Defending Capitalism Against Ayn Rand

In this essay, I will follow d’Anconia’s and Akston’s advice. I will show that a fundamental contradiction pervades Atlas Shrugged because Rand failed to check her premises. She thought that the heroes she created were exemplars of pure, uncorrupted capitalism. In fact, the heroes she created in Atlas Shrugged came from her sense of life, which was not only un-​capitalist but anti-​capitalist. I will also show that this contradiction is extremely fortunate because it illuminates why capitalism is the most efficient and humane economic system ever implemented.

Rand often emphasized the importance of a person’s “sense of life” and of art as its expression (e.g., Rand 1975: 31, 33, 44). She defined her sense of life and its artistic expression most clearly in an essay she wrote on Victor Hugo (1975: 153–61). In it she said, “Victor Hugo is the greatest novelist in world literature” because his characters are “a race of giants,” who are not concerned with “penny ante.” “‘Grandeur’ is the one word that names the leitmotif … of all of Hugo’s novels—and of his sense of life.”

Grandeur also names the sense of life of Communist economies.² They had no concern with anything “penny ante.” In the 1980s, when the economy of the Soviet Union was disintegrating, it was producing between 1.5 and two times more steel and cement than the United States and generating more electricity; it also had 2.5 times more machine tools. However, buttons, clothespins, babies’ pacifiers, pens, and thermometers were always extremely difficult to find in the Soviet Union and often completely unobtainable (Shmelev and Popov 1989: 82, 132, 144). Toilet paper and toilet seats were such rare and precious commodities that when McDonald’s opened a restaurant in Moscow in 1990, its employees had to guard its restrooms to prevent customers stealing toilet paper and toilet seats (Goldman 1991: 166). The Soviet Union’s heroic economy also did not provide contraceptives or a single practical guide to contraception. As a result, Soviet women averaged at least four legal abortions during their lives. In addition, large numbers of illegal abortions were performed. Anesthetics could be obtained only by a large bribe (Feshbach and Friendly 1992: 208–9).

In The Fountainhead, the villain, Ellsworth Toohey, destroys Catherine Halsey’s soul. The visible sign of her corruption is that her mouth has adapted to giving orders, “not big orders or cruel orders; just mean little ones—about plumbing and disinfectants” (IV.10). Toohey has turned her into the opposite of a Communist. The Communists gave big, cruel orders and had no concern with mean little considerations. The heroes of Atlas Shrugged are heroic because, like Communist bureaucrats, they produce or maintain impressive products, not mean little ones. It would be unimaginable for a Rand hero to be a manufacturer of “penny ante” products, such as menstrual tampons, dependable contraceptives, or disposable baby diapers. But these were among the greatest inventions of the twentieth century. They made human life more human by freeing people from preoccupation with brute, animal existence.

Most services would be included among “mean little” occupations. The Communists’ heroic obsession with production caused them to ignore services, which, with a few exceptions, they did not even include in their gross domestic product statistics. In fact, Marxists always used the term “the means of production” as a synonym for “the economy.” In modern capitalist countries, most businesspeople provide services. With one exception that I will discuss below, the only service that a hero in Atlas Shrugged provides is running railroads. This is clearly not a “mean little” occupation. It was one of the few services that the Soviet Union included in its gross domestic product statistics (weight of freight times kilometers carried).

Moreover, Rand ignored all services in her representation of history (Rand 1963: 10–57) as a battle between Attila and the Witch Doctor and their antithesis, the Producer. Indeed, her practice of using “industrialist” as a synonym for businessperson excludes businesspeople who provide services along with those who produce “penny ante” products. In his long speech in Atlas Shrugged, John Galt (i.e., Ayn Rand) says, “Productiveness is your acceptance of morality … productive work is … a constant process of … shaping matter to fit one’s purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one’s values;” and “the industrialists, the conquerors of matter … have produced all the wonders of humanity’s brief summer” (III.7).

