The Ayn Rand Story

Ayn Rand is, of course, the author of We The Living, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged as well as the founder of Objectivism, the philosophy presented in her novels. Best known for her opposition to altruism which she believed is poisoning the world, she preferred to call herself a "radical for capitalism" rather than a conservative. Rather than attempt to produce a synopsis of her philosophy, I am letting those involved in her movement do that instead.

You will read about how Rand believed that every reaction people have to art and every sexual attraction indicates the person's approach to life. People can be either pro-life or against life. Those who embrace life, see the universe as a primarily benevolent place. They live their lives rationally because that is the appropriate approach to living on this earth. The artists she considered malevolent are surprising. Artists like Beethoven, for example. The irony is that her followers came to be afraid to express admiration or appreciation for any of the "malevolent" artists. So a society of individuals became a society of conformists. "Social metaphysics" was one of the dirtiest words in the Objectivist's vocabulary. It referred to people who didn't think for themselves but looked to others to define their values. Oddly, they didn't seem to realize how "socially metaphysical" they were being by making such a guru of their leader. Two of her closest followers, who eventually came to understand this contradiction and repudiate it were Barbara and Nathaniel Branden.

• Nathaniel Branden was her leading disciple and founder of the Nathaniel Branden Institute which offered lectures on Objectivism. He was also Rand's clandistine lover for years. Their friendship ended in an ugly rift as is documented in his book, My Years With Ayn Rand.
• Barbara Branden, Nathaniel Branden's wife and one of the main supporters of Objectivism and friend of Ayn Rand, wrote her own book about those years, The Passion of Ayn Rand.
• Ayn Rand Institute, run by Leonard Peikoff. An original member of "The Collective" (a name adopted by Ayn Rand's inner circle in the spirit of irony), he was regarded by Nathaniel Branden and Ayn Rand as a "social metaphysician," someone who got his sense of reality from other people rather than from his own rational use of his mind and senses. This was a very bad thing to Objectivists and it is ironic that he was the one in the group to remain the most steadfast and uncritical to Ayn's original ideas as well as the one to avoid a major rift.
• The Unofficial "Passion of Ayn Rand" Movie Homepage
• Ayn Rand, A Sense of Life
• The Unlikelist Cult in History, by Michael Shermer, Skeptic, vol. 2, No. 2, 1993.
• Unofficial Atlas Shrugged Movie Homepage
• Atlas as an Avenging God, my essay on Objectivism and Atlas Shrugged.