Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (32 page)

Lean also touched on what he called “communication difficulties.” Some of their disagreement, he thought, stemmed “from the fact that certain words and statements have a customary technical meaning among contemporary professional philosophers that differs from the historical use.” Rand and he had different understandings of such terms as “volition” and “volitionality,” he noted. Lean also suggested that Peikoff had mischaracterized Wittgenstein and other linguistic philosophers and offered to make a formal presentation to clear up the confusion. Throughout 1961 Lean and Rand corresponded occasionally and had at least one more meeting of their “small discussion group.” Lean declined an invitation to attend the opening of an NBI lecture series but did deliver the promised presentation of Wittgenstein in a session that proved to be, in Rand’s words, “indecisive.”
³⁸

As Lean noticed, it was undoubtedly true that Rand had her own unique definitions for common philosophical terms. In a designation that must have shocked Rand, he even joked that he was “not as much of a Kantian” as Rand.
³⁹
Instead of believing all questions could be resolved by fact and deductive logic, a position he attributed to Kant, Lean suggested that subjective factors might play a role. Hospers had the same experience with Rand: “I had to be careful that she not misinterpret or oversimplify what a philosopher was saying; she was so ‘out of the loop’ of the give-and-take of contemporary philosophers that she found even the basics to be elusive.”
⁴⁰
If she truly wanted to make an impact on the field, Hospers told her, she should publish in an academic journal and respond to her critics; a dialogue would start, and she would be on her way. But the normal push and pull of academic life was alien to Rand.

Her friendship with Hospers ended dramatically when he invited her to present at the 1962 American Aesthetics Association meeting, held at Harvard University. Rand must have felt she was finally getting her due, speaking to Ivy League philosophers as an equal. But after her presentation Hospers took the floor and made a critical commentary on her
presentation. In his role as commentator he held forth as an authority, commending Rand in some areas, tweaking her in others, suggesting avenues of further inquiry or points to clarify. This was not the kind of treatment Rand had expected, and she was deeply hurt. At the reception afterward neither she nor the Collective would acknowledge Hospers’s presence. By criticizing her in public Hospers had committed an unforgivable error, made all the worse by Rand’s sensitivity to her status among intellectuals. He tried to heal the breach, but Rand would never again speak to him. Hospers continued to acknowledge Rand as an influence, including a discussion of her work in his textbook,
Introduction to Philosophical Analysis
. But he alone could do little to transform Rand’s reputation in the academy. Later he even came to believe his identification with Rand cost him a job at UCLA and a Guggenheim fellowship.
⁴¹

The long years of labor on
Atlas Shrugged,
the stress of her relationship with Nathan and her disappointment in Frank, regular drug use and unhealthy personal habits, all had culminated in a mental rigidity that increasingly defined Rand. She was even unwilling to acknowledge her own intellectual development, releasing an edited version of
We the Living
in 1959 that erased any passages at odds with Objectivism.
⁴²
For years she had sealed herself off from all outside influences save Nathan and Leonard, and it was now impossible for her to communicate with contemporaries. The woman who had written long demonstrative letters to Isabel Paterson and Rose Wilder Lane, trying her best to understand and be understood, had vanished forever.

CHAPTER SEVEN
Radicals for Capitalism

“
I AM COMING
back to life,” Rand announced as the Nathaniel Branden Institute entered its second year of existence. Watching Nathan’s lectures fill, Rand began to believe she might yet make an impact on the culture.
¹
Roused from her despair, she began once more to write. In 1961 she published her first work of nonfiction,
For the New Intellectual,
and in 1962 launched her own monthly periodical,
The Objectivist Newsletter
. Over the course of the decade she reprinted articles from the newsletter and speeches she had given in two more books,
The Virtue of Selfishness
and
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
. Although she occasionally talked of a fourth novel, Rand had abandoned fiction for good. Instead she reinvented herself as a public intellectual. Gone were the allegorical stories, the dramatic heroes and heroines, the thinly coded references to real politicians, intellectuals, and events. In
The Objectivist Newsletter
Rand named names and pointed fingers, injecting herself directly into the hottest political issues of the day. Through her speeches and articles she elaborated on the ethical, political, and artistic sides of Objectivism.

Rand’s ideas were particularly attractive to a new generation of campus conservatives, who saw rebellion against a stifling liberal consensus as a basic part of their identity. Unlike older conservatives, many right-leaning college students were untroubled by her atheism, or even attracted to it. As Rand’s followers drew together in campus conservative groups, Ayn Rand clubs, and NBI classes, her ideas became a distinct stream of conservative youth culture. Through her essays on government, politics, and capitalism Rand herself encouraged the politicization of her work. In 1963 she even endorsed a new Republican on the scene, Barry Goldwater, a move that situated her as the leader of a growing political and intellectual movement.
²

At first look Objectivism may appear a freakish outgrowth of the turbulent 1960s, but it had significant parallels in American history. Nearly a century before, similar reading clubs and political activism had sprung up around Edward Bellamy’s
Looking Backward,
a book uncannily similar to
Atlas Shrugged,
if diametrically opposite politically. Bellamy’s futuristic book, written in 1887 but set in 2000, imagined a bemused time traveler awakening in a socialist utopia and marveling at the rampant selfishness and greed that had characterized his own time. In Bellamy’s most famous metaphor, a character describes late Victorian society as a carriage pulled by toiling masses, on top of which decadent capitalists live a life of luxury and ease. Inspired by Bellamy’s vision of a planned, egalitarian society, organizations sprang up across the country to advocate for his plans.
³
Now, similarly enraptured by Rand’s utopia, came forth a new cohort of well-educated, affluent reformers, this time eager to defend the carriage-pulling capitalists against the mob who rode atop their effort.

