Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit, usually in competitive markets. Income in a capitalist system takes at least two forms, ''profit'' on the one hand and ''wages'' on the other. There is also a tradition that treats ''rent'', income from the control of natural resources, as a third phenomenon distinct from either of those. In any case, profit is what is received, by virtue of control of the tools of production, by those who provide the capital. Often profits are used to expand an enterprise, thus creating more jobs and wealth. Wages are received by those who provide a service to the enterprise, also known as workers, but do not have an ownership stake in it, and are therefore compensated irrespective of whether the enterprise makes a profit or a loss. In the case of profitable enterprise, profits are therefore not translated to workers except at the discretion of the owners, who may or may not receive increased compensation, whereas losses are not translated to workers except at similar discretion manifested by decreased compensation.

There is no consensus on the precise definition of capitalism, nor on how the term should be used as a historical category. There is, however, little controversy that private ownership of the means of production, creation of goods or services for profit in a market, and prices and wages are elements of capitalism. The designation is applied to a variety of historical cases, varying in time, geography, politics and culture. Some define capitalism as a system in which ''all'' the means of production are privately owned, and some define it more loosely as one in which merely "most" are in private hands — while others refer to the latter as a mixed economy biased toward capitalism. More fundamentally, others define capitalism as a system in which production is carried out to generate profit and is governed by the laws of capital accumulation; regardless of the legal ownership titles. Private ownership in capitalism implies the right to control property, including the determination of how it is used, who uses it, whether to sell or rent it, and the right to the revenue generated by the property.

Economists, political economists and historians have taken different perspectives on the analysis of capitalism. Economists usually emphasize the degree that government does not have control over markets (laissez faire), and on property rights. Most political economists emphasize private property, power relations, wage labor, class and emphasize capitalism as a unique historical formation. There is general agreement that capitalism encourages economic growth. The extent to which different markets are free, as well as the rules defining private property, is a matter of politics and policy, and many states have what are termed mixed economies.

Capitalism, as a deliberate economic system, developed incrementally from the 16th century in Europe, although proto-capitalist organizations existed in the ancient world, and early aspects of merchant capitalism flourished during the Late Middle Ages. Capitalism became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. Capitalism gradually spread throughout Europe, and in the 19th and 20th centuries, it provided the main means of industrialization throughout much of the world. Today the capitalist system is the world's dominant economic model.

Etymology and early usage

{| align="right" class="box" style="margin-left:1em;text-align: left; border: 4px solid #aaaaaa; padding: 2px; font-size: 100%; width: 30%;" |bgcolor="#dbeaff"| Other terms sometimes used for capitalism:

Capitalist mode of production

Economic liberalism Free-enterprise economy Free market Laissez-faire economy Market economy Market liberalism Self-regulating market |}

''Capital'' evolved from ''capitale'', a late Latin word based on proto-Indo-European ''caput'', meaning "head" — also the origin of ''chattel'' and ''cattle'' in the sense of movable property (only much later to refer only to livestock). Capitale emerged in the 12th to 13th centuries in the sense of funds, stock of merchandise, sum of money, or money carrying interest. By 1283 it was used in the sense of the capital assets of a trading firm. It was frequently interchanged with a number of other words — wealth, money, funds, goods, assets, property and so on.

The term ''capitalist'' refers to an owner of capital rather than an economic system, but shows earlier recorded use than the term ''capitalism'', dating back to the mid-seventeenth century. The ''Hollandische Mercurius'' uses it in 1633 and 1654 to refer to owners of capital. In French, Étienne Clavier referred to ''capitalistes'' in 1788, six years before its first recorded English usage by Arthur Young in his work ''Travels in France'' (1792). David Ricardo, in his ''Principles of Political Economy and Taxation'' (1817), referred to "the capitalist" many times.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an English poet, used ''capitalist'' in his work ''Table Talk'' (1823). Pierre-Joseph Proudhon used the term ''capitalist'' in his first work, ''What is Property?'' (1840) to refer to the owners of capital. Benjamin Disraeli used the term ''capitalist'' in his 1845 work ''Sybil''. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels used the term ''capitalist'' (''Kapitalist'') in ''The Communist Manifesto'' (1848) to refer to a private owner of capital.

According to the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (OED), the term ''capitalism'' was first used by novelist William Makepeace Thackeray in 1854 in ''The Newcomes'', where he meant "having ownership of capital". Also according to the OED, Carl Adolph Douai, a German-American socialist and abolitionist, used the term ''private capitalism'' in 1863.

The initial usage of the term ''capitalism'' in its modern sense has been attributed to Louis Blanc in 1850 and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1861. Marx and Engels referred to the ''capitalistic system'' (''kapitalistisches System'') and to the capitalist mode of production (''kapitalistische Produktionsform'') in ''Das Kapital'' (1867). The use of the word "capitalism" in reference to an economic system appears twice in Volume I of ''Das Kapital'', p. 124 (German edition), and in ''Theories of Surplus Value'', tome II, p. 493 (German edition). Marx did not extensively use the form ''capitalism'', but instead those of ''capitalist'' and ''capitalist mode of production'', which appear more than 2600 times in the trilogy ''Das Kapital''.

Marx's notion of the capitalist mode of production is characterised as a system of primarily private ownership of the means of production in a mainly market economy, with a legal framework on commerce and a physical infrastructure provided by the state. No legal framework was available to protect the labourers, so exploitation by the companies was rife. Engels made more frequent use of the term ''capitalism''; volumes II and III of ''Das Kapital'', both edited by Engels after Marx's death, contain the word "capitalism" four and three times, respectively. The three combined volumes of ''Das Kapital'' (1867, 1885, 1894) contain the word ''capitalist'' more than 2,600 times.

An 1877 work entitled ''Better Times'' by Hugh Gabutt and an 1884 article in the ''Pall Mall Gazette'' also used the term ''capitalism''. A later use of the term ''capitalism'' to describe the production system was by the German economist Werner Sombart, in his 1902 book ''The Jews and Modern Capitalism'' (''Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben''). Sombart's close friend and colleague, Max Weber, also used ''capitalism'' in his 1904 book ''The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism'' (''Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus'').

Economic elements

Capitalist economics developed out of the interactions of the following elements.

A product is any good produced for exchange on a market. "Commodities" refers to standard products, especially raw materials such as grains and metals, that are not associated with particular producers or brands and trade on organized exchanges.

There are two types of products: capital goods and consumer goods. Capital goods (i.e., raw materials, tools, industrial machines, vehicles and factories) are used to produce consumer goods (e.g., televisions, cars, computers, houses) to be sold to others. The three inputs required for production are labor, land (i.e., natural resources, which exist prior to human beings) and capital goods. Capitalism entails the private ownership of the latter two — natural resources and capital goods — by a class of owners called capitalists, either individually, collectively or through a state apparatus that operates for a profit or serves the interests of capital owners.

Money was primarily a standardized medium of exchange, and final means of payment, that serves to measure the value all goods and commodities in a standard of value. It eliminates the cumbersome system of barter by separating the transactions involved in the exchange of products, thus greatly facilitating specialization and trade through encouraging the exchange of commodities. Capitalism involves the further abstraction of money into other exchangeable assets and the accumulation of money through ownership, exchange, interest and various other financial instruments. However, besides serving as a medium of exchange for labour, goods and services, money is also a store of value, similar to precious metals.

Labour includes all physical and mental human resources, including entrepreneurial capacity and management skills, which are needed to produce products and services. Production is the act of making products or services by applying labour power to the means of production.

Types of capitalism

There are many variants of capitalism in existence. All these forms of capitalism are based on production for profit, at least a moderate degree of market allocation and capital accumulation. The dominant forms of capitalism are listed here.

Anarcho-capitalism

Anarcho-capitalism is a libertarian and individualist anarchist political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state and the elevation of the sovereign individual in a free market. In an anarcho-capitalist society, law enforcement, courts, and all other security services would be provided by voluntarily-funded competitors such as dispute resolution organisations and private defense agencies rather than through taxation, and money would be privately and competitively provided in an open market. By advocating a society without a need for a state it seeks to eliminate the negative externalities caused by government interference into property rights or the markets, thus proponents believe it to be the most efficient, moral, and accountable form of capital allocation though the swift action of dollar voting and budget constraint (profit and loss mechanism) rather than the slow movement of political bureaucracy that's monopolistic in its immunity to competition and coercive in its guaranteed funding through taxation.

Mercantilism

A nationalist form of early capitalism where national business interests are tied to state interests, and consequently, the state apparatus is utilized to advance national business interests abroad. Mercantilism holds that the wealth of a nation is increased through a positive balance of trade with other nations.

Free-market capitalism

Free market capitalism consists of a free-price system where supply and demand are allowed to reach their point of equilibrium without intervention by the government. Productive enterprises are privately-owned, and the role of the state is limited to protecting property rights.

Social market economy

A social market economy is a nominally free-market system where government intervention in price formation is kept to a minimum, but the state provides for moderate to extensive provision of social security, unemployment benefits and recognition of labor rights through national collective bargaining schemes. The social market is based on private ownership of businesses.

State capitalism

State capitalism consists of state ownership of profit-seeking enterprises that operate in a capitalist manner in a market economy. Examples include corporatized government agencies or partial state ownership of shares in publicly-listed firms. The term ''state capitalism'' has also used to refer to an economy consisting of mainly private enterprises that are subjected to comprehensive national economic planning by the government, wherein the state intervenes in the economy to protect specific capitalist businesses (although this is usually referred to as ''state monopoly capitalism'' or ''corporate capitalism''). Many socialists and anti-Stalinist leftists argue that the Soviet Union was state capitalist instead of socialist, since the state owned all the means of production, functioned as an enormous corporation, and exploited the working class.

Corporate capitalism

Corporate capitalism is a free or mixed market characterized by the dominance of hierarchical, bureaucratic corporations, which are legally required to pursue profit. State monopoly capitalism refers to a form of corporate capitalism where the state is used to benefit, protect from competition and promote the interests of dominant or established corporations.^{[Citiation Needed]}

Mixed economy

A largely market-based economy consisting of both public ownership and private ownership of the means of production. In practice, a mixed economy will be heavily slanted toward one extreme; most capitalist economies are defined as "mixed economies" to some degree and are characterized by the dominance of private ownership.^{[Citation Needed]}

Other

Other variants of capitalism include:

Crony capitalism

Finance capitalism

Financial capitalism

Late capitalism

Market economy

Neo-Capitalism

Post-capitalism

Technocapitalism

History

Economic trade for profit has existed since the second millennium BC. However, capitalism in its modern form is usually traced to the Mercantilism of the 16th-18th Centuries.

