Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (18 page)

Business conservatives were also drawn to another best-selling book attacking state control of the economy, F. A. Hayek’s
Road to Serfdom
. Written for a British audience, Hayek’s book unexpectedly caught the attention of Americans, and he was mobbed by enthusiastic crowds when he toured the United States in 1944. Hayek made arguments very similar to those Rand had advanced during her post-Willkie activism. He tied his laissez-faire beliefs to the broader international situation, arguing that any movement toward state regulation of the economy would ultimately culminate in full-blown socialism and dictatorship. Like Rand, he warned, “The forces which have destroyed freedom in Germany are also at work here.”
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He shared her distrust of “the common good” and titled one of his chapters “Individualism and Collectivism.” The reception of their work was also similar, for Hayek was snubbed by intellectuals yet embraced by businessmen and other Americans nervous about the implications of the New Deal. Both
The Fountainhead
and
Road to Serfdom
were even made into comic books, a testimony to their wide appeal.

The Road to Serfdom
launched Hayek on a remarkable career as an intellectual and organizer that would culminate with his winning the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics. The book’s popularity caught the attention of the Kansas City–based Volker Fund, a newly active libertarian foundation, which eventually helped Hayek secure a position at the University of Chicago, a lone academic redoubt for libertarian ideas. During the war the economists Frank Knight, Henry Simons, and Alan
Director had assembled a critical mass of free market thinkers at the university. Hayek’s arrival marked a high point in this campaign, even though he was rejected by the Economics Department and instead landed at the Committee for Social Thought, with a salary paid by the Volker Fund. Regardless of how he got there, once at Chicago Hayek quickly expanded on the earlier efforts of Knight and Director and helped transform the university into a powerhouse of market economics.
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His most successful venture was the Mont Pelerin Society, an international society of economists he launched in 1947. Hayek drew on the same pool of conservative businessmen that Read and Mullendore first targeted with Pamphleteers, shaping an organization that bridged the worlds of commerce and academia.

Rand cast a gimlet eye on Hayek. In a letter to Rose Wilder Lane, a libertarian book reviewer, she called him “pure poison” and “an example of our most pernicious enemy.” The problem was that Hayek was considered conservative, yet acknowledged there could be an important role for government-sponsored health care, unemployment insurance, and a minimum wage. “Here is where the whole case is given away,” Rand noted in her copy of
The Road to Serfdom
. Addressing Lane, she compared him to Communist “middle of the roaders” who were most effective as propagandists because they were not seen as Communists.
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Rand’s reaction to Hayek illuminates an important difference between her libertarianism and the classical liberal tradition that Hayek represented. Although the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, classical liberals generally have a more capacious concept of the minimal state than do libertarians. Socialistic central planning and state ownership of economic enterprises overstep the line of permissible action, but up to that point classical liberals can be comfortable with a range of state action. Hayek himself remained a controversial figure on the right precisely because even his admirers thought he went too far in accepting an active government. In this respect Rand’s critique of Hayek was not unique, but it fixed her on the far right of the libertarian spectrum.
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The rest of Rand’s attack on Hayek was distinctive. “The man is an ass, with no conception of a free society at all,” she scribbled in the margin of his best-seller. She assaulted Hayek on multiple fronts. She reacted angrily whenever he discussed how competition or societies might be guided or planned, or when he spoke favorably of any government
action. She was unwilling to admit he had a point: “When and how did governments have ‘powers for good?’” Some of her comments echoed the same disillusionment she felt with the fatalistic libertarians of the Willkie campaign, who underappreciated man’s capacity for creation and growth. When Hayek spoke about the needs of different people competing for available resources Rand retorted, “They don’t compete for the available resources—they create the resources. Here’s the socialist thinking again.” Hayek didn’t truly understand either competition or capitalism, she concluded.
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Rand also objected to Hayek’s definition of individualism, which she felt lacked moral grounding. Using wording Rand herself favored, Hayek defined individualism as “respect for the individual man
qua
man” and rooted it in Christianity, classical antiquity, and the Renaissance. However, he next referred to an individual’s own sphere, “however narrowly that may be circumscribed.” This qualification, like his willingness to tolerate limited government programs, outraged Rand. To her it was proof of why individualism had failed as a political ideology: “It had no real base, no moral base. This is why
my
book is needed.” Hayek would have been surprised at Rand’s contention that his individualism had no moral base. His work was motivated by a deep sense of spiritual crisis, and for an organization of economists the Mont Pelerin Society was unusually sensitive to questions of morality. Hayek originally wanted to name his group the Acton-Tocqueville Society, in reference to two great Catholic thinkers.
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But Rand and Hayek had very different understandings of what was moral. In
The Road to Serfdom
Hayek criticized people of goodwill and their cherished ideals, insisting that the West examine the ethical assumptions that underlay its descent into barbarism. As Rand detected, this was only a surface critique of altruism. Hayek also believed that a revival of traditional morals would save the West, and he was receptive to Christian values (although cagey about his personal religious beliefs). By contrast, she believed it was altruism itself that had brought Europe to the brink of destruction. At the end of Hayek’s second chapter Rand summarized her thoughts: “Nineteenth Century Liberalism made the mistake of associating liberty, rights of man etc. with the ideas of ‘fighting for the people,’ ‘for the downtrodden,’ ‘for the poor,’ etc. They made it an altruistic movement. But altruism is collectivism. That is why
collectivism took the liberals over.”
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The solution, then, was to shift the principles of nineteenth-century liberalism onto different ethical grounds that avoided altruism. Rand had a ready candidate at hand: her own system of selfishness that she had articulated in
The Fountainhead
.

