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AYNRANDAn introductionEAMONNBUTLER

Ayn Rand

AYN RANDAN INTRODUCTIONE AMONN BUTLER

First published in Great Britain in 2018 byThe Institute of Economic Affairs2 Lord North StreetWestminsterLondon SW1P 3LBin association with London Publishing Partnership Ltdwww.londonpublishingpartnership.co.ukThe mission of the Institute of Economic Affairs is to improve understandingof the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expoundingthe role of markets in solving economic and social problems.Copyright The Institute of Economic Affairs 2018The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reservedabove, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introducedinto a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the priorwritten permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.ISBN 978-0-255-36765-3 (interactive PDF)Many IEA publications are translated into languages otherthan English or are reprinted. Permission to translate or to reprintshould be sought from the Director General at the address above.Typeset in Kepler by T&T Productions Ltdwww.tandtproductions.com

This book is addressed to the young – in yearsor in spirit – who are not afraid to know andare not ready to give up.Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

CONTENTS1The author  Acknowledgements  xxiIntroduction  1What this book is about, 1; What this book covers, 2;Who this book is for, 3; Rand, the author andthis book, 4; How this book is structured, 52Why Ayn Rand is important  6The importance of Rand’s fiction, 6; The importanceof Rand’s thought, 10; Critics and adherents, 123Rand’s life and writings  14Turbulent childhood in Russia, 14; New careerin America, 15; Breakthrough novel, 17;The Objectivist movement and its discontents, 19;Final years, 20; Continuing influence, 21;A timeline of Rand’s life and work, 234Outline of Rand’s worldview  30Rand on reality, 31; Rand on human knowledge, 32;Rand on morality, 33; Rand on politics andeconomics, 33; Rand on art and literature, 34;Rand’s image of a heroic being, 35vii

C ontents5Rand on the nature of reality  376How we understand the world  43Basic axioms, 37; Identity and causality, 38;Existence and consciousness, 39; Necessityand choice, 40; The rejection of reality, 41The process of understanding, 43;Knowledge and its critics, 497Rand on morality  53Facts and values, 53; Life and objective value, 54;Dealing with others, 57; The importance ofprinciple, 60; Objectivist virtues, 628Politics and economics  67Rational political principles, 67; Other politicalphilosophies, 71; A rational and moral economy, 739Rand on public issues  79The poverty of progressive schooling, 79; College andstudent discontent, 80; Old Left and New Left, 81;Racism as collectivism, 82; Environmentalism, 83;Civil rights, 84; Crime and terrorism, 84;Economic policy, 85; Foreign policy, 8610 The nature and importance of art  The process of artistic creation, 88; The critical roleof art, 89; Art and life, 90; The structure of art, 91;Valid forms of art, 91; Invalid forms of art, 92; Theprinciples of literary art, 92; Romanticism in art andliterature, 94; Deficiencies in contemporary art, 95viii88

C ontents11 Rand’s novels  9612 Rand’s critics  109The goal of Rand’s fiction, 96Rand’s philosophical approach, 109; Rand onreality and knowledge, 110; Rand on morality, 112;Rand on politics, 114; Rand on capitalism, 115;Rand on art and literature, 117; Rand’s fiction, 117;Ayn Rand’s legacy, 119 ; Is Atlas shrugging?, 12213 Quotations by and about Rand  124On herself, 124; On reality and knowledge, 124;On ethics, 126; On altruism, 126; On politicsand economics, 130; On heroism, 138;Quotations about Rand, 13914 Further reading  141How to read Ayn Rand, 141; Short guides toRand, 143; Rand’s main fiction, 144; Rand’s mainnon-fiction, 145; Posthumous collections, 146; Randin her own words, 147; Books on Rand, 148Index  151About the IEA  158ix

