Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (21 page)

Rand was keenly aware that Lane’s book reviews could affect her reputation. In late 1945 she initiated their correspondence, writing to thank Lane for a favorable mention of
The Fountainhead
in the
NEC Review of Books
. Rand’s first letter was polite and even flattering. She acknowledged Lane as an intellectual equal, telling her, “[I]t is such a rare treat to read intelligent book reviewing for a change.” The next year Rand sent Lane her “Textbook of Americanism” and in a letter responded favorably to some of the corrections Lane suggested.
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As she had with Paterson, Rand tested out her developing theories on Lane, particularly her definition of rights. Lane was interested in Rand’s
theory of natural rights because she was “not certain, myself, of the basis of the definition of rights. Is a ‘right’ a thing, a fact, existing unalterably in the essential nature of the four dimensional world?” If rights were not a fact akin to an electron, then they must be moral or spiritual, she wrote. But then how could they survive in the physical world, given that “anyone can kill anyone else quite easily”? What she sought was a basis for rights “that doesn’t have in it what seems to me the fallacy of dualism.” Rand’s theory of rights, or at least the brief exposition she had read in “Textbook” and Rand’s earlier letters, did not seem to solve the problem. On the other hand, Lane was primarily enjoying the exploration of ideas rather than being set on finding a solution. As she admitted, “I’m only a fumbler, trying to think.”
⁵⁵
Rand’s ideas were for her provocative, but not complete. There were enough areas of agreement between the two, however, to keep the correspondence productive. In the early stages it was enough that both women agreed individual rights must be clearly and explicitly defended.

Before long, more serious disagreements emerged as Rand’s individualism clashed with Lane’s holistic view of the world. Commenting on one of Lane’s book reviews, Rand criticized Lane’s invocation of “love thy neighbor as thyself,” and her discussion of mutual effort. She warned Lane that both could be construed as supporting collectivism. This touched off a lengthy discussion about individualism, collectivism, and cooperation. Lane felt it would be “natural human action” to help others, citing the example of a neighbor’s house catching fire. She asked Rand, “isn’t there a vital distinction between cooperation and collectivism? It seems to me that the essential basis of cooperation is individualism. . . . I think that it is literally impossible for one person on this planet to survive.”
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In her reply Rand emphasized that although human beings might choose to help one another, they should never be obligated to do so, and certainly they should never help another person to their own detriment. To argue that human beings should help others in need was “the base of the New Deal pattern of declaring one emergency after another.” She tore apart Lane’s logic, posing hypothetical situations in which it would be moral to not help a neighbor (if one’s own house was on fire, for example). Aside from logic, Rand’s response to Lane drew upon her own stark understanding of the world. She told Lane, “each man’s fate is essentially his own.”
⁵⁷

Lane was unconvinced. Calmly she told Rand, “you have perhaps shown me that I am a collectivist.” But she simply couldn’t believe that all human action should be or was motivated by self-interest. If that was the case, Lane asked, why did she herself oppose Social Security? Lane opposed Social Security because she thought it was bad for society as a whole, “which I can’t deny is a do-good purpose.” But opposing Social Security on “do-good” rather than self-interested grounds was not, Lane thought, inappropriate. Lane also rejected Rand’s atomistic view of the world, recalling her frontier childhood to illustrate human interdependence. She described a typhoid epidemic in her small prairie town: “People ‘helped each other out,’ that was all. . . . It was just what people did, of course. So far as there was any idea in it at all, it was that when you were sick, if you ever were, the others would take care of you. It was ‘common neighborliness.’ . . . The abnormal, that I would have thought about, would have been its not being there.” She concluded, “There IS a sense of ‘owing’ in it, of mutuality, mutual obligation of persons to persons as persons.”
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Lane saw charity arising naturally from human societies. What bothered her was the coercion involved in government programs like Social Security, not the underlying moral principles they reflected. But it was just these underlying moral principles that Rand opposed.