Mercantilism

The period between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries is commonly described as mercantilism. This period, the Age of Discovery, was associated with geographic exploration being exploited by merchant overseas traders, especially from England and the Low Countries; the European colonization of the Americas; and the rapid growth in overseas trade. Mercantilism was a system of trade for profit, although commodities were still largely produced by non-capitalist production methods.

While some scholars see mercantilism as the earliest stage of capitalism, others argue that capitalism did not emerge until later. For example, Karl Polanyi, noted that "mercantilism, with all its tendency toward commercialization, never attacked the safeguards which protected [the] two basic elements of production—labor and land—from becoming the elements of commerce"; thus mercantilist attitudes towards economic regulation were closer to feudalist attitudes, "they disagreed only on the methods of regulation."

Moreover Polanyi argued that the hallmark of capitalism is the establishment of generalized markets for what he referred to as the "fictitious commodities": land, labor, and money. Accordingly, "not until 1834 was a competitive labor market established in England, hence industrial capitalism as a social system cannot be said to have existed before that date."

Evidence of long-distance merchant-driven trade motivated by profit has been found as early as the second millennium BC, with the Old Assyrian merchants. The earliest forms of mercantilism date back to the Roman Empire. When the Roman Empire expanded, the mercantilist economy expanded throughout Europe. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, most of the European economy became controlled by local feudal powers, and mercantilism collapsed there. However, mercantilism persisted in Arabia. Due to its proximity to neighboring countries, the Arabs established trade routes to Egypt, Persia, and Byzantium. As Islam spread in the seventh century, mercantilism spread rapidly to Spain, Portugal, Northern Africa, and Asia. Mercantilism finally revived in Europe in the fourteenth century, as mercantilism spread from Spain and Portugal.

Among the major tenets of mercantilist theory was bullionism, a doctrine stressing the importance of accumulating precious metals. Mercantilists argued that a state should export more goods than it imported so that foreigners would have to pay the difference in precious metals. Mercantilists asserted that only raw materials that could not be extracted at home should be imported; and promoted government subsidies, such as the granting of monopolies and protective tariffs, were necessary to encourage home production of manufactured goods.

European merchants, backed by state controls, subsidies, and monopolies, made most of their profits from the buying and selling of goods. In the words of Francis Bacon, the purpose of mercantilism was "the opening and well-balancing of trade; the cherishing of manufacturers; the banishing of idleness; the repressing of waste and excess by sumptuary laws; the improvement and husbanding of the soil; the regulation of prices…"

Similar practices of economic regimentation had begun earlier in the medieval towns. However, under mercantilism, given the contemporaneous rise of absolutism, the state superseded the local guilds as the regulator of the economy. During that time the guilds essentially functioned like cartels that monopolized the quantity of craftsmen to earn above-market wages.

At the period from the eighteenth century, the commercial stage of capitalism originated from the start of the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company. These companies were characterized by their colonial and expansionary powers given to them by nation-states. During this era, merchants, who had traded under the previous stage of mercantilism, invested capital in the East India Companies and other colonies, seeking a return on investment. In his "History of Economic Analysis," Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter reduced mercantilist propositions to three main concerns: exchange controls, export monopolism and balance of trade.

Industrialism

A new group of economic theorists, led by David Hume and Adam Smith, in the mid 18th century, challenged fundamental mercantilist doctrines as the belief that the amount of the world’s wealth remained constant and that a state could only increase its wealth at the expense of another state.

During the Industrial Revolution, the industrialist replaced the merchant as a dominant actor in the capitalist system and effected the decline of the traditional handicraft skills of artisans, guilds, and journeymen. Also during this period, the surplus generated by the rise of commercial agriculture encouraged increased mechanization of agriculture. Industrial capitalism marked the development of the factory system of manufacturing, characterized by a complex division of labor between and within work process and the routine of work tasks; and finally established the global domination of the capitalist mode of production.

Britain also abandoned its protectionist policy, as embraced by mercantilism. In the 19th century, Richard Cobden and John Bright, who based their beliefs on the Manchester School, initiated a movement to lower tariffs. In the 1840s, Britain adopted a less protectionist policy, with the repeal of the Corn Laws and the Navigation Acts. Britain reduced tariffs and quotas, in line with Adam Smith and David Ricardo's advocacy for free trade.

Karl Polanyi argued that capitalism did not emerge until the progressive commodification of land, money, and labor culminating in the establishment of a generalized labor market in Britain in the 1830s. For Polanyi, "the extension of the market to the elements of industry – land, labor and money – was the inevitable consequence of the introduction of the factory system in a commercial society." Other sources argued that mercantilism fell after the repeal of the Navigation Acts in 1849.

Keynesianism and neoliberalism

In the period following the global depression of the 1930s, the state played an increasingly prominent role in the capitalistic system throughout much of the world.

After World War II, a broad array of new analytical tools in the social sciences were developed to explain the social and economic trends of the period, including the concepts of post-industrial society and the welfare state. This era was greatly influenced by Keynesian economic stabilization policies. The postwar boom ended in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the situation was worsened by the rise of stagflation.

Exceptionally high inflation combined with slow output growth, rising unemployment, and eventually recession to cause a loss of credibility in the Keynesian welfare-statist mode of regulation. Under the influence of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, Western states embraced policy prescriptions inspired by laissez-faire capitalism and classical liberalism.

In particular, monetarism, a theoretical alternative to Keynesianism that is more compatible with laissez-faire, gained increasing prominence in the capitalist world, especially under the leadership of Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the UK in the 1980s. Public and political interest began shifting away from the so-called collectivist concerns of Keynes's managed capitalism to a focus on individual choice, called "remarketized capitalism." In the eyes of many economic and political commentators, the collapse of the Soviet Union brought further evidence of the superiority of market capitalism over communism.

Globalization

Although international trade has been associated with the development of capitalism for over five hundred years, some thinkers argue that a number of trends associated with globalization have acted to increase the mobility of people and capital since the last quarter of the 20th century, combining to circumscribe the room to maneuver of states in choosing non-capitalist models of development. Today, these trends have bolstered the argument that capitalism should now be viewed as a truly world system. However, other thinkers argue that globalization, even in its quantitative degree, is no greater now than during earlier periods of capitalist trade.

Neoclassical economic theory

Neoclassical economics explain capitalism as made up of individuals, enterprises, markets and government. According to their theories, individuals engage in a capitalist economy as consumers, labourers, and investors. As labourers, individuals may decide which jobs to prepare for, and in which markets to look for work. As investors they decide how much of their income to save and how to invest their savings. These savings, which become investments, provide much of the money that businesses need to grow.

Business firms decide what to produce and where this production should occur. They also purchase inputs (materials, labour, and capital). Businesses try to influence consumer purchase decisions through marketing and advertisement, as well as the creation of new and improved products. Driving the capitalist economy is the search for profits (revenues minus expenses). This is known as the profit motive, and it helps ensure that companies produce the goods and services that consumers desire and are able to buy. To be profitable, firms must sell a quantity of their product at a certain price to yield a profit. A business may lose money if sales fall too low or if its costs become too high. The profit motive encourages firms to operate more efficiently. By using less materials, labour or capital, a firm can cut its production costs, which can lead to increased profits.

An economy grows when the total value of goods and services produced rises. This growth requires investment in infrastructure, capital and other resources necessary in production. In a capitalist system, businesses decide when and how much they want to invest.

Income in a capitalist economy depends primarily on what skills are in demand and what skills are being supplied. Skills that are in scarce supply are worth more in the market and can attract higher incomes. Competition among workers for jobs — and among employers for skilled workers — help determine wage rates. Firms need to pay high enough wages to attract the appropriate workers; when jobs are scarce, workers may accept lower wages than they would when jobs are plentiful. Trade union and governments influence wages in capitalist systems. Unions act to represent their members in negotiations with employers over such things as wage rates and acceptable working conditions.

The market

In a capitalist economy, the prices of goods and services are controlled mainly through supply and demand and competition. Supply is the amount of a good or service produced by a firm and which is available for sale. Demand is the amount that people are willing to buy at a specific price. Prices tend to rise when demand exceeds supply, and fall when supply exceeds demand. In theory, the market is able to coordinate itself when a new equilibrium price and quantity is reached.

Competition arises when more than one producer is trying to sell the same or similar products to the same buyers. In capitalist theory, competition leads to innovation and more affordable prices. Without competition, a monopoly or cartel may develop. A monopoly occurs when a firm supplies the total output in the market; the firm can therefore limit output and raise prices because it has no fear of competition. A cartel is a group of firms that act together in a monopolistic manner to control output and raise prices.

Role of government

In a capitalist system, the government does not prohibit private property or prevent individuals from working where they please. The government does not prevent firms from determining what wages they will pay and what prices they will charge for their products. Many countries, however, have minimum wage laws and minimum safety standards.

Under some versions of capitalism, the government carries out a number of economic functions, such as issuing money, supervising public utilities and enforcing private contracts. Many countries have competition laws that prohibit monopolies and cartels from forming. Despite anti-monopoly laws, large corporations can form near-monopolies in some industries. Such firms can temporarily drop prices and accept losses to prevent competition from entering the market, and then raise them again once the threat of entry is reduced. In many countries, public utilities (e.g. electricity, heating fuel, communications) are able to operate as a monopoly under government regulation, due to high economies of scale.

Government agencies regulate the standards of service in many industries, such as airlines and broadcasting, as well as financing a wide range of programs. In addition, the government regulates the flow of capital and uses financial tools such as the interest rate to control factors such as inflation and unemployment.

Democracy, the state, and legal frameworks

Private property

The relationship between the state, its formal mechanisms, and capitalist societies has been debated in many fields of social and political theory, with active discussion since the 19th century. Hernando de Soto is a contemporary economist who has argued that an important characteristic of capitalism is the functioning state protection of property rights in a formal property system where ownership and transactions are clearly recorded.

According to de Soto, this is the process by which physical assets are transformed into capital, which in turn may be used in many more ways and much more efficiently in the market economy. A number of Marxian economists have argued that the Enclosure Acts in England, and similar legislation elsewhere, were an integral part of capitalist primitive accumulation and that specific legal frameworks of private land ownership have been integral to the development of capitalism.

