Book Review - Ayn Rand and the World She Made

With the Ayn Rand cultist Paul Ryan becoming the Republican Vice Presidential Candidate today I thought this might be a good opportunity to republish my reveiw of the Ayn Rand Biography by  Anne C. Heller from 2010.

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The picture on the left may represent the beginning of the deregulation frenzy that resulted in the current world wide economic disaster. It was taken in 1974 by David Hume Kennerly and pictured are President Gerald Ford, Alan Greenspan, Ayn Rand, Rand's husband Frank Conner and Greenspan's mother Rose Goldsmith. The occasion was Alan Greenspan being sworn in as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. The significance of the picture is that Ayn Rand is there next to her disciple Alan Greenspan but to understand the significance you must understand Rand herself and her philosophy. Anne C. Heller helps us do that with her excellent biography of Rand,Ayn Rand and the World She Made

I recommend this book not because I agree with anything Ayn Rand stands for but because it's a really good read and it's necessary to understand Rand and undererstand how we arrived where we are today. Heller makes it clear that Rand and her life are much more interesting than any of the creations in her fiction and there are times you forget that you are not reading fiction. I am going to concentrate on Rand's early life in this review - it's important because narcissists and sociopaths like Rand are either created early if not born that way.

Alyssa Zinovievna Rosenbaum was born in St Petersburg, Russia in 1905 of Jewish parents. While it's often said that it was the Bolshevik revolution that was responsible for Rand's philosophy and world view according to Heller the foundation for Rand's philosophy predates the revolution.

When Rand was five or so, she recalled, her mother came into the children's playroom and found the floor littered with toys. She announced to Rand and Rand's two-and-a-half-year-old sister, Natasha, that they would have to choose some of their toys to put away and some to keep and play with now; in a year, she told them, they could trade the toys they had kept for those they had put away. Natasha held on to the toys she liked best, but Rand, imagining the pleasure she would get from having her favorite toys returned to her later, handed over her best-loved playthings, including a painted mechanical wind-up chicken she could describe vividly fifty years later. When the time came to make the swap and Rand asked for her toys back, her mother looked amused, Rand recalled. Anna explained that she had given everything to an orphanage, on the premise that if her daughters had really wanted their toys they wouldn't have relinquished them in the first place. This may have been Rand's first encounter with injustice masquerading as what she would later acidly call "altruism." Her understanding of how power can be acquired by a pretense of loving kindness would grow only more acute with time.
Perhaps it's little wonder, then, that from the age of four or five onward, Rand developed a keen sense that anything she liked had to be hers, not her mothers, the family's, or society's, an attitude that readers of her 1943 novel The Fountainhead will recognize in the perverse and complicated character of Dominique Francon. As a corollary, she claimed not to care about being approved of or accepted by her family and peers. Since she generally wasn't accepted, the proud, intelligent child appears to have learned early to make a virtue of necessity. In her twenties and thirties, she would construct a universe of moral principles built largely on the scaffolding of some of these defensive childhood virtues.

The second influence in Rand's life came when she read a serial in a French Boys magazine, The Mysterious Valley. It was there that Rand met Cyrus Vance, a handsome and heroic figure and in Rand's eyes a hero in every way. Rand would spend the rest of her life looking for a Cyrus Vance and creating him in her fiction.

Rand herself was an elitist who lived on cigarettes, amphetamines and chocolate. Elitism was also what she was marketing in her novels. Her characters like Galt and Roark were unbelievable because they were little more than abstract principles personified. Her vision of capitalism was simple and had a grade school like quality to it.

But Rand has impacted us all and still does. The principal architect of our current economic crisis, Alan Greenspan was a disciple for most of his life but after looking at the havoc he had created had to recant. (Via Digby)

"I have found a flaw" in free market theory, Greenspan said under intense questioning by Representative Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the Government Oversight Committee of the House of Representatives. "I don't know how significant or permanent it is," Greenspan added. "But I have been very distressed by that fact."

Pressed by Waxman, Greenspan conceded a more serious flaw in his own philosophy that unfettered free markets sit at the root of a superior economy.

"I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms," Greenspan said.

Waxman pushed the former Fed chief, who left office in 2006, to clarify his explanation.

"In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working," Waxman said.

"Absolutely, precisely," Greenspan replied. "You know, that's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well."

But she still has her followers in important places today like the Republican's wonder boy, Congressman Paul Ryan.

