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GODLESS CAPITALISM: AYN RAND AND THE

CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT

JENNIFER BURNS

Modern Intellectual History / Volume 1 / Issue 03 / November 2004, pp 359 - 385

DOI: 10.1017/S1479244304000216, Published online: 21 October 2004

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1479244304000216

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JENNIFER BURNS (2004). GODLESS CAPITALISM: AYN RAND AND THE
CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT. Modern Intellectual History, 1, pp 359-385
doi:10.1017/S1479244304000216

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Modern Intellectual History, 1, 3 (2004), pp. 359385

C 2004 Cambridge University Press
DOI: 10.1017/S1479244304000216 Printed in the United Kingdom

godless capitalism: ayn rand and

the conservative movement
jennifer burns
Department of History, University of California at Berkeley

This essay examines the relationship between the novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand
(The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged) and the broader conservative movement in the
twentieth-century United States. Although Rand was often dismissed as a lightweight
popularizer, her works of radical individualism advanced bold arguments about the
moral status of capitalism, and thus touched upon a core issue of conservative identity.
Because Rand represented such a forthright pro-capitalist position, her career highlights
the shifting fortunes of capitalism on the right. In the 1940s, she was an inspiration to
those who struggled against the New Deal and hoped to bring about a new, market-
friendly political order. As a second generation of conservatives built upon these
sentiments and attempted to tie them to a defense of Christian tradition, Rands status
began to erode. Yet by the late 1960s, Rands once-revolutionary defense of capitalism
had become routine, although she herself remained a controversial figure. The essay
traces the ways in which Rands ideas were assimilated and modified by key intellectuals
on the right, including William F. Buckley, Jr, Whittaker Chambers, and Gary Wills.
It identifies the relationship between capitalism and Christianity as a fundamental
dilemma for conservative and right-wing thinkers. By treating Rand as an intellectual
and cultural leader of significant import, the essay broadens our understanding of the
American right beyond the confines of mainstream conservatism, and re-establishes
the primacy of the 1930s, and 1940s, to its ideological formation. Responding to a
paucity of scholarship on Rand, the essay offers an analysis and summary of Rands
ideas, and argues that despite her outsider status, Rands work both embodied and
shaped fundamental themes of right-wing thought throughout the century.

In 1954 New York, two titans of the twentieth-century American right came
face to face. Fiery pro-capitalist ideologue Ayn Rand, author of the best-selling
novel The Fountainhead (1943), met a young William F. Buckley, Jr, fresh from the
notoriety and success of his God and Man at Yale (1950). As Buckley recalled in later
years, upon meeting him Rand declared in her imperious Russian accent, You
arrh too eentelligent to bihleef in Gott!1 It was, to say the least, an inauspicious
beginning to an acquaintanceship that would span many decades. The pious

1 William F. Buckley, Jr, On the Right: Ayn Rand, RIP, National Review (April 2, 1982),
380.

359
360 jennifer burns

Buckley never quite recovered from his immediate dislike of Rand, while she
never lost her sense that Buckleys religiosity ruined an otherwise valuable fellow
traveler. Beyond the clash of two proud and ambitious personalities, the first
RandBuckley encounter encapsulates many of the dynamics of right-wing
thought in the twentieth century. In Buckley, Rand saw the first glimmers of
a religious conservatism that would soon co-opt the anti-statist ideals she had
been promoting for her entire career. What Buckley encountered in the person
of Rand was a nearly pure incarnation of the putative Old Right, for Rand
had formed her positions in the ideological matrix of the 1930s and 1940s. Yet
Rand was far from a dusty relic of the past, as her continued appeal over the
century would demonstrate. Buckley himself quickly grasped that in Rand he
faced a formidable competitor for the loyalty of the anti-statist forces in America.
And there was no question of collaboration, for Buckley was convinced that as
an atheist, Rand missed the central truth his conservatism had to offer: that
religion was the only viable foundation for victory over the collectivist madness
of Stalins terror. But neither could Rand simply be dismissed, for her works of
radical individualism advanced controversial arguments about the moral status
of capitalism, thus touching upon a core issue of conservative identity. In 1957,
Buckley declared open warfare on Rand in the pages of his journal National
Review, publishing a scathing review of her second novel, Atlas Shrugged. Yet this
rebuttal proved insufficient, and National Review returned to the subject of Rand
and her relevancy to conservatism with two articles in 1961 and a cover story
in 1967. When it came to dealing with Rand, Buckley wheeled out the big guns,
enlisting conservative luminaries such as Whittaker Chambers, Garry Wills, and
M. Stanton Evans to deliver their judgments. As distasteful as the outspoken Rand
might be to Buckley, it was clear that she could not be safely ignored.
Debates over Ayn Rand remained contentious for conservatives throughout
the 1960s because her pro-market ideology, and its popularity, exposed the fault
lines upon which modern American conservatism rested. The publication of
Atlas Shrugged, her magnum opus, brought to the surface uncertainties about
how capitalismand justifications for itfit into the conservative program.
Responding to Rand compelled conservatives to wrestle with a profound set
of dilemmas about the nature and meaning of the market economy. Was
capitalism a fundamental part of the conservative program or simply a necessary
evil? The answer might be a delicate blend of both, but Rands intoxicating
novels threatened to overwhelm such subtleties with polemical sophistries.
Furthermore, Rands vast popularity meant she could conceivably eclipse
conservatives in the public eye. Therefore, managing Rand and containing her
influence were critical projects if the editors at National Review were to retain
any control over the movement they were so carefully nurturing into maturity.
The process by which conservatives attempted to repudiate the atheistic Rand
 godless capitalism: ayn rand and the conservative movement 361

was an inverse of the larger process whereby anti-government, individualistic,

pro-capitalist (libertarian, if you will) thought allied itself with an aggressive
Christian outlook and tried to disown its secular roots. While conservatives
might try to reject Rand root and branch, in many cases they ended up
echoing her arguments and conclusions, albeit in a more modulated voice. An
examination of Rands career, and conservative relations with her, shows how
the conservative movement as a whole managed to absorb Rands embrace of
the market while preserving the primacy of Christian ethics. Consideration of
Rand also re-establishes the significance of the 1930s and 1940s to conservatism
broadly considered. To date, historians have generally portrayed the ideas that
Rand represented as of little concern to Buckley and the New Conservatism he
embodied.2 Recent scholarship on the right reinforces this impression by focusing
extensively on the 1960s. Yet conservatism had deeper roots than this, and the
legacy of these early origins was manifest throughout the century.3
Conservatism as it was assembled under the flag of Buckleys National Review
was a rather hybrid creed.4 When he founded the magazine in 1955, Buckley

2 Terminological clarity is elusive when discussing the historic right in America. I use New
Conservatism here as it was used generally in the 1950s, as reference to a reassertion of
conservative beliefs in the wake of World War II. This is not to be confused with the New
Right, a term which scholars generally employ when discussing either the Goldwater
movement of the 1960s or politically active Christians in the 1970s. I reserve the term Old
Right for phenomena of the pre-war period.
3 Recent scholarship has begun to emphasize the importance of libertarianism, a belief
system which Rand both embodied and influenced. This new literature has also delineated
the role of corporations and businesspeople in the development of conservative ideology.
See Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and
Liberalism, 19451960 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), and Rick Perlstein,
Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (New
York: Hill and Wang, 2001). Although most treatments of the 1960s acknowledge her
influence, academic work on Rand herself remains scarce. For this reason, I will briefly
sketch key features of her thought in this piece.
4 The most useful definition of conservatism, and the one I will employ here, is that given
by George H. Nash. He defines conservatism as the postwar political and social movement
which opposed liberal reform efforts and encompassed three main impulses: libertarian
anti-statism, anti-communism, and reverence for tradition (usually rendered as explicitly
Christian). I also employ the term right-wing to refer to persons and thought which
might share some but not all features of this trinitarian conservatism. So, in other words,
all conservatives are right-wing, but not all those on the right are conservative (e.g.
Rand). George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement Since 1945 (New York:
Basic Books, 1976). Nash discusses Rand as an episode in the conservative process of
fusion. Nash concurs with Buckleys opinion that Rand was successfully read out of
the movement, but does not explore the ambiguity surrounding her work or the deeper
issues she raised (ibid., 1425).
362 jennifer burns