Institutions

New institutional economics, a field pioneered by Douglass North, stresses the need of a legal framework in order for capitalism to function optimally, and focuses on the relationship between the historical development of capitalism and the creation and maintenance of political and economic institutions. In new institutional economics and other fields focusing on public policy, economists seek to judge when and whether governmental intervention (such as taxes, welfare, and government regulation) can result in potential gains in efficiency. According to Gregory Mankiw, a New Keynesian economist, governmental intervention can improve on market outcomes under conditions of "market failure", or situations in which the market on its own does not allocate resources efficiently.

Market failure occurs when an externality is present and a market will either under-produce a product with a positive externalization or overproduce a product that generates a negative externalization. Air pollution, for instance, is a negative externalization that cannot be incorporated into markets as the world’s air is not owned and then sold for use to polluters. So, too much pollution could be emitted and people not involved in the production pay the cost of the pollution instead of the firm that initially emitted the air pollution. Critics of market failure theory, like Ronald Coase, Harold Demsetz, and James M. Buchanan argue that government programs and policies also fall short of absolute perfection. Market failures are often small, and government failures are sometimes large. It is therefore the case that imperfect markets are often better than imperfect governmental alternatives. While all nations currently have some kind of market regulations, the desirable degree of regulation is disputed.

Democracy

The relationship between democracy and capitalism is a contentious area in theory and popular political movements. The extension of universal adult male suffrage in 19th century Britain occurred along with the development of industrial capitalism, and democracy became widespread at the same time as capitalism, leading many theorists to posit a causal relationship between them, or that each affects the other. However, in the 20th century, according to some authors, capitalism also accompanied a variety of political formations quite distinct from liberal democracies, including fascist regimes, absolute monarchies, and single-party states,.

While some thinkers argue that capitalist development more-or-less inevitably eventually leads to the emergence of democracy, others dispute this claim. Research on the democratic peace theory indicates that capitalist democracies rarely make war with one another and have little internal violence. However critics of the democratic peace theory note that democratic capitalist states may fight infrequently and or never with other democratic capitalist states because of political similarity or stability rather than because they are democratic or capitalist.

Some commentators argue that though economic growth under capitalism has led to democratization in the past, it may not do so in the future, as authoritarian regimes have been able to manage economic growth without making concessions to greater political freedom. States that have highly capitalistic economic systems have thrived under authoritarian or oppressive political systems. Singapore, which maintains a highly open market economy and attracts lots of foreign investment, does not protect civil liberties such as freedom of speech and expression. The private (capitalist) sector in the People's Republic of China has grown exponentially and thrived since its inception, despite having an authoritarian government. Augusto Pinochet's rule in Chile led to economic growth by using authoritarian means to create a safe environment for investment and capitalism.

In response to criticism of the system, some proponents of capitalism have argued that its advantages are supported by empirical research. Indices of Economic Freedom show a correlation between nations with more economic freedom (as defined by the indices) and higher scores on variables such as income and life expectancy, including the poor, in these nations.

Political benefits

Economic growth

In years 1000–1820 world economy grew sixfold, 50 % per person. After capitalism had started to spread more widely, in years 1820–1998 world economy grew 50-fold, i.e., 9-fold per person. In most capitalist economic regions such as Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the economy grew 19-fold per person even though these countries already had a higher starting level, and in Japan, which was poor in 1820, to 31-fold, whereas in the rest of the world the growth was only 5-fold per person.

Many theorists and policymakers in predominantly capitalist nations have emphasized capitalism's ability to promote economic growth, as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), capacity utilization or standard of living. This argument was central, for example, to Adam Smith's advocacy of letting a free market control production and price, and allocate resources. Many theorists have noted that this increase in global GDP over time coincides with the emergence of the modern world capitalist system.

Proponents argue that increasing GDP (per capita) is empirically shown to bring about improved standards of living, such as better availability of food, housing, clothing, and health care. The decrease in the number of hours worked per week and the decreased participation of children and the elderly in the workforce have been attributed to capitalism.

Proponents also believe that a capitalist economy offers far more opportunities for individuals to raise their income through new professions or business ventures than do other economic forms. To their thinking, this potential is much greater than in either traditional feudal or tribal societies or in socialist societies.

Political freedom

Milton Friedman argued that the economic freedom of competitive capitalism is a requisite of political freedom. Friedman argued that centralized control of economic activity is always accompanied by political repression. In his view, transactions in a market economy are voluntary, and the wide diversity that voluntary activity permits is a fundamental threat to repressive political leaders and greatly diminish power to coerce. Friedman's view was also shared by Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes, both of whom believed that capitalism is vital for freedom to survive and thrive.

Self-organization

Austrian School economists have argued that capitalism can organize itself into a complex system without an external guidance or planning mechanism. Friedrich Hayek considered the phenomenon of self-organization as underpinning capitalism. Prices serve as a signal as to the urgent and unfilled wants of people, and the promise of profits gives entrepreneurs incentive to use their knowledge and resources to satisfy those wants. Thus the activities of millions of people, each seeking his own interest, are coordinated.

Criticism

Critics of capitalism associate it with: unfair distribution of wealth and power; a tendency toward market monopoly or oligopoly (and government by oligarchy); imperialism, counter-revolutionary wars and various forms of economic and cultural exploitation; repression of workers and trade unionists; social alienation; economic inequality; unemployment; and economic instability.

Notable critics of capitalism have included: socialists, anarchists, communists, national socialists, social democrats, technocrats, some types of conservatives, Luddites, Narodniks, Shakers and some types of nationalists.

Marxists have advocated a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism that would lead to socialism, before eventually transforming into communism. Many socialists consider capitalism to be irrational, in that production and the direction of the economy are unplanned, creating many inconsistencies and internal contradictions. Labor historians and scholars such as Immanuel Wallerstein have argued that unfree labor — by slaves, indentured servants, prisoners, and other coerced persons — is compatible with capitalist relations.

Many aspects of capitalism have come under attack from the anti-globalization movement, which is primarily opposed to corporate capitalism. Environmentalists have argued that capitalism requires continual economic growth, and that it will inevitably deplete the finite natural resources of the Earth.

Many religions have criticized or opposed specific elements of capitalism. Traditional Judaism, Christianity, and Islam forbid lending money at interest, although alternative methods of banking have been developed. Some Christians have criticized capitalism for its materialist aspects. Indian philosopher P.R. Sarkar, founder of the Ananda Marga movement, developed the Law of Social Cycle to identify the problems of capitalism.

See also

People

Amartya Sen

Andrew Carnegie

Ayn Rand

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk

Frederic Bastiat

Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Hayek

John D. Rockefeller

John Maynard Keynes

John Locke

John Stuart Mill

Joseph Schumpeter

Joseph Stiglitz

J. P. Morgan

Karl Marx

Ludwig Von Mises

Milton Friedman

Murray Rothbard

Thorstein Veblen

Concepts

Accumulation of capital

Business

Capital (economics)

Chicago school

Classical Economics

Consumption (economics)

Economics

Calculation Problem

Economic equilibrium

Economic liberalism

Economic interventionism

Entrepreneurship

Factors of production

Financial market

Free price system

Gains from trade

History of Economic Thought

Industrial Revolution

Invisible hand

Institutional economics

Keynesianism

Laissez-faire

Macroeconomics

Marginalism

Market

Market Economy

Mass production

Means of production

Microeconomics

Monetarism

Neoclassical economics

Perspectives on Capitalism

Private property

Privatization

Positive non-interventionism

Profit (economics)

Social market economy

Spontaneous order

State capitalism

Supply and demand

Supply-side economics

Trickle down economics

True-cost economics

Works

''Capitalism and Freedom''

''Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy''

''Das Kapital''

''Free to Choose''

''Grundrisse''

''Individualism and Economic Order

''Man, Economy, and State''

''The Accumulation of Capital''

''The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality''

''The Communist Manifesto''

''The Law''

''The Road to Serfdom''

''The Theory of Business Enterprise''

''The Wealth of Nations''

Notes

References

Bacher, Christian (2007) ''Capitalism, Ethics and the Paradoxon of Self-exploitation'' Grin Verlag. p. 2

De George, Richard T. (1986) ''Business ethics'' p. 104

Lash, Scott and Urry, John (2000). ''Capitalism''. In Nicholas Abercrombie, S. Hill & BS Turner (Eds.), ''The Penguin dictionary of sociology'' (4th ed.) (pp. 36–40).

Wolf, Eric (1982) ''Europe and the People Without History''

Wood, Ellen Meiksins (2002) ''The Origins of Capitalism: A Longer View'' London: Verso

Thomas K. McCraw, ''"The Current Crisis and the Essence of Capitalism"'', The Montreal Review (August, 2011)

Further reading

Abu-Lughod, Janet L. ''Before European Hegemony The World System A.D. 1250–1350''. New York: Oxford UP, USA, 1991.

Josephson, Matthew, ''The Money Lords; the great finance capitalists, 1925–1950'', New York, Weybright and Talley, 1972.

China GDP – Dr. Fengbo Zhang introduced the Western economics, GDP and SNA system to China, replaced Soviet Union's MPS system.

External links

Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University

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Category:Economic systems Category:Economic ideologies Category:Economies Category:Economic liberalism Category:Ideologies Category:Social philosophy Category:Political economy Category:Individualism

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Coordinates	37°46′45.48″N122°25′9.12″N
name	Ayn Rand
alt	Half-length monochrome portrait photo of Ayn Rand, seated, holding a cigarette
birth name	Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum
birth date	February 02, 1905
birth place	Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
death date	March 06, 1982
death place	New York City, United States
occupation	philosopher, writer
citizenship	United States
ethnicity	Russian Jew
language	English
period	1934–1982
subject	philosophy
alma mater	University of Petrograd
spouse	Frank O'Connor(m. 1929-1979, his death)
influences	Aristotle, Frédéric Bastiat, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, O. Henry, Henry Hazlitt, Victor Hugo, H.L. Mencken, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Nietzsche, Isabel Paterson
influenced	Martin Anderson, Bob Barr, Andrew Bernstein, Harry Binswanger, Barbara Branden, Nathaniel Branden, Steve Ditko, Edith Efron, Terry Goodkind, Allan Gotthelf, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen, Erika Holzer, John Hospers, David Kelley, Anton LaVey, Liu Junning, Edwin A. Locke, Tibor Machan, Stefan Molyneux, Ron Paul, Neil Peart, Leonard Peikoff, George Reisman, Murray Rothbard, John Ridpath, Paul Ryan, Chris Matthew Sciabarra, George H. Smith, Kay Nolte Smith, L. Neil Smith, Tara Smith, John Stossel, Clarence Thomas, Jimmy Wales
notableworks	''The Fountainhead''''Atlas Shrugged''
signature	Sign Ayn Rand.png }}

Ayn Rand (; born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum, – March 6, 1982) was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels ''The Fountainhead'' and ''Atlas Shrugged'' and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism.

