The Vindication of Ayn Rand

The Autonomist ^ | 03/11/05 | Cass Hewitt

[Hank Kerchief]

The Vindication of Ayn Rand

A review of James S. Valliant’s The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics: The Case Against the Brandens

by Cass Hewitt

Who would have thought that within the seemingly sedate and cerebral world of philosophy would be found a history to rival any Hollywood drama for intrigue, passion, seduction, lies, betrayal, black evil, and the ultimate triumph of the good—and which is also a fascinating detective story.

Among those who rose to heights of fame in the last half of the twentieth century none was as charismatic as the author-philosopher Ayn Rand. Her electrifying, radical novels depicting her fully integrated philosophy, which she named Objectivism, broke on popular consciousness like a storm and caught the enthusiasm of a generation seeking truth and values in the aridity of postmodernism. She was a sought after speaker, her public lectures filled to standing room only. She was interviewed on Prime Time television and for high circulation magazines.

She taught a philosophy of individualism in the face of rising collectivism; an ethic of adherence to reality and honesty; of objective truth against the subjectivist antirealism of the Counter Enlightenment philosophies and presented the world with a blue-print for day to day living.

On the coat tails of her fame were two young students who sought her out, convinced her their passion for her ideas was genuine and became associated with her professionally, intellectually, and ultimately personally. They were Nathaniel Branden, now a noted “self-esteem” psychology guru, and his then wife, Barbara Branden.

Not only did Branden, 25 years Rand’s junior, become her favored student, he was so professionally close to her that he gave Objectivist lectures with her, edited and wrote for the “Objectivist Newsletter”, and formed a teaching venue, the Nathaniel Branden Institute, to teach details of her philosophy to the army of readers of her novels hungry for more. Rand dedicated her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged to him (along with her husband), and named Branden her intellectual heir.

Then suddenly, in 1968, Rand issued a statement which repudiated both the Brandens, totally divorcing them from herself and her philosophy. In “To whom it may Concern,” [The Objectivist, May 1968] Rand gave her explanation for the break detailing Brandens departure from practice of the philosophy.

However, in 1989, 7 years after Rand’s death, Nathaniel Branden published his book Judgment Day, a supposedly detailed biography of his famous philosopher-mentor. In it he painted a picture of a woman very different from that recognized by her army of admirers —a dark, “repressed“, angry woman who tortured and pilloried anyone who remotely disagreed with her, with no patience for any views not exactly her own, with an almost pathological arrogance and dictatorial tyranny.

Barbara Branden published her own “warts and all” version of her reminiscences earlier, in 1986. The Passion of Ayn Rand (later made into a movie) presented a similar picture of Rand. Both categorically stated that the reason for the break between Rand and the Brandens was because Nathaniel and Rand had been involved in an extra-marital sexual relationship while still married for a period of 14 years and that Nathaniel’s refusal to continue the affair had reduced a tyrannical Rand to hysterics.

Rand is presented as a seriously psychologically disturbed individual whose very philosophy was not only flawed but dangerous. Both books and their authors have become accepted as the last and most reliable “word” on Ayn Rand, and most works describing Rand today mainly trace back to these two as sources.

However, in 2002 a prosecuting lawyer, James Valliant, published on the Internet the results of his examination of these two books. Studied with the critical eye of a dispassionate investigative mind he saw serious errors: major contradictions both within each book and between both. Apparent to him was that a major act of deliberate deception had been perpetrated by these two well known, highly respected adherents of Rand’s philosophy.

For a considerable time before the final split the Brandens had drifted away from Rand’s philosophy but it was much worse. They lied to her about themselves, the state of their marriage, their multiple sexual affairs, and Nathaniel Branden’s secret four year love affair with another woman while he was supposedly carrying on a sexual liaison with Rand herself . Worst of all, was the reason for the deception. The lies enabled them to use her name to promote their own early publications and the considerable income they were deriving from the “spin-offs“. Nathaniel Branden admits that he frequently “paced the floor” trying to work out how not to wreck the “life he had built up for himself” as Objectivism’s authorized representative. At his wife’s urging that he admit his secret affair to Rand he responded “not until after she writes the forward for my book."