THE AUTHOREamonn Butler is Director of the Adam Smith Institute, oneof the world’s leading policy think tanks. He holds degreesin economics and psychology, a PhD in philosophy, and anhonorary DLitt. In the 1970s he worked in Washington forthe US House of Representatives, and taught philosophy atHillsdale College, Michigan, before returning to the UK tohelp found the Adam Smith Institute. A former winner ofthe Freedom Medal awarded by Freedom’s Foundation ofValley Forge and the UK National Free Enterprise Award,Eamonn is currently Secretary of the Mont Pelerin Society.Eamonn is author of many books, including introductions to the pioneering economists and thinkers AdamSmith, Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek and Ludwig vonMises. He has also published primers on classical liberalism, public choice, Magna Carta, the Austrian Schoolof Economics and great liberal thinkers, as well as TheCondensed Wealth of Nations and The Best Book on the Market. His Foundations of a Free Society won the 2014 FisherPrize. He is co-author of Forty Centuries of Wage and PriceControls, and of a series of books on IQ. He is a frequentcontributor to print, broadcast and online media.x

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThanks go to Carl Barney and Yaron Brook for their encouragement on this project and to Greg Salmieri and MikeBerliner for their extremely helpful criticisms on the draft.xi

1INTRODUCTIONWhat this book is aboutThis book guides the reader through the highly original,but controversial, ideas of the Russian–American writerand thinker Ayn Rand (1905–82) – best known for her‘Objectivist’ worldview and her novels The Fountainhead(1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957).Rand’s thinking still has profound influence, particularly on those who come to it through her novels, attractedby their core messages of individualism, self-worth, andthe right to live your life without others imposing on you.The hunger for this vision seems limitless. Atlas Shruggedsells almost a quarter of a million copies annually – quiteremarkable for a book of 1,200 pages, published morethan half a century ago – with sales of The Fountainheadnot far behind. Their popularity has made Rand the toprecruiter for the individualist movement. In the famouswords of one libertarian activist, ‘It usually begins withAyn Rand.’This has made her a major influence on many of theworld’s leading legislators, policy advisers, and economists.Entrepreneurs and investors too, particularly those leading1

Ayn R andthe knowledge industries (such as Wikipedia co-founderJimmy Wales and PayPal co-founder Peter Th iel), have beeninspired by her robust account of the morality of free-market capitalism, and of the crucial role of creative minds indriving human progress.More widely, though, Rand’s ideas remain highly controversial – or deeply unfashionable. Academics largelyignore her thoughts on art, literature, and philosophy.Traditionalists find her attacks on altruism and religionshocking. Progressives scorn her view of state interventionas a destroyer of value, spirit and life itself. Public intellectuals dismiss her as a crazy extremist whose work fuelsthe worst vices of greed, self-absorption, indifference, andcallousness.Such reactions should come as no surprise. Rand herself radically and intensely opposed almost every strand ofmainstream thinking – on human nature, morality, politics, economics, art, literature, education, and even realityitself. Yet her positions were all part of a consistent andcomprehensive view of life and the universe. It is a viewthat should be taken seriously, no matter how unorthodoxand shocking it might seem.Even if you disagree with Ayn Rand, she certainlymakes you think.What this book coversThis book is shorter than the 32,963-word speech by thecharacter John Galt in Atlas Shrugged, which encapsulates Rand’s worldview. So it must focus on the essentials,2

I ntroductionavoiding academic detail. It aims only to introduce andexplain Rand’s key ideas, and some of the criticisms madeof them, clearly and jargon free.The book covers Rand’s importance, her understanding of reality and human nature, and her conclusions onknowledge, morality, politics, economics, government,public issues, aesthetics, and literature. It places these inthe context of her life and times, showing how revolutionary they were, and how they influenced the public policydebate and encouraged a spreading rejection of collectivism, centralism and statism.Who this book is forRand’s output covered so many subjects in so many different forms – novels, articles, speeches, interviews, books,plays, movie scripts, newsletters, broadcasts – that it canbe hard to know where to begin. This book organizes herthinking into a short, structured guide.The book is written for intelligent readers who are interested in the public debate on politics, government, socialinstitutions, capitalism, rights, liberty, and morality. It isfor anyone who wants to understand the pro-freedom sideof the debate and the influence that Ayn Rand had on itthrough her writings, as well as through her extraordinarypersonality and the ‘radical individualist’ movement thatsprang up around her.The book aims to explain Rand’s ideas in plain language,without distortion. Hence there are no academic-stylefootnotes or references – just an essential reading list of3

