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Capitalism's Wicked Witch
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Ayn Rand is having another moment, and critic Allen Barra thinks we should once and for all recognize her as a fraud and an ideologue with creepy followers.
Any objectivity about the founder of Objectivism is impossible. I’ll lay my cards on the table—Ayn Rand and her followers have given me the creeps since high school. Rand herself always looked to me like Lotte Lenya’s Rosa Krebb in From Russia with Love, and her disciples like extras from Village of the Damned.
The appeal of Rand’s philosophy to confused teenagers—and what other kind is there?—was obvious: Existence is summed up in a neater, tighter package than in Christianity or Marxism. To many of the students in the upscale all-white high school I attended, Objectivism offered a rousing guilt-free defense of privilege; ambiguities and loose ends were the product of “faulty thinking.” The Randians were bullies, roving around and looking to start debates in which they could ask questions and make anyone who didn’t have ready answers seem weak and foolish. “Check your premises!” they would say, looking you in the eye with a finger pointed at your forehead.
Rand’s real heirs are Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, who read passages from her books to their audiences, careful to avoid writings that would alienate the fundamentalist right.
Four decades later, the cult of personality that created Rand’s movement is still strong, but it’s unlikely to survive two new biographies: Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne C. Heller and Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns. Heller is a better biographer, and Burns better on Rand’s influence on the right wing’s politics and economics. But they agree more than they disagree. If you read both books back to back, you have a 700-page portrait of a humorless, puritanical didact who was contemptuous of, among many other things, homosexuals, American Indians (arguing that Europeans had a right to take their land because the natives did not recognize “individual rights”), Medicare, family values, beatniks, hippies, and libertarians, whom she regularly referred to as “scum,” “intellectual cranks,” and “worse than anything the New Left has proposed.”
Ayn Rand and the World She Made. By Anne C. Heller. 592 pages. Nan A. Talese. $35.
She opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, was vehemently against the draft (but called those who evaded it “bums”), and “regarded the feminist movement as utterly without legitimacy.” In her novels, she glorified rape—if it was committed by the right kind of man. Heller quotes her most famous disciple and lover Nathaniel Branden as saying, “What she wanted was a man whose esteem would reduce her to a sex object.”
Oh, and for the last 30 years of her life, she was addicted to amphetamines.
So much for the small stuff. Rand was also, despite her avowed love of America, contemptuous of democracy. In an admiring 1958 letter, the economist Ludwig von Mises told Rand, “You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: You are inferior, and all the improvements in your condition which you simply take for granted, you owe to the effort of men who are better than you.” And apparently women, too. In a 1936 novel, We the Living, a stand-in for Rand tells a Bolshevik with blood-chilling candor, “I loathe your ideals. I admire your methods.”
Heller and Burns have both found an even scarier Rand text, what Heller describes as “a stunningly harsh and antisocial novella called ‘The Little Street 1928,’ based on the actual trial of a notorious killer named William Hickman...” The real Hickman had strangled and dismembered an 8-year-old girl in Los Angeles, but Rand admired Hickman’s “disdainful countenance, his immense, explicit [sic] egoism.” This, Heller adds, “is practically a diagnostic description of narcissism, and also a description of Rand herself.”
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Paul Schrodt is a writer living in New York City. He has contributed to New York magazine, Radar, and Esquire.com.
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Allen Barra writes about sports for the Wall Street Journal and the Village Voice. He also writes about books for Salon.com, Bookforum, and the Washington Post. His latest book is Yogi Berra, Eternal Yankee.
The Prince of Gibberish
Allen Barra writes about sports for the Wall Street Journal and the Village Voice. He also writes about books for Salon.com, Bookforum, and the Washington Post. His latest book is Yogi Berra, Eternal Yankee.
mzkitti
I wonder why it took this country sixty years to find out Ann Rand was a fraud?
