[IsaacL]

There's a direct link from Kant to Hegel to Marx, and from Marx to all the horrors communism brought into the world.

A separate link leads from Kant to Frege, Russell and modern analytic philosophy. Which is hardly on the level of Marxism, and it still respects reason and reality, but it led to the idea of logic as meaningless symbol games, rather than a vital tool to understand the world.

Rand didn't found her whole philosophy on 'A is A' - this is a common misconception. She isn't trying to create a philosophy based on geometry, where everything is deduced from a few axioms. The law of identity is fundamental, but it's not sufficient - you need observation of reality too.