It's important to know what motivates the enemy and the Rand cultists are still with us.  As Digby notes Rand's followers are passing out free books.  For that reason this is an important read for anyone concerned about how Ayn Rand is still an influence.

Note:

I received a copy of this book from the publisher for this review.

Book Review - Guest of Honor

In 2008 the United States elected a black President - the result was a very negative reaction by about 25% of the population. It's not the first time there was a reaction to shifts in racial equality. In his concession speech in 2008 John McCain mentioned T.R, Roosevelt's dinner with Booker T. Washington in 1901. Like most of us this was the first time author Deborah Davis had heard of this historical event. She became curious and researched the history of the event and wrote Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner That Shocked a Nation.

The first half of the book is a mini biography of both T.R Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington. For me this was very informative since I had little knowledge of this period of US history. TR was born into wealth and privilege and Booker T. was born a slave but their lives had many parallels. They first met in 1898 when they discussed the performance of the black soldiers that were part of TR's Rough Riders.

While Booker T. continued to build Tuskegee TR used the popularity of the Rough Riders to become governor of New York. Being TR he manged to upset the New York Republican political machine. The machine convinced McKinley to choose TR as his Vice President just so they could get him out of the State House. TR continued his communication with Booker T and agreed to visit Tuskegee. Fate had other ideas and when McKinley was assassinated TR suddenly found himself President and Booker T suddenly found himself an adviser to the President of the United States.

On October 16, 1901 TR had a evening meeting with Booker T. In addition TR had a big family meal planned that included a hunting friend from Colorado. He made the decision to invite Booker T to dinner. Both men recognized the danger - TR almost withdrew the invitation and Booker T almost turned it down. But the dinner happened and the next morning it was reported in the press.

A summary of TR's daily agenda was read by a reporter at the Washington Post and suddenly realized that a black man had dined with the President at the White House.

"Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee, Ala., dined with the president last evening." he wrote in his column. That one line caused the telegraphs to start clicking furiously in the capital, their shocking message reverberating across the nation like a thunderclap.

In the South the reaction was immediate and angry. TR was blasted for the invitation and the "uppity" Booker T for accepting. The loss of slavery was bad enough for the South but the idea that "coons" were social equals was just too much. The press in the North was for the most part positive.

Although both men were able to accomplish a great deal that dinner haunted them for the rest of their lives.

This is a very readable book covering the history of the US 30+ years after the civil war. It is valuable because it gives us not only a picture of how things have changed in the century since TR was President but also how much really hasn't changed.  I recommend this book to anyone interested in this short period of history.

Cross Posted At The Moderate Voice

Note:

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.

Book Review - We Heard the Heavens Then: A Memoir of Iran

I receive several opportunities a month to do book reviews. I turn most of them down in spite of the fact it means I won't get a free book. I almost decided against reviewing We Heard the Heavens Then: A Memoir of Iran but eventually agreed. After reading the first few pages I knew I had made the right decision.

We Heard The Heavens Then by Aria Minu-Sepher is the story of the last few years of Shah’s Iranian monarchy and the revolution that brought it down as seen through the eyes of a young boy who's father was a powerful general in the Shah's air force. The author has had decades in the United States to think about what happened and presents us with a measured and fair account of social-political reality that led up to the revolution.

There are several characters in this story both family members and others. Aria Minu-Sepher grew up in a privileged world. As we might say now he was part of the one percent. His mother is mentioned but it is rarely a flattering picture. She was proud of the fact she was part of the aristocracy. His father, “Baba,” plays a key part in the narrative. A very competent pilot and General who adores his son and attempts to mold his son in his own image. In a way this book is a tribute to his father. The rest of the authors extended family represent an eclectic mix of Iranian society. The household staff also plays a part but none more than the housekeeper “Bubbi.” She is a very conservative Muslim, a classic member of the Iranian 99%. She is offended by Western influence. She objects to serving wine, shrimp and ham. She objects to automobiles and thinks the F14 fighters the General commands are straight from the devil. We get the impression that she represents a lot of the 99%.

The author paints a picture of an Iran that is not just divided along 1% - 99% line but also on a secular – pious line, but there is a great deal of overlap. Much of Iran was not enjoying the miracles from the west but they didn't want to. I think that we can see some of the problems we are having in Afghanistan – a majority who simply don't want to be forced into a secular world.

Normally this subject matter would be rather dry but this book is an enjoyable and easy read because it is made up primarily of personal anecdotes. I highly recommend this book.



