Musings on A Religion That Would Not Fade Away: Randian Communism

  The interesting thing about Ayn Rand is that she is an inverted early Soviet communist in a number of ways. Like the early Soviet Communists Rand believed that utopia was just over that hill. For Leninists, Lenin and Leninism offered a map that guided the faithful to a radiant future where history would end. For Rand the radiant future was a kind Nietzschean libertarianism with herself as the ultimate ubermensch and guide, guiding true believing faithful travellers to a utopia in which they too could become super capitalist-artists (with art conceived in a rather lumpen bourgeois very mediocre way). For both Leninists and Randians a intellectualitariat would guide the faithful toward this radiant future, which is why the statue to your left can represent both Leninism and Randianism equally well. For the former it is the worker and peasant who are emblematic of a radiant future while for the Randian it is the capitalist-romantic artist-libertarian-philosopher king and queen guiding one toward the radiant future of individualistic narcissistic capitalism who are icons. Like the early Soviet Communists Rand was manichean. For Soviet Communists, Leninism was the essence of good in the universe while capitalism was the essence of evil. For Rand it was just the opposite. Rand style capitalism was good while communism was evil. For both Leninists and Rand religion was a relic of a dark past that would fade away thanks to the triumph of Enlightenment rationality which makes the religious like nature of both Leninism and Randianism--they are both meaning systems after all--and the faith that the faithful had in both faiths rather ironic, I suppose.