Was Ayn Rand a conservative? For lack of a better word, when they pause to consider her career at all, scholars and commentators have generally classified the popular novelist/philosopher as such. And certainly, during the 1940s and 1950s she was in close dialogue with many intellectuals who would later go on to prominence in the conservative movement. Today, in a time of right-wing ascendancy, it is difficult to envision just how enervated the movement was in the 1940s: there was no William F. Buckley, no Ronald Reagan, no Barry Goldwater, no National Review. People who identified as conservatives lacked any discernable program or institutional base. But there was Ayn Rand, and her bestselling novel of unmistakable political import, The Fountainhead (1943). This paper looks at the relationships between Rand and a number of nascent conservative intellectuals in the years from 1940 to 1957. In particular, it focuses on her unfettered celebration of capitalism as a flashpoint for both the fundamental ideological disagreements that separated her from many conservatives and the deep affinities that drew them together. It describes a parallel universe of intellectuals and artists who defended capitalism vigorously in the aftermath of the Age of the CIO. In the end, it suggests that perhaps the more interesting question is not whether Rand was a conservative, but whether the conservatives were Randites.

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