I took down my original post. It was misleading and was getting hostile responses. People assumed I’m some big Ayn Rand fan and was whining that she didn’t get the credit she deserved. Nope.

(For an excellent and thorough rebuttal of Rand’s philosophy, see Michael Heumer here.)

So let’s try this again.

I’m seeing many hostile articles about Ayn Rand today, thanks to the release of an Atlas Shrugged film adaptation. I’ve noticed that many people who are infuriated by Rand’s moral and literary flaws are sanguine about, say, Che Guevara’s moral flaws or the literary flaws of other authors. (I don’t want to get into a discussion about some of these other authors, so I won’t name names.) Since I’m interested in political bias, I find this interesting.

So, here is something I am curious about:

1. If Ayn Rand had written the same kinds of books, but the books had a left-leaning theme rather than “Objectivist”, what would her literary reputation be? I think it would be much more positive. (That’s not to say it would deserve to be more positive, just that it would be.) She might even be considered one of the great novelists. I don’t mean this to suggest that she really is at the level of Joyce. I just mean that given people’s political biases, I think her writing would be much more admired in literature departments.

2. If Ayn Rand had been left-leaning, people would be less hostile to her character. Again, I don’t mean this to defend her. Our best available evidence shows that she was a nasty person. But I think people are politically biased, and I suspect that many of the people who now write about her moral flaws would overlook them if she shared their politics.  For some evidence favoring this claim, see here.

One poster wrote this in response to the first post:

Left-wing equivalents of AS might be  The Jungle or some of the more shrill Sinclair and Steinbeck novels… and yet somehow the literati prefer Joyce and Faulkner (hardly writers of political manifestos).

Good points. Maybe Rand would have no reputation at all if she’d taken a left-leaning point-of-view.

So, speculate with me. What would Rand’s literary and personal reputation be if she had had a left-wing point-of-view?