With all the controversy over Paul Ryan's adoration of Ayn Rand, I was rather surprised that philosopher Slavoj Zizek (a self-described communist) wrote a sympathetic analysis of Rand's works.
It underlies the simplistic interpretation given by most people, yes there's "makers" and "looters" but most hardcore Randians (that is, people that actually read her books) will point to a different appeal. The main message behind the work is to be liberated from the gaze of others, not necessarily from caring about others but to not care what others think of you.
While it's obviously a good value to have, it's completely ambiguous as to who holds it and why. Indeed, while some of the most moral leaders didn't care what others thought of them, all the worst criminals and dictators in history were "Randian" in this sense as well.
To give an example relevant to Rand herself, the Bolsheviks that she despised were a minor party in Russia. Even after taking power in the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks decided to create an Assembly and lost in an election they held themselves. After a single day, they dissolved the Assembly and became a dictatorship.
Long afterwards the Bolsheviks had to suppress wide-scale movements against them just among the left. They weren't appealing to, nor did they care about what the masses thought, they suppressed them to get what they wanted.
It's why the villain in The Fountainhead, Toohey doesn't make sense. Take his vision for society:
A world where the thought of each man will not be his own, but an attempt to guess the thought of the brain of his neighbor who'll have no thought of his own but an attempt to guess the thought of the next neighbor who'll have no thought--and so on...
[Every man will work for] [t]he approval of his fellows--their good opinion--...public polls.
Aside from the fact that, that statement probably applies better to investors trying to "guess the thought of the" market than any left-wing ideology (hell even Noam Chomsky has described the
problems with collectivism.) this would imply that Toohey was asked by the "looters" to altruistically rule over them, or put another way, the masses wanted a ruler. Rand circumvents this problem by making Toohey a manipulator who convinced the population to follow him, akin to if the Bolsheviks had won the support of a majority of Russians.
The other issue is how this strive is apparently incompatible with altruism. To assume as such, you would have to assume all altruism is based on guilt and objectification which I suppose Rand and her followers actually believe. What's amazing is not only is that view ridiculous but studies suggest that helping others not only makes us happy but makes us happier than all other activities.
Muddled Economics
The most glaring problem is the interpretation of the rich as the ones who drive the economy. In Atlas Shrugged, this is taken to its extreme when the world's rich go on "strike" and society falls apart without them. In recent years the term "job creator" was used to propagate this view. As Nick Hanauer points out, this view is completely backwards, it's consumers that drive the economy both in terms of jobs but also profits.
The irony of Ayn Rand's works is that in real life it's the rich who are feeding off both workers and the government. Indeed most great invocations like computers, airlines, satellites, the internet, GPS etc. were the result of government creation while their profits were the result of labor generating it. It's why when workers go on strike, it actually does make a difference for the CEOs that depend on them.
The appeal then is to the people in power; CEOs and administrators think of themselves as strivers that overcame the glare of a mob. In reality, it's the people that have to overcome them.