Antonio Gramsci and Ayn Rand; each notable for their distinct yet conflicting views on the role of the individual in society, were both heavily influenced by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Each denounced physical coercion employed by police and armed forces, or as Rand would say, by “communist thugs”. Both wrote about the revolution’s influence on their belief systems. That is where their similarity ends.

Gramsci agreed with Karl Marx that capitalism was bad for the “average Joe” because,

“Although workers produce things for the market, market forces control things; workers do not. People are required to work for capitalists who have full control over the means of production and maintain power in the workplace. Work, he said, becomes degrading, monotonous, and suitable for machines rather than free, creative people. In the end people themselves become objects—robotlike mechanisms that have lost touch with human nature, that make decisions based on cold profit-and-loss considerations, with little concern for human worth and need. Marx concluded that capitalism blocks our capacity to create our own humane society.” ¹

To put it simply, Marx believed that when money is used to motivate people to excel, they will lose their natural compassion for others as well as the internal motivation which makes them want to do their best. He believed that working to benefit society was a more powerful motivation for success. Had he been alive today, he would have to reconsider his position because although the United States employs capitalism, it is one of the most innovative and charitable nations; as indicated by the amount of time, money and goods donated to the less fortunate or victims of disaster.

Antonio Gramsci realized that the means to political control was best gained through hegemony (power) derived from ideological control (sharing the same beliefs) and control by consent; like the system of government which has been employed in the United States for over two centuries. In his assessment, no imposed regime could maintain itself through state power and armed force (no one likes or wants to give in to thugs). Sustained control over people could only take place if there was popular support for changing a status quo government.

He thought the Bolshevik Revolution failed because those in the working class didn’t really feel the need to rise up and start a revolution. He believed they needed to be gently prodded along before they would reject the “old order” and buy into a new ideology. Come to think of it, he’s describing why the American Revolution was a success. People didn’t like the way the British were running things. They wanted to rise up and revolt, though some did have to be convinced that it was the correct thing to do and in their best interests. Additionally, “Intellectuals” from the “old order” needed to be converted to the new way of thinking. Why would you want to revolt if life is good?

In order to subjugate the masses (control them) and prepare them for a Communist governing philosophy, Gramsci concluded that all the classes within the society must willingly adopt the same system of values, attitudes, beliefs and morality. Only then could they truly champion the ideas of those in power. Once a society internalizes the same way of looking at the world, this could be considered the “natural order of things.” Everyone must believe the new system will benefit them and each must have a stake in the system.

One way to achieve control was through the education system. Gramsci presumed that the existing system of education in his native Italy was structured to keep the “established” societal classes in their respective place. He realized that intellectuals could be produced by an educational system to perform a function for the dominant social group in society, in order for the ruling class to maintain its control over the rest of society.

He wanted to create a new group of “Intellectuals” from the working class. He proposed turning this education model upside down to transform the status quo. Gramsci wanted to reform education by providing just one “type of formative school (primary-secondary) which would take the child up to the threshold of his choice of job, forming him during this time as a person capable of thinking, studying and ruling - or controlling those who rule." ²

Recently, in Florida, the judiciary ruled that Florida Opportunity Scholarships violated the state constitution's 1998 guarantee of a uniform public-school system. By striking down vouchers, the courts are ruling that there can only be one type of school that children attend. Families can not choose a form of education that might be more tailored to a child’s needs.

“Gramsci maintained that this type of school could only achieve success with the active participation of pupils and, in order for this to happen, the school must relate to their everyday life. This did not mean that education should not include abstract ideas but that philosophical concepts, formal logic, rules of grammar etc needed to be acquired in school "through work and reflection... ³ He was positive that learning was not something that came easily for the majority of young people. He believed that, "The individual consciousness of the overwhelming majority of children reflects social and cultural relations which are different from and antagonistic to those which are represented in the school curricula." ⁴

In other words, he believed that the classroom should be student centered and that students should construct their own knowledge instead of teachers instructing the students on the subject matter. The learning material should be made relevant to the students’ experiences instead of broadening their horizons by exposing them to what they might find boring or difficult. He didn’t have very high expectations for the majority of students. Also, he realized the values that the school needed to impose in order to get the students to buy into the new governing philosophy and discard the old might conflict with those of the family.

“When introduced to American history in her last year of high school,” ⁵ Ayn Rand “immediately took America as her model of what a nation of free men could be.” ⁶ Her own family endured the Communist’s confiscation of her father's pharmacy and subsequent near-starvation. She also experienced first hand Communist stifling of free inquiry when the university she’d been attending in Petrograd was taken over by those in power.

Such personal encounters likely had the effect of cementing her steadfast belief in American capitalism, or economic freedom, to which she credited, “the major achievements of American inventors and businessmen during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.” ⁷ So convinced of this truth, she wrote Atlas Shrugged, “to demonstrate what might happen to the world if such economic freedom were lost, if emerging collectivist trends were to continue to their logical conclusions.” ⁸

Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged, depicts the collapse of an economic system in which some people live off the production of others without having to actually produce anything themselves. Eventually the producers in the society go on strike. The thinkers withdraw their minds and protest oppression of thought and the forced moral code of self-sacrifice, a code that obligates them to work only to serve the needs of others. It is Rand’s own belief in American’s “inalienable right to pursue their own happiness based on their own values and that they must be free to pursue their own self-interest as they choose,” ⁹ which ends up prevailing as the operative philosophy of a successful economy. Over and over she makes the point that our only obligations are “to respect the freedom and rights of other self-interested people.”