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Ayn Rand on "Why do some people reject capitalism?"

Ayn Rand on "Why do some people reject capitalism?"

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August 6, 2014

1967: Ayn Rand is interviewed on WKCR, a Columbia University student-run radio station. She is asked about the reason for hostility and the "deep antagonism" that some critics of capitalism express toward it. This reaction is rooted in a "fear of independence" and "rationality" Rand says.

Those critics are seeking a "psychological loophole to rationality," she argues, because they secretly and/or subconsciously want to find their altruist philosophy to be acceptable and 'true to reality.'  (Note: this use of altruism does not refer to the popular notion of benevolence, but specifically, of holding, as the highest goal of life, to sacrifice, or martyr, oneself.)  Rand also speaks on the relationship of subjectivism to statism, and identifies statists as the "enemies of capitalism." "There is no alternative to a free society except the establishment of a totalitarian state...," Rand contends. Also discussed: the "self-made man who arose from the bottom."


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