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Jan. 11, 2008
Capitalism's ideological anchor
Reactions to the works of Ayn Rand continue to oscillate, despite the years gone by.
EUGENE KAELLIS
Fifty years after the publication of her widely successful and influential novel Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand remains one of the most contentious authors of the 20th century.
What makes Rand interesting is not only that she wrote extremely well in her adopted language, but that, especially when she started writing professionally, she was an ideological oddity. Her first scenario, about a USSR gulag political prisoner, bought by RKO in 1932, was never produced. She was simply out of step with the bulk of America's readers and critics: quasi-, pseudo- and para-intellectuals, many of whom, while capitalism was floundering in the Great Depression, were mesmerized by the Soviet system or, more accurately, their perception of it. In the meantime, back at the kholkoz, millions were dying from brutal collectivization while Stalin's tribunals and executioners were busy eradicating "enemies of the people," almost all fellow Bolsheviks and the best Red Army officers.
Rand's first major novel, The Fountainhead, published in the '50s when the political pendulum had swung the other way, was first described to me as "fascist." I hadn't read it yet and it turned out, neither had my informant; his characterization simply parroted the left-wing media to which he was addicted. The novel caused major controversy because the book advocated radical support of individual freedom and free enterprise. Consequently, it earned her the "fascist" label from leftists.
Still later, I discovered that Rand was a Jew, born Alisa Rosenbaum to a prosperous St. Petersburg family in 1905. In 1925, after living under communism, she was allowed to leave for the United States in an effort, by the diplomatically isolated Soviets, to impress Americans with how "free" Bolshevism was.
That was in the pre-neocon days, and Rand was rare among Jews, almost all of whom were liberals or socialists. Realizing that Rand was an anomaly, I wondered why so many Jews, especially intellectuals, have tended historically to support liberal and collectivist movements. For centuries, Jews had been coerced into money lending and international trade and those who weren't "dirt poor" and anonymous were identified with capitalism. Economist Werner Sombart even attributed the invention of capitalism to Jews, and Marx and Engels repeatedly and viciously castigated them as money worshippers. This attribution spread so widely among leftists that Bebel, the German Social-Democratic leader, was constrained to call anti-Semitism the "socialism of fools." The Catholic Church had outlawed the collection of interest from money lending. Its major economic contribution was superbly opulent edifices and, at least at the cardinal level, princely living. Yet, by its charitable institutions: hospitals, foundling homes and almshouses and references to "the social gospel" of Jesus, it sustained an image of charity and beneficence.
In liberal, democratic countries, many Jews, often out of a misplaced sense of guilt but a realistic sense of isolation and fear, supported liberal and socialist causes, thereby attempting, ineffectively it turned out, to eradicate their unwholesome image of being money worshippers.
Because Jews were almost invariably the victims of authoritarian-clerical regimes, some turned towards the most militant (usually leftist) opposition parties. Only after the murderous anti-Semitism of the Soviet bloc was exposed, did leftist Jews shift their political stance. But now, new generations of Jews have become anti-Israel, ingratiating themselves to fellow leftists by championing the Palestinians, the world's perpetual official underdogs. Rand was a committed supporter of Israel, which she saw, not only as a haven, but as a wholesome stimulant for modernism and freedom in a region of cultural and economic stagnation.
Even with the standard "party line" curriculum of the University of Leningrad, Rand learned to think critically, ignoring the plentiful propaganda, instead charting performance, not an easy task in the USSR, where manufacturing false data was the country's leading industry.
Rand's heroes have a romantic aura about them: "... the concept of man as a heroic being with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only guide" (her language). Yet, the heroic figures she developed do not conform to romantic icons firmly rooted in Rousseauian sentiment and wildly supportive of popular revolution.
Rand has even been called a social Darwinist. Perhaps in an effort to ward off misleading characterizations, she described herself as an "objectivist," meaning that she was not in the throes of any ideology but rather assessed the
practical rewards of every political-economic system: how well it alleviated discomfort and provided opportunities for advancement and self-expression. As strong as Rand was on personal freedom, including reproductive rights, she was near absolutist in opposing physical force to coerce people, except "... against those who initiate its use" – hardly what you'd call a fascist position.
During the Second World War, an Italian film based on her semi-autobiographical novel We the Living was produced without Rand's knowledge. Largely faithful to the book, the film was approved by Italy's fascist government on the grounds that it was anti-communist. But the Italian public understood that the movie was just as anti-fascist as it was anti-communist. People grasped Rand's theme that dictatorship as such is evil, and embraced the movie. Five months after its release, Mussolini's government figured it out and banned the movie.
Rand can be included in the company of Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Arthur Koestler and other genuine intellectuals who early realized that totalitarianism, including communism, was an evil practice that was managed by slogans, rhetoric and rationalizations to seduce many in the coalition of the deluded.
Atlas Shrugged was Rand's condemnation of collectivism and religion. In the novel, highly gifted and industrious men and women, who carry the progress of the world on their shoulders (like Atlas), instead of shrugging in the face of a repressive statist society, literally participate in a "mind strike" by retreating to a secret mountain in Colorado, depriving society of their genius and talents. When the system collapses, they emerge from their hiding and, as an expression of victory, trace the dollar sign in the air – quite a change from making the sign of the cross.
The book was close in publication date and character to Golding's The Lord of the Flies, which also expressed disdain for tribalist collectivism and for Christianity. Golding's book, more subtle, possibly more cynical, and certainly easier to read simply as a story, was widely admired; Rand's was not.
Rand's political mentors were Adam Smith and David Ricardo, both laissez faire, perhaps to a fault. She founded the Ayn Rand Institute as a school/think tank whose "graduates" include Alan Greenspan, former head of the U.S. Federal Reserve and one of the world's most widely admired economists. The sole purpose of government, she believed, was to suppress crime and defend against foreign attacks. Civilization, she thought, is progress toward a society of privacy, claiming that collectivism reflected primitive tribalism.
Rand's opposition to religion was based on her stand that reality exists as an objective absolute with no room for the supernatural. She also opposed any form of self-sacrifice. The hero of Atlas Shrugged states, "I swear – by my life and the love of it – that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." Not at all like the social gospel, more like "tough love."
Tribalism is unquestionably a recurrent theme among Western youth. The communes of the 1960s, Woodstock Nation and their collectives were a toxic brew of Marx, Rousseau and marijuana, the three most successful illusionists in history. That hippies often subsisted on the forced generosity of their aging "bourgeois" parents or by theft or selling drugs has still not diminished their mystique.
Recognizing the political bias of much of North America's media, although extremely articulate in English and obviously well-informed and educated, Rand refused to participate in public debates, and would be interviewed only when she faced the interviewer and was promised no editing. Obviously, with her highly controversial, some would say "extreme," positions, she was fearful of having her ideas ridiculed or, worse, distorted.
By the time of her death in New York in 1982 at the age of 77, Rand had become a highly successful writer. Through her books and institute, she continues to contribute to conservative thinking in North America.
Eugene Kaellis is a freelance writer and retired academic living in New Westminster.
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