On the one hand there is a quite good storytelling skill, with mastery of the hero with a thousand faces as well as emphatic developement. On the other hand there is a very strong ugliness of spirit, appeal to man's (and woman, everyone is shit) baser instincts and social theories that generally only hold up to a mild breeze..
Disclaimer: I haven't done any research on Rand, below is merely what I get from reading some of her books a long time ago.
She has terrible writing skills, the books are filled with repetitive arguments which lack subtlety and philosophical insight, so far that I
'm sure she didn't have enough depth to understand where Marx was coming from, which made her get stuck in the conventional moral dichotomy.
Having said that, I almost fully agree with her central point in Atlas Shrugged. The problem is, when faced with the evident challenge, her heroes would either melt away or turn to abusing the abusers, in effect becoming more like them. Which is also what I see in the real world. The reasons for optimism do not stand out in the book and the solution it alludes to isn't actually there. Essentially, the heroes all died and went to capitalist heaven, which is what will happen to all people who empathize with her heroes (including me). Either that, or the message is "hang in there bro"?
I'll tell you where Marx came from, a wealthy family who married aristocracy, watched his family live in squalor, poverty and starvation (some of whom died as a result) and refused to work A SINGLE DAY IN HIS LIFE, and wrote a book about how unfair it was that other people who worked should share their hard earned gains with the likes of him.
His entire philosophy is anti-human, anything he didn't like he decided should be removed, family didn't like..BOOM, get rid of it.
Rand grew up and studied lived in the Soviet Union (before Stalin got ahold of the reigns and the shit REALLY hit the fan), she understood the depth of Marx more than he did himself.
