April 9, 2020 35
devastated. She craved approval not
from ordinary readers but from leading
intellectuals and prominent thinkers,
including academics, and she didn’t get
it. She fell into a deep depression, tell-
ing the Brandens, “John Galt wouldn’t
feel like this.” (That’s funny, but she
didn’t mean it as a joke. Rand didn’t do
self-deprecation.) She never wrote fic-
tion again. Nathaniel Branden became
a vigorous entrepreneur on her behalf,
organizing various lecture series on
Objectivism, and ultimately creating,
in 1958, the Nathaniel Branden Insti-
tute (NBI) in homage to her. Several
years later, the Brandens separated, but
they continued to work closely together
as, in Barbara’s words, “comrades -in-
arms.” They succeeded in producing
something like an organized move-
ment, with 3,500 students in fifty cities
by 1967. The NBI, and Rand’s social
world, revolved around what she called
the Collective, a small group of devo-
tees (including Alan Greenspan, who
went on to become chairman of the
Federal Reserve Board).
But something was rotten in the state
of NBI. There was secrecy—the organi-
zation was led by Rand and Branden,
whose passionate, turbulent relation-
ship was known to their spouses, but
hidden from everyone else—and there
was enforced orthodoxy. Within the
Collective and the NBI, Rand and
Branden would not tolerate the slight-
est dissent. As Branden wrote in his
memoir, with a kind of mordant humor,
students were taught the following:
- Ayn Rand is the greatest human
being who has ever lived. - Atlas Shrugged is the greatest
human achievement in the history
of the world. - Ayn Rand, by virtue of her phil-
osophical genius, is the supreme
arbiter in any issue pertaining to
what is rational, moral, or appro-
priate to man’s life on earth.
In 1968 things fell to pieces. Rand
abruptly split with the Brandens, stat-
ing in a bizarre public letter, “I hereby
withdraw my endorsement of them and
of their future works and activities. I
repudiate both of them, totally and per-
manently, as spokesmen for me or for
Objectivism.” Though she referred to
various financial and personal impro-
prieties, she did not disclose the actual
reasons for the split. Both Brandens
responded with public letters of their
own. Neither revealed the truth, which
was intensely personal. While working
closely with Rand and continuing to
proclaim his love for her, Nathaniel had
ended their sexual relationship, citing
supposed psychological problems (for
which she “counseled” him). All the
while, he was having a secret love affair
with another woman. He disclosed that
relationship to Barbara as early as 1966;
after repeated entreaties from Rand,
asking what on earth was wrong with
Nathaniel, Barbara told her the truth.
Rand was shattered. Branden, she
told Barbara, had taken away “this
earth.” She also fell into an implacable
rage, which lasted for the rest of her life.
She never spoke to Nathaniel Branden
again. Barbara put it this way to Na-
thaniel: “Ayn wants you dead!” Among
other things, she ordered the deletion
of her glowing words about Nathaniel
in the dedication of Atlas Shrugged.
Though Rand did not fully recover
from the emotional devastation, she con-
tinued to work and to write. She spoke
on college campuses, and she did inter-
views on television, where she was often
engaging, charming, and even funny.
She wrote long essays for The Ob-
jectivist magazine and the Ayn Rand
Letter.
In the early 1970s, her health dete-
riorated. A lifelong smoker, she was
diagnosed with lung cancer in 1974.
Five years later, Frank O’Connor died,
a second blow. Rand died in 1982. By
that point, she had alienated or rejected
most of her friends.Duggan is interested not only in
Rand’s extraordinary life but also in
her influence on contemporary politics
and in particular the rise of neoliber-
alism, which, she says, seized “state
power by the 1980s.” Duggan does not
clearly define neoliberalism, but she
describes it as a “global anti-left so-
cial movement,” focused on reducing
taxes and regulation. She associates
it with Ronald Reagan and Margaret
Thatcher, but also, and in more moder-
ate form, with Bill Clinton, Tony Blair,
and Barack Obama. Its point “was to
free capitalism” and promote “privati-
zation of public services” and “erosion
of consumer and workplace protec-
tions.” Duggan thinks that neoliberal-
ism was, in significant part, a product
of resistance to the civil rights move-
ments in the United States, and that
it marched under the name of “prop-
erty supremacy.” In Duggan’s account,
“Rand’s influence floats” over neoliber-
alism “as a guiding spirit for the sense
of energized aspiration and the advo-
cacy of inequality and cruelty.” Neolib-
erals see the powerless not as “a class,
but a collection of individual failures.”
By contrast, the rich are, in their view,
“the very source of wealth and a boon
to society.” That happens to be the cen-
tral argument of Atlas Shrugged.
After the crash of 2008, Rand had
a revival; her books have been selling
astonishingly well. Atlas Shrugged re-
portedly sold 500,000 copies in 2009,
more than doubling the previous re-
cord, established the year prior. In
some respects, the age of Trump can
be seen as the age of Rand. Duggan is
careful to emphasize thatTrump is in most ways a Rand vil-
lain—a businessman who relies on
cronyism and manipulation of gov-
ernment, who advocates interfer-
ence in so-called “free markets,”
who bullies big companies to do
his bidding, who doesn’t read.Trump is anything but a self-made
man, and he is hardly a consistent pro-
ponent of capitalism as Rand defended
it. But “his cabinet and donor lists are
full of Rand fans.” Far more important,
some of his policies are unmistakably
Randian: tax cuts, especially for the
wealthy; elimination of safeguards for
consumers and workers; repeal of im-
portant environmental regulations. As
Duggan sees it, Rand “is the avatar of
capitalism, in its militant form as mar-
ket liberalism.” She urges people to
“reject Ayn Rand.”
