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FROM NOVELIST TO PHILOSOPHER, 1944–1957
New Yorkers in any argument: “Many are the people who laughed at my
description of her dialectical invincibility, only later to try their hands
and join me among the corpses on the Randian battlefi eld.” Rand began
with the basics, establishing agreement on primary axioms and principles.
She came out on top by showing how her opponent’s ideas and
beliefs contradicted these foundations. This approach was particularly
effective on those who prided themselves on logic and consistency, as
did Greenspan. He remembered that “talking to Rand was like starting
a game of chess thinking I was good, and suddenly fi nding myself in
checkmate.” Greenspan was hooked. 42
Greenspan’s attraction to Rand was fairly standard for those drawn
into her orbit. As she had for Rothbard, Rand exposed Greenspan to
previously unknown intellectual treasures, “a vast realm from which I’d
shut myself off.” Before meeting Rand, Greenspan was “intellectually
limited . . .”: “I was a talented technician, but that was all.” Under Rand’s
tutelage he began to look beyond a strictly empirical, numbers-based
approach to economics, now thinking about “human beings, their values,
how they work, what they do and why they do it, and how they
think and why they think.” His graduate school mentor, Arthur Burns,
had given Greenspan his fi rst exposure to free market ideas. Rand
pushed him further, inspiring Greenspan to connect his economic ideas
to the big questions in life. Now he found that morality and ethics had
a rational structure that could be analyzed and understood, just like the
economy or music, his fi rst passion. Primed to accept Rand’s system by
his devotion to mathematical thought, Greenspan was soon an enthusiastic
Objectivist. His friends noticed the change immediately, as he
began fl avoring his conversations with Objectivist vocabulary and the
Randian injunction “check your premises.” 43
Unlike most members of the Collective, who were students, Greenspan
stood out as an established professional with a successful economic consulting
business. He was in the rare position of being able to teach Rand
something. While she dominated the others, when it came to Greenspan
“it was the reverse, he was the expert, she was learning from him,” remembered
a friend. 44 His fi rm, Townsend-Greenspan, charged huge sums for
the information it synthesized about all aspects of economic demand.
Greenspan was legendary for his ability to comb statistical data, analyze
government reports, and ferret out key fi gures from industry contacts.
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