It is true that the great philosopher Hugh Akston owns a diner and cooks its food, which he does with extraordinary skill (I.10). However, Rand does not let this fact affect her conceptualization of productive work. Galt tells Dagny, “We take nothing but the lowliest jobs and we produce by the effort of our muscles” (III.1).³

In her short story “The Simplest Thing in the World” (1975: 173–85), Rand depicts a writer of fiction who cannot make a living because he has the same sense of life as Rand. The writer decides to create the type of story that will sell: “a simple, human story,” which consists of “lousy bromides.” “It mustn’t have any meaning,” and its characters must be petty because “small people are safe.” However, he is incapable of writing such a story. Every time he tries, his sense of life thwarts his conscious efforts, and he starts composing a story about heroes. The reason, as Rand explains in her introduction, is that his “sense of life directs … and controls his creative imagination.” To exemplify this fact, he begins to write “a story about a middle-​aged millionaire who tries to seduce a poor young working girl.” He is “a big tycoon who owns a whole slew of five-​and-​tens [i.e., discount stores].” But the author cannot write this story. As he develops the plot in his mind, his sense of life makes him forget about the girl and transform the villain into a hero. As part of the transformation, he says to himself, “to hell with the five-​and-​ten!” The hero now builds ships because he is motivated by “a great driving energy … the principle of creation itself. It’s what makes everything in the world. Dams and skyscrapers and transatlantic cables.” “He wants to work—not to make money, just to work” (italics added). So, an author with Ayn Rand’s sense of life could not make the hero of his works a retailer, no matter how successful he might be, not even Sam Walton, who founded and built Walmart into the company with the greatest revenue of any business in the world.

Because the Soviets had the same sense of life as the author in this short story (i.e., the same as Rand), they were extremely proud of their enormous hydroelectric dams, and their retailing was horribly inefficient. In the Soviet Union, people had to wait in long lines for any purchase. If someone had time to spare, he would wait in a line to buy something he did not need, to barter it with someone who had waited in another line to buy something else. When McDonald’s opened its first restaurant in Moscow, it set all records for the number of customers: 40,000 to 50,000 a day, even though its food cost twice as much as the food in state-​run cafeterias. It needed ushers to tell customers not to go to the longest line, because in Communist countries, the length of a line showed how valuable the merchandise was (Goldman 1991: 166–7; Blackman 1990).

The opening of this first McDonald’s, an event that, as much as any other, marked the end of Communism, illustrates another serious defect in Communist-​Objectivist ideals. A small notice in a Soviet newspaper drew 27,000 applicants for jobs as counter clerks, even though the anticipated salary was only average by Soviet standards. Those who were chosen had to be trained to smile at customers and speak politely to them. Their training was so successful that customers could not believe that the clerks were Soviet-​raised Russians (Blackman 1990; Goldman 1991: 166–7).

Rand used “grocery clerk” to symbolize the antithesis of her ideal (1964: viii; 1975: 84). In We the Living, when Kira sees her future lover Leo for the first time, she observes that “his mouth … was that of an ancient chieftain who could order men to die, and his eyes were such as could watch it.” However, Leo says to Kira, with bitter humor, “I’m nothing like what you think I am. I’ve always wanted to be a Soviet clerk who sells soap and smiles at customers” (I.4). Again, Rand reversed Communism and capitalism. Men who could order others to die and watch their death calmly characterized Communism. Smiling clerks, who sell unimpressive products, characterize capitalism.

When Nathaniel Branden was the official Objectivist expert on psychology, he wrote, “Productive work is the process through which a man achieves that sense of control over his life which is the precondition of his being able fully to enjoy the other values possible to him … Productive … achievements lead to pride” (“Self-​Esteem: Part IV,” The Objectivist, June 1967). Obviously, pride in productive achievements is a wonderful feeling. It can derive directly from the type of work done by the heroes of Rand’s novels and by real-​world titans of production, like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, and Steven Jobs, who used their brilliance and creativity, to make life better for the peoples of the world. However, pride in achievement does not follow directly from the type of work that most people do in a market economy: salesmen, accountants, insurance brokers, bank clerks, real estate agents, advertising. In fact, the first jobs of the odious Wesley Mouch were in advertising (Atlas II.6).

Let us consider briefly the novelist whom Rand (1975: 119) regarded as the best of the naturalists, Sinclair Lewis. When Lewis wanted to write novels about admirable protagonists, he made them a dedicated research scientist (Martin Arrowsmith) and the president of a car company (Sam Dodsworth), who began his career as assistant manager of production. When Lewis wanted a pathetic protagonist, he made him a real estate agent (George Babbitt). Babbitt, like Arrowsmith and Dodsworth, is successful at his work. But Lewis says in the first chapter that Babbitt “made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry,” and he “detested the grind of the real estate business.” 

