Dear Mrs. Rand:
I am not a professional critic and I feel no call to judge the merits
of a novel. So I do not want to detain you with the information that I enjoyed very much reading
Atlas Shrugged and that I am full of admiration for your masterful construction of the plot.
But Atlas Shrugged is not merely a novel. It is also (or may
I say: first of all) a cogent analysis of the evils that plague our society, a substantiated rejection
of the ideology of our self-styled "intellectuals" and a pitiless unmasking of the insincerity of the
policies adopted by governments and political parties. It is a devastating exposure of the "moral
cannibals," the "gigolos of science" and of the "academic prattle" of the makers of the "anti-industrial
revolution." You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and
all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the efforts of men
who are better than you.
If this be arrogance, as some of your critics observed, it still is
the truth that had to be said in this age of the Welfare State.
I warmly congratulate you and I looking forward with great
expectations to your future work.
Sincerely,
Ludwig von Mises
International Society for Individual Liberty
> Ludwig von Mises Congratulates Rand
