The following is a commentary on the book, ATLAS SHRUGGED, by Ayn Rand.
Ayn Rand, born in Russia in 1905, immigrated to America and wrote “Atlas” in 1957. It is considered one of America’s premier novels.
“Atlas” is a fictional work which serves as a commentary on Rand’s philosophy of “Objectivism,” which she says she originated.
The novel is both a powerful defense of “free-market capitalism” (with which I agree) and a (perhaps unintended) graphic expression of its excesses.
Her leading figure, John Galt, is a messianic figure and is accompanied by several of his apostles (Francisco d’Anconia, Hank Rearden, and Dagny Taggart). Galt lives out Rand’s philosophy and—toward the end of the book—delineates and espouses it to the entire world in a three-hour globally-aired speech. They alone, with a handful of others, are of sufficient mental acuity to understand Rand’s economic philosophy. She has a manifest facility in put-downs, both subtly and patently, of those who disagree with her, or are simply too dim-witted to get her “objectivist” philosophy embodied in her heroes.
The essential story-line is that a country (America?) sells out to an economic process by means of which all the wealth of the country is re-distributed, not only to the needy of the country, but to every needy person on earth. If a child in Patagonia does not have shoes, a resident of the mythical wealthy country may not purchase a second pair for his own child. In the end, the economy utterly fails and Galt and his free-market capitalists—financially dispossessed by a rampant socialism—live reclusive lives in a secret valley where they can live in freedom from the “moochers,” i.e., the socialists. The book ends with the small group planning to revive the utterly destroyed economy of the country by re-introducing free-market capitalism.
My observations:
- Rand’s essential philosophy is that of a calculating selfishness; neither you nor I owe anything to each other innately. If we mutually choose (key word) to make a deal which is equally beneficial to each other, then a deal is made. Neither your need, however, nor mine, can make any claim on each other. Rand endlessly pillories the idea of sacrifice for another unless there is a free choice in such an act, and an equal compensatory result for both parties.
- Every man should seek his own happiness and contentment first and foremost. (Interestingly, no child is mentioned in the novel, running to almost eleven hundred pages; one wonders how such a philosophy could possible function in a family setting. But then, no family is depicted in the book either.)
- Rand is an atheist and has a dread of people “of faith.” Only one such person, a priest, makes a quiet appearance and a quick exit in the book. Rand later wrote that she did not know how to make such a person a believable character, and so didn’t create one. (That is mystifying since her obvious genius is character development.) She calls such people “mystics,” and blathers often about their shallowness and refusal, or incapacity, to think. She is feverishly afraid of the doctrine of original sin or even the theory that man is innately inclined to sin. That would take away man’s most precious gift—true freedom of action. She gives us no information as to how it is that, universally, all men—I almost said “egregiously and continually”— sin. To explain a universal accident, occurring to billions of people, across thousands of years, is difficult. She doesn’t try. (Defacto, a universal “accident”constitutes a universal law.) Sentiment has no justifiable place in Rand’s landscape. It is only cool hard calculating rationality that counts. (Reading C. S. Lewis’ small jewel of a book, “The Abolition of Man” is a sovereign cure for such a theory as he delineates the important, indeed, necessary, place of sentiment in the lives of all humans.)
- Her theory is that life’s great virtue is to use one’s mind, to develop one’s capacity for “real” thought. She doesn’t say the words, but one is led to believe that, in her view, only those who espouse her own philosophy are true thinkers.
- Interestingly, one of her common mantras is a perfect redundancy: “Existence exists!” She repeats it often. And, again, apparently only she and her followers could possibly really know that fact. (On such a view, a rustic who says—assuming he is standing behind his harnessed mule and has been asked about its existence—“My mule EXISTS!” would qualify for membership in her exclusive club. One finds it difficult to see the profundity of her scream unless she thinks everybody else is a pure philosophic immaterialist, i.e., a person who believes nothing exists outside the mind.) And the answer is “no;” she nowhere explains what we are to understand by the obvious fact that existence does exist beyond the obvious and self-evident fact that it does.
- She has a lot to say about morals, but, at bottom her philosophy is amoral, unless “moral” means you and I may justifiably profit in any deal if we get what each of us wants from each other. Her “morals” (she uses “sanity” almost as a synonym for morality) are of sufficient elasticity for her heroine, Dagny Taggart, to sleep with Rearden and d’Anconia, and apparently, with Galt. (I suppose one could argue that at least she is discriminating, engaging in sex only with apostles.) “Morals” for her are simply cultural mores without any transcendant origin or implications. Remember: no family, happy or sad, is seen in the entire novel!
- She holds that free market capitalism has no basis in a Judeo-Chrisian ethic since it is based solely on self-interest. Obviously, she has nothing to say about the founding fathers and/or their views on the issue. America (if she is speaking of America) is exceptional only and solely in an economic sense.
- John Galt’s lengthy speech is so long, so rambling, so convoluted, and so beset with philosophical material (he quotes Aristotle) that perhaps five percent of the general population might have some clue as to what “objectivism” really is. Remember: the speech was made to all humans on the planet. One imagines people, upon hearing the speech, in all the great cities in the world, and throughout the countryside, running amok with banners and brass bands in wild joy and unbounded ecstasy shouting that now, they finally understand, from soup to nuts, acceptable economic philosophy. One more easily envisions the same people pulling the radio plug seven minutes into the speech, plugging in the popcorn machine and calling for beer.
- Rand says (p. 7 of the introduction to the book) that she is the very first human being who has ever created a “new, original abstraction—objectivism—and translated it through new, original means (i.e., fiction). This as far as I know (she writes) is only me—my kind of fiction. (Emphasis hers) May God forgive me (Metaphor!) if this is mistaken conceit.” (Emphasis added!) Her friend, Leonard Peikoff, who writes the introduction to the book, says (p. 8) that her assessment might be right. “Atlas,” he says, “might, indeed, be a mistaken conceit.” His two final words are: “You decide.” I have. It is.