Mondays with Murray: Rothbard on Ayn Rand

September 30, 2013 Jason Grimley

In my recent podcast interview with Shayne Wissler, author of REASON and LIBERTY, he mentioned that one of his early influences was Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, among other great works. While I was started down the path of libertarianism when a friend insisted I read Harry Brown's How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, I've found much of Rand's literary work to be, on the whole, beneficial towards developing a pro-liberty view, especially for those unfamiliar with the ideas. Her novels have the ability to really "slap someone in the face" with hard-hitting critiques of socialism and presenting a rational case for natural rights, communicated by strong, compelling characters.Nonetheless, Rand has become a controversial figure over the years, not only reviled by leftists but by many libertarians as well. So what did Murray Rothbard think of Ayn Rand?Rothbard wrote Rand a letter in 1957 praising Rand and Atlas Shrugged shortly after its release. An excerpt:

I just finished your novel today. I will start by saying that all ofus in the “Circle Bastiat” are convinced, and were convinced verynearly in the reading, that Atlas Shrugged is the greatest novel ever written. This is our generally accepted initial premise, and the discussions over the book have naturally been based upon it. But this is just the beginning. This simple statement by itself means little to me: I have always had a bit of contempt for the novel form, and have thought of the novel, at best, as a useful sugar-coated pill to carry on agit-prop work amongst the masses who can’t take ideas straight. A month ago, if I had said a book was “the greatest novel ever written,” it wouldn’t have been too high a compliment.It is one of the small measures of what I think of Atlas Shrugged that I no longer pooh-pooh the novel. I have always heard my literary friends talk of the “truths” presented by novels, without understanding the term at all. Now I do understand, but only because you have carried the novel form to a new and higher dimension. For the first time you have welded a great unity of principle and person, depicting persons and their actions in perfect accordance with principles and their consequences. This in itself is a tremendous achievement. For with the unity of principle and person there emerges the corollary unity of reason and emotion: and the reader, in grasping your philosophic system both in speech and through acting persons, is hit by the great emotion of an immediate and rational perception. As I read your novel, the joy I felt was sometimes tempered by the regret that all those generations of novel-readers, people like my mother who in their youth read Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, searching eagerly for they knew not what truths which they never quite found, that these people could not read Atlas Shrugged. Here, I thought, were the truths they were really looking for. Here, in Atlas Shrugged, is the perfection of the novel form. It is now a form that I honor and admire.

Murray's tune on Rand would change over the years. Fifteen years after his proverbial love letter to Ayn Rand, Rothbard penned a piece in 1972 entitled The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult. The title should give you a clue as to the nature of the essay.He begins by discussing the nature of a cult:

In the America of the 1970s we are all too familiar with the religious cult, which has been proliferating in the last decade. Characteristic of the cult (from Hare Krishna to the "Moonies" to EST to Scientology to the Manson Family) is the dominance of the guru, or Maximum Leader, who is also the creator and ultimate interpreter of a given creed to which the acolyte must be unswervingly loyal. The major if not the only qualification for membership and advancement in the cult is absolute loyalty to and adoration of the guru, and absolute and unquestioning obedience to his commands. The lives of the members are dominated by the guru’s influence and presence. If the cult grows beyond a few members, it naturally becomes hierarchically structured, if only because the guru cannot spend his time indoctrinating and watching over every disciple. Top positions in the hierarchy are generally filled by the original handful of disciples, who come to assume these positions by virtue of their longer stint of loyal and devoted service. Sometimes the top leadership may be related to each other, a useful occurrence which can strengthen intra-cult loyalty through the familial bond.

And continues...

It should be clear at this point in history that an ideological cult can adopt the same features as the more overtly religious cult, even when the ideology is explicitly atheistic and anti-religious. That the cults of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Trotsky, and Mao are religious in nature, despite the explicit atheism of the latter, is by now common knowledge. The adoration of the cult founder and leader, the hierarchical structure, the unswerving loyalty, the psychological (and when in command of State power, the physical) sanctions are all too evident.

And, as you may have guessed by now, he then goes on to compare Rand's growing "Objectivist" movement to a cult:

If the glaring inner contradictions of the Leninist cults make them intriguing objects of study, still more so is the Ayn Rand cult, which, while in some sense is still faintly alive, flourished for just ten years in the 1960s; more specifically, from the founding of the Nathaniel Branden lecture series in early 1958 to the Rand-Branden split ten years later. For not only was the Rand cult explicitly atheist, anti-religious, and an extoller of Reason; it also promoted slavish dependence on the guru in the name of independence; adoration and obedience to the leader in the name of every person’s individuality; and blind emotion and faith in the guru in the name of Reason.Virtually every one of its members entered the cult through reading Rand’s lengthy novel Atlas Shrugged , which appeared in late 1957, a few months before the organized cult came into being. Entering the movement through a novel meant that despite repeated obeisances to Reason, febrile emotion was the driving force behind the acolyte’s conversion. Soon, he found that the Randian ideology sketched out in Atlas was supplemented by a few non-fiction essays, and, in particular, by a regular monthly magazine, The Objectivist Newsletter (later, The Objectivist).

Rothbard goes on to expand upon the qualities of the Rand cult that further exemplify it's cult status, including an index of permitted books, signing a "loyalty oath" to Rand, and excommunications and purges from the group. (It should be noted that some claim Rothbard himself was "purged" from Rand's inner circle, the reasons for which depend on who you're hearing it from. I won't delve into this claim further here, but you're an Internet search away from finding out more if you so choose.)Rothbard concludes:

There seems to be only one way to resolve the contradiction in the Randian strategic outlook of extreme sectarianism within the libertarian movement, coupled with extreme opportunism, and willingness to coalesce with slightly more conservative heads of State, in the outside world. That resolution, confirmed by the remainder of our analysis of the cult, holds that the guiding spirit of the Randian movement was not individual liberty – as it seemed to many young members – but rather personal power for Ayn Rand and her leading disciples. For power within the movement could be secured by totalitarian isolation and control of the minds and lives of every member; but such tactics could scarcely work outside the movement, where power could only hopefully be achieved by cozying up the President and his inner circles of dominion.Thus, power not liberty or reason, was the central thrust of the Randian movement. The major lesson of the history of the movement to libertarians is that It Can Happen Here, that libertarians, despite explicit devotion to reason and individuality, are not exempt from the mystical and totalitarian cultism that pervades other ideological as well as religious movements. Hopefully, libertarians, once bitten by the virus, may now prove immune.

The purpose of Mondays with Murray is to express Rothbard's view an a certain issue or subject. In the case of Ayn Rand, it's clear that Rothbard, like myself, saw her literary work as an excellent introduction to libertarian ideas for those remotely open to them. The sharpness with which the heroes of her novels communicated their virtues is something that is difficult to find in most literary works. His later reflections on what the Rand movement became in no way contradict this.All movements must be wary of looking at any of their leaders with too much idolatry, or becoming dogmatically closed to listening to new ideas. We should be open to the rhetoric of others, so that we can either refute it or adapt our views if we find out new truths. Whether those we look up to are Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Ron Paul, or any other single figure, it's important to not act "cult-like"; to not become collectivists or authoritarians; to not become that which we oppose. Receive access to ALL of our EXCLUSIVE bonus audio content – including “Conspiracy Corner”, “Degenerate Gamblers” and the “League of Liberty Podcast” by joining the Lions of Liberty Pride and supporting us on Patreon!