Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (40 page)

But this was as Rand wanted it, she responded angrily to Hospers. In her letter she exhibited a striking contempt for those who showed the most interest in her philosophy. “Through all the years that I spent formulating my philosophical system, I was looking desperately for ‘intelligent agreement’ or at least for ‘intelligent disagreement,’ “ she told Hospers. “Today, I am
not
looking for ‘intelligent disagreement’ any longer, and certainly not from children or amateurs.” In other parts of the letter she called participants in her classes “weaklings” and denied, predictably, that she should have any concern for their interests. She argued that neither she nor Branden should be expected to present themselves as “uncertain” for the benefit of her students: “If you think that our certainty will intimidate the poor little ‘social metaphysicians’ what do you think our uncertainty would do to them? Would it make them think independently?”
⁴⁷
Rand was oblivious to the idea that presenting multiple sides of an issue might stimulate students to independently measure and evaluate the validity of each option, thereby exercising their reason and arriving at their own, individual conclusions.

In the letter it also became clear that Rand thought of
Atlas Shrugged
as a kind of revealed truth. She argued that for her or Nathan to assume a stance of “uncertainty” would be tantamount to pretending “that
Atlas Shrugged
[had] not been written.” She also seemed to equate disagreement with ignorance, and understanding with agreement. If her ideas weren’t presented as deriving from “rational certainty,” it would permit the audience to make “assertions of disagreement, while evading and ignoring everything” she and Branden said. Rand was unable to conceive of a person’s understanding her ideas, yet disagreeing with them. She told Hospers that the classes were offered “
only
to those who have understood enough of
Atlas Shrugged
to agree with its essentials,” as if the two were synonymous. Rand also explicitly rejected any pedagogical role, telling Hospers that NBI’s purposes were very different from those of a university. They had no interest in the development of their students’ minds: “
we
are not and do not regard ourselves as
teachers
. . . . We address ourselves to adults and leave up to them the full responsibility for learning something from the course.”
⁴⁸
Despite her emphasis on reason and independent judgment, Rand had a very narrow idea of how this reason should be used. She conceived her ideal student as an empty vessel who used his or her rationality only to verify the validity of Objectivism. At the same time, she excoriated those who did so as weaklings or cowards.

Although Objectivism claimed to be an intellectual culture, it was decidedly not one devoted to freewheeling inquiry, but rather a community in which a certain catechism had to be learned for advancement. A flyer for the Basic Principles of Objectivism class openly alerted potential students to the bias inherent in NBI. “The lectures are not given to convert antagonists,” the flyer noted, but were “addressed exclusively” to those who had read Rand’s major works, “are in agreement with the
essentials
of the philosophy presented in these books, and seek an amplification and further study of this philosophy.” This tendency was most prominent in New York, where Rand’s opinions and actions had an immediate effect on the atmosphere at NBI. Her interest in her students seemed directly proportional to their agreement with her ideas. An NBI student remembered, “When she learned that I was a physicist, she made a comment about how physics has been corrupted by bad philosophy. She was apparently expecting my agreement. But I couldn’t
agree, because I didn’t think that physics was corrupt. I could see the interest in me dying down in her eyes.”
⁴⁹
Rand could turn her charisma on and off at will, charming those who paid her proper homage while freezing out those who did not.

For every NBI student who found Rand harsh or was the target of an unprovoked rage, there is another who remembers Rand’s sensitivity and caring. Jan Richman, a Los Angeles NBI representative, described her first meeting with Rand: “[She] said that I should take my glasses off. I took them off, and she said, you have very beautiful eyes. You shouldn’t hide them behind glasses; get contact lenses. I remember I felt like crying.” Martin Anderson, the author of a controversial book that attacked federal urban renewal programs,
The Federal Bulldozer
, was a professor at Columbia Business School when he and his girlfriend attended an NBI lecture they saw advertised in the
New York Times
. There he befriended Alan Greenspan, who invited him to several smaller events with Rand. Anderson remembers Rand as a “pussycat,” a warm and caring figure. It was Rand, alone out of a late-night café crowd, who noticed his trouble and helped prepare his coffee when a broken arm left him unable to open a package of cream. When Rand learned about his upcoming wedding she asked to be invited and presented the couple with a wedding gift. Older, professionally accomplished, and married, Anderson was insulated from the groupthink and gossip of younger NBI students. His engagement with Objectivism was purely intellectual. Rand helped him clarify and unify his long-standing political beliefs, shaping them into a cohesive and integrated whole that helped direct his future work in Republican politics.
⁵⁰

