Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (47 page)

Rand had one last word of warning to issue. Referring to the upcoming Republican primaries she wrote, “I urge you, as emphatically as I can, not to support the candidacy of Ronald Reagan.” Reagan was a conservative in “the worst sense of the word,” she told her readers.
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Not only did he support a mixed economy, a compromise between laissezfaire and government controls, but his opposition to abortion demonstrated a dangerous disregard for individual rights. Reagan represented the triumph of all the political trends on the right Rand had fought throughout her long career. He blended libertarianism with religion, submerging a rational defense of capitalism under altruistic ethics. His position on abortion was the clearest indicator that he did not understand the free society he claimed to defend. Like Willkie and Eisenhower before him, Reagan was a false friend, a conservative who would destroy the very principles he claimed to uphold.

Although Rand would never appreciate their efforts, her political beliefs were shared by the Libertarian Party, who worked vigorously to provide an alternative to the majority party stars Reagan, Ford, and Carter. But like Rand, the Libertarian Party was subject to sudden political enthusiasms and dashed hopes. Party activists vacillated between a genuine belief that they could create immediate political change and a more realistic understanding that their campaigns were little more than public relations events. After a disappointing showing in the 1976 election several Party leaders swung back to the Randian position that education must precede action. In partnership with the Koch brothers, wealthy libertarians who had bankrolled most of the campaign, Party Chair Ed Crane started the Cato Institute, dedicated to spreading libertarian ideas. Born from the early libertarian ethos of education, Cato nonetheless became deeply involved in policy and politics. From the start it strove for respectability among the intellectual elite, publishing
Inquiry,
a magazine that offered serious, well-researched, and quietly libertarian articles for an educated readership. As the years passed Cato would develop into a true player within the beltway think-tank world. Along with
Reason
magazine, Cato injected a consistent libertarian voice into national political debates. The institute relocated to Washington,
D.C., shortly after its founding and became an influential think-tank as the capitol tended rightward. By the mid-1980s Cato had replaced the Libertarian Party as the institution of choice for libertarians who hoped to create meaningful social change.
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Rand was left largely isolated in New York. One by one she drove away the last remnants of the Collective. She stopped speaking to the Hessens after their Palo Alto Book Service offered for sale a novel by Kay Nolte Smith, whom Rand had exiled years before.
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The Blumenthals, who had nursed her so tenderly through her cancer surgery, broke with Rand after she harangued them endlessly about their artistic tastes. Next to go were the Kalbermans, unable to tolerate Rand’s diatribes against the now despised Blumenthals. Mary Ann and Charles Sures, who lived in Maryland, were occasional visitors. But only Frank and Leonard Peikoff, loyal to the last day, remained by her side.

Orthodox Objectivism continued to draw a small audience, and a core group of serious students clustered around Leonard Peikoff. Rand was too faded to hold the famed all-night sessions of yore, but Peikoff helped form another cadre eager to carry her ideas forward. Rand approved two new magazines,
The Objectivist Forum
and
The Intellectual Activist,
run by her last philosophy students. In the late 1970s she was captivated by the idea of
Atlas Shrugged
as a television mini-series. Numerous proposals to dramatize the work had landed on her desk, but this was the first time producers were willing to give her full script control. She began working on the adaptation, which was to be broadcast on NBC, and had completed most of the script when the project was canceled. In her spare time she collected stamps avidly and began taking algebra lessons with a private tutor.
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The hardest blow came in 1979, when Frank died. The two had been married for fifty years. As difficult as their union had been, Frank had never betrayed Rand, never broken her trust or abandoned her in a time of need. He had been a silent and at times sullen paramour, but he was unfailingly consistent—and consistency was something Rand valued above almost anything else. She was disconsolate after his loss, weeping in her apartment and pestering his niece, her last remaining family contact, for reminiscences about him as a young man. Making a final television appearance on Phil Donahue’s show, Rand was sanguine about the prospect of her own end. She did not believe in life after death, she told
Donahue, otherwise she would have committed suicide by now in order to join Frank.

His death brought a renewed connection with Barbara Branden, who reached out to Rand after more than a decade of silence. Rand welcomed Barbara’s overture. She had a ready excuse for Barbara’s past behavior; like her, Barbara had been tricked and traduced by Nathan. It was an interpretative frame that glossed much of the truth but allowed the two women to draw together for a final peaceful visit in New York one afternoon. Nathan remained an untouchable. His third wife, Devers, whom he married after Patrecia’s tragic death in a drowning accident, attempted a reconciliation between the two. She arrived on Rand’s doorstep one day, urging her to speak with Nathan and heal the past. Torn between suspicion and curiosity, Rand let Devers inside her apartment for a few hours. Later she hardened against her, and still she refused to speak to Nathan. He called her once, hoping in some way to smooth over their history. She hung up immediately.
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In the aftermath of Frank’s death, Rand had few projects and almost no energy. She became obsessed with Hans Gudagast, a German-born movie actor who resembled Frank. While writing the
Atlas
script she had envisioned him playing the role of Francisco D’Anconia. Then Gudagast, now using the name Eric Braeden, grew a moustache, ruining his resemblance to Frank. Ayn pined for a photo of him without facial hair. When she discovered one in a magazine she had the idea to derive a full-size photo from the small thumbnail. Ignoring the pleas of her solicitous housekeeper Eloise, Rand plunged out into the rain to a photo studio in Times Square. Without a coat or umbrella she was caught in a downpour on her way back home. She fell ill with a cold, a dangerous malady for a woman of seventy-six with a history of lung cancer.
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Only a few days later she addressed the annual meeting of the National Committee for Monetary Reform, a group dedicated to the restoration of the gold standard. The NCMR’s founder was a devoted fan of Rand’s work, and he lured her to the group’s New Orleans conference with the promise of a private rail car. With Leonard and Cynthia Peikoff, Rand traveled down the eastern seaboard of the United States in executive luxury, much as Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart would have done. She spoke to a roaring audience of three thousand hard money enthusiasts, defending the morality of profit and production. By the time the
return train reached New York Rand’s cold had transformed into pneumonia. The Peikoffs took her directly to the hospital.

Death was not something Rand feared. As her condition worsened she accepted the inevitable. All she wanted was to die at home. In the final weeks of February 1982 she gave her work in progress to Peikoff, now her designated legal and intellectual heir. A hired nurse was in her apartment twenty-four hours a day, and it was the nurse who sat by her bedside in early March when Rand slipped away.

Her funeral was an event to rival the great Objectivist gatherings of the past. Close to a thousand mourners paid her final tribute, waiting for hours outside the funeral home on Madison Avenue. Her last battles, breakups, and flights of inspiration behind her, Rand lay facing the world in an open casket. Next to her coffin was an enormous topiary, shaped into the sign of the dollar.

EPILOGUE:
AYN RAND IN AMERICAN MEMORY

When Rand died in 1982, her old enemies were quick to declare victory. “Ayn Rand is dead. So, incidentally, is the philosophy she sought to launch dead; it died still born,” William F. Buckley Jr. announced in a mean-spirited obituary that once again set the letters column of
National Review
abuzz. Buckley’s dismissal of Rand was overconfident by any standard. Only a year before, George Gilder had recognized Rand as an important influence in
Wealth and Poverty
, a book soon known as the bible of the Reagan administration. Two years after her death another of her admirers, Charles Murray, would light the conservative world aflame with his attack on welfare,
Losing Ground
. Along with
A Time for Truth
, written by former Treasury Secretary William Simon and former Collective member Edith Efron, these books suggested that Rand’s influence was just beginning to be felt in policy circles. The
New York Times
would even dub Rand the “novelist laureate” of the Reagan administration, citing her influence on Alan Greenspan, Martin Anderson, and several others.
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Yet as Buckley’s obituary suggested, Rand’s reputation was captive to the events of her lifetime. In 1986 Barbara Branden lifted the curtain on Rand’s private affairs with the publication of her memoir cum biography,
The Passion of Ayn Rand
, followed three years later by Nathaniel Branden’s own lurid memoir,
Judgment Day: My Years with Ayn Rand
. Sparing no detail, the Brandens disclosed the full story of her relationship with Nathan and emphasized the dark side of Rand, including her harsh treatment of the Collective, her anger and depression, and her habitual use of amphetamines. Although both Brandens lauded Rand’s intellectual accomplishments, the revelations about her personal life overshadowed their assertions of her worth as a thinker.

The news that Rand and Nathaniel Branden had been lovers stunned the broader Objectivist community. Many of Rand’s fans had unquestioningly taken her side and had been content to let lie the mystery of Nathan’s depredations. Upon learning the truth, one defender of Rand recounted a deep sense of betrayal: “and all those years I had thought Frank was a model for Francisco. My blood literally ran cold at the extent of Rand’s deceit.”
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To those who had known Rand intimately or seen her attack questioners at an NBI lecture, the revelations of her personal failings were less shocking. But to the outside world Rand emerged a deeply unsavory figure, manipulative, controlling, self-deceived, and wildly emotional despite her professed rationality. This impression was further reinforced when Barbara Branden’s memoir was transformed into an HBO television movie starring Helen Mirren and Eric Stolz. Complete with scenes of a mink-clad Ayn making furtive love to Nathan in her foyer, the movie destroyed the vaunted image of Rand as an intellectual paragon who lived by rationality alone.

Barbara Branden’s memoir also precipitated another great schism across Objectivist ranks. After Rand’s death a small but active orthodox Objectivist community had emerged, led by Leonard Peikoff, who inherited Rand’s estate and whom she publicly proclaimed her “intellectual heir.” In 1985 Peikoff institutionalized the orthodox approach by creating the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), a nonprofit dedicated to spreading Objectivism. Peikoff and the other philosophy students who had clustered around Rand in her final years combined their Objectivist studies with work in academic philosophy departments, giving them the grasp of contemporary philosophical discourse that Rand had so sorely lacked. This network bore fruit in 1988 with the publication of David Kelley’s
The Evidence of the Senses
. One of Objectivism’s rising young stars, Kelley had a doctorate in philosophy from Princeton, where he studied under the eminent pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty. Opening with a tribute to Ayn Rand, Kelley’s book presented a philosophically rigorous defense of her approach. Educated in a top-ranked philosophy department and by a mentor who stood in opposition to all Rand taught, Kelley was the first Objectivist philosopher to grapple seriously with opposing points of view rather than dispensing with them in the loaded language that Rand typically employed. As such his volume opened a new range of possibilities for Rand’s presence within contemporary philosophy.
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But shortly after the book’s publication Kelley fell from grace when he agreed to address two libertarian forums. Rand had made clear that libertarians were beyond the pale, and the Ayn Rand Institute followed her lead. To Peter Schwartz, writing in the
Intellectual Activist
, Kelley’s appearance amounted to “moral sanction” of Rand’s enemies, and he urged that anyone who collaborated with libertarians be shunned. Kelley defended himself with a short pamphlet circulated among friends, which drew a further response from Peikoff, “Fact and Value.”
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The two sides articulated clear differences. To Kelley, Objectivism was “a magnificent system of ideas. But it is not a closed system.” His out-reach to libertarians was essential, he maintained, if Objectivism was ever to grow beyond its small circle of adherents. To Peikoff, spreading Objectivism was nonsensical if the truth and validity of Rand’s ideas was lost in the process. “Please drop out of our movement: drop Ayn Rand, leave Objectivism alone,” he wrote. Hovering in the background was the unacknowledged issue of Kelley’s failure to publicly repudiate Barbara Branden’s memoir. Unlike the ARI top brass, Kelley considered its contribution meaningful. And then he was on the outs, the latest casualty of Rand’s penchant for judgment.
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