正文
September 15, 2007
Ayn Rand's Literature of Capitalism
By HARRIET RUBIN
Oneof the most influential business books ever written is a 1,200-pagenovel published 50 years ago, on Oct. 12, 1957. It is still drawingreaders; it ranks 388th on Amazon.com's best-seller list. (“Winning,”by John F. Welch Jr., at a breezy 384 pages, is No. 1,431.)
The book is “Atlas Shrugged,” Ayn Rand's glorification of the right of individuals to live entirely for their own interest.
Foryears, Rand's message was attacked by intellectuals whom her circlelabeled “do-gooders,” who argued that individuals should also work inthe service of others. Her book was dismissed as an homage to greed.Gore Vidal described its philosophy as “nearly perfect in itsimmorality.”
But the book attracted a coterie of fans, some ofthem top corporate executives, who dared not speak of its impact exceptin private. When they read the book, often as college students, theynow say, it gave form and substance to their inchoate thoughts, showingthere is no conflict between private ambition and public benefit.
“Iknow from talking to a lot of Fortune 500 C.E.O.'s that ‘AtlasShrugged' has had a significant effect on their business decisions,even if they don't agree with all of Ayn Rand's ideas,” said John A.Allison, the chief executive of BB&T, one of the largest banks inthe United States.
“It offers something other books don't: theprinciples that apply to business and to life in general. I would callit complete,” he said.
One of Rand's most famous devotees isAlan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, whosememoir, “The Age of Turbulence,” will be officially released Monday.
Mr.Greenspan met Rand when he was 25 and working as an economicforecaster. She was already renowned as the author of “TheFountainhead,” a novel about an architect true to his principles. Mr.Greenspan had married a member of Rand's inner circle, known as theCollective, that met every Saturday night in her New York apartment.Rand did not pay much attention to Mr. Greenspan until he beganpraising drafts of “Atlas,” which she read aloud to her disciples,according to Jeff Britting, the archivist of Ayn Rand's papers. He wasattracted, Mr. Britting said, to “her moral defense of capitalism.”
Rand'sfree-market philosophy was hard won. She was born in 1905 in Russia.Her life changed overnight when the Bolsheviks broke into her father'spharmacy and declared his livelihood the property of the state. Shefled the Soviet Union in 1926 and arrived later that year in Hollywood,where she peered through a gate at the set where the director Cecil B.DeMille was filming a silent movie, “King of Kings.”
He offeredher a ride to the set, then a job as an extra on the film and later aposition as a junior screenwriter. She sold several screenplays andintermittently wrote novels that were commercial failures, until 1943,when fans of “The Fountainhead” began a word-of-mouth campaign thathelped sales immensely.
Shortly after “Atlas Shrugged” waspublished in 1957, Mr. Greenspan wrote a letter to The New York Timesto counter a critic's comment that “the book was written out of hate.”Mr. Greenspan wrote: “ ‘Atlas Shrugged' is a celebration of life andhappiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviatingpurpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites whopersistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.”
Rand's magazine, The Objectivist, later published several essays by Mr. Greenspan, including one on the gold standard in 1966.
Randcalled “Atlas” a mystery, “not about the murder of man's body, butabout the murder — and rebirth — of man's spirit.” It begins in a timeof recession. To save the economy, the hero, John Galt, calls for astrike against government interference. Factories, farms and shops shutdown. Riots break out as food becomes scarce.
Rand said she “setout to show how desperately the world needs prime movers and howviciously it treats them” and to portray “what happens to a worldwithout them.”
The book was released to terrible reviews.Critics faulted its length, its philosophy and its literary ambitions.Both conservatives and liberals were unstinting in disparaging thebook; the right saw promotion of godlessness, and the left saw amessage of “greed is good.” Rand is said to have cried every day as thereviews came out.
Rand had a reputation for living for her owninterest. She is said to have seduced her most serious reader,Nathaniel Branden, when he was 24 or 25 and she was at least 50. Eachwas married to someone else. In fact, Mr. Britting confirmed, theycalled their spouses to a meeting at which the pair announced theirintention to make the mentor-protégé relationship a sexual one.
