Solomon Wakeling is a regular Webdiarist, and has so far submitted his reviews of classic novels, the most recent being East of Eden: in defence of Cathy Trask [0].
by Solomon Wakeling
Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead is one heck of a right-wing propaganda piece. Next to Dostoyevsky's The Possessed it is possibly the best right-wing novel ever produced. It should be read as a companion piece and de-tox from The Communist Manifesto . It should also be read with caution. I came away from reading it with an unwell feeling. I had something like the moral horror Camus intended for the reader to feel in reading The Outsider . The book is alien and unnerving at times, bordering on the surreal. I read it when I was 17 and I wish I hadn't. Propaganda does harm to supple young minds.
The central character is Howard Roark, a rebellious but gifted architect. Rand uses a likeable archetype, the struggling artist, to peg her philosophy on. Roark is sketched as an orange-haired outsider, with cat-like movements and a relaxed demeanour. His attitude to the world is uncompromising and rebellious, which makes him instantly likeable. He is a creative type, ambitious only in the furtherance of his art. He doesn't give a damn for anything else. What more could you want?
Roark's style of art resembles modern architecture but it is something subtly different. He likes to create buildings as expressions of perfection - perfection like the "ideal man". Rand intended Roark as an expression of this "Ideal man". He is so perfect, in her eyes, that the female heroine is gratified when he rapes her. This scene occurs towards the end of the book and it is a shocker. If it weren't for the heroine’s masochistic acceptance of his attentions, the book would be utterly unreadable. Rand's rape fantasy is unnecessary, juvenile and dangerous. That she felt the need to include it shows the depths of the poison of her mind. Just as, in Rand's words, A is A, rape is rape and should not be tolerated.
Rand would be no friend to the right-wing Christian governments we see in the USA, Britain and Australia. Her ideology is far beyond the realms of the politically correct which these governments comfortably swim in. Her belief in the virtue of selfishness would be hard for our governments to stomach. A more complete inversion of the teachings of Christ could not be imagined. Our governments only go so far as to want to reward ambition, not selfishness. Selfishness as a goal is softened with Christian piety - yet the belief in the individual survives the rift. The belief in free market capitalism also survives the rift.
Howard lives endlessly on in Australian politics in part because of the Family tax benefit. Rand had no time for families. Early in The Fountainhead Roark is, with a somewhat unintentional humour, said not to know if he has any family. It is a matter of complete indifference to him. Rand saw human relations as burdensome in contrast to individual liberation. Co-operation is bad. Community is to be discouraged.
The best line in the book comes at the end of part II when Roark is asked what he thinks of socialist Ellsworth M. Toohey. He replies "But I don't think of you". Nothing in the book so aptly represents Roark's, and Rand's, character. Rather than seeking to change others she wants only for them to leave her alone. She is not anti-social so much as asocial. Her paradise, sketched in her other great work, Atlas Shrugged , resembles a Buddhist monastery or an Amish retreat. It is a place where the rich and intelligent hide from the world, in rebellion, to let it fall apart without them. Her ideology is the ideology of just not giving a damn for the fate of the world and focusing on yourself. In my view there is enough of this type of attitude in the world already and it doesn't need propagandising.
This is the kind of work that makes you want to read Ulysses , just to see life painted in all its confusion, its vulnerability and its complexity. It has the same deadening effect of total sureties and repetition, present in all dogmas. Blissfully arrogant, Rand assures us that A is A and that her ideas can be deduced by simple reason. Man is an end in himself, there for his own glory. Free market capitalism is the perfect system of governance and collectivism is the devil. All this as sure as black and white, light and dark, day and night. Her work is just dogma, dogma, dogma...And is as ultimately as boring as them all.
At its best, individualism is about the dignity of the individual and facilitating individual self-expression. Laws are needed to protect the vulnerable. Rand wanted total non-interference, ignoring entrenched disadvantage and the need for positive governance to correct this. She saw individuals as totally equal in power. With the new industrial relations laws we see the government following her in this fantasy, treating individuals as having the same level, or indeed more, of bargaining power than employers. In trying to liberate the individual in to being able to negotiate their own contracts, the government is creating the possibility of exploitation and coercion. An individual may become a slave to a corporation as easily as they may become a slave to governance. An effective federalism will be one where power is shared, without excess weight placed on any one individual or group. I support capitalism but not corporate-fascism. Checks and balances like unfair dismissal laws, award wages and minimum working conditions are effective methods of separating power within our society. They should not be seen as restricting individual freedom but as facilitating it.