Letters of Ayn Rand.

• Author: Sciabarra, Chris Matthew

Edited by Michael S. Berliner, New York: Penguin Dutton, 1995, 681 pages, $34.95

On November 7, 1943, Ayn Rand issued a prophetic warning to Ruth Alexander, a prominent conservative writer and lecturer: "God save capitalism from capitalism's defenders! Nobody can defeat us now--except the Republicans." For Rand, the Republican Party had exhibited an awful penchant can political compromise: It had never seriously challenged the "collectivist premises" of the New Deal, nor had it fundamentally opposed the country's march toward statism. Ultimately, Rand thought, the GOP merely sought to slow the march toward collectivism, rather than to reverse its direction. For Rand, its betrayal of principle engendered the rise of the theocratic right, a movement that, in Rand's view, undermined the rational and moral case for capitalism.

Rand characterized the "conservative" defense of the free society as half-baked, for just as the liberals had embraced intellectual freedom while seeking to regulate economic life, the conservatives had embraced economic freedom while seeking to regulate moral life. Rand's whole approach to politics sought to transcend this dichotomy and to embrace a consistent vision of human freedom in all its incarnations. Her admonitions should be seriously considered today by those friends of liberty who rush to celebrate any recent Republican victories. For within GOP ranks, Christian conservatives have combined a rhetorical commitment to the free market with a steadfast belief in government promotion of "family values"--even if this means, among other things, state repression of alternative lifestyles, restraints on the First Amendment, opposition to abortion, and a renewed war on drugs.

Especially since the Russian-born novelist and philosopher had once counted herself among the "conservative writers," her gradual disillusionment with conservatism is one of the most important leitmotifs to be found in the Letters of Ayn Rand, a newly published collection of the author's correspondence from 1926, six months after her arrival in the United States, until 1981, approximately two months before her death. The book encapsulates more than five decades of ideological strife in nearly 700 pages of frank and varied exchanges. It is divided into eight primarily chronological parts, with special sections devoted to Rand's correspondence with architect Frank Lloyd Wright, author Isabel Paterson, and philosopher John Hospers. Much of the material derives from the turbulent 1940s, prior to Rand's deep immersion in the writing of her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged.

Editor Michael S. Berliner has assembled correspondence that will delight--and sometimes shock--readers...