Ayn R andher most significant books and articles, ordered so that thereader can navigate them more easily.It also gives high-school and college students of economics, politics, ethics, and philosophy a concise studyguide to a set of radical ideas and opinions that are frequently dismissed or ignored by mainstream teachers.There is plenty in here to challenge those teachers!There is also much of political interest. Rand was one ofthe main intellectual inspirations behind the rise of individualist, pro-freedom politics at the end of the twentiethcentury. Even today, her ideas influence policy around theglobe.Rand, the author and this bookI never knew Ayn Rand but, like many others, came to herwhen young, through her novels. I found The Fountainheadfresh, uplifting, and inspiring and admired its heroic vision of human creativity, achievement, and integrity. AtlasShrugged moved me less. Its plot seemed far-fetched, itscharacters cardboard, its tone sermonizing, and its lengthwearing.Moreover, I was never convinced by Rand’s certaintyabout the nature of reality and its power to reveal truthsabout individuals, society and morality. And like manyothers at the time, I was put off by the sectarianism thatsurrounded her, and the schisms that continued after herdeath.But today such disputes are eclipsed by the accelerating global interest in Rand’s ideas, and I have returned4

I ntroductionto those ideas with an open but critical mind. I remain askeptic, and my view of her novels is unchanged. But I hopethat my personal opinions do not color what follows, andthat my portrayal of Rand’s ideas (and some of the criticalresponses to them) is fair and (dare I say it?) objective.How this book is structuredThis book is not a chronological history but is structuredaround Rand’s key ideas.It begins with the question of why Rand is importantand worth reading more about. It looks at her wider effectthrough her novels and the challenges that she posed tomainstream thinking. It then provides a brief sketch ofher life and how events shaped her ideas, and how in turnthose ideas shaped the lives of her followers and the worldbeyond. It includes a timeline of the key events and publications of her life.Next, the book outlines the key elements of Rand’sworldview. It then looks more closely at her ideas on thoseelements: reality, knowledge, morality, politics and publicissues, economics, art and literature.In its closing chapters, the book reviews Rand’s novels,providing a guide for the reader and showing how theirthemes, plots, characterization, and style reflect and express her worldview. It looks at some of the criticisms thathave been made of her work. It ends with a short assessment of Rand’s continuing influence, a guide to furtherreading, and some of the key quotations that sum up herremarkably radical ideas on reality and human nature.5

2WHY AYN RAND IS IMPORTANTThe importance of Rand’s fictionIt must be the most common opening of all the letters received by Rand’s publishers, not to mention the many articles and blog posts about Rand that appear daily: ‘AtlasShrugged changed my life.’Most people discover Rand not through her articles, butthrough her fiction. Her novels have brought her ideas onlife, politics, and morality into popular culture and madethem accessible to a lay public who might struggle to wadethrough some academic treatise.Young people in particular connect easily with The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, which speak to their concernsabout their future lives and ambitions. The books also feedtheir natural rebelliousness, giving them the argumentsthey need to challenge the received wisdom of self- sacrificeand soft socialism that is handed down by their teachers.Aspiring to excelThese novels feed the self-esteem of young people – andindeed many who are not so young. They convince readers6

W hy Ayn R and is importantthat, through thought and action, they can create a worldin which their efforts will be valued, not disparaged orexploited. They assert the nobility of using your mind toreach your full potential. They make self-belief cool.Rand’s heroes are individualists who live by their owncreative talents – existing for no one else nor asking othersto exist for them. They are rebels against the establishmentand its ways. They do not conform to social norms butstand by their own vision and truth: a vision built on theirown values and a truth built on fact and reason, not on thefalse authority of others. They are the creative minds whodiscover new knowledge, innovate, drive progress, andconsequently benefit all humanity.But minds cannot be forced to think. Creativity, andtherefore human progress, depends on people being freeto think and act in pursuit of their own values and on thebasis of fact, not authority – a seductive idea, especially forRand’s young readers.A comprehensive viewAnother quality that makes Rand so influential is that sheprovides a system – a comprehensive view of how the worldand human life work. She looks far deeper and wider thanmere politics or economics, tracing their roots down toculture, society, and philosophy.Her novels teach the ideas of liberty, values, mind, reason, creativity, entrepreneurship, capitalism, achievement,heroism, happiness, self-esteem, and pride. They explainthe life- destroying consequences of coercion, extortion,7

