Ayn Rand is the Russian-born author whose philosophy is iconic for many conservative intellectuals, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan being perhaps the most famous. Raul Ryan cites her as a major influence. Her ideas find a welcome in the libertarian and tea party movements. John Stossel has devoted a flattering show to her.
As a result of who likes her, the left despises her as advocating a cruel, inhuman philosophy that would let the weak and wounded of society die. They can also pitch into her personal life including her defense of her own adultery (allowed since she claimed to be a superior person) and the imperious way she ran her group of friends, to say nothing of dismissing her writing skills.
But do her major novels, “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead,” really support the extreme small-government, pro-wealth views of the current right wing movement?
Who does Rand admire?
I am not going to look at her personal life nor at the abstract treatments of her philosophy, rather, I’m going to focus on her novels as novels.
The first problem for modern-day conservatives is who exactly are held up as heroes in her books. In the Rand view of the world, people are divided into producers and “looters”. The looters are always trying to guilt-trip the productive into “helping,” being “fair” by sharing their wealth. Contracts should be shared with all companies, not just those supplying the best price and products. New and innovative products, if they might drive others out of business are disruptive and unfair.
So far this sounds like the musings of Gov. Romney about “the 47 percent” who he said “believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”
However, once you look closely at Rand’s novels, you see something slightly, but crucially different. Her heroes are scientists, engineers and architects who develop ground-breaking new products and then attempt to build businesses selling those products to those who would benefit by them. In “Atlas Shrugged,” the hero is a man who invents a metal stronger and lighter than any existing steel. In “The Fountainhead,” the hero is an architect (thought to be modeled on Frank Lloyd Wright) who designs clean, “form-follows-function” buildings rather than the rococo eclectic style favored by others.
She celebrates the creative power of human minds to conceive new things, to dream them into existence and to persist at personal cost in order to see the projects through. None of her heroes lead lives of vast luxury.
In other words, her heroes are not those who inherited their wealth, want to use it for conspicuous consumption, still less are they bankers, marketers, financiers, hedge fund managers or anyone engaged in moving money around.
Frankly, most of the 0.1 percent holding economic power in the United States, if you apply the logic of the novels strictly, would be classified as looters, not the productive – even if Rand herself and her followers wouldn’t tend to see it that way.
I can see the owner of a small business who dreams about making it big being a fan of these books. But that the super-wealthy love them only is an act of projection and self-delusion.
Her real targets
There are many who relate to the world by guilt-tripping or emotional blackmail. These people seem to have a skill at leaving others “holding the bag” for decisions.
In one of the most harrowing, and misunderstood, scenes in “Atlas Shrugged” a railroad engineer is ordered to take a train through a tunnel using a steam locomotive (the book was written in 1957) when the engineer knows the smoke from the locomotive will poison everyone and a cleaner diesel should be used. He protests, but his bosses berate him for whining, tell him to use a diesel (knowing none is available) and insist he bears the responsibility for having the train be on time. The bosses then disappear, but not before insisting that the engineer is responsible for safety. The engineer takes the train through the tunnel, a disaster ensues and everyone blames the engineer.
This dynamic: Bosses who order absurd things and then blame subordinates for the consequences of doing them is common to anyone who works in business. People who instinctively step up and take responsibility get used by those with a knack for avoiding blame. Those who have to deal with this can find it exhausting and long to be free of it.
The major plot movement in “Atlas Shrugged” is the decision of those who are productive to stop enabling a corrupt system. One by one, they “check out” and move to an isolated valley in Colorado to await the collapse of an economic system built on guilt.
So a different reading of her books is possible. Her works can support those who simply wish to be creative and not to be held back by the nay-sayers who try to stop anything new that might upset existing arraignments. They can find resonance with those who think that we spend money on extremely unlikely threats or are frustrated that you can’t even control your own house and yard.
The move to Colorado also can relate to more personal issues. It can be read as analogous to the escape of a spouse from an abusive relationship or a child getting free of an addictive family system.
It isn’t only the far right that can wonder if elements of the contemporary civil-rights movement or the feminist movement aren’t based just a bit too much on guilt rather than expanding the opportunities for self-empowerment.
The real critique
But Rand’s books do have their faults and it comes in the schematic nature of her description of society. It has been pointed out that there are no children in her books, at least not as any sort of significant presence. Why is that? One explanation that suggests itself is that children simply must be cared for by others.
Having a duty to care for someone fits badly into Rand’s hyper-individualistic philosophy which suggests that “selfishness” is the highest virtue. That is her acceptance of a term hurled at her heroes by the looters. She means that a person owes nothing but to themselves and that any relationship with others should be conducted as a fair exchange of equal value.
Children, I suppose, can be thought of in terms of supplying the values of “being cute” or as an “investment” in your ability to be cared for in your declining years, but that seems to deny the most precious values we actually hold. Indeed it denies that love is any sort of legitimate force.
Rand has a problem with love. Her female protagonist in “Atlas Shrugged” and her male hero in “The Fountainhead” both have relationships but they seem to be based on anything but actual love. Rand appears to conceive an interpersonal relationship as a sort of continuing contract of economic benefits, as if our spouses were chosen because we liked to engage in business transactions with them.
She doesn’t try to deal with the complex balance we need to achieve between self-expression and the need to keep society going. As with children, those who are handicapped, disabled by an accident or simply fail to be geniuses don’t have much of a place in a Rand society.
Selfishness is simply not enough.
Rand is an atheist, something which conservatives appear to gloss over. And her view that a human is free to do what their mind calls them to do — even if it breaks society’s rules — does not sound like a conservative position.
In short, both economic conservatives and social conservatives read into Rand what they want and do not confront the ways in which her vision is not the same as the one they promote.
Responding to the Rand appeal
Liberals make a fundamental mistake by reflexively attacking anything the right likes. And they also fail to take seriously the extent to which a web of regulations restricts people from doing things, or the way that blue-collar people resent the demands placed on them by people who don’t seem to understand the practical issues in getting something done. When conservatives attack liberals as desiring to control every aspect of our lives, it is these issues they often have in mind.
Liberals would do better to attack the assumed identity rich conservatives draw between themselves and Rand’s heroes and to make it clear how concentrations of economic wealth are restricting the creativity of everyone.