Will Wilkinson asks a very useful question:

Here is a good debate proposition: It ought to be less embarrassing to have been influenced by Ayn Rand than by Karl Marx.
The most powerful way to argue the affirmative is to compare the number of human beings murdered by the devotees of each. That line of attack ought to be decisive, but I’m afraid it won’t get you far with the multitude of highly-self-regarded thinkers influenced by Karl Marx. Fact is, commitment to some kind of socialism and fluency in the jargon of Marxism used to be mandatory for serious intellectuals. And there’s something glamorous in the very idea of the intellectual. Even for those of us who came of age after 1989, Marxism, like cigarettes, remains linked by association to the idea of the intellectual, and so, like cigarettes, shares in the intellectual’s glamour. I don’t know if cigarettes or Marxism have killed more people, but it’s pretty clear cigarettes are more actively stigmatized. Marxists, neo-Marxists, crypto-Marxists, post-Marxists, etc. have an enduring influence on intellectual fashion. So it is not only possible proudly to confess Marx’s influence on one’s thought, but it remains possible in some quarters to impress by doing so. It ought to be embarrassing, but it isn’t. Being a bit of a Marxist is like having a closet full of pirate blouses but never having to worry.

He then takes it in a very different (but enjoyable) direction, but I think the proposition is a great one and should be thrown up in lots of debates and discussions, particularly on college campuses. Professors will roll their eyes as will countless leading liberals (many of whom were indisputably and vastly more influenced by Marx than Rand, albeit sometimes second or third hand). It says something profound about the center of gravity in our culture that intellectuals, academics, and journalists are more inclined to think of Rand sympathizers as “extremists” or “ideologues” and Marx sympathizers (i.e. neo-Marxists, crypto-Marxists, post-Marxists, etc) as mainstream and thoughtful scholars.

All of this leaves aside that you could make the nearly same point, even more dramatically, by replacing Ayn Rand with Adam Smith or even Milton Friedman.

Update: A reader asks why I say “nearly the same point” rather than the same point. It’s a good question, I think. My short answer is that if you said Milton Friedman or Adam Smith you would capture pretty much all of the mainstream Right including the libertarians. Rand, however, is more controversial on the Right and, while I doubt many conservatives would easily admit it, it sure seems that in real life there are some conservatives more comfortable associating with some flavors of Marxist than associating with avowed Randians. There are probably some interesting cultural factors at work there, but I think it’s revealing nonetheless.

I have no desire to reopen old wounds, but one need only look at the masthead of NR when Whittaker Chambers defenestrated Rand in these pages to prove that point.