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Sunday, July 28, 2019

On Two Closed Systems: Marxism and Objectivism

Vladimir Lenin made Marxism a closed system in 1909: In his theoretical work Materialism and Empirio-criticism, Lenin writes, “You cannot eliminate even one basic assumption, on substantial part of this philosophy of Marxism (it is as if it were a solid block of steel) without abandoning objective truth, without falling into the arms of the bourgeois-reactionary falsehood.” Leonard Peikoff made Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism a closed system in 1989: In his article, “Fact and Value,” Peikoff writes, “Objectivism holds that every truth is an absolute, and that a proper philosophy is an integrated whole, any change in any element of which would destroy the entire system.” It is an irony that Lenin, a Marxist and communist, and Peikoff, a Randian individualist and free marketer, have used similar arguments for imposing a closed system on their philosophy.

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