Soaring sales of Ayn Rand’s books in the USA (Atlas Shrugged is high at number 30 in the Amazon bestsellers list) are rattling supposedly progressive thinkers over here.

See eg the Guardian desperately falling back on those two honest thinkers Noam Chomsky and Slavoj Zizek to try to put people off buying her work. Although this other account of her books’ new found popularity is at least more more or less sensible.

And see this even more feeble effort at the Independent:

The truth is, the yearning for strong men, strong leaders, the impulse towards fascism, in fact, and the fetishisation of what Bryan Ferry called (without irony) Nazi chic is nearly always the mark of an infantilised society and a childish mind.

One theme in these laboured efforts is a swipe at the idea they claim is central to the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, namely the motive fascistic power of Greed.

"Do", wail these critics, "we need more greed? If greedy men of the sort extolled in Atlas Shrugged go on strike and even better go away, won’t we all be much better off?"

Greed.

There’s a concept.

Yet what exactly is it in these books that describes the sort of fascist greed these critics claim to denounce?

Come on, Guardian and Indy. Show us you have actually read these books – quote some substantive examples (and do not make a twerp of yourself like Johann Hari whose ridiculous account of the Atlas Shrugged railway crash has not a word in common with what the book actually says).

Greed for power and wealth there is aplenty in these novels, but not among the leading heroes and heroines who battle tirelessly to offer their fine products to the market at the best price they can get. Yes, they want to make money as a measure of their success in their endeavours. But they also want to show integrity and straightforwardness in all their dealings.

Is not that something Guardian and Indy readers too might value? Not to mention the strong anti-religion themes, and the trail-blazing feminist portrayal of Dagny Taggart as an indomitable principled senior woman industrialist – something else many Guardian/Indy readers might think a teensy bit of a plus?

The main greed in these books comes not from the industrialists and inventors but from the busily mediocre politicians and manipulators and social parasites and commentators, whose nervous lack of ability combined with lust for power and control drives them to ever-more extreme oppression. In fact, to the sort of communism/fascism which overwhelmed Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, the backdrop to Ayn Rand’s work

Likewise the books are probably the only novels ever written to look in minute (let’s be fair – also obsessive) detail at the sort of moral responsibilities which successful innovators have to the wider public – and the sort of response from the public they might hope to expect in return.

Here Ayn Rand lays out in bleak terms another form of greed: widespread public clamour for the practical fruits of others’ creativity, tied to widespread public sneering at the people who create those fruits.

Do we give much thought to the people fixed on their work and toiling late into the night and/or making all sorts of other sacrifices for months or years on end  to invent new medicines and solar power cells and clever computer programmes capable of changing the world?

Do we reduce everything they are doing to their ‘greed’ and lust for wealth? If not, what is it? If they succeed, what do we owe them? A fair price for their products? An unfair price? Some sense of minimal respect and appreciation too?

Ayn Rand is indeed tough on ‘altruism’. But her core target is the pseudo-altruism on the part of those with ability and energy towards those who have less of both and who make a moral claim on the genius/hard work of others as some sort of entitlement.

Her basic point is that acknowledging any such blank-cheque entitlement belittles the giver and the receiver alike. Both become slaves to reduced expectations of each other – and of themselves.

This is the sort of argument which in a different context wins progressive support – see eg objections to tipping in restaurants as intrinsically patronising and wrong. And it helps support the claim by Dambisa Moyo that Western developmentalist ideology in Africa is doing far more harm than good in psychological terms – too much dependency is bad for everyone concerned. You need not agree with these points of view to agree that they are substantial.

The lesson?

The Left hate Ayn Rand because she pared down the logic of collectivism to its darkest, inhuman core. The Right are uneasy about Ayn Rand because she was suspicious of inherited power and organised religion.

Her two great novels are timeless, uncategorisably majestic in their insights and zany failings alike.

Unlike Indy and Guardian pip-squeak pea-shooters, read them for yourself.