When she came out with her book the Fountainhead... the whole world knew she was a fraud. But not the US. Glenn Beck needs to tell his moronic listeners that Rand hated Christians and thought they were all mentally unbalanced.
nortonclybourn
Most Americans were oblivious of her, but there have been a few who saw themselves in the role of the supermen that society couldn't live without (although they did not have any actual talent for architecture or finance or anything else).
economicfreedom
When The Fountainhead came out it climbed to the best-seller list and was then made into a movie. Hardly a case of fraud. And today, 52 years after its publication, Atlas Shrugged continues to sell a cool 100,000 copies per year, with sales having recently tripled as people realize that the Marxists in the White House and Congress are leading the U.S. into the same socialist hell-hole Rand predicted so uncannily in her novel. That the no-talents and the lightweights who write for The Daily Beast will never sell hundreds of thousands of copies of anything they write makes me conclude that hit-pieces like the present one by Allen Barra are simply projections of professional jealousy. It's just so painful to be ideologically ineffective, is it not?
kamknauss
Well, if we are basing ideological effectiveness on sales and popularity among the masses, we'll soon be practicing wizardry, so none of this will matter. Heil Harry Potter!
crypto
Not all of Glenn Beck's listeners are moronic. In fact some are very intelligent and well schooled, enough so that some recognized Rand to be a tweedle long before now. However when you make a statement as to Beck's abilities you do so through bigotry and ignorance. If you had followed his thread, better yet, his guest's threads, you would see that Mr. Beck has indeed a very good handle on the decent of our economy into a hole from which there is no evident recovery. How would anyone propose to pull this nation from a 19 trillion dollar debt in the next 10 or 15 years. If you visit the nationaldebtcalender
.org and just watch for a moment you will see where we are headed and it's scary I don't care who you are.
Allenbarra
If Glenn Beck had such a grip on the so-called descent of our economy, why was he silent when Bush lead us into a disastrous war and a $1.3 billion debt? I think Glenn Beck knows even less about economics than Ayn Rand.
Mika64
Ben Gleck is a opportunistic 2 belly buttons ex-coward running around. Here is some food for the soul from some atheist's archenemy.
http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/111953-0/
Enjoy !!!
screendummie
The whole focus of this feature was unfocused hatred of Ayn Rand that eventually rambles about Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck. I'm surprised this article doesn't even mention "Atlas Shrugged" the novel the gave her last fame whether you like her or not.
Allen Barra is patently a hack when you read the statement: "You can draw a straight line from Rand's equation of JFK and Hitler to the tea-baggers who paint swastikas on pictures of Barack Obama." How do you corelate any of that in this statement?
Back to "Atlas Shrugged", the novel and the others not metioned by Barra, is an excellent book. Rand's own experience of Leninist Soviet Russia is a strong foundation of the book. My own experience inside the People's Republic of China has shown me no matter how much propaganda is shown, communism deprives people of their basic rights and freedoms.
You can be objective and have a rational debate on Rand's philosophy as long as you cut the hate. Barra's hate is irrational because when you like Rand or not, she does not agree with the writer. Or rather Barra doesn't agree with Rand. Either way, foaming at the mouth serves no purpose.
nortonclybourn
Sorry, dummie, when you wrote "Atlas Shrugged...is an excellent book," you lost all credibility.
Allenbarra
There isn't one line in my piece that was written in hate. You call it hate because you don't agree with it, which is your way of dismissing what you can not deal with -- by the way, a typical Randian tactic.
I had several lines on Atlas Shrugged but decided to cut them and confine my comments to a general statement about her novels -- namely that they are moralistic claptrap derived from 19th century romantic fluff. Atlas Shrugged, like all of Rand's novels, is only a great novel for people who already agree with Ayn Rand. It is instantly dismissable.
awesomepossum
"Atlas Shrugged, like all of Rand's novels, is only a great novel for people who already agree with Ayn Rand. It is instantly dismissable."
Of course, the author never has had found any books that he already agrees with. Any book that is too agreeable with his views should be dismissed. I highly doubt, though, that he abides by this principle that he espouses as a criterion for rejecting simplistic ideologies.
alethus
By the same methodology that you utilized here we should also completely dismiss any of the philosophical contributions of Karl Marx. He made rather insulting comments about Jewish people; "What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, selfishness. What is the secular cult of the Jew? Haggling. What is his secular god? Money.", had Catarrh which caused boils all over his body that had to be regularly drained of puss, looked like a manic Santa Claus and was also extremely dismissive and mean to his critics.
I disagree with pretty much everything that Ayn Rand wrote, but it is disturbingly idiotic to claim that a book like Atlas Shrugged is "instantly dismissable". Her works still contribute to the greater debate on the optimal state of man and your position on this topic is ignorant and useless.
