Marx and Rand
Will Wilkinson says that it would be interesting to debate this proposition:
It ought to be less embarrassing to have been influenced by Ayn Rand than by Karl Marx
Will’s a very smart guy, and naturally, is not exactly predisposed to be a fan of Marx. But still, this is just silly. Although Rand was writing some 100 years after Marx, if you just look at the academic work influenced by the two, it’s pretty easy to see which lodestar would be more embarrassing. On one side, I present to you much of the British historical profession in the 20th century, including luminaries who, despite occasionally noxious and naive politics, were (and are) great scholars; Eric Hobsbawm, Christopher Hill, E.B. Thompson. Not to mention the literary theorists, sociologists, anthropologists, political theorists and scholars in just about every field who are deeply indebted to Marx. Carrying the Randian torch, on the other hand are…Leonard Peikoff? Alan Greenspan? Chris Sciabarra?
So when Wilkinson says that “Marxists, neo-Marxists, crypto-Marxists, post-Marxists, etc. have an enduring influence on intellectual fashion,” he seems to dismiss out of hand that the “enduring influence” might be a result of a Marxian scholarly program bearing fruit in all these fields. Now, I’m not saying that the Marxist interpretation or approach to anything is necessarily always correct, or even the best approach, but Marxist and Marxist-derived ideas are certainly useful in a great many scholarly endeavors. Now, I’m sure that Will believes, in good faith, that “Standard, non-Marxist economic history is not only better history, but equally sweeping,” but surely he can see why others may disagree.
UPDATE This piece by Robert McHenry at the American, comparing Marx and L. Ron Hubbard is also pretty silly.
Matt, My question is really one of intellectual fashion. Of course it is in fact more embarrassing to have been influenced by Ayn Rand, which why intellectuals who have been tend not to mention it. And of course some great scholars were influenced by Marx, and were happy to admit it. But I’m interested in the effect of fashion on the quality of intellectual life. Perhaps Hobsbawm, Thompson, etc. were smart imaginative people and would have made even more useful contributions outside a Marxian framework. My guess is that, body counts aside, Marxism led to a huge amount of intellectual wasted effort and had an overall retarding effect on intellectual progress. I’m not sure how to argue this (maybe the possible world in which Marx never caught on gets hijacked by an even more fruitless ideology), but the combination of the endurance and falsity of the core Marxist tenets seem to me likely to have had a rather massive downside.
Will Wilkinson
August 25, 2009 at 12:23 pm
[...] Matt Zeitlin: Will’s a very smart guy, and naturally, is not exactly predisposed to be a fan of Marx. But still, this is just silly. Although Rand was writing some 100 years after Marx, if you just look at the academic work influenced by the two, it’s pretty easy to see which lodestar would be more embarrassing. On one side, I present to you much of the British historical profession in the 20th century, including luminaries who, despite occasionally noxious and naive politics, were (and are) great scholars; Eric Hobsbawm, Christopher Hill, E.B. Thompson. Not to mention the literary theorists, sociologists, anthropologists, political theorists and scholars in just about every field who are deeply indebted to Marx. Carrying the Randian torch, on the other hand are…Leonard Peikoff? Alan Greenspan? Chris Sciabarra? [...]
We Dance Around The Many “Ists” In Our Philosophies And Wonder Which One To Kick Off The Island « Around The Sphere
August 25, 2009 at 1:00 pm