Born and educated in Russia, Rand moved to the United States in 1926. She worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood and had a play produced on Broadway in 1935–1936. After two initially unsuccessful early novels, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel ''The Fountainhead''. In 1957, she published her best-known work, the philosophical novel ''Atlas Shrugged''. Afterward she turned to nonfiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own magazines and releasing several collections of essays until her death in 1982.

In her philosophy of Objectivism, Rand advocated reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge and rejected all forms of faith and religion. She supported rational egoism and rejected ethical altruism. In politics, she condemned the initiation of force as immoral and opposed all forms of collectivism and statism, instead supporting ''laissez-faire'' capitalism, which she believed was the only social system that protected individual rights. She promoted romantic realism in art. She was sharply critical of most other philosophers and philosophical traditions.

The reception for Rand's fiction from literary critics was largely negative, and most academics have ignored or rejected her philosophy. Nonetheless she continues to have a popular following, and her political ideas have been influential among libertarians and some conservatives. The Objectivist movement attempts to spread her ideas, both to the public and in academic settings.

Life and work

Early life

Rand was born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum () on February 2, 1905, to a bourgeois family living in Saint Petersburg. She was the eldest of the three daughters of Zinovy Zakharovich Rosenbaum and Anna Borisovna Rosenbaum, largely non-observant Jews. Rand's father was a successful pharmacist, eventually owning his own pharmacy and the building in which it was located. Rand was twelve at the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917, during which her sympathies were with Alexander Kerensky. Rand's family life was disrupted by the rise of the Bolshevik party under Vladimir Lenin. Her father's pharmacy was confiscated by the Bolsheviks, and the family fled to the Crimea, which was initially under the control of the White Army during the Russian Civil War. She later recalled that while in high school she determined that she was an atheist and that she valued reason above any other human attribute. After graduating from high school in the Crimea, at sixteen Rand returned with her family to Petrograd (the new name for Saint Petersburg), where they faced desperate conditions, on occasion nearly starving.

After the Russian Revolution, universities were opened to women, including Jews, allowing Rand to be in the first group of women to enroll at Petrograd State University, where she studied in the department of social pedagogy, majoring in history. At the university she was introduced to the writings of Aristotle and Plato, who would form two of her greatest influences and counter-influences, respectively. A third figure whose philosophical works she studied heavily was Friedrich Nietzsche. Able to read French, German and Russian, Rand also discovered the writers Fyodor Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo, Edmond Rostand, and Friedrich Schiller, who became her perennial favorites.

Along with many other "bourgeois" students, Rand was purged from the university shortly before graduating. However, after complaints from a group of visiting foreign scientists, many of the purged students were allowed to complete their work and graduate, which Rand did in October 1924. She subsequently studied for a year at the State Technicum for Screen Arts in Leningrad. For one of her assignments, she wrote an essay about the actress Pola Negri, which became her first published work.

By this time she had decided her professional surname for writing would be ''Rand'', possibly as a Cyrillic contraction of her birth surname, and she adopted the first name ''Ayn'', either from a Finnish name or from the Hebrew word (''ayin'', meaning "eye").

In the fall of 1925, Rand was granted a visa to visit American relatives. Rand was so impressed with the skyline of Manhattan upon her arrival in New York Harbor that she cried what she later called "tears of splendor". Intent on staying in the United States to become a screenwriter, she lived for a few months with relatives in Chicago, one of whom owned a movie theater and allowed her to watch dozens of films for free. She then set out for Hollywood, California.

Initially, Rand struggled in Hollywood and took odd jobs to pay her basic living expenses. A chance meeting with famed director Cecil B. DeMille led to a job as an extra in his film, ''The King of Kings'', and to subsequent work as a junior screenwriter. While working on ''The King of Kings'', she met an aspiring young actor, Frank O'Connor; the two were married on April 15, 1929. Rand became an American citizen in 1931. Taking various jobs during the 1930s to support her writing, Rand worked for a time as the head of the costume department at RKO Studios. She made several attempts to bring her parents and sisters to the United States, but they were unable to acquire permission to emigrate.

Early fiction

Rand's first literary success came with the sale of her screenplay ''Red Pawn'' to Universal Studios in 1932, although it was never produced. This was followed by the courtroom drama ''Night of January 16th'', first produced in Hollywood in 1934 and then successfully reopened on Broadway in 1935. Each night the "jury" was selected from members of the audience, and one of the two different endings, depending on the jury's "verdict", would then be performed. In 1941, Paramount Pictures produced a movie version of the play. Rand did not participate in the production and was highly critical of the result.

Rand's first novel, the semi-autobiographical ''We the Living'', was published in 1936. Set in Soviet Russia, it focused on the struggle between the individual and the state. In the foreword to the novel, Rand stated that ''We the Living'' "is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write. It is not an autobiography in the literal, but only in the intellectual sense. The plot is invented, the background is not..." Initial sales were slow and the American publisher let it go out of print, although European editions continued to sell. After the success of her later novels, Rand was able to release a revised version in 1959 that has since sold over three million copies. Without Rand's knowledge or permission, the novel was made into a pair of Italian films, ''Noi vivi'' and ''Addio, Kira'', in 1942. Rediscovered in the 1960s, these films were re-edited into a new version which was approved by Rand and re-released as ''We the Living'' in 1986.

Her novella ''Anthem'' was written during a break from the writing of her next major novel, ''The Fountainhead''. It presents a vision of a dystopian future world in which totalitarian collectivism has triumphed to such an extent that even the word 'I' has been forgotten and replaced with 'we'. It was published in England in 1938, but Rand initially could not find an American publisher. As with ''We the Living'', Rand's later success allowed her to get a revised version published in 1946, which has sold more than 3.5 million copies.

''The Fountainhead'' and political activism

During the 1940s, Rand became involved in political activism. Both she and her husband worked full time in volunteer positions for the 1940 Presidential campaign of Republican Wendell Willkie. This work led to Rand's first public speaking experiences, including fielding the sometimes hostile questions from New York City audiences who had just viewed pro-Willkie newsreels, an experience she greatly enjoyed. This activity also brought her into contact with other intellectuals sympathetic to free-market capitalism. She became friends with journalist Henry Hazlitt and his wife, and Hazlitt introduced her to the Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises. Despite her philosophical differences with them, Rand strongly endorsed the writings of both men throughout her career, and both of them expressed admiration for her. Once von Mises referred to Rand as "the most courageous man in America," a compliment that particularly pleased her because he said "man" instead of "woman." Rand also developed a friendship with libertarian writer Isabel Paterson. Rand questioned the well-informed Paterson about American history and politics long into the night during their numerous meetings and gave Paterson ideas for her only nonfiction book, ''The God of the Machine''.

Rand's first major success as a writer came with ''The Fountainhead'' in 1943, a romantic and philosophical novel that she wrote over a period of seven years. The novel centers on an uncompromising young architect named Howard Roark and his struggle against what Rand described as "second-handers"—those who attempt to live through others, placing others above self. It was rejected by twelve publishers before finally being accepted by the Bobbs-Merrill Company on the insistence of editor Archibald Ogden, who threatened to quit if his employer did not publish it. While completing the novel, Rand was prescribed the amphetamine Benzedrine to fight fatigue. The drug helped her to work long hours to meet her deadline for delivering the finished novel, but when the book was done, she was so exhausted that her doctor ordered two weeks' rest. Her continued use of the drug for a number of years may have contributed to what some of her later associates described as volatile mood swings.

''The Fountainhead'' eventually became a worldwide success, bringing Rand fame and financial security. In 1943, Rand sold the rights for a film version to Warner Bros., and she returned to Hollywood to write the screenplay. Finishing her work on that screenplay, she was hired by producer Hal Wallis as a screenwriter and script-doctor. Her work for Wallis included the screenplays for the Oscar-nominated ''Love Letters'' and ''You Came Along''. This role gave Rand time to work on other projects, including a planned nonfiction treatment of her philosophy to be called ''The Moral Basis of Individualism''. Although the planned book was never completed, a condensed version was published as an essay titled "The Only Path to Tomorrow", in the January 1944 edition of ''Reader's Digest'' magazine.

While working in Hollywood, Rand extended her involvement with free-market and anti-communist activism. She became involved with the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a Hollywood anti-Communist group, and wrote articles on the group's behalf. She also joined the anti-Communist American Writers Association. A visit by Isabel Paterson to meet with Rand's California associates led to a final falling out between the two when Paterson made comments that Rand saw as rude to valued political allies. In 1947, during the Second Red Scare, Rand testified as a "friendly witness" before the United States House Un-American Activities Committee. Her testimony described the disparity between her personal experiences in the Soviet Union and the portrayal of it in the 1944 film ''Song of Russia''. Rand argued that the film grossly misrepresented conditions in the Soviet Union, portraying life there as being much better and happier than it actually was. When asked about her feelings on the effectiveness of the investigations after the hearings, Rand described the process as "futile".

After several delays, the film version of ''The Fountainhead'' was released in 1949. Although it used Rand's screenplay with minimal alterations, she "disliked the movie from beginning to end," complaining about its editing, acting and other elements.

''Atlas Shrugged'' and Objectivism

After the publication of ''The Fountainhead'', Rand received numerous letters from readers, some of whom it had profoundly influenced. In 1951 Rand moved from Los Angeles to New York City, where she gathered a group of these admirers around her. This group (jokingly designated "The Collective") included future Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a young psychology student named Nathan Blumenthal (later Nathaniel Branden) and his wife Barbara, and Barbara's cousin Leonard Peikoff. At first the group was an informal gathering of friends who met with Rand on weekends at her apartment to discuss philosophy. Later she began allowing them to read the drafts of her new novel, ''Atlas Shrugged'', as the manuscript pages were written. In 1954 Rand's close relationship with the much younger Nathaniel Branden turned into a romantic affair, with the consent of their spouses.

