hey,
I've been a Communist for almost a decade, but have found myself on a sort of journey towards "recovering" from the experience of realising how fragile and fallible human beings are after coming to terms with the reality of violence and atrocity in Communist countries. That's sort of led me to explore other materialist ideas such as Anton Le Vey's Satanism and Objectivism that my provide a much stronger moral compass and make me much happier. I've only flicked through "The virtue of selfishness" and know not much more than I could get off a few Wikipedia pages, so I'm not really in a position to know what I'm looking for.
I'm aware that the forum guidelines specify that members cannot spread ideas contrary to objectivism, including Communism, so I thought I'd get straight to the point and ask a few questions.
1. To what extent was Ayn Rand influenced by her experiences in the Soviet Union, particularly given that she was a women educated at a Soviet University? I realise her First Novel "We the Living" was set in the Soviet Union so I'm just curious if it had an effect on her later work given that Objectivism and Marxism are both atheistic and materialist ideologies.
2. Is it possible to have a Socialist Objectivism driven by selfishness? Can Altruism be driven by selfishness (such as the expectation of reciprocity, or the selfish gratification of emotional desires such as love, sex, empathy) or do Objectivists use altrusim more narrowly to refer to only when it is driven by coercion or ideologically as a duty/obligation irrespective of the wishes of the individual?
[As its likely to come up, its a common misconception of Communism that it was driven by a sense of "fairness" to achieve "equality of outcome". Marxists only wanted to eliminate those inequalities based on class and attacked such views as "liberal" rather than authentically "revolutionary". In Stalin's Russia, economic inequality was greater in the USSR than in the United States. This was deliberate because, as materialists, Marxists continue to believe in the important of material incentives as a reward for their labour. http://akarlin.com/2012/06/ayn-stalin/ ]
3. Can Capitalism prevent catastrophic climate change through technological innovation or are environmental concerns inherently coercive as altruistic interventions in the marketplace? Do you think Climate Change, whether as a (possibly false) idea to control the people or as a real problem, could encourage a wave of totalitarian mass movements over this century?
4. If free markets lead to free societies, would you agree that it is logical to argue that the freest society would be an Anarcho-capitalist one without a state? Would you expect the future to therefore evolve in the direction of anarcho-capitalism or does the necessity of the state mean that only a "minarchist" society can be achieved?
5. Has anyone here on Objectivism Online actually changed their views from being a Marxist-Communist to an Objectivist? or made the change from Socialism or Anarcho-Communism? What were the experiences that meant you made that shift? Was it something that made you happier and more fulfilled out of respecting yourself more?
6. [...and just for fun ] How many of you watched Wall Street and wanted to be Gorden Gekko as a kid?
There is probably more I could ask, but I think they may come up in discussion if this thread goes somewhere. If you want to ask me questions, you're welcome to- but I will try to keep the short and sweet to stay within the forum rules.
Thanks in advance.