Note

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.

Cross posted at The Moderate Voice

We Heard the Heavens Then: A Memoir of Iran
by Aria Minu-sepehr

Book Review - The Arms Maker of Berlin

 This weeks book is a historical spy/mystery/ thriller but mostly it's a work of fiction and as such should be judged mostly on it's entertainment value. I received Dan Fesperman's The Arms Maker of Berlin (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) right before dinner on Thursday and started to read it after dinner. Before I turned out the lights that night I had read over a third of it and had a hard time putting it down.

I can't do much better than this description from the dust jacket.

When Nat Turnbull, a history professor who specializes in the German resistance, gets the news that his estranged mentor, Gordon Wolfe, has been arrested for possession of stolen World War II archives, he's hardly surprised that,even at the age of eighty-four, Gordon has gotten himself in trouble. But what's in the archives is staggering: a spymaster's trove missing since the end of the war, one that Gordon has always claimed is full of "secrets you can't find anywhere else . . . live ammunition."

Yet key documents are still missing, and Nat believes Gordon has hidden them. The FBI agrees, and when Gordon is found dead in jail, the Bureau dispatches Nat to track down the material, which has also piqued the interest of several dangerous competitors. As he follows a trail of cryptic clues left behind by Gordon, assisted by an attractive academic with questionable motives, Nat's quest takes him to Bern and Berlin, where his path soon crosses that of Kurt Bauer, an aging German arms merchant still hoarding his own wartime secrets. As their stories and Gordon's-intersect across half a century, long-buried exploits of deceit, devotion, and doomed resistance begin working their way to the surface. And as the stakes rise, so do the risks . . .

The characters are well developed and the novel takes place both in the present and in Berlin and Switzerland in the mid 40's. Some of the characters are real like John Foster Dulles, America's spy chief in Switzerland during the war and Reinhard Heydrich, one of the architects of the Holocaust.

You also get some insight into the anti-Hitler resistance in Germany as much of the plot centers around the White Rose student movement.

I recommend this book for both it's entertainment and it's history but beware, once you start it's hard to put down. I had not heard of Dan Fesperman before but I am going to check out some of his earlier works.

The Arms Maker of Berlin (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
by Dan Fesperman

The Collapse of Complex Societies

The implication is clear: civilizations are fragile, impermanent things.

This is the review of a book most of you will not read, The Collapse of Complex Societies. The Author, Joseph Tainter, is an academic and writes like one and it's full of examples and histories of past societies.

Anyone who has studied history knows that societies/civilizations are born and eventually collapse. The collapse of societies have been analyzed individually but Tainter was interested in what those failures of complex societies had in common - he was looking for a unified theory of collapse. He evaluates several complex societies that failed and discovered they all had one thing in common - increasing complexity until there was a sudden simplification or collapse.

The first part of the book is dedicated to the discussion of 11 popular explanations for the collapse of societies.

1. Resource depletion.


2. New resources.


3. Catastrophes.


4. Insufficient response to circumstances.


5. Other complex societies.


6. Intruders


7. Conflict/contradictions/mismanagement.


8. Social dysfunction.


9. Mystical.


10. Chance concatenation of events.


11. Economic explanations.

With the exception of "Mystical" Tainter thinks they all have some validity but come up short because they only look at one or two societies and don't explain how some societies survive the same adversities. Tainter builds on the economic model for his unified collapse theory.

Human societies and political organizations, like all living systems, are maintained by a continuous flow of energy.

The real currency is energy and until the industrial revolution that energy was primarily grain and other foodstuffs to feed people. Today with think of energy as fuel to feed machines but a shortage of that fuel will ultimately result in a shortage of the historical energy.


When we discuss energy sources we have to look at the EROEI - energy return on energy invested. It takes energy to produce energy. As the process to recover energy becomes increasingly complex it takes more and more energy to produce it. When oil was first tapped the EROEI was 100 - for each barrel of oil spent you got 99 barrels you could use to make energy. Compare that to the Alberta tar sands that have an EROEI of 1.6. Ethanol from corn has an EROEI of less than 1 - it takes more energy to produce than you get back when it is used as a fuel. A nuclear power plant has to operate at near 100% for 15 years to produce the energy that was required to build the plant and process the fuel.