As the author states, “the persistent dishonesty of the Brandens about their own part in Rand’s life makes it impossible to rely on them as historians of events for which they are the only witnesses.” He amply demonstrates, taking their own words from their critiques of Rand, to substantiate his conclusion that “they will recollect, suppress, revise, exaggerate and omit whenever convenient… [where] necessary they will pull out of their magical hats a very “private” conversation that one of them “once” had with Rand to prove what all the rest of the evidence denies.”

Their criticisms of Rand are personal and “psychological,” perfect examples of the psychologizing Rand denounced, attempting to demonstrate that Rand did not live up to her own philosophy. Barbara Branden makes total about face contradictions within a few pages; draws conclusions from nearly non-existent evidence such as a single old family photo and uses such alien to Objectivism concepts as “feminine instincts” and “subjective preferences” without the bother of defining these terms.

In her The Passion of Ayn Rand, Ms. Branden draws personal psychological conclusions without any evidence. Examples such as “Her Fathers’ seeming indifference ..{had} ..to be a source of anguish.. as an adult, she always spoke as if [they] were simple facts of reality, of no emotional significance.. one can only conclude that a process of self-protective emotional repression [was deep rooted]…” and further “In all my conversations with Ayn Rand about her years in Russia she never once mentioned to me [any] encounter ..with anti-Semitism. It is all but impossible that there were not such encounters.. One can only assume that ... the pain was blocked from her memory … perhaps because the memory would have carried with it an unacceptable feeling of humiliation” Assumptions, which Valliant says, prove nothing.

It is interesting to note that Ms. Branden was an ardent supporter of Rand until immediately after the break, when such wild accusations and psychologizing rationalizations cut from whole cloth began. Indeed, Ms. Branden can be read at public Internet forums doing the very same thing to this day.

Nathaniel Branden is even more revealing. His own words not only carry the same blatant unreal contradictions as Ms. Brandens’ but he also reveals a twisted mentality capable of totally unethical acts which he then tries to portray as his victim’s faults. For example, he accuses Rand of being authoritarian and “causing us to repress our true selves” and offers as evidence his own lying sycophancy, agreeing with Rand on issues he was later to claim he had always disagreed; praising Rand's insight in topics such as psychology in which field, he says, she had little experience. Considering that it was Rand's endorsement of him he was seeking, his behavior constitutes, as Valliant says, “spiritual embezzlement.”

The complete lack of value in anything either of the Branden’s have to say about Ayn Rand is summed up with pithy succinctness by the author: “We have seen [they] will distort and exaggerate the evidence, and that they have repeatedly suppressed vital evidence and [employ] creativity in recollecting it. Both exhibit internal confusions and numerous self contradictions. The only consistencies are the passionate biases that emanate from their personal experiences. These factors all combine to render their biographical efforts useless to the serious historian.”

James Valliant has done more than demonstrate the complete invalidity—including a viscous character assassination—of both the Brandens books. Using the clear logic and language of an experienced prosecuting lawyer, with only essential editing, he has presented and interpreted Rand’s own private notes, made while she was acting as psychological counselor for Nathaniel Branden. These show her mind in action as she analyses the language of, and finally understands the bitter truth about, the man she had once loved.

Mr. Valliant not only demonstrates this is a tragic story of assault on innocence by a viciously duplicitous person, it is also an amazing detective story, and the detective is none other than Ayn Rand herself.

Over the four years of emotionally painful psychological counseling Rand gave Branden for his supposed sexual dysfunction, we see a brilliant mind carefully dissecting the truths she unearthed. By applying her own philosophy to Branden’s methods of thinking although still unaware of the worst of his deceptions, we see Rand slowly reaching her horrifying conclusion.

The picture of Rand which shines out through her notes is of a woman of amazing depths of compassion; who would not judge or condemn if she could not understand why a person thought and felt as they did; who would give all her time and energy to try to understand and help someone she believed was suffering and in need of guidance.

The facts indicate the sexual affair was apparently over 4 years before the final public split, though Mr. Valiant is careful to say he is only certain it had ended by the start of 1968 and that it was Rand, not Branden, who ended the relationship because she had finally understood his subjectivism, deceits (including financial misappropriation) and mental distortions.