Rand looked more favorably on Ludwig von Mises, Hayek’s mentor, whose works she read during this time. As she explained to Leonard Read, Mises made mistakes when it came to morality, going “into thin air, into contradictions, into nonsense” whenever he discussed ethics. But at least he was “for the most part unimpeachable” on economics. Unlike Hayek, Mises was unwilling to consider political compromises that restricted the free market. Like Rand, he considered capitalism an absolute, and for that Rand was willing to forgive his failure to understand and reject altruism.
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Rand intended to make known her differences with Hayek and Mises in a short nonfiction work titled “The Moral Basis of Individualism.” She proposed the project to Bobbs-Merrill as a booklet that would double as promotional material for
The Fountainhead
, but her ambitions for the project quickly grew. In her first notes she resurrected several concepts from her 1941 “Manifesto of Individualism,” including Active Man and Passive Man. As her title indicated, however, there were significant differences between the two works. Where the “Manifesto” had skirted morality in favor of emphasizing the dangers of totalitarianism, now Rand wanted to make the case against altruism, which she called “spiritual cannibalism.” She emphasized that her readers could choose from two alternatives: “Independence of man from men is the Life Principle. Dependence of man upon men is the Death Principle.”
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This was the dilemma she had brought to life through Howard Roark and Peter Keating. The challenge now was to explain it in simple terms linking her discussion to a defense of the capitalist system.

As it turned out, writing “The Moral Basis of Individualism” was much harder than Rand had anticipated. Nor did
The Fountainhead
need much help. Like most publishers, Bobbs-Merrill had a strict paper quota due to the war, and it was unable to keep up with demand for Rand’s enormous novel until it subcontracted distribution of the book to Blakiston, a small press with a large paper quota. Blakiston released its own series of advertisements stressing the book’s themes that finally satisfied Rand. In 1945 alone
The Fountainhead
sold 100,000 copies and
finally cracked the New York best-seller lists, a milestone Rand had long anticipated. Both were notable feats for a book released two years earlier, and Rand capped off the year by approving a syndicated comic book version of the novel that appeared in newspapers nationwide. With each piece of good news her motivation to write a new book for publicity’s sake dwindled.