Ayn R andregulation, self-sacrifice, altruism, wishful thinking, andrefusing to use one’s mind.This is exactly what so many young people (in particular) are looking for: a comprehensive, consistent worldviewthat provides a way of understanding the world and a set ofprinciples through which its many puzzles might be solved.In time, of course, they may come across other viewpoints, or come to accept that the world is more complicated than Rand suggests. But it is a mark of the powerof her system that it typically still continues to affect herreaders. Their lives remain forever changed.The spread of Rand’s ideasNowhere do Rand’s ideas change more lives than in heradopted United States, where her novels tap into theAmerican ideals of self-reliance and individualism. In theearly 1990s, a decade after her death, a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club ratedAtlas Shrugged as the most influential book after the Bible.Today, Rand’s ideas are taught in colleges across Americaand discussed in academic and popular journals. Institutes and groups have been set up to promote her ideas.Her ideas are accelerating in other English-speakingcountries too, such as the United Kingdom (where 20,000Rand books are sold each year), Canada, Australia, NewZealand, South Africa, and India, where English is widely spoken. Even Indian footballers and Bollywood starsacknowledge her influence on their lives.8

W hy Ayn R and is importantBeyond the English-speaking countries, Sweden, acountry of just 9.5 million people, leads the world inGoogle searches for ‘Ayn Rand,’ and Swedes bought over30,000 copies of her books in the last decade. About 25,000more are bought each year in Rand’s native Russia, another 13,000 a year in Brazil, 6,000 in Spain, and 1,000 eachin Japan and Bulgaria. Even in China, some 15,000 Randbooks are bought each year – a number which, given thatcountry’s economic and intellectual awakening, can onlyincrease.Influence on politicsAll this gives Rand a significant impact on the political debate. In the US, many of those she inspired rose into publicoffice. Former US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan was an early member of Rand’s inner circle. SupremeCourt Justice Clarence Thomas shows his new clerks thefilm of The Fountainhead. Politicians such as former Congressman Ron Paul; his son, Senator Rand Paul; and HouseSpeaker Paul Ryan cite Rand as an influence. Even President Ronald Reagan described himself as ‘an admirer ofAyn Rand.’Nor is this only a US phenomenon. Annie Lööf, leaderof Sweden’s Center Party and former enterprise minister,helped launch the Swedish translation of The Fountainhead, calling Rand ‘one of the greatest thinkers of the 20thCentury.’ Rand’s ideas were praised by the reformist PrimeMinister of Estonia, Mart Laar, and influenced Australia’s9

Ayn R andPrime Minister Malcolm Fraser, along with many otherpast or current political leaders.The importance of Rand’s thoughtIn addition to her novels and plays, Rand wrote non-fictionon philosophy – the study of reality and existence, how weknow and understand the world, and what that implies formorality and politics.Reality and its implicationsHer approach is interesting for many reasons, not leastbecause she sees reality, knowledge, human nature, morality, politics, economics, and even art as all intimately connected. While many philosophers focus on just one element, to Rand they are integral parts of an overall system.She called this system Objectivism. It starts with the ideathat there is a real world outside us that would continueto exist even without us. We can get to know the natureand workings of this world, but only if we think objectively.That means starting with the raw facts of our perceptionsand using reason to understand them and build a coherentworldview upon them.If we know how the world works, thought Rand, we canwork out how we should best behave to thrive in it. Thatgives us a new way to determine what is morally right orwrong, and politically workable or unworkable – not onthe traditional basis of religion, emotion, or authority, buton the objective basis of reason.10

W hy Ayn R and is importantReality and moralityThis is a remarkable claim, and given the controversialnature of the moral principles and political institutionsthat Rand says are implied by this reasoning process, onecan see why it draws criticism. In politics, she believesthat reason prescribes freedom and capitalism, while themoral code that our reason dictates is not altruism andself-sacrifice – as so many moralists teach – but rationalself-interest.These, says Rand, are what guide us toward life, prosperity, the achievement of our values, and happiness. By contrast,the traditional morality of altruism and self-sacrifice doeshuge damage: success is decried and exploited, while failureand incapacity are rewarded – a one-way ticket, she says, todecline, dispute, and destruction. Having lived in Soviet Russia, she perhaps understood such problems better than most.Whether or not you accept the view that morality canbe based objectively on fact, Rand’s approach remains animportant c ritique of common political and moral ideas,such as M arxism and religion. To her, it is reason andknowledge that create value – physical labor, as Marxwould have it. And religious faith cannot move mountains,never mind grow food and heal the sick. That takes technology, which in turn requires creative minds.A new defense of libertyBut to work, creative minds must be free – to interact withthe world, to reason, to learn, and to identify and serve11

