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Ayn Rand’s “Heroic” Modernism: Interview with Art and Architectural Historian Merrill Schleier

by Nader Vossoughian

"Have you read The Fountainhead?” is often the reaction one gets when you tell them you study architecture. Indeed, the book has shaped the public’s perception of the architectural profession more than perhaps any other text over this last half-century. Its appeal lies in its accessibility – Rand conjures up clear heroes and clear villains. Her protagonists are frequently the subject of repression or persecution, which elicits the reader’s empathy and identification. In The Fountainhead in particular, Rand very aptly coaxes the reader’s attention by taking up a theme as powerful as any; namely, the notion of the artisan-genius struggling against an indifferent and ignorant society.

Why is it that architecture, and modern architecture more specifically, figure so prominently in The Fountainhead? Why did it appeal as much as it did to popular audiences? I pose this question to the historian of art, architecture, and film Merrill Schleier, who recently published a paper on architectural modernism and Rand’s politics (see Merrill Schleier, “Ayn Rand and King Vidor’s Film The Fountainhead: Architectural Modernism, the Gendered Body, and Political Ideology,” JSAH 61:3 (September 2002): 310-331). In the interview that follows, we explore Rand’s brand of “heroic” modernism and its resonance, both politically and socially, in post-war America.

Q. In your article, you mention that Rand disliked International Style modernism, that she co-opted the discourse without embracing the aesthetic. What puzzles me is that in the years after publishing The Fountainhead, she bought a home by the Los Angeles modernist Richard Neutra. Do you know anything about her feelings for the house? Could she have been more conflicted about the International Style than she actually led on?

A. Despite Rand’s invectives concerning International Style modernism, which she termed the “concrete and pipe school of architecture,” she liked the house by Richard Neutra, which she purchased in 1945. In a letter to Gerald Loeb, who lived in a Wright house himself, she expressed her delight in the house, but added that it was “not as good as a Wright one.” Even though the house was all “steel, glass, and concrete,” Rand was enamored with the thirteen and one-half acres, which included a garden, an orchard, and a field of alfalfa. It might have also been important to Rand that Neutra had worked with Wright at Taliesin, and thus had the master’s implicit stamp of approval. Hence, she saw no inconsistencies in her disapproval of International Style modernism and her embracing of the house. In a letter to a fan who inquired about the house, she wrote back, “I’m the kind of ballplayer who endorses only what she really smokes . . .”

Q. Was Rand’s populist rhetoric (i.e., celebrating the common man in the name of individualism and capitalism) something she cultivated on her own?

A. Rand’s model of the “heroic artisan” actually represented an early version of the self-made man, which had been popular in the United States since the nineteenth century. The ideal was revived during the Depression in New Deal murals, which showed men engaged in instrumental labor. Rand viewed this as a handy way of melding two paradigms of American masculinity, the entrepreneur and the laborer. However, her worker was different than the New Deal cooperative version, which she abhorred.

Q. You say in your article that Frank Lloyd Wright was somewhat ambivalent about The Fountainhead, that he voiced admiration privately, but that he expressed reservations publicly. Could you comment more on this? What was the reception of the book among architects in general?

A. It is necessary to differentiate between Wright’s attitude toward Rand’s novel and his attitude toward the filmic adaptation of The Fountainhead. Wright loved the depiction of the architect in the novel, particularly her lionization of the individual struggling against forces of mediocrity. He felt the celebration of the individual was an important one in the context of the fight for ideological hegemony during World War II. “The Freedom of the Individual is the only legitimate object of government: the Individual Conscience is the great inviolable,” Wright wrote to Rand in 1944.

Wright cautioned Rand not to let Hollywood ruin her novel in the manner they had bastardized so many literary works in the past. After the film was released, he must have felt vindicated in his warnings. He called the film a “treacherous slant of my philosophy.” He was particularly dissatisfied with the stage sets. Replying to an interviewer, who suggested that he respond with a filmic rejoinder, he stated, “Any movie I would make against such grossly abusive caricatures of my work by this film crew would only serve their purpose.” Other architects such as George Nelson followed suit. However, there were a few apologists such as University of Southern California chapter of the American Institute of Architects who enjoyed the film, but referred to it as perhaps “the greatest single approbation of their profession.” Ted Criley, the editor of their Bulletin recognized that the film’s art staff had borrowed from Wright and Mies van der Rohe, but viewed these adaptations as somewhat humorous.