deliberately sought to weld the established libertarian, anti-New Deal critique

with a renewed appreciation for Christian tradition. Yet this accord did not come
easily, and debates raged wildly about the issue of fusionism, or the desirability
and practicality of joining Christian advocacy with a defense of capitalism. While
all could agree with anti-communism, traditionalists like Russell Kirk disliked
the libertarian emphasis on the free market and individual liberty. Libertarians
fought back fiercely, refusing to cede any ground to traditionalists and their talk of
virtue. Buckley and one of his editors, Frank Meyer, struggled to keep the peace
and to convince everyone that they belonged in one alliance. Into this debate,
Rand came like an ideological time capsule from the libertarian fringe of the 1930s.
Her unreconstructed defense of capitalism and business made no concessions to
religion or to the post-New Deal, welfare state consensus that had emerged. Atlas
Shrugged (1957) explicitly endorsed capitalism and promoted a comprehensive
system of pro-market ethics in a way that Rands previous blockbuster, The
Fountainhead (1943), had not. It articulated a set of values that conservatives
wanted desperately to disavow, combining anti-government rhetoric, staunch
pro-capitalism, and atheism into a particularly noxious mixture. Yet if Rand had
so clearly misconstrued conservatism, then why spill so much ink? Beyond the
articles he published throughout the 1960s, Buckley took potshots at Rand during
his public appearances. In 1967, he sneered to an audience at the New School for
Social Research, is there anyone more boring?5
Buckleys jab at Rand contains a clue to this puzzle, for he clearly expected
his audience to know who she was and what she stood for, thereby implicitly
acknowledging her public stature. It is difficult to exaggerate Rands popularity
or her ubiquity in 1960s popular culture. Sales figures for her novels tell part of
the story. Within five years of publication, The Fountainhead had sold 400,000
copies, and it broke the million mark soon thereafter. Atlas Shrugged was even
more popular, quickly surging into the million-copy range. And neither books
success was ephemeral, for decades after publication both continued to sell over
100,000 copies annually, making Rands novels the stuff of publishing legend.6
Moreover, Rand was not simply a novelist, but she was also a popular guest
on national TV shows and radio programs, a favorite of political cartoonists, a
syndicated columnist, a frequent lecturer at college campuses, and, as of 1962,
the publisher of her own periodical, The Objectivist Newsletter. Her fictional
characters quickly passed into conversational parlance and her political slogans

5 John Leo, Buckley Explains Views to a Class, New York Times (November 22, 1967).
6 These figures are from Nora Ephron, A Strange Kind of Simplicity, New York Times Book
Review (May 5, 1968), 8, 423, and Barbara Branden, The Passion of Ayn Rand (New York:
Doubleday Books, 1987), 180, 299.
 godless capitalism: ayn rand and the conservative movement 363

surfaced in magazines and newspapers across the land. For the staff of a magazine
that struggled to break into the 50,000 circulation range, Rands capacity to draw
an audience had to be a bit aggravating.7
Yet it was not just popularity that the Buckleyites craved; they aspired to
respectability as well. Here, Rands successes hit another sore spot. Given the
medias interest in the New Conservatism, and Rands considerable cultural
presence, it was quite possible that she might be anointed by liberals as a
spokesperson for conservatism, and then be used to discredit their entire
program. Such dangers had arisen before, in the early 1950s, when liberals such
as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, eagerly took upon themselves the task of defining who
was and who was not a true conservative.8 Buckley and his writers had bridled
at this interposition on their own ideological formations, and had fought long
and hard to present a united, coherent front to their liberal adversaries. But even
as they pilloried liberals, they clearly wished to be taken as worthy opponents,
and even as they mocked professors, their desire for intellectual respectability
was clear.9 It was obvious that Rand would be of no help in this effort, for
popular as she was, her overwrought literary style ensured that she would never
be respectable among the countrys intelligentsia. Even worse, she might confirm
the liberal stereotype that conservatism was nothing more than an ideological
cover for the naked class interests of the haves. But the most important reason to
reject Rand was her hostility to religion, because it meant she had fundamentally
misunderstood what conservatism was all about.
Nonetheless, the task of disowning Rand was formidable, because she had been
a significant presence on the right-wing scene since long before Buckley entered
Yale. Many leading conservatives, particularly those of a libertarian bent, had
been profoundly inspired by her early work and continued to find her a valuable
ally in the struggle against statism. Furthermore, while her strident atheism set
her apart from many on the right, key features of Rands thought mimicked
the dynamics of conservative ideology and ensured that her work would have
continued relevance in the years ahead. Like the Catholic conservatives of National
Review, Rand advanced a vituperative critique of liberalism, depicted a world
consisting of moral absolutes, and touted the wisdom of the people against an
overweening elite. While her advocacy of pure laissez-faire might owe much to
the nineteenth century, she presented her arguments in a twentieth-century form

7 At the time of Chamberss review, the National Review had 18,000 subscribers; in 1961 it
had 54,000; and in 1964 it reached a high point of 90,000. John B. Judis, William F. Buckley,
Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 140, 221.
8 The controversy is covered in Nash, The Conservative Movement Since 1945, 12024. See
also Jennifer Burns, In Retrospect: George Nashs The Conservative Intellectual Movement
in America Since 1945, Reviews in American History 32/3 (Sept., 2004), 44762.
9 Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr., 140.
364 jennifer burns

that dovetailed easily with the rhetoric of the burgeoning conservative movement.
This symmetry, and Rands contribution to the broader development of right-
wing thought, can be seen most easily in the way her anti-communist attitudes
shaded imperceptibly into pro-capitalism. In her early work, Rand focused on
establishing the moral depravity of communism, drawing heavily on her own
experience in Russia. Later she shifted into portraying the positive aspects of the
American system, focusing on what she identified as the intrinsic moral nature of
capitalism. Rand advanced both these ideas under the rubric of individualism
vs. collectivism, which allowed her to construct a series of theoretical arguments
about the good society that were not religious in nature. Rand was not the first
to develop this binary of individualism vs. collectivism, which was widespread
at the popular level in the 1940s, but she did much to popularize and shape its
form.10 She was also one of the first to argue against communism and in favor of
capitalism on purely ethical grounds. Long before the evils of communism were
widely known, Rand maintained its ideals were fundamentally corrupt, and she
likewise insisted upon the beneficence of capitalism when such attitudes were
far out of the mainstream. In large part, her career was shaped by the penalties
she paid for being an early advocate of unpopular ideas that would later pass
into conventional wisdom. In order to understand why National Review reacted
to Rand with such vehemence, it is necessary to see how deeply embedded she
was in the pre-war conservative world, and how her work embodied core themes
of conservative ideology. Rand was particularly vexing because she was only
partially wrong. In many ways she looked like a friend to conservatism, which
made establishing a clear policy on her ideas all the more imperative.
In 1936, long before there was a cold war, Rand established herself as a cold
warrior with the publication of her first novel, We The Living, a bitter indictment
of life in Soviet Russia. In contrast to later anti-communist writers, Rand, a
lifelong atheist, did not base her arguments on religion.11 Instead, she fictionalized
her own history to depict the hopelessness and despair of life under collectivism.
Rand, who had emigrated from Russia in 1926, knew from firsthand experience

10 See, for example, Rands printed debate against Oswald Garrison Villard, former editor of
the New York Evening Post and The Nation, on the theme Collectivism or Individualism
Which Promises Postwar Progress?, syndicated in the series Wake Up America
(October 11, 1943), distributed by Fred G. Clark, American Economic Foundation.
11 Rand was born into a middle-class Jewish family. Upon arriving in the United States, she
changed her name from the unmistakably Jewish Alissa Rosenbaum to the androgynous,
Nordic sounding Ayn Rand. While there is no evidence to suggest that Rand deliberately
wished to cover up her Jewish roots, the name change did embody her belief that history
and tradition should have little impact on the course of an individuals life. Despite this,
it is a notable feature of Rands career that with the exception of her husband, nearly all
her close associates were secular Jews.
 godless capitalism: ayn rand and the conservative movement 365

what cost revolution could exact. Her fathers business had been nationalized in
the first wave of communist reforms, plunging the family into dire poverty. This
experience instilled in Rand a deep suspicion of government and a passionate
desire to tell the truth about what communism wasto her, a corrupt system
built entirely upon theft. She wrote to her agent: No one has ever come out of
Soviet Russia to tell it to the world. That was my job.12 We The Living follows the
fate of three young Russians who struggle against the injustices and violence of
totalitarianism. Ultimately, Rand argues it is impossible to lead a life of integrity
or meaning in a society that demands man must live for the state. While the
novel is concerned with communism on the surface, its deeper theme invokes
the problem of the individual against the collective. With these baseline ethics,
Rand attacked communism because of its very principles. As one character tells
a Party member, I loath your ideals.13 Because the basic unit of value for
Rand was the individual, she argued forcefully that any system which prioritized
the common good over the lives of individuals was ethically bankrupt. Rands
systemic critique of communism laid the groundwork for her later dismissal of
liberalism, which, she argued, fundamentally shared the ideals of communism.
This early recognition of communisms evils gave Rand considerable credibility
and moral stature on the right.
By 1940, Rands fealty to the ideals of individualism led her to Wendell
Willkies presidential campaign, where she imbibed a strong dose of traditional
American laissez-faire, the hoary creed of William Graham Sumner and Andrew
Carnegie that was fast becoming radicalized by the ascendancy of the Roosevelt
administration.14 The Willkie campaign provided a gathering place for the slowly
germinating conservative movement that stood opposed to the New Deal. Rand
was drawn into a network of unregenerate individualists, including the economist
F. A. Hayek and the writers Albert J. Nock, Isabel Paterson, and Rose Wilder Lane.
The political atmosphere of the New Deal transformed these thinkers, causing