Ayn R andour needs and values. The process cannot be forced. Liberty, to Rand, is therefore essential to human survival andprogress.This is a new and forceful defense of liberty, one basedon what Rand saw as an objective understanding of ourspecies and our world, not on personal, subjective opinions and conventions.Our political and economic arrangements, likewise,must be based in liberty. The only economic system thatis compatible with complete freedom, says Rand, is laissez-faire capitalism. And that depends on the existenceof private property and a rule of law by which people cantrade confidently without being coerced. The role of thestate is merely to keep everyone to these rules and suppress violence; no other state activity can be justified.Critics and adherentsRand’s confidence in our ability to know an external worldis controversial among philosophers. Many skeptics suggest that our experiences may be just a dream, or an illusion, or at best a distortion of reality. Other critics doubtthat even reliable knowledge of reality can be any guide toour moral or political actions.Rand’s moral idea that we should reject altruism andvalue things in terms of our own interest is corrupting,say critics. It ignores the fine, but crucial, lines betweenself-esteem and conceit, self-interest and greed, integrityand vanity. It is at odds with nature, since we are a social species and are naturally disposed to care for others,12

W hy Ayn R and is importanteven strangers. Can all the world’s religions be wrong inpromoting altruism? And, of course, Rand’s political conclusions – freedom, private property, and a minimal state– are equally unpopular among academics.But academic opposition does not mean that Rand’sideas can be dismissed. On the contrary, they deserve to betaken seriously – if for no other reason than the fact thatthey have attracted so many adherents from all walks oflife.13

3RAND’S LIFE AND WRITINGSTurbulent childhood in RussiaAyn Rand was born Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum in 1905,the first of three daughters of a middle-class Russian-Jewish family in St Petersburg. By age nine she had alreadydecided to become a writer – inspired by the tale of theheroic British soldier Cyrus Paltons in a children’s magazine. Later, after her mother took her to the cinema, shedeveloped a passion for writing movie scenarios.But in 1917, when she was just 12, Petrograd (as St Petersburg was then called) became the focus of the February and October Revolutions. When the Bolsheviks eventually won control, her father’s pharmacy business and thefamily home were confiscated.To escape the conflict and the harsh conditions in thecity – shockingly portrayed in Rand’s semi-autobiographical novel We the Living (1936) – the family moved to Crimea.Her father started a new pharmacy business, but that againwas nationalized when the Red Army arrived. So when Alisacompleted high school in 1921, they returned to Petrograd.She was one of the first women to enroll in the State University. American history and politics, and Western plays,14

R and’s life and writingsmusic, and cinema particularly enthused her. In additionto the novelists Fyodor Dostoevsky and Victor Hugo thatshe had read in Crimea, she now discovered other thinkerswho would influence her later career, such as the Greekphilosopher Aristotle.But (again like the heroine Kira in We the Living) she wasdismayed by how the communists suppressed free thoughtand free speech. Together with other ‘bourgeois’ students,she was purged from the university, but after foreign academics protested, she eventually graduated in 1924.In these dark times, she became increasingly absorbedby Western plays, operettas, and films. Determined to become a screenwriter, she entered the state Cinematic Institute in Leningrad (as the Soviets had renamed the city),where she chose her professional name of Ayn Rand. Sheknew that she had no future in a stifling communist Russia and yearned to be part of the can-do culture portrayedin American movies. She obtained a visa to visit relativesin Chicago. Her parents helped to pay the passage. But shehad no intention of returning.New career in AmericaLanding in New York in 1926, Rand was overwhelmed bythe impressive (and, to her, heroic) winter skyline. Shewent on to Chicago, where one of her relatives owned acinema, allowing her to indulge her passion for films. Sheextended her visa and, with a borrowed 100 and a letterof recommendation from a film-distributor friend of herrelatives, set out for California.15

