Atlas Shrugged a book in review

So I finally made it through the brick that is Atlas Shrugged. And after one thousand one hundred and sixty eight pages in my centennial edition I’m wondering how I feel about it all.

I read The Fountainhead at the end of this summer and I was so floored by the philosophy set down in that book that I wanted to continue it into Atlas Shrugged. And it does continue as Ayn Rand herself says on the first page of the book:

“To all readers who discovered The Fountainhead and asked me many questions about the wider application of its ideas, I want to say that I am answering these questions in the present novel and that The Fountainhead was only an overture to Atlas Shrugged.”

Beautiful, an overture, I love music. And I did discover The Fountainhead and I was asking “many questions about the wider application of its ideas”! How could I go wrong with Atlas Shrugged?

Well I think the problem is, I don’t like her “wider applications.” See to me The Fountainhead was and is much more philosophical in nature and Atlas Shrugged is much more political and economical, hence the application. Just like Marx was a philosopher and Lenin and Stalin where politicians, the same can be said of these two books; my apologies however for using a communist analogy when discussing the works of Ayn Rand.

Because if you are not familiar with Rand you should know that she hates Communism. I suspect this has a lot to do with her being born in Russia in 1905 during those revolutionary years that lead to the cold war Russia we all know and love. And seeing what that particular form of Communism did to Russia, her homeland, I’m sure no one can blame her for taking such a disliking to it. But I think that is a very important part of the narrative of her life that one must consider when interpreting the ideas she lays down in Atlas Shrugged.

The overall message being summed up in the oath the central characters take:

“I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

But women, they can do whatever the hell they want.

And that is the basics of her philosophy that she introduces in The Fountainhead and “applies” in Atlas Shrugged. She is a champion of the ego and a believer in selfishness. Not that one should take as much as one can for oneself, but rather that one should take pride in ones work and one should not compromise for anything but the fulfillment of ones desires.

After reading The Fountainhead my first question was: Wasn’t Hitler fulfilling his desires? Aren’t people that rob and steal attempting to fulfill a desire to rob and steal? Where is the line? Well Atlas Shrugged has the answers, apparently.

The application of her philosophy is nothing more then controlled Fascism. She paints a picture of strong almost god-like characters who are above and beyond the normal person, or “second-raters” or “looters” as she chooses to call them, and they adhere to a code of conduct that includes such rules as: No violence is to be used unless used against them first (Which is so horribly broken at the end of Atlas Shrugged when one of the characters kills an innocent man, his only crime being that he is a victim of society and thus in Rand’s point of view not worthy of his life). Two, no one should “give” anyone anything without proper value exchange (i.e. cold hard cash). And there are a few of other loose ideas they claim to follow, but of course can be broken whenever their superior intellect sees fit to change the rules. So basically you have Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and a bit of current U.S. politics tossed into a room and told they can’t kill anyone unless they have a really good reason. And of course Hitler says the Jews are breaking the economy and starts killing them, Mussolini says something similar and starts killing poor people and The White House just shoots the first brown person is sees and claims they had a bomb.

In short Rand is painting the exact opposite of Socialism, which we all know is Fascism, that’s why the German’s and the Russian’s didn’t get along during WWII. But once you’re knee deep in Atlas Shrugged it doesn’t appear that way, thus making it very effective propaganda. I’m no friend of stupid people or people that don’t want to work or think for themselves and just want to steal other people’s money, but at the same time she makes me feel like I should go knock on the door of Exxon Mobil and cuddle up with their CEO and tell him I still love him.

The thing that makes her arguments so strong in fact is the major flaw of her work. These god-like characters she presents do not exist, no matter how hard she tries to tell you that they do.

“I trust that no one will tell me that men such as I write about don’t exist. That this book has been written, and published, is my proof that they do”

What? A bunch of dedicated industrialist who are out there producing their little heads off with no concern whatsoever of anyone else but themselves published this book, even helped you write it? If these people do exist what the hell do they care if your book gets published or not? What the hell do they care if your message gets spread or not?

“My personal life,” says Ayn Rand, “is a postscript to my novels; it consists of the sentence: ‘And I mean it.’ I have always lived by the philosophy I present in my books – and it has worked for me, as it works for my characters. The concretes differ, the abstractions are the same.”

And this is the second paradox that I find in Ayn Rand’s work, of which she hasn’t provided an answer yet. If her philosophy states that we should only be concerned with our own selfish desires and do nothing to compromise that how then does she explain her desire to spread her message to the masses? I understand she got money in exchange for it, but in exchange for what an abstract idea? That’s hardly metal or rock like her characters exchange.

I find it interesting that she only have one abstract artist in all of her books that is portrayed in a good light. Most are seen as sniveling intellects who talk out of their asses as a way of getting out of doing real hard labor. The one respectable artist is a composer who claims that he only gives concerts for people who truly appreciate his music, as if that is the value he exchanges, well that and a lump of gold. But is he endowed with some super human power to be able to detect who is appreciating his music and who isn’t?

Answer: yes.

Or worse, are industrialist AKA rich people the only people worthy of hearing beautiful music?

Answer: yes.

Never mind the idea that art inspires people to action or inspires them to a level they never through possible before they experienced that piece of art. O wait, that’s the fucking reason she wrote the God Damn books! She wrote the books and the following non-fiction ones, and spent eighteen years traveling around promoting her philosophy for second raters, for the looters, for the very people her philosophy teaches us to hate in an effort to inspire them.

That’s very nice of her but it’s an important contradiction to point out.

When I first read The Fountainhead, I was inspired by the possibility of my own greatness. A flame was reignited in me that had begun to dwindle. I felt the power in believing in my own ability to feel power. And to me that is the single greatest lesson to be taught by Ayn Rand. The point of the rant above and the lesson I learned in Atlas Shrugged is that Ayn Rand is not a god-like person as much as she wishes. The point is, no one is. And you can’t expect people to be that perfect or you fall into the same trap religion falls into.

Man is not a god, and if he thinks he is that is arrogance and it will lead to destruction. I have said here before that I believe man has the potential to be great and I still believe that, but it is important to remember that we are still on that path and until we get there we shouldn’t act as if we are there.

Atlas Shrugged, presents the idea that man is god, well some of us anyway, and that everyone else should submit to these god-men. I disagree. There is value in helping your fellow humans. The value is the overall wellbeing of mankind. However Rand's philosophy provides a check on that by reminding us that there is a difference between helping and giving. Are we helping the genocide in Darfur by giving them aid that is just stolen by the mercenaries? Or would we be helping them if we sent in troops and stopped the slaughter? Right now I feel like we are ignoring them because we adhere to closely to Rand’s philosophy. Our interests are in Middle East oil, so that’s why we are there. Although I can’t help but wonder what Rand’s take would be on the Bush administration. Would it not be of benefit to look beyond the here and now and help our fellow humans?

Just like any philosophy it should be considered with the plethora of other philosophies that one can read and digest into their own personal philosophy. And in a way, Rand’s philosophy supports this, almost a philosophy of philosophy in the idea that one should form ones own world view of selfish interest to ones own desires. What if you selfishly want to help your friends? What if it is your desire to give your money to the poor and needy? Rand would probably claim you are lying to yourself, but how would she really know?

Overall I think there are very valuable lessons to be learned from Rand and her books. I for one have learned many lessons that have and are going to profoundly affect the way I live my life. But just like anything else it should be considered critically and you shouldn’t live by it just for Ayn Rand’s sake, I don’t think she’d like that anyway.