Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (46 page)

No longer star-struck teenagers, libertarians were now ready to challenge Rand’s authority and even her intellectual contribution. A Libertarian Party organizer, Edward Crane III, responded specifically to Rand’s allegation that the Party existed on “borrowed” ideas. “Sure, we’ve ‘borrowed’ some of the concepts used by Miss Rand,” wrote Crane. “But the myth that she
invented
those ideas should long since have been dispelled,” he added, citing a number of earlier libertarian writers who had influenced Rand, including Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson. Crane surmised that Rand was most troubled because she did not control the Libertarian Party. Despite his harshness Crane tempered his criticism, noting in a foreword, “I am a great admirer of Rand and had mixed emotions about writing the piece. I am inclined to believe that the Ayn Rand I was writing about is not quite the same Ayn Rand of a decade ago.”
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Framing Rand as a new and different person helped ease the sting. And to some degree it was true: Rand had become increasingly unpleasant, querulous, and rigid as the years progressed. But libertarians had also changed. Their worldview, goals, and ambitions had shifted, as would their intellectual horizons.

Libertarian ambitions were fed by the ascendancy of Rand’s protégé, Alan Greenspan, to the president’s Council of Economic Advisers. Anarchists and purists regarded him as a statist sell-out; others wondered if he would subtly pull the administration in an Objectivist direction. He and Rand were still close, although they met infrequently. Greenspan had largely stayed above the fray in 1968 but had not hesitated to publicly support Rand in her disavowal of Nathan. This action
cemented Rand’s appreciation of his friendship, and he in turn made no secret of his involvement with her philosophy. Greenspan’s rise within Republican circles had been meteoric, aided by his alliance with Martin Anderson, whom he had met through the New York NBI. Once a regular at NBI lectures and a visitor to Rand’s private salons, Anderson had been swept out of the Objectivist orbit when he joined Richard Nixon’s first presidential campaign. But he remembered both his Objectivist principles and friends, bringing Greenspan on board the campaign and urging Nixon to oppose the draft on libertarian grounds.
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Anderson and Greenspan were both appointed to the Gates Committee, which eventually recommended abolition of the draft. From there Greenspan’s economic expertise made him a valued consultant to the president and set him on the path toward his eventual chairmanship of the Federal Reserve.