Moreover, she was distracted by the idea for a new novel. As with
The Fountainhead
, inspiration had come all at once. In New York Rand and Isabel Paterson had been chatting about current events and the need for Rand to spread her ideas. Rand was indignant at the idea that she was obligated to write for anyone. Perhaps thinking of the new labor militancy that was sweeping the country, she asked Paterson, “What if I went on strike?” From there a story unfolded instantly in her mind. What if the all creators in the world went on strike, much like her father had in Russia? What would happen next? It was a refinement of the conflict she had dramatized through Dominique. Rand galloped ahead with this new idea, once alert to it seeing the concept of the strike everywhere.
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Her screenwriting job, however, permitted Rand little time to pursue either project. She was the first writer Hal Wallis had hired, and he was eager to make immediate use of her talents. Because Rand lived so far from Hollywood and gas rationing was still in effect, Wallis allowed her to work from home, coming in only when needed for story conferences. He put her to work rewriting properties he already owned, and her first two assignments,
Love Letters
and
You Came Along
, were both released as successful films in 1945. Next Wallis asked her to develop ideas for a movie based on the atomic bomb. Rand began a careful investigation of the Los Alamos project, even securing an extensive audience with the atomic scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan Project. The film was never produced, but Rand’s encounter with Oppenheimer provided fuel for a character in her developing novel, the scientist Robert Stadler.

While Rand busied herself with writing and networking, Frank thrived in California. The purchase of the Chatsworth property had been his decision, for Rand was unconcerned with where they lived. After carefully researching the local market, Frank determined that the outskirts
of Los Angeles would boom in the postwar years once the price of gas declined. The distant ranch would appreciate sharply in value, he correctly gambled. Previously home to the director Joseph von Sternberg and the actress Marlene Dietrich, the house was extraordinary by any measure. Rand’s office was on the ground floor, with glass doors that opened to a private patio. The master bedroom was set apart on the upstairs floor. Adjoining it was a mirrored bathroom and a roof pool that Frank filled with exotic fish. The open two-story living room was an arresting space, painted brilliant blue and dominated by a towering philodendron tree with leaves that Frank meticulously polished. Birds flew in and out of the house, and outside was a spacious patio that could hold two hundred people. The house was encircled by a goldfis-filled moat, lined by Japanese hyacinths. “Elemental in form, dynamic in color . . . designed for sun, steel and sky,” enthused
House and Garden
in a four-page spread about the property that prominently featured Ayn and Frank.
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The house meant far more to Frank than an investment. Reinventing himself as a gentleman farmer, he grew lush gardens on their land and raised a flock of peacocks. In true individualist fashion the birds were not shut up in cages but flew shrieking about the property. Frank’s agricultural dabbling soon revealed a true talent for horticulture. The fields filled with bamboo, chestnuts, pomegranate trees, and blackberry bushes. In a greenhouse he bred delphiniums and gladiolas and over the years developed two new hybrids, one called Lipstick and another called Halloween. He supervised a small staff of Japanese gardeners and in the high season opened a roadside vegetable stand to sell excess produce. After one of his employees taught him flower arranging he began selling gladiolas to Los Angeles hotels.
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No longer living in Rand’s shadow, Frank’s talents drew admiration from his neighbors and customers.

Within the household, however, Frank continued to carefully defer to Ayn. Deep in concentration, she was often shocked to discover that he had silently glided into the house to tend the flowers or deliver the latest crop. At her request he agreed to wear a small bell on his shoe so she could hear him come and go. The rhythm of daily life revolved around her writing. She worked in the downstairs study with her door firmly shut and instructions to be left alone. A few days a week a secretary came in and took dictation. The house was large enough to accommodate
live-in servants, typically a couple who divided household and outdoor tasks between them. Lunch was served on a regular schedule, but all understood they were not to speak to Ayn unless spoken to. If she was lost in thought the meal would be a silent affair. Dinner was more formal, with servants delivering a hot meal to the couple when summoned.
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