Could something similar apply to societal complexity? Is it possible that the benefits of complexity can reach a point where they no longer justify the expense? Tainter supplies four concepts to help answer the above questions:

1. human societies are problem-solving organizations;


2. sociopolitical systems require energy for their maintenance;


3. increased complexity carries with it increased costs per capita; and


4. investment in sociopolitical complexity as a problem-solving response often reaches a point of declining marginal returns.

To demonstrate his concept Tainter looks at three complex societies;

1. Western Roman Empire


2. Maya of the southern lowlands


3. Chacoan Society of the American Southwest

Tainter makes this observation; substantial increased costs occurred late, shortly before collapse and were incurred by a population already weakened by a pattern of declining marginal returns. It was not a challenge that caused the collapse but a system that had been unproductively complex was unable to respond.

Tainter says that the only solution for over complexity is simplification but complex systems are unable to voluntarily simplify. Collapse is nothing more than involuntary simplification. He further states that collapse is "not a fall to some primordial chaos, but a return to the normal human condition of lower complexity-an economizing process" - it's not a catastrophe. I would guess that the millions (billions)of people who are displaced or will die might disagree with that conclusion.

What we see today is a sociopolitical system that requires more and more resources to maintain but is unable to respond to challenges in a meaningful or productive way. Climate Change, Peak oil, peak water, peak soil and peak many other resources most of us wouldn't recognize are the challenges.
Cross Posted at The Moderate Voice.

Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story

Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story by Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould is a must read book for anyone who wants to understand world geopolitics since the Vietnam war and even before.  It might be surprising what  an important part the small country Afghanistan played in the politics of the cold war.  This was a difficult review simply because there is so much information. Some of it contains information I knew nothing about.  In some cases I had little knowledge but most striking was how much of what I thought I knew was wrong. 

The first quarter of the book covers Afghan history up to 1960 and I did not fully appreciate the country's importance.

A great deal of what is traditionally denoted in historical studies as Persian, Iranian, and even Indian history involves the cities and principalities of what is now Afghanistan. Composed of tribes that were even at the time recognized as ethnically and culturally distinct, such ancient cities as Kandahar, Bamiyan, Mazar, Herat, Kabul, Bagram, and Baikh played a leading role in the evolving history of the region and the civilized world. Over the millennia, rulers from these cities swept far outside their territories to conquer and for long intervals rule over kingdoms stretching from China to the Caspian Sea. At times Afghan dynasties controlled the fate of Indian and Persian empires, while no less a figure than Zoroaster (Zarathustra) is said to have gained renown as a priest-scholar in the northern Bactrian city of Baikh, now located in Afghanistan, not far from Mazar-e Sharif.
But the ancient apocalyptic religious teachings accredited to Zoroaster take on even more meaning when placed against a backdrop of today s holy war. For what may seem to our modern secular society a hopelessly anachronistic throwback to the past is in fact seen by its mystical holy warrior participants in Washington and elsewhere as the final act in an ancient historical drama.

Afghanistan become important to the west in early in the 19th century when Britain saw it as a buffer between Tsarist Russia and it's economic empire in India.  The most significant thing to come out of  the British actions in the 19th century was the Durand Line which sliced off a chunk of Afghanistan and divided the Pashtuns.  That was to remain a contentious issue to this day.

Moving forward to the mid 20th century Afghanistan was still seen as a buffer to Russia by the "B-Team", which I discussed here.  To the B-Team Afghanistan was more than a buffer, it was a way to further weaken the Soviet Union and pay back for Vietnam.  The Soviets did not want to invade and occupy Afghanistan but the B-Team forced their hand and made it impossible for them to withdraw when that was really what they wanted to do.

Dreyfuss writes, "In the Nouvel Observateur interview, Brzezinski admitted that his intention all along was to provoke a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan-even though, after the Soviet action occurred, U.S. officials expressed shock and surprise. 'We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would,' said Brzezinski." "'Now,' he told President Carter in 1979, 'we can give the USSR its Vietnam war.'"

To do this they supported and encouraged the very Islamic extremists that were responsible for 911 and we are fighting now in Afghanistan.  Even as the American's and their allies were fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban Pakistan's ISI was giving them support.

This entire effort required that the American people be fed what can only be described as propaganda.  Just like the lead up to the Iraq war the media was more than willing to play along.  The failure of the media to do their job is nothing new.

