of Ayn Rand’s life is, in the words of the Oscar-nominated documentary Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life: “a life more compelling than fiction.” Born February 2, 1905, she wrote her first fiction at age 8, when she also showed signs of being an intellectual crusader, vowing to refute a newspaper article claiming that school was the sole source of a child’s ideals. A year later she decided to become a writer: inspired by the hero of a children’s story, who embodied “intelligence directed to a practical purpose,” she had a “blinding picture” of people–not as they are but as they could be.

In high school and college, she discovered two figures whom she never ceased to admire: Victor Hugo, for “the grandeur, the heroic scale, the plot inventiveness” of his stories, and Aristotle, as “the arch-realist and the advocate of the validity of man’s mind.”

Escaping the tyranny and poverty of the U.S.S.R., she came to America in 1926, officially for a brief visit with relatives. A chance meeting with her favorite American director, Cecil B. DeMille, resulted in jobs as a movie extra and then a junior screenwriter. After periods of near-starvation, she sold her first play to Broadway and her first novel, We the Living, set in the Soviet tyranny she had escaped. With her first best-seller, The Fountainhead in 1943, she presented her ideal man, individualist architect Howard Roark. But it was, she said, “only an overture” to her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged in 1957, a mystery story about the role of the mind in man’s existence. With Atlas Shrugged her career as a fiction writer ended, but her career as a philosopher had just begun.

Her philosophy–Objectivism–upholds objective reality (as opposed to supernaturalism), reason as man’s only means of knowledge (as opposed to faith or skepticism), free will (as opposed to determinism–by biology or environment), and an ethics of rational self-interest (as opposed to the sacrifice of oneself to others or others to self). The only moral political system, she maintained, is laissez-faire capitalism (as opposed to the collectivism of socialism, fascism, or the welfare state), because it recognizes the inalienable right of an individual to act on the judgment of his own mind. Your life, she held, belongs to you and not to your country, God or your neighbors.

Ayn Rand understood that to defend the individual she must penetrate to the root: his need to use reason to survive. “I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism,” she wrote in 1971, “but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows.” This radical view put her at odds with conservatives, whom she vilified for their attempts to base capitalism on faith and altruism. Advocating a government to protect the individual’s right to his property, she was not a liberal (or an anarchist). Advocating the indispensability of philosophy, she was not a libertarian.

Despite being outside the cultural mainstream, her novels became best-sellers and her books sell more today than ever before–half a million copies per year. There is a reason that Atlas Shrugged placed second in a Library of Congress survey about most influential books. There is a reason that her works are considered life-altering by so many readers. She had an exalted view of man and created inspiring fictional heroes.

A sui generis philosopher, who looked at the world anew, Ayn Rand has long puzzled the intellectual establishment. Academia has usually met her views with antagonism or avoidance, unable to fathom that she was an individualist but not a subjectivist, an absolutist but not a dogmatist. And they have thus ignored her original solutions to such seemingly intractable problems as how to ground values in facts. But even in academia, her ideas are finding more acceptance, e.g., university fellowships and a subgroup within the American Philosophical Association to study Objectivism.

Ayn Rand left a legacy in defense of reason and freedom that serves as a guidepost for the American spirit–especially pertinent today when America and what it stands for are under assault.

Dr. Berliner is the senior advisor to the Ayn Rand Archives. He was the executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute from its founding to January 2000.

Values are the motivating power of man’s actions and a necessity of his survival, psychologically as well as physically.

Man’s values control his subconscious emotional mechanism that functions like a computer adding up his desires, his experiences, his fulfillments and frustrations—like a sensitive guardian watching and constantly assessing his relationship to reality. The key question which this computer is programmed to answer, is: What is possible to me?

There is a certain similarity between the issue of sensory perception and the issue of values. . . .

If severe and prolonged enough, the absence of a normal, active flow of sensory stimuli may disintegrate the complex organization and the interdependent functions of man’s consciousness.

Man’s emotional mechanism works as the barometer of the efficacy or impotence of his actions. If severe and prolonged enough, the absence of a normal, active flow of value-experiences may disintegrate and paralyze man’s consciousness—by telling him that no action is possible.

The form in which man experiences the reality of his values is pleasure.

AYN RAND

It is your mind that they want you to surrender—all those who preach the creed of sacrifice, whatever their tags or their motives, whether they demand it for the sake of your soul or of your body, whether they promise you another life in heaven or a full stomach on this earth. Those who start by saying: “It is selfish to pursue your own wishes, you must sacrifice them to the wishes of others”—end up by saying: “It is selfish to uphold your convictions, you must sacrifice them to the convictions of others.”

— Ayn Rand, from Galt’s Speech in ATLAS SHRUGGED