''Atlas Shrugged'', published in 1957, was Rand's ''magnum opus''. Rand described the theme of the novel as "the role of the mind in man's existence—and, as a corollary, the demonstration of a new moral philosophy: the morality of rational self-interest." It advocates the core tenets of Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and expresses her concept of human achievement. The plot involves a dystopian United States in which the most creative industrialists, scientists and artists go on strike and retreat to a mountainous hideaway where they build an independent free economy. The novel's hero and leader of the strike, John Galt, describes the strike as "stopping the motor of the world" by withdrawing the minds of the individuals most contributing to the nation's wealth and achievement. With this fictional strike, Rand intended to illustrate that without the efforts of the rational and productive, the economy would collapse and society would fall apart. The novel includes elements of mystery and science fiction, and it contains Rand's most extensive statement of Objectivism in any of her works of fiction, a lengthy monologue delivered by Galt. ''Atlas Shrugged'' became an international bestseller, and in an interview with Mike Wallace, Rand declared herself "the most creative thinker alive." ''Atlas Shrugged'' was to be Rand's last work of fiction; a turning point in her life, it marked the end of Rand's career as a novelist and the beginning of her role as a popular philosopher. After completing the novel of more than one thousand pages, however, Rand fell into a severe depression that may have been aggravated by her use of prescription amphetamines.

In 1958 Nathaniel Branden established Nathaniel Branden Lectures, later incorporated as the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI), to promote Rand's philosophy. Collective members gave lectures for NBI and wrote articles for Objectivist periodicals that she edited. Rand later published some of these articles in book form. Critics, including some former NBI students and Branden himself, have described the culture of NBI as one of intellectual conformity and excessive reverence for Rand, with some describing NBI or the entire Objectivist movement as a cult or religion. Rand expressed opinions on a wide range of topics, including literature, music, sexuality, even facial hair, and some of her followers mimicked all her preferences, wearing clothes to match characters from her novels and buying furniture like hers. Rand was unimpressed with many of the NBI students and held them to strict standards, sometimes reacting coldly or angrily to those who disagreed with her. However, some former NBI students believe the extent of these behaviors has been exaggerated, with the problem being concentrated among Rand's closest followers in New York.

Later years

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Rand developed and promoted her Objectivist philosophy through her nonfiction works and by giving talks to students at institutions such as Yale University, Princeton University, Columbia University, Harvard University and MIT. She received an honorary doctorate from Lewis & Clark College in 1963. She also began delivering annual lectures at the Ford Hall Forum, responding afterward in her famously spirited form to questions from the audience. During these speeches and Q&A; sessions, she often took controversial stances on political and social issues of the day. These included supporting abortion rights, opposing the Vietnam War and the military draft (but condemning many draft dodgers as "bums"), supporting Israel in the Arab-Israeli War of 1973 as "civilized men fighting savages", saying European colonists had the right to take land from American Indians, and calling homosexuality "immoral" and "disgusting", while also advocating the repeal of all laws against it. She also endorsed several Republican candidates for President of the United States, most strongly Barry Goldwater in 1964, whose candidacy she promoted in several articles for ''The Objectivist Newsletter''. In 1964 Nathaniel Branden began an affair with the young actress Patrecia Scott, whom he later married. Nathaniel and Barbara Branden kept the affair hidden from Rand. When she learned of it in 1968, though her romantic relationship with Branden had already ended, Rand terminated her relationship with both Brandens, which led to the closure of NBI. Rand published an article in ''The Objectivist'' repudiating Nathaniel Branden for dishonesty and other "irrational behavior in his private life." Branden later apologized in an interview to "every student of Objectivism" for "perpetuating the Ayn Rand mystique" and for "contributing to that dreadful atmosphere of intellectual repressiveness that pervades the Objectivist movement."

A heavy smoker, Rand underwent surgery for lung cancer in 1974. Several more of her closest associates parted company with her and during the late 1970s her activities within the Objectivist movement declined, especially after the death of her husband, on November 9, 1979. One of her final projects was work on a never-completed television adaptation of ''Atlas Shrugged''.

Rand died of heart failure on March 6, 1982, at her home in New York City, and was interred in the Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, New York. Rand's funeral was attended by some of her prominent followers, including Alan Greenspan. A six-foot floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign was placed near her casket. In her will, Rand named Leonard Peikoff the heir to her estate.

Philosophy

Rand named her philosophy "Objectivism", describing its essence as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." She considered Objectivism a systematic philosophy and laid out positions on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy and esthetics.

In metaphysics, Rand embraced philosophical realism and atheism, and opposed anything she regarded as mysticism or supernaturalism, including all forms of religion. In epistemology, she considered all knowledge to be based on sense perception, the validity of which she considered axiomatic, and reason, which she described as "the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses." She rejected all claims of non-perceptual or ''a priori'' knowledge, including "'instinct,' 'intuition,' 'revelation,' or any form of 'just knowing.'" In her ''Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology'', Rand presented a theory of concept formation and endorsed the rejection of the analytic–synthetic dichotomy.

In ethics, Rand argued for rational egoism (rational self-interest), as the guiding moral principle. She said the individual should "exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself." She controversially referred to egoism as "the virtue of selfishness" in her book of that title, in which she presented her solution to the is-ought problem by describing a meta-ethical theory that based morality in the needs of "man's survival ''qua'' man". She condemned ethical altruism as incompatible with the requirements of human life and happiness, and held that the initiation of force was evil and irrational, writing in ''Atlas Shrugged'' that "Force and mind are opposites".

Rand's political philosophy emphasized individual rights (including property rights), and she considered ''laissez-faire'' capitalism the only moral social system because in her view it was the only system based on the protection of those rights. She was a fierce opponent of all forms of collectivism and statism, including fascism, communism, socialism, and the welfare state. Rand believed rights should be enforced by a constitutionally limited government. Although her political views are often classified as conservative or libertarian, she preferred the term "radical for capitalism". She worked with conservatives on political projects, but she disagreed with them (and they with her) over issues such as religion and ethics. She denounced libertarianism, which she associated with anarchism. She rejected anarchism as a naïve theory based in subjectivism that could only lead to collectivism in practice. Some non-Objectivist philosophers, such as Norman P. Barry and Chandran Kukathas, have questioned her consistency in rejecting anarchism, while some self-proclaimed Objectivists called on her to endorse anarcho-capitalism.

Rand's esthetics defined art as a "selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments." According to Rand, art allows philosophical concepts to be presented in a concrete form that can be easily grasped, thereby fulfilling a need of human consciousness. As a writer, the art form Rand focused on most closely was literature, where she considered Romanticism to be the approach that most accurately reflected the existence of human free will. She described her own approach to literature as "romantic realism".

Rand acknowledged Aristotle as her greatest influence and remarked that in the history of philosophy she could only recommend "three A's"—Aristotle, Aquinas, and Ayn Rand. She also found early inspiration in Friedrich Nietzsche, and scholars have found indications of his influence in early notes from Rand's journals, in passages from the first edition of ''We the Living'' (which Rand later revised), and in her overall writing style. However, by the time she wrote ''The Fountainhead'', Rand had turned against Nietzsche's ideas, and the extent of his influence on her even during her early years is disputed. Ayn Rand shared with Nietzsche the cult of human ego, which ''The Fountainhead'' intended to express. That is why she quoted a passage from ''Beyond good and evil'' which illustrates this cult in the manuscript of the book. She nonetheless decided to move it out once ''The Fountainhead'' was going to be published, because of her rejection of Nietzsche's mysticism and irrationalism .

Among the philosophers Rand held in particular disdain was Immanuel Kant, whom she referred to as a "monster" and "the most evil man in history", although Objectivist philosophers George Walsh and Fred Seddon have argued that she misinterpreted Kant and exaggerated their differences.

In 1976, Rand said that her most important contributions to philosophy were her "theory of concepts, [her] ethics, and [her] discovery in politics that evil—the violation of rights—consists of the initiation of force." She believed epistemology was a foundational branch of philosophy and considered the advocacy of reason to be the single most significant aspect of her philosophy, stating, "I am not ''primarily'' an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not ''primarily'' an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows."

Reception and legacy

Reviews

During Rand's lifetime, her work evoked both extreme praise and condemnation. Rand's first novel, ''We the Living'', was admired by the literary critic H.L. Mencken, her Broadway play ''Night of January 16th'' was both a critical and popular success, and ''The Fountainhead'' was hailed by a reviewer in ''The New York Times'' as "masterful". Rand's novels were derided by some critics when they were first published as being long and melodramatic. However, they became bestsellers largely through word of mouth.

The first reviews Rand received were for ''Night of January 16th''. Reviews of the production were largely positive, but Rand considered even positive reviews to be embarrassing because of significant changes made to her script by the producer. Rand believed that her first novel, ''We the Living'', was not widely reviewed, but Rand scholar Michael S. Berliner says "it was the most reviewed of any of her works," with approximately 125 different reviews being published in more than 200 publications. Overall these reviews were more positive than the reviews she received for her later work. Her 1938 novella ''Anthem'' received little attention from reviewers, both for its first publication in England and for subsequent re-issues.

Rand's first bestseller, ''The Fountainhead'', received far fewer reviews than ''We the Living'', and reviewers' opinions were mixed. There was a positive review in ''The New York Times'' that Rand greatly appreciated. The reviewer called Rand "a writer of great power" who wrote "brilliantly, beautifully and bitterly," and stated that "you will not be able to read this masterful book without thinking through some of the basic concepts of our time." There were other positive reviews, but Rand dismissed most of them as either not understanding her message or as being from unimportant publications. Some negative reviews focused on the length of the novel, such as one that called it "a whale of a book" and another that said "anyone who is taken in by it deserves a stern lecture on paper-rationing." Other negative reviews called the characters unsympathetic and Rand's style "offensively pedestrian."

Rand's 1957 novel ''Atlas Shrugged'', was widely reviewed, and many of the reviews were strongly negative. In the ''National Review'', conservative author Whittaker Chambers called the book "sophomoric" and "remarkably silly". He described the tone of the book as "shrillness without reprieve" and accused Rand of supporting the same godless system as the Soviets, claiming "From almost any page of ''Atlas Shrugged'', a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: 'To a gas chamber—go! ''Atlas Shrugged'' received positive reviews from a few publications, including praise from the noted book reviewer John Chamberlain, but Rand scholar Mimi Reisel Gladstein later wrote that "reviewers seemed to vie with each other in a contest to devise the cleverest put-downs," calling it "execrable claptrap" and "a nightmare;" they said it was "written out of hate" and showed "remorseless hectoring and prolixity." Author Flannery O'Connor wrote in a letter to a friend that "The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail."

Rand's nonfiction received far fewer reviews than her novels had. The tenor of the criticism for her first nonfiction book, ''For the New Intellectual'', was similar to that for ''Atlas Shrugged'', with philosopher Sidney Hook likening her certainty to "the way philosophy is written in the Soviet Union", and author Gore Vidal calling her viewpoint "nearly perfect in its immorality". Her subsequent books got progressively less attention from reviewers.

