Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (42 page)

In 1974, Alan Greenspan invited Ayn and Frank to the White House to attend his swearing in a chairman of President Ford’s Council of Economic Advisers. Courtesy Gerald R. Ford Library.

CHAPTER NINE
It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand

THE SCHISMS OF
1968 were a disaster for Rand but a boon for many of her readers. Afterward she retreated into private life, emerging only once every year to address the Ford Hall Forum, an event that became known as the “Objectivist Easter.” But the ideological energy amassed by Rand and her followers was too strong to disappear overnight, as had NBI. The break even had an invigorating effect on the spread of Objectivism, broadly considered, because the shuttering of NBI coincided with a new wave of right-wing activity on campus. As young conservatives began to mobilize against an increasingly radical New Left, Rand’s ideas became an important source of inspiration and guidance. And now, without the dictats of NBI, there was ample room for interpretation. No longer “students of Objectivism,” those who liked Rand were free to call themselves Objectivists or libertarians. They could follow the logic of their antistatism all the way to the newly popular position of anarchism or, with a nod to Rand, anarcho-capitalism.
¹
Rand’s works were too potent and too popular to be confined or controlled, even by their creator.

Once unleashed, Rand’s ideas helped power an ideological explosion on the right that culminated in an independent libertarian movement. These new libertarians distinguished themselves proudly from traditional conservatives, who in turn greeted the movement with dismay. At times, libertarians talking fervently about revolution seemed to have more in common with the left than the right. For a brief moment it even seemed that libertarianism or anarchism might become the latest addition to the New Left’s rainbow of ideologies.
²
But since Rand had so deeply imprinted capitalism upon the face of the libertarian subculture, this latent potential never fully developed. Instead, libertarians remained fierce defenders of the free market and apologists for all the
social consequences thus engendered. The greatest contribution of Rand’s Objectivism was to moor the libertarian movement to the right side of the political spectrum. In turn, libertarians kept Rand’s ideas actively circulating in the years after NBI’s demise. Rand denounced libertarian appropriation of her work, never accepting that with her success came a commensurate loss of control. Objectivism,
Atlas Shrugged,
John Galt—they no longer belonged to Rand exclusively. She had set them loose in the world, and their fortunes were no longer tied to hers.

After the deluge, Rand’s first priority was to produce the year’s remaining issues of
The Objectivist,
now nearly five months behind schedule. Her main preoccupation was with Nathan and his betrayal. In long philosophic discussions with the remains of the Collective—the Blumenthals, the Kalbermans, and Leonard Peikoff—Rand strove to identify the root of Nathan’s corruption, to find the seed of evil that had transformed him from trusted friend to sworn enemy.
³
Rand did what she could to erase the past, removing his name from future editions of
Atlas Shrugged
and repudiating him in a postscript to her nonfiction collections. She sabotaged his book contract with New American Library, her publisher, refusing to release copyright to
Objectivist
articles he intended to use and convincing the firm to drop his contract after a missed deadline. Her letter in
The Objectivist
was intended to ruin his reputation and prevent him from capitalizing on her work.

It was too late. Nathan was already beyond her reach, relocated to Los Angeles with Patrecia, whom he soon married. California Objectivists cared little about the crisis in New York, and before long he had another flourishing psychotherapy practice. Rand had built Nathan up to great heights among her readership; it was impossible now for her to tear him down. All but the most orthodox remained interested in his activities. In 1969 he found a different publisher for
The Psychology of Self Esteem,
which launched him on a new career as a leader of the self-esteem movement. Nathan’s early work remained highly derivative of Rand, notwithstanding the photo on the book’s back cover, which showed him towering over a headless statue of a winged goddess. Over time, as he continued to benefit from his earlier affiliation with Rand, Branden would repudiate many of her ideas. His Biocentric Institute strove to
reconcile, as he and Rand never had, the connections between mind and body, sexuality and intellect.
⁴
Barbara Branden was in California too, but she stayed far from Nathan. Neither wanted to re-create the world they had just escaped.

Frank, who had witnessed the cataclysmic ending of her extramarital affair, became Rand’s primary source of comfort. As her relationship with Nathan disintegrated, she came to newly appreciate her husband. In May 1968 she wrote a preface to the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of
The Fountainhead
that sang his praises. “Frank was the fuel,” she wrote, describing his support in her darkest days of writing.
⁵
Her discovery of Frank’s essential virtues came just as his hold on reality began to slip. He had been softening for years, and when life after the break settled into a new normal it became obvious that he was growing senile. By the early 1970s he was homebound, no longer able to visit galleries or participate in art classes. With her firm belief in free will and the power of rationality, Rand found it difficult to understand Frank’s deterioration. In vain she tried to help him through his confusions with lengthy rational explanations. When he could no longer communicate, she asked his doctor if he could be mentally retrained so he could learn how to speak again. His obvious need for care stirred Rand’s motherly side, and she fussed and worried over his every move. After almost fifty years of marriage Rand still loved her husband, or the shell of him that remained.
⁶

Rand was also cheered by the unfailing loyalty and attention of Leonard Peikoff, one of the last remaining insiders from the years before
Atlas Shrugged
. During Objectivism’s glory days Leonard had been a valued but decidedly second-tier member of the Collective. Now, bolstered by a new appointment as a philosophy professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, he emerged as Nathan’s successor. Excerpts from his manuscript in progress,
The Ominous Parallels,
a comparison of Nazi Germany and contemporary America, filled the pages Nathan had claimed in
The Objectivist,
and he began to offer private courses in Objectivism. He and Rand were wary of recreating NBI, so his courses were not offered by tape transcription, only in person. Students had to sign a consent agreement stating that they would not associate with Nathan or Barbara Branden. Eventually
The Objectivist
would advertise a smattering of courses led by Rand’s remaining associates, including
several that had been recorded, but the level of activity never approximated NBI’s. Nathan’s transgressions had profoundly damaged Rand’s willingness to popularize her work.

