The Unmasking of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged

I was first introduced to Ayn Rand in 1985 by a fellow customer at a pizza place in Evanston, Illinois. Seated across from each other, we randomly began talking about some of our favorite books. It’s here where she began sharing with me about Ayn Rand, an author she deeply admired.

Problem is, I’d never heard of Rand. So I kind of played along as she took me on a lengthy soliloquy of Rand’s works. Then came the magical words from her mouth

Are you aware of Ayn Rand?

Being that I considered myself the pre-eminent black intellectual at the time (at least in my 20-year-old head) and the fact that she was smoking hot, I decided that I needed to fudge my way through a response. So with an air of haughty sophistication I leaned back in the booth I was seated in and blurted out:

Yes, I am quite familiar with “HIS” work? 

At this point, I experienced the full brunt of her feminist ire. I’ll leave it at that in terms of her exact words.

The good news is that nearly 20 years later, emboldened by the memory of that experience, I rediscovered Rand by way of a letter I received back from none other than Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Being that Justice Thomas is a long-standing fan of Rand, particularly her highly acclaimed book The Fountainhead, I immediately took a dive into many of her works. Needless to say, they have had a profound impact on my life. 

Recently I stumbled upon a book entitled “So Who Is John Galt, Anyway?: A Reader's Guide to Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" which is in my view one of the best guides to the literary, historical, and philosophical significance of Rand’s magnum opus Atlas Shrugged. It offers a wealth of insights for both those who are new to the novel as well as longtime fans. 

Upon completing the book I reached out to the author Robert Tracinski who kindly agreed to share a few thoughts about his journey in unmasking Atlas Shrugged and the legacy of Ayn Rand. Here’s what he shared with me for this “Great Books, Great Minds” feature interview.  

Tell us a little about you and your life journey

My wife and I reside in a tiny Virginia town out in the middle of nowhere. Charlottesville being is the only town of any appreciable size nearby. We moved here because my wife attended graduate school at the University of Virginia. She’s an architect who went back to school to study architectural history.  At some point, she wants to pursue a project focusing on the real architectural history behind The Fountainhead, specifically the real events and how Ayn Rand drew from that in terms of fictionalizing them.

How Did You First Discover Ayn Rand? 

My journey to discovering Ayn Rand and her work is an interesting one because I actually began by arguing against her philosophies. I have a friend in high school and college (he’s still a friend) who has been teaching in China for many years. While in high school he discovered and read The Fountainhead. And while I found some of it intriguing, I began arguing against Ayn Rand’s ideas with him. At a certain point, I sort of exhausted his ability to argue before realizing that there was something more there. 

What were your intellectual interests at that time? 

I actually wanted to become an academic philosopher. Here I was at 17 years old with an aim in life to study philosophy. So when I began taking Rand’s work very seriously I thought to myself, ‘well, I think I really need to understand this in order to refute it.’ So I read Atlas Shrugged before moving on to The Introduction To Objectivist Epistemology, which is her most technical, philosophical work. 

Why that latter book? 

Because I wanted to understand Rand’s ideas so that I could find out what might be wrong with them and refute them. But of course, the more I got into it and understood what her actual arguments were,  I realized that they couldn’t be refuted. So that kind of set me on a new path.

So as dove headfirst into Atlas Shrugged and some of the other works of Rand, what began running through your head? 

I remember when I first started reading Atlas Shrugged, I got about 200 pages in and thought it was very very gripping and well written. But I remember thinking that the world she described doesn’t work the way she thinks it does. Then there was this period of a couple of months where I’d be watching the news or reading a newspaper and think ‘that’s just like something out of Atlas Shrugged.’ At that point, I began to be convinced that maybe the world does actually work like that, more than I would have ever realized. 

You finished the novel and then...

That’s when I was prompted to go straight into the most technical, philosophical part of it.  Because in my mind it was important for me to understand the very foundation of what she was doing. 

What did you discover? 

There is one chapter in the Introduction To Objectivist Epistemology called “Axiomatic Concepts” that really dives into the basic metaphysical foundation of Rand’s work. At that point, it sort of all clicked as to what she was saying. After that, it was just a matter of reading the rest and absorbing her ideas on all of the other aspects of philosophy. 

I’m curious as to whether you have read all of Ayn Rand’s books? 

I think I have read about all there is to read. She has four novels and a smattering of other nonfiction as well as fiction that has been published piecemeal over the years like short stories and things like that. So I’ve read the four main novels and then there are a series of anthologies I’ve taken in as well. 

What sort of insights did you walk away with from all of this reading? 

She is unusual as a philosopher in that a lot of her philosophical ideas, some very deep and profound, others highly technical and epistemological, ensued from a series of articles that she wrote commenting on the politics of the day. 

