Nietzsche not nurture in the land of Ayn Rand
The horror maestro Stephen King once described Dan Brown's bestsellers as 'the literary equivalent of Kraft's macaroni and cheese'. Many people would agree, though that didn't stop them from staying up all night to finish The Da Vinci Code. The same may be said about Ayn Rand. Her philosophy is derivative, her moral ideas callous and crass, but still, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are mighty good reads.
In America today, an increasing number of business leaders, pundits and politicians find solace in Rand as they work against, or at least react to, a president whom many believe to be a socialist, or worse. The hard right may be anti-intellectual, anti-science and increasingly fundamentalist, yet it has always had a core constituency of intellectuals with a philosopher posted as a godfather/mother. For example, the neoconservatives, whose members populated the first George W. Bush administration, are said to be inspired by the philosopher Leo Strauss.
One might think Rand should have gone into eclipse, given that the greed and egoism - qualities she praises - of Wall Street helped cause the near collapse of the world economy. Alan Greenspan, once idolised but now branded 'a serial bubble blower' for helping to create the housing and credit bubbles, was a student and close friend of Rand.
His Randian beliefs no doubt contributed to his actions as head of the US Federal Reserve. Rand's advocacy of unfettered capitalism is but a more general statement of Greenspan's belief in deregulation and market self-discipline. Yet, far from being discredited, Rand is enjoying a resurgence across the US - but nowhere else - because of the ethos of her philosophy. She helps crystallise some core beliefs that animate the hard right, which may otherwise be incomprehensible to people outside the US.
Like the brilliant and uncompromising architect Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, many entrepreneurs, especially in America, like to think of themselves as outsiders who succeed against all odds. Most believe they create true value in their work, just as it was famously declared in Atlas Shrugged that the only true measure of human value is how well you do your work.
Since the work you have chosen is all important, you must, on Rand's theory, be devoted to it with all your heart, even at the expense of other people. The supermen - the entrepreneurs, innovators and capitalists - create value and produce the good things in life for others to enjoy, and their only reward is profit. Your income or wealth, therefore, becomes a measure of your success and worth as a human being.