Ayn Rand versus Christianity

Many supporters of free markets and laissez-faire capitalism use Ayn Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged, and her philosophy of objectivism to support their cause without being aware of her hostility toward Christianity and other religions.

And the case can be made that her philosophies are in direct contradiction to the teachings of Jesus Christ. For example, "Jesus Christ versus Ayn Rand" argues Rand's pursuit of self-interest is contrary to the New Testament lessons of love and compassion for others.

Stossel - January 7, 2010 - Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged

Libertarian journalist John Stossel examines Ayn Rand's 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged on his January 7, 2010 self-titled program on the Fox Business Network. The book surged in popularity during the economic recession of 2007-2010 and became a popular talking point among conservatives and libertarians as justification for reducing or eliminating government regulation of markets.

Stossel - January 7, 2010 - Part 1 of 6
John Stossel interviews John Allison (Chairman, BB&T Bank).

Stossel - January 7, 2010 - Part 2 of 6
Professor C. Bradley Thompson (Clemson University), Yaron Brook (President of the Ayn Rand Institute), and John Allison (Chairman, BB&T Bank) discuss Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged.

Stossel - January 7, 2010 - Part 3 of 6
Audience members ask questions to Stossel, Thompson, Brook and Allison.

Stossel - January 7, 2010 - Part 4 of 6
Stossel interviews Nick Gillespie (an editor for Reason.com and Reason TV) and Jeffrey Klein (New York State Senator)

Stossel - January 7, 2010 - Part 5 of 6
Stossel interviews audience members.

Stossel - January 7, 2010 - Part 6 of 6
Stossel's perspective on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Two Recent Books about Ayn Rand

The October 22, 2009 Economist article "Capitalism's martyred hero: The life and views of Ayn Rand" reviews two recent books about Ayn Rand, saying "most intellectuals don’t have much time for Ayn Rand with her `glare that could wilt a cactus.´ But her uncompromising views are still worshipped by many."

Ayn Rand and the World She Made. By Anne Heller. Nan A. Talese; 592 pages.

Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. By Jennifer Burns. Oxford University Press; 384 pages.

FOR all its faults socialism is manifestly superior to capitalism in one area: the making of myths. Capitalists can never equal the emotional appeal of socialism’s martyred heroes. Ayn Rand, however, is a conspicuous exception to this rule. She has been given short shrift by the intellectual establishment. Literary critics bemoan her cardboard characters and tabloid style. Political theorists dismiss her as a shallow thinker whose appeal is restricted to adolescents. But such disdain has done nothing to damage her popular appeal.

Rand’s books have enjoyed impressive sales since her death in 1982. But America’s shift to the left—the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006 and Barack Obama’s election two years later—has put her back at the heart of the political debate. Conservative protesters carry posters asking “Who is John Galt?”, referring to one of Rand’s heroes. Conservative polemicists suggest that Mr Obama, by stepping in to rescue the banks and industrial behemoths such as General Motors, is ushering in the collectivist dystopia that Rand gave warning against. Sales of “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” have surged. Rumours swirl that a film based on “Atlas Shrugged” is in the works.


So the publication of these two books could not have been better timed. Anne Heller is more informative on Rand’s early years in Russia. Jennifer Burns is better versed in conservative thought. Both are well worth reading, partly because Rand’s life was so extraordinary and partly because the questions that she raised about the proper power of government are just as urgent now as they ever were.

Rand was the single most uncompromising critic of the collectivist tide that swept across the capitalist world in the wake of the Depression. For her, government was nothing more than licensed robbery and altruism just an excuse for power-grabbing. Intellectuals and bureaucrats might pose as champions of the people against the powerful. But in reality they were empire builders who were motivated by a noxious mixture of envy and greed. Rand’s heroes were a different breed: the businessmen and entrepreneurs who felt the future in their bones and would not rest until they had brought it to life.