Perhaps the most important international modernist to respond to the novel was the Dutch architect J.J. Oud, who wrote Rand in 1947, “I am more than astonished to see how deeply you penetrated into the essence of architecture and architects: especially in the sense of ‘modern architecture.’” In an anecdote from his own career, he likened himself to Roark. After completing a modernist church, the pastor asked him to inform him when he was finished. Oud replied that the building was complete and inquired if the pastor was willing to be shot for his faith. When the latter replied in the positive, Oud concurred. “Now that I am finished, I am willing to be executed for a design like this.”

Q. Did Rand consider centering her book around a subject other than architecture? Why did she settle upon architecture as her subject matter in the first place?

A. Rand selected an architect as the hero because he was active and instrumental, and a creator. She also viewed the architect’s concern for structure as a perfect metaphor for the enactment of man’s rationalism, one of the keynotes of her burgeoning Objectivist philosophy. In a letter to a fan, she wrote, “You ask why I chose architecture as the profession of my hero. I chose it because it is a field of work that covers both art and a basic need of men’s survival. And because one cannot find a more eloquent symbol of man as creator than a man who is a builder. His antithesis, the collectivists, are destroyers.” This was poignant rhetoric for wartime when the monuments were being destroyed and democratic values were under siege. However, Rand equated building with capitalism, which added an economic dimension to the equation. She did not consider centering this book on another profession; however, in Atlas Shrugged (1957), she explored the careers of several entrepreneurs, including the dynamic railroad magnate, Dagny Taggert.

Q. You mention in your article that many commentators were troubled by Roark’s anarchism, the fact that he blew up a building that did not conform to his expectations. How universal was this perception? Were there commentators who defended Roark’s actions?

A. In addition to Bosley Crowther of the New York Times, several film reviewers were critical of the destruction of the housing project. The New Republic’s film critic regarded Roark as a megalomaniac, whose views were in conflict with the tenets of American democracy. “Contempt for the public has never been a cherished principle of American democracy and dynamite is no argument for a free society,” he wrote.



Merrill Schleier teaches Film Studies at the University of the Pacific.

Interview with Intellectual Historian Malachi Hacohen: On George Soros' Reception of Karl Popper

by Matthew Specter

George Soros’ achievements are many. Professionally, he built his reputation as hedge fund manager and currency trader. However, since 1979 he has also distinguished himself as a leading sponsor of philanthropic causes: over the last four years, his network of foundations have dispensed 425 million U.S. dollars annually. Moreover, in 1992 he also opened the Central European University in Budapest, which has since expanded into Warsaw.

Most astonishingly perhaps, Soros has emphasized that his philosophy as a donor has never veered fundamentally from his original vision as an investor. In either case, he credits his successes to his belief that human beings possess an inherently imperfect understanding of the world. Citing Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies (1945), Soros insists that democracy and freedom are best served by free-markets governed by non-partisan political bodies that uniformly uphold the rule of law for all citizens, allowing free markets to co-exist with social and civil liberties.

Yet one difficulty that stems from his work is the degree to which his practical endeavors fulfill the promise offered up his philosophy. One relationship bears particular notice in this regard – namely, his reception of Karl Popper. Has Soros remained faithful to his mentor’s vision, whose work he came to know and revere at the Londong School of Economics, and if so, to what extent? More broadly perhaps, what is the place of concepts and ideas in the realm of real-world transactions and events? Do “big ideas” have a place in a post-ideological world, and if so, how are these ideas to be translated, if at all? Is it possible to articulate a unified social or political vision without repeating the hubris exhibited by ideologies past and present (think communism, think fascism, think market fundamentalism)?

In order to answer these questions, for this issue of Agglutinations we hear the perspective of a leading scholar of Karl Popper, the historian Malachi Hacohen, who was interviewed recently by Matthew Specter. In their very engaging exchange, they explore matters ranging from Popper’s social politics to his views on science and commerce.

Q. Soros founded the Central European University in 1991, and since then the school has been torn between pure and applied conceptions of knowledge, that is, whether it should follow the Cambridge tradition of liberal learning or the London School of Economics’ more praxis-oriented curriculum. What would Popper have wanted?

A. [Professor Hacohen] I can try to find out more about Popper’s feelings about the Central European University… Regarding the London School of Economics vs. Cambridge models, you should remember that Popper was not always happy at the London School of Economics and that he was resentful of the Cambridge establishment. Wittgenstein’s influence at Cambridge was pervasive, and Popper did not feel he was sufficiently recognized. I know that in the 1980s Popper had major reservations about the declining standards of academic education in the United Kingdom.



