Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (36 page)

The title was intentionally provocative but also reflected Rand’s deep revulsion at the Kennedy administration. The famous line from Kennedy’s inaugural speech, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” inflamed Rand.
⁵²
(Milton Friedman also found this sentiment objectionable, attacking Kennedy’s statement in the very first sentence of
Capitalism and Freedom
.) In the title essay she juxtaposed excerpts from speeches by Kennedy and Hitler to demonstrate their similarity; to her, both were collectivists who demanded that men live for the state. Such a comparison was too much for Cerf, who requested that she delete the passages and select a new title. Rand angrily rejected both suggestions and accused Random House of breach of contract. She had chosen the publisher because they promised not to censor her work; from her perspective, Cerf’s request proved their agreement was a sham. She split from Random House and published the book instead with the New American Library, a division of Penguin.

Cerf was slow to understand what had transpired. Not only had his prize author left the house, but she had taken her friendship away too. After an initial testy exchange of letters he waited in vain for further communication from Rand. Even Kennedy’s assassination brought no comment. He pleaded, “Truly, a profound but honest difference about a publishing matter cannot have affected our relationship this deeply! Please do write to me.” Rand finally relented with a brief note wishing him well. Cerf was bemused and saddened by Rand’s attitude. He continued to follow her career with interest. “How wonderful it must be to be so sure you are right!” he commented to the circulation manager as
he renewed his subscription to Rand’s magazine.
⁵³
Cerf had wandered into a danger zone with Rand, who never reacted well to criticism. Even Nathan could not budge her on this point. He argued against her replacement title,
The Virtue of Selfishness,
claiming that it would obscure her meaning and alienate readers, but Rand disagreed.

When it appeared in 1964
The Virtue of Selfishness
brought the political and philosophical ideas expressed in Rand’s newsletter to a much wider audience. Most of the book reprinted articles that had already been published, but it did include one significant new essay, “The Objectivist Ethics,” first delivered to a symposium at the University of Wisconsin. The piece reflected Rand’s new understanding of herself as an innovative philosopher. Much of the essay was heavy slogging, with Rand carefully defining such key terms as “percept,” “concept,” and “abstraction.” From there she quickly translated her ideas into a common idiom: “The principle of trade is the only rational ethical principle for all human relationships, personal and social, private and public, spiritual and material. It is the principle of justice.”
⁵⁴
Her elevation of the trader echoed the older libertarian idea of the contract society, in which individuals were finally liberated from feudal hierarchies. As she had in the 1940s, Rand was revitalizing the inherited wisdom of libertarian theory for a new generation.

Two other chapters, “Man’s Rights” and “The Nature of Government,” outlined Rand’s political philosophy and helped situate her relative to the rapidly evolving right wing. In “Man’s Rights” she began by linking capitalism, private property, and individual rights, which each depended on the other. She then drew a careful distinction between economic and political rights. According to Rand, all rights were political rights, because rights pertained to actions, not results. “A right does not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one’s own effort.” Looking at the 1960 Democratic platform, which listed rights to housing, a job, education, and so forth, she asked,
“At whose expense?”
⁵⁵
The Democrats were attempting to redefine rights in economic terms, a move Rand rejected. She argued that the United States had thrived because it recognized the supremacy of individual rights, which served to limit and constrain government, the most dangerous threat. Shifting to economic rights would empower the state to seize the private property
of some for distribution to others. In its basic outline Rand’s discussion of rights was similar to her “Textbook of Americanism,” which she had shared with FEE decades earlier. Now her discussion was much more sophisticated, grounded in both a developed Objectivist philosophy and concrete examples taken from history and politics.

Similarly “The Nature of Government” expanded on the noninitiation principle that Rand had included in “Textbook of Americanism.” She repeated the idea in
Atlas Shrugged
and
For the New Intellectual,
making it a basic tenet of her ethics: “No man has the right to
initiate
the use of physical force against others.”
⁵⁶
Physical force was a core concern of Rand’s political philosophy, for she held that rights could only be violated by physical force. The role of government was to protect individual rights by establishing a monopoly on the use of physical force. Citizens would forgo the use of force knowing they would be protected by the government, itself constrained by objectively defined laws. To protect men from criminals and outside aggressors, the government would exercise its monopoly through police and armed forces.

Although it sounded straightforward, Rand’s definition of force was nuanced. She defined fraud, extortion, and breach of contract as force, thus enabling government to establish a legal regime that would create a framework for commerce. Critically, Rand also considered taxation to be an “initiation of physical force” since it was obtained, ultimately, “at the point of a gun.” This led her to a radical conclusion: that taxation itself was immoral.
⁵⁷
In a separate essay, “Government Financing in a Free Society,” Rand considered the implications of taxation as force. In a truly free society, one without taxes, how would the government have any money to perform its proper functions? She suggested a few examples, such as a fee tied to each contractual transaction, including credit transfers, or a government lottery. Such schemes “would not work today,” Rand emphasized, delegating the details to “the field of the philosophy of the law.”
⁵⁸
Though the proper arrangements had yet to be developed, the basic principles behind voluntary financing were the only ones compatible with true freedom, she maintained.

Like most of Rand’s books,
The Virtue of Selfishness
sold briskly, going through four editions that totaled more than four hundred thousand copies in its first four months. It also had an important impact on her public profile. At the suggestion of Robert Hessen, a Collective member
in the bookselling business, the book included a small tear-out card that readers could send back to receive additional information about Rand’s philosophy. Readers drawn to her ideas would find a thriving Objectivist universe, complete with foundational texts, celebrities, and opportunities for advanced study. Even those who did not return the card now learned there was a community and a movement centered around Rand.
⁵⁹

Taken together, NBI and Rand’s willingness to directly engage current events suggested a new way to be on the right. In 1955 William F. Buckley’s
National Review
had brought together a variety of competing ideas, blending libertarianism, religious traditionalism, and anti-Communism into a creed he called “American conservatism.” For close to a decade Buckley had monopolized discourse on the right, suggesting that his synthesis was the only respectable and responsible way to oppose the liberal order. Now he faced a formidable challenge from Rand. In the wake of
Atlas Shrugged
Rand had come to see herself as an abstract philosopher who might make important contributions to human knowledge. But it was as a political philosopher that she would leave her mark on history.

