Taylor replied, ‘Well, Ayn, it’s primarily because he wasn’t truthful. He said all these things and couldn’t back them up.’ And Rand said, ‘Oh, I see. The Big Lie’.
Rand liked McCarthy and detested Eisenhower, ‘a conservative who lacked principles and backbone’. She was indignant over a 1957 Time Magazine article recounting a 1945 meeting between General Eisenhower and his Russian counterpart, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, in Berlin. The two had been debating the strengths of their respective forms of government. The article quoted Eisenhower as saying, ‘I was hard put to it when [Zhukov] insisted that [the Soviet] system appealed to the idealistic and [that ours appealed] completely to the materialistic, and I had a very tough time trying to defend our position because he said: “You tell a person he can do as he pleases, he can act as he pleases, he can do anything. Everything that is selfish in man you appeal to…. We tell him that he must sacrifice for the state.” The fact that Eisenhower couldn’t defend ‘the noblest, freest country in the history of the world’ as a matter of principle against a puppet of ‘the bloodiest dictatorship in history’ infuriated Rand.
I agree with Rand’s conclusion. Without a morality of rational self-interest capitalism cannot be defended. The problem of capitalism is the inability and the lack of courage of its defenders to defend it. It is difficult to defend the capitalist idea of the ‘invisible hand’ (made famous by Adam Smith) because the hand is, in fact, ‘invisible’. In contrast, equality and sacrifice for the masses are visible ideals.
As a libertarian, I have always admired the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. I agree with him that political liberty is founded on private property, free markets, and limited government. A Jewish refugee from Nazi occupied Austria, he had been a great social and economic theorist in pre-war Europe but was unknown in America. Mises met Ayn Rand in the early 1950s in New York and they quarrelled immediately over the government’s right to impose conscription or forced military service or ‘draft’, which was then underway in America. Mises, who had a purely economic aversion to state power, supported it. Rand called it a violation of individual rights. Rand became angry and said, ‘you treat me like an ignorant Jewish girl!’ Henry Hazlitt, their host, tried to make peace, ‘Oh, I’m sure, Ayn, that Lu didn’t mean it that way’. Mises jumped to his feet and shouted, ‘I did mean it that way!’
The following day she met one of the guests who had been present at the dinner party, and asked him to take sides in the dispute. When he pleaded neutrality, she replied, ‘That’s not possible. You are either with him or against me.’ He refused to choose and she never spoke to him again. In her copy of Mises’ famous book, Human Action, Rand wrote ‘bastard’ in the margin because Mises preferred a practical, economic argument for capitalism rather than a moral one.
Rand emerges somewhat diminished from Heller’s vivid and affecting account of this great champion of liberty and individuality who insisted on obedience and conformity from her followers (including from Alan Greenspan). A friend of John Hospers tried to console him after their falling-out: ‘Well John,’ the friend said, ‘You were a scholar. She was a revolutionary’.
Rand liked McCarthy and detested Eisenhower, ‘a conservative who lacked principles and backbone’. She was indignant over a 1957 Time Magazine article recounting a 1945 meeting between General Eisenhower and his Russian counterpart, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, in Berlin. The two had been debating the strengths of their respective forms of government. The article quoted Eisenhower as saying, ‘I was hard put to it when [Zhukov] insisted that [the Soviet] system appealed to the idealistic and [that ours appealed] completely to the materialistic, and I had a very tough time trying to defend our position because he said: “You tell a person he can do as he pleases, he can act as he pleases, he can do anything. Everything that is selfish in man you appeal to…. We tell him that he must sacrifice for the state.” The fact that Eisenhower couldn’t defend ‘the noblest, freest country in the history of the world’ as a matter of principle against a puppet of ‘the bloodiest dictatorship in history’ infuriated Rand.
I agree with Rand’s conclusion. Without a morality of rational self-interest capitalism cannot be defended. The problem of capitalism is the inability and the lack of courage of its defenders to defend it. It is difficult to defend the capitalist idea of the ‘invisible hand’ (made famous by Adam Smith) because the hand is, in fact, ‘invisible’. In contrast, equality and sacrifice for the masses are visible ideals.
As a libertarian, I have always admired the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. I agree with him that political liberty is founded on private property, free markets, and limited government. A Jewish refugee from Nazi occupied Austria, he had been a great social and economic theorist in pre-war Europe but was unknown in America. Mises met Ayn Rand in the early 1950s in New York and they quarrelled immediately over the government’s right to impose conscription or forced military service or ‘draft’, which was then underway in America. Mises, who had a purely economic aversion to state power, supported it. Rand called it a violation of individual rights. Rand became angry and said, ‘you treat me like an ignorant Jewish girl!’ Henry Hazlitt, their host, tried to make peace, ‘Oh, I’m sure, Ayn, that Lu didn’t mean it that way’. Mises jumped to his feet and shouted, ‘I did mean it that way!’
The following day she met one of the guests who had been present at the dinner party, and asked him to take sides in the dispute. When he pleaded neutrality, she replied, ‘That’s not possible. You are either with him or against me.’ He refused to choose and she never spoke to him again. In her copy of Mises’ famous book, Human Action, Rand wrote ‘bastard’ in the margin because Mises preferred a practical, economic argument for capitalism rather than a moral one.
Rand emerges somewhat diminished from Heller’s vivid and affecting account of this great champion of liberty and individuality who insisted on obedience and conformity from her followers (including from Alan Greenspan). A friend of John Hospers tried to console him after their falling-out: ‘Well John,’ the friend said, ‘You were a scholar. She was a revolutionary’.
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