The Fountainhead’s basic political message is that the whole range of socialist, communist, and progressive movements in general (exemplified by Toohey) were all about, not fighting against the bourgeoisie to elevate the proletariat, but fighting against excellence to elevate mediocrity. Toohey is a man with no real creative talents who hates everyone so gifted; he hangs out with, and promotes, a group of “individualist” artists who are, indeed, nonconformists, but also completely mediocre; he dedicates himself to spoil all the works of Roarke (e.g., his Temple, which is ruined with superfluous add-ons) because he recognizes Roarke as a true creative genius. Now, you could make a lot of valid criticisms of socialism/communism/etc., but that ain’t one of 'em!
I also found the character of Roarke as “man as he should be” (so described in Rand’s afterword) to fall utterly flat, on those terms. Keating is a man who cares about architecture only because it gives him the chance to be a star, i.e., makes him look good in the eyes of others – and he can see himself only through his reflections in his admirers’ eyes. Roarke is the opposite extreme – not only doesn’t he give a shit about what other people think of him, he doesn’t give a shit about other people at all. The architecture-school lecture, early in the book, about an architect’s duty to “serve the client” first and foremost is included only for the sake of refuting that whole way of thinking. Roarke knows very well that he knows better than his prospective clients – knows, in particular, that what they think they want in a building usually derives from their trying to live up to the way they think society perceives/defines them – and he usually won’t give them what they want, because it would violate his artistic integrity. But what’s his alternative? Roarke, it appears, is a man so devoted to Architecture for Architecture’s Sake that he would be perfectly content, given the funding, to put up a building in the Gobi Desert, never to be used or even seen by anyone. Unlike the “selfless man” Keating, Roarke has a “self,” but there appears to be very little in it; he’s just as much an empty shell as Keating, only in a different way. His soul is a vast, harsh, sublime modernist edifice with no occupants.
I will give Rand props for making Roarke an architect. No other field of creative endeavor would have served the purpose. Architecture is an obvious metaphor for any kind of effort to design or build human society. Unlike say, painting, architects produce things everybody has to live with. Architecture is the queen of arts – it draws from and influences everything else. It embodies esthetic but also functional principles. Every building reflects certain assumptions about history, tradition and society.
But I wonder if Rand ever noticed that the most distinctly Roarkian-modernist buildings put up in her lifetime were built by the Nazis and the Communists? Read the descriptions of the few things Roarke actually manages to get built – the Temple, the mansion – and then look at some pix of Albert Speer’s Chancellory in Berlin and the Soviet Palaces of Culture, etc.