As she wrote to Lane, Rand groped toward an explanation of how and why they differed. Both women agreed they were operating from different assumptions. Rand told her, “that is why I intend to write a book someday, stating my case from basic premises on.”
⁵⁹
Through their letters it became clear that Rand and Lane did not share the same understanding of human nature on either an individual or a social level. But these differences lay under the surface, for Rand had not yet explicitly formulated her moral and political philosophy. For instance, Rand told Lane, “now of course I don’t believe that there is
any
‘natural’ or instinctive human action. (I won’t try to state my reasons here—that would have to be a treatise on the nature of man.)” This was a belief that Paterson shared but Lane did not. Presented without benefit of the treatise she hoped someday to write, Rand’s ideas came across to Lane as assertions of dubious validity. Even Rand recognized this, acknowledging that her letters to Lane were a poor vehicle for communicating her complete philosophy. She asked Lane, “Do you know what I’ve written
to you here? It’s the theme of my next novel. This is only a brief, partial statement—the subject is extremely complex. If I haven’t stated it clearly enough—you’ll see me do better when I present it completely in the novel.”
⁶⁰

As Rand’s letter indicated, she had decided to forgo “The Moral Basis of Individualism” and turned instead to the book that would become
Atlas Shrugged
. The transition point came in the spring of 1946, when Rand clashed with Wallis over his decision to sell her atom bomb project to another studio. Frustrated that all her work had gone for naught, Rand convinced Wallis to give her an entire year off to get started on her novel. In long walks around the ranch property she began plotting the book’s structure and imagining the major characters. By August she had a complete outline. In September she began writing.

Rand’s creation of an imaginary world was interrupted by unhappy news from the country she had left behind. For eight years, since the Rosenbaums’ American visa was denied, Rand had not communicated with her family. With the end of the war she hoped to reestablish contact, and asked a friend in New York to help her send two packages of food and supplies to her sisters in Leningrad. No sooner had Rand mailed off her request than she received a letter from Marie Strachnov, a close family friend and Rand’s first English teacher. Trapped in a displaced persons camp in Austria, Strachnov had no news of Natasha or Nora, but reported that Rand’s parents had died years before, of natural causes. Sorrowfully Rand told her, “you are now my only link to the past.” She was adamant that Strachnov come to America, assuring her she would pay all costs and support her upon arrival. When Strachnov did finally make it to California, in large part due to Rand’s indefatigable efforts on her behalf, she lodged with the O’Connors for nearly a year.
⁶¹

The news from Russia fortified Rand’s anti-Communism. She continued her work for the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, authoring another article for
The Vigil
. This time she avoided political theory and instead concentrated on practical measures Hollywood studios could take to root out Communist influence. Her “Screen Guide for Americans,” which would later be reprinted in the conservative magazine
Plain Talk
, nonetheless encapsulated much of her political thinking. In the guide Rand portrayed Hollywood Communists as veritable Ellsworth Tooheys, carefully smuggling “small casual bits of
propaganda into innocent stories.” Eventually these bits “will act like the drops of water that split a rock if continued long enough. The rock they are trying to split is Americanism.”
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To resist, movie producers and writers must understand that politics flowed from moral premises, Rand wrote. After this assertion, however, she backed away from sweeping statements, keeping most of her suggestions specific and practical. She opposed any formal movie code but listed thirteen ways to keep movies free of Communist undertones. Rand told moviemakers to avoid smearing the free enterprise system, industrialists, wealth, or the profit motive. They should celebrate success and avoid glorifying failure or the common man. Movies should also be careful about using current events or criticizing American political institutions.

Rand’s “Screen Guide” caught the eye of a congressional committee, the House Un-American Activities Commission (HUAC), which was investigating Communist penetration of the movie industry. The committee had begun sniffing out Communists in 1938, and its activities picked up steam in the postwar years, eventually resulting in the celebrated confrontation between the former Communist Whittaker Chambers and the accused spy Alger Hiss that riveted the nation. In 1947, one year before the Hiss case broke, HUAC was just starting its first high-profile investigation, a probe into the political associations of famous actors, directors, and screenwriters.