Q. Does the Central European University reflect an idea of central Europe that Popper held at some point ?

A. The notion of a cosmopolitan Central Europe, of cultivating democracy, democratic traditions and institutions, and of using education to do that, was certainly an idea with which Popper wholeheartedly agreed. He thought that the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was the great burden of Central Europe, because it led to the triumph of nationalism, especially German nationalism. He criticized even Masaryk’s liberal nationalism in his last public speech in Prague in 1994.

In The Open Society, Popper traced the demise of Central Europe to the rise of ethno-nationalism and to the absence of democratic and Enlightenment traditions that sustained Western, especially British, democracy. He had higher regard for British and American educational and political institutions than for their Central European equivalent. The hegemony of logical positivism in Anglo-American universities caused some disenchantment, but I don’t think that Popper ever went back on the notion that the West possessed something superior to that which he had experienced in his youth in Vienna.

Q. Soros says 1989 taught him that closed societies don’t lead automatically to open ones.

A. Popper never said that closed societies always lead to open societies. That’s incorrect. He always emphasized that open societies faced challenges from closed societies, and the closed ones often won.

Q. Soros’ point is that 1989 enabled him to see that the concept of the “open society” needed to be revised. Today, he explains, open society is “precariously perched” between the “static equilibrium” of closed societies and the “dynamic disequilibrium” of open societies. “This is very different,” Soros writes, “from my original framework, in which I recognized only a dichotomy between open and closed society. Although the dichotomy was appropriate to cold war conditions, the idea of open society occupying a middle ground…seems to fit the present situation much better.”(Future, 81)

A. Then he misreads Popper. I cannot believe he read Popper this way — it is impossible to see Popper as a market fundamentalist. The Open Society and its Enemies [1945] contains an attack on laissez-faire economics. Read the sections on Marx and capitalism and tell me whether Popper reads like a market libertarian. It seems that Soros was most familiar with Popper of the postwar period and the reception of his work at the time, namely, as a Cold War liberal writing against communism. (This is the reading of Popper that my book challenges.) Popper’s close association with the “Vienna School” economist Friedrich von Hayek (who would be championed by Milton Freedman and other conservative “trickle-down” economists) probably contributed to Soros’ impression. It is true that Popper became more conservative in the postwar period, but he remained a supporter of a modified welfare state, all the same.

Scholars Jeremy Shearmur and Ian Jarvie think that Popper did not change all that much and remained a Social Democrat to the end. Jeremy is a libertarian, Ian a moderate conservative, and I, a social democrat, but we all agree on this point: Popper was no market libertarian. So Soros’ reading of Popper, if you’ve rendered it correctly, seems to me problematic. Indeed, Soros’ current views on the market are perfectly compatible with Popper—this is Popper.

Q. I’m puzzled that Soros got Popper wrong, because he describes the atmosphere at London School of Economics during the 1950s as one in which laissez-faire economics was completely discredited.

A. I am not sure. True, Hayek left for Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought in 1948, but the influential economist Lionel C. Robbins stayed on for many years. In the immediate postwar years, it was usually the socialist political scientist Harold Laski who squared off against Hayek or Robbins. (Popper thought Laski was a lightweight…) So, laissez-faire economics was definitely in contention, but far from finished.

When the Soviet Union fell apart, von Hayek advised them to introduce the market immediately; for him, there was no compromise between capitalism and socialism. Popper argued that the thing most important to a democratic society was its legal framework. And for him, in the absence of a constitutional tradition, this sort of things was very difficult to create. Popper therefore believed that one had to proceed cautiously, step by step, in introducing the market to prevent excessive hardship that may cause instability.

Q. So Popper is Soros before Soros ?

A. Exactly. Since Soros was in touch with Popper, I’m surprised at his reading; are you sure you rendered his view of Popper correctly? The complaint I often hear is that Soros misinterprets Popper by making him into a social planner, but my view is that he has him right. You’re telling me now that Soros gets Popper wrong (i.e., as a libertarian).

Q. It’s not clear whether Soros thinks he’s updating Popper or channeling him, when he asserts that open society means the middle path between capitalism and socialism.. But Soros definitely seems to be emphasizing his own originality. What he says is: “I argue that the global capitalist system is a distorted form of the open society and that its excesses could be corrected if the principles of open society were better understood and more widely supported…”(Future, xxii)

A. The late Popper would not have gone as far.

Q. What would Popper say about this? “Market fundamentalism endangers the open society inadvertently by misinterpreting how markets work and giving them an unduly large role to play.” (Future, xxii)

A. Popper would agree. However, he would argue that the current world system is not unrestrained capitalism. Remember: He lived in a Europe dominated by the welfare state….

