Atlas Shrugged Turned on Its Head

Posted on April 28, 2012 by Trish and Rob

When I was in college, I read Ayn Rand’s  Atlas Shrugged. For those of you haven’t read it, here’s a summary from Wikipedia:

Atlas Shrugged is a novel by Ayn Rand, first published in 1957 in the United States. Rand’s fourth and last novel, it was also her and contains Rand’s most extensive statement of Objectivism in any of her works of fiction.

The book explores a dystopian United States where many of society’s most productive citizens refuse to be exploited by increasing taxation and government regulations and disappear. They are led by John Galt. Galt describes the strike as “stopping the motor of the world” by withdrawing the minds that drive society’s growth and productivity. In their efforts, these people “of the mind” hope to demonstrate that a world in which the individual is not free to create is doomed, that civilization cannot exist where every person is a slave to society and government, and that the destruction of the profit motive leads to the collapse of society. The protagonist, Dagny Taggart, sees society collapse around her as the government increasingly asserts control over all industry.

I enjoyed her characters and the love story between Dagny Taggart and the mysterious John Galt. Then I reached the very long speech that Galt made – 27 or 30 pages – on capitalism and profit and thought, Huh? Why didn’t an editor cut this sucker to two paragraphs?

At the time, I didn’t understand enough about capitalism to realize that speech formed the core of Rand’s dangerous belief system. In a nutshell,  her take on capitalism is that there should be no government regulation. None. The free market regulates itself  and when government tries to regulate it, creativity is stifled and profits nosedive.  And oh, there are no free lunches – no Social Security, no Medicare, no welfare, no health care for the poor. Forget all that.

I re-read the book about ten years later and hated it. I didn’t know at the time that a man named Alan Greenspan was a student of Rand’s; Greenspan served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006. After 9-11, he’s the one who encouraged Americans to use their homes as ATM machines, to refinance and use that additional money to bolster the economy by shopping.

Like economist Milton Friedman, Greenspan was a proponent of a self-regulating market, a term I never really understood. I mean, is a market  a human being with a conscience? Does a market know the difference between right and wrong? Greenspan – like Friedman, like Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, like Congressman Paul Ryan – believes in trickle down economics.

I’m sure you’ve heard the term: the upper one percent in the U.S. shouldn’t have their taxes raised because they are the job creators, the ones who supposedly hire you and me and all the rest of us. And because they are the job creators, the belief says, we – the middle class, the poor, the elderly – should be the ones who pay higher taxes. Huh?

Congressman Paul Ryan is the author of the infamous Ryan plan for how to put the country back on track to a brighter economic future. The core of it? Cut social services across the board – i.e., scrap Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and give the very rich a new tax break, and get rid of government regulations on everything, so that the oil companies and insurance companies and banks will have higher profits. And really, don’t worry about it, all you peons out there, because the market self-regulates.

Well, once it became public knowledge that Ryan – a Catholic – was a proponent of Ayn Rand, an atheist,  some Catholic bishops denounced him. So now Ryan, no surprise, suddenly doesn’t embrace Rand’s teachings.

What is so puzzling is that even though the financial meltdown of 2008 was the result of trickle down economics, of the Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand economical view, even though the self-regulating market on Wall Street turned out to be enormously greedy, this philosophy is still advocated as an answer to economic woes.  But don’t take my word for it. Read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine.

“Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism – the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock – did not begin with September 11, 2001. The book traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, “shock and awe” warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.”

The bottom line, I think, is that as we move deeper into 2012, many of us are becoming even more aware of how the old paradigms no longer work. It’s time to turn Rand’s form of capitalism, based on personal greed at the expense of everyone and everything else, on its head. It’s part of that dying belief system. Politicians who advocate cutting social safety net programs that protect the most vulnerable in society, who propose banning contraception and overturning abortion, who believe that corporations are people, who propose doubling the interest rates on student loans, who think it’s okay to drill oil wells a mile deep in the ocean,  who believe that torture is just fine…it’s time for these guys to hit the road, Jack.  Their worldview is broken.

It’s up to the rest of us to put the pieces together in a new way that is beneficial for all people, not just the privileged few.

 

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23 Responses to Atlas Shrugged Turned on Its Head

  1. Nicholas Carroll says:
    April 29, 2012 at 5:23 am

    Since my adolescence, even though I’ve never read any of Rand’s books, I always had a dislike about her for some reason. As a young man, I learned that I did not get along well with guys who loved Ayn Rand. I didn’t know why at the time, but now, it most certainly is a litmus test for me. It sounds kind of shallow, but it seems to work: someone who considers Ayn Rand a major influence on their development / views is completely incompatable with me. I have a hard time being friends with such people. I can understand atheists who like her, but a Christian who likes her is truly ignorant. You’ve might’ve seen some of the pictures on Facebook with Ayn Rand side by side with a picture of Jesus. It asks people to choose which one to follow because you can’t follow both of them. They are completely the opposite in what they espoused.

  2. Kate Gladstone says:
    April 28, 2012 at 3:49 pm

    What, specifically, do you suggest as the better system that turns Rand on her head?