From the flaws in their own works and from Rand's concurrent notes of the time it is clearly apparent that in her 1968 statement of repudiation, Rand told the truth about events and the Brandens lied. Throughout all of her years with them, Rand behaved with the integrity followers of her work would have expected. And, to quote Mr. Valliant, “The Brandens were dishonest with Rand about nearly everything a person can be … largely to maintain the good thing they had going at NBI. This dishonesty lasted for years. ..[They] not only lied to Rand, they lied to their readers .. [and] then they lied about their lies. Ever since they have continued to lie in memoirs and biographies about their lies, calling Rand's 1968 statement ‘libelous’. This remarkable all-encompassing dishonesty is manifest from these biographies and all the more apparent now we have Rand's journal entries from the same period.”

Her generous nature was unable to conceive the full truth about Nathaniel Branden. It is left to Valliant to finish the story, taking it to its full and final dreadful conclusion, showing exactly what it was Nathaniel Branden had deliberately done to this innocent, brilliant, compassionate woman, and what both the Brandens, whom Rand rejected as having any association at all with her philosophy, are still doing to this day—and why.

In the end, those who have used the Branden’s lies to claim the philosophy of Objectivism “doesn’t work, because it’s author couldn’t follow the precepts,” are shown to be completely wrong. Rand used her philosophy and psycho-epistemology to discover the truth; her philosophy to guide her actions in dealing with it and finally to lift her above the heartbreak and pain it caused her.

There is something almost operatic in the telling: A great woman, a great mind, who conceived of a philosophy of love for and exalted worship of the best in the human mind, who defended with searing anger the right of all people to be free to discover happiness, being deceived by the one person she believed to be her equal, her lover and heir, who had lied to and manipulated her for his own gains while she was alive and vilified her name and distorted with calumny the image of her personality after her death.

Perhaps in nothing else is her greatness better shown, than that she was able to rise above the cataclysm and live and laugh again. She always said, “Evil is a negative.. It can do nothing unless we let it.” In her life she lived that and proved it true.

[B4Ranch]

So true!

We search for the words to express our thoughts, then we'll type the shortest lines possible. That's my method .......most of the time.

[B4Ranch]

>>Most, but not all, truly creative writers are egocentric, prone to a dominating disposition and likely to offend many while gaining plaudits from others. <<

Your description of the others is ??????

[BradyLS]

If my not reading the book leaves me disabled in understanding objectivism, then so be it.

I think a much better written, shorter, more rousing, and philosophically comparable work that will put you near the pitcher's mound of what Objectivists are trying to say, I would suggest reading Robert Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.

[Rembrandt_fan]

Nietszche was asked once what determines the value of a thing, and he responded, "How much did you pay for it?" But he was only half-serious. The Overman, in his view, established his own values--and the values Nietszche was talking about had nothing to do with commerce. However wrongheaded that screwed-up German might've been, he was nothing if not intellectually fearless and brutally straightforward. Rand comes along, swipes those ideas of his that suit her, dumbs them down, and covers them with a capitalist veneer to make these ideas more palatable (and more salable) to a market that likes to believe itself a cut above the common herd. 'Overman' becomes 'Entrepreneur'. Hank Reardon of 'Atlas Shrugged' isn't a businessman with a head for metallurgy, oh no. He is an avatar of the new Randian Man: proudly atheistic, ruthless, coolly intelligent, sublimely selfish. "Who is John Galt?" I'll tell you: John Galt is a bean-counting elitist parading as messiah. And finally, the values promoted by Ayn Rand disciples are far from conservative, as we understand the term. No amount of Randian harping about the joys of free enterprise can hide the absolute fascism at its core. It is a philosophy--one of many--which holds compassion as a weakness. So when I say 'damned', I mean it in the literal, Christian sense of the term.

[SouthParkRepublican]

"Its an important work, but it's a pain in the arse. There's no excuse for the repetition and flowery cliche in some places.

Well said! You have to go through 100 tons of silt to find a nugget but when you do it's a big one. She was a mediocre writer, an average philosopher, and one hell of an objective pragmatist.

[SouthParkRepublican]

I'll cut you some slack in the "Christian" sense. Yes, Rand missed the point here but indirectly raises the valid question of original sin vs. a son not being accountable for the sins of his father.

