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INDIVIDUALISTS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! 63
contributions to society, showing little interest in distinguishing members
of the faceless mob below. Now, without losing contempt for “the
lowest elements” (which remained undefi ned), she allotted a new role
to the vast American middle classes. These were the people she had met
in the theater and on the street, ordinary voters who seemed naturally
suspicious of Roosevelt and his promises of prosperity.
The “Manifesto” as a whole throbbed with a newfound love and
respect for America. In Russia Rand had idealized America, but the 1930s
had disillusioned her. Watching the spread of collectivism in literature
and art, in 1937 she complained about “our degeneration in cultural matters—which
have always been collective in America.” 63 The “Manifesto”
bore no such traces of cynicism. Instead it defi ned individualism and
Americanism as essentially the same thing. America’s establishment of
individual liberty, according to Rand, “was the secret of its success.” She
praised the American Revolution as a rare historic moment when men
worked collectively to establish “the freedom of the Individual and the
establishment of a society to ensure this freedom,” and called “give me
liberty or give me death,” Patrick Henry’s dramatic words in support of
the American Revolution, “the statement of a profound truth.” 64
Rand’s fi nal section, an extended defense of capitalism, likewise bore
the marks of her campaign experience. Before Willkie she had been procapitalist
yet pessimistic, writing, “The capitalist world is low, unprincipled,
and corrupt.” Now she celebrated capitalism as “the noblest,
cleanest and most idealistic system of all.” Despite her opposition to
Willkie’s managers, Rand seemed to have picked up on some of their
tactics, marketing capitalism as the solution to all ills. 65
Rand’s newfound embrace of capitalism also refl ected reading
she had done since the campaign ended, particularly Carl Synder’s
Capitalism the Creator: The Economic Foundations of Modern Industrial
Society. 66 Snyder, a well-known economist and statistician at the Federal
Reserve Bank, argued that capitalism was the “only one way, that any
people, in all history, have ever risen from barbarism and poverty to
affl uence and culture.” From this premise Snyder developed a historically
grounded, statistically supported case in favor of capital accumulation
and against economic regulation and planning. Snyder supported
centralized credit control, and indeed touted wise control of the money
supply as the key to preventing future depressions and panics. He also
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