Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (53 page)

39
. Charles Peters, “The Greatest Convention,”
Washington Monthly
36, no. 7/8 (2004): 16.

40
. Willkie is quoted in Neal,
Dark Horse
, 74; Biographical Interview 14, March 3, 1961.

41
. Ayn Rand to Gerald Loeb, August 5, 1944,
Letters
, 154.

42
. Biographical Interview 10, January 1, 1961.

43
. Barbara Branden,
The Passion of Ayn Rand
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1986), 161.

44
.
Journals
, 73.

45
. Biographical Interview 14.

46
. Isolationism is described in Justus Doenecke,
Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention, 1939–1941
(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000); Justus Doenecke and Mark A. Stoler,
Debating Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Foreign Policies, 1933–1945
(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005); Wayne S. Cole,
Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–1945
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983).

47
. Biographical interview 10.

48
. Biographical interview 14.

49
. Bill Kauffman,
America First! Its History, Culture, and Politics
(Amherst, MA: Prometheus Books, 1995), 18.

50
. “New Force?,”
Time
, December 23, 1940.

51
.
Journals
, 345, 347. First used during the Spanish Civil War, “fifth column” was a fairly popular term for internal subversion at the time. See Ribuffo,
The Old Christian Right
. Rand had also recently read a conservative screed about Communists in the United States, Joseph Kamp’s
The Fifth Column in Washington!
(New Haven, CT: Constitutional Education League, 1940). Peikoff Library Collection, Ayn Rand Archives. Rand’s usage of “totalitarianism” rather than “collectivism” followed a similar shift in the public understanding of communism and fascism. See Benjamin L. Alpers,
Dictators, Democracy, and American Public Culture
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003). This equation of Russia and Germany occurred particularly among business leaders and in corporate publications. See Les K. Adler and Thomas G. Paterson, “Red Fascism: The Merger of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the American Image of Totalitarianism, 1930s–1950s,”
American Historical Review
75, no. 4 (1970): 1046–64. The bulk of Adler and Paterson’s sources for this discourse are business leaders and corporate publications, although they do not comment on this.

52
.
Journals
, 345.

53
. Important geographic variations persisted, with the Party remaining strong in California throughout World War II. Betty Friedan and Robert Oppenheimer, for example, became close to Communists in Berkeley during this time. See Daniel Horowitz,
Betty Friedan and The Making of the Feminine Mystique
(Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), 92–94.

54
. For the history of the CPUSA, including membership figures, see Harvey Klehr,
The Heyday of American Communism: The Depression Decade
(New York: Basic Books, 1984); Maurice Isserman,
Which Side Were You On? The American Communist Party During the Second World War
(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1982).

55
. Pollock’s column “This Week,” ran in the supplement to the
Sunday Herald Tribune
. Pollock, “What Can We Do for Democracy,” Town Hall Forum of the West, ARP 146–PO1.

56
. AR to Pollock, April 28, 1941,
Letters
, 45.

57
. Rand’s “Manifesto of Individualism” has not been published. For an extended treatment, with particular attention to the connections among the “Manifesto,”
Anthem
, and
The Fountainhead
, see Jeff Britting, “Anthem and the Individualist Manifesto,” in 70–80.

58
. Rand, “Manifesto of Individualism,” undated typescript with handwritten edits, 2–4, ARP, 029–90A.

59
. Ibid, 6.

60
. Ibid. 14.

61
. Ibid., 15.

62
. Ibid., 17. Rand’s distinction between social classes, typically understood, and her views of the worthy echoes Ortega y Gasset, who railed against the “masses” yet emphasized that the term did not mean working class but rather “anyone who does not value himself.”
Revolt of the Masses
, 7.

63
.
Journals
, 90.

64
. Rand, “Manifesto of Individualism,” 10, 12, 33.

65
.
Journals
, 84. Some of the changes Rand made to a second edition of
We the Living
, released in 1959, may also track this shift in perspective. See Robert Mayhew, “We the Living: ’36 and ’59,” in
Essays on Ayn Rand’s
We the Living (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 203–4; Rand, “Manifesto.”

