Atlas Shrugged and the Sphere, Part III

This is Part III of my response to Atlas Shrugged, to get you ready to see the movie that opens today. (See Wednesday and Thursday's posts for Part I and Part II.) Economically, the philosophy of the book is fairly sound. When you’re figuring out whether an economic policy is in the northern or southern hemisphere of the Spherical Model, the primary question to ask is whether the person who makes the money decides how to spend it. Ayn Rand’s philosophy definitely places spending power in the hands of the producer of the wealth. So, definitely northern hemisphere.

Socially/morally, however, there are essential pieces missing. The book claims self-interest and independence as the highest morality. But there’s much of life that this philosophy doesn’t reach.

Dagny symbolizes much of what the author is taking us through. So, what Dagny misses, we can assume Ayn Rand is missing. Dagny is sexual but infertile. She has a sexual relationship as a 17-year-old with the older D’Anconia (technically statutory rape, but presented here as a positive, with them both thinking it through as the logical behavior). There are no negative consequences for the out-of-wedlock sex, nor even a hint that there could be negative consequences. A pregnant teenage Dagny might not have become an industrial giant at 30.

Dagny later has a sexual relationship with the married Hank Rearden. It is consensual, and his marriage is a sham, portrayed as a trap caused only by the rules set by the looters (no possibility that the institution of marriage has values in itself beyond and before the looters’ search for power). This relationship goes on for a couple of years, ending only after Dagny meets John Galt and therefore turns her sexual desires to him, because as the most desirable female (based on her productive ability and problem-solving brain power) she must logically fit with the most desirable male.

Oddly enough, when D’Anconia, who (despite the playboy rumors he had been creating about himself) has been saving himself for the time when he can reunite in honor with Dagny, because there is no other woman for him, finds out about Rearden, he’s OK with it and concedes relationship defeat without resistance. Again, when he sees Dagny’s desire for John Galt, whom D’Anconia loves for his value system, he’s totally fine with that. He will, apparently, go the rest of his life without a mate, because he didn’t quite deserve Dagny, and no other woman could possibly be worthy. And he has no resentment or jealousy. Hmmm.

And when Rearden sees her again, after her month lost at the Colorado colony, he guesses, almost without a clue, that she has found someone else, and he simply has no problem with it. He will, apparently, go the rest of his life without a mate, because he didn’t quite deserve Dagny, and no other woman could possibly be worthy. And he has no resentment or jealousy. Hmmm. (Yes, that is an uncanny and unlikely repeat of D’Anconia’s behavior.)

The Colorado colony has very few women. Of those mentioned, one is a famous actress, very skilled in her craft, married to Ragnar Danneskjold, childless. The other is, ironically, a homeschooling mother; she left the outer world where the government was preventing her from teaching her children except as government required. (I related to her.) Almost all of the disappearing industrialists involved in the brain strike just happen to be unencumbered by wife and family. It is suggested that no more women are likely to be allowed into the colony. Galt mentions that husband and wife have a mutual agreement in what they offer one another, so marriage isn’t necessarily a parasitic relationship (a token respect for marriage, at least). So when Rand mostly excludes women from Galt’s world, it may be that she thinks women in large part are not logical enough, not independent enough, not self-interested enough, not productive enough. Men unencumbered by family tend to be better human specimens, in her view.

The colony men seem to be perfectly content with the absence of women. Heads up: a movement that does not/cannot reproduce and pass along its philosophy to the next generation will die off after the current generation.

If nothing else, Rand shows that she doesn’t understand the male mind, productive or not. Nor does she understand that industrial capacity is not necessarily the most desirable trait in a woman for every productive man. Nor does she understand or value procreation, which is absolutely essential for continuation of the human species, and that in its natural form with mother and father raising their own children into adulthood is essential for inculcating the values that allow for civilization.

The fact of life is that, when a parent brings a child into this world—which is the natural and likely consequence of a sexual relationship, no matter how unlikely Rand made it in 1069 pages—the parents then, for the sake of the child, for their own happiness as parents, and for the sake of civilization, owe it to that child to relieve the child of the impoverished, shelterless, unlearned state he is born in until the child grows to adulthood, at which time making the decision to be independent is an option.

Swearing Galt’s oath, not to expect anyone to live for him (provide for him) isn’t an option for a child. Swearing not to live for someone else isn’t even relevant when the youngster can’t even live for himself yet. Is the child immoral for this inability? I can’t wrap my mind around that possibility.

If, after bringing the child into the world by making decisions and acting in a way to beget the child, the parent keeps the oath not to live for another (provide for him), is that moral? It’s hard to imagine a culture larger than two people in which that wouldn’t be considered neglect.

I think we should be able to say, then, that Galt’s oath is not the most moral way in a society that includes children and therefore has the possibility of continuing. So there are limits to the morality of self-interest. Let’s consider that Galt (and therefore Rand) may be wrong about self-interest being the highest morality, and there may be a higher morality that he fails to recognize.

There’s another unlikely detail about the heroes in Atlas Shrugged: every one of the producers, even among more minor characters, is tall, slender, strong, brilliant, never ill or out of energy. Hmmm. Again, not real life.

In Rand’s world, “good” people, the ones who use their brains to solve problems and accomplish things, for which they rightly expect to be compensated, are never ill. So they have the ability to make the choice Galt requires of them. While not