12 Rand to Jean Wick, October 27, 1934, in Letters of Ayn Rand, ed. Michael S. Berliner (New
York: Dutton, 1995), 18.
13 Ayn Rand, We The Living (New York: Random House, 1936, 1959), 80.
14 Robert Green McCloskey, American Conservatism in the Age of Enterprise: A Study of
William Graham Sumner, Stephen J. Field and Andrew Carnegie (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1951). Although some of Rands ideas seem akin to Sumners, in 1944
she had never heard of him. Rand to Leonard Read, November 12, 1944, Freedom
Quotations Book, Correspondence 1944, Box 33, Rose Wilder Lane Papers, Herbert
Hoover Presidential Archives. For a discussion of anti-Roosevelt sentiment in Congress,
see James T. Patterson, Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: The Growth of the
Conservative Coalition in Congress, 19331939 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press,
1967). Also helpful on this period is George R. Wolfskill, Revolt of the Conservatives: A
History of the Liberty League, 19341940 (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1962).
366 jennifer burns

them to fear that any accommodation with government could result in the
dangerous state expansion typified by Roosevelts programs. Under the pressures
of the New Deal, what would earlier have been no more than a traditional
affection for limited government was fast becoming a deeply felt anti-statism.
This dislike of big government was linked to a keen appreciation of capitalism
or, as the more politic among them had it, free enterprise. The banner year for
this circle was 1943, which brought the publication of Rands The Fountainhead,
Hayeks The Road to Serfdom, Patersons God of the Machine, Lanes The Discovery
of Freedom, and Nocks Memoirs of a Superfluous Man. Although Rands and
Hayeks books were the only ones to attain immediate success, the others went on
to become sleeper classics that heavily influenced mid-century conservatives.15
Rand would carry on the legacy of these earlier thinkers, albeit with her own
innovations. While she shared their basic political orientation, she disagreed with
Lanes and Patersons friendliness towards religion and went on to celebrate what
Nock attacked as economism.16 Hayek she regarded with suspicion because he
supported limited planning. Nonetheless, these relationships broadened Rands
perspective on the United States and helped form her political judgments. In this
period she also dipped into more mainstream economic theory, profiting greatly
from Carl Snyders Capitalism the Creator: The Economic Foundations of Modern
Industrial Society (1940).17 Snyder, a well-known economist and statistician at
the Federal Reserve Bank, argued in this book that capitalism was the chief
mechanism by which societies moved from barbarism and poverty to affluence

15 Hayeks The Road to Serfdom might well be taken as a theoretical exposition of the
themes Rands novel embodied. Both agreed that seemingly benevolent impulses to social
planning in fact masked a dictatorial power grab, drew on their experiences in totalitarian
Europe to reflect on American politics, and employed an absolutist, slippery slope logic
to predict that socialism would lead inevitably to communism and then totalitarianism.
Nock is well known to students of conservative thought, but Lane and Paterson are
not. Lanes life and work are described in William Holtz, The Ghost in the Little House
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993), and Patersons career is briefly sketched
by Stephen Cox in the foreword to a 1993 reissue of God of the Machine (New Brunswick,
NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1943, 1993). Libertarians fete all three women as foremothers
of their movement. See Jim Powell, Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Paterson, and Ayn Rand:
Three Women Who Inspired the Modern Libertarian Movement, The Freeman (May,
1996).
16 Nock coined this word to identify a world view that interpreted the whole of human
life in terms of the production, acquisition, and distribution of wealth. Albert J. Nock,
Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (New York: Harper Brothers, 1943), 111.
17 Details on Rands political awakening are taken from Biographical Interview with Ayn Rand
conducted by Barbara Branden, Interview # 14, tape # 8, Side 1, Activities in Politics: 1926
to 1952, The Conservatives, pp. 3515. Ayn Rand Papers, Ayn Rand Archives, Irvine, CA.
 godless capitalism: ayn rand and the conservative movement 367

and culture.18 His vision of creative and beneficent capitalism would soon find
its way into Rands fiction. The laissez-faire doctrine she absorbed from Snyder,
her libertarian friends, and general newspaper reading was also reinforced by
her own biography, for Rands career embodied the Horatio Alger story. Like
countless self-made men, Rand came to believe fervently in the gospel of success.
These ideas and influences were manifest in Rands wildly popular second
novel, The Fountainhead (1943), which established her as a towering figure
among her political associates. In a time of right-wing ascendancy, it is difficult
to envision just how enervated the movement was in the 1940s: there was no
Buckley, no Ronald Reagan, no Barry Goldwater, no National Review. People
who identified themselves as conservatives lacked any discernible program
or institutional base. But there was Ayn Rand, and her best-selling novel of
unmistakable political import, The Fountainhead. In this book, Rand celebrated
the freedoms of American capitalism while also warning that there were diabolical
forces afoot that threatened liberty. The novel follows the career of the brilliant
architect Howard Roark, who embodies Rands idea of the heroic individual.
Unlike the characters in We The Living, Roark finds ample room for his genius
in America. Perceiving his work to be fundamentally representative of his soul
and character, Roark refuses to modify his radical, avant-garde designs to gain
popularity. He suffers early professional setbacks but emerges triumphant by the
end of the novel because he has never compromised his own individuality. The
Fountainhead departs from Rands first novel because it is clearly a didactic
parable, rather than an attempt to portray life under totalitarianism. Each
character symbolizes a certain range of human characteristics that is then linked to
a specific political position. Rand took special care to skewer liberals throughout
the novel. As she wrote to a friend just after its release, When you read it, youll
see what an indictment of the New Deal it is, what it does to the humanitarians
and what effect it could have on the next electionalthough I never mentioned
the New Deal by name.19 Rand even modeled her arch-villain Ellsworth Toohey
on the British socialist Harold Laski, thereby situating her tale of the individual
vs. the collective within current politics.20
In the dramatic climax of the novel, Roark gives voice to Rands anti-statism
when he dynamites a government-funded housing project that has been built
based on his adulterated architectural plans. He remains unrepentant about the

18 Carl Snyder, Capitalism the Creator: The Economic Foundations of Modern Industrial Society
(New York: Macmillan, 1940), 4. Interestingly, Synders work was also read by Hayek. See
F. A. Hayek, Review of Capitalism The Creator by Carl Snyder, Economica 7/28 (Nov,
1940), 4379.
19 Rand to DeWitt Emery, May 17, 1943, Letters, 73.
20 Ayn Rand, Journals of Ayn Rand, ed. David Harriman (New York: Dutton, 1997), 113.
368 jennifer burns

destruction and insists that the entire project was morally flawed because it set
a collectivity against an individual. Defending himself in court, Roark rejects
the idea of any social obligation to the poor. While he is speaking specifically
of the housing project he designed, his sentiments encode a general rejection of
progressive taxation or government welfare projects. Roark argues:
It is believed that the poverty of the future tenants gave them a right to my work. That
their need constituted a claim upon my life. That it was my duty to contribute anything
demanded of me. This is the second-handers credo now swallowing the world. I came
here to say that I do not recognize anyones right to one minute of my life. Nor to any
part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how
large their number or how great their need.21

Luckily for Roark, a jury composed of virtuous American everymen agrees

with his defense, and he is acquitted of any crime. The carefully selected jury
demonstrates Rands faith in the level-headed common sense of the average
American: it is composed of two executives of industrial concerns, two engineers,
a mathematician, a truck driver, a bricklayer, an electrician, a gardener, and
three factory workers. Although her novel centered on the esoteric profession of
architecture, with the jury Rand extended her conception of work as spiritual craft
to any individual who took pride in his or her profession, no matter how humble.
With its suspicion of government projects, resolute belief in populist wisdom
as superior to the counsel of Machiavellian experts, and reflexive patriotism,
Rands novel adumbrated many basic themes of right-wing thought. It proved
a heady brew indeed for those who chafed at the policies of the Roosevelt
years.
While The Fountainhead s success established Rand as a considerable
intellectual force on the right, its popularity also pulled her out of the rapidly
expanding conservative political orbit. After moving back to Hollywood in 1945
to help with the screen adaptation of The Fountainhead, Rand fell out of contact
with many of her Willkie-era friends (although she became active in California
right-wing politics).22 Soon after, The Fountainhead s emotive power attracted