Rand made her network television debut in 1960, appearing on Mike Wallace’s celebrated interview show. Her dark eyes flashing, she refused to be intimidated by the liberal Wallace and expertly parried his every question and critique. Her performance caught the eye of Senator Barry Goldwater, who wrote Rand a letter thanking her for defending his “conservative position.” Rand had not mentioned the senator by name, but he immediately recognized the similarity between their views. Goldwater told Rand, “I have enjoyed very few books in my life as much as I have yours,
Atlas Shrugged
.” He enclosed an autographed copy of his new book, the best-selling
Conscience of a Conservative
. Shortly thereafter the two met briefly in New York. Rand followed up this encounter with a lengthy letter urging Goldwater to support capitalism through reason alone.
⁴
Although she considered him the most promising politician in the country, Rand was distressed by Goldwater’s frequent allusions to religion.
The Conscience of a Conservative
had been written primarily by L. Brent Bozell, William F. Buckley’s brother-in-law, and accordingly reflected the fusionist consensus of
National Review
.

In her letter to Goldwater Rand hammered on the need to separate religion and politics, a theme that would animate her for decades. She
singled out
National Review
for special criticism because it was a supposedly secular magazine that surreptitiously tried “to tie Conservatism to religion, and thus to take over the American Conservatives.” If such an effort succeeded, Rand asked, what would become of religious minorities or people like herself who held no religion? Goldwater’s response, which reiterated his Christian religious beliefs, was brief yet polite.
⁵
Rand had a powerful admirer, but not a convert.

As her depression lifted, Rand began to explore different ways she might exercise cultural influence. She was newly interested in politics because of her esteem for Goldwater and her dislike of the dashing presidential contender, Jack Kennedy, to her a glamour candidate who offered no serious ideas. She made her first venture back into political commentary with a scathing attack on Kennedy, “JFK: High Class Beatnik,” a short article published in the libertarian journal
Human Events
.
⁶
In the summer of 1960 she even dispatched Nathan to investigate the possibility of founding her own political party. It was unclear if Rand saw herself as a potential candidate or simply a gatekeeper for others. Nathan sounded out a few of Goldwater’s political advisors, who told him that Rand’s atheism severely limited her prospects. Abandoning that idea, Rand returned once again to intellectual pursuits. She sent her attack on JFK to the head of the Republican National Committee to be used as needed in Republican publications.

Shaking off her lethargy, Rand now began paying attention to the new following she had gained through
Atlas Shrugged
. The book was an instant best-seller despite the largely negative reviews it received. As with
The Fountainhead
enormous quantities of enthusiastic fan mail poured in. Although Rand could not respond personally to every letter, she was interested in her readers, particularly those who wrote especially perceptive or ignorant letters. Nathan often interposed himself between Rand and the most objectionable writers, but in the early 1960s it was entirely possible to send her a letter and receive a personal response. Sometimes she even engaged in a lengthy correspondence with fans she had not met, although her more usual response was to refer the writer to work she had already published.

The Nathaniel Branden Institute both capitalized on and fostered Rand’s appeal. Nathan used the addresses from her fan mail to build NBI’s mailing list and advertise new courses. As the lectures expanded
into new cities, he took out newspaper advertisements describing Objectivism as the philosophy of Ayn Rand. In 1962 he and Barbara published a hagiographic biography,
Who Is Ayn Rand?,
which included an essay by Nathan on the fundamentals of her philosophy. Slowly public perception of Rand began to shift, establishing her as a philosopher, not just a novelist. The NBI ads and lectures made Objectivism into a movement, a larger trend with Rand at the forefront.

Rand’s first published work of nonfiction,
For the New Intellectual,
set forth the creed her young fans would follow in the coming decade. Most of the book consisted of excerpts from Rand’s already published fiction, except for the title essay, which called for a cadre of “New Intellectuals” who would work together with business to celebrate the achievements of industrialism and capitalism. In the essay Rand identified three categories of men who had clashed throughout history: Atillas (despotic rulers), Witch Doctors (priests and intellectuals), and Producers (spiritual forerunners of American businessmen). The first two terms, she noted, had been coined by Nathaniel Branden, whom she formally thanked for his “eloquent designation.”
⁷
She traced their conflicts through Western history until the Industrial Revolution, when two new social types were born: the modern businessman and the modern intellectual. According to Rand, the two were supposed to work in tandem to manage, direct, and explain the changes stemming from the Industrial Revolution. But intellectuals had committed “treason” in the face of this grave responsibility, choosing instead to hold down Producers by promoting altruism as an ethical imperative.

Rand’s essay mixed history, philosophy, and polemic into a bewitching brew. While her typologies bore a clear resemblance to traditional divisions between proletariat, capitalist, and revolutionary vanguard, she centered these differences in mental outlook, not economic position. Producers were different from Witch Doctors and Atillas because they were independent and rational rather than mystical. Even though she avoided the language of economic determinism, Rand saw history as a kind of spiritualized class struggle. She took readers on a rapid tour of Western intellectual history, quickly summarizing and critiquing several major schools of philosophy.

Rand then paused to clarify her most misunderstood and controversial idea, her attack upon altruism, or “moral cannibalism,” as she liked
to call it. She explained that she used the word as did the French philosopher August Comte, to mean “self-sacrifice.” This usage was philosophically precise, but potentially very confusing. Most of Rand’s critics took the word in the more colloquial sense, as broadly meaning concern for or caring about other people. This meant that Rand seemed to be attacking even kindness itself. Once again, as she had with selfishness, Rand was redefining words to match her philosophical concepts.
⁸
It was not, she thought, her fault that she was sometimes misunderstood, and in any event she relished her iconoclastic persona. If her audience thought she was violating all standards of human decency, so much the better.