Can you elaborate a bit more on this point? 

I recall a point that she made about epistemology that came out as a part of an article analyzing the 1964 Republican National Convention. So here you have George Romney and Ronald Reagan and their factions duking it out. Romney was the liberal Republican and Reagan was arguably the more radical one at the time. In assessing this conflict, Rand began to articulate her views about epistemology, the philosophical study of the nature of knowledge. It’s interesting how much of her philosophy comes out of her not necessarily writing an abstract technical philosophic treatise. 

What about her anthologies? Have you studied those?

Yes. Here anthologies essentially tie back to all of the articles she wrote where she lays out the different steps of her philosophy. So I’ve gone through all of that as well as a bunch of the newsletters she wrote at the time.

Outside of her books, what were some of the other methods she used to communicate her ideas? 

Well, I will say this — If Substack had been around in 1962, she would have a Substack page. Of course, that was back in the day when we printed things and sent them through the mail. Rand did a series of newsletters where she would lay out a series of articles on different aspects of her philosophy, sometimes in response to reader questions, sometimes in response to news events. 

It sounds like you’ve made quite a study of her secondary work? 

Yes, I’ve poured through quite a bit of her work. And I’m sure there is something that I’ve probably missed here and there. But not very much. I’ve been pretty thorough. 

You wanted to be an academic philosopher at one point. Tell us about that. 

Yes, that’s true. But I eventually decided that that’s not what I wanted to do. Instead, I kinda followed Rand’s lead in embracing a fascination with how philosophy plays out in the events of the day, and in the political and cultural war debates that emerge over time. 

What is the biggest way that Rand has impacted your journey? 

She has helped me break down life into various philosophical components while examining the basic premises and ideas that people are relying on amidst the knock-down, drag-down debates that we find ourselves enmeshed in these days. I’ve learned from her how to apply philosophy and the insights of philosophy to all of that. In fact, that’s one of the main things that I’m doing right now through my Substack publication called Symposium

Tell us more about Symposium?

For me, it’s an attempt to bring political liberals of different stripes together. A liberal, that is, in the broadest philosophical sense meaning an advocate of a free society.  In other words, bringing these free society advocates together for discussions that are boiled down to basic principles. We can then define, understand, and debate what those basic philosophical principles are along with examining what it means to defend a free society in terms of what that requires. 

Going back to Rand, what do you believe are some of the prevailing misconceptions about her work? 

She is, I think, a very misunderstood author for one main reason, and that is Rand did not accept categories. I discuss this in my book as sort of a running theme that addresses these misconceptions 

Can you elaborate a bit more on what you mean by this?

Today, as you know, political and cultural war debates can become very heated. Oftentimes there are situations where people fall on two opposing sides to where we feel as though we have to fall on one side or the other. Rand identified this and argued that this was nothing more than a false alternative. The big one we hear these days is left versus right. And then there are those who claim to be in the middle. 

What about those claiming to moderate, those in the center? 

Rand hated the center.  She said that if the center is a compromise between fascism and communism then that’s what are we going to end up with. I think she would have approved of what Ronald Reagan said in his 1964 “Time For Choosing” speech that launched him on the national political spectrum. He asserted that the issue isn't between left versus right but rather it’s up versus down. In other words, it’s either a maximum amount of freedom or a move down to totalitarianism. 

Have people tried to place Ayn Rand in categories over the years? Like right-leaning? 

People have all sorts of categories in their heads, false alternatives that they think are true alternatives that one needs to have. They try to make you fit into those. Many have tried to say that Ayn Rand is against the welfare state therefore she hates the poor. That kind of thing. And then there are the conservatives who have a long-standing issue with Rand because she’s an atheist and rejects religion. So they say if Rand rejects religion that she must, therefore, be for subjectivism, sort of an anything-goes morality. Whereas what Rand did is promote a secular basis for morality. 

So at the core, what was her philosophy? 

She called her philosophy objectivism which is essentially the opposite of subjectivism. But unfortunately, people keep trying to shove her into these categories, these assumptions about where she must stand based on their own existing categories. And the biggest one is the hardest for people to wrap their brains around, which is her critique of altruism. 

How exactly did she view altruism? 

Most people think of altruism as being synonymous with morality itself — that you have to sacrifice yourself for others. And that you have to be selfless. 

Rand comes out against this notion of having to sacrifice yourself to others or others having to sacrifice themselves to you. Unfortunately, there are those who believe that if you are against altruism, and if you are against self-sacrifice then you must be in favor of exploitation and taking advantage of other people, and being a predator. Essentially sort of a “Lone Wolf” mentality. But in challenging that approach, Rand is essentially bringing back the enlightenment tradition of rational self-interest. 