21 Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition (New York: Penguin Books
USA, 1993), 684.
22 Rands Hollywood career is fascinating, but beyond the scope of this essay. In the 1920s
and 1930s, Rand was a screenwriter for several major studios. In 1949 she testified as
a friendly witness before HUAC. The Fountainhead movie, which starred Gary Cooper,
opened in 1949 and was also drawn into the fight against communism. The Committee
for Constitutional Government distributed postcards touting the film and encouraging
families to see it together as an educational experience. Box 143-33-C4, Ayn Rand Papers.
For a discussion of the film and its contribution to Cold War discourse, see Robert
Spadoni, Guilty by Omission: Girding The Fountainhead for the Cold War (Ayn Rand),
Literature-Film Quarterly 27/3 (1999), 22332.
 godless capitalism: ayn rand and the conservative movement 369

her a unique constituency in the form of Nathaniel and Barbara Branden, two
college students who were avid admirers of her fiction. The Brandens, who would
go on to be her primary intellectual collaborators in the years ahead, fell quickly
under Rands sway and did little to challenge her opinions.23 From 1950 until the
publication of Atlas Shrugged, Rand isolated herself from wider society, socializing
predominantly with the Brandens and their relatives. She was thus largely absent
from the critical discussions about the nature and meaning of conservatism
that dominated the early and mid-1950s. As conservatives struggled to extract
moral meanings from totalitarianism, and to bolster religion in a society they
believed had gone fundamentally astray, Rand focused exclusively on her own
fictional world. After all, she had long ago made up her mind about the evils of
totalitarianism and what must be done to combat it. Her opinions sprang from
experience, not theology. And experience had taught her that America was the
promised land because it allowed unprecedented political and economic freedom,
not because it enjoyed divine favor. This freedom had made possible her meteoric
rise from impoverished immigrant to literary sensation. Rand, wealthy now from
sales of The Fountainhead, knew at first hand the blessings of the market. With
the same sense of mission that had inspired We The Living, she turned to the
political and economic ideologies of her new homeland.
Atlas Shrugged, much more so than The Fountainhead, was essentially a
vindication and defense of American capitalism. During its composition, she
wrote that the novels theme was those who are antibusiness are antilife.24 Like
its predecessor, Atlas Shrugged offers a dystopian vision of a world on the brink of
ruin due to years of liberal policy making and leadership. The aggrandizing state
has run amok and collectivism has triumphed across the globe. Facing exploitative
tax burdens and unbearable regulation, the creative minds of America have gone
on strike and throughout the course of the story, all competent individuals
in every profession disappear. The man masterminding this strike, John Galt,
appears halfway through the 1,084-page novel. He faces off againstand falls in
love withone of Rands dynamic female characters, Dagny Taggert, the gorgeous
and brilliant head of Taggert Transcontinental Railroad. Besides melodrama and
dime-store romance, the novel is studded with nuggets of politically instructive
detail. Some are sheer capitalist fantasy: upon arriving at Galts secret hideaway,
Dagny learns that all the money she has paid in taxes over her working lifetime
has been collected into a secret bank account and will now be returned to her.
Others are more cutting, such as her caustic descriptions of Washington insiders

23 The two were Canadians nee Nathaniel Blumenthal and Barbara Weidman. After becoming
deeply involved with Rand, they married and changed their surnames to Branden.
24 Rand to John Chamberlain, November 27, 1948, Letters, 413.
370 jennifer burns

and a young man with an odor of public payroll.25 Galts vision of the future
United States, to be restored after the corrupt liberal government has fallen under
its own weight, represents a flat-out rebuttal of every major policy initiative of
the twentieth century. Galts band will abolish income taxes, foreign aid, social
welfare programs, and will return currency to the gold standard.
Rands depiction of capitalism in Atlas Shrugged is simultaneously nostalgic
and visionary. When the competent go on strike, they retreat to Galts Gulch,
a refuge nestled deep in the mountains of Colorado, where they recreate a
nineteenth-century world. Residents of the valley are on a first-name basis with
each other, and attend Chautauqua-type lectures at night.26 The former head
of Sanders Aircraft is a hog farmer, while a federal court judge supplies the
eggs and butter. This affectionate picture of small-town America rests side by
side with Rands definition of capitalism as the ultimate cerebral achievement,
a social system that calls for constant innovation, learning, and a commitment
to rationality. In a manner remarkably apropos to the late twentieth-century
knowledge economy, Rand conceptualized money as mind made manifest:
Wealth is the product of mans capacity to think, claims one of her characters.27
Many of Rands protagonists have an entrepreneurial bent and accumulate wealth
through an ingenious invention or by making a scientific breakthrough. Even
Dagny, whose railroad is the emblematic old-economy business, is successful
because she has an outstanding conceptual grasp of the marketplace and is the
only executive who understands the potential of new technologies to improve
her operations. Reprising the Protestant work ethic, Rand also suggests that
money has a direct relation to values: Money is the product of virtue, but it
will not give you virtue, and it will not redeem your vices.28 For Rand, the
market not only rewarded virtue, it regulated vice. Without the interference of
government, the market would evenly distribute its rewards to those who were
deserving and punish those who did not make use of their talents. For this reason,
Rand dismissed the dangers of inherited wealth. If an heir was not worthy, he

25 Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, Thirty-Fifth Anniversary Edition (New York: Penguin Books
USA, 1992), 858.
26 For an analysis of nostalgia in Rands thought, see Andrew Hoberek, Ayn Rand and the
Politics of Property, in The Twilight of the Middle Class: Post-World War II American
Fiction and White-Collar Work (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, forthcoming).
27 Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 387. Christopher Hitchens suggests that Rands forward-looking
vision of capitalism accounts for her popularity in Silicon Valley. See Hitchens, Why So
Many High-Tech Executives Have Declared Allegiance to Randian Objectivism, Business
2.0 (August, 2001), 12832.
28 Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 389.
 godless capitalism: ayn rand and the conservative movement 371

or she would soon be stripped of all financial advantage. Because it operated on

pure reason and rewarded only objective achievement, Rand saw capitalism as
inherently self-regulating.
As in The Fountainhead, so the ethics of Atlas Shrugged posit self-interest as
the highest good, and explicitly reject sacrifice or obligation. Entrants to Galts
Gulch take the following oath, reminiscent of Roarks courtroom speech: I swear
by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man,
nor ask another man to live for mine.29 Rands heroes are a diverse band of
producers, including industrialists, artists, and scientists, whom she intends
to embody moral truths. These producers lead moral lives because they do
not extract resources from others, but rather depend on their own talents and
ingenuity to advance. Although all their actions are guided by selfishness, there
is room in Rands world for self-interest that accrues goods to the commons, as
exemplified by Reardon Metal. Henry Reardon, owner of several steel mills, is the
only man able to bring to market a new material that will make trains safer and
provide inestimable boons to industrial society as a whole. Through Reardon,
Rand advances her belief that innovation and progress will happen in the private
sector, and only be inhibited by government. If the greater good of Reardon
Metal does somewhat undercut her emphasis on selfishness, Rand is careful to
emphasize that any social benefits capitalism creates are secondary effects, and
rightly so. Social welfare should never be a goal of private enterprise, but rather
the profit motive should be acknowledged and celebrated as a spur to creativity.
If the profit motive is considered selfish, then so be it: Rand gladly celebrates
selfishness as humanitys highest moral calling.
As she elaborated these already controversial ideas in Atlas Shrugged, Rand
was often deliberately provocative, even inflammatory. Beyond simply presenting
capitalism as a moral system, she seemed to take an adolescent delight at sending
up traditional conventions and mores. One of her admirable characters proudly
assumes the nickname Midas Mulligan. Another declares Robin Hood to be
the most contemptible symbol known to man, and makes a practice of stealing
humanitarian aid intended for poor countries, giving it instead to the productive
rich. A third discourses upon money, the root of all good.30 Moreover, in

