Ebook: Autarchies: the invention of selfishness

"The philosophy of Ayn Rand has had an undeniably major role shaping the contemporary neo-liberal consensus. It has impact powerfully on architects of Reaganomics such as Alan Greenspan, former Director of the World Bank, and the new breed of American industrialists who developed revolutionary information technologies in Silicon Valley. But what do we really know of Rand's philosophy? Is her gospel of selfishness really nothing more than a reiteration of a quintessentially American 'rugged individualism'? This book argues that Rand's philosophy can in fact be traced back to a moment, before World War I, when the work of a now-forgotten German philosopher called Max Stirner possessed an extraordinary appeal for writers and artists across Europe. The influence of Stirnerian Egoism upon that phase of intense creative innovation we now call Modernism was seminal."--Page 4 of cover.