The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution

by Ayn Rand

Book Overview

In the tumultuous late 60s and early 70s, a social movement known as the "New Left" emerged as a major cultural influence, especially on the youth of America. It was a movement that embraced "flower-power" and psychedelic "consciousness-expansion," that lionized Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro and launched the Black Panthers and the Theater of the Absurd.In Return Of The Primitive (originally published in 1971 as The New Left),...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452011841
• ISBN13: 9780452011847
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: New American Library
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 5.3" x 7.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Devastating Analysis of Today's Trends

If you are are serious about ideas and sympathetic to today's fashionable causes, such as feminism, environmentalism and multi-culturalism, this book will make you think again.Ayn Rand's essays are clear, incisive and compelling. Peter Schwartz's contributions are equally lucid. He has the remarkable ability to cut through the rationalizations and smokescreens thereby exposing the essence of an ideology. His attention to detail is astonshing. Ever considered why environmentalists use the term "environment" rather than "nature"? Schwartz has.Peter Schwartz has taken on a tough assignment; few question the validity of the causes he has in his sights. His is an unpopular position, but after reading this book you might wonder why.If you really want to understand today's trends, Ayn Rand and Peter Schwartz offer a concise and cogent analysis and a withering rebuttal unlike any other I have read. Highly Recommended.

A timely update of a vital text

It's hard to engage in hyperbole when it comes to praising Ayn Rand, she was a brilliant novelist, groundbreaking philosopher and accomplished communicator, all of the first order. "The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution," though its adroit assessment of the cultural conflict of 1960's and `70's clearly ranks among the crown jewels of the Objectivist corpus. Written at a time when America was in a confused retreat, facing the wholesale rejection of the principles that led to its spectacular rise and facing a future that seemed wrought with storm clouds, Ayn Rand cut through the haze like a laser, identifying the altruist moral premise of America's destroyers and prescribing the antidote. Her essays, like `The Comprachicos,' which identified the essence and effect of progressive education, or `Apollo and Dionysus,' which contrasted the Apollo moon launch with the Woodstock music festival, all eloquently identified the forces that were tearing America apart and what was needed to make it whole again.Yet it would be a mistake to say that Ayn Rand's essays were written only for the time in which they were written. Primarily philosophical examinations of the era, these essays have a timelessness to them that make them all the more vital today. In describing the problems that plagued America in the 60's and 70's, Ayn Rand described the problems that face all men who live in civilization, yet do not fully posses the right principles for doing so. Now re-released as "Return of the Primitive" with new essays by Peter Schwartz, (a brilliant communicator in his own right), the book takes on an almost haunting tone. Today, the once-radical agenda of America's destroyers in the 60's and 70's is all but accepted. Through his new articles, Schwartz gives his readers an update on America's philosophical trends and makes clearer the stakes that are at risk.Does America have to be lost? No, and this book is a call to arms to those who would save both it and their own lives.

This is another of Rand's whopping success!

Return of the primitive: The anti industrial revolution is a modernized version of Rand's original work from the 1960's: The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution. I have read Atlas Shrugged, Fountainhead, Anthem, We the Livng, Philosophy Who Needs It, Virtue of Selfishness...all by Ayn Rand. This book, The Anti-Industrial Revolution, in its original form is a very high quality addition to your Ayn Rand library.Originally written at the suggestion of student/ reader, The Anti industrial revolution is a good application of Rand's philosopy to the troubles which plauged society both today and at the time of its writing, the riotous 1960's. Here you will see Rand analyse famous events such as Woodstock.. the mud pit fiasco of pot smoking non productive tribal minded people, and Apollo the launch representing man's highest abilities: the culmination of industry and technology in to man's greatest achievement to date (1960's). You will hear rand compare and contrast Woodstock with Apollo and you will be both surprised and enlightened.The chapter on the comprachinos will take you for a psychological tour of what makes a man develope as a thinking individual, or not, from the time of birth through adolescence. Rand takes you on a virtual tour of a childs life, showing you which points are critical to the developement of individuality: the ability to percieve objectively. If you are concerned about what, if any, detrimental effects day care centers may have on the development of your child, you can find guidance here with Rand's writings.Over all the book, composed of many short articles by Rand, is a very good addition to your works by Rand. I believe you will find it to be of the same high quality as other works by Rand. A really good book for those interested in reading some Rand for the first or fifth time.

Airlift copies of "RP" to America's campuses

"Return of the Primitive" is a masterfully re-edited version of Ayn Rand's "The New Left." By adding Ayn Rand's essays, and a number of his own, Peter Schwartz has assembled a new manifesto against the horrors of today's intellectuals.Essays by Ayn Rand, new to this edition, include "Racism" and "Global Balkanization." The first explains Ayn Rand's unique (and powerful) case against racism; the second explains the deeper philosophic reasons why racism is engulfing the globe at an ever-expanding pace. Mr. Schwartz's new essays also go a long way in addressing certain contemporary cultural questions (feminism, multiculturalism, and environmentalism) on which Ayn Rand herself was not able to comment in full. Of particular interest is Mr. Schwartz's essay, "Multicultural Nihilism." By identifying the *epistemological* roots of contemporary diversity worship, Mr. Schwartz is able to resolve a nagging paradox of contemporary leftism: why do the multiculturalists advocate radical non-discrimination policies, but affirmative action (a form of discrimination) at the same time? The answer to this question -- which I will leave to the reader to discover -- is a stroke of integration of the brand I have come to expect (and appreciate) from Peter Schwartz.Ayn Rand's original edition, "The New Left" focused mainly on the specifically anti-industrial doctrines of '60's leftists, such as "ecology." With the massive upswing of the multicultural movement (of which feminism is a part) in the 80's and 90's, however, the left became all the more variegated in its venom. Peter Schwartz's new edition shows what these new movements have in common with the anti-industrialism of the 60's: an all-out assault on values as such.