29 Ibid., 680.
30 Ibid., 38791. It should be noted that this speech was among the most popular parts
of the book; Rand granted countless requests for reprints. Rand was a favorite content
provider for business owners who sought to spread the gospel of free enterprise. For a
description of organized business campaigns against unions, see Fones-Wolf, Selling Free
Enterprise. Politically engaged small business owners like those who contacted Rand were
also committed backers of Barry Goldwater, whose candidacy she supported. See Perlstein,
Before the Storm, 46. Also see n. 48 below.
372 jennifer burns

her efforts to portray the ideals of selfishness, Rand often ended up glorifying
singularly unappealing characters. Radical individualism might look noble in the
case of Howard Roark, a single male professional. But it did not come off quite
the same in the married Henry Reardon. When Reardons mother worries what
will befall the family if he is sentenced to jail, Reardon tells her, I dont know and
I dont care, and then walks out on Thanksgiving dinner to visit his mistress.
That same evening, he tells his feckless brother, Whatever affection I might have
felt for you once, is gone. I havent the slightest interest in you, your fate or your
future.31 While Rand implies that Reardons family deserves the treatment they
receive, what remains is Reardons cold manner and Rands depiction of this
as a proper course of action. Rand called her literary style Romantic Realism
and maintained that the goal of her fiction was to portray life as it could be,
not as it was. To this end, she developed a series of sharp polarities between
her characters. Her heroes are always fair of form and strong in jaw line, while
her villains are correspondingly flabby and shifty-eyed. Since Rand meant to
demonstrate on both a personal and a social level the result of faulty ideals, she
was often merciless with her characters, depicting their sufferings and failings
with relish. In one noteworthy and repellent scene, she describes in savory detail
the personal flaws of passengers doomed to perish in a violent railroad crash,
openly suggesting their deaths are warranted by their ideological errors.32 The
spoofing of liberals in The Fountainhead was positively gentle compared to the
vicious caricatures of Atlas Shrugged.
Rand eagerly awaited the reviews in 1957, but she was to be sorely disappointed.
While virtually no one had seen her coming in 1943, now it seemed legions were
prepared. The New York Times Book Review, which had generously praised The
Fountainhead, featured a scathing review of Atlas Shrugged by ex-communist
Granville Hicks, who declared: loudly as Miss Rand proclaims her love of life, it
seems clear that the book is written out of hate.33 For the most part, reviewers
did not primarily object to Rands political or moral views, or even her adulation
of the superior man. What they focused on instead was the tone and style of the
book as a whole. Echoing Hickss comment, the Saturday Review wrote: the book
is shot through with hatred.34 Other frequent complaints concerned Rands
repetition and her habit of overdrawing the contrasts between good and evil
characters. In many cases, Rand inspired a particularly visceral reaction. Reviews

31 Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 439, 441.

32 Ibid., 5668.
33 Granville Hicks, A Parable of Buried Talents, New York Times Book Review (Oct. 26,
1957), 7, 18. The Timess positive review of The Fountainhead is Lorine Pruette, The Battle
Against Evil, New York Times Book Review (May 16, 1943), 7, 18.
34 Helen Beal Woodward, Atlas Shrugged, Saturday Review (Oct. 12, 1957), 25.
 godless capitalism: ayn rand and the conservative movement 373

were often savage and mocking commentaries, rather than literary assessments.
As Time asked, Is it a novel? Is it a nightmare?35 Such spleen may have been due
to Rands own renunciation of charity as a moral obligation. After all, she had
voluntarily opted out of the traditional expectations of politeness or courtesy. Or,
it may have been due to the books prodigious length, which taxed even the most
enthusiastic commentators. Occasional reviewers doled out grudging praise for
Rands dramatic flair, but found such strengths overshadowed by her hectoring
tone. Most glumly agreed that whatever its faults or merits, the novel was likely
to outsell even The Fountainhead.
Over at National Review, Whittaker Chambers went for the jugular. In an
article entitled Big Sister is Watching You, Chambers deemed Atlas Shrugged
a remarkably silly book and announced that the news about this book seems
to me to be that any ordinarily sensible head could possibly take it seriously.36
He noted Rands popularity and her promotion of conservative ideals such as
anti-communism and limited government, but argued that because she was
an atheist, her underlying message was faulty and dangerous. The book began
by rejecting God, religion, original sin, etc. etc. and in so doing created a
materialism of the Right which differed little from a materialism of the Left.
According to Chambers, Rand was foolish to think that collectivism, an essentially
godless philosophy, could be defeated by anything other than religion. Without
the guidance of religion, Chambers believed, societies would be led astray into
the hubris of socialism and dictatorship. Rands work, in fact, foreshadowed
this outcome, for it was marked by strong fascist elements and ultimately
pointed to rule by a technocratic elite. But it was not just this criticism that
marked the review: far more striking was the articles vituperative tone. The
insults came thick and fast. Rands writing was dictatorial and had a tone
of overriding arrogance; she was certainly not sufficiently feminine, hinted
Chambers, speculating that children probably irk the author and may make her
uneasy. And in a stunning line that must have been particularly galling to the
Jewish Rand, Chambers intoned: from almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice
can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: To a gas chambergo! At
base, it was a clash of two radically different versions of human nature. Rands
world view was fundamentally optimistic, and her novel showed mankind, guided
by rationality alone, achieving heroic deeds. Chambers, fresh from the traumas
of the Hiss trial, saw rational man as a doomed and helpless creature trapped in
dangerous utopian fantasies of his own creation.

35 The Solid Gold Dollar Sign, Time (Oct. 14, 1957), 128. A prime example of a reviewer
having fun at Rands expense is Donald Malcolm, The New Rand Atlas, The New Yorker
(Oct. 26, 1957), 1946.
36 Whittaker Chambers, Big Sister Is Watching You, National Review (Dec. 28, 1957), 5946.
374 jennifer burns

Yet there was another source of the viciousness. Chambers was fully conscious
that Rands ideas put conservatism, as Buckley was trying to promote it, under
grinding strain. This current of thought ran just below the surface of the review.
In his article, Chambers argued that Rands book was materialist not simply
because she was an atheist, but because she was a capitalist. He wrote that if
Rands fictional world ever became real, the only value would be hedonism,
leading to cultural degradation and a general softening of the fibers of will,
intelligence, spirit. This would happen because a free enterprise system . . . [is]
in practice materialist (whatever else it claims or supposes itself to be). The
observation came in passing, but it cut to the heart of the conservative problem
with Rand. By spinning out the logic of capitalism to its ultimate conclusion,
she highlighted all the contradictions that had lately caused such ferocious
infighting among conservatives. Her novel showcased the paradox of defending
free-market capitalism while at the same time advocating Christianity. But it
was just this combination that made conservatism distinctive and, Buckley
and his allies believed, was both morally defensible and politically expedient.
Books like Rands, however, might undermine or redirect the whole venture.
If this was what capitalism meant, how could a Christian possibly support
it? Chambers, long a student of dialectics, grasped these contradictions in an
instant. He sensed immediately that Rands ideas had to be quarantined if
conservatism was to maintain its careful balancing act between capitalism and
Christianity.
Chamberss evisceration of Rand reflected both the new importance religion
had assumed for conservatives in the 1950s, and the tension they felt over the
issue of capitalism. Communism was by now always and everywhere godless,
making the presence of a strident atheist intrinsically problematic. But godless
capitalism was, potentially, even worse. While postwar conservatives promoted
laissez-faire capitalism as superior to the liberal welfare state, they did not wish to
glorify the pursuit of wealth, or fall into what Nock had termed economism.37 To
National Review conservatives, Rand represented a dangerous departure from the
libertarian tradition, which had simultaneously bemoaned the rise of government
and the degradation of a society oriented solely to commercial concerns. By
contrast, Rand argued that economic life was the highest good, that in the
striving and struggling to forge a career and make a living mankind achieved
its highest potential existence. She sought to free capitalism of the stigma it had
acquired during the Depression and to protect it from the disdain of intellectuals
and religious believers alike. Her capitalism was a market infused with spirit
that came complete with its own laudable moral code, not a cold system of

