Opinion

Tensions are already emerging in Camp Trump between populists and libertarians

Ayn Rand’s articulation of a brutal, amoral ‘greed-is good’ philosophy embodies the spirit of the new administration

Ayn Rand: We owe nothing to anyone, the Russian-born US author maintained, even our families or the poor and weak, who are 'refuse' and 'parasites'. Photograph: The New York Times/Getty
Ayn Rand: We owe nothing to anyone, the Russian-born US author maintained, even our families or the poor and weak, who are 'refuse' and 'parasites'. Photograph: The New York Times/Getty
Patrick Smyth's picture
Patrick Smyth
Sat Jan 25 2025 - 07:00

Ayn Rand was the ghost at the feast: invisible, unspoken-of, but the malign ultra-libertarian spirit embodying the essence of Trump’s new America.

While Trump’s inauguration guest list – in pride of place, the richest man in the world, Elon Musk – gave visible manifestation to Joe Biden’s parting warning that “oligarchy is taking shape”, it is the shadow of Rand’s articulation of a brutal, amoral “greed-is good” philosophy she called “the virtue of selfishness”, known as “objectivism”, which gives the new regime its particular ideological character.

The writer and philosopher who became a best seller in the 1950s has been for several generations the ideological inspiration for the US libertarian far right, notably the anti-tax Tea Party movement. Among those inspired by her was Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal Reserve, and two members of the first Trump cabinet, Mike Pompeo and Rex Tillerson. She was energetically promoted by shock jocks Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

She has inspired the late Apple founder Steve Jobs, Trump’s “best buddy” Musk, and early Trump backer, Peter Thiel.

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“My philosophy, in essence,” Rand wrote, “is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” We owe nothing, she maintained, to anyone, even our families or the poor and weak, who are “refuse” and “parasites”. The state’s role should be limited to the police, courts and armed forces, with no role for income tax, social security, public health or education. The market will provide.

[ Peter Thiel, big tech’s chief conspiracy theorist, says the state is keeping big secrets from us. And he should know ]

Atlas Shrugged (1957) depicts a US crippled by state intervention, in which heroic millionaires struggle against a nation of spongers. The millionaires, whom she portrays as Atlas holding the world aloft, withdraw their labour, and the nation collapses. It is rescued, through unregulated greed and selfishness, by heroic plutocrat John Galt. For John Galt, read Elon Musk.

Rand’s work – dreary reading, it must be said – is a manifesto for unrestrained capitalism, and its heroes billionaires like Trump. No reader of fiction, the president has only ever spoken about liking three works – one, Rand’s The Fountainhead. In a USA Today interview he described himself as a Rand fan, saying of her novel “it relates to business (and) beauty (and) life and inner emotions”.

Rand “has been beloved”, biographer Jennifer Burns writes, “by disrupters, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, people who see themselves as shaping the future, taking risky bets, moving out in front of everyone else, relying only on their own instincts, intuition and knowledge, and going against the grain”.

In that spirit in 2021 Musk attacked a proposed tax on billionaires. Any government-led reallocation of wealth would be better managed by the private sector, he proclaimed. “Who is best at capital allocation – government or entrepreneurs – is indeed what it comes down to,” he wrote on Twitter. And Trump has charged him with the ultimate Randian project of dramatically deregulating and shrinking the state through the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

His relationship with Trump is a first. Even “America’s robber barons – the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and Carnegies – did not act as co-equals with the presidents of their day,” Edward Luce of the Financial Times writes. Nor did their fabled wealth compare to Musk’s.

Musk’s ambitions are not purely domestic. He has been weighing in on European politics, supporting the far right AfD in Germany, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, and calling for the overthrow of Keir Starmer. Not a word of criticism from Trump, so it must be presumed the latter approves this unconventional dabbling in the politics of allied states. He is not having it all his own way. In defiance of Trump’s intention to clamp down on all immigration, a number of the tech bros have openly clashed with leading Maga figures to support visa programmes for top talent, a fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley, Musk warns. He promises to “go to war on this issue”.

[ Steve Bannon condemns Elon Musk as ‘racist’ and ‘truly evil’ ]

The issue reflects a sharp ideological difference within Trump ranks between nativist populists in the traditional Maga movement and Randian libertarians who resent any shackles on business. Tensions are likely to get worse as the administration beds in. Prominent Trump influencer Laura Loomer denounced “third-world invaders from India”, insisting “our country was built by white Europeans”, while Trump adviser and leading light of the Maga movement Steve Bannon has called Musk a “toddler” who needs a “wellness check” from Child Protective Services. He promised to have him removed from the White House.

To suggest, however, that there is a coherent, well-thought out ideology driving Trump would be to credit the new president with a capacity for rational and analytical thought well beyond his purely transactional mindset. The US’s new president is a populist, nativist and Rand-ian, depending on the day, all three and more at times. We’re in for a bumpy and unpleasant ride.