“Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.” ― Ayn Rand
First of all, let me say that being a conservative, I have absolutely nothing against free enterprise and capitalism. However, obviously I am not a right wing libertarian as Ayn Rand was. Trotsky said once that “a right independent is a leftist and a left independent belongs to the right”. In many ways, the right libertarians unconsciously play the game of the left ― at least they play by the same rules.
The aforementioned citation allegedly quoted from Ayn Rand ― and I believe it is from her own property ― is exactly the opposite of Schopenhauer’s idea about civilization which was conceived as “prison” restraining the ferocious animal called “man”. As I do not sympathize much with Schopenhauer I will skip it.
Jean-Henri Fabre wrote that « Men will succumb victimized by the excesses caused by what is called “civilization” ». This quote implies a vision of History similar to Oswald Spengler’s ― or even to the Italian illuminist Mario Pagano before him. Also carries with it a strong apocalyptical view resulting from a belief that societies cannot regenerate themselves. So let’s skip Fabre.
Let’s try another one: “True barbarism is Dachau; true civilization is, in the first place, that special part of the human being that all concentrations camps intended to destroy.” The French Andre Malraux is the author of this one.
Does this citation coordinates itself with the above one of Ayn Rand? Well, being “free from oppression” is not the same as being “free from men” ― we could be “oppressed” by ourselves in the first place.
We simply cannot be totally free from our next door neighbors (unless we shoot them) and we cannot consider human interdependence and sociability as a sort of “oppression”. May be Ayn Rand considered “men” as a invariable symbol of “oppression”; however, we cannot rationally support this conception of “men”.
Furthermore, I do not see either History (or civilization) as a “process”. When we talk about History we’re talking about multi generations of human beings and not about any kind of “process” as making industrial hot-dogs. The word “process” was applied to History in the first place by Hegel with his tragic “dialectics of reason” followed by gnostics as Karl Marx that caused the Marxist gulags, Hitler and the Nazi concentration camps, more than 200 million victims only in 20th century — and even Ayn Rand is also part of all that “process” as per Franz Kafka.
The best way to understand the philosophy of Ayn Rand is trying to understand Eric Voegelin.
Finally, a quotation from Jean-Edern Hallier:
“Civilizations are mortal only because they become clairvoyant. As soon as they set reflecting about themselves, they blow up…”