This might sound like libertarian boilerplate: Nietzsche repackaged for the Chamber of Commerce crowd. But three things gave her work its hypnotic power. The first was her background as a Russian Jew—she was born Alisa Rosenbaum—who witnessed the revolution and its aftermath at first hand. This filled her with contempt for the Communist fellow-travellers she encountered in Washington and Hollywood, and sensitised her to the similarities between the New Deal and central planning. The second was the absolutism of her vision. Confronted by an almost uniformly hostile elite, she went out of her way to pick a fight with a possible ally, Friedrich Hayek, dismissing his “The Road to Serfdom” as pure poison because he conceded there might be a limited role for the state.

But her most important attribute was her talent for myth-making. Rand perfected her literary art as a screenwriter in Hollywood. And she dealt in Hollywood-style dichotomies between good and evil, between white-hatted capitalists and black-hatted collectivists. Greys don’t interest me, she once said. “Atlas Shrugged” conjured up a world in which all creative businessmen had gone on strike, retreating to Galt’s Gulch in Colorado, and culminated in a dramatic court scene in which Galt detailed the evils of collectivism.

The woman behind these right-wing myths was exceedingly odd. She had “a glare that could wilt a cactus” according to a writer in Time, and wore a broach in the shape of a dollar sign. She was even odder to live with. Ms Burns points out that she obliged her long-suffering husband to wear a bell attached to his shoe so that she could hear him come and go. She all but obliged her leading acolyte, Nathaniel Branden, to meet her for sex twice a week, informing both her husband and Mrs Branden that the arrangement was rational. She picked fights with “frightened zombies”, as she called her fellow intellectuals, and yet was mortally offended when anybody dared to criticise her writing.

Ms Heller and Ms Burns both dwell on the contradictions of Rand and Randism. Rand was an uncompromising rationalist. But she was also the plaything of powerful emotions. She devoted her life to fighting collectivism. But she would not tolerate dissent among her followers—and even playfully called her inner-circle “the collective”. There was more than just a right kind of politics, one of her followers recalled. There was also a right kind of interior design, a right kind of dancing. She loathed communism. But many of her readers reacted to her writings in much the same way that leftists reacted to reading Marx.

Both authors point to the tragedy of her career even though her book sales turned her into a multimillionaire and a cultural icon. She lived to see laissez-faire triumph over collectivism and one of her leading acolytes, Alan Greenspan, appointed to the president’s Council of Economic Advisers. But nothing was ever good enough for her and she felt surrounded by traitors. Ms Heller is particularly informative on the way that the “collective” fell apart when she fell out with Branden.

Yet Rand’s appeal has been undimmed by either the vituperation of her critics or the peculiarity of her admirers. Her insight in “Atlas Shrugged”—that society cannot thrive unless it is willing to give freedom to its entrepreneurs and innovators—has proved to be prescient. Even if John Galt is under threat once again in the West, he is back in business in China and India.

It's 'Atlas Shrugged' all over again

The March 1, 2009 Economist article "It's 'Atlas Shrugged' all over again" suggests the fictional profession of Rand's novel may be becoming reality.

Books do not sell themselves: That is what films are for. "The Reader," the book that inspired the Oscar-winning film, has shot up the best-seller lists. Another recent publishing success, however, has had more help from Washington, D.C., than Hollywood. That book is Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged."

Reviled in some circles and mocked in others, Rand's 1957 novel of embattled capitalism is a favorite of libertarians and college students. Lately, though, its appeal has been growing.

According to data from TitleZ, a firm that tracks best-seller rankings on Amazon, an online retailer, the book's 30-day average Amazon rank was 127 on Feb. 21, well above its average over the past two years of 542. On Jan. 13 the book's ranking was 33, briefly besting President Barack Obama's popular tome, "The Audacity of Hope."

Tellingly, the spikes in the novel's sales coincide with the news. The first jump, in September 2007, followed dramatic interest-rate cuts by central banks, and the Bank of England's bailout of Northern Rock, a troubled mortgage lender.