37 See n. 16 above.
 godless capitalism: ayn rand and the conservative movement 375

exploitation. While this idea might seem ridiculous to book reviewers, it would
prove to be a compelling vision to millions of Americans.
As it turned out, this vision even had its attractions for Chambers. In 1959,
two years after he had attacked Rand, Chambers had nearly crossed to her side
of the fence. Starkly, he told Buckley: I am not a conservative. In a series of
remarkable letters to Buckley, Chambers attempted to clarify his position vis-
a-vis National Review and its assorted agendas. He wrote: I am a man of the
Right. I am a man of the Right because I mean to uphold capitalism in its
American version. But I claim that capitalism is not, and by its essential nature
cannot conceivably be, conservative.38 Although Chambers, a Quaker, retained
a deep sense of personal religious belief, in the political realm he chose to endorse
capitalism, giving in to his fundamentally historicist sense that in capitalism
lay the future. If such was the case, it was futile to fight and impossible to
maintain a position that was both pro-capitalist and truly conservative. For this
reason, Chambers wished to separate himself from the program that Buckley
was developing. In his review of Rand, Chamberss comments had focused
mainly on the materialism of capitalism, and how that stood in opposition to
religion. Now, he tried to explain to Buckley how capitalisms intrinsic dynamism
posed a challenge to those who sought to preserve the past. And he evinced
a Rand-like appreciation for the markets innate flux: Conservatism is alien
to the very nature of capitalism whose love of life and growth is perpetual
change. Although he was fascinated with the transformative power of capitalism,
Chamberss valuation of the market was tinged with ambiguity. In a passage
replete with Spenglerian undertones, he told Buckley: I am pro-capitalist; I
would only retard for an instant, seek to break the fearful impacts of change,
hold back lest the rush of development (in a multitude of frightful forms)
carry us to catastrophe, as, in fact, seems almost inevitable.39 Yet if capitalism
might carry us to catastrophe, Chambers, an ex-Communist, was sure that the
alternatives were worse. It was capitalism that must be defended, against its
enemies both conservative and liberal. Only a few years earlier, these ideas and
insights had lain dormant beneath his attack on Rand. Now fully manifest,
later in 1959 they led him to resign from National Review, much to Buckleys
dismay.40

38 Whittaker Chambers, Odyssey of a Friend: Whittaker Chambers Letters to William F.

Buckley, Jr. (New York: G. P. Putnams Sons, 1969), 2278.
39 Ibid., 229.
40 According to Buckleys biographer, he never fully comprehended the grounds of difference
between himself and Chambers. See Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr., 167, 177.
376 jennifer burns

Although Buckley viewed Chamberss review as the party line on Rand,

it was far from the last word on the topic.41 The attention-grabbing article
set off reverberations across the right-wing community. Many libertarians, in
particular, were incensed. Supporters of laissez-faire had fought for years to
be on equal footing with the Catholics of National Review, and these debates
were still contentious in 1957. John Chamberlain, who had reviewed Atlas
Shrugged favorably in The Freeman, was one high-profile defender.42 But he
and other libertarians were disappointed in Rand, too, for if the conservatives
had needlessly attacked her, it was also true that she had failed to make
any accommodations to them. In a letter to National Review, Chamberlain
lamented: if Miss Rand had chosen to admit just one vocal and practicing
Christian in her Fellowship of the Competent . . . there would have been no outcry
against Atlas Shrugged. He praised her magnificent exposition of freedom
and averred that he would continue the lugubrious task of persuading people
to read it in spite of themselves.43 Although a number of readers cancelled
their subscriptions in outrage, the controversial article was invigorating for
National Review. Chamberss bold pronouncements helped the magazine stake
its claim as the arbiter of the conservative mainstream. Buckley professed that
conservatism was free of any formal litmus tests for membership, but the
Atlas Shrugged review signaled that definitive boundaries would nonetheless be
drawn.
Despite this attempt at excommunication, Rand retained a considerable
following among the National Review audience. In 1960, Buckley accepted an
article on Rand written by poet and anti-collectivist polemicist E. Merrill Root, an
English professor at Earlham College and the author of Collectivism on Campus
(1956) and Brainwashing in the High Schools (1958). At National Review, Root
was considered something of a second-string writer. But Buckley needed to keep
stalwart foot soldiers like Root happy and engaged, and letting him write on Rand
was the perfect solution. In his article, What About Ayn Rand?, Root openly
challenged National Reviews policy on Rand and lauded her heroic vision of life

41 Buckley referred to the article whenever he was asked about Rand in subsequent years.
National Review also reprinted the article in its Thirty-Fifth Anniversary Issue (Nov. 5,
1990).
42 John Chamberlain, Reviewers Notebook: Atlas Shrugged, The Freeman (Dec., 1957),
536. Another defender was Isabel Paterson, who felt the review to be unconscionably
mean-spirited and possibly libelous. See Paterson to Buckley, Jan. 2, 1958, Paterson, Isabel
(1958), Box 6, William F. Buckley, Jr., Papers, Yale University Library. Robert LeFevre of
the Freedom School was also upset by the review. E. Merrill Root to Buckley, Jan. 31, 1960,
Root, E. Merrill (1960), Box 11, Buckley Papers.
43 John Chamberlain, To The Editor: An Open Letter to Ayn Rand, National Review
(Feb. 1, 1958), 118.
 godless capitalism: ayn rand and the conservative movement 377

and her celebration of man as creator. He was copious in his praise, calling her a
life-giving sun among her planets and our most original artist-philosopher.44
He praised Rand for her brilliant skinning alive of all the phonies of the earth,
noting that she and the conservatives held many common enemies: cheapjack
existentialists, relativists, behaviorists, positivists. Roots article then descended
into improbable assertions that Rand was an unconscious Christian and that
her novels showed the deep imprint of theism. Like Chambers, Root was troubled
by Rands irreligion, but he chose to wish it away, rather than directly attack it.
Unlike Chambers, he proved unable to conceptualize the contradictions that lay
under the surface.
Roots article drew an almost immediate response from Garry Wills, who
represented the more cosmopolitan and sophisticated new guard at National
Review. The Jesuit-educated Wills missed entirely the populist appeal of Rand,
and found Roots review painful to read, he wrote Buckley privately. He begged
to be given space for a response. It seems that neither Buckley nor Wills had read
either of Rands novels, although they had looked at John Galts famous 57-page
speech in Atlas Shrugged as a precis of her thought (Rand herself identified this
as the most important part of the book).45 But even if they werent familiar with
her oeuvre, Wills and Buckley both knew enough to see that Rand needed to be
restrained. Wills wrote to Buckley:

I read the speech you referred me to, hard as it is to wade through gibberish. This is
something too serious, it seems to me, to take a soft stand on. I know you always have a
lunatic fringe to placate; and on the economics level that is all right, [but] allowing any
connection to be established, in any ones mind, between National Review and Ayn Rand
is a betrayal of National Reviews stance and past record.46

Buckley replied: I cannot agree with you more, that one cannot afford to confuse
our two theses.47 The divergent responses to Rand among National Reviews
staff did not merely follow the libertariantraditionalist continuum, but also
reflected differences based on religion, educational background, and social class
that affected the wider conservative constituency. The better-educated writers,
such as Wills and Chambers, found little of redeeming value in Rand. By contrast,
Root spoke for National Review readers who approached conservatism from a less
intellectual angle. Many of Rands most ardent admirers were small businessmen
from the Midwest, who were untroubled by Rands atheism or her style and saw

44 E. Merrill Root, What About Ayn Rand?, National Review (Jan. 30, 1960), 76.
45 Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 93693.
46 Wills to Buckley, Feb. 10, 1960, Wills, Garry (1960), Box 12, Buckley Papers.
47 Buckley to Wills, Feb. 15, 1960, Box 12, Buckley Papers.
378 jennifer burns

her as an inspiration.48 Thus the problems surrounding Rand also pointed to the
difficulties of welding a coalition between well-educated, urban Catholics and
more populist, pro-business Midwesterners who were relatively unconcerned
with religious orthodoxy.
Responding to Roots article in February 1960, Wills demolished Roots facile
argumentation, and then honed in on the more important issue at stake. The
simple equation of capitalism with conservatism is not only naive, it is fatal,
Wills wrote. He argued: it is treason, betrayal from within, for conservatives
to endorse any fanatic who agrees with certain methods which conservatives
must use to implement their view of man.49 Here was exactly what Rand
would have disagreed with: the idea that certain methods (i.e. free markets
or capitalism) must be used, whatever their underlying morality or implications
if fully elaborated. Whereas Rand saw capitalism as the ultimate fulfillment of
human nature, Wills had a much more limited appreciation of its function.
According to Wills, political and economic freedom was the basic grounds on
which man must come to know himself, but it was no route to beatitude.
Wills denied that capitalism was the true foundation of conservatism, promoting
history instead as the first principle of conservatism. But if the two were not
identical, they were hardly incompatible. Capitalism was simply a handy tool
that American conservatives would use to shape the world according to their
view of man, which was deeply informed by Catholic conceptions of original
sin.50 Even so, it was an imperfect method that certainly did not deserve the
turgid praise Rand bestowed upon it. According to Wills, the true conservative
knows a captain of industry can be as ruthless as the leader of a commune.
He finished with a call to duty. Root was wrong, Rand and her ilk must be
resisted: The narrow fixations of Miss Rand, the logorrhea of Mr. Root, should
meet with more strenuous opposition from conservatives than from any other
group of thinkers, especially when such chaos takes to itself the unearned title of
conservatism. The conservatives job is to see complexity, to continue standards,
to learn from history.

