Russian-born novelist Ayn Rand died over a quarter century ago, yet her books and her Objectivist philosophy are debated in business circles regularly, particularly in tumultuous economies.

Reviled by some people and glorified by others, Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged has been growing in popularity, with annual sales reaching all-time highs 50 years after publication.

According to the Ayn Rand Institute, sales of the book almost tripled over the first seven weeks of this year compared with sales for the same period last year, continuing a strong trend after bookstore sales reached an all-time annual high in 2008.

Why is this half-a-century-old book — not to mention its Russian-born author’s entire philosophy — considered as timely today as ever before?

Rand is considered the mother of Objectivism, a philosophy that claims:

1. Reality exists as an objective absolute; facts trump man’s feelings, wishes, hopes and fears.
2. Reason is the only way to perceive reality and the sole knowledge source — it is man’s only guide to action and means of survival.
3. Every man exists for his own sake. Pursuit of his own rational self-interest and his own happiness is his life’s moral purpose.
4. The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. In Rand’s own words, “It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit.”

Objectivism regards capitalism as a beneficent system in which the innovations of the most creative benefit everyone else in the society (although this is not its justification).

With Atlas Shrugged, according to a 2007 feature in the New York Times, Rand said she “set out to show how desperately the world needs prime movers and how viciously it treats them” and to portray “what happens to a world without them.”

“No politico-economic system in history has ever proved its value so eloquently or has benefited mankind so greatly as capitalism — and none has ever been attacked so savagely, viciously and blindly,” Rand wrote in her introduction to Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

Atlas Shrugged begins in a time of recession, telling the story of the United States economy “crumbling under the weight of crushing government intervention and regulation,” as Dr. Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, recently explained in the Wall Street Journal. “Meanwhile, blaming greed and the free market, Washington responds with more controls that only deepen the crisis.”

To save the economy, the book’s hero John Galt calls for a strike against government interference. Factories, farms and shops shut down, and riots break out as food becomes scarce.

Rather than simply argue that government control destroys entrepreneurialism, Rand took it further by claiming that men are in fact morally obligated to fight for these freedoms.

Atlas Shrugged glorified the right of individuals to live entirely for their own interest. The author’s idea of the “virtue of selfishness” did not necessarily encourage exploiting others, but rather, as Brook wrote of Rand’s philosophy: “Selfishness — that is, concern with one’s genuine, long-range interest — required a man to think, to produce, and to prosper by trading with others voluntarily to mutual benefit.” (Source: The Wall Street Journal)

Upon its initial release, the reviews for Atlas Shrugged were generally very negative. Rand’s radical philosophy had become explicit in this novel of embattled capitalism, and the reviewers reacted accordingly, mocking with extreme opposition and attacking with vitriol. “Both conservatives and liberals were unstinting in disparaging the book; the right saw promotion of godlessness, and the left saw a message of ‘greed is good,’” said the New York Times.

Nonetheless, over time Rand’s books and philosophy both have accumulated a who’s who of devout followers. Today’s business leaders who have cited Rand’s books as influential include: Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers; Whole Foods CEO John Mackey; Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban; and James M. Kilts, who led turnarounds at Gillette, Nabisco and Kraft.

“When they read the book, often as college students, they now say, it gave form and substance to their inchoate thoughts, showing there is no conflict between private ambition and public benefit,” the Times explained of the novel’s coterie of fans.

One of Rand’s most famous acolytes was former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who met Rand when he was 25 and working as an economic forecaster. (She was already renowned as the author of The Fountainhead, a novel that wove Objectivist beliefs into the speeches of the book’s hero, Howard Roark, an architect true to his principles.) Soon after, the young Greenspan joined Rand’s exclusive Collective, a group that evangelized Rand’s writings and, in Greenspan’s case, politicized them.

But even Greenspan, testifying before a congressional committee last October, admitted to a “flaw” in free-market ideology, specifically “in the model” of securitization.

Although 2008 and 2009 have so far seen Rand’s brand of unbridled capitalism take some blows — as government intervention continues full tilt following the unfolding of the largest bailout in government history late last year — many business executives are rediscovering a certain comfort in Rand’s heroes today, finding reassurance that self-interest makes the most sense both economically and morally.

The Economist recently pointed out data from TitleZ, a firm that tracks bestseller rankings on Amazon.com, showing recent sales spikes of the book coinciding with major political events, such as the passing of the economic stimulus plan. The spikes, The Economist surmised, happen when people notice the eerie similarities between real-life events and the scenarios Rand described in her book — including slowing international trade, riots in Europe, sea pirate attacks on cargo ships and politicians castigating corporate chiefs.

Whenever governments intervene in the market, it seems a safe bet readers will rush to buy Rand’s novel. Last week, not long after its praising on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, the book ranked No. 1 on Amazon.com’s bestseller list in the U.S. Literature and Fiction category.

Resources

The Ayn Rand Institute

Is Rand Relevant?
by Yaron Brook
The Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2009

Atlas Felt a Sense of Déjà Vu
The Economist, Feb. 26, 2009

Ayn Rand’s Literature of Capitalism
by Harriet Rubin
The New York Times, Sept. 15, 2007