  3. 67 Not Out - Mike Perry says:
    April 28, 2012 at 1:25 pm

    An excellent post, it’s an enormous subject. I feel initially it’s about balance before the ‘dying belief system’ you mention will pop it’s clogs. We almost need re-educating. Yes, we must, for example, protect the vulnerable, sick, aged and so on but it can’t be a free ride for those who simply want to live on welfare by choice, not out of necessity. Everyone, who is able, has to be willing to play their part we all have something to contribute to the whole. Change will come about if we put our beliefs into action and make sure the politicians know what we think – they are our servants, not the other way round.

    • Rob and Trish says:
      April 28, 2012 at 1:27 pm

      Re-education: that sure fits! I agree completely.
      I used to work in social services and found that most people who sought help hated doing it but didn’t have any other choice. I don’t know if the same is true now.

  4. Nancy says:
    April 28, 2012 at 1:09 pm

    We are on the same wavelength here.

  5. Darren B says:
    April 28, 2012 at 9:33 am

    I have “Atlas Shrugged” sitting on my chest of drawers in my “to read” pile.I’ve had it there for years,but can never bring myself to read it (maybe the 1000 pages I would have to slug through is the main reason). I keep thinking that I should read it next,but I always pick up another book from the pile that looks more interesting.
    Now that you’ve mentioned it here,maybe I should take it as a sign to make sure it is the next book that I read.
    I highly recommend “The Shock Doctrine” to anyone reading this comment,it is a great (although disturbing ) read.
    To really understand how corrupt the banking game is though,you have to go back before the battle of Waterloo. This 3 hour film about the banking industry is the best film that I’ve ever seen about modern banking;
    https://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936
    For those who have the patience to sit through it,a lot of questions will be answered about modern banking and just how we got into this pickle.
    Probably another reason why I can’t get into “Atlas Shrugged”.

  6. DJan says:
    April 28, 2012 at 8:51 am

    I could not agree with you more. I was just thinking about capitalism and how destructive it is to a democratic society that actually cares about its citizens. I am willing to do my part, giving money to groups that fight for Democratic values, and at the ballot box. I wish I could do more. Sometimes I feel so powerless that I get discouraged. I am glad to read something like this, it makes me feel like maybe there’s hope.

    • Rob and Trish says:
      April 28, 2012 at 1:25 pm

      I am uneasy about the 2012 election. Mercury turns retrograde on election day. In the 2000 election, Mercury turned direct on election day, shortly after Florida had been announced as won for Gore. A few iutes later, Flroida was announced as undecided. We all know where that eleciton ended up.

      • gypsy says:
        April 28, 2012 at 6:31 pm

        oh, yes, i remember now having heard the retro date and the election timing – all the more reason we each individually and all collectively must get out there and see to it that rand and her followers are put to pasture – speaking up acting out – speaking up more – and voting –

    • Jon says:
      April 28, 2012 at 11:59 pm

      Democracy without capitalism is a boat without oars. Communists kill rather than allow true freedom. Socialists drag its citizens down to the lowest common denominator and stifle creativity.

      Please tell me, anybody, what has life-changing technology/product/idea has emerged from communist or socialist states? Neither improve anybody’s quality of life.

      Yes, capitalism means that there are inequalities in the distribution of life’s pleasures, but socialism and communism are designed to assure there is an equitable distribution of life’s miseries.

      • Rob and Trish says:
        April 29, 2012 at 12:10 am

        We’re not saying to eliminate capitalism. What happened during the Bush years and during the Clinton years with deregulation, is what produced unbridled, corrupt capitalism. Wall Street ran amok. The whole business of derivatives was corrupt. It’s what happened when greed just barrels forward, without restraints or checks. Any society that hopes to survive and thrive must care for the people in that society who are most vulnerable. I’m not talking about freeloaders. I’m talking about your 98 year old grandmother with arthritic fingers and legs that are betraying her, a memory riddled with holes and a life that is history, who can no longer feed herself. I’m talking about the middle class family who has followed all the rules – and got screwed by the greed of bankers and politicians and are now homeless. I’m talking about college and graduate school students who must take out loans to attend school and graduate with a hundred grand more of debt and then can’t find jobs. I’m talking about the dirt poor. We support profit. Who wouldn’t? We all want to be paid for the work we do and paid fairly. But why shouldthe poor and middle class pay more taxes than the top one percent? Why should corporations making zillions, not pay any taxes at all? That’s corporate welfare, not capitalism.

      • Rob and Trish says:
        April 29, 2012 at 9:41 am

        Ah, but capitalism without democracy that is where the corporations and their paid-off politicians are taking us. It’s like a big cruise ship crushing the little paddle boats without regard. Where is the creativity there? It’s all about consumerism, buy, buy, buy.

      • Darren B says:
        April 29, 2012 at 5:29 pm

        Democracy needs a balance of both Capitalism and Socialism,forget about communism (that’s obviously just another word for Fascism when you see how the so called Communist countries of today are operating).
        Neither Capitalism or Socialism can work by themselves,there has to be a mix of the two.
        True Capitalism can never work by itself,because that would just come down to ‘every person for themselves’ which would just lead to Anarchy.
        The United States,Britain,Australia,Canada,and countries like them who have prided themselves on being Capitalist societies have never truly been fully Capitalist societies in the past.They have always operated on a mix of both Capitalism and Socialism.
        If you think otherwise Jon,then you are fooling yourself.
        Take a good hard look at how these societies have run successfully in the past and I think you will see that you need both oars in the water (Capitalism and Socialism) to go forward.

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