There seemed to be two Objectivisms: one that genuinely supported intellectual exchange, engagement, and discourse, and one that was as dogmatic, narrow-minded, and stifling as Rand’s harshest critics alleged. And the closer one got to New York, the more repressive the atmosphere became, Objectivists noticed.
⁵¹
For all their emphasis on reason, Rand and NBI instructors met intellectual disagreement with invective. Sometimes the two sides of Objectivism alternated with stunning speed, leaving Rand’s followers unsure where they stood. A college student who would pursue a philosophy doctorate at the University of Rochester, and then a professorial career at Tulane, took Leonard Peikoff’s NBI lecture series in the summer of 1965. He and several advanced students met
separately with Peikoff for “what turned out to be an excellent, exciting, open-ended, philosophical discussion.” “The topic I most clearly remember,” he said, “was phenomenalism—objects are really just categories of sense data.” The group was then told that for their next meeting they would meet with Rand and Nathan. Seeing this as a promotion based on their enthusiasm and expertise, the students were shocked when at the meeting, Nathan “began a long harangue about how grotesque it was for people to claim to have read Rand’s works and still raise the sorts of philosophical [questions] Peikoff had reported to them. This went on for quite a while and we were all thoroughly abused.”
⁵²
It was a sudden reversal of fortune for the class, which did not understand Nathan’s characterization of their questions as villainy.

The conformity engendered by NBI stretched beyond the classroom. Objectivism was a comprehensive philosophy, and Objectivists strove to apply the principles they learned at NBI to daily life. Rand’s cast of mind saw all of reality as integrated by a few fundamental principles. Therefore adoption of these principles would radiate out infinitely into every aspect of a person’s life. Following her reasoning, it became possible to gauge the validity of an Objectivist’s commitment by the smallest details of his or her personal life and preferences. One NBI student remembered, “There was more than just a right kind of politics and a right kind of moral code. There was also a right kind of music, a right kind of art, a right kind of interior design, a right kind of dancing. There were wrong books which we could not buy, and right ones which we should. . . . And on everything, absolutely everything, one was constantly being judged, just as one was expected to be judging everything around him. . . . It was a perfect breeding ground for insecurity, fear, and paranoia.”
⁵³

Striving to become good Objectivists, Rand’s followers tried to conform to her every dictate, even those that were little more than personal preferences. Rand harbored a dislike of facial hair, and accordingly her followers were all clean shaven. Libertine in her celebration of sex outside marriage, she described homosexuality as a disgusting aberration. The playwright Sky Gilbert, once an enthusiastic Objectivist, remembered, “As a young, self-hating gay man, I welcomed Rand’s Puritanism. I imagined I could argue myself out of homosexuality. I labored over endless journal passages, arguing the advantages and disadvantages
of being gay, always reminding myself that gay was ‘irrational.’”
⁵⁴
If Objectivism was a religion to some people, it was a notably dogmatic and confining one. Led to Rand by a quest for answers and a need for certainty, her followers could find themselves locked into the system she had created.