48 See n. 30 above. There was significant overlap between the followers of Rand and
Goldwater. Rand corresponded frequently with the campaign and one of Goldwaters
main speechwriters, Karl Hess, was heavily involved in the Objectivist movement. See
Paul Richard, Writer Rests His Pen, Turns to Blowtorch, Washington Post (Nov. 21,
1967), B3.
49 Garry Wills, But is Ayn Rand Conservative?, National Review (Feb. 27, 1960), 139.
50 For the Catholic influence at National Review, and in the conservative movement more
generally, see Patrick Allitt, Catholic Intellectuals and Conservative Politics in America, 1950
1985 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), and Nash, The Conservative Intellectual
Movement Since 1945.
 godless capitalism: ayn rand and the conservative movement 379

While Rand was odious in Willss sight, she had unknowingly provided a
useful service to conservatism. Due to her presence, a consensus was gathering.
Whatever conservatisms relationship to capitalism, it was not to be the answer
Rand proposed. Yet neither was it to be the one that Chambers ultimately
found, for Wills seemed confident that capitalism and conservatism could be
complementary to one another. More so than the others, Wills spelled out
the reasoning behind this conclusion. And if the exact relationship couldnt
be pinpointed, Rand could always be kept at bay by sheer invective.
For her part, Rand was happy to return the insults. In December 1960, she
gave a lecture at Princeton University entitled Conservatism: An Obituary. She
scorned the label conservative, preferring to be called a radical for capitalism.
Much of her criticism was sheer anger at compromisers. Rand insisted that the
only effective defense of capitalism was a wholehearted one. Unlike Chambers,
she found conservatives not unclear or confused about their ultimate stance
towards capitalism, but rather full of cowardice:
The moral treason of the conservative leaders lies in the fact that they . . . do not have the
courage to admit that the American way of life was capitalism, that that was the politico-
economic system born and established in the United States, the system which, in one
brief century, achieved a level of freedom, of progress, of prosperity, of human happiness,
unmatched in all the other systems and centuries combined.51

Any compromise ceded both moral and rhetorical ground to liberals: collec-
tivism, the ancient, frozen, status society is offered to us in the name of
progresswhile capitalism, the only free, dynamic, creative, society ever devised,
is defended in the name of stagnation.52 Cowardice led conservatives to
misrepresent the essence of capitalism, which impeded their ability to defend
it. If capitalism were only celebrated for its true merits, as her fiction attempted
to do, its defense would be simple. According to Rand, it was the very genius of
capitalism that it stood opposed to all traditional morality. But conservatives
are paralyzed by the profound conflict between capitalism and the moral
code which dominates our culture: the morality of altruism . . . Capitalism and
altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-
exist in the same man or in the same society.53 What Rand called altruism
was essentially indistinguishable from Christian ethics. Hence, like Chambers,
Rand understood that capitalism opposed conservatism on two main grounds.
Conservatism supported established tradition while the market demanded

51 Rand later published an essay based on the lecture, from which these quotations are taken.
Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: Penguin Books USA, 1967), 194.
52 Ibid., 198.
53 Ibid., 195.
380 jennifer burns

change; and conservatism called for Christianity, whereas such ethics were
fundamentally crippling to capitalism. Although they differed in their estimation
of religion, Rand and Chambers concurred on these fundamental points.
As Rands popularity surged in the 1960s, she became impossible to ignore. In
the wake of Atlas Shrugged, she became a media sensation and a star of the college
lecture circuit, appearing to capacity crowds and attendant campus controversy.
Her original fan base had been business people, but as the decade wore on,
Rand drew to her banner increasing numbers of libertarians, anarcho-capitalists,
and so-called hippies of the right. The dogmatism and moral certainty of
her novels proved especially appealing to adolescents, many of whom were
marked lifelong by this early encounter. Although conservatives repudiated her
atheistic philosophy, in so doing they allowed Rand to carve out a vital niche
as spokesperson for the secular right. Secular and Jewish right-wing youth who
were put off by Christian-inflected conservative rhetoric flocked to her lectures
and the trademarked courses on Objectivism offered by the Nathaniel Branden
Institute.54 Rand labeled her philosophy Objectivism because she taught that
values were absolute and could be rationally, objectively determined. Accordingly,
Objectivism promoted capitalism as a system that grew naturally out of the self-
interested ethics her novels depicted. Through her periodical The Objectivist
(196271), Rand kept readers appraised of her views on current events and
literature, providing a forum for the real-world application of her philosophical
ideas.55 On most issues, she took a fairly predictable right-wing line, although
her justifications for such positions were often idiosyncratic and linked to her
larger agenda of promoting rationality. Once again, Rand was headed in the
same direction as the conservatives, but for very different reasons. She stood
in solid opposition to what she called todays intellectual trend, including
relativism, behaviorism, civil rights, and the welfare state. Rand was also a
vigorous opponent of campus political activism and lifestyle experimentation.

54 The most famous representative of this group is Alan Greenspan, who continues to speak of
Rand as an important mentor. Also see Rebecca E. Klatch, A Generation Divided (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1999), and Women of the New Right (Philadelphia, PA:
Temple University Press, 1987), and John A. Andrew III, The Other Side of the Sixties: Young
Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 1997), 238. It is by no means insignificant that Rand was particularly
attractive to youth. Although few retained equal levels of devotion in maturity, as Karl
Mannheim argues, a persons natural view of the world is often formed in the ages from
17 to 25 and thus an early encounter with Rand could have longstanding impact. Karl
Mannheim, The Problem of Generations, in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, ed.
Paul Kecskemeti (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952), 291.
55 The Objectivist replaced The Objectivist Newsletter (19625) and was later superseded by
The Ayn Rand Letter (19716).
 godless capitalism: ayn rand and the conservative movement 381

The former she opposed for being a distraction to the intellectual mission of the
university, the latter because drugs and sexual promiscuity encouraged irrational
thought and impulsive behavior.56 By contrast, Rand taught her students that
reason was the only means to the good. She insisted that all her political stances
flowed directly from the ideas she had expressed in her fiction, and that she had
created a fully integrated philosophical system free of contradictions or error. If
ideology was dead on the left, Rand had certainly resurrected it on the right.
National Review was not blind to these developments, and returned to Rand
yet again in 1967, a year which marked the zenith of her national fame. This
time, Buckley tapped M. Stanton Evans to write the review. Evans, a protege of
Buckleys who had graduated from Yale in 1955, was a respected young activist
who had been instrumental in the founding of Young Americans for Freedom,
an organization of young conservatives that was sponsored by Buckley but
heavily influenced by Rand.57 At the time of the review, he was an editor at
the Indianapolis News. Buckley wrote to Evans that he wanted a definitive piece
on Ayn Rand which would demonstrate to people of commonsense that her
ideological and philosophical presumptions make her an inadequate mentor.58
The magazines cover in October featured a portrait of Rand rendered as a
stained-glass window, surrounded with dollar signs, along with the headline
The Movement to Canonize Ayn Rand. (In point of fact, the dollar sign was
Rands personal totem, and she wore a gold dollar sign pin for many of her public
appearances.)
This prominent National Review story covered many of the themes Wills
had raised six years earlier, but it granted Rand a far greater measure of
praise and authority. It also, paradoxically, revealed how many of Rands beliefs
had been absorbed by National Review conservatives even as she remained,
officially, persona non grata. Evans clearly shared some of the instinctive liking
for Rand felt by young conservatives in the 1960s. He was untroubled by her
defense of capitalism and her attack upon government regulation, accepting it
as conventional wisdom. She had, Evans wrote, an excellent grasp of the way
capitalism is supposed to work, the efficiencies of free enterprise, the central
role of private property and the profit motive, the social and political costs of