“Shewasn't a nice person, ” said Darla Moore, vice president of the privateinvestment firm Rainwater Inc. “But what a gift she's given us.”
Ms.Moore, a benefactor of the University of South Carolina, spoke of herdebt to Rand in 1998, when the business school at the university wasnamed in Ms. Moore's honor. “As a woman and a Southerner,” she said, “Ithrived on Rand's message that only quality work counted, not who youare.”
Rand's idea of “the virtue of selfishness,” Ms. Mooresaid, “is a harsh phrase for the Buddhist idea that you have to takecare of yourself.”
Some business leaders might be unsettled bythe idea that the only thing members of the leadership class have incommon is their success. James M. Kilts, who led turnarounds atGillette, Nabisco and Kraft, said he encountered “Atlas” at “a time incollege life when everybody was a nihilist, anti-establishment, and acollectivist.” He found her writing reassuring because it made successseem rational.
“Rand believed that there is right and wrong,” he said, “that excellence should be your goal.”
JohnP. Stack is one business executive who has taken Rand's ideas to heart.He was chief executive of Springfield Remanufacturing Company, aretooler of tractor engines in Springfield, Mo., when its parentcompany, International Harvester, divested itself of the firm in therecession of 1982, the year Rand died.
Having lost his solecustomer in a struggling Rust Belt city, Mr. Stack says, he took actionlike a hero out of “Atlas.” He created an “open book” company in whichemployees were transparently working in their own interest.
Mr.Stack says that he assigned every job a bottom line value and thatevery salary, including his own, was posted on a company ticker daily.Workplaces, he said, are notoriously undemocratic, emotionally chargedand political.
Mr. Stack says his free market replaced all thatwith rational behavior. A machinist knew exactly what his working hourcontributed to the bottom line, and therefore the cost of slacking off.This, Mr. Stack said, was a manifestation of the philosophy ofobjectivism in “Atlas”: people guided by reason and self-interest.
“Thereis something in your inner self that Rand draws out,” Mr. Stack said.“You want to be a hero, you want to be right, but by the same token youhave to question yourself, though you must not listen to interferencethrown at you by the distracters. The lawyers told me not to open thebooks and share equity.” He said he defied them. “ ‘Atlas' helped mepursue this idiot dream that became SRC.”
Mr. Stack said he was19 and working in a factory when a manager gave him a copy of the book.“It's the best business book I ever read,” he said. “I didn't do wellin school because I was a big dreamer. To get something that tells youto take your dreams seriously, that's an eye opener.”
Mr. Stacksaid he gave a copy to his son, Tim Stack, 25, who was so inspired thathe went to work for a railroad, just like the novel's heroine, DagnyTaggart.
Every year, 400,000 copies of Rand's novels are offeredfree to Advanced Placement high school programs. They are paid for bythe Ayn Rand Institute, whose director, Yaron Brook, said the missionwas “to keep Rand alive.”
Last year, bookstores sold 150,000copies of the book. It continues to hold appeal, even to a youngergeneration. Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, who was bornin 1958, and John P. Mackey, the chief executive of Whole Foods, whowas 3 when the book was published, have said they consider Rand crucialto their success.
The book's hero, John Galt, also continues tolive on. The subcontractor hired to demolish the former Deutsche Bankbuilding, which was damaged when the World Trade Center towers fell,was the John Galt Corporation. It was removed from the job last monthafter a fire at the building killed two firefighters.
InChicago, there is John Galt Solutions, a producer of software forsupply chain companies like Tastykake. The founder and chief executiveof the company, Annemarie Omrod, said she considered the character aninspiration.
“We were reading the book,” she said, when sheand Kai Trepte were thinking of starting the company. “For us, the booksymbolized the importance of growing yourself and bettering yourselfwithout hindering other people. John Galt took all the great minds andstarted a new society.