Rand was eager to help. At HUAC’s request she arranged her next trip east so that she could stop in Washington to appear as a friendly witness. Unlike most witnesses who were subpoenaed to testify about their past Communist associations, Rand took the stand willingly. After a few perfunctory remarks about her background, she launched into an attack on
Song of Russia
, a syrupy romance filmed at the height of America’s wartime alliance with the Soviet Union. Her testimony gained notoriety when she told the committee that the movie was propaganda because it showed too many Russians smiling. “Doesn’t anybody smile in Russia anymore?” a congressman queried. “Well, if you ask me literally, pretty much no,” Rand responded, drawing laughter from the audience.
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What is most striking about the testimony, however, is how slow Rand was to understand that
Song of Russia
was not Communist propaganda, but American propaganda about a wartime ally. When Georgia Representative John Stevens Boyd questioned her about this, Rand
seemed confused, asking, “What relation could a lie about Russia have with the war effort?” Later she asserted, “I don’t believe the American people should ever be told any lies, publicly or privately. . . . Why weren’t the American people told the real reasons and told that Russia is a dictatorship but there are reasons why we should cooperate with them to destroy Hitler and other dictators?”
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She had a real point to make about honesty in politics, but because she failed to appreciate the wartime context of
Song of Russia
, her testimony did little to support the inquiry into Communist subversion of American movies. Nor was the committee interested in hearing Rand’s take on
The Best Years of Our Lives
, declining to ask her to testify a second day.

In retrospect Rand had mixed feelings about her appearance. She worried about the morality of government inquiries into Americans’ political beliefs, assuring herself in private notes that the investigation was warranted because the committee was inquiring into the
fact
of Communist Party membership, not the belief in Communist ideals. That fellow travelers or Communist sympathizers would be swept up into the dragnet did not worry her. What bothered her was the ineffectiveness of the whole event, which seemed little more than a charade to get Congress off Hollywood’s back. Later Rand became convinced that the hearings had triggered a reverse blacklist against the friendly witnesses. After HUAC’s investigation many of her conservative friends, including Albert Mannheimer, had great difficulty finding work in the industry.
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Following her appearance in Washington Ayn and Frank continued on to New York, where she had scheduled a full gamut of literary activities. Chief among her goals was research for
Atlas Shrugged
. As the story developed Rand determined that railroads and steel, pillars of the modern industrial economy, would lie at the center of her story. As in
The Fountainhead
, she conducted painstaking research to make her story accurate. Her primary contact was with the New York Central Railroad. She grilled the vice president of operations, took a guided tour of Grand Central and its underground track systems, and visited a construction site in upstate New York. The highlight of her visit was a ride to Albany, where she was permitted to ride in the cab of the train’s engine, an occasion that prompted the normally reticent Frank to declare, “You’re marvelous!” In an effusive letter to Paterson, Rand described how the
engineer even let her drive the train for a brief moment, to the surprise of observers along the track. When she disembarked, Frank continued to marvel, telling her, “You do such exciting things!”
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In Chicago she had another series of appointments with executives at Kaiser Steel and toured one of the company’s giant mills.

Rand’s visit to New York also reinvigorated her connection to Paterson, which had seen its share of ups and downs. At first their rich friendship appeared to easily weather Rand’s move to California. In New York their relationship was defined by long abstract conversations, often stretching into the early morning. When Rand relocated, they easily translated these conversations onto paper, sending each other lengthy letters and carrying on extended debates about intellectual matters. Paterson updated Rand on the comings and goings of New York libertarians, telling of her meetings with Herbert Hoover and DuPont executive Jasper Crane. The letters were also warm, with Paterson consoling Rand over publishing troubles, advising her on how to relate to the wives of her male friends, and praising her fashion choices. Paterson adopted a motherly role toward Rand. She was particularly concerned about Rand’s continued use of Benzedrine to fuel her late-night conversations and lengthy writing days. “Stop taking that Benzedrine, you idiot,” she told her. “I don’t care what excuse you have—stop it.”
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Still enjoying the new creative capacity the stimulants engendered, Rand brushed off Paterson’s hints that Benzedrine could become a dangerous habit.