The October 2007 rise happened two days after the Bush administration announced an initiative to coax banks to assist subprime borrowers. A year later, sales of the book rose after America's Treasury said that it would use a big chunk of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to buy stakes in nine large banks.

Debate over Obama's stimulus plan in January gave the book another lift. And sales leapt once again when the stimulus plan passed and Obama announced a new mortgage-modification plan.

Whenever governments intervene in the market, in short, readers rush to buy Rand's book. Why?

The reason is explained by the name of a recently formed group on Facebook, the world's biggest social-networking site: "Read the news today? It's like 'Atlas Shrugged' is happening in real life." The group, and an expanding chorus of fretful bloggers, reckon that life is imitating art.

Some were reminded of Rand's gifted physicist, Robert Stadler, cravenly disavowing his faith in reason for political favor, when Alan Greenspan, an acolyte of Rand's, testified before a congressional committee last October that he had found a "flaw in the model" of securitization.

And with pirates hijacking cargo ships, politicians castigating corporate chieftains, riots in Europe and slowing international trade -- all of which are depicted in the book -- this melancholy meme has plenty of fodder.

Even if Washington does not keep the book's sales booming, Hollywood might. A film version is rumored to be in the works for release in 2011. But by then, a film may feel superfluous to Rand's most loyal fans; events unfolding around them will have been dramatization enough.

What would Ayn Rand do?

In the January 14, 2009 Free Exchange blog article "What would Ayn Rand do?," an Economist correspondent considers modern parallels to the novel Atlas Shrugged.

AYN RAND is rolling in her grave, according to Stephen Moore.

In ["Atlas Shrugged"], these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as "the looters and their laws." Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the "Anti-Greed Act" to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel's promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the "Equalization of Opportunity Act" to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the "Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act," aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn't Hank Paulson think of that?

These acts and edicts sound farcical, yes, but no more so than the actual events in Washington, circa 2008. We already have been served up the $700 billion "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act" and the "Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act." Now that Barack Obama is in town, he will soon sign into law with great urgency the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan." This latest Hail Mary pass will increase the federal budget (which has already expanded by $1.5 trillion in eight years under George Bush) by an additional $1 trillion -- in roughly his first 100 days in office.

The current economic strategy is right out of "Atlas Shrugged": The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That's the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies -- while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. With each successive bailout to "calm the markets," another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as "Atlas" grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate "windfalls."

I bet Hank Paulson never thought he’d find himself accused of being opposed to competition when he took this job. It reminds me of an ongoing debate I’ve been having with a friend from graduate school (in a secure academic job). She is also from eastern Europe and has seen her share of crisis and harmful government intervention. She maintains the whole mess will be over more quickly if we just let the weak banks fail. Propping them up merely prolongs the crisis because the market can not distinguish between good and bad banks. She reckons we should just deal with the short-term pain of some banks failing, firm bankruptcy, and job loss and move on when the market re-equilibrates. Her experience growing up during communism speaks louder to her than lessons from the Great Depression.

Normally, and I never imagined I would feel differently, I’d agree with my friend and the John Galt-ites. But these are not ordinary times. The problem is that we’ve reached a point of market failure and uncertainty. It's impossible to tell who the weak banks are. No one involved wants to admit it now, but the justification at the time for not bailing out Lehman was at least partly based on these market principles. This caused widespread panic, and it looked as though a total banking collapse would take place absent a government guarantee. No one knows what the assets they have on their balance sheets are worth. This means there is no lending when there should be; firms who in any functioning market would get credit are left in the lurch.

I am all for market discipline, I would even argue that market distortions from the meddling government sowed the seeds of this crisis. That may be why we need intervention to get out of it. Unfortunately, that means firms, and entire industries, who have no business getting government money are going to receive cheques. But, as Ben Bernanke says (a man who also probably never saw himself on this side of government), "There are no atheists in foxholes and no idealogues in financial crises."

