How Ayn Rand’s Philosophy Took Shape—and Found an Audience

Ayn Rand is considered one of the most influential and controversial writers of the 20th century.

Her best-selling novels—including The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged—have sold more than 29.5 million copies worldwide. Beyond their commercial success, Rand's books were vehicles for a philosophical system called objectivism. Following World War II, her fiction helped shape this ideological movement that continues to influence technology, business and politics.

The central themes of Rand’s philosophy were reason, individualism and laissez-faire capitalism, says Ben Bayer, a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. This worldview extended beyond politics and economics into how she understood creativity.

“She’s an admirer and champion of Romanticism in the arts, self-expression and genius,” explains Gregory Salmieri, who teaches philosophy at the University of Texas. As an artistic movement, Romanticism emphasized imagination and the celebration of exceptional individuals. “Philosophically, Romanticism is a crusade to glorify man’s existence,” Rand wrote in The Romantic Manifesto (1969), “psychologically it is experienced simply as the desire to make life interesting.”

Whereas other members of artistic movements tended to disapprove of capitalism, notes Salmieri, Rand applied a Romantic sensibility to the economic system. She was also a proponent of technology and a free market. Ultimately, she believed a person’s central purpose is their own rational self-interest, and she rejected selflessness and collectivism. These ideas became the foundation of objectivism.

Born February 2, 1905, Rand grew up in czarist and then—after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917—communist Russia. “She witnessed firsthand the advent of communism in Russia and definitely saw it as a horror,” explains Salmieri.

As a student, she absorbed a range of Western literary and philosophical influences, including those of French author Victor Hugo, German philosopher Frederich Nietzsche and ancient Greek polymath Aristotle.

Although she opposed the monarchy of czarist Russia, “when the Communist revolution happened she realized she wasn’t going to be able to live there successfully with her views,” Bayer says. “She’s an individualist. She sees the consequences of collectivism.” 

Rand left Russia for the United States in 1926. She arrived without English fluency, says Bayer, but with a clear ambition: to write, either as a novelist or for Hollywood. She immersed herself in the English language and continued to write short stories and screenplays. A chance meeting with director Cecil B. DeMille opened the door for her as a script reader.

But Rand was distressed throughout the 1930s. She saw communism growing in popularity throughout America and particularly in Hollywood. Although she voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, Rand became a fierce critic of the president, especially his New Deal policies. In 1936, she published her first book, We The Living, about a young girl’s struggles in oppressive Russia. 

Rand used fiction as a vehicle for her ideology. Other intellectual leaders like Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud started with academia. “Their ideas would trickle down into the culture from scholars,” Bayer explains. “Rand starts with a much broader audience, and it almost trickles up to the scholars.”

She told people she devised her own philosophy in order to help her write. Through fiction, she presented her idealized vision for the world, adds Salmieri.

As she was writing The Fountainhead—a novel about a visionary architect battling a society determined to force him into creating traditional designs—Rand campaigned for 1940 Republican presidential nominee Wendell Willkie. During this experience, she developed respect for the ordinary American working man. “She was impressed by the intelligence of the kinds of questions she would get from the audience,” Bayer says. 

Published during World War II, The Fountainhead gained traction when many Americans were thinking about what was wrong with the countries they were fighting against and what was better about their way of life, believes Salmieri. “The novel stresses the importance of individualism and individual choice. Individuals determining their own life has a real appeal at that time,” he adds. Although it was met with polarizing reviews when it was released in 1943, word-of-mouth propelled it to a best-seller by 1945.

Following the publication of The Fountainhead, Rand didn’t have any kind of “organized following,” says Salmieri. She began exchanging fan letters with people drawn to her ideas, including psychotherapist Nathaniel Branden and his wife Barbara. She also increasingly spoke out against communism. In 1947, she testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, drawing on her experiences in Soviet Russia to denounce communism in Hollywood.

Warner Bros.’ panned 1949 film adaptation of the The Fountainhead further boosted her profile. All the while she continued to work on Atlas Shrugged, which was finally published on October 10, 1957. Although that novel was also met with negative reviews, the controversy exposed Rand’s philosophies to an even wider audience.

Set in a dystopian United States, Atlas Shrugged depicts a society where the most innovative and productive individuals repeatedly go missing. “It’s about more than politics and individualism versus collectivism,” Bayer says. “It’s fundamentally about a certain attitude towards life and how you need to use your mind in order to determine what is the best way to achieve your happiness.”

People started to gather around Rand, especially in New York. “A lot of people are influenced by [objectivism] from the beginning. She has a huge readership,” Bayer says. “This inner circle of friends and intellectuals jokingly refer to themselves as ‘the collective.’ The joke being they’re studying a philosophy of individualism." The "collective" included influential figures like future Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, psychiatrist Allan Blumenthal and art historian Mary Ann Sures.

Rand and Nathaniel Branden hosted courses and lectures on objectivism, which were recorded and distributed across the country. She also wrote objectivist periodicals, journals, magazines and newsletters that elaborated on her ideas and applied them to contemporary political and cultural events. “A whole objectivist movement begins,” Salmieri says. 

Objectivism rose in popularity until 1968, when Rand denounced the Brandens over a personal dispute. “Organized objectivism then becomes disorganized for quite some time,” admits Bayer. 

The political shift toward trade, innovation and economic freedom that started in the mid-1970s sparked a renewed interest in Rand and boosted her popularity. In the decades that followed, her work became required reading for a generation of businessmen, technology entrepreneurs and politicians, including Paul Ryan, Rex Tillerson and Donald Trump.

“Sometimes she’s a guilty secret. Sometimes people are proud,” Salmieri says. “But this whole sphere of makers and technologists are imbued with a spirit of: ‘You can do something great. You can build something that’s good. We need the freedom to do that.’”