The presence of Rand, a charismatic personality, was enough to tip Objectivism into quasi-religious territory, but Objectivism was also easy to abuse because of its very totalizing structure. There were elements deep within the philosophy that encouraged its dogmatic and coercive tendencies. Although Rand celebrated independence, the content of her thought became subsumed by its structure, which demanded consistency and excluded any contradictory data deriving from experience or emotion. Rand denied any pathway of knowledge that did not derive from rational, conscious thought and did not lead to the conclusions she had syllogistically derived. Thus Objectivism could translate quickly into blind obeisance to Rand. One former Objectivist remembered, “If you think to yourself, I have to be able to go by rational arguments, and you’re unable to refute them, then you’re really in a bind, which is where we all were.” At NBI balls dozens of women appeared in slinky, one-shouldered gowns, like Dagny wore in
Atlas Shrugged
. When Ayn and Frank purchased a new piece of furniture, the Objectivist dining table became all the rage.
⁵⁵

Roy Childs, an active Objectivist and later advocate for anarchocapitalism, remembered that many did not simply read
Atlas Shrugged
but were “dominated” by it. Rand’s fan letters reflected this truth. “Your philosophy has affected me to such a depth that I can longer think outside its context, nor can I picture myself in any other activity, save the discussion of it,” one man wrote to her. Another college student reported cheerfully, “About a month ago I noticed how much I was talking about your books to my teachers and classmates. As a result of my enthusiasm I have lost two friends. I am beginning to realize how unimportant these people are.
⁵⁶
Just as her fans mimicked Rand’s language and rhetorical structures, so too could they come to imitate her psychology, including the rejection of friends who did not measure up to Objectivist standards. Principled schisms and breaks were commonplace in the Objectivist subculture as fans followed Rand’s cues about proper human relationships.

The Collective bore the brunt of Objectivism’s shadow side. Saturday nights at Rand’s apartment often came with a price. One night Robert Hessen and his wife arrived fresh from a movie they had both enjoyed,
Topaz
. Rand’s brow darkened when she heard them describe a scene in which a Russian defector is confronted with the bounty and splendor of Western goods: “[She became] literally furious, and started screaming at us how stupid we were.” The room fell silent as Rand spoke. Didn’t they realize this was propaganda, intended to make all defectors seem like materialistic opportunists rather than people motivated by a desire for freedom? To focus on this scene without understanding its meaning meant the Hessens were immature, superficial, naïve. The evening was ruined, the Hessens feeling “beaten and battered, humiliated.”
⁵⁷

Members of Rand’s inner circle saw her outbursts as a danger they would willingly brook in exchange for what she offered. Henry Holzer, Rand’s lawyer, remembered that nights at her apartment involved a trade-off of sorts: “Ayn would hold court mostly, and every word, every sentence was magic. It was a revelation. . . . But, on the other hand, I think it’s fair to say that most people were walking on egg shells.” He described Rand’s reaction if one of her friends said something she did not like: “She’d look at you with those laser eyes and tell you that you have a lousy sense of life, or what you said was really immoral, or you didn’t see the implications, or it was anti-life.”
⁵⁸
Such tongue-lashings did little to deter Rand insiders. She offered them a “round universe” and a comprehensive philosophy that seemed to clear an easy path through life’s confusions. Once they made a psychic investment in Rand, it was nearly impossible to pull away.

Many victims accepted that they had done something wrong, even as they were cast out of Rand’s world. The worst offenders were publicly rebuked in group discussions and analyses that resembled trials. It mattered little if the accused was also a patient of Branden’s who had exposed personal information as part of treatment and expected confidentiality or support. This official rejection by friends, therapist, and intellectual idol was crushing. The journalist Edith Efron, excommunicated when her sharp wit displeased Rand, wrote an ingratiating letter after her trial, thanking Rand for the gift of
Atlas Shrugged
and her other work: “I fully and profoundly agree with the moral judgment you have made of me, and with the action you have taken to end social relations. . . . I have
repaid you for this greatest of gifts [
Atlas Shrugged
] with hurt and disappointment. Do me, if you wish, the courtesy of understanding that my self-condemnation is ceaseless.”
⁵⁹
Efron’s expulsion was accompanied by a notice in
The Objectivist
, a harbinger of splits to come.