Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (57 page)

12
. Biographical Interview 17, April 19, 1961.

13
. On his reluctance to write the review, see Whittaker Chambers to Murray Rothbard, August 25, 1958, “Letters 1958 July–Dec,” Rothbard Papers, Mises Institute. Chambers’s worldview is described in Sam Tanenhous,
Whittaker Chambers: A Biography
(New York: Random House, 1997); Michael Kimmage,
The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2009). I give a fuller treatment of Chambers’s review in Jennifer Burns, “Godless Capitalism: Ayn Rand and the Conservatives,”
Modern Intellectual History
1, no. 3 (2004): 1–27.

14
. Whittaker Chambers, “Big Sister Is Watching You,”
National Review
, December 28, 1957, 596.

15
. Ibid., 594.

16
. See “Letters to the Editor,”
National Review
, January 18, 1958, 71.

17
. John Chamberlain, “Reviewer’s Notebook:
Atlas Shrugged
,
National Review
, January 18, 1958. See Isabel Paterson to William F. Buckley Jr., January 2, 1958, “Paterson, Isabel (1958),” Box 6, William F. Buckley, Jr., Papers, Yale University Library.

18
. John Chamberlain, “To the Editor: An Open Letter to Ayn Rand,”
National Review
, February 1, 1958, 118. Murray Rothbard also took Rand’s side in the ensuing exchange of letters. See Rothbard, “To the Editor,”
National Review
, January 25, 1968, 95.

19
. In addition to the letter, Mullendore wrote two lengthy memos analyzing
Atlas Shrugged
of six and five pages each, dated September 15, 1957 and October 12, 1957, respectively. “Dearest Carla and Louis,” September 22, 1957, Mullendore Papers, “Rand,
Ayn,” Box 23, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, IA; Sidney Krupicka, “Letter to the Editor,”
National Review
, February 13, 1960, 117; Jim Kolb, “Letter to the Editor,”
National Review
, February 1, 1958, 119; Kevin Coughlin, “Letter to the Editor,”
National Review
, February 1, 1958, 119.

20
. Ludwig von Mises to AR, February 23, 1958, quoted in Jörg Guido Hulsmann,
Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism
(Auburn, AL: Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 2007), 996.

21
. Robert LeFevre to Rose Wilder Lane, January 10, 1958, and Rose Wilder Lane to Robert LeFevre, December 26, 1957, both in Box 27, Lane Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, IA.

22
. Even hostile reviewers tended to admit that Friedman’s book was valuable food for thought. Most reviews were published in scholarly journals, which were less likely to employ ad hominen attacks than the mass-market magazines that reviewed
Atlas Shrugged
. The only popular magazine to review
Capitalism and Freedom
was
The Economist
, which gave it a largely positive review. “A Tract for the Times,”
The Economist
, February 16, 1963. Other representative reviews include Abba P. Lerner, “Capitalism and Freedom,”
American Economic Review
53, no. 3 (1963): 458–60; F. X. Sutton, “Capitalism –Freedom,”
American Sociological Review
28, no. 3 (1963): 491–92. A negative review is Oscar Handlin, “Capitalism and Freedom,”
Business History Review
37, no. 3 (1963), 315–16. Friedman, who never met Rand, appreciated her work, calling her “an utterly intolerant and dogmatic person who did a great deal of good.” Brian Doherty, “Best of Both Worlds: Milton Friedman Reminisces,”
Reason
, June 1995,32–38

23
. Daniel Bell,
The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties
(New York: Free Press, 1960); Morton White,
Social Thought in America: The Revolt against Formalism
(New York: Viking, 1949). Nor were they looking for an uncritical perspective on capitalism, with some even envisioning the future as a postcapitalist world. Howard Brick,
Transcending Capitalism: Visions of a New Society in Modern American Thought
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006); Nelson Lichtenstein, ed.,
American Capitalism: Social Thought and Political Economy in the Twentieth Century
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

24
. Kathleen and Richard Nickerson, Oral History, ARP. Rand’s classes formed the basis of Ayn Rand,
The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers
(New York: Plume, 2001).

25
. Nathaniel Branden,
Judgment Day: My Years with Ayn Rand
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989), 263.

