roman_mir's Journal: Review of Atlas Shrugged

Finally, after almost 3 decades of just hearing about this book, I decided to read it, simply because I am quite tired of the people answering to my comments with: "put away Atlas Shrugged". I never held it in my hands before so now at least this type of commentary will have some merit.

I read it now, it's very good, I understood the meaning in it simply because I came to the same conclusions on my own long ago, and this was just a nice summary put into a somewhat interesting half science fiction, half detective novel. Of-course it was fairly easy to understand most of the 'mystery' of the detective portion of it even from the first part, the plot was easy to figure out, so if you are just looking to be surprised with a good detective story, it's not for you (unless you are easily surprised.)

The narrative is very straight forward and easy to read, mostly. It takes about 2 full days to finish all 3 parts.

As an atheist it's interesting to see Rand attack the religious believes of a large portion of the population through this book, now I understand why so many religious folks hated it. The good and bad are shown for what they are - the self-sacrifice is properly displayed for being in reality contradictory to the very concept of justice. Of-course it is unjust that the best people are being sacrificed by the worst and the mediocre and the average on the altair of what these mediocre and average people believe to be their right because they understand that they are weak and thus they believe they deserve compassion. They believe they deserve the sacrifice of the strong. They want the strong to sacrifice themselves to the weak and they want the strong to believe that this is the right thing to do as well, so that the weak can feel that they are free of guilt of requiring this sort of masochism from those, who really don't deserve to be sacrificed.

So in the most basic sense, the main protagonist - John Galt is a creator, who decides that he will not allow the crowd to sacrifice him to their wants and needs simply because they are weaker than them, and he refuses even to feel bad about it, which removes all leverage from the crowd that they could use to force him into this sacrifice. To the religious this is an atrocity, John Galt becomes the Anti-Christ, because of-course, Christ is a god (or part of god, or whatever that religion does with the 1 x 3 god ratio), so Christ is the ultimate Creator, and he is the strongest, and the weak want him to sacrifice himself, they want him to die for them and simultaneously to take away their own responsibility for his demise.

The crowd wants Christ to do so and Christ does it, but John Galt does not. John Galt thus is the Anti-Christ - a powerful creator that they want to sacrifice for them, to be their slave while abdicating them from all of the responsibility, giving them everything, the material and the spiritual safety with his own life.

This is the the main theme of the book - the weak requiring the sacrifice of the strong and motivating it simply with the fact of their own weakness, lack of desire or ability to take care of themselves. The strong telling them - get out of my way and you will get what you desire, do not require me to sacrifice myself but let me live and you will get fruits of my labour but you will pay the fair price for it so that I would not have to sacrifice my life for you in this unjust manner, that also requires me to take away your responsibility not just for you stealing the fruits of my labour, but also for you stealing my own morality for me, forcing me to accept that I must be responsible for you in an unnatural unjust manner, not requiring anything in return for this work.

The book uses multiple examples of this type of behaviour on all sides, from those who take care of themselves and by proxy of the market and the rest of the people, to those who expect the sacrificial behaviour, to those who don't expect it, but are uninterested in changing the status-quo and are simply going with the flow of things.

In the book all of the nations are going in that same direction and the USA is portrayed as the last of the nations that is still standing on its own feet, the last one to be destroyed by this socialist movement.

I think the only real criticism of the idea that I can come up with is of 3-fold.

1. Some of the characters are too thoughtful, they are too rational, I would say too theoretical in their thinking, I am not sure that too many people think too much. I don't believe that the majority of really good business people would listen to somebody like John Galt, so they wouldn't become his disciples and leave the system to disintegrate, people are not that intelligent, they would stay in the system much longer and would keep doing what they do mostly by inertia and false hope.

2. A socialist system is capable of prolonging its suffering for longer than just a decade or two, I think especially given the power and wealth that is collected over a few generations in a free society cannot be dissipated that quickly, not in 12 years, not even in 50 years. Given the fact that Rand correctly showed that the only innovation that takes place in a powerful formerly free society is military driven, it's unlikely that the knowledge could be lost so quickly. The inertia in the system would keep the society going for a longer period of time, we know this for sure, after all USSR lasted for about 75 years and USA is still going despite the 1913, 1929, 1971 and 2008, it's quite impressive actually how long the road to total destruction is. Of-course Rand shows correctly that the end will be self-destruction through all of the banditism and wars and hunger once the business leaves and lets the system digest itself and collapse as that huge oak tree that was struck by a lightning, but it collapsed because its core was rotten and it could no longer stand on its own.