Rational self interest? Explain more 

It’s the idea that your purpose in life is to pursue your own growth and prosperity and your own well being and happiness. And that not only is this ok but what else are we going to expect people to do as living beings given that we want to live and prosper and enjoy our time here on this earth. Rand believes that we can achieve this without having to sacrifice ourselves to others or other people having to sacrifice themselves to us. 

So how can Rand’s predominant narratives better inform our thinking about the Covid pandemic and vaccines? 

I believe there are some major issues with the current messages being spun by our political leaders and the media, this whole notion of calling the anti-vaxxers selfish. The message we ought to be promoting is to take precautions because if it benefits you it will also benefit everyone else around you. In other words, if we all do something that is beneficial to ourselves, this will also be beneficial to the entire system and to society as a whole. 

Where in Rand’s works did she describe this view on selfishness 

For example, In The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand has the character Ellsworth Toohey who advocates for a system where everyone is sacrificing for the sake of the person next to them. As a result everyone suffers and no one enjoys anything. 

That’s an interesting way to look at this? 

It is. That's the thing I think is fascinating because Ayn Rand as a philosopher is sharing lessons she learned from a world she was part of. She lived in Russia during the Soviet takeover and lived in the Soviet Union before moving to the United States. So she quickly made this theme a topic for one of her early novels, a book called “We The Living.” Over the years she then began espousing the view that rational self-interest actually leads to the benevolent and prosperous society that we want. 

What is your personal opinion about the pandemic shutdowns and restrictions that have seemingly been forced on so many? 

Some of the emergency powers or shutdowns that were advocated as part of the pandemic response I think are legitimate as temporary emergency measures. What’s important here is that you have to look at things and remember “this is only a temporary emergency and that the priority needs to be about how do we make the emergency end as soon as possible so we can go back to normal life.

But how do you respond to those who assert that these very shutdowns and restrictions are an affront to their ability to live freely? 

I think there are a couple of things to consider here. For starters, there are those who I believe are going to experience a withdrawal when the pandemic has ended because they will no longer have an excuse to be busybodies, telling everyone else what to do. At the same time, I also see many on the conservative right who don’t want anyone telling them what to do, They often make liberty issues out of things that are not necessarily matters of political liberty because they are treating temporary measures or temporary requirements of the pandemic as if they were permanent, as if they were a normal part of life. 

Tell us more about your thoughts here. 

I think it's fine to say that it’s not a liberty issue if you’re told that you have to wear a mask indoors. It’s such a minor infringement so long as it’s a temporary reaction to a situation that can be shown scientifically by the facts of the spread of the virus and the levels of the virus in your area. It’s about recognizing that this is a temporary situation that will in all likelihood have an endpoint. I think that’s the main thing, this idea of recognizing that emergencies exist but that they are not the basis for moral principles that you build your society on. 

In the aftermath of the death of George Floyd and the racial justice protests that happened across the U.S. in 2020 can you offer some perspective on what Rand’s views might have been about race? 

It’s interesting that she doesn’t actually spend a lot of time on race, which obviously was a major political issue during her time. Like every intellectual she had issues that she did and did not focus on. In Rand’s case, she was more focused on collectivism, the Cold War, and the conflicts of capitalism versus socialism. 

But she did, however, write an article on racism as such that talked about race as being a form of collectivism — the idea that someone is collectivized by their membership in an ethnic group, their skin color, or whatever. She actually described it as a crude barnyard version of collectivism where the crudest physical characteristics of some were taken as the basis for differentiating people into totally radically opposite, separate groups. 

In terms of race in America, what do you personally see as the path forward? 

I think that the tragedy of the George Floyd incident from my perspective is that there has been a slow response to the legitimate need for police reforms to prevent abusive police power. A saying that I believe was attributed to George Washington that is in keeping with Ayn Rand’s views is that “government like fire is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” Sure we need is a government that protects us from criminals. But in order to truly achieve this, we have to retrain the government as well and prevent it from getting out of control. So there is a need for reform on both sides of this equation. 

So what is your greatest hope in terms of what readers walk away from your book with?

I sort of wrote “So Who Is John Galt, Anyway?: A Reader's Guide to Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" in a way that hopefully will be intelligible to the new reader of Atlas Shrugged. I, in fact, have a little warning at the beginning because I talk about things that are sort of spoilers throughout the book. The first chapter is a little sales pitch basically sharing about why all of this is interesting, where I recommend that people read Atlas Shrugged and then come back to the book I wrote. I try to make it so that a first-time reader can get plenty of valuable things out of it. As well, people who have been reading Atlas Shrugged for years can also get some new insights from my book.