Our Confused Randian Values

Adam Kirsch has a review in The New York Times of Anne Heller's new book on Ayn Rand. The piece seeks to explore the connections between Rand's philosophy and the meandering modern Republican party. He winds up exploring Rand's life and values, with indirect comparisons to our current political landscape. The most interesting part to me was his questioning of Rand's placing of businessman and entrepreneurs on pedestals. He writes,

Rand had no more reverence for the actual businessmen she met than most intellectuals do. The problem was that, according to her own theories, the executives were supposed to be as creative and admirable as any artist or thinker. They were part of the fraternity of the gifted, whose strike, in “Atlas Shrugged,” brings the world to its knees. Rand’s inclusion of businessmen in the ranks of the Übermenschen helps to explain her appeal to free-marketeers — including Alan Greenspan — but it is not convincing. At bottom, her individualism owed much more to Nietzsche than to Adam Smith (though Rand, typically, denied any influence, saying only that Nietzsche “beat me to all my ideas”). But “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” never sold a quarter of a million copies a year.

Kirsch, via Heller, emphasizes the the contradicting values expressed to American students. There is a lot of talk about following your dreams and passions, about making a difference in the world. At the same time, an MBA from Wharton is impressive, while having a "career" as an artist is seen as just that- a career in quotation marks, a career that is not really a career at all, as it does not typically result in wealth. Rand's genius, or failing, depending on what angle you are coming from, is to subsume the value of artistic or philosophically inclined thinkers in her descriptions of businessmen. This is a great point to note for those who have conflicting opinions on Rand's philosophy. I always found myself inclined to agree with the gist of her argument in terms of radical individualism and the strive toward human greatness, yet was still strangely unnerved by the way in which she seemed to manifest these concepts.

Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne Heller- Book Review by Adam Kirsch