2009: The Year of Rand

Jennifer Burns is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia.

2009: The Year of Rand

Thursday, 31 December 2009 17:50

Of all the second acts in American lives, perhaps none is more remarkable than this year’s conservative embrace of Ayn Rand, the long-dead doyenne of American capitalism. In 2008 it seemed her version of free market capitalism had been discredited altogether; even Alan Greenspan had his doubts, famously telling Congress he had found “a flaw” in his Rand-inspired ideology. Yet in 2009 sales of her books began a ferocious climb, with Atlas Shrugged alone topping 300,000 copies sold.

In a clever sleight of hand, Rand’s ideas have helped conservatives shift the terms of debate from the causes of the economic crisis to the Obama administration’s proposed solutions. Here Rand’s 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, is critical. The novel is set in a future dystopian America, where overbearing government regulation and taxation have strangled the economy. In response, the country’s top capitalists have gone “on strike,” heroically refusing to work for an exploitative system that redistributes their wealth to the needy. Ever since it was published in 1957, conservatives have hailed the work as prophecy, seeing in Rand’s villains the dim outline of liberal presidents from Lyndon Baines Johnson to Jimmy Carter. “Read Atlas Shrugged before it happens” warned a sign at this spring’s tea parties. Or as Rush Limbaugh put it: “Ayn Rand, she wrote ‘Atlas Shrugged.’ The sequel: ‘Atlas Puked.’ We're in the middle of it.”

What’s different now is that for the first time, conservatives are willing to overlook Rand’s once-controversial atheism. Rand’s materialistic philosophy is pivotal to her attack upon government, as both she and an earlier generation of conservatives understood. William F. Buckley, Jr., himself an avid fan of capitalism, tried to run Rand out of the conservative movement because she was an atheist. He rightly perceived her work as not just a defense of capitalism, but an attack upon Christianity itself. For Buckley and other traditional conservatives, government charity might be wrong, but charity itself was to be applauded. That Rand criticized Christian morality made her anathema to believers like Whittaker Chambers, who wrote the message of Atlas Shrugged was “to a gas chamber – go!”

What matters most to Rand’s latter day conservative followers, however, is how vividly Rand makes the point that government intervention in the economy and government welfare programs are morally wrong. She offers a secular version of saints and sinners, for in Rand’s world, there are two types of people: producers and looters, or those who work for themselves, and those who work for the government. It’s the original version of Nixon’s “silent majority” or Sarah Palin’s “real Americans.”

Whether Rand’s popularity will last into the new decade remains to be seen. One reason Rand has emerged as a leading intellectual on the right because there has been little competition for the role.

Yet integrating Rand into the pantheon of conservative thinkers has consequences, primarily for the balance of power between market and religious fundamentalists.

Keeping Rand at bay was one way religious believers measured their strength within the conservative movement and asserted their dominance over secular libertarians. Her acceptance, then, is a sign that the libertarian wing of the movement is gaining strength as economic issues move to the fore of American politics. The relaxation of tension around Rand may also signify that the ideal of unregulated capitalism itself is becoming more firmly welded to the conservative world view.

Is any of this good for conservatism, broadly considered? The next generation of conservative intellectuals will have to address these questions, and Ayn Rand would be a good place to start.

Comments (9)

|2009-12-31 19:34:02 Michael Caution - Conservatism is Dead

Well said. It is exactly on the battlefield of ideas where conservatives must engage their detractors if they wish to have any effect on the culture. If however their arguments are found lacking (which I think is the case) they would do well to check their premises, advise Rand gave on many occasions.

Also, Rand's second novel was The Fountainhead, We the Living being her first. She also wrote her novella Anthem in between these two thereby making Atlas her third full length novel.

And strictly speaking Objectivism does not advocate materialism. It does not purport that there is mere physical existence while denying consciousness. Rand's philosophy discards the mind-body dichotomy in the trash heap of history where it belongs and makes the case for an integrated view of man, both mind and body. The absence of a belief in the supernatural does not make one a materialist, only a non-theist.

|2010-01-01 12:24:28 Neil Parille - Materialism

Michael,

One definition of materialism is the view that everything that exists is physical or material and that the mental supervenes on or depends on the physical.