66
. Biographical Interview 14.

67
. Carl Snyder,
Capitalism the Creator: The Economic Foundations of Modern Industrial Society
(New York: Macmillan, 1940), 4, 363. Tellingly, Synder’s work was also read by F. A. Hayek; see Hayek, “Review of
Capitalism the Creator
by Carl Snyder,”
Economica
7, no. 28. (1940): 437–39.

68
. Snyder,
Capitalism the Creator
, 416.

69
. Rand, “Manifesto,” 21, quoted in Britting,
Ayn Rand
, 74.

70
. Adam Smith,
Theory of Moral Sentiments
(1759; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

71
. Rand, “Manifesto,” 22, 32, 33, quoted in Britting,
Ayn Rand
, 74.

72
. AR to Pollock, May 1, 1941,
Letters
, 46.

Chapter 3

1
. Rand, “Dear Mr.____,” undated fundraising letter, ARP 146–PO4.

2
. AR to Pollock, July 20, 1941,
Letters
, 33.

3
. AR to Ann Watkins, May 17, 1941, reprinted in Robert Mayhew, ed.,
Essays on Ayn Rand’s
The Fountainhead (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), 66.

4
. Biographical Interview 11, February 15, 1961.

5
. Ibid.

6
. Monroe Shakespeare to DeWitt Emery, November 25, 1941, ARP 139–E2x.

7
. Emery to Rand, undated, ARP 139–E1.

8
. AR to Pollock, June 23, 1941,
Letters
, 53; AR to Emery, August 14, 1941,
Letters
, 57.

9
. Biographical Interview 14, March 3, 1961.

10
. Ibid.

11
. Ibid.

12
. John Maynard Keynes,
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997). Keynes’s ascendency is described in David C. Colander and Harry Landreth, eds.,
The Coming of Keynesianism to America
(Brookfield, VT: Edward Elgar, 1996). As the authors rightly note, Keynesianism did not have a direct effect on New Deal policymaking, nor was the adaptation of his ideas uncontroversial in academic departments. The attractiveness of Keynes to a young generation of economists, however, quickly minimized the influence of classical economics at key institutions like Harvard University.

13
. Talcott Parsons,
The Structure of Social Action
(New York: McGraw Hill, 1937), 3 New work on Parsons considers him more progressive than previously understood. See Howard Brick,
Transcending Capitalism: Visions of a New Society in Modern American Thought
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006).

14
. Alfred Jay Nock, introduction to Herbert Spencer,
The Man versus the State
(Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1940), x.

15
. Richard Hofstadter,
Social Darwinism in American Thought
, revised ed. (1944; Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), 52.

16
. There is a rich debate about the role played by true Darwinian theory in this tradition of thought. None deny, however, that laissez-faire theorists drew heavily on scientific theory and the idea of evolution, even if they drastically misunderstood Darwin’s ideas. See especially Robert C. Bannister’s critique of Hofstadter,
Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979); Donald C. Bellomy, “ ‘Social Darwinism’ Revisited,”
Perspectives in America History 1, n.s. (1984): 1–129.

17
. Channing Pollock, “What Can We Do for Democracy,– Town Hall Forum of the West, undated, 16, ARP 146-P01; Ruth Alexander to AR, February 27, 1965, ARP 137–A2x. Nock apparently accepted Cram’s bizarre theory as scientific truth, and it contributed to the pessimism of his later years. See Nock,
Memoirs of a Superfluous Man
(New York: Harper Brothers, 1943), 139; Charles H. Hamilton, foreword to Albert Jay Nock and Charles H. Hamilton,
The State of the Union: Essays in Social Criticism
(Indianapolis:
Liberty Press, 1991), xxi; Rand, “An Attempt at the Beginning of an Autobiography,” ARP, 078–15x, reprinted in
Journals
, 65.