That aside, you elect to begin by citing Nietzsche and declaring him to be "intellectually fearless and brutally straightforward." This is pure foolishness. Even the prolific sinner Russell had the common sense to point out that Nietzsche's views were absolutely incongruous with the conduct of his personal life. I have to paraphrase here but Nietzsche wrote "When going to women, don't forget to bring the whip" and Russell reasonably suggests "Nietzsche knows that, in reality, nine out of ten women would have got the whip out of his hand". Nietzsche's greatest problem was that he was the living, breathing, antithesis to what his philosophy held dear. He was nothing more than a weak step on the ladder to Nihilism which made us all realize that nothing mattered.

Interestingly, things still seem to matter, and I'm amazed that you differentiate between Hank Rearden and John Galt in your post. Galt is more vocal in the novel but their ideals are the same. Simplified; if I make something what gives another person any right to it or say in it's distribution?

BTW. I am a reformed lib too. Try not to let it get in the way.

[Rembrandt_fan]

Don't need any slack cut for me, thanks, and wasn't defending Nietszche's ideas by any means, but I don't mistake the man with the mind. The fact that he was physically weak and sickly has nothing to do with the philosophical stance he took: an atheist who followed the ramifications of such an anti-belief in toto, all the way. Of course nihilism is the result, but he didn't shrink from it. And I stand by the central claim: Rand repackaged the raw material of Nietszche's ideas and shaped them into something slick and smooth and easily swallowed by those whose vanity is tickled by the notion that they, too, are Reardon and Galt material. Whether or not 'Reardon Steel' belonged to Reardon is not the central issue of 'Atlas Shrugged', and in the real world, which we common folk somehow muddle through without Rand's quasi-divine arbitration, copyright and patent laws are in place to assure ownership belongs to the creator. The author's contempt for those not part of her self-styled elite is palpable. She spends several interminable pages, for example, explaining why the death of hundreds of people in a railway disaster really isn't such a bad thing since the train crash victims were idealogical bedfellows to the cardboard cutout bad guys in her novel. Conservative thought, as Hobbes and Locke propounded it, is based upon self-interest harnessed to a common good, the polity as a whole. The self-interest Rand advocates is pathologically extreme: selfishness not as a recognized trait of a less-than-ideal humanity, as Hobbes saw it, but as a virtue to be extolled and celebrated.

'Reformed lib' doesn't get in the way of anything. It does, however, give me some experience with power-hungry, self-styled apostles of truth.

[FreeKeys]

And how could her voice be other than common with militant atheists (of whatever "spiritual" stripe) who must decide for themselves that which is Good and that which is Evil

Because UNLIKE (perhaps even opposite) random nihilists and hedonists -- she demonstrates that there IS a SPECIFIC objective morality derived from REALITY, and she spells it out in such a way that many people who were never born into a Judaeo-Christian culture (numbering, oh say, about 5 Billion people) have a common starting point (There's an introduction to the objectivist ethics in the first essay in The Virtue of Selfishness).

This confusion on your part may be THE MOST COMMON source of the straw-man and red-herring objections to Ayn Rand. This, plus your justified objections to her temperament, may prejudice you from even considering that she can be, and has been, the source of conversions of tremendous numbers of people, including myself, to the pro-liberty mindset.

While we all must appreciate what the love of life and productivity, however imperfect, that Aquinas Catholics and Presbyterian and Episcopalian Protestants have meant to Western Civilization, an insistence on non-Christians accepting such teachings on blind faith is, to most of them, a nonsense demand that they substitute one randomly-chosen subjectivist ethics for another. Therefore I think we all must also appreciate how those like Rand have not only tried, but succeeded, in convincing millions of non-Christians and pseudo-Christians to appreciate the values of capitalism and freedom when they would have otherwise remained supporters of various forms of socialism, dictatorship and in the U.S. of the DemocRAT party.

[Askel5]

=== an insistence on non-Christians accepting such teachings on blind faith


Please, you're speaking to a Catholic. Not some lobotomized Bibliolator or Enlightened.

I'll address the rest of your post later. You bring up some good points to which I'd like to respond when I have more time.

[annalex]

Rand have not only tried, but succeeded, in convincing millions of non-Christians and pseudo-Christians to appreciate the values of capitalism and freedom

She did? Where? One can see some intellectual exercise value in Rand's work -- I do -- but please, let us not pretend that her pitiful philosophy ever convinced anyone outside of a very narrow circle of fellow-theorizers.

[FreeKeys]

One can see some intellectual exercise value in Rand's work -- I do -- but please, let us not pretend that her pitiful philosophy ever convinced anyone outside of a very narrow circle of fellow-theorizers.

