The Chairman's Favorite Author

At one of the preliminary conferences leading to this week's summit on inflation, John Kenneth Galbraith looked over the 28 other economists who had gathered in the White House and quipped that the remedies for inflation would be about the same for "Bolsheviks and the devoted supporters of Ayn Rand, if there are any present." Then Alan Greenspan smiled and spoke up: "There's at least one."

So there was. The new chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers is a longtime friend and disciple of Ayn Rand, the Russian-born author whose novels of rebellious achiever-heroes (We the Living, The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged) and nonfiction books have sold at least 12 million copies in 38 years. Greenspan, who is 48, makes no secret of his admiration for Rand, who is now a vigorous 69. His admiration extends to Rand's work and her philosophy of Objectivism, which she describes as advocating "reason, individualism and capitalism." It rejects altruism and embraces, says Rand, "rational selfishness." As John Galt, the hero of Atlas Shrugged, puts it at the climax of a 57-page speech that explains Objectivism: "I swear--by my life and my love of it--that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." Indeed, the title of one of Rand's nonfiction books is The Virtue of Selfishness. Rand does not like to be compared with earlier thinkers of any stripe, but her beliefs are not too far from the 18th century philosophers who held that if every man were out for himself, society would ultimately benefit. She has long been indignant over the consistent fire she has drawn from hostile critics, who view her as an impractical, closed-minded ideologue rather than a serious philosopher.

No Taxes. Ayn (as in "mine") Rand is openly pleased over her real-life achiever-hero's rise to the White House. She traveled from her midtown Manhattan apartment to Washington, D.C., this month to watch Greenspan's swearing-in, then was introduced to President Ford. "I'm very proud of Alan," she says. "His is a heroic undertaking."

Greenspan is the first known follower of Objectivism to be tapped for a major Government policymaking position. When the appointment was announced, critics wondered only half jokingly if Greenspan's rise would lead to Rand's becoming the Administration's primary behind-the-scenes economics adviser. That sort of speculation is dismissed by both Rand and Greenspan. He says he has little contact with Rand now, and even before the CEA job came, meetings were limited to dinners every month or so with her and her husband of 45 years, Artist Frank O'Connor. On these occasions, Greenspan adds, conversation is just "what old friends talk about." Suspending a policy of shunning press interviews, Rand told TIME'S Sarah Button: "I am a philosopher, not an economist. Alan doesn't seek my advice on these matters. He can tell me more than I can tell him, and knows more about the day-to-day events."

Still, the two are very much in agreement on economic principles. Both view capitalism as a system that functions best without any Government regulation --a recurring theme in Rand's writings. During the Arab oil boycott late last year, Rand quoted Greenspan in her biweekly Ayn Rand Letter (circ. 15,000) as saying jokingly, "We would have oil spurting from under our feet" if the Government relieved the oil industry of all taxes and controls and promised to impose no new ones for a decade. As for inflation, Rand agrees with Greenspan's remedies: balanced budgets, reduced Government spending, tight money. Three years ago, she said in her letter that wage-price controls would lead to runaway inflation.

Though both Rand and Greenspan admire risk-taking entrepreneurs, Rand generally has little regard for U.S. businessmen. "They are appeasers, compromisers and pragmatists," she declares in her heavily accented, carefully spoken English. "They do not have one long-range idea." Oilmen? Rand says, "They claim that their sole purpose is to serve the public, which is a vicious statement of altruism and collectivism. What they should say is that they're working for their own profit. And that incidentally, as a consequence, they are serving the public."

More Recognition. Greenspan and Rand have known each other since the early 1950s, when they were introduced by Greenspan's former wife. "He impressed me as very intelligent, brilliant and unhappy," recalls Rand. "He was groping for a frame of reference. He had no fundamental view of life." But that began to take shape in the course of long, late-night talks with her, and in reading the manuscript of Atlas Shrugged before it was published, to mostly unfavorable reviews, in 1957. The book describes what happens when men of ability go on strike: the U.S. is destroyed. "By the time he was reading it, he was sold on the philosophy, but only in a general way," says Rand. "Atlas Shrugged finished the job."

In the early 1960s, Rand edited Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, an anthology of essays. Greenspan's contribution championed a return to the gold standard and abolition of antitrust laws --views he still generally holds but does not expect to effect in the light of political realities. At that time, Greenspan was a part-time economics lecturer at the Nathaniel Branden Institute in New York City, a forum for Rand and her followers that was disbanded in 1968.

Rand does not like Richard Nixon, who named Greenspan to the CEA job. The former President, she says as she puffs on a Tareyton through an ever-present blue-and-silver cigarette holder, is "a grotesque example of pragmatism." But she heartily approves of Gerald Ford, whom she regards as "marvelous casting in appearance alone."

Now Rand is busy planning her fifth novel and writing her letter. She is pleased that a younger generation is gradually being exposed to her ideas, which are not always predictable. For instance, although she fled Soviet totalitarianism in 1926, at age 21, Rand is "almost in sympathy" with the Kremlin's expulsion of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Reason: "He's against growth and technology, and for replacing Communism with the theocracy of the Russian Orthodox Church, a dreadful religion." And she is receiving somewhat more recognition, too, from academia. Earlier this year at West Point, Rand delivered a lecture on the importance of philosophy. It has since been made a part of the academy's curriculum.

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