MittyMo
Typical Alinski-like smear piece. Attack the messenger, hoping to discredit the message. To the extent she lived within the law and did not harm others, Rynd's private life was hers to live as she liked. That she had shortcomings is no concern for most. She was neither a sex, nor beauty symbol. Instead, she was a messenger who signaled alarms against the government's creeping forays into our freedoms.
Attack the message, dude, if you have the intellectual honesty to do so. She believed in individual rights, capitalism, and limited government. She was a fierce opponent of all forms of collectivism and statism (that she witnessed the horrors of in Russia).
The sordid little details you dug up will likely prove interesting only to sordid little individuals.
madame48
oh no Rand will find out we have a p-u-b-l-i-c library, we share books! we even share the police & fire dept who protect us from harm....the worst kind of collectivism....and we have public schools that educate all the kids in town whether their parents have a job or got laid off when Bain bought the company, loaded it with debt-took the pensions and took theirmillions in profit for Bain and closed the plant.
Allenbarra
Sorry, but it was Ayn Rand hersefl who said "One should judge every moment of one's life." The same standards should be applied to her that she applied to others, And the judgement on Ayn Rand is: hypocrisy. I dug up no details on her personal life; her followers did. Check out "The Passion of Ayn Rand." By the standards she used to judge others she was a tyrant and a hypocrite.
MarkASadowski
The story of postwar American conservatism perhaps is best understood as a continual replay of a single long-standing debate. On one side are those who have upheld the Burkean ideal of replenishing civil society by adjusting to changing conditions. On the other are those committed to a revanchist libertarian counterrevolution, the restoration of America's pre-welfare state ancien regime. The result is that modern American "conservatism" is no longer really dedicated to fortifying and replenishing civil society but rather is increasingly committed to weakening it through a politics of civil warfare.
How did this happen? One reason is that the most intellectually sophisticated influences on postwar libertarianism, including and especially Rand, tempermentally and philosophically had much more in common with the Marxists that they so violently opposed than they themselves could ever perceive. They may have been on the right rather than on the left, but they too were persuaded that they were living in revolutionary times and so were afflicted with an astonishingly similiar absolutist fervor. But instead of a Marxist dialectic they had a Manichaean politics of good and evil, still with us today, and their strategy was to build a movement based on organizing cultural antagonisms. Many have observed that movement politics most clearly defines itself not by what it yearns to conserve but by what it longs to destroy--"statist" social programs; "socialized medicine"; "big labor"; "activist" Supreme Court justices, the "media elite"; "tenured radicals" on university faculties; "experts" in and out of government.
Modern American libertarianism is firmly grounded in Rand's atheistic Objectivism. Objectivists substitute secular reasoning for the divine laws of God. Objectivism, you see, is religion turned inside out. Russell Kirk, in venting his spleen against libertarianism, once wrote "Ideology provides sham religion and sham philosophy, comforting in its way to those who have lost or never have known genuine religious faith, and to those not sufficiently intelligent to apprehend real philosophy." (Mill once called conservatives the stupid party. Kirk was merely returning the compliment.) This is why true conservatives can never be Objectivists; possessing faith, and deeply versed in philosophy, they have no need of any replacements. "Because ideology is by essence antireligious," Kirk once wrote, "Christians tend to be attracted to ideology's negation, conservatism."
bananaphone
Yes Mark your usage of big words has convinced us all of your intelligence. And how is ideology's negation equal to conservatism? Conservatism is an ideology. And if we could ever destroy statist social programs, big labor, tenured radicals, and the media elite, I would die a happy man. These are all bad things, would you not agree?
Allenbarra
This is a very perceptive letter. The gulf between conservatives and Randians/libertarians can never be bridged.. In fact, the gulf between Randians and libertarians may never be brdged; it was Rand who called libertarians "worse than anything on the left."
Alpha1
"Any objectivity about the founder of Objectivism is impossible."
That first line says it all, right there. The fact that Allen Barra would then proceed to write an article about the founder of Objectivism after making such a statement just proves what a cynical piece of self-loathing crap he is. It is also an insult to his readers, because no one should be asked to believe a promulgator or his "facts" after he admits to non-objectivity, especially in the context of such a blatant hack job. This is just incredible. How did he get a gig at the Wall Street Journal?
Allen Barra is a sore loser because Ayn Rand's ideas, which he won't discuss because he can't disprove them, are winning out in the public realm. He needs to wipe his bib and man up. Life goes on.
gseine
I've known a couple of people like the author, too uncomfortable with their own beliefs to to shine a light into their own thinking. In the first line he lays out his commitment to irrationality, that he is not able to be objective,
That alone speaks volumes for his personal beliefs. Free will is out and we know from here on on he has granted emotions to control his actions rather than thinking.