Duggan is less than sure-footed in
her lamentations about neoliberalism;
Obama doesn’t fit easily in the same
category as Reagan (look at the Afford-
able Care Act, the Consumer FinancialProtection Bureau, and the Paris ac-
cord on climate change). But she is
sharp, engaging, and funny when writ-
ing about Rand, whose magnetism, de-
termination, grandiosity, desperation,
and galloping narcissism Duggan cap-
tures beautifully. As she notes, Rand in-
fluenced contemporary political thought
less because of her ideas than because
she offered, in The Fountainhead and
Atlas Shrugged, heroic accounts of cap-
italism and capitalists, and contrasted
them with the losers, the moochers,
and the “second-handers” who seek
to steal from them through taxes and
regulation. As a result, she gave voice
to, and helped spur, a specifically moral
objection to redistribution of wealth
and interference with property rights
and market arrangements. That objec-
tion resonates strongly in the business
community and the Republican Party,
and something like it certainly has ad-
vocates in the Trump administration.
Was Rand a serious thinker? That is
doubtful. She did not defend her con-
clusions so much as pound the table
and insist on them. (From a passage in
The Fountainhead defining freedom:
“To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To
depend on nothing.”) Yet she did write
a great deal of nonfiction attempt-
ing to justify Objectivism in strictly
philosophical terms. Robert Nozick,
the influential libertarian philosopher,
seemed to take her seriously, and the
Ayn Rand Society, affiliated with the
American Philosophical Society, pro-
duces papers and books focusing on
her work. But if one is interested in
free markets, liberty of contract, and
the importance of private property, one
would do a lot better to read Friedrich
Hayek, Milton Friedman, or Nozick
himself.
Duggan convincingly shows that
Rand’s enduring influence comes
from the emotional wallop of her fic-
tion—from her ability to capture the
sheer exhilaration of personal defi-
ance, human independence, and free-
dom from chains of all kinds. With her
novels, Rand identified, touched, and
legitimated the psychological roots
of a prominent strand in right-wing
thought. A skeptic about Roark’s ambi-
tious plans poses this question to him:
“My dear fellow, who will let you?”
Roark’s answer: “That’s not the point.
The point is, who will stop me?”
That exchange captures the attitude
of many people who want to do away
with social programs like the Afford-
able Care Act, the Consumer Finan-
cial Protection Bureau, the Clean Air
Act, even the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Call it Who-Will-Stop-Me Capital-
ism. It has special resonance among
adolescent boys, but its appeal is much
broader than that. The problem is that
those who need to lionize men with “a
contemptuous mouth, shut tight, the
mouth of an executioner or a saint”
tend to be terrified of something. Al-
truism really is okay. Redistribution to
those who need help is hardly a viola-
tion of human rights.
Rand had a unique talent for trans-
forming people’s political convictions
through tales of indomitable heroes
and heroines, romance, and sex. Dug-
gan describes her novels as “conver-
sion machines that run on lust.” Nearly
a decade after Rand’s death, Branden
seemed to agree, writing that “not just
Ayn and me, but all of us—we were ec-
stasy addicts. No one ever named it that
way, but that was the key.” QSheila Burnford offers the spellbind-
ing tale of a small dog caught up in
the Second World War, and of the
extraordinary life-transforming at-
tachments he forms with the peo-
ple he encounters in the course of
a perilous passage from occupied
France to besieged England.Nameless, Burnford’s hero first turns
up as a performing dog, a poodle
mix earning his keep as part of a
gypsy caravan that is desperately
fleeing the Nazi advance. Taken
on ship by the Royal Navy, he is
given the name of Ria and serves
as the scruffy mascot to a boatload
of sailors. Marooned in England in
the midst of the Blitz, Ria rescues
an old woman from the rubble
of her bombed house, and finds
himself unexpectedly transformed
into Bel, the pampered companion
of her old age.“If you love animals in general,
dogs in particular, and good stories
about them, you will rejoice in Sheila
Burnford’s novel Bel Ria... The
scenes of war, both on land and
sea, are as beautifully done as the
rest, with a considerable cast of
appealing human characters also....
With unerring touch, Mrs. Burnford
draws the threads of people and
animals together in resolution, by
instinct as sound as that which once
guided Homer in such a matter. Bel
Ria is a magical story; Mrs. Burnford
has benevolent witchery.”
—The Wall Street Journal“Bel Ria can’t help but become
another classic... Sheila Burnford
has written a beautiful, moving story,
woven from many fine threads.
I can’t recommend it highly enough
for readers from 12 to 90.”
—The Philadelphia InquirerBel Ria: Dog of War
Sheila Burnford
Paperback • $12.99 • For ages 9-14
Also available as an e-book
On sale April 28thFrom the author of
The Incredible JourneyAvailable in bookstores, call
(646) 215-2500, or from http://www.nyrb.com