On the 100th anniversary of Rand's birth in 2005, Edward Rothstein, writing for ''The New York Times'', referred to her fictional writing as quaint utopian "retro fantasy" and programmatic neo-Romanticism of the misunderstood artist, while criticizing her characters' "isolated rejection of democratic society". In 2007, book critic Leslie Clark described her fiction as "romance novels with a patina of pseudo-philosophy". In 2009, ''GQ''s critic columnist Tom Carson described her books as "capitalism's version of middlebrow religious novels" such as ''Ben-Hur'' and the ''Left Behind'' series.

Popular interest

In 1991, a survey conducted for the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club asked club members what the most influential book in the respondent's life was. Rand's ''Atlas Shrugged'' was the second most popular choice, after the Bible. Rand's books continue to be widely sold and read, with 25 million copies sold as of 2007 and another 800,000 sold in 2008. (This includes approximately 300,000 copies distributed for free by the Ayn Rand Institute.) Although Rand's influence has been greatest in the United States, there has been international interest in her work.

Rand's contemporary admirers included fellow novelists, such as Ira Levin, Kay Nolte Smith and L. Neil Smith, and later writers such as Erika Holzer and Terry Goodkind have been influenced by her. Other artists who have cited Rand as an important influence on their lives and thought include comic book artist Steve Ditko and musician Neil Peart of Rush. Rand provided a positive view of business, and in response business executives and entrepreneurs have admired and promoted her work. John Allison of BB&T; and Ed Snider of Comcast Spectacor have funded the promotion of Rand's ideas, while Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, and John P. Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, among others, have said they consider Rand crucial to their success.

Rand and her works have been referred to in a variety of media. References to her have appeared on television shows including animated sitcoms, live-action comedies, dramas, and game shows. She, or characters based on her, figure prominently (in positive and negative lights) in literary and science fiction novels by prominent American authors. Nick Gillespie, editor in chief of ''Reason'', has remarked that "Rand's is a tortured immortality, one in which she's as likely to be a punch line as a protagonist..." and that "jibes at Rand as cold and inhuman, run through the popular culture." Two movies have been made about Rand's life. A 1997 documentary film, ''Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life'', was nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. ''The Passion of Ayn Rand'', a 1999 television adaptation of the book of the same name, won several awards. Rand's image also appears on a U.S. postage stamp designed by artist Nick Gaetano.

Political influence

Although she rejected the labels "conservative" and "libertarian," Rand has had continuing influence on right-wing politics and libertarianism. Jim Powell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, considers Rand one of the three most important women (along with Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson) of modern American libertarianism, and David Nolan, one of the founders of the Libertarian Party, stated that "without Ayn Rand, the libertarian movement would not exist." In his history of the libertarian movement, journalist Brian Doherty described her as "the most influential libertarian of the twentieth century to the public at large," and biographer Jennifer Burns referred to her as "the ultimate gateway drug to life on the right."

Despite Rand's untraditionally Republican stance as a pro-choice atheist, the political figures who cite Rand as an influence are most often conservative or libertarian members of the United States Republican Party. A 1987 article in ''The New York Times'' referred to her as the Reagan administration's "novelist laureate". Republican Congressmen and conservative pundits have acknowledged her influence on their lives and recommended her novels.

The late-2000s financial crisis spurred renewed interest in her works, especially ''Atlas Shrugged'', which some saw as foreshadowing the crisis, and opinion articles compared real-world events with the plot of the novel. During this time, signs mentioning Rand and her fictional hero John Galt appeared at Tea Party protests. There was also increased criticism of her ideas, especially from the political left, with critics blaming the economic crisis on her support of selfishness and free markets, particularly through her influence on Alan Greenspan. For example, ''Mother Jones'' remarked that "Rand's particular genius has always been her ability to turn upside down traditional hierarchies and recast the wealthy, the talented, and the powerful as the oppressed", while ''The Nation'' alleged similarities between the "moral syntax of Randianism" and fascism.

Academic reaction

During Rand's lifetime her work received little attention from academic scholars. When the first academic book about Rand's philosophy appeared in 1971, its author declared writing about Rand "a treacherous undertaking" that could lead to "guilt by association" for taking her seriously. A few articles about Rand's ideas appeared in academic journals prior to her death in 1982, many of them in ''The Personalist''. One of these was "On the Randian Argument" by respected libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick, who argued that her meta-ethical argument is unsound and fails to solve the is–ought problem posed by David Hume. Some responses to Nozick by other academic philosophers were also published in ''The Personalist'' arguing that Nozick misstated Rand's case. Academic consideration of Rand as a literary figure during her life was even more limited. Gladstein was unable to find any scholarly articles about Rand's novels when she began researching her in 1973, and only three such articles appeared during the rest of the 1970s.

Since Rand's death in 1982, interest in her work has gradually increased. Historian Jennifer Burns has identified "three overlapping waves" of scholarly interest in Rand, the most recent of which is "an explosion of scholarship" in the 2000s. However, few universities currently include Rand or Objectivism as a philosophical specialty or research area, with many literature and philosophy departments dismissing her as a pop culture phenomenon rather than a subject for serious study.

Academics with an interest in Rand, such as Gladstein, Sciabarra, Allan Gotthelf, Edwin A. Locke and Tara Smith, have taught her work in academic institutions. Sciabarra co-edits the ''Journal of Ayn Rand Studies'', a nonpartisan peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study of Rand's philosophical and literary work. In 1987 Gotthelf helped found the Ayn Rand Society, and has been active in sponsoring seminars about Rand and her ideas. Smith has written several academic books and papers on Rand's ideas, including ''Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist'', a volume on Rand's ethical theory published by Cambridge University Press. Rand's ideas have also been made subjects of study at Clemson and Duke universities. Scholars of English and American literature have largely ignored her work, although attention to her literary work has increased since the 1990s.

Some academic philosophers have criticized Rand for what they consider her lack of rigor and limited understanding of philosophical subject matter. ''The Philosophical Lexicon'', a satirical web site maintained by philosophers Daniel Dennett and Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen, defines a 'rand' as: "An angry tirade occasioned by mistaking philosophical disagreement for a personal attack and/or evidence of unspeakable moral corruption." Chris Matthew Sciabarra has called into question the motives of some of Rand's critics because of what he calls the unusual hostility of their criticisms. Sciabarra writes, "The left was infuriated by her anti-communist, pro-capitalist politics, whereas the right was disgusted with her atheism and civil libertarianism."

Rand scholars Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen, while stressing the importance and originality of her thought, describe her style as "literary, hyperbolic and emotional." Philosopher Jack Wheeler says that despite "the incessant bombast and continuous venting of Randian rage," Rand's ethics are "a most immense achievement, the study of which is vastly more fruitful than any other in contemporary thought." In the ''Literary Encyclopedia'' entry for Rand written in 2001, John Lewis declared that "Rand wrote the most intellectually challenging fiction of her generation". In a 1999 interview in the ''Chronicle of Higher Education,'' Rand scholar Chris Matthew Sciabarra commented, "I know they laugh at Rand," while forecasting a growth of interest in her work in the academic community.

Objectivist movement

In 1985, Rand's heir Leonard Peikoff established the Ayn Rand Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to spreading Rand's ideas and promoting her works. In 1990, philosopher David Kelley founded the Institute for Objectivist Studies, now known as The Atlas Society. In 2001 historian John McCaskey organized the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship, which provides grants for scholarly work on Objectivism in academia. The charitable foundation of BB&T; Corporation has also given grants for teaching Rand's ideas or works. The University of Texas at Austin, the University of Pittsburgh, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are among the schools that have received grants. In some cases these grants have been controversial due to their requiring research or teaching related to Rand.

Selected works

References

Works cited

External links

Ayn Rand Biographical FAQ from the Objectivism Reference Center

Frequently Asked Questions About Ayn Rand from the Ayn Rand Institute

What's Living and Dead in Ayn Rand's Moral and Political Thought by the Cato Institute

Rand's papers at The Library of Congress

Ayn Rand Lexicon – searchable database

Category:1905 births Category:1982 deaths Category:20th-century philosophers Category:American anti-communists Category:American atheists Category:American dramatists and playwrights Category:American essayists Category:American novelists Category:American philosophers Category:American screenwriters Category:American writers of Russian descent Category:Anti-Christianity Category:Atheist philosophers Category:Atheism activists Category:Burials at Kensico Cemetery Category:Deaths from heart failure Category:Jewish atheists Category:Libertarian theorists Category:Objectivists Category:Pseudonymous writers Category:Russian atheists Category:Saint Petersburg State University alumni Category:Soviet emigrants to the United States Category:Women philosophers Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:Metaphysicians Category:Epistemologists Category:Ethicists Category:Philosophers of mind Category:Political philosophers Category:Political theorists

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Coordinates	37°46′45.48″N122°25′9.12″N
birth name	Michael Francis Moore
birth date	April 23, 1954
birth place	Flint, Michigan, United States
years active	1972–present
occupation	Actor, director, screenwriter, producer
spouse	Kathleen Glynn (1991–present)
alma mater	University of Michigan–Flint (dropped out)
website	http://michaelmoore.com/ }}

Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an American filmmaker, author and liberal political commentator. He is the director and producer of ''Bowling for Columbine'', ''Fahrenheit 9/11'', ''Sicko'', and ''Capitalism: A Love Story'', four of the top ten highest-grossing documentaries of all time. In September 2008, he released his first free movie on the Internet, ''Slacker Uprising'', documenting his personal crusade to encourage more Americans to vote in presidential elections. He has also written and starred in the TV shows ''TV Nation'' and ''The Awful Truth''.

Moore criticizes globalization, large corporations, assault weapon ownership, U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the Iraq War, the American health care system, and capitalism in his written and cinematic works.

Early life

Moore was born in Flint, Michigan and raised in Davison, a suburb of Flint, by parents Veronica (née Wall), a secretary, and Frank Moore, an automotive assembly-line worker. At that time, the city of Flint was home to many General Motors factories, where his parents and grandfather worked. His uncle LaVerne was one of the founders of the United Automobile Workers labor union and participated in the Flint Sit-Down Strike. Moore has described his parents as "Irish Catholic Democrats, basic liberal good people."

Moore was brought up Roman Catholic, attended parochial St. John's Elementary School for primary school and originally intended to join the seminary. He then attended Davison High School, where he was active in both drama and debate, graduating in 1972. As a member of the Boy Scouts of America, he achieved the rank of Eagle Scout. At the age of 18, he was elected to the Davison school board.

