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THE EDUCATION OF AYN RAND, 1905–1943
of values is not exclusive, for anyone could join Rand’s elite simply by
loving their work. Instead of talking about the wealthy, she talked about
the independent, thereby sidestepping social class. Inequalities or differences
between characters are discussed in specifi c, individual terms,
without reference to larger social structures. 38 Denizens of Hell’s Kitchen
and the city’s toniest drawing rooms are evaluated by the same standard
of independence.
Even as it uncoupled libertarianism from its traditional elitism,
The Fountainhead made a familiar argument that humanitarianism
is simply a guise for those who seek power. The idea was not novel
for a time that had seen the birth of two new totalitarianisms. Alfred
Hitchcock’s fi lm Foreign Correspondent, released in 1940, depicted the
head of Britain’s peace party as a German agent, hiding his diabolical
designs under the cover of pacifi sm. Paterson would make the point in
her vividly titled chapter, “The Humanitarian and the Guillotine.” In
later years Rand claimed credit for the ideas in this chapter, a contention
Paterson vigorously disputed. It is likely that Paterson did believe
in an ethics of self-interest prior to meeting Rand, for such beliefs were
not uncommon among supporters of laissez-faire. Paterson could have
been paraphrasing William Graham Sumner, who was famously skeptical
of humanitarianism, when she wrote, “Most of the harm in the
world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission.
It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they
hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends.” Rand was
not the fi rst thinker to criticize altruism or to suggest that noble sentiments
often cloak base motives. Indeed in the early libertarians Rand
had stumbled across a rare community where her attack on altruism
was not taboo. 39
What Rand offered was an unforgettable and highly stylized version
of this argument set in a modern context. Her primary vehicle was The
Fountainhead’s villain Ellsworth Toohey, who angles for power through
the promotion of collectivist ideas. Subtly he infl uences the Wynand
papers: “If a statement involved someone’s personal motive, it was always
‘goaded by selfi shness’ or ‘egged by greed.’ A crossword puzzle gave the
defi nition of ‘obsolescent individuals’ and the word came out as ‘capitalists’
” (588). In a speech he parodies Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms: “If you
were assigned to a job and prohibited from leaving it, it would restrain
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