RSS FeedMissing The Point of Atlas Shrugged
This is a posting about a piece written by Stephen Moore in the Wall Street Journal about Ayn Rand’s classic novel Atlas Shrugged and its relevance to today’s economic crisis. Although I agree with most of what Moore says, I think he fails to mention the true meaning of Atlas. I would also encourage you to read another classic, The Great Gatsby, which has many more lessons we fail to learn.LAS VEGAS, NV (January 12, 2009) – Stephen Moore is an economics writer for the Wall Street Journal. He’s also a frequent guest on news and business talk shows. I enjoy him and his work. This past weekend he wrote a piece January 9, 2009 called Atlas Shrugged: From Fiction To Fact in 52 Years. It was well-written. Here’s Moore’s nice description of Ayn Rand’s work that has become the Bible for libertarians.
For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises — that in most cases they themselves created — by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.
Moore also makes his pitch to gather new converts.
If only “Atlas” were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I’m confident that we’d get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.
Not so fast, Stephen.
Like most libertarians and followers of Ayn Rand, Moore has missed the true meaning of Rand and her effect on American life in 2009.
First, Rand has already bled into the fabric of American life and business. Look at the millions of small businesses in America. Look at the number of people who work full-time and have businesses on the side. Imagine how many more enterprises will sprout as the Internet becomes a ubiquitous form of distribution and we shake off the old ways of last century’s corporate culture. Even Democrats, once known as strictly the party of unions and welfare recipients, understand the need to spur business to create jobs.
Rand, for me, is imbedded into the thinking of most Americans who haven’t even read the book.
But secondly and more importantly, libertarians and Randites fail to see the Rand-created villains that still exist today in their own ranks – namely Wesley Mooch. Mooch is a mediocre bureaucrat who becomes the nation’s economic dictator through betrayal and well-placed connections.
Who is Wesley Mooch today? He is the lobbyist and campaign donor; he’s also the corporate executive who wines, dines and lavishly entertains our elected officials behind closed doors. These are the people who have helped kill innovation today: look no further than our car companies.
Trust me, I’ve seen it. I’ve met many of these elected officials and business leaders who are nice guys but cannot intelligently, let alone intellectually, converse on issues that affect our way of life and business. Yet, they set policy; policy that’s based on who pays them – not on what’s good for America.
(Look at TV news – especially cable news. People like Ann Coulter are always on air because she offers “good television,” not because she has intelligent insight and information.)
While we try to figure out whom to give bailout money to, we forget that most politicians in both parties have gotten sweetheart deals from big business on mortgages, land deals, and campaign donations. The secret wiretappings of Gov. Blago are the norm, not the exception. Does Duke Cunningham ring a bell? You can add others still in Congress like Rangel, Dodd, and Frank.
And this won’t stop. Why? It makes too much sense (and cents) for big business to curry favor with politicians who are making laws. Laws can and will be tweaked to benefit the donor. It’s a small investment that can return millions. But it also creates an unfair advantage to small businesses that don’t have the clout, money, or access.
And this is where Moore and the Randites look silly. Their ranks are loaded with Wesley Mooches and they don’t even know it. I love to hear corporate bigwigs scream about how high our taxes are in America. Yet, they fail to mention the give-backs the politicians bestow on them. With those give-backs included, the U.S. has one of the lowest net corporate tax rates, according to many analysts. And then we scream about other nations stopping free trade.
And what’s even more amazing is the number of people who are small business people who will take to the Rand pulpit and defend these give-backs that will never reach them.
If Ayn Rand were alive today, she’d be asking for the abolishment of all forms of campaign contribution. Politicians don’t need it. They have the internet and other forms of mass communication to inform and educate the masses. But it’s much easier to line their pockets with money from donors and large media companies who reap profits from those donors in the form of campaign advertising.
Wake up, Randites and libertarians. You’ve been invaded by Mooches. And you have yourselves to blame because you’ve gotten lazy and rested on the original interpretation of Atlas.
I’m sure libertarians have just placed their version of a fatwa on me. This is blasphemy to them. But libertarians, like staunch liberals and conservatives, fall in love with their philosophies; they stop thinking and evolving. Think back on the famous adage of “No new taxes.” It sounds good and it’s well-founded economic theory – only if you include spending cuts.