Instead Rand restricted her teaching to a small group of students, most of whom were pursuing graduate degrees in philosophy. These students were primarily interested in Rand’s theory of concepts, which she laid out in
The Objectivist
in 1967 and would publish in 1979 as
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
. In these smaller courses Rand often discussed topics she did not write about, leading to the development of an Objectivist “oral tradition” carried forth by this remnant of the larger movement. Her lectures and Peikoff’s extension of her ideas provided fertile ground for later Objectivist philosophers, but Rand had little new published work to offer. In 1971 she released her last two nonfiction books,
The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
and
The Romantic Manifesto,
both collections of previously published articles.
⁷

In the outside world the “Objecti-schism” diminished Rand’s authority considerably. In the year following her split with Branden subscriptions to
The Objectivist
dropped sharply, from twenty thousand to fourteen thousand. Stepping into the vacuum, entrepreneurial Rand enthusiasts began to redefine her philosophy to suit their interests. Objectivism had always been more than NBI, for the institute’s rigidity repelled many a would-be student. Anne Wortham was a devoted reader of Rand when she visited the New York NBI, but she was disappointed by the “big-wigs” on stage and Rand herself, who “seemed cold, dogmatic, authoritarian, without that benevolent sense of life that she wrote so eloquently about.” Although she never enrolled in an NBI course, Wortham continued a “private” relationship with Objectivism and used Rand’s ideas to inform her later academic work in sociology.
⁸
Similarly, after Jarrett Wollstein was ejected from NBI for daring to teach a course on Objectivism at the local free university, he continued to identify Rand as a major influence on his thought. Wollstein started one of the most successful neo-Objectivist organizations, the Society for Rational Individualism, which published
The Rational Individualist,
a journal “in basic agreement with Objectivism.”
⁹

Despite its stated orientation,
The Rational Individualist
published the first serious challenge to Rand’s hegemony, an “Open Letter to Ayn Rand” by Roy Childs Jr., a student at the State University of New York,
Buffalo. Childs admired Rand but questioned her stance on government as he gravitated toward an anarchist position. With his letter, sent to Rand on July 4, 1969, Childs repudiated Objectivism and debuted as the enfant terrible of anarcho-capitalism. Boldly Childs opened with a straightforward declaration: “The purpose of this letter is to convert you to free market anarchism.” Relying heavily on Objectivist concepts and Randian words and phrases, Childs argued that Rand’s advocacy of a limited state was contradicted by her own philosophy. Her told her, “Your political philosophy cannot be maintained without contradiction, that, in fact, you are advocating the maintenance of an institution—the state—which is a moral evil.” Beyond offering an ethical critique, Childs also turned Rand’s terminology against her, arguing that her idea of a limited government that did not initiate force was a “floating abstraction.” According to Childs, all governments must initiate force to survive as governments and maintain their monopoly on coercion. And if the initiation of force was forbidden in both the Objectivist and libertarian worlds, then the state itself must be opposed. Childs lectured Rand, “Your approach to the matter is not yet radical, not yet fundamental:
it is the existence of the state itself which must be challenged
by the new radicals. It must be understood that the state is an
unnecessary evil
“
¹⁰
Rand was unimpressed by Childs’s logic. Her only response was to cancel his subscription to
The Objectivist
.

Although Rand vehemently opposed anarchism, many adherents insisted that anarchism was a logical outgrowth of Objectivism. Surveying the student right, the
Western World Review
observed, “Her philosophy and ethic appear to be functioning as a campus way station or half-way house on the road to the anarchism she opposes.”
¹¹
In many ways, the new vogue for anarchism had the quality of an Oedipal revolt against Rand. Anarchism was a way to resolve the contradictions that many found in Rand’s political philosophy. How was it possible to oppose the initiation of force (a key Randian tenet), yet still defend a minimal state? R. W. Bradford, later an editor of
Liberty
magazine, remembered, “A few were willing to accept her obfuscations on the issue, but the overwhelming majority were unwilling to evade the problem. Virtually all these people became anarchists.”
¹²
To many libertarians tutored in Rand’s absolutist style of thought, the steps were simple: the state was bad, so why not abolish it entirely? Childs put it this way: “As
in ethics there are only two sides to any question—the good and the evil—so too are there only two logical sides to the political question of the state: either you are for it, or you are against it.”
¹³
Describing the origin of radical libertarianism and the new anarcho-capitalism, Jerome Tuccille called
Atlas Shrugged
“the seeds of this latest eruption.”
¹⁴
Even more tellingly, he titled his memoir of libertarian activism
It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand
.

To some degree, Rand was proud of her role as an intellectual counterpoint to the New Left. In the first
Objectivist
published after her break with Nathan she praised a group at Brooklyn College, the Committee against Student Terrorism, for protesting a leftist rebellion with a leaflet that “condemned the violence, named the philosophical issues involved, and demonstrated that the antidote to the problem was to be found in the works of Ayn Rand and the literature of the Objectivist philosophy.”
¹⁵
At the same time, she emphasized that students of Objectivism “cannot be and must not attempt to be the theoreticians of the subject they are studying.” She repeated a guideline from two years earlier: “It is our job to tell people
what
Objectivism is, it is your job to tell them
that
it is.” Such limited horizons did little to satisfy right-wing students, particularly those chafing with enthusiasm for anarchism.