The Objectivist movement is a movement of individuals who seek to study and advance Objectivism, the philosophy expounded by novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand. The movement began informally in the 1950s and consisted of students who were brought together by their mutual interest in Rand's novel, The Fountainhead. The group, ironically named "the Collective" due to their actual advocacy of individualism, in part consisted of Leonard Peikoff, Nathaniel Branden, Barbara Branden, Alan Greenspan, and Allan Blumenthal. Nathaniel Branden, a young Canadian student who had been greatly inspired by The Fountainhead, became a close confidant and encouraged Rand to expand her philosophy into a formal movement. From this informal beginning in Rand's living room, the movement expanded into a collection of think tanks, academic organizations, and periodicals. Rand described Objectivism as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute". Objectivism's main tenets are: that reality exists independently of consciousness; direct realism, that human beings have direct and inerrant cognitive contact with reality through sense perception; that one can attain objective conceptual knowledge based on perception by using the process of concept formation and inductive logic; rational egoism, that the moral purpose of one's life is the achievement of one's own happiness through productive work; that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism; and that art is "a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments." History The Collective "The Collective" was Rand's private, humorous name for a group of close confidants, students, and proponents of Rand and Objectivism during the 1950s and 1960s. The founding members of the group were Nathaniel Branden, Barbara Branden, Leonard Peikoff, Alan Greenspan, Joan Kennedy Taylor, Allan Blumenthal, Harry Kalberman, Elayne Kalberman, Joan Mitchell, and Mary Ann Sures (formerly Rukavina). This group became the nucleus of a growing movement of Rand admirers whose name was chosen by Rand as a joke based on Objectivism's staunch commitment to individualism and strong objection to all forms of Collectivism. The Collective originally started out as an informal gathering of friends (many of them related to one another) who met with Rand on weekends at her apartment on East 36th Street in New York City to discuss philosophy. Barbara Branden said the