“Some of our customers don't know thename, though after they meet us, they want to read the book,” she wenton. “Our sales reps have a problem, however. New clients usually ask:‘Hey, where is John Galt? How come I'm not important enough to rate avisit from John Galt?' ”
In Ayn Rand, CEO's Find Defense of Success
Ayn Rand's Literature of Capitalism
By HARRIET RUBIN
Oneof the most influential business books ever written is a 1,200-pagenovel published 50 years ago, on Oct. 12, 1957. It is still drawingreaders; it ranks 388th on Amazon.com's best-seller list. (“Winning,”by John F. Welch Jr., at a breezy 384 pages, is No. 1,431.)
The book is “Atlas Shrugged,” Ayn Rand's glorification of the right of individuals to live entirely for their own interest.
Foryears, Rand's message was attacked by intellectuals whom her circlelabeled “do-gooders,” who argued that individuals should also work inthe service of others. Her book was dismissed as an homage to greed.Gore Vidal described its philosophy as “nearly perfect in itsimmorality.”
But the book attracted a coterie of fans, some ofthem top corporate executives, who dared not speak of its impact exceptin private. When they read the book, often as college students, theynow say, it gave form and substance to their inchoate thoughts, showingthere is no conflict between private ambition and public benefit.
“Iknow from talking to a lot of Fortune 500 C.E.O.'s that ‘AtlasShrugged' has had a significant effect on their business decisions,even if they don't agree with all of Ayn Rand's ideas,” said John A.Allison, the chief executive of BB&T, one of the largest banks inthe United States.
“It offers something other books don't: theprinciples that apply to business and to life in general. I would callit complete,” he said.
One of Rand's most famous devotees isAlan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, whosememoir, “The Age of Turbulence,” will be officially released Monday.
Mr.Greenspan met Rand when he was 25 and working as an economicforecaster. She was already renowned as the author of “TheFountainhead,” a novel about an architect true to his principles. Mr.Greenspan had married a member of Rand's inner circle, known as theCollective, that met every Saturday night in her New York apartment.Rand did not pay much attention to Mr. Greenspan until he beganpraising drafts of “Atlas,” which she read aloud to her disciples,according to Jeff Britting, the archivist of Ayn Rand's papers. He wasattracted, Mr. Britting said, to “her moral defense of capitalism.”
Rand'sfree-market philosophy was hard won. She was born in 1905 in Russia.Her life changed overnight when the Bolsheviks broke into her father'spharmacy and declared his livelihood the property of the state. Shefled the Soviet Union in 1926 and arrived later that year in Hollywood,where she peered through a gate at the set where the director Cecil B.DeMille was filming a silent movie, “King of Kings.”
He offeredher a ride to the set, then a job as an extra on the film and later aposition as a junior screenwriter. She sold several screenplays andintermittently wrote novels that were commercial failures, until 1943,when fans of “The Fountainhead” began a word-of-mouth campaign thathelped sales immensely.
Shortly after “Atlas Shrugged” waspublished in 1957, Mr. Greenspan wrote a letter to The New York Timesto counter a critic's comment that “the book was written out of hate.”Mr. Greenspan wrote: “ ‘Atlas Shrugged' is a celebration of life andhappiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviatingpurpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites whopersistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.”
Rand's magazine, The Objectivist, later published several essays by Mr. Greenspan, including one on the gold standard in 1966.
Randcalled “Atlas” a mystery, “not about the murder of man's body, butabout the murder — and rebirth — of man's spirit.” It begins in a timeof recession. To save the economy, the hero, John Galt, calls for astrike against government interference. Factories, farms and shops shutdown. Riots break out as food becomes scarce.
Rand said she “setout to show how desperately the world needs prime movers and howviciously it treats them” and to portray “what happens to a worldwithout them.”
The book was released to terrible reviews.Critics faulted its length, its philosophy and its literary ambitions.Both conservatives and liberals were unstinting in disparaging thebook; the right saw promotion of godlessness, and the left saw amessage of “greed is good.” Rand is said to have cried every day as thereviews came out.
Rand had a reputation for living for her owninterest. She is said to have seduced her most serious reader,Nathaniel Branden, when he was 24 or 25 and she was at least 50. Eachwas married to someone else. In fact, Mr. Britting confirmed, theycalled their spouses to a meeting at which the pair announced theirintention to make the mentor-protégé relationship a sexual one.