Career

After dropping out of the University of Michigan–Flint following his freshman year (where he wrote for the student newspaper ''The Michigan Times''), Moore worked at the local Buick plant. At 22 he founded the alternative weekly magazine ''The Flint Voice'', which soon changed its name to ''The Michigan Voice'' as it expanded to cover the entire state. In 1986, when Moore became the editor of ''Mother Jones'', a liberal political magazine, he moved to California and ''The Michigan Voice'' was shut down.

After four months at ''Mother Jones'', Moore was fired. Matt Labash of ''The Weekly Standard'' reported this was for refusing to print an article by Paul Berman that was critical of the Sandinista human rights record in Nicaragua. Moore refused to run the article, believing it to be inaccurate. "The article was flatly wrong and the worst kind of patronizing bullshit. You would scarcely know from it that the United States had been at war with Nicaragua for the last five years." Berman described Moore as a "very ideological guy and not a very well-educated guy" when asked about the incident. Moore believes that ''Mother Jones'' fired him because of the publisher's refusal to allow him to cover a story on the GM plant closings in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. He responded by putting laid-off GM worker Ben Hamper (who was also writing for the same magazine at the time) on the magazine's cover, leading to his termination. Moore sued for wrongful dismissal, and settled out of court for $58,000, providing him with seed money for his first film, ''Roger & Me.''

Directing/producing

; ''Roger & Me'': Moore first became famous for his 1989 film, ''Roger & Me'', a documentary about what happened to Flint, Michigan after General Motors closed its factories and opened new ones in Mexico, where the workers were paid much less. Since then Moore has been known as a critic of the neoliberal view of globalization. "Roger" is Roger B. Smith, former CEO and president of General Motors.

; ''Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint'': (1992) is a short (23-minute) documentary film that was aired on PBS. It is based on the feature-length film ''Roger & Me'' (1989) by Michael Moore. The film's title refers to Rhonda Britton, a Flint, Michigan, resident featured in both the 1989 and 1992 films who sells rabbits as either pets or meat.

; ''Canadian Bacon'': In 1995, Moore released a satirical film, ''Canadian Bacon'', which features a fictional US president (played by Alan Alda) engineering a fake war with Canada in order to boost his popularity. It is noted for containing a number of Canadian and American stereotypes, and for being Moore's only non-documentary film. The film is also one of the last featuring Canadian-born actor John Candy, and also features a number of cameos by other Canadian actors. In the film, several potential enemies for America's next great campaign are discussed by the president and his cabinet. (The scene was strongly influenced by the Stanley Kubrick film ''Dr. Strangelove.'') The President comments that declaring war on Canada was as ridiculous as declaring war on international terrorism. His military adviser, played by Rip Torn, quickly rebuffs this idea, saying that no one would care about "... a bunch of guys driving around blowing up rent-a-cars."

; ''The Big One'': In 1997, Moore directed ''The Big One'', which documents the tour publicizing his book ''Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American'', in which he criticizes mass layoffs despite record corporate profits. Among others, he targets Nike for outsourcing shoe production to Indonesia.

; ''Bowling for Columbine'': Moore's 2002 film, ''Bowling for Columbine'', probes the culture of guns and violence in the United States, taking as a starting point the Columbine High School massacre of 1999. ''Bowling for Columbine'' won the Anniversary Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and France's César Award as the Best Foreign Film. In the United States, it won the 2002 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. It also enjoyed great commercial and critical success for a film of its type and became, at the time, the highest-grossing mainstream-released documentary (a record now held by Moore's ''Fahrenheit 9/11''). It was praised by some for illuminating a subject slighted by the mainstream media.

; ''Fahrenheit 9/11'': ''Fahrenheit 9/11'' examines America in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, particularly the record of the Bush administration and alleged links between the families of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden. ''Fahrenheit'' was awarded the ''Palme d'Or'', the top honor at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival; it was the first documentary film to win the prize since 1956. Moore later announced that ''Fahrenheit 9/11'' would not be in consideration for the 2005 Academy Award for Documentary Feature, but instead for the Academy Award for Best Picture. He stated he wanted the movie to be seen by a few million more people via a television broadcast prior to election day. According to Moore, "Academy rules forbid the airing of a documentary on television within nine months of its theatrical release", and since the November 2 election was fewer than nine months after the film's release it would have been disqualified for the Documentary Oscar. However, Fahrenheit received no Oscar nomination for Best Picture. The title of the film alludes to the classic book ''Fahrenheit 451'' about a future totalitarian state in which books are banned; according to the book, paper begins to burn at 451 degrees Fahrenheit. The pre-release subtitle of the film confirms the allusion: "The temperature at which freedom burns." At the box office, as of 2010 ''Fahrenheit 9/11'' is the highest-grossing documentary of all time, taking in over US$200 million worldwide, including United States box office revenue of almost US$120 million. In February 2011, Moore sued producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein for US$2.7 million in unpaid profits from the film, claiming they used "Hollywood accounting tricks" to avoid paying him the money.

; ''Sicko'': Moore directed this film about the American health care system, focusing particularly on the managed-care and pharmaceutical industries. At least four major pharmaceutical companies—Pfizer, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline—ordered their employees not to grant any interviews to Moore. According to Moore on a letter at his website, "roads that often surprise us and lead us to new ideas—and challenge us to reconsider the ones we began with have caused some minor delays." The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 19 May 2007, receiving a lengthy standing ovation, and was released in the U.S. and Canada on 29 June 2007. The film was the subject of some controversy when it became known that Moore went to Cuba with chronically ill September 11th rescue workers to shoot parts of the film. The United States is looking into whether this violates the trade embargo. The film is currently ranked the fourth highest grossing documentary of all time and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature.

; ''Captain Mike Across America'':Moore takes a look at the politics of college students in what he calls "Bush Administration America" with this film shot during Moore's 60-city college campus tour in the months leading up to the 2004 election. The film was later re-edited by Moore into ''Slacker Uprising''.

; ''Capitalism: A Love Story'': On September 23, 2009, Moore released a new movie titled ''Capitalism: A Love Story'', which looks at the late-2000s financial crisis and the U.S. economy during the transition between the incoming Obama Administration and the outgoing Bush Administration. Addressing a press conference at its release, Moore said, "Democracy is not a spectator sport, it's a participatory event. If we don't participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy. So Obama will rise or fall based not so much on what he does but on what we do to support him."

Acting

Moore has dabbled in acting, following a 2000 supporting role in ''Lucky Numbers'' as the cousin of Lisa Kudrow's character, who agrees to be part of the scheme concocted by John Travolta's character. He also had a cameo in his ''Canadian Bacon'' as an anti-Canada activist. In 2004, he did a cameo, as a news journalist, in ''The Fever'', starring Vanessa Redgrave in the lead.

Television

Between 1994 and 1995, he directed and hosted the BBC television series ''TV Nation'', which followed the format of news magazine shows but covered topics they avoid. The series aired on BBC2 in the UK. The series was also aired in the US on NBC in 1994 for 9 episodes and again for 8 episodes on Fox in 1995.

His other major series was ''The Awful Truth'', which satirized actions by big corporations and politicians. It aired on Channel 4 in the UK, and the Bravo network in the US, in 1999 and 2000.

Another 1999 series, ''Michael Moore Live'', was aired in the UK only on Channel 4, though it was broadcast from New York. This show had a similar format to ''The Awful Truth'', but also incorporated phone-ins and a live stunt each week.

In 1999 Moore won the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award in Arts and Entertainment, for being the executive producer and host of ''The Awful Truth'', where he was also described as "muckraker, author and documentary filmmaker".

Music videos

Moore has directed several music videos, including two for Rage Against the Machine for songs from ''The Battle of Los Angeles'': "Sleep Now in the Fire" and "Testify". He was threatened with arrest during the shooting of "Sleep Now in the Fire", which was filmed on Wall Street; the city of New York had denied the band permission to play there, although the band and Moore had secured a federal permit to perform.

He also directed the videos for R.E.M. single "All the Way to Reno (You're Gonna Be a Star)" in 2001 and the System of a Down song "Boom!".

Appearances in other documentaries

Moore appeared in ''The Drugging of Our Children'', a 2005 documentary about over-prescription of psychiatric medication to children and teenagers, directed by Gary Null a proponent of Alternative Medicine. In the film Moore agrees with Gary Null that Ritalin and other similar drugs are over-prescribed, saying that they are seen as a "pacifier".

Moore appeared on fellow Flint natives Grand Funk Railroad's edition of Behind The Music.

Moore appeared as an off-camera interviewer in ''Blood in the Face'', a 1991 documentary about white supremacy groups. The film centers around a neo-Nazi gathering in Michigan.

Moore appeared in ''The Yes Men'', a 2003 documentary about two men who pose as the World Trade Organization. He appears during a segment concerning working conditions in Mexico and Latin America.

Moore was interviewed for the 2004 documentary, ''The Corporation.'' One of his highlighted quotes was: "The problem is the profit motive: for corporations, there's no such thing as 'enough'".

Moore appeared in the 2006 documentary ''I'm Going to Tell You a Secret'', which chronicles Madonna during her 2004 Re-Invention World Tour. Moore attended her show in New York City at Madison Square Garden.

Books

Moore has authored three best-selling books:

''Downsize This!'' (1996), about politics and corporate crime in the United States,

''Stupid White Men'' (2001), ostensibly a critique of American domestic and foreign policy but, by Moore's own admission, "a book of political humor," and

''Dude, Where's My Country?'' (2003), an examination of the Bush family's relationships with Saudi royalty, the Bin Laden family, and the energy industry, and a call-to-action for liberals in the 2004 election.

Political views

Though Moore rejects the label "political activist", he has been active in promoting his political views. According to John Flesher of the Associated Press, Moore is known for his "fiery left-wing populism," and publications such as the Socialist Worker Online have hailed him as the "new Tom Paine."

Moore was a high-profile guest at both the 2004 Democratic National Convention and the 2004 Republican National Convention, chronicling his impressions in ''USA Today''. He was criticized in a speech by Republican Senator John McCain as "a disingenuous film-maker." Moore laughed and waved as Republican attendees jeered, later chanting "four more years." Moore gestured his thumb and finger at the crowd, which translates into "loser."

