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アメリカの国民作家･思想家のアイン・ランド（Ayn Rand）の思想は毀誉褒貶が激しく，特にその徹底した合理主義（rationalism）は，日本人読者にとって敬遠されやすい．ところが，実は，アイン･ランドの思想の核となる彼女の資本主義観は，日本人にとって意外に理解しやすく共感を得やすい．それは，百田尚樹の『海賊とよばれた男』という経済歴史小説と，ランドの代表作の『肩をすくめるアトラス』を比較するとわかることである．これら二作品は，どちらも「資本主義の精神」を祝福し，どちらもリバータリアニズムの立場にある．マックス・ヴェーバーが論じたように，資本主義の精神を構成するのは，「労働が宗教的救済となること」と「目的合理的な経営」と「利潤の正当化」である．山本七平が発見したように，その資本主義の精神は江戸期の日本にも生まれていた．だからこその明治以降の日本の近代化が可能であった．ランドの資本主義観は，一見奇異に見えて，ヴェーバーが論じた資本主義の精神の世俗化した形である．この文脈で，ランドの説く道徳としての資本主義は，日本人にとって理解しやすいものである．ただし，ランドが「いまだ実現していない理想」として説く資本主義の精神においては，日本的資本主義に見られるように，企業という機能集団は，共同体と未分化ではない．日本人がランドの資本主義から学べることは，個人を共同体に溶解させることによって機能集団を機能不全にすることを抑止する個人主義である．個人の尊厳である． Ayn Rand's defense of capitalism has infuriated anti-capitalists, including many American intellectuals. In popular usage in the context of literary criticism, the word "capitalism"is a synonym of evil. In such an anti-capitalist American intellectual milieu, Ayn Rand dared to refuse to renounce the concept of capitalism. Ayn Rand's view of capitalism is derived from the following ideas: reality exists as an objective absolute, independent of man's feelings, wishes, hopes, or fears; reason is man's only means of perceiving reality, man's only source of knowledge, man's only guide of action, and man's means of survival; every man is an end in himself/herself, not the means to the ends of others; man must exist for his/her own sake, neither sacrificing him/her to others nor sacrificing others to him/her; the pursuit of man's own rational self-interests based on a long-term vision and the achievement of his/her own happiness are the moral purposes of his/her life; therefore, the ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism, because it is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit; the government acts only as a protector of man's rights; for the above-mentioned reasons, of all the social systems in human history, capitalism is the only system based on morality, though a pure system of capitalism has never yet existed even in America; that is to say, capitalism is the system of the future or the unknown ideal. Thus we can safely say that Ayn Rand's view of capitalism seems to be "humanistic" rather than "capitalistic." Ayn Rand's defense of capitalism as a moral system makes readers recognize that protection of individual rights and creation of prosperity as its result depend on the spiritualization of political-economic life through the recognition and practice of morality, or on the true spirits of capitalism which was previously discussed by Max Weber.