CHAPTER EIGHT
Love Is Exception Making

BY THE MIDDLE
of the 1960s Rand’s popularity among young conservatives, her open support of Goldwater, and the continued appeal of her books had pushed her to a new level of mainstream visibility. As a backlash unfolded against Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and the war in Vietnam, Rand’s ideas seemed ever more relevant and compelling. In 1967 she was a guest on Johnny Carson’s
Tonight Show
three times in five months. Each time she explained to Carson the fundamentals of her philosophy, the audience response was so great she earned another invitation.
¹
Ted Turner, then a little-known media executive, personally paid for 248 billboards scattered throughout the South that read simply “Who is John Galt?”
²
Ten years after the publication of
Atlas Shrugged
she was at the apex of her fame.

With success came new challenges. Most troubling of all was her relationship with Nathan. Rand had designated him her intellectual heir, openly and repeatedly. She had dedicated
Atlas Shrugged
to him (and Frank), allowed his name to be publicly linked with Objectivism, entered business arrangements with him. The Nathaniel Branden Institute had blossomed into a national institution, with around thirty-five hundred students enrolled each year in more than fifty cities.
³
The institute had heavy concentrations of followers in southern California, New York, and Boston. In New York City Objectivism became its own subculture, complete with sports teams, movie nights, concerts, and annual dress balls. An NBI student could socialize, recreate, and study exclusively with other Objectivists, and many did. At the top of this society stood Nathan and Ayn, living embodiments of her philosophy. They were bound by a thousand ties, personal and professional, private and public, past and present. But more than a decade after they first became lovers, the two were further apart than they had ever been.

The success of NBI and Rand’s new fame transformed the Collective from a small band of intimates into a much admired and watched in-group. New York NBI students knew them all by sight. Nathan was “tall, striking, his hair cascading in blonde waves over his forehead and his eyes sparkling like blue ice.” (Less flatteringly, other Objectivists remembered Nathan’s “Elmer Gantry” style and called him a “great showman.”)
⁴
Barbara, cold and remote in her bearing, looked the part of a Rand heroine with her delicate features and pale blonde hair. Alan Greenspan, nebbish and awkward, was an occasional lecturer, offering a course in the Economics of a Free Society, and Leonard Peikoff, hovering in Nathan’s shadow, taught the History of Philosophy.

When new NBI tape transcription courses debuted in far-flung cities, Nathan would fly in like a rock star to deliver the first lecture. When Ayn accompanied him once to Los Angeles, an overflow audience of eleven hundred crowded several rooms to hear them talk. Their tours on behalf of NBI not only energized the faithful, but helped Nathan maintain control over his sprawling empire. The institute’s business representatives were carefully vetted; they served as the official representatives of NBI to the vast majority of Rand’s students, who would never see her or Nathan in person. The tours gave Nathan a chance to hire, meet with, and supervise the work of this core stratum. Paid by the number of students they enrolled, NBI’s business representatives, already enthusiastic Objectivists, had further incentive to spread Rand’s ideas.
⁵

Relationships among the Collective were now codified by residence and employment. The O’Connors, the Brandens, and the Blumenthals had all moved into the same building on East Thirty-fourth Street, which also housed the NBI offices and Nathan’s private office. Many of Rand’s inner circle worked for her or an Objectivist enterprise. In addition to the magazine, NBI launched a book service and sold reproductions of romantic art. Barbara Branden, NBI’s executive director, oversaw operations and taught her class on efficient thinking. Lecturing gigs at NBI paid well, as befit a capitalist establishment. Nathan and Allan Blumenthal received the bulk of their therapy clients from NBI students. Robert Hessen, then a graduate student in history at Columbia, became Rand’s secretary. Members of the Collective were not only friends, they were neighbors; they were not only neighbors, they were coworkers. Breaking into this tight circle was impossible for most NBI students.

Saturday nights at Rand’s apartment remained the most coveted invitation in Objectivist society. Most of Rand’s original group continued to attend the weekly sessions, and they always tried to be together on New Year’s Eve, one of Rand’s favorite holidays. As the clock turned, Rand made a great show of retreating to her bedroom with Frank, who would emerge later with lipstick smeared on his face. Rand extended her favor to those who boasted extraordinary professional success or intellectual or artistic talent, but the Collective remained primarily a family affair. The only outsiders successfully adopted married in, such as Charles Sures, the husband of Mary Ann Rukavina, an art student who had worked as Rand’s typist when she wrote
Atlas Shrugged
. Around the Collective orbited several loose bands of more dedicated Objectivists, who might occasionally be invited to a Saturday night gathering at Rand’s apartment or a private party hosted by one of the Collective.

Newcomers to NBI were directed to start with Nathan’s twenty-week lecture series, “Basic Principles of Objectivism,” the prerequisite for all further study. It was by far the most popular of NBI’s offerings, with some students even taking it twice. Most Objectivists took the course via tape transcription in the city where they lived, but Branden delivered the lectures live in New York City, where he consistently attracted an enrollment of nearly two hundred students each time it was offered. Although Branden sprinkled his own psychological theories through the curriculum, his course was primarily dedicated to a broad summary of Rand’s ideas, covering her positions on reason, altruism, economics, art, and sex.