During September and October 2004, Moore spoke at universities and colleges in swing states during his "Slacker Uprising Tour". The tour gave away ramen and underwear to young people who promised to vote. This provoked public denunciations from the Michigan Republican Party and attempts to convince the government that Moore should be arrested for buying votes, but since Moore did not tell the "slackers" involved for ''whom'' to vote, just to vote, district attorneys refused to get involved. Quite possibly the most controversial stop during the tour was Utah Valley State College in Orem, Utah. A fight for his right to speak ensued and resulted in massive public debates and a media blitz. Death threats, bribes and lawsuits followed. The event was chronicled in the documentary film ''This Divided State''.

Despite having supported Ralph Nader in 2000, Moore urged Nader not to run in the 2004 election so as not to split the left vote. On ''Real Time with Bill Maher'', Moore and Maher knelt before Nader to plead with him to stay out of the race. In June 2004, Moore stated that he is not a member of the Democratic party. Although Moore endorsed General Wesley Clark for the Democratic nomination on January 14, Clark withdrew from the primary race on February 11.

Moore drew attention when charging publicly that Bush was AWOL during his service in the National Guard, describing Bush as "The Deserter" (see George W. Bush military service controversy).

On April 21, 2008, Moore endorsed Barack Obama for President, stating that Hillary Clinton's recent actions had been "disgusting."

In December 2010, Moore publicly offered to contribute $20,000 to the bail of Julian Assange, then held in custody in Britain after Swedish prosecutors sent a European Arrest Warrant, wanting to question Assange for alleged sex crimes. Moore also wrote an open letter to the Swedish government, citing statistics on the increasing number of reported rape cases in Sweden. Some of these statistics appear to have been misinterpreted.

Personal life

Since 1990, Moore has been married to producer Kathleen Glynn, with whom he has a stepdaughter named Natalie. They live in Traverse City, Michigan.

Moore is a Catholic, but has said he disagrees with church teaching on subjects such as abortion and same-sex marriage. He acquired a life membership to the National Rifle Association following the Columbine massacre.

In 2005 ''Time'' magazine named him one of the world's 100 most influential people. Also in 2005, Moore started the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Traverse City, Michigan.

Moore's net worth has been estimated at "8 figures".

Controversy

Moore was criticized by Sean Hannity for criticizing capitalism while benefiting from it himself.

Published work

Bibliography

Filmography

''Roger & Me'' (1989)

''Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint'' (1992) (TV)

''Canadian Bacon'' (1995)

''The Big One'' (1997)

''And Justice for All'' (1998) (TV)

''Lucky Numbers'' (2000) (as actor)

''Bowling for Columbine'' (2002)

''The Corporation'' (2003)

''Fahrenheit 9/11'' (2004) "Palme d'Or" in Cannes

''Sicko'' (2007)

''Captain Mike Across America'' (2007)

''Slacker Uprising'' (2008)

''Capitalism: A Love Story'' (2009)

Television series

''TV Nation'' (1994)

''The Awful Truth'' (1999)

''Michael Moore Live'' (1999)

References

External links

Michael Moore on YouTube

The Populist: Michael Moore Can Make You Cry / ''New Yorker'' (16 February 2004)

America's Teacher by Naomi Klein, ''The Nation'', September 23, 2009

A 2007 NOW on PBS interview with Michael Moore What makes him tick, and why our health care system ticks him off

Michael Moore on His Life, His Films and His Activism - video interview by ''Democracy Now!''

Michael Moore on 2010 Midterm Elections, the Tea Party, and the Future of the Democratic Party

Category:1954 births Category:Living people Category:People from Flint, Michigan Category:Actors from Michigan Category:American alternative journalists Category:American anti–Iraq War activists Category:American anti-war activists Category:American documentary filmmakers Category:American film actors Category:American film directors Category:American health activists Category:American political writers Category:American social commentators Category:American writers of Irish descent Category:César Award winners Category:Documentary film directors Category:Eagle Scouts Category:Emmy Award winners Category:National Rifle Association members Category:University of Michigan alumni Category:Writers from Michigan Category:Writers Guild of America Award winners Category:Youth empowerment individuals Category:Youth rights individuals Category:Roman Catholic activists Category:Academy Award winners

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Jerry Harris (b. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, born November 23, 1945) is an African American abstract sculptor, collagist and writer. Harris is primarily a constructivist sculptor, working in media such as wood, stone, bronze, fiberglass, clay, metal, mixed media (found objects), and collage.

After graduating from high school in Pittsburgh, he spent a year in Portland, Oregon with his uncle, professional wrestler and referee Shag Thomas. He attended community college in Portland and then transferred to Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, and San Francisco State University.

Harris then studied sculpture under James Lee Hansen, a leading Pacific Northwest sculptor who taught at Portland State University, Portland, Oregon until his retirement. Subsequently, Harris was accepted in the international sculptor's program at the St Martins School of Art, now Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design London, England were his teachers included Sir Anthony Caro, Phillip King and Frank Martin. He also did special studies in bronze casting at the former ''The Central School of Art and Design'', London, under Henry Abercrombie.

Harris lived in Stockholm and Lund, Sweden for many years until the death of his wife, the Swede Britt-Marie Olofsson-Harris in 1996. He befriended many African American visual artists while living in Sweden, such as Herbert Gentry and Harvey Cropper. In 1998 Harris returned to the United States and his home town of Pittsburgh. He was elected into ''The Associated Artists of Pittsburgh'', the nation's second oldest artists' association, where he felt welcomed by the African American sculptor Thaddeus Mosley. Harris later moved to Eugene, Oregon, and currently lives in Chico, California.

Since 1988 Harris is a member of the The Swedish Sculptors Association. His sculptures can be found in many private national and international collections, and in the permanent Swedish National Art Collection in Stockholm (Statenskonstrad). He has exhibited throughout Sweden, Europe, and the United States in various galleries and museums.

References

External links

Jerry Harris official website

Article on Jerry Harris, accessed 10/25/09

Article on Jerry Harris, accessed 1/23/08

Video clips showing the art of Jerry Harris

Jerry Harris' African American Art Blog

Category:1945 births Category:Living people Category:American artists Category:Contemporary artists Category:African American artists Category:American sculptors Category:Contemporary sculptors Category:20th-century sculptors Category:21st-century sculptors Category:Modern sculptors Category:Collage Category:Artists from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Category:People from Chico, California

Joyce Oldham Appleby (born April 9, 1929) is an American historian. She is Professor Emerita of History at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA. She served as president of the Organization of American Historians (1991) and the American Historical Association (1997).

Appleby was born in Omaha, Nebraska, of English, Scotch-Irish and Norwegian stock. Her father was a businessman, and she attended public schools in Omaha, Dallas, Kansas City, Evanston, Phoenix, and Pasadena.

Appleby received her B.A. degree from Stanford University in 1950, and then became a magazine writer in New York. Returning to academia, she took her Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate School in 1966. She taught at San Diego State University from 1967-81, then became a professor of history at UCLA. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993. Appleby is the widow of Andrew Bell, a professor of European history at San Diego State University. They have three children together.

Appleby is a specialist in historiography and the political thought of the early American Republic, with special interests in Republicanism, liberalism, and the history of ideas about capitalism. She has served on the editorial boards of numerous scholarly journals and editorial projects, and has received prominent national fellowships.

Bibliography

Articles

"Reconciliation and the Northern Novelist, 1865-1880", ''Civil War History'', Vol. 10 (June 1964)

"The Jefferson-Adams Rupture and the First French Translation of John Adams' ''Defence''", ''American Historical Review'', Vol. 73, No. 4 (April 1968)

"The New Republican Synthesis and the Changing Political Ideas of John Adams", ''American Quarterly'', Vol. 25, No. 5 (December 1973)

"Liberalism and the American Revolution", ''New England Quarterly'', Vol. 49, No. 1 (March 1976)

"The Social Origins of American Revolutionary Ideology", ''Journal of American History'', Vol. 64, No. 4 (March 1978)

"Modernization Theory and the Formation of Modern Social Theories in England and America", ''Comparative Studies in Society and History'', Vol. 20, No. 2 (April 1978)

"Commercial Farming and the 'Agrarian Myth' in the Early Republic", ''Journal of American History'', Vol. 68, No. 4 (March 1982)

"What Is Still American in the Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson?", ''William and Mary Quarterly'', Vol. 39, No. 2 (April 1982)

"History as Art: Another View", ''American Quarterly'', Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring 1982)

"Republicanism and Ideology", ''American Quarterly'', Vol. 37, No. 4 (Autumn 1985)

"Republicanism in Old and New Contexts", ''William and Mary Quarterly'', Vol. 43, No. 1 (January 1986)

"The American Heritage: The Heirs and the Disinherited", ''Journal of American History'', Vol. 74, No. 3 (December 1987)

"One Good Turn Deserves Another: Moving beyond the Linguistic; A Response to David Harlan", ''American Historical Review'', Vol. 94, No. 5 (December 1989)

"Recovering America's Historic Diversity: Beyond Exceptionalism", ''Journal of American History'', Vol. 79, No. 2 (September 1992)

"The Personal Roots of the First American Temperance Movement", ''Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society'', Vol. 141, No. 2 (June 1997)

"The Power of History", ''American Historical Review'', Vol. 103, No.1 (February 1998)

"The Americans' Higher-Law Thinking behind Higher Lawmaking", ''Yale Law Journal'', Vol. 108, No. 8 (June 1999)

Books

''Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth Century England'' (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1978) ISBN 0-691-05265-4

''Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s'' (New York: New York University Press, 1984) ISBN 0-8147-0581-2

''Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination'' (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992) ISBN 0-674-53012-8

(co-author) ''Telling the Truth About History'' (New York, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994) ISBN 978-0-393-31286-7

(ed.) ''Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspective'' (New York: Routledge, 1996) ISBN 0-415-91382-9

(ed.) ''Recollections of the Early Republic: Selected Autobiographies'' (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997) ISBN 1-55553-301-9

''Inheriting the Revolution : The First Generation of Americans'' (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 2000) ISBN 0-674-00236-9

''The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism'' (New York, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010) ISBN 978-0-393-06894-8

See also

List of Stanford University people

List of University of California, Los Angeles people

References

External links

Faculty page at UCLA

Online NewsHour: A Conversation With Joyce Appleby

Booknotes: Joyce Appleby

Joyce Appleby, ''The Power of History,'' AHA Presidential Address Retrieved 19 April 2010

Category:1929 births Category:American historians Category:Claremont Graduate University alumni Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:Feminist historians Category:Living people Category:Historians of the United States Category:Presidents of the American Historical Association Category:San Diego State University faculty Category:Stanford University alumni Category:University of California, Los Angeles faculty