3. It is a rarity today or any day to see a very smart individual who is a real creator - from ideas to implementations to business and even to being near perfect in every way themselves, it's an idealistic view, not a realistic one. But I am pretty sure that it is not that Ayn Rand believed herself in that image, but she really was building a stark contrast between the polar opposites of who she was writing about, so she just wanted to distil the naked concepts into sometimes unbearably rational and intelligent individuals who don't really exist in the world, but it's one way to bring the point across. It's not completely black and white that way in real life, but fundamentally it is the reality and I think some of the criticism is just that - that you don't see people like that in real life. Well no, don't often see that, I think Apple computer or Google or Facebook today are much better examples than Rearden with his metal and Dagny with her trains and I am unconvinced that the people behind Google, Facebook and Apple are as rational and intelligent and so self-reliant as the characters in Atlas Shrugged, but they don't have to be, they are still a good enough approximation. On the other hand the politicians as they are shown in the novell I think are much closer to the true individuals found in politics everywhere, and the average people are probably also closer to the average people the book portrays. Of-course it had to be done that way, because that is how Rand wrote, that was her way of quickly brining the point across (even if 'quickly' takes a bit over 2 days to read).

Of-course Bible also had very unbelievable characters, but at least the New Testament was created based on the exact opposite idea - that the strong must self-sacrifice for the weak and they must forgive the transgressions and the sins of the weak and they must accept their own sacrifice and take the responsibility for this away from their 'flock'.

I read a few reviews of the book after I read it myself and I find that the criticism suggested by others, especially those who did not like the novel is really lacking in the understanding of the meaning of what they just read or it is a complete denial, not of the book even, but of the idea that self-sacrifice of the strong for the benefit of the weak is unjust. I think they missed the fact that they are the characters from the book.

The main positions that the author takes are these:

1. Government is inherently evil but it has to exist to do a few things, like provide border security, protect individual freedoms, and criminal and contract law.

2. Taxing labour, work, production, income is morally wrong and it also turns out to be a bad economic practice.

3. Allowing government to regulate individuals in business, taking away rights, like the property right, right of speech, etc., all of this must not be allowed, otherwise the society falls apart.

4. Going alone with the society on the so called 'social-contract' that one did not sign is self-sacrifice for the benefit of the bandits, who are looking for that sacrifice and they are looking to everybody to give them the justification that their expectations are good and moral. Sacrificing self for the benefit of others is always wrong, because it goes against the morality of living and also it ends up destroying the economy and enslaving people, everybody, regardless of their position on things. Sacrificing self only puts the weapons into the hands of these bandits - politicians, sociologists, philosophers, judges, various corporate groups that are benefiting from close ties to the government.

5. The crowd is used as leverage against its own long term interests because the crowd only is interested in short term gains and it has no problem sacrificing somebody, in fact it's looking to sacrifice somebody immediately to achieve those short term gains and further destroying any long term profits.

6. Allowing government to set the standard for what money is, is a horrible idea and practice, because destroys money but that means it destroys investments and productivity and labour and economy and society and promotes violence and destruction.

Conclusion: the book is a good read, but by looking at various other reviews it's clear that it does not change the position of those, who are on the opposite side of this idea.

Re:

[Qzukk]

I can't even imagine how one would turn something like the Communist Manifesto or The Road to Serfdom into a novel, but it'd probably be a pain to read, and be ridiculed by everyone but their authors' most stalwart followers (though privately, even these members of the inner circle would admit that they would have been easier to read without the magic wands and ray guns).

Re:

[roman_mir]

Not to mention the little fact that whatever is described in the book is actually happening in practice, not because there are people so principled and ready to do the real right thing, like Galt, but because so far there are still places on the planet where it is possible to move the savings and investment capital to and thus it's not as dire yet as it was portrayed in the book.