18
. Paterson’s career and thought are described in a recent a full-length biography: Stephen Cox,
The Woman and the Dynamo: Isabel Paterson and the Idea of America
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2004). Her time at the
Herald
is also briefly described in Joan Shelley Rubin,
The Making of Middlebrow Culture
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 79–80.

19
. Rose Wilder Lane to AR, undated, ARP 143–LN3.

20
. Biographical Interview 14.

21
. Details of the Rand-Paterson relationship are given in Barbara Branden,
The Passion of Ayn Rand
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1986), 164–66 Cox,
The Woman and the Dynamo
, especially chapters 14, 18, 22, 24.

22
. Maine first elaborated the distinction between status and contract societies in
Ancient Law
(1861; New York: Henry Holt, 1864). Spencer refers to this idea on the first page of
The Man versus the State
(1884), and Sumner highlights it in the first chapter of
What Social Classes Owe to Each Other
(1883; Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 2003). In later libertarian writing this distinction would pass for common sense. Rand hurled it at religious conservatives in the 1960s, accusing them of advocating a return to the “ancient, frozen, status society.” See Rand, “Conservatism: An Obituary,” in
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
(New York: Penguin, 1967), 198.

23
. Carl Ryant,
Profit’s Prophet: Garet Garrett
(Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1989). Paterson’s interest in Garrett is described in Cox,
The Woman and the Dynamo
, 126–28.

24
. Biographical Interview 14.

25
. Rand, “Dear Mr.____,” undated fund-raising letter, ARP 146–PO4.

26
. Ibid.

27
. Channing Pollock to DeWitt Emery, September 6, 1941, ARP 146–PO4.

28
. Quoted in Mayhew,
Essays on Ayn Rand’s
The Fountainhead, 68. Isabel Paterson also claimed to have influenced Bobbs-Merrill to accept the book. See Anne C. Heller,
Ayn Rand and the World She Made
(New York: Doubleday, 2009), 144.

29
. AR to Odgen, February 19, 1942,
Letters
, 63.

30
. Biographical Interview 15, March 31, 1961.

31
. Ayn Rand,
The Fountainhead
, 50th anniversary ed. (1943;
The Fountainhead
. 50th anniversary ed. 1943; New York: Signet, 1993), 675. Subsequent citations are from this edition and are referenced in the text.

32
. AR to Monroe Shakespeare, June 12, 1943, ARP 004–15C.

33
. Ayn Rand,
The Art of Fiction
, ed. Tore Boeckmann (New York: Penguin, 2000), 163.

34
. AR to Paul Smith, March 13, 1965, ARP 39–07A; Barbara Branden, “Ayn Rand: The Reluctant Feminist,” in
Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand
, ed. Mimi Reisel Gladstein and Chris Sciabarra (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 37.

35
. Phyllis Schlafly, for one, stopped reading the book when she reached this scene. Schlafly,
Feminist Fantasies
(Dallas: Spence, 2003), 23.
The Fountainhead
may be compared to romance novels, which use rape as a standard trope. In these popular works rape is essential to male character development and one of many
symbolic ways male and female characters interact. See Janice Radway,
Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature
1984 Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 207. The rape scene is given extended treatment in Gladstein and Sciabarra,
Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand
and Andrew Bernstein, “Understanding the ‘Rape’ Scene in
The Fountainhead
, ” in Mayhew,
Essays on Ayn Rand’s
The Fountainhead, 201–8.

36
. Shoshana Milgram, “
The Fountainhead from
Notebook to Novel: The Composition of Ayn Rand’s First Ideal Man,” in Mayhew,
Essays on Ayn Rand’s
The Fountainhead, 3–40, provides a perceptive reading of these changes.

37
. See Sumner,
What Social Classes Owe to Each Other
, 107; Isabel Paterson,
God of the Machine
(1943; New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1993), xii. This was in many ways an articulation of a producer ethic, which Michael Kazin identifies as an important component of populism. Kazin emphasizes that populism is a “flexible mode of persuasion,” and not all who employ the idiom should be identified as populists in a sociological sense. Kazin,
The Populist Persuasion: An American History
(New York: Basic Books, 1995), 3.