Ayn Rand

Author

• Born: February 2, 1905
• Birthplace: St. Petersburg, Russia
• Died: March 6, 1982
• Place of death: New York, New York

Russian-born philosopher and writer

An uncompromising philosopher of rationalism, individualism, freedom, and enlightened self-interest, who spread her ideas in her novels and essays from the mid-1930’s to her death, Rand was a major progenitor of the modern libertarian movement.

Areas of achievement: Philosophy; social issues; literature

Early Life

Ayn Rand (in rand) was born to Jewish parents. Her father was agnostic, and her mother was not actively religious. Her family achieved a middle-class lifestyle, provided by her father’s pharmacy, and she grew up strongly oriented toward rationality, optimism, and great achievement.

Though mainly raised with her younger sisters, Natasha and Nora, by her social mother, Rand adopted her father’s quiet passion for politics and ideas. Previously tutored and self-taught, she found high school boring. In 1917, Rand favored the February Revolution, which led to the abdication of Czar Nicholas II, and she developed an infatuation for Alexander Kerensky, a leader in the revolution who spoke fiercely for freedom (she lost her illusions before meeting him in 1945). However, Rand opposed the October Revolution, when the Bolsheviks took over the government. Her family fled to the Crimea when the Bolsheviks confiscated her father’s pharmacy, but failed to escape before Vladimir Lenin defeated the Whites. Rand enrolled in the University of Petrograd in 1921 to study history and philosophy, while her father worked in the pharmacy he formerly owned and her mother translated books.

Graduating in 1924, Rand enrolled in the State Technicum for Screen Arts, hoping to write screenplays subtly favoring her philosophy, but she found this impossible. The extreme censorship frustrated her. A letter from a cousin in Chicago inspired Rand to go to America in 1926, nominally to study film for a year; her family labored to make this possible. She intended to stay and never returned, changing her name to Rand in the process, though she remained in touch with her family until the late 1930’s. In Hollywood, she met Cecil B. DeMille and got a job as an extra on the film The King of Kings (1927); then she became a junior writer, researching scripts. In 1929, she married Frank O’Connor (who became her spiritual soulmate) and took American citizenship in 1931.

Life’s Work

Rand’s career as advocate of freedom and individualism started with a 1932 screenplay called Red Pawn, which was bought but never produced. Then she wrote her first novel, We the Living (1936), inspired by her university experiences. She also wrote a play, Night of January 16th (1934), about a murder trial in which the verdict (decided by a jury chosen from the audience) springs from subconscious philosophical views. Both were completed in 1934, but she had many problems getting the play performed as she wished and even more getting the novel published. Later she wrote a short novel, Anthem (1938), about the rediscovery of egoism in a world so collectivist that even the word “I” had disappeared.

Meanwhile, she beganThe Fountainhead (1943). This portrayed her first example of the ideal Rand hero, architect Howard Roark, and it expounded her philosophy. She had great difficulties finding a publisher and nearly gave up at one point; O’Connor persuaded her to continue, and she dedicated the novel to him. It finally appeared in 1943 and eventually sold well. In 1949, a film based on it was released. Rand wrote the script, but overall she was displeased with the film and became disgusted with Hollywood. She and O’Connor moved to New York for good in 1951.

By that time, Rand was forming a circle of friends, young people who shared her views. They included Barbara and Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, and Leonard Peikoff (Rand’s eventual heir). One problem was that Rand increasingly saw herself as perfectly rational and expected everyone to agree with her completely, even about tastes in the arts. Yet they were also supposed to think for themselves. Writer Ruth Beebe Hill pointed out the contradiction in this, but the problem got worse. Rand started an affair with Nathaniel Branden, which by a complex series of events wrecked the circle in 1968.

Already she was working on Atlas Shrugged (1957), inspired by the notion of a strike by the dominant creators of society against the self-sacrifice demanded by altruism. The distillation of all she advocated, it left her with the problem of what to do next; she never wrote another novel and her later essays often relied heavily on self-quotation. Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957 to many negative reviews, but it sold well. Despite its flaws (the black-and-white portrayal of heroes and villains and protagonist John Galt’s excessively long, tedious speech), it superbly presents her philosophy and shows the defects in collectivism.

In 1962, she started The Objectivist Newsletter (later called The Objectivist) to present her views and those of like-minded associates. She published five collections of the essays: The Virtues of Selfishness (1964), Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966), The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971), Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1979), and The Romantic Manifesto (1969). However, the effort of both writing her essays and carefully editing submissions led her to end it and start The Ayn Rand Letter to express herself. She also occasionally lectured and made other public appearances. Health problems forced her to end The Ayn Rand Letter a few years later, and her career wound down. O’Connor died in 1979, and Rand began a script for an Atlas Shrugged film, dying of lung cancer before she got far.

Significance

Although Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism was intended as a complete philosophy and its heroes attract admiration as ideals, its greatest influence has been political. In the early 1940’s, she was part of a group of three women (the others were her friends Isabel Paterson and Rose Wilder Lane) who played a key role in starting a movement for capitalism and individualism at the height of the “New Deal.” Many later leaders of the Libertarian Party were initially influenced by them, but Rand has also had an enduring influence (through novels, essays, and occasionally personal encounters) on a large number of people in a wide variety of fields. The most important undoubtedly was economist Greenspan, a friend and contributor to her newsletters in the 1960’s and later longtime chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Bibliography

Berliner, Michael S., ed. Letters of Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton, 1995. Selected letters—business and personal, with some expounding her philosophy over several pages—mostly from 1934 until her death.

Branden, Barbara. The Passion of Ayn Rand. New York: Doubleday, 1986. Generally favorable biography and assessment by a longtime associate who had a temporary falling out with Rand at the end of the 1960’s.

Branden, Nathaniel. Judgment Day: My Years with Ayn Rand. New York: Avon, 1989. Personal account of the author’s relationship with Rand and its devastating impact on both families and the Objectivist movement.

Britting, Jeff. Ayn Rand. New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2003. A short but complete biography and analysis.

Doherty, Brian. Radicals for Capitalism. New York: PublicAffairs Books, 2007. History of the modern libertarian movement, with considerable material about Rand, her philosophy, and her influence.

Harriman, David, ed. Journals of Ayn Rand. New York: Penguin, 1997. Rand’s personal notes, primarily about various writing projects (including some never completed), particularly The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

Heller, Anne Conover. Ayn Rand and the World She Made. New York: Doubleday, 2009. Detailed, well-researched biography and assessment; mostly favorable, but points out flaws, such as her rigid rationalism.