The discussion so far illuminates a crucial benefit of the love of money. It draws people into occupations that they may not find interesting or inspiring, but which create products and services that the public wants and will pay for.

In all of Rand’s novels, only one business owner completely embodies the ethos of the market economy. That is the press tycoon Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead, who becomes fabulously rich through selfless service to the public by providing it with what it wants: a lowbrow, sentimental, lurid newspaper. As he says (IV.11), he has led a life of “selflessness in the absolute sense.” He “erased [his] ego out of existence” by following the principle, “give the greatest pleasure to the greatest number.” However, according to Rand, Wynand is guilty of the most horrible sin in her moral universe: betraying himself.

Rand’s story “The Simplest Thing in the World” is an excellent illustration of this point. It assumes that an author with Rand’s sense of life is compelled to create a heroic protagonist who “wants to work—not to make money, just to work” (italics added). He therefore chooses to build ships instead of discount stores. This contrast is factually accurate. Someone motivated by money would not consider shipbuilding as a business career since, in economically advanced countries, shipbuilders can stay in business only by means of tariff protection, government subsidies, or both. But he would certainly consider discount stores, since they have proved to be the most profitable (i.e., socially useful) branch of retailing.

The economic role of money in constantly driving economic participants to provide the public with what it wants is related to an admirable moral attribute of the free market. It is completely democratic and non-​coercive; no one can interfere with other people spending their money on what they want. In her essay “What Is Capitalism?” (1967: 17, 20), Rand extolled this fundamental attribute of the free market (the italics are Rand’s):

It is the Gail Wynands who provide true-​confession magazines and Elvis Presley CDs.

At this point, many readers will object that Ayn Rand appreciated the value of money. She ended Atlas Shrugged with its hero tracing the sign of the dollar in space, made a gold dollar sign Atlantis’s “coat of arms, its trademark, its beacon” (III.1), and she herself often wore a dollar sign pinned to her dress.

In Atlas Shrugged, Rand sometimes has her heroes claim that their goal is to make money. At the opening of the John Galt Line (I.8), a reporter asks Dagny her “motive in building that Line.” She answers, “The profit which I expect to make.” But Rand never shows her calculating cost and profit. What Rand does show is Dagny experiencing “the sweep of an emotion which she could not contain, as of something bursting upward.”

At least in their economic interactions, money should be the primary consideration of the heroes of a novel that ends with the dollar sign traced in the air. In Part I, Chapter 1, James Taggart says, “I don’t like Hank Rearden.” Dagny replies, “I do. But what does that matter, one way or another? We need rails and he is the only one who can give them to us.” James Taggart, typically, replies, “You have no sense of the human element at all.” With this conversation, Rand crystallized the wonderful advantage of money and the market economy it makes possible. They enable non-​coercive, mutually advantageous co-​operation among large numbers of people with different values and moral codes.

However, in Part II, Chapter 3, Francisco asks Rearden if he wanted the rail he made for the John Galt Line “used by your equals … such as Ellis Wyatt … [or] by men who could not equal the power of your mind, but who would equal your moral integrity—men such as Eddie Willers.” Rearden answers, “Yes.” Francisco then asks, “Did you want to see it used by whining rotters?” Rearden answers, “I’d blast that rail first.” Francisco then explains that by “whining rotter” he means “any man who proclaims his right to a single penny of another man’s effort.” But no economy, whether socialist or capitalist, could function if producers acted in this way. Similarly, in Part II, Chapter 10, Dagny says that Nathaniel Taggart, supposedly the archetypical capitalist, “He couldn’t have worked with people like these passengers. He couldn’t have run trains for them.” But no one running a train line, even in a socialist economy, could possibly consider the moral worth of its passengers, or any consideration besides their paying for the ride.

I will conclude with the most frequently quoted explanation of why the market is the most effective means of providing people with what they want. It is by Adam Smith, in Book I, Chapter II of The Wealth of Nations: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard for their own interest. We address ourselves … to their self-​love.” Butchers, brewers, and bakers had a very low priority in Communist countries. When McDonald’s opened its first restaurant in Moscow, it had to train its own butchers (Goldman 1991: 166). It is also unimaginable for an Ayn Rand hero to be a butcher, brewer, or baker. The self-​interest and self-​love that induces people to become butchers, brewers, and bakers and to perform those jobs well is totally different from the heroic self-​love of Rand’s heroes. It is a mundane desire to support themselves and their families in comfort and security, to create heaven in their backyard.⁴