Q. Soros puzzles over the question of how to convince people of the value of the rightness of the open society, while maintaining that fallibility is one of its key values. As he puts it: “[o]pen society recognizes our fallibility; closed society denies it. Which one is right it is impossible to say.”(68) But Soros nonetheless asserts that universal recognition of our own fallibility can supply the “firm foundation” on which common principles and values can be built (Future, 84) On what grounds did Popper attempt to defend the idea of an open society ?

A. Popper had no doubt that the Open Society was better than the closed one, but the Open Society was better because it left the question of the good society open for discussion.

Q. But does it in fact ?

A. I think it does. There are impediments to discussion, but The Open Society provides a set of institutional arrangements for debate on the question of the best society. Thus there is always the possibility that the closed society argument will triumph. This would be a very dark day for everyone who cherishes freedom and the principles of open debate.

Q. In what way is that not a vision of the good society ? Is it because it is allegedly more procedural than substantive ?

A. It is a procedural view of rationality and political debate … If you suggest that it already has a substantive dimension to it, yes, the worldview of the late Enlightenment does underlie the vision of the open society—Kant’s belief in reason supports it. But it is not logically required for one to “believe” in reason to support the Open Society. The prerequisites for the Open Society are the prerequisites for debate and discussion. You may wish not to discuss and debate, but if you do, there is no arrangement other than the one offered by the Open Society.

Q. Do contemporary U.S. institutions correspond to that of the Open Society?

A. That question is an open one. Popper thought that Western societies were as good as the world had ever seen, but I think there’s room for disagreement. He did think some Western societies were better than others. I would tend to emphasize the gap between constitutional mechanisms on the one hand, and social and economic inequity on the other. Socio-economic inequity prevents constitutional mechanisms from operating as they should. An improved set of socio-economic arrangements is necessary to sustain Popper’s vision of the Open Society.

Q. That sounds similar to Jürgen Habermas’ project in Between Facts and Norms to realize the unrealized democratic potential in the liberal constitutional state. (English trans. 1996, orig. ’92)

A. Yes, but … With the idea of the public sphere Habermas asserts, above all, the possibility of rational agreement. Critical rationalists thrive on conflict of opinions and continued debate. But the proximity of their views is real. Some say that Habermas holds a consensus theory of truth, whereas Popper does not, but I think there is significant common ground between them.

Q. Is there a progressive dimension to the critical rationalist mold at work today?

A. Yes. The philosopher Joseph Agassi is the leading progressive critical rationalist today.

Q. Soros is very concerned that the unregulated market can have grave, unintended consequences. Does he get this from Popper ?

A. In The Poverty of Historicism [orig.1944-45] Popper says that the unintended consequences of social action show the limits of holistic social planning. This is why he advocates piecemeal reform.

Q. What would Popper have made of currency speculation philosophy, that it constitutes a kind of scientific hypothesis-testing à la Popper ? Soros writes, “I developed my own variant of Popper’s model of scientific method for use in financial markets. I would formulate a hypothesis…it had to differ from the accepted wisdom and the bigger the difference the greater the profit potential… This corresponded to Popper’s contention—much criticized by philosophers of science—that the more severe the test, the more valuable the hypothesis that survives it… That is why I liked to invest in flawed hypotheses that had a chance of becoming generally accepted, provided I knew what the flaw was…I called my flawed hypotheses fertile fallacies and I built my theory of history as well as my success in financial markets around them.”.(22)

A. In science, we do not know what the flaw is before we “invest” in the hypothesis, do we? […] Popper distinguished between science, where revolutionary hypotheses were necessary, and politics where they were disastrous – you do not gamble with human life. Presumably, falsified hypotheses have greater value for science than for investing in the stock market where the money is lost. All the same, the view that there is nothing mysterious about scientific reasoning, that it is just a bit more formal, systematic and self-conscious version of daily problem-solving is indeed Popperian. The manner we proceed in all realms of life is conjecture and refutation.

Q. But Soros starts with the Popperian idea of science and tries to apply that to the real world. Wouldn’t that seem backwards to Popper ?

A. No, Popper starts with science, but he wanted to demystify the scientific process. The problem-solving approach that he described provides a very different view of science from the common one [see, for example, Popper’s Conjectures and Refutations of 1963]. His philosophy is not an effort to make life more scientific but to point out the shared characteristics of science and daily practice.

Q. Soros writes:“[i]n Popper, scientist’ theories have no effect on their experiments…the experiments provide the facts by which scientific hypotheses can be judged. No amount of testing will confirm a hypothesis, but as long as it has not been falsified it can be accepted as valid.”(Future, 30) Soros asserts that there is a reality that is independent of science.