Ayn R andOn her second day in Hollywood, a chance meetingwith the leading filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille – who saw herstaring at him as he left the studios – led him to hire heras an extra in the religious film King of Kings. Two weekslater she met the young actor Frank O’Connor, whom shemarried in 1929, just before her visa ran out. She became aUS citizen in 1931.Rand reviewed scripts for DeMille, then worked in theRKO Pictures wardrobe department while developing herown writing skills. In 1932 she sold her first screenplay, RedPawn, a spy drama set on a Russian prison island, to Universal Studios. Her courtroom-drama stage play Night ofJanuary 16th (in which members of the audience act as thejury) was produced in H ollywood in 1934 and on Broadwayin 1935. She was becoming a successful writer. To furtherher career, and anticipating the Broadway run, she andFrank moved to New York in late 1934.She finished her novel We the Living in 1934, but itsportrait of the brutal reality of life in the Soviet Unionwas at odds with the mood of the ‘Red Decade,’ in whichWestern intellectuals actively praised communism forits bold vision. Nor did the Russian idea of a ‘philosophical novel’ fit well with American culture. The book waseventually published in 1936 to disappointing reviews,though it fared better outside the US (and, withoutRand’s knowledge, was turned into two films in Italy).For the same reasons, it was her UK publisher who in1938 first released her next book, Anthem, a novella setin a dystopian future where the idea of individuality hasbeen extinguished.16

R and’s life and writingsBreakthrough novelNevertheless, she received crucial encouragement fromIsabel Paterson, the influential New York Herald Tribune literary columnist and prominent libertarian thinker, who exchanged ideas with her and assured Rand of her originality.Her breakthrough novel, The Fountainhead, appearedin 1943. Reactions were mixed. Critics scorned its 700-pagelength or saw its characters as unsympathetic loudspeakersfor the author’s views. But reader-to-reader recommendation made The Fountainhead a major literary success, andby 1945 it ranked sixth on the New York Times bestseller list.Like We the Living, its theme is individualism versus collectivism – this time in the realm of creativity rather thanpolitics. A philosophical romance, its plot centers aroundHoward Roark, a principled, uncompromising, and visionary modern architect – Rand’s first personification of herideal man – and heroine Dominique Francon, who shareshis values but has withdrawn from what she sees as a contemptibly mediocre world.The Fountainhead made Rand famous as a champion ofindividualism. One of those who read and admired it wasthe leading actor Gary Cooper, who offered Warner Bros.his services to play Roark for a screen version. Rand agreedto return from New York to Hollywood to write the script,but on condition that the studio did not change a word ofit – a condition that, despite arguments, was honored.When the film appeared in 1949, critics again saw thecharacters more as philosophical mouthpieces than asreal human beings. The film was not a commercial success.17

Ayn R andBut it attracted a big following, which boosted sales of thebook, and brought Rand considerable wealth – allowingher and Frank to buy a large (and, appropriately, modernist) ranch house in California.Atlas ShruggedRand actively opposed the spread of communist sympathies in Hollywood. Her Screen Guide for Americans explained how filmmakers could spot and resist communistpropaganda in their scripts. In 1947 she appeared as afriendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee. It all deepened the hostility against her fromthe left- leaning intellectuals who dominated cinema, literature, and criticism.But by then, she had already begun work on a new novel,Atlas Shrugged. To complete it, she returned to New York,where a group of admirers – ironically dubbed ‘The Collective’ – gathered around her.The 1,200-page Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957.Its themes, said Rand, were ‘the role of the mind in man’s existence’ and her new morality of rational self-interest. Itportrays a crumbling economy in which creative peoplereject their exploitation by others and withdraw to foundtheir own society based on egoism – the refusal to live forthe sake of others or to expect others to live for you. LikeThe Fountainhead, the plot involves a love affair, betweenthe capable railroad boss Dagny Taggart and the innovative steelmaker Hank Rearden – and then with the mastermind behind the strike, John Galt.18

R and’s life and writingsThe critics scorned the novel’s polemical tone, its politics, and its length. But millions of readers found thebook, its story, and its characters compelling – and stilldo. It soon peaked at third place on the New York Timesbestseller list and went on to become one of the world’smost influential

ket capitalism, and of the crucial role of creative minds in driving human progress. More widely, though, Rand’s ideas remain highly con-troversial – or deeply unfashionable. Academics largely ignore her thoughts on art, literature, and philosophy. Traditionalists find her attacks on altruism and religion shocking.

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