In this sense Objectivism is a version of materialism.

|2010-01-01 21:48:59 Edward McMorrow - Confusion about the origins of "free markets V co

So many people do not have a concept of how free markets came to be a component of the rights of man. The Magna Carta not only established habeas corpus, but also broadened the ownership of markets away from the sovereign towards other royals.

What is misunderstood by many Libertarians and Socialists is that the free market itself is a collective entity. This is recognized with anti-trust laws that when one person or entity "owns" even one sector of the market, requires restriction of how that entity or person conducts their business, or the freedom to create of all the rest of us is curtailed.

The bill of rights is a series of feedback loops that limit government. Now that corporations have gained the rights of individuals we are in danger of losing the west from the inside. If we do not develop feedback loops that limit robot rights the future is dark.

Corporations are more properly defined as robots who serve their masters. If you look ahead and recognize how soon a...

|2010-01-02 02:46:09 Kain Scalia - On Philosophy

With all due respect, Professor: although you have done a very competent job in your book, from a historical perspective, I continuously found your attitude towards the philosophy in itself to be that of someone who either strived to misrepresent it or who simply did not understand it and did not put much effort to understand it at all.

I am aware that your focus is a historical one, but it seems to be a very obvious oversight to attempt a book about a philosopher without actually studying the philosophy itself. At best you have offered an incomplete portrait, at worst you have presented a disingenuous reduction of the personage by not attempting to understand the concepts of the philosophy and instead relegating your explanation of Rand to a point of view which is aimed as a platform for your criticisms of the person in question and not as an honest evaluation of the person *and* the philosophy. A philosophy by itself can be the subject of a book, but the biography of a philosophe...

|2010-01-02 08:12:53 Telrod - The Kingdom of God is within you

The characters in the Fountainhead ACT as if they are very devout, they act as if they believed in God. This book is not religious, in the usual sense, but it is very spiritual. Toohey states through Stoddard, "you're a very religious man Mr Roark, I can see it in your work." As a refugee from Soviet Communism, Ms. Rand is "once burned twice shy" of any system that would steal her God given power, including the "Shopkeeper" god of modern religion. In that sense, of course she's an atheist.

A very similiar work of art to the Fountainhead was the play by Robert Bolt, "A Man For All Seasons". Thomas More as Roark, King Henry as Wynand, Cromwell as Toohey, Richard Rich as Keating, well you get the picture. More's work, as the onlyhonest lawyer in England, and the foundation for his respect, is presented here as an outgrowth of his belief in God. His fight is the same as Roark's: against those that would strip him of his innate spirituality and...

|2010-01-02 09:15:14 Richard Ryckoff - Clarifying important issues

I was very surprised to read your comment about Objectivism's "materialism." M. Caution (in the first comment posted above) brings this up as well.
One of Ayn Rand's breakthroughs philosophically was rejecting the false dichotomy of materialism v. idealism or mysticism. Her point was that human beings are physical beings with consciousness. And that consciousness is as natural as are the "provable" things in science (it is distinct from provable things because it is an axiomatic concept which is self evident). It is a characteristic of life evolved to its highest level that we know of. It was consciousness that many previous thinkers focused on to "to escape" the emptiness of a merely physical existence with no values, ideals, etc.
Her contribution was to say that man (men and women) is an integrated being of both a physical and spiritual nature (spiritual meaning,conciousness). She also showed how values are derived from the facts of human nature; thereby ...

|2010-01-05 04:42:24 Patrick Manley - Today's Ayn Rand

Dear Jennifer,

I just started Atlas Shrugged and am about 170 pages onto it.

What is striking to me is the clear writing and excellent visual images conveyed in written form.

To combine ideas that reflect today's political struggle with high quality prose is a testament to the brilliance and practicality of Ayn Rand.

I look forward to reading your book and following your research as I learn more about this fascinating woman and her quest for preserving individualism and market capitalism, aka freedom. From what I see so far, Ayn Rand may be one of the most important Americans who ever lived.

Sincerely,

Pat Manley

|2010-01-16 21:30:14 Bill - Capitalism: Is the Unknown Ideal

We live in a mixed economy, not a free market. I believe that Capitalism as an ideal is conspicuously flawed and, therefore can never be known. Mister Greenspan realized this last year when he understood that pure Capitalism cannot exit without consummately moral businessmen and politicians. That we humans are imperfect, both hero AND villian, delimits the progress that can be made in a republic, in my view. Rand was an is a great read, but I don't agree it is time for an apotheosis.