Ayn Rand Versus Karl Marx: An Interesting Factoid - An Awkward Corner

Ayn Rand Versus Karl Marx: An Interesting Factoid

Niranjan Rajadhyaksha - Monday, April 13, 2009 5:36 PM

 "Only in the US and India do searches on Rand beat searches on Marx."

That's Eric Crampton on whether people around the world are searching the Internet more frequently for Ayn Rand or Karl Marx --- and what this means. 

His message to libertarians:  "So, Randians, be a bit careful about calling this a Randian moment. Economic crisis seems to intensify interest in alternatives at both poles, at least as evidenced by Google search trends."

Read more here. (Hat Tip: Marginal Revolution)

I am not sure how much to read into data from Google searches, but this is interesting.


 

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9 Comment

From V.B.N.Ram

April 13, 2009 7:40 PM
Karl Marx's postulates that the capitalist , without exception exploites the worker and his contribution to the output is always undervalued : is severely flawed and therefore, highly irrational. Where ever thare is a conflict of interest among the factors of production, such conflict has necessarily, continually to be ironed out, so that an enterprise's smooth functioning does not come to an abrupt halt. Even in Communist China, the so perceived last citadel of Communism, inefficiencies in enterprise management are removed by re-modelling and re-structuring enterprises. The upheavels of the present slowdown impacting China, should not be seen as developments, disproving my above contention. These are one off cyclical exception. Marx , unlike Ayn Rand is irrational. Rand said " My philosophy in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, and reason as his only absolute " Her philosophy of objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness. This shows every man's worth ( man is a heroic being ) In a free society even a worker can seek his own happiness. If the society a man lives in offers choices, through his rationalising ability a man or woman will opt for the best choice. Of course, society has to offer choice . A totalitarian state physically and mentally kills the human spirit. Rand, unlike Marx churns out the cream . Marx appeals to the baser elements of man. Any concept " material " is more sought after than any concept "spiritual", hence Marx is more googled than Rand

From HerbSewell

April 14, 2009 1:23 AM
That makes sense. Karl Marx has simply been more influential than Ayn Rand, (to the plight of more than 100,000,000 million innocent dead people.) Now, if Das Kapital or the Communist Manifesto were selling more than Atlas Shrugged, that would mean something, (even if they were, considering how insanely longer Atlas Shrugged is than both those two books combined it would still give credit to Rand).

From N.Ramagopal

April 15, 2009 12:33 AM
Bryan Magee, a British philosopher, made a distinction between "following" a thinker and "learning from" a thinker: we can learn from any one without being a blind follower. We can learn from Marx and from Rand without having to swallow everything they said wholesale. Indeed, a society based on orthodox Marxian and "Randian" principles will be a very wretched one. A case can be made for the view that if one has to make a trade-off, studying the ideas of Adam Smith, both in his Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations, will be more fruitful intellectually and more beneficial to society than reading the Communist Manifesto or Atlas Shrugged. Of course, Magee's distinction applies to Smith too. By the way, 2009 is the 250th anniversary of Theory of Moral Sentiments.Hopefully Niranjan will write on this work.

From Harry Binswanger

April 15, 2009 7:16 AM
The statistics are skewed by the fact that Marx is assigned reading in universities. Rand is not. In regard to N. Ramagopal, nothing should be swallowed wholesale from any thinker. Rand demands of each individual that he think for himself, regarding any "blind follower" as the opposite of a rational individual. As a professional philosopher, I have to say Objectivism is the philosophy I have accepted, spending 45 years *learning from* Rand and doing what I can to develop her ideas further.

From W. Schultz

April 15, 2009 8:48 PM
Harry makes two excellent points!

From Antony Reed

April 17, 2009 11:52 PM
Dr. Binswanger beat me to the punch on the fact that Universities teach Marx, but not Rand. This point cannot be dismissed.

From N.Ramagopal

April 19, 2009 12:36 PM
I think there are two reasons why universities teach Marx but not Rand as far as economics departments are concerned. First, Marxian thought has thrown open avenues of research in fields of inquiry considered important in the academia, for example gender, globalization,poverty and economic development. It is doubtful if "Randian" thought can match Marx in this regard. Second, Marxian theory is more rigorous and it can be formulated as an abstract model. Rand's ideas cannot be articulated in the form of a mathematical model, and economists love abstract models, and this makes it very difficult to have Rand in the economics curriculum. Incidentally, I do not think the neglect of Rand by economists has anything to do with dominance of left-wing ideology: even economists of the Austrian school, whom mainstream economists regard as extreme free-marketers, do not bother much about Rand. Indeed, Rothbard, a prominent Austrian school economist wrote a devastating critique of Rand, branding her the leader of a cult. Read his piece "The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult" here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html

From Niranjan

May 10, 2009 11:03 AM
Thanks for the comments. True, the search results will be skewed a bit because Marx is taught in universities but Rand is not. But how significant could this be? Let us assume that it is only students of economics, political science, sociology and philosophy who would be more likely to search for Marx rather than Rand because of their course work. They would be a small subset of the total Google users in a country, wouldn't they?

From Dsylexic

May 15, 2009 6:34 PM
"First, Marxian thought has thrown open avenues of research in fields of inquiry considered important in the academia, for example gender, globalization,poverty and economic development. It is doubtful if "Randian" thought can match Marx in this regard. Second, Marxian theory is more rigorous and it can be formulated as an abstract model. Rand's ideas cannot be articulated in the form of a mathematical model, and economists love abstract models, and this makes it very difficult to have Rand in the economics curriculum. " Lot of bogus arguments here. Academia has always been filled with men and women who prefer the security of state support than the risk of entreprenuerial support.No wonder Marx is their hero. The second point about economics reveals a lot.Economics (since Keynes) has massive physics envy.It wants to model human behavior/action via neat equations.Bunch of equations pretending to be nice nuggets of truth -but they merely provide wrong answers to the nth decimal digit.It is a silly idea that economics should be about mathematics.In fact a crying shame that the Nobel prize winners of today in economics are more known for their math wizardry. No wonder socialists/marxists love this brand of economics. The state can use these neat equations and "set the world right".

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