It is regrettable to see such a blatant case of a person terrified of thinking, which is really all that Ayn Rand ever advocated. "Your mind is you greatest asset."
And he's been fighting himself since highschool? Pity.
MinnItMan
Rand's influence on the right is a difficult matter to gauge. On the one hand, she did sell a bazillion books. On the other hand, her main contribution was to place the ubermenscher head on an already well-developed set of ideas, a ''tude" that was largely rejected by the right, that had allowed for a pantheon that included Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Adams, Lincoln, Locke, Smith, Churchill and others. 15 years ago, when I listened to Rush regularly, he did seem to be a Randian apotheosis, and I remember what appeared to be a Randian effort to bring him into the fold. Rush's own intellectual development was largely based on his father's (and grandfather's, IIRC) many Rotary Club speeches, and used God and Country gauziness to soften the harder edges of what seemed to be Randian individualism - what Rush calls "Rugged American individualism." I remember Rush questioning Randians along the line of "you think she invented all this?" They did, or at least they thought she invented the truly necessary part of it - the attitude.
I have listened to Beck a lot less, but he seems to me to be far less deferential to establishment conservatism, and far more likely to see where it might be a swindle for his listeners, although based upon the ad-base for both him and Rush, swindles where they get a piece are just fine.
So, Rand is an ideologue, and her followers are creepy (Randians are a quite distinct group). That's the cut-line here. Berra added very little except that he hates Limbaugh and Beck, too. Fine.
dooreen
I would bet Ayn Rand is closer to being an objectifyer than being objective.
It is technology that has given us windows of opportunity. But it is mass marketing, mass consumers that have given these technologies power and the economies of scale etc create a power base.
It is the everyday person that empowers people like Bill Gates to grow his products, because his investors know we will buy every operating system he puts out, because the computers are marketed that way.
It is the mass consumer that gave Ayn Rand her power.
It seems to me the extreme left and extreme right assumes every day people are stupid. They may say puttin up barriers to control movement, to protect us, no it is to protect them, it manipulates the market.
The circuit, which needs energy to move volume, can't be treated like an object without it back firing.
Stick your finger in a socket, you will see what I mean. It is a fact, no one is going to stay objective if it is their finger getting shock. They can stay objective if someone else's finger is getting a shock.
It is a management style, which gives a person the ability to see the depth of someone and to motivate them to grow beyond limits, and to shift boundaries.
atmananda
Good article Allen, it is important to share this insight with the public. I know that many Americans do not know who Ayn Rand was. That she was a dark and narcissistic writer who had a huge influence on what is worst about American culture and mythos.
Sadly her influence persists to this day. She is the heroine of all those who lack compassion, kindness, true courage (the kind that lets you look within) and the desire to serve all members of humanity equally. In other words she is the inspiration of the greedy, the selfish and the fearful...
awesomepossum
I think that many Americans also think they know who Ayn Rand is but tend to be quite mistaken about the kind of philosophy she is espousing. To claim that she alone is responsible for the worst of American culture and mythos is to absolve the current generation of any responsibility for their own actions in perpetuating this culture of self-centeredness and greed.
Snertly
Ayn Rand labored mightily to excuse her own selfishness by creating a fantasy that says selfishness is good for everyone. Then she disguised the inherently subjective nature of a philosophy that says "self interest before all else!" by naming it Objectivism.
If you need a fairy tale to live your life by, you'd probably be a lot happier picking "Stone Soup".
jpaden
Thank you! People have blindly worshipped this horrible woman for decades; in part, I think, because they couldn't believe that she actually meant what she said. Like you, I found her creepy and frightening years ago and never found anything to which I could relate in any of her writings.
Wayfarin
in the paragraph on bad authors you forgot to include a final period.
Wayfarin
and china owes its current economic prowess to dismantling a portion of its centralized economic structure.
funny how much vitriol this woman inspires in the left. to presume that free market capitalism is all of the sudden passe because giant oligarchies, with close ties to the government, collapsed, is a little silly. to think it is misguided because ayn rand had personal failings is even sillier.
Oenolicious
The line about the aesthetic gulf had me rolling on the floor.
Thank you.
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