An Excerpt from ‘Choose Your Issues’: From Ayn Rand’s Bound Periodicals, Now in Paperback

Between 1962 and 1976, Ayn Rand published a series of periodicals: The Objectivist Newsletter, The Objectivist, and The Ayn Rand Letter. Many of the articles she published there went on to be anthologized in the collections of nonfiction essays published as books. But some were never anthologized, and have only been available in bound periodicals long available for purchase from the Ayn Rand Institute. ARI is now happy to offer these periodicals for the first time in paperback, at a significant discount from the original hardback versions.

The bound periodicals are especially invaluable as a means of understanding the historical context in which Rand wrote her nonfiction. Here we see her view of the American cultural-political scene unfolding in reaction to major milestones of the twentieth century: the Kennedy-Johnson administrations, the Vietnam war, the campus student rebellion, and the stagnation of the 1970s. Readers can see a high-level survey of the rich array of content in this earlier article in New Ideal. Rand not only comments on politics, but publishes theoretical articles on epistemology and esthetics, and reviews of the art and literature of her day.

Here we offer the first of several excerpts from articles never anthologized, exclusively available in the bound periodicals, and now available for purchase from Amazon.

This excerpt is from her very first essay in her first periodical, The Objectivist Newsletter. “Choose Your Issues” (January 1962) serves as a kind of manifesto for the agenda of The Objectivist Newsletter, by describing Rand’s uniquely philosophical approach to the analysis of current events.

Objectivism is a philosophical movement; since politics is a branch of philosophy, Objectivism advocates certain political principles – specifically, those of laissez-faire capitalism – as the consequence and the ultimate practical application of its fundamental philosophical principles. It does not regard politics as a separate or primary goal, that is: as a goal that can be achieved without a wider ideological context.

Politics is based on three other philosophical disciplines: metaphysics, epistemology and ethics – on a theory of man’s nature and of man’s relationship to existence. It is only on such a base that one can formulate a consistent political theory and achieve it in practice. When, however, men attempt to rush into politics without such a base, the result is that embarrassing conglomeration of impotence, futility, inconsistency and superficiality which is loosely designated today as ‘conservatism.’ Objectivists are not ‘conservatives.’ We are radicals for capitalism; we are fighting for that philosophical base which capitalism did not have and without which it was doomed to perish.

A change in a country’s political ideas has to be preceded by a change in its cultural trends; a cultural movement is the necessary precondition of a political movement. Today’s culture is dominated by the philosophy of mysticism (irrationalism) – altruism – collectivism, the base from which only statism can be derived; the statists (of any brand: communist, fascist or welfare) are merely cashing in on it – while the ‘conservatives’ are scurrying to ride on the enemy’s premises and, somehow, to achieve political freedom by stealth. It can’t be done.

To read the rest, order your copy of The Objectivist Newsletter from Amazon today.