For years, I've been of the view that Ayn Rand's philosophy is based on a poor reading of Aristotle.

A is A is Aristotle's law of identity. It is one of three axioms of Aristotelian logic. The other two are the law of contradiction (the poposition A is not A) is always false) and the law of the excluded middle (the proposition A or not A is always true).

A is A and man is man, Ms. Rand would say. But what is man? Depending on how that question is answered, one could prove just about anything.

Ms. Rand answer was that man is an acquisitive animal. The freedom to acquire things and territory is therefore the meaning of freedom itself, and any artifice that prevents an individual human from acquiring is immoral. Therefore, laissez faire capitalism is the only truly moral economic system. Selfishness is a virtue.

It's a pretty handy way of refuting Marxism in ten seconds or less. If that sounds too simple, it's because it is. Objectivism is an intellectual reaction to Marxism, and in rejecting oversimplified Marxist premises by simply asserting some form of their opposites, objectivism ends up being at least as flawed as orthodox Marxism. Objectivism and Marxism have a great deal in common in that both are materialist philosophies to the point of dogmatically rejecting a belief in God.

The definition of man presented in this example is a half-truth; recognizing it as such brings down the objectivist house of cards. That man is an acquisitive animal is true as far as it goes, but that man is also a social animal is an inconvenient truth for an objectivist. For the orthodox Marxist, that man is a acquisitive animal is the inconvenient truth that calls into question the practicality of a goal of a post-socialist utopia.

Man is both acquisitive and social, as well as intelligent. It is the survival strategy of our species, which is a slow runner and awkward tree climber. The dual nature of acquisitiveness and the need to be social often brings about contradictions in individuals causing spiritual conflict when the individual's intelligent nature makes him self-aware of the contradiction. Selfishness may be a positive character trait in a being who needs to acquire things and territory, but it can be disruptive to the cohesion of a social group.