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THE EDUCATION OF AYN RAND, 1905–1943
gave grudging support to some government activities, such as the building
of dams and conservation projects. But any further intervention,
such as redistributive taxation, centralized planning boards, or wage
and price controls, would be tantamount to “putting industry under the
dead hand of government regulation.” 67 Published with a glossy picture
of Adam Smith for a frontispiece, Snyder’s book was a rebuttal of the
Keynesian theories that dominated academic economics and infl uenced
Roosevelt’s administration.
Snyder helped Rand codify and historicize the ideas she had already
expressed in Anthem. In allegorical form Rand had emphasized the
power of the individual and the importance of breakthrough innovations.
Now Snyder set these ideas in an economic and historical context,
arguing that economic prosperity was due to “some few [who] are
very successful, highly talented, endowed with capacities and abilities
far beyond the mass of their fellows.” 68 As she read Snyder, Rand transformed
the psychological categories of second-hander and creator into
the economic concepts of Active and Passive Man.
In the “Manifesto” Rand followed Snyder’s celebration of classical
economics rather than introduce her own explosive concepts of morality.
Altruism, which would play a signifi cant role in The Fountainhead, is
noticeably subordinate in the “Manifesto.” It may have been that Rand’s
attention was far from the philosophy of her novel when she wrote the
“Manifesto,” or it may have been that she was unwilling to debut her
ideas without the illustrative support of fi ction. Whatever the reason,
Rand celebrated selfi shness in entirely economic terms. “One of the
greatest achievements of the capitalist system is the manner in which a
man’s natural, healthy egoism is made to profi t both him and society,”
she wrote, and went no further. 69 Similarly all of her attacks were leveled
at the “absolute” common good, implying that a limited conception of
the common good was acceptable.
Unlike her later work, the “Manifesto” did not spell out Rand’s differences
with Adam Smith’s bounded “self-interest.” Though he lauded
self-interest in the economic realm, Smith also celebrated the natural
concern people felt for the welfare of others, which he called “sympathy.”
Smith drew a distinction between self-interest and what he called
the “the soft, the gentle, the amiable virtues.” These two sets of values
existed in a delicate balance, he argued, and “to restrain our selfi sh, and
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