Greenspan was only the first of many high-profile economists to break out of the libertarian ghetto, broadening the libertarian focus beyond Rand. After decades of honing their approach, academic libertarians were ready to take advantage of opportunities created by the economic doldrums of the 1970s. The long struggle for acceptance paid off when both F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman were awarded Nobel Prizes in economics in 1974 and 1976, respectively. Their ascent to the top of the economics profession reflected a major intellectual shift away from Keynesianism. The failings of socialist economies and the appearance of “stagflation,” which Friedman had famously predicted, made economists and policymakers alike more interested in libertarian arguments. Although Rand despised Hayek, his classical liberal views were a species of libertarianism to all but the purists, and his public recognition was an index of the increased respectability of antistatism. Hayek’s prize also brought attention and prestige to his overlooked mentor, Ludwig von Mises, who remained a favorite of Rand’s, and gave a boost to the fourth-generation Austrian School clustered around NYU. During this time the libertarian-inflected law and economics movement, an outgrowth of the Chicago School, made inroads at several important law schools.
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In 1975 libertarians won another coveted prize when Harvard Professor Robert Nozick was awarded the National Book Award for
Anarchy, State, and Utopia,
a philosophic defense of the limited state. Nozick had been
introduced to libertarianism through Murray Rothbard and cited both Rothbard and Rand in his pathbreaking book. Typically understood as a response to the egalitarianism of his Harvard colleague John Rawls,
Anarchy, State, and Utopia
must also be recognized as the fullest intellectual flowering of the libertarian subculture. Even while attacking the argument Rawls had propounded in
A Theory of Justice
, Nozick was equally concerned with responding to Murray Rothbard and the ongoing minarchist/anarchist debate. He intended to establish that a state could be compatible with “solid libertarian moral principles.” Nozick was an enthusiastic member of the Libertarian Party, appearing at the 1976 conference to argue on behalf of a VP candidate who had been rejected due to his homosexuality.
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This libertarian move into the mainstream eroded the distinction between academic and popular libertarianism, and with it Rand’s reputation among libertarians. The gap between academic and popular (or “movement”) libertarianism first developed in the 1940s, when organizations such as the Foundation for Economic Education, the Volker Fund, and the Mont Pelerin Society began concentrating their funding on professional economists, to the exclusion of popular writers like Rand, Isabel Paterson, and Rose Wilder Lane. As Rand developed Objectivism, professors supported by libertarian organizations began to make their way into academia, many becoming associated with the University of Chicago. Rand’s claim to a comprehensive philosophy and her refusal to recognize other libertarians besides Ludwig von Mises had kept many of her followers ignorant of the strides libertarianism had made in the academy. Accordingly the early libertarian movement was shaped largely by popularizers like Rand, Robert LeFevre, and Murray Rothbard. Now grass-roots publications such as
A Is A Newsletter
began paying attention to the latest publications from Chicago, and Friedman and other luminaries likewise reached out to the movement. Friedman was viewed with suspicion by many libertarians for his involvement in designing compulsory tax withholding, but his son David, an anarchist, was active in several organizations. Tipped off to the existence of a growing popular movement, the elder Friedman addressed an SIL convention via telephone and began promoting the group to his college audiences.
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The barriers between movement libertarians and the broader intellectual and political world were beginning to collapse. In 1973 a wave of
consolidation swept over the movement, spearheaded in large part by SIL. After years of irregular publication SIL severed its connection to Wollstein’s
Individualist,
offering members in its place a subscription to
Reason
magazine. Originally started as a handmade mimeographed Objectivist newsletter out of Boston University, by 1973
Reason
had almost six thousand subscribers, making it the most successful libertarian magazine by far.
Reason
was the first libertarian magazine since Rand’s
Objectivist
to garner a subscription base in the thousands. As
Reason
developed, fewer and fewer small homegrown libertarian magazines appeared. Professionally produced and designed,
Reason
charted a careful course away from libertarian extremism toward greater mainstream visibility and respectability.

Reason
owed much of its circulation to a coup scored in 1971, when it published Nathaniel Branden’s first post-Rand interview. As Branden well knew, the libertarian movement offered him a chance to refurbish his reputation among the Objectivist rank and file. Branden was coy about his experiences with Rand, but clearly indicated his growing differences with her philosophy. He still considered her “one of the greatest minds in history” and claimed, “[She is] the greatest novelist I have ever read,” but he spoke frankly about the flaws he saw in her personality and her philosophy. Branden was contrite about his own role in what he called the “intellectual repressiveness” of NBI, and he offered his latest book,
The Disowned Self,
as a way to “undo some of the damage” he admitted to “caus[ing] students of Objectivism in the past.” Though he still considered himself an expert on psychology, Branden had lost some of his overbearing moralism. When the magazine asked if sex without love was moral he responded, “What, am I your mother?”
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The interview’s overall tone reflected the general libertarian stance toward Rand, who was now seen as a figurehead or a respected elder rather than a source of direct guidance. She was a totem and ideal to be admired, but not worshipped.
Reason
was interested in Rand but not beholden to her.

By 1973
The Ayn Rand Letter
was slipping badly. Issues were often months behind schedule and Rand’s standards of discourse had plunged. In a review of John Rawls’s
Theory of Justice
Rand dropped the pretense that
she had read his work, announcing, “Let me say that I have not read and do not intend to read that book.”
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Instead, she offered a review of the reviews Rawls had received in the
New York Times
. Aside from Leonard Peikoff, Rand had no other contributors to her publication, and between Frank’s declining health and her own it was impossible for her to produce a fortnightly publication unaided.

