But then, the common model, repeated over and over again in communist revolutions, is that the intellectuals and academics who are often the avant-garde of the revolution and imagined themselves near the top of the pyramid in the shining new age, are quickly swept aside and replaced by the likes of Cuffy Meigs and TInky Holloway in Atlas Shrugged. In the 1960s I heard a talk at my school by an emigré from Cuba who had been a professor and supporter of Castro and described how, within months of the fall of Batista, what he described as “goon squads” took over the universities with the goal of transforming them into centres of indoctrination for the regime, discarding its original supporters as having served their purpose.
It has been said of her writing, “Ayn Rand’s heroes are fake, but her villains are real”. Part of the insight in the story is that the villains are not scheming evil geniuses but rather incompetents who place misguided theories above evidence from the real world and their innumerable subordinates whose first priority is to never take responsibility for any decision or action.