56 Rand opposed civil rights to the extent that civil rights leaders advocated government
intervention to achieve their goals. On many college campuses, Objectivist students
held counterdemonstrations to student protestors. The Rand-inspired Committee for
the Defense of Property Rights at Columbia University even distributed Abolish SDS
buttons and literature. Ayn Rand Archives, Box 5-01-18A.
57 For more on Evanss career, and Rands influence upon YAF, see Andrew, The Other Side
of the Sixties, 65, 612.
58 Buckley to Evans, Feb. 28, 1967, Evans, M. Stanton, Box 43, Buckley Papers.
382 jennifer burns

welfare schemes which seek to compel a false benevolence.59 He also admired her
polemical fire and consistency, and defended her against Chamberss accusation
that she was an unconscious Nazi. Evanss review reflected the more relaxed
attitude of National Review in its maturity. It also indicated how capitalism had
become less of a charged topic for conservatives as the arguments surrounding
fusionism faded into the background. Partially, this reflected the libertarians
success at redefining capitalism as a moral economic system, specifically when
contrasted to communism or socialism. Rand herself had been harping on this
theme for decades, and by the late 1960s, her arguments had been picked up by
numerous politicians, businesspeople, students, and journalists.60 This openness
to capitalism also reflected the experience of a new generation who had grown
up in the flush prosperity of the 1950s.
Evans went on to argue that despite these features, Rand remained a dangerous
figure for conservatives because she mixed her good qualities up with the bad:
namely, atheism. Rands work raised several central dilemmas of the era, such
as Can faith in God be reconciled with liberty for man? Is Christian belief
compatible with libertarian attachment? Is Capitalism anti-Christian? These
questions were no longer deeply problematic, and failed to exercise Evans the way
they had Chambers and Wills. Evans seemed confident that a general consensus
on each had already been reached. The only hitch was that Rand answered all of
these questions incorrectly. Evans urged that conservatives make judicious use of
Rand, all the while being careful not to swallow her argument whole. Now that
a strident defense of capitalism was considered fairly standard by conservatives,
her atheism, which had been the original ground of Buckley s dislike for her,
remained the fundamental problem. Chamberlains lament about the missing
Christian in Atlas Shrugged seemed ever more prescient. These developments
aside, whatever critical issues Rand raised would soon be theoretical in nature,
for her career went into rapid eclipse soon after. In 1968, the Objectivist movement
imploded in a series of personal schisms and Stalinesque purges.61 Rand fell into
a deep depression and ceased most public activities and publishing. Yet if Rand

59 M. Stanton Evans, The Gospel According to Ayn Rand, National Review (Oct. 3, 1957),
1067.
60 Jerome Himmelstein erroneously claims that it was the Christian conservatives who were
able to reshape capitalism as a moral system. As the debates surrounding fusionism in
the 1950s make clear, it was the Christians who had the most trouble with capitalism, and
it was the libertarians who argued against them that capitalism should be regarded as a
moral system. Rand was the most vigorous, but not the sole, expositor of this argument.
Himmelstein, To The Right: The Transformation of American Conservatism (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1990), 45.
61 The trouble began when Nathaniel Branden terminated his longstanding affair with Rand.
Details of these events and the relationship are given in Nathaniel Branden, My Years With
 godless capitalism: ayn rand and the conservative movement 383

was no longer an institutional presence, she remained a powerful ideological

influence, and in the 1970s echoes of her thought could be heard throughout the
Nixon and Ford administrations.62 But as far as National Review was concerned,
Rand had come to the sorry end she deserved.
Almost fifty years after the Chambers review, Buckley still relished his self-
declared victory over her. In 2003, he published a work of historical fiction,
Getting It Right, which was significantly oriented to Rand and Objectivism.
In this novel, set in the 1960s, Buckleys secular Jewish protagonist, Leonora
Goldstein, is an ardent Objectivist. She is romantically involved with another
misguided young conservative, Woodroe Raynor, who works for the John Birch
Society. Over the course of the book, both Leonora and Woodroe recant their
ideological foolishness, deciding to forsake their extremist positions and work
instead for mainstream, National Review-style conservatism. At the novels
conclusion the two are engaged and, to boot, Leonora is planning her conversion
to Catholicism.63 Buckleys novel intends to narrow the circle of acceptable
conservatism, but at the same time underscores its diverse and unwieldy origins.
Although National Review is the clear winner in this battle, it is Objectivism and
the John Birch Society that inspire the young recruits and bring them into the
right-wing scene. Significantly, Buckley does not probe the ideological tensions
that separate National Review, the John Birch Society, and the Objectivists. Rather,
it is sexual deviance that alerts both youths to the error of their ways. Leonora
leaves Objectivism when she learns of Rands extramarital affair with Nathaniel
Branden, and Woodys disillusionment begins with intimations of homosexuality
that surround General Edwin A. Walker, a John Birch favorite. For Buckley, right-
wing politics are still not enough: only the Catholic Church can keep youth from
falling into profound error.
The novel covers much the same territory as Chamberss, Willss, and Evanss
discussions of Rand, but excises any mention of capitalism, the most contentious
issue historically. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, capitalism has almost
faded from view, and is taken for granted not simply as a conservative ideal, but
as a generalized desideratum of the post-communist world.64 As examination

Ayn Rand (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999) and Barbara Branden, The Passion of Ayn
Rand.
62 For an observation on this, see TRB, The Ayn Rand Factor, The New Republic (July 19,
1975).
63 William F. Buckley, Jr, Getting It Right (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2003).
64 Two influential recent books that assume the desirability of capitalism are Francis
Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: The Free Press, 1992) and
Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (New
York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1999).
384 jennifer burns

of conservative reaction to Rand demonstrates, however, it was not always so.

Because Rand represents such a forthright pro-capitalist position, her career
highlights the shifting fortunes of capitalism on the right. In the 1940s, she
was an inspiration to those who struggled against the New Deal and hoped
to bring about a new, market-friendly political order. As a second generation
of conservatives built upon these sentiments and attempted to tie them to a
defense of Christian tradition, Rands status began to erode. Because she clung
so tenaciously to her atheism and her heroic vision of capitalism, she was soon a
liability to conservatism as envisioned by the newly powerful National Review. In
1957, Chambers set the terms of the debate with his controversial review of Atlas
Shrugged. The fulcrum then swung the other way with the populist effusions of
Roots pro-Rand article, which drew Willss wrath. Finally, conservative opinion
settled into a kind of stasis with Evanss 1967 article and Rands subsequent
personal disintegration.
This resolution, however, did not come without cost. It is notable that tension
over the issue of capitalism propelled two of conservatisms brightest intellectual
stars, Garry Wills and Whittaker Chambers, right out of the movement. In
the early 1970s, as Chambers had done earlier, Wills distanced himself from
Buckley and National Review, partially because he believed its advocacy of
capitalism to be incompatible with Catholic social ethics.65 When confronted
with Rands work, both men understood immediately that while she might
appear to be simply a lightweight popularizer, her work touched upon the deepest
structures of conservative thought. Rand forced both writers to consider how a
creed oriented to transcendence would respond to the mundane realities and
potentially devastating outcomes of the marketplace. While they might mock
her style, Chambers and Wills recognized that Rand gave powerful voice to ideas
that threatened to overwhelm their own allegiances. Eventually, the two major
architects of conservative policy on Rand became disenchanted with their own
formulations. If conservatism in the 1950s had not tied itself firmly enough to
capitalism for Chamberss taste, by the 1970s its identification with the market was
deep enough to repel Wills. Although they differed in their reasons for leaving
the conservative fold, Willss and Chamberss encounters with Rand were part of
a larger process whereby both men concluded it was untenable to rest upon an
intellectual program so rife with contradictions.
In Getting It Right, the eventual drawing of Leonora into the movement
symbolizes conservative success at neutralizing Rand while relying on the ardor
she inspired. Leonoras fictional conversion points to a real-world similarity
between the dogmatism of Objectivist and Catholic ethics, which both lay claim to

65 Wills was also dissatisfied with the conservative reaction to civil rights. For an able
discussion of his career, see Allitt, Catholic Intellectuals, Chap. 7.
 godless capitalism: ayn rand and the conservative movement 385

absolute truth.66 This progression also mimics the broader success conservatives
had in integrating capitalism into their larger agenda of revitalizing Christian
values and tradition. At first, such a combination seemed impossibly jarring,
but repetition would help the problem fade. And as a newly modified, state-
regulated capitalism showered the country with riches and a grateful religious
revival swept the land, the two seemed more compatible than theoreticians might
argue. Moreover, conservative success at managing Rand, and denying her full
membership benefits of the coalition, helped pave the way for later celebrations
of the market. If capitalism could be modulated, or its ultimate logic inhibited
by the strictures of Christianity, then it could fit right in with motherhood, apple
pie, and other emblems of the American way.67

66 In reality, it was more often the case that conservative youth moved from religion to
Objectivism than vice versa. See Jerome Tuccile, It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand (New
York: Stein and Day, 1971).
67 A version of this essay will also appear in Imagining Capitalism: Social Thought and Political
Economy in Twentieth-Century America, ed. Nelson Lichtenstein (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). For their invaluable assistance, I would like to thank Charles
Capper, David A. Hollinger, Nelson Lichtenstein, Joyce Mao, Kristen Richardson, and
three anonymous readers for MIH. This study is part of a doctoral dissertation in progress
entitled Skyscraper on a Hill: Ayn Rand and the Cultural Politics of American Capitalism,
19301980.