Rand was occupied primarily by personal events, particularly the discovery of her long-lost sister Nora. In the spring of 1973 Rand was shocked to receive word from Nora, whom she had presumed dead decades ago. At a U.S.-sponsored art show in Leningrad, Nora picked up a booklet on American authors and discovered her sister’s picture. She wrote to the group sponsoring the exhibit, who in turn contacted Rand. It was the first news she had received of her family in more than thirty years. The two women had a tearful phone conversation and arranged for Nora and her husband to pay a visit. Rand was overjoyed. Here, after the hard years of disappointment and betrayal, was a reward to brighten her old age. Despite declining health she threw herself into preparations, renting an apartment for the couple in her building and investigating Russian communities in the area where they could settle. She would sponsor Nora and Victor to stay in the United States, supply them with whatever they needed to make their lives near hers.

But Nora’s visit was a disaster, a sad reprise of Rand’s last failed days with Isabel Paterson. At first the two sisters connected ecstatically. Nora, though, was paranoid and suspicious, suspecting Rand’s driver, cook, and Leonard Peikoff of being American spies. Shaped by years of propaganda, she refused to believe they were not being watched. Rand was frustrated by her sister’s inability to understand the freedoms of America. Nora pushed back, criticizing the messiness and clamor of Rand’s beloved New York. She showed little interest in her sister’s books, instead devouring a volume by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, banned in the USSR. Rand considered Solzhenitsyn the worst kind of Russian mystical collectivist, but Nora praised his work. The two began to argue nonstop. Rand canceled the parties she had planned for Nora as their six-week visit devolved into a clash of wills. Nora was jealous of her sister’s fame and fortune perhaps, or maybe she was just overwhelmed by the differences between their lives. But she could not, would not reject Russia as Rand expected her to. Equally stubborn and righteous,
neither sister could let go of her disagreement and reach for common ground. By the close of the visit, both knew it was impossible for Nora to settle in the United States. When Nora and Victor returned to Russia Rand was deeply disappointed. She had offered her sister freedom, and Nora had chosen dictatorship. Nora was not like her at all—and so much like her yet.

Not long after Nora left, Rand was diagnosed with lung cancer. She had smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for decades, resolutely insisting that statistics about their health risks were not reliable evidence. Now the proof was in her own labored breathing and fading energy. Before undergoing surgery on her left lobe she accepted an invitation to speak at the West Point commencement ceremony. Facing an enthusiastic audience of cadets Rand gave a rousing speech, “Philosophy, Who Needs It?, later reprinted in the West Point curricula. That summer she scheduled her operation. It was a success, but her recovery was painful and slow.
The Ayn Rand Letter
fell almost a year behind its supposed publication schedule. Rand mailed the August 1974 issue in May 1975, telling readers that the letter would soon become a monthly. After two more issues she knew it was no use. The November–December issue, she announced, would be the final one.

In the final
Ayn Rand Letter,
her effective exit from public life, Rand sounded somber yet familiar themes. It was sad to cease publication, she told her readers, but also a relief. Month after month she found herself saying the same things: “I do not care to go on analyzing and denouncing the same indecencies of the same irrationalism.” She had lost the sense that she was leading an effective crusade that could reverse the drift toward collectivism. Gone was the optimism that had led her to endorse Goldwater, to rouse campus audiences across the country, to dissect the popular culture and media. Now she was “haunted by a quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche: ‘It is not my function to be a fly swatter.’ “ Rand recognized her own weariness, and also her own circularity. For all the distance she had traveled in her life, a few fundamentals still guided her thought. Russia haunted her still, an object lesson in what might happen if the wrong ideas triumphed. The injustice served her father resonated in the welfare state she opposed, both starkly demonstrating the evils of altruism. Capitalism dragged under the weight of compromise and contradiction. For all the emotional upheavals she had
suffered, rationality was still her only guide and source of wisdom, individualism her favored theme. “Well, I told you so,” she sighed. “I have been telling you so since
We the Living,
which was published in 1936.”
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