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There are plenty of good atheist, capitalistic, libertarian thinkers and philosophers. In fact, most philosophy departments I've been around have had a bit too many of them for my tastes. And there is nothing that precludes a libertarian philosophy from being relevant. My brother is one of the smartest fellows I know, and a good, compassionate person - and he's the president of the local libertarian club and an atheist (and a philosophy major). Rand is just a crap one. Her arguments are faulty and so are her premises. It's like Dawkins trying to advocate for atheism - his basic incompetence of the subject matter makes him irrelevant to any educated conversation of the subject matter. It's not because he is an atheist (plenty of those that can argue well) it's that he is simply either uninformed or willfully ignorant regarding the depths of his claims. So make no mistake - I'm not criticizing libertarianism in general - I'm criticizing Ayn Rand's version of it. I don't particularly agree with much libertarian economic thought (though I am a social libertarian myself) but I can respect much of it. As someone pointed out - you can't really argue with Rand because she isn't making arguments that are arguable, it's like arguing with a Southern Baptist (no offense to any present) you aren't going to get anywhere because the premises are not going to line up.
The thing is.. Marx is not just communism and it is certainly hasn't much to do with the crap that is called communism (Stalinism, Mao, Lenin, Pol Pot, etc). And often if you run across an academic Marxist (especially in the social sciences, literature, etc) you are talking about Marxist analysis - which can be rather politically and economically neutral but rather advocates an explanation of events and history that is economic and power oriented. So if we analyze religion or the industrial revolution, etc. we're going to be looking at the economic forces that are going on, and how these and other issues help keep the powerful powerful and the weak weak. Marx actually offers some enormously useful tools for analysis even if much of his other thought hasn't worked out very well (but not many people in that time's thought has stood the test of time well.)
There was a strange fascination with his economic/political thought for a long time by people that really should have known better. My guess this has a lot to do with the times when the mores of the intelligensia types were moving towards equal rights for women and minorities, social justice was becoming more important, there was a growing awareness of how our economic and political system was oppressive and was helping keeping the oppressed down and helping the white middle class male get further ahead on their backs. My guess (and I've not studied it in any depth) is that people were seeing communism (though rarely allying themselves with anything you'd see in the world as communism given how monstrous all that was) as something that would address these issues in a way that capitalism just seemed to perpetuate.
Marxism as anything but an analytic tool doesn't have much feet in the US anymore. Has a bit more in Europe. And as a whole, most schools pretty much let your thought go where you want it to - but you're expected to back it up. And with Rand - that is a very, very difficult thing. Hell.. my department really likes to have people that are outside the norm of our thought and kicks things up a bit. That is, as long as they can be rational and rigorous about it. We get plenty that talk a lot of crap (it is religious studies so... you can imagine what some of the things that happen are - both from religious and a-religious people) and you'll be respected just fine as long as you're playing by the academic rules (which means have a good reason for your opinion).
I don't think the academic world is the end all, be all of course... in fact, I think it is getting more and more irrelevant but it is still a great BS detector as a whole (though often fails in isolated incidences).
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