Ayn Rand was an anti-Communist who woke us up to the pitfalls of Socialism. It’s no different than what Marx did in the 1800s; he woke us up to the pitfalls of capitalism. Both thinkers – and many others like Darwin and Keynes – transformed society; how we live and how we do business.
America is an evolving, reactive society. We don’t follow one philosophy. We’re a melting pot of thought. What makes us exceptional is our ability to form new forward thinking through social and business experimentation.
Ayn Rand is a major part of that American progress. So is Marx — whether we like it or not. (If Marx were alive today, we’d be listening to him on TV and one of the things he’d be upset about is the portrayal of his theories by the totalitarians in Soviet Russia and Red China in the last century.) But Keynes and Darwin are also strongly embedded in our thinking. Many others, too.
Should you read Atlas? Absolutely. It’s a great work. It is one of my five most influential books in American history. (A literary note: read Alan Greenspan’s autobiography. He was a Rand disciple and spent a lot of time with her in the 1950s and 1960s and he offers some interesting insight into Rand.)
But Atlas is not the Bible as most libertarians think. It has its flaws.
My problem with Atlas is its homage to one man – John Galt – who has the answers while being persecuted and tortured by the enemies of society. In the end of the novel, he is exalted as the messiah to America who will deliver us to true capitalism. This is trite and one dimensional.
Galt is the creation of a Russian writer; surely an anti-Communist, but also a Russian. Russia loves their strong-armed, rugged, individual leaders – not intellectuals or sacrificing servants. The line of dictators and despots starts from Peter The Great, Catherine The Great, through the czars, Lenin, and ending today with Putin. Can you make a literary connection between Galt and Putin? Sure, they’re both bringing order back to society that have been ravaged by their enemies.
Sorry, folks, but parts of Rand smack of Fascism. Still, that doesn’t remove the lessons we Americans have derived from Atlas.
My suggestion is to also read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. (It’s shorter reading.) This is still the greatest American novel. It was written in 1925 and its lessons still ring true.
Like Gatsby’s 1920s parties, we just lived in “orgiastic” times. Now the party is over with plenty of hang-over headaches. Some of our high and mighty have had Gatsby like endings – dead and motionless in the bottom of a swimming pool.
Gatsby’s gangsters are no different than today’s. Meyer Wolfsheim is the 1920s version of Bernie Madoff. Gatsby says Wolfsheim “fixed the 1919 World Series.” The laudatory tone of Gatsby’s description of Wolfsheim is similar to the pre-crisis belief that someone with money must be a good person. No one dared question Madoff’s incomprehensible returns: he’s rich. I’ll let you decide if stealing $50 billion equates to fixing the 1919 World Series.
(Another literary note: Wolfsheim is the dramatic creation of Arnold Rothstein, the gambler who really set the Black Sox scandal into motion. Read the book Eight Men Out or see the film.)
Gatsby even foresees the environmental crises that will occur decades later. He takes the famous Hawthorne poem, Evangeline, in the 1800s that extols “a forest primeval” and turns it into “This is the valley of ashes” in Gatsby. Fitzgerald laments that all those trees the first Dutch sailors saw in America are gone.
What’s amazing about Gatsby is that it was written in the 1920s – before the Depression. Yet, Fitzgerald saw that coming, too. Rand, on the other hand, wrote about the effects of Communism decades after 1917.
Like Gatsby, we Americans “are borne back ceaselessly into the past” to our detriment. Gatsby thought he could go back into the past and find love with Daisy. We Americans constantly think we can find that fountain of youth or the financial model that will make us all wealthy. The truth is we age and the economy has cycles.
We also believe we can find that one philosophy – like the 1950s Biblical lessons of Atlas – to find utopia. But society changes along with our technology and our thinking. The lessons of the 1950s don’t entirely apply today.
We fail to learn the lessons of Gatsby — until it’s too late. We’re “like boats against the currents”. We struggle, survive, and then thrive through traumas like Steinbeck’s 1930s Grapes of Wrath and the upheavals of today.
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