1 Boring Old Man

Ayn Rand’s Literature of Capitalism

The book is “Atlas Shrugged,” Ayn Rand’s glorification of the right of individuals to live entirely for their own interest.

For years, Rand’s message was attacked by intellectuals whom her circle labeled “do-gooders,” who argued that individuals should also work in the service of others. Her book was dismissed as an homage to greed. Gore Vidal described its philosophy as “nearly perfect in its immorality.”

But the book attracted a coterie of fans, some of them top corporate executives, who dared not speak of its impact except in private. When they read the book, often as college students, they now say, it gave form and substance to their inchoate thoughts, showing there is no conflict between private ambition and public benefit.

“I know from talking to a lot of Fortune 500 C.E.O.’s that ‘Atlas Shrugged’ has had a significant effect on their business decisions, even if they don’t agree with all of Ayn Rand’s ideas,” said John A. Allison, the chief executive of BB&T, one of the largest banks in the United States. “It offers something other books don’t: the principles that apply to business and to life in general. I would call it complete.”

One of Rand’s most famous devotees is Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, whose memoir, “The Age of Turbulence,” embargoed until its release Monday, is expected to discuss his interest in Ayn Rand.

Mr. Greenspan met Rand when he was 25 and working as an economic forecaster. She was already renowned as the author of “The Fountainhead,” a novel about an architect true to his principles. Mr. Greenspan had married a member of Rand’s inner circle, known as the Collective, that met every Saturday night in her New York apartment. Rand did not pay much attention to Mr. Greenspan until he began praising drafts of “Atlas,” which she read aloud to her disciples, according to Jeff Britting, the archivist of Ayn Rand’s papers. He was attracted, Mr. Britting said, to “her moral defense of capitalism.”

…

Shortly after “Atlas Shrugged” was published in 1957, Mr. Greenspan wrote a letter to The New York Times to counter a critic’s comment that “the book was written out of hate.” Mr. Greenspan wrote: “ ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.”

My Law Student roommate carried his copy of Atlas Shrugged everywhere. I got tired of hearing him talk about it, so I read it. It was fantastic! Misunderstood creative heros [with "angular features"] banded together and finally dropped out to let the hangers-on fall apart. The heros, lead by John Galt [with the most "angular features" of all], hid in the West smoking cigarettes with gold dollar signs on them. And the author, a Russian refugee lived an avant garde life preaching the gospel of self. What could be cooler than that? I, of course, read The Fountainhead and her other more obscure books. Such wonderful stuff!

One day, as I was walking back to my apartment thinking about her doctrine of self, and I had a thought. "What if I’m not one of the heros?" "What if I’m just a regular person?" "What she says only works if you define yourself to be a hero." And, with a crash as profound as the crescendo when first I read her books, I had a moment of clarity. I didn’t know the word Narcissism back then, but I got the concept. To be an Ayn Rand devotee, one had to be a member of the creative, brilliant, ["angular"] elite and there had to be large numbers of "lesser thans" out there to be "better than." I didn’t know it at that moment, but that thought changed me forever. While it was hardly her intent, in an instant, Ayn Rand turned me from a kid who wandered from idea to idea [as one should be in college] into a life-long, card carrying Liberal.