Ayn Rand's gospel of unadulterated laissez-faire capitalism seems to be gaining popularity among a new generation of followers.
It may not come as a surprise that the Tea Party movement in the US is using Rand, the Russian-American who developed a philosophical system called Objectivism, as a posthumous poster girl for lower taxes, with banners reading "I am John Galt" – a reference to the idealised hero of her 1957 magnum opus Atlas Shrugged. Or that elaborate public talks on her radical philosophy are being sponsored by the economically rightwing Adam Smith Institute in London. But this week she also surfaced in popular culture with a starring role on BBC2 in All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, the documentary by Adam Curtis.
In the US, though, a filmed version of Atlas Shrugged is reaching contemporary audiences and feeding ambition in a new generation of the fiscally conservative nearly 30 years after Rand's death. Reviewers have derided this first instalment in a planned trilogy ("rushed, amateurish and clumsy", said the New York Times), while the Randians love it. But above all, everyone is talking about it.
Sadly, the producers of the $15m, independently financed film say that they have no desire to distribute it beyond the US at this point. Which means those of us in the UK who might like to have had the opportunity to form our own opinions can only follow Atlas and shrug.