Since I have personally talked with about a thousand people from many different walks of life about Ayn Rand since 1963, and since Rand not only sold millions of books before her death in 1982, and TWELVE MILLION SINCE her death, your insinuation that my conclusions are based upon PRETENDING I can only guess is based upon hasty wishful thinking or something equally unwise on your part. Further, did my seeing the impact of Rand on influential people from Robert Prechter to Tibor Machan to Jonathan Hoenig, etc., etc. have me fooled? For myself, I've never been part of anyone's inner circle, and have found her philosophy vastly more compelling, life-saving, inspiring and ennobling than anything else, and any implication that I didn't would be unwise to keep maintaining.

[The Westerner]

I happen to know that James Valliant is correct. The Branden's deception of a woman scrupulously honest, the most honest human being I have ever seen, was the depth of depravity, bar none. You would have had to have known Ayn Rand in person to know the definition of total honesty in all human affairs. They deceived her over such a long period of time, during which she gave them hours of her time trying to help them with their contradictions, trying to give them everything she could to help them think it through. And they lied, knowing she was expending all that effort in an attempt to make sense of their lies. Over a period of Years. They are liars, and to have lied to this human being, of all people, marks them for life. You cannot believe anything in their biographies.

[aynrandfreak]

let us not pretend that her pitiful philosophy ever convinced anyone outside of a very narrow circle of fellow-theorizers

That may be the most ignorant post I've ever read here.

[CSM]

"She did? Where? One can see some intellectual exercise value in Rand's work -- I do -- but please, let us not pretend that her pitiful philosophy ever convinced anyone outside of a very narrow circle of fellow-theorizers."

Hmmm, that's funny. I suppose since you seem to believe that the numbers convinced gives validity to a philosophy, you probably are willing to give 100% credence to Karl Marx. What the heck, we have half the country believing in socialism so it must be a valid and workable philosophy!

The more I look around, the more I see "Atlas Shrugged" coming to life!

[aynrandfreak]

When the books came out, Peikoff & Co were saying that they were lying about the affair (which he later admitted they had), so don't try saying that we can't believe anything that's in their books. Your attempt to dismiss them out of hand shows a Peikovian intrincism.

[annalex]

I know she can sell books, and I know that libertarianism is an attractive philosophy for the modern mind.

The fact remains that the intellectual attraction did not result in a libertarian society. Moreover, the trend is in the opposite direction, toward more and more statism. This is unfortunate, and Rand shares some of the blame for this.

There are pockets of acceptance of libertarianism, mostly in economic thought. Thanks to her and her fellow-thinkers such as Hayek, Friedman and Mises, planned command economy has been discredited.

But I think that her inability to reach beyond that is in the falsehood of the ethical system of Objectivism. Intuitively, all have an understanding of good and evil, and most find her ethical system inattractive. The falsity of her moral philosophy shows through in her sneering attitude toward charity, acceptance of abortion (I know that many libertarians these days are pro-life, for reasons extraneous to libertarianism), indifference toward cultural values, and myopic views on immigration and foreign trade.

[not-alone]

What wonderful memories I have of reading Rand the first time and I must admit envy of West coast conservative. Forty yeaes ago I was an architectual student at Pratt and my classmates nicknamed me Dominque. I read Fountianhead to find out why and learned so much more.

[jackbob]

One can see some intellectual exercise value in Rand's work -- I do -- but please, let us not pretend that her pitiful philosophy ever convinced anyone outside of a very narrow circle of fellow-theorizers.

I have many more times been quite correctly portrayed by others as being anti-Rand, than I have ever been referred to as pro-Rand. I consider myself to be an anti-Randian. Yet to be honest, I must admit that Rand has had a tremendous influence on me and my opinions. Today, as when she was alive, I have/had many disagreements with her positions. I also agree with many of her opinions. Any statement as quoted above is pure silliness and is not even worthy of this comment.

.

[jackbob]

My reply #138 should also have been addressed to you and your #130. It is now.

[annalex]

I must admit that Rand has had a tremendous influence on me and my opinions.

Same here, except I couild not bring myself to reading her novels. I was a self-identified libertarian till about two years ago, and I even had a regular Pursuit of Liberty feature running on FR. I was never terribly fond of Rand or objectivism, and I stand by my epithet of "pitiful".