After the fall of the Soviet Union the Reagan, Bush 41  and Clinton administrations still assumed that instability created by religious extremists in Afghanistan was in the best interest of the United States and watched or even encouraged Pakistan's ISI and Saudi Arabia create the Taliban.  It was only after the bombings of the two US embassies in Africa and the near sinking of the USS Cole that they realized they had created a monster.  The events on 911 were icing on the cake.  But this was good news for the neocons and the military industrial complex - they had an enemy again which would justify military spending.

Fitzgerald and Gould close the book with some advice for President Obama:

President Obama will face the toughest foreign policy decisions of any president since Franklin Roosevelt. But among the toughest of those tough decisions will be how to handle the ongoing battle for Afghanistan.

Lest he fall prey to the popular misconceptions and the self-fulfilling delusions of Washington s current Beltway wisdom, he should be well advised that today's Afghanistan is more a creation of Washington, Islamabad and London than it is of Kabul. He should also be advised that achieving anything resembling a real victory will require much more than just additional troops or taking the battle into Taliban- and Al Qaeda-controlled areas of neighboring Pakistan. It will require rethinking some basic assumptions about both Afghanistan, and Pakistan and America's goals in
the region.

I see little evidence that Obama is willing to take the advice.  The same hawks are still in charge.

I repeat,  Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story, is a must read for anyone trying to understand AF/PAK policy.  I have not even scratched the surface of what you will find in this book. And how about a teaser? - Pakistan's ISI was involved in the 911 attacks.

Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story
by Paul Fitzgerald

Book Review, Leap In The Dark

As we know history is written by the victors and later rewritten by the new victors. There has been a lot of rewriting going on since Ronald Reagan's victory almost 30 years ago. In addition we are for the most part given a sanitized version of history in elementary and secondary school. John Ferling, a Professor of History at the State University of West Georgia, tries to set the record straight in A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic. Ferling begins this narrative in the 1750's, long before the war, and ends it with the election of 1800.  


Some of the subjects covered:

• The American revolution was far from inevitable.
• Men like Samuel Adams were major players and drivers in the revolution although today Sam Adams is little more than a footnote and a beer and many others not even that.
• The importance of the behind the scenes activity of John Adams and his ideological conflicts with Thomas Jefferson.
• The US was not created as a Christian nation and that many of the founders were not Christian and in the case of Jefferson and others hostile towards Christianity.
• The Boson Tea Party was really a protest against corporate power not taxes.

John Ferling is both a brilliant historian and a very capable writer who has given us a very readable book. I highly recommend this this look at our history.

A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic
by John E. Ferling

Book Review - 1491

History is written by the victors and the Eurocentric vision of the Western Hemisphere before Columbus is what we have all learned in school.  That vision consisted of a virtually untouched land where small bands of hunter gatherers lived in harmony with nature.  In 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus, Charles C. Mann explains how that vision may be very wrong.

When Columbus first landed as many as 100 million people lived in the Western hemisphere, more than lived in Europe, and as much as two thirds of  North America may have been farmed.  So what happened?  Between the 16th and 18th century epidemics of diseases like smallpox decimated the native American population, killing perhaps 90 percent, making it impossible for Indian cultures to continue to control their environment.  When the Europeans started heading west the miles of wilderness and the vast herds of buffalo were relatively new.  Not everyone agrees with this vision and Mann gives time for dissenting views as well.

Other conclusions:

• Certain cities-such as Tenochtitl the Aztec capital-were far greater in population than any contemporary European city. Furthermore, Tenochtitl unlike any capital in Europe at that time, had running water, beautiful botanical gardens, and immaculately clean streets.
• Pre-Columbian Indians in Mexico developed corn by a breeding process so sophisticated that the journal Science recently described it as "man's first, and perhaps the greatest, feat of genetic engineering." Hemisphere were thriving before the Egyptians built the great pyramids.
• Amazonian Indians learned how to farm the rain forest without destroying it-a process scientists are studying today in the hope of regaining this lost knowledge.
• Native Americans transformed their land so completely that Europeans arrived in a hemisphere already massively "landscaped" by human beings.

A must read is found at the end of the book, The Great Law of Peace. An alliance of five native American tribes in the Northeast.  Mann and many others think this is the real origin of American Libertarianism and had more of an impact on the direction of the United States than any European political philosophy.

Now this book is educated speculation and much of it may not be accurate or much of it may be.  We will of course never know.  It's not always the most readable book but it certainly supplies an alternate view of history and presents us with a lot to think about..  For that reason I highly recommend it.

1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus
by Charles C. Mann