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Weiner, Adam. How Bad Writing Destroyed the World: Ayn Rand and the Literary Origins of the Financial Crisis, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 53, Issue 3, July 2017, Pages 377–378, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqx032
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This volume explains the evolution of revolutionary ideologies informing the brand of ‘objectivism’ on display in Ayn Rand’s famous novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Weiner argues that the financial crisis of 2008–2009 was the culmination of Rand’s influence on her sycophantic followership, famously known as ‘The Collective’ (p. 8), which included the former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. In the Introduction, Weiner posits that Greenspan’s deregulatory policy proved catastrophic because he ‘foolishly counted on business to regulate itself […] in accordance with the simplistic logic of objectivism’ (p. 16). Ironically, Rand’s ‘arch-capitalist’ (p. 2) ideology and Russia’s nineteenth-century socialist revolution share the same origin: Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s 1863 novel What Is to Be Done? was the seedbed of dogmatic instruction that became like a Bible for several generations of Russian leftist extremists. Notable names included Nikolai Speshnev (a contemporary of Chernyshevsky’s who also belonged to the group known as the ‘Petrashevskyites’), the legendary mercenary and nihilist Sergei Nechaev, and of course Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov – or Lenin. Chapters 1 and 2 demonstrate how Chernyshevsky’s most lasting legacy became the ‘cross-contamination’ (p. 37) between history and literature. Chapters 3 to 7 describe attempts made by other Russian writers such as Dostoevsky and Nabokov to present a counter-discourse in order to temper the destructive consequences of Chernyshevsky’s seminal text. Chapter 8 focuses exclusively on Ayn Rand, a contemporary of Nabokov’s: both fled Russia to escape Lenin’s destructive collectivism, and yet somehow Rand ruthlessly ‘adapted it for capitalism’ (p. 192). Weiner’s analysis ends with an emphatic conclusion: ‘Unfettered capitalism is no more a utopia than the chained collective’ (p. 218). Although this book achieves a suitable level of erudition for academia, it is reasonably accessible. It is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian literature, Ayn Rand, or the political and economic ideologies emanating from both the United States and Russia.