'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years

In the January 9, 2009 Wall Street Journal editorial "'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years," Stephen Moore argues the events foretold in Ayn Rand's 1957 novel are becoming a reality.

Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read "Atlas Shrugged" a "virgin." Being conversant in Ayn Rand's classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only "Atlas" were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I'm confident that we'd get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.

Many of us who know Rand's work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that "Atlas Shrugged" parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit.

Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism, was already a celebrity. The left, naturally, hated her. But as recently as 1991, a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that readers rated "Atlas" as the second-most influential book in their lives, behind only the Bible.

For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.

In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as "the looters and their laws." Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the "Anti-Greed Act" to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel's promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the "Equalization of Opportunity Act" to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the "Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act," aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn't Hank Paulson think of that?

These acts and edicts sound farcical, yes, but no more so than the actual events in Washington, circa 2008. We already have been served up the $700 billion "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act" and the "Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act." Now that Barack Obama is in town, he will soon sign into law with great urgency the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan." This latest Hail Mary pass will increase the federal budget (which has already expanded by $1.5 trillion in eight years under George Bush) by an additional $1 trillion -- in roughly his first 100 days in office.

The current economic strategy is right out of "Atlas Shrugged": The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That's the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies -- while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. With each successive bailout to "calm the markets," another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as "Atlas" grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate "windfalls."

When Rand was writing in the 1950s, one of the pillars of American industrial might was the railroads. In her novel the railroad owner, Dagny Taggart, an enterprising industrialist, has a FedEx-like vision for expansion and first-rate service by rail. But she is continuously badgered, cajoled, taxed, ruled and regulated -- always in the public interest -- into bankruptcy. Sound far-fetched? On the day I sat down to write this ode to "Atlas," a Wall Street Journal headline blared: "Rail Shippers Ask Congress to Regulate Freight Prices."

In one chapter of the book, an entrepreneur invents a new miracle metal -- stronger but lighter than steel. The government immediately appropriates the invention in "the public good." The politicians demand that the metal inventor come to Washington and sign over ownership of his invention or lose everything.

The scene is eerily similar to an event late last year when six bank presidents were summoned by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to Washington, and then shuttled into a conference room and told, in effect, that they could not leave until they collectively signed a document handing over percentages of their future profits to the government. The Treasury folks insisted that this shakedown, too, was all in "the public interest."

Ultimately, "Atlas Shrugged" is a celebration of the entrepreneur, the risk taker and the cultivator of wealth through human intellect. Critics dismissed the novel as simple-minded, and even some of Rand's political admirers complained that she lacked compassion. Yet one pertinent warning resounds throughout the book: When profits and wealth and creativity are denigrated in society, they start to disappear -- leaving everyone the poorer.

One memorable moment in "Atlas" occurs near the very end, when the economy has been rendered comatose by all the great economic minds in Washington. Finally, and out of desperation, the politicians come to the heroic businessman John Galt (who has resisted their assault on capitalism) and beg him to help them get the economy back on track. The discussion sounds much like what would happen today:

Galt: "You want me to be Economic Dictator?"

Mr. Thompson: "Yes!"

"And you'll obey any order I give?"

"Implicitly!"

"Then start by abolishing all income taxes."

"Oh no!" screamed Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet. "We couldn't do that . . . How would we pay government employees?"

"Fire your government employees."

"Oh, no!"

Abolishing the income tax. Now that really would be a genuine economic stimulus. But Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Washington want to do the opposite: to raise the income tax "for purposes of fairness" as Barack Obama puts it.

David Kelley, the president of the Atlas Society, which is dedicated to promoting Rand's ideas, explains that "the older the book gets, the more timely its message." He tells me that there are plans to make "Atlas Shrugged" into a major motion picture -- it is the only classic novel of recent decades that was never made into a movie. "We don't need to make a movie out of the book," Mr. Kelley jokes. "We are living it right now."

Mr. Moore is senior economics writer for The Wall Street Journal editorial page.