“Shewasn't a nice person, ” said Darla Moore, vice president of the privateinvestment firm Rainwater Inc. “But what a gift she's given us.”
Ms.Moore, a benefactor of the University of South Carolina, spoke of herdebt to Rand in 1998, when the business school at the university wasnamed in Ms. Moore's honor. “As a woman and a Southerner,” she said, “Ithrived on Rand's message that only quality work counted, not who youare.”
Rand's idea of “the virtue of selfishness,” Ms. Mooresaid, “is a harsh phrase for the Buddhist idea that you have to takecare of yourself.”
Some business leaders might be unsettled bythe idea that the only thing members of the leadership class have incommon is their success. James M. Kilts, who led turnarounds atGillette, Nabisco and Kraft, said he encountered “Atlas” at “a time incollege life when everybody was a nihilist, anti-establishment, and acollectivist.” He found her writing reassuring because it made successseem rational.
“Rand believed that there is right and wrong,” he said, “that excellence should be your goal.”
JohnP. Stack is one business executive who has taken Rand's ideas to heart.He was chief executive of Springfield Remanufacturing Company, aretooler of tractor engines in Springfield, Mo., when its parentcompany, International Harvester, divested itself of the firm in therecession of 1982, the year Rand died.
Having lost his solecustomer in a struggling Rust Belt city, Mr. Stack says, he took actionlike a hero out of “Atlas.” He created an “open book” company in whichemployees were transparently working in their own interest.
Mr.Stack says that he assigned every job a bottom line value and thatevery salary, including his own, was posted on a company ticker daily.Workplaces, he said, are notoriously undemocratic, emotionally chargedand political.
Mr. Stack says his free market replaced all thatwith rational behavior. A machinist knew exactly what his working hourcontributed to the bottom line, and therefore the cost of slacking off.This, Mr. Stack said, was a manifestation of the philosophy ofobjectivism in “Atlas”: people guided by reason and self-interest.
“Thereis something in your inner self that Rand draws out,” Mr. Stack said.“You want to be a hero, you want to be right, but by the same token youhave to question yourself, though you must not listen to interferencethrown at you by the distracters. The lawyers told me not to open thebooks and share equity.” He said he defied them. “ ‘Atlas' helped mepursue this idiot dream that became SRC.”
Mr. Stack said he was19 and working in a factory when a manager gave him a copy of the book.“It's the best business book I ever read,” he said. “I didn't do wellin school because I was a big dreamer. To get something that tells youto take your dreams seriously, that's an eye opener.”
Mr. Stacksaid he gave a copy to his son, Tim Stack, 25, who was so inspired thathe went to work for a railroad, just like the novel's heroine, DagnyTaggart.
Every year, 400,000 copies of Rand's novels are offeredfree to Advanced Placement high school programs. They are paid for bythe Ayn Rand Institute, whose director, Yaron Brook, said the missionwas “to keep Rand alive.”
Last year, bookstores sold 150,000copies of the book. It continues to hold appeal, even to a youngergeneration. Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, who was bornin 1958, and John P. Mackey, the chief executive of Whole Foods, whowas 3 when the book was published, have said they consider Rand crucialto their success.
The book's hero, John Galt, also continues tolive on. The subcontractor hired to demolish the former Deutsche Bankbuilding, which was damaged when the World Trade Center towers fell,was the John Galt Corporation. It was removed from the job last monthafter a fire at the building killed two firefighters.
InChicago, there is John Galt Solutions, a producer of software forsupply chain companies like Tastykake. The founder and chief executiveof the company, Annemarie Omrod, said she considered the character aninspiration.
“We were reading the book,” she said, when sheand Kai Trepte were thinking of starting the company. “For us, the booksymbolized the importance of growing yourself and bettering yourselfwithout hindering other people. John Galt took all the great minds andstarted a new society.
“Some of our customers don't know thename, though after they meet us, they want to read the book,” she wenton. “Our sales reps have a problem, however. New clients usually ask:‘Hey, where is John Galt? How come I'm not important enough to rate avisit from John Galt?' ”
In Ayn Rand, CEO's Find Defense of Success
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