A. Yes, Popper was a realist.

Q. Soros says that experimental hypotheses work with the natural sciences, but not with social science, because you overlook humans’ self-consciousness, which interferes with predictive accounts of social life.

A. That’s a well-known argument, and Popper responds to it already in The Poverty of Historicism. Popper, contra Soros, asserts that there is no fundamental methodological difference between the natural and social sciences. It is a difficult subject. Popper’s position went through interesting revisions, but he maintained the unity of science. There is a section in my book (in Chapter 10) on the relationship of history, social science, and natural science in Popper.

Q. Does Soros get Popper right on natural science ? Soros believes thinking and reality can be neatly separated into watertight compartments. Logical positivism categorized statements as true, false or meaningless. This is suitable to a universe which is independent of the statement we make about it. But in social life statements can change the nature of the phenomena being studied. The fact that reality incorporates inherently imperfect human thinking makes it unpredictable and unexplainable. Thinking participants can change the rules of economic and social life by their ideas about these rules. (Future, 17, 30) Soros claims to be moving beyond the master in grasping the indeterminacy in social life, or what he calls “reflexivity.” (Future, 34) Indeterminacy in physics not the same as the indeterminacy introduced by ‘reflexivity.’ Thus for example, capitalism’s law of supply and demand does not naturally determine equilibrium price, because human expectations about price affect demand. Determining creditworthiness in lending is similarly reflexive. In Soros’ opinion, Popper could have “protected scientific method better”(Future, 35) by recognizing that social science shouldn’t always aspire to emulate natural science.

A. I think that Popper ends up with a view of social science that is closer to history than at the start but also with a view of natural science that is closer to social science than he first imagined. This is not because social science is like natural science, but because natural science is like social science. Even in natural science, causal explanation is a limiting and rather rare case, and models are common. They give rise to probabilistic, rather than causal, theories. I have not read Soros on “reflexivity.” My sense is that Popper would be skeptical and suggest that he had addressed the issue adequately in Poverty. But I am not sure.

Q. Soros believes in utopian fashion that widespread acceptance of the principles of the open society—fallibility, reflexivity, and an acknowledgment of unintended consequences—could transform the world. Did Popper think fallibilism was that important ?

A. I am inclined to say yes. But since Popper does not specify the institutional means for realizing this goal, his view remains utopian. The late Popper thought that history was moving in the right direction, especially with the fall of Communism, but he saw a great number of problems emerging from and threatening globalization. He was worried about AIDS, demographic trends, nuclear proliferation, and much more. He believed that world government—an armed United Nations—would eventually emerge. He had his blind spots – he ignored Islam, was not well-informed about postcolonial politics, etc. His late book on television as endangering democracy is rather strange …

Q. What was Popper's position on popularizing knowledge? Did he have any views about the Unity of Science movement that might be relevant in this regard?

A. Popper dismissed the Unity of Science movement as political propaganda. It was led by Otto Neurath and the Vienna Circle, the targets of his critique in Logik der Forschung (1935; The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1959), and he questioned the movement’s philosophical premises. But he cherished the traditions of Viennese Volksbildung, popular education, which gave rise to the Unity of Science movement. He believed in democratic education, and in science’s usefulness to it. He was critical of traditional humanistic education, the way he had experienced it in Vienna. He also believed deeply in the importance of his philosophy – it could make the world better – but was apprehensive about its popularization and politicization. He felt constantly misunderstood. This is the ambivalence of which I spoke at the beginning of the interview.

Q. Was he an elitist ?

A. He always had distaste and contempt for people who thought themselves better than others.

Q. Was Popper any good at managing his own money ?

A. Not really. He ended up leaving a nice inheritance, but, as a young man, he lost his in-laws’ Viennese apartment. In New Zealand, he complained bitterly about not being able to live on a lecturer’s salary. Gombrich wrote Hayek that Popper never had talent for making money, but some suggest that a touch of extravagance was the real problem. Money continued to be a problem at least until the 1980s when prizes, royalties, and then the sale of Fallowfield (his residence in Penn) brought a measure of comfort and a new hobby – collecting expensive first editions of noteworthy books.

Malachi Hacohen is Fred W. Shaffer Associate Professor of History and Political Science at Duke University. He is the author of Karl Popper: The Formative Years, 1902-45: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna (2000).

Matthew Specter is Ph.D. candidate in modern European intellectual history at Duke University. He is completing a dissertation entitled: “Legality and Legitimacy: Jürgen Habermas and the Reconstruction of German Political Thought.” He is a graduate of Brown.