Capitalism's Wicked Witch
Allen Barra's Daily Beast review of Anne Conover Heller's "Ayn Rand and the World She Made" and Jennifer Burns' "Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right".
He likes the books, and thinks they paint an accurate picture of just how odious Rand was.
Added to the reviews section of the web site.
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Yes, odious, dreadful, repressive, humorless, homophobic, narcissist, antisocial, pedophile, simple-minded, two-dimensional, etc, etc.
So far so good, except the current status is:
Killings by objectivist/libertarian ideologues: 0 (zero)
Killings by marxist socialist ideologues: 100 million
(source: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.ART.HTM)
Killings by national socialist idelogues: 50 million (same link)
Now that seems to be in perfect harmony with what you seem to support in your later post, that objectivism/libertarianism is basic inverted marxism. We also know that national and marxist socialists share the admiration in Big State, so in at least that regard objectivism/libertarianism is also basic inverted fascism. However, fascism does share with libertararianism the existance of at least rudimentary private business, even if completely at the whim of fascist elite, so that might explain "only" half as much deaths as with commusit regimes.
Just having fun...
Except you don't notice that her character Galt is proposing a major genocide. Rand in a position of power would have been frightening: she committed enough abuses in her cult.
I see you've been suckered by that crank propagandist Rummel. I don't need to dispute his figures to point out that he entirely misses the causal factor in the atrocities he lists. It is not some ideology: it is simply private ownership of states by dictators, kings, political parties, etc. It is only by distributing power with checks and balances that we can prevent atrocities.
Rummel's sort of "blame it on socialism" idiocy is typical of sloppy libertarian thinking, which is generally happy to accuse the enemy (government) to anything they can vaguely connect to it.
Mike, yeah, genocide libertarian-style, "fellow libertarians, let's relax and take some time off!", what a dooomsday :)
You basically say countries ruled by ardent believers in communism/socialism have never really been communisms/socialisms at all. How convenient. Look how you don't say it explicitely, it's just what you think you have implicitely "proved" by repeating a libertarian argument, that communism = private ownership of states by communist dictators. Some more of the "deft jiu-jitsu" you so admire ;)
Your writing is even more incoherent than your ideas.
It's irrelevant whether those nations were "truely" communist or socialist (terms you don't seem to be able to define.) What is relevant is that the nations were run as private property of dictators or political parties. When I wrote to Rummel, he agreed with that point (private political power.)
Public ownership and distribution of political power, with checks and balances is what's important.
How can you expect anyone, communist or not, to run a country whose all factors of production are state owned? How can it be different from private ownership of a country by a corporation or an individual? Would you, being the leader of such country, allow your printing houses to publish any "stupid" critique of your government? You would not even need to make it illegal, after all, you own all printing houses. How can you retain checks and balances in such environment?
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