26
. Ibid., 264.

27
. Murray Rothbard to AR, October 3, 1957, Letters 1957, July–Dec, Rothbard Papers, Ludwig von Mises Institute.

28
. Murray Rothbard to Kenneth S. Templeton, November 18, 1957, Letters 1957, July–Dec, Rothbard Papers.

29
. Murray Rothbard to “Mom and Pop,” Friday afternoon 5:30, Rothbard Papers.

30
. Details are taken from an interview with Robert Hessen, December 7, 2007; Murray Rothbard to “Mom and Pop,” July 23, 1958, Wed night 8:30 pm, Rothbard Papers. The paper was eventually published. Murray N. Rothbard, “The Mantle of Science,” in
Scientism and Values
, ed. Helmut Schoeck and James W. Wiggins (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1960), 159–180.

31
.
Murray Rothbard to “Mom and Pop,” Friday afternoon, 5:30, Rothbard Papers; Murray Rothbard to Whittaker Chambers, August 25, 1958, Letters 1958 Jul–Dec, Rothbard Papers. This episode is also described in Justin Raimondo,
An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000); Murray Rothbard, “Mozart Was a Red,” available at
www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/mozart.html
[February 19, 2009]; Murray Rothbard, “The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult,” available at
www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html
[February 28, 2009].

32
. Sidney Hook to Barbara Branden, April 6, 1984, Box 154, Sidney Hook Papers, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

33
. See Brand Blanshard to AR, February 4, 1965, AR to Brand Blanshard, March 4, 1965, and Brand Blanshard to AR, May 28, 1967, ARP 100–12A.

34
. John Hospers to AR, January 9, 1961, ARP 141-HO3.

35
. John Hospers, “A Memory of Ayn Rand,”
Full Context
, March/April 2001, 5.

36
. Biographical Interview 17.

37
. Martin Lean to AR, October 31, 1960, ARP 001–01A.

38
. AR to Martin Lean, November 30, 1961, ARP 001–01A.

39
. Martin Lean to AR, October 31, 1960, ARP 001–01A.

40
. Hospers, “A Memory of Ayn Rand,” 6.

41
. John Hospers,
An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis
, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967), 591–94, 602–3; John Hospers to Nathaniel Branden, June 25, 1965, ARP 141-HO3. A selection of Rand’s and Hospers’s correspondence is published in
Letters
, 502–63. The existentialist philosopher Hazel Barnes was less impressed with Rand, calling Objectivism “based on wish ful. llment.” Barnes,
An Existentialist Ethics
New York: Knopf, 1967), 149.

42
. Rand claimed that the changes were only cosmetic, but they fell into two substantive categories: she rewrote the sex scenes to make male characters dominant over female characters, and she reworked all passages that demonstrated her earlier interest in Nietzsche. For a close examination of these changes, see Robert Mayhew, “
We the Living
: ‘36 and ‘59,” in
Essays on Ayn Rand’s
We the Living, ed. Robert Mayhew (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004).

Chapter 7

1
. Nathaniel Branden,
Judgment Day: My Years with Ayn Rand
(Boston: Houghton Mif. in, 1989), 314.

2
. Rand’s popularity underscores new scholarly understandings of the 1960s, an era now characterized by both conservative and liberal politics and activism, particularly among youth. See Rebecca E. Klatch,
A Generation Divided: The New Left, the New Right, and the 1960s
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); John A. Andrew III,
The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997); Gregory L. Schneider,
Cadres for Conservatism: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of the Contemporary Right
(New York: New York University Press, 1999). Other books that incorporate this sense of the 1960s as a politically divided time are Mary C. Brennan,
Turning Right in the Sixties: the Conservative Capture of the GOP
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 1; Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin,
America Divided: the Civil War of the 1960s
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 206; David Farber and Jeff Roche, The Conservative Sixties (New York: Peter Lang, 2003), 2–3; Rick Perlstein,
Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
(New York: Hill and Wang, 2001).

3
. See Alex McDonald, introduction to Edward Bellamy,
Looking Backward 2000–1887
, ed. Alex McDonald (Ontario: Broadview Literary Texts, 2003).

4
. Barry Goldwater to AR, May 11, 1960, ARP 043–05A, and AR to Barry Goldwater, June 4, 1960, ARP 043–05A,
Letters
, 565–72.

5
. Barry Goldwater to AR, June 10, 1960, ARP 043–05A.

6
. Ayn Rand, “JFK: High Class Beatnik,”
Human Events
, September 1, 1960, 393.

7
. There was also the class that Rand frankly called “human ballast,” who mindlessly followed whichever of the three was ascendant. Ayn Rand,
For the New Intellectual
(New York: New American Library, 1961), 20.

8
.
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of English Language, Unabridged
defines “altruism” as “uncalculated consideration of, regard for, or devotion to others’ interests sometimes in accordance with an ethical principle.” Rand’s use of Comte’s definition is debated in Robert L. Campbell, “Altruism in Auguste Comte and Ayn Rand,” and Robert H. Bass, “Egoism versus Rights,”
Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 7
, no. 2 (2006): 357–69.

9
. Rand,
For the New Intellectual
, 11, 45.

10
. Sidney Hook, “Each Man for Himself,”
New York Times Book Review
, April 9, 1961, 3, 28. Other negative reviews of
For the New Intellectual
are Charles Frederick Schroder, “Ayn Rand: Far Right Prophetess,”
Christian Century
, December 13, 1961,1493–95; James Collins, “State of the Question: Ayn Rand’s Talent for Getting Headlines,”
America
, July 29, 1961, 569; “Born Eccentric,”
Newsweek
, March 27, 1961, 104; Joel Rosenblum, “The Ends and Means of Ayn Rand,”
New Republic
, April 24, 1961, 28–29; Bruce Goldberg, “Ayn Rand’s
For the New Intellectual,” New Individualist Review
, November 1961, 17–24.
For the New Intellectual
went through five hardcover editions in the first year and was issued in a first paperback printing of two hundred thousand.

11
. Gore Vidal, “Two Immoralists: Orville Prescott and Ayn Rand,” in
Rocking the Boat
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1962), 232, reprinted from
Esquire
, July 1961.

12
. Daniel Bell ed.,
The New American Right
(New York: Criterion, 1955) and
The Radical Right
, 3rd ed. (1963; New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002). Once dominant, this interpretation is now universally acknowledged to reveal more about the views of midcentury liberal historians than the conservatives they analyzed. See Michael Paul Rogin,
The Intellectuals and McCarthy: The Radical Specter
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967); Alan Brinkley, “The Problem of American Conservatism,”
American Historical Review
99, no. 2 (1994): 409–29.

13
. The centrality of the rebel identity to postwar society, and conservatism specically, is explored in Grace Hale,
Rebel, Rebel: Why We Love Outsiders and the Effects of This Romance on Postwar American Culture and Politics
(New York: Oxford University
Press, 2009); Kevin Mattson,
Rebels All! A Short History of the Conservative Mind in Postwar America
(Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008).

14
. Rand found the weekly column time-consuming, and syndicated sales were poor. Rex Barley to AR, December 14, 1962, ARP 045–11A. Rand’s articles are collected and published under different titles in Ayn Rand,
The Ayn Rand Column
, ed. Peter Schwartz (Oceanside, CA: Second Renaissance Books, 1991).

15
. Ayn Rand, “Check Your Premises,”
The Objectivist Newsletter
1, no. 1 (1962): 1.

16
. Edith Efron, “The Feminine Mystique,”
The Objectivist Newsletter
2, no. 7 (1963): 26.

17
. Al Ramus, Oral History, ARP. Edith Efron later became a conservative journalist who focused on media bias. Efron,
The News Twisters
(Los Angeles: Nash, 1971). She was also a ghostwriter for Treasury Secretary William Simon,
A Time for Truth
(New York: Reader’s Digest Press, 1978). Rand’s interviews for the Columbia radio program are reproduced in Ayn Rand,
Objectively Speaking: Ayn Rand Interviewed
, ed. Marlene Podritske and Peter Schwartz (New York: Lexington Books, 2009). AR to Hugh Hefner, March 14, 1964, ARP 060–14A.

18
. Mike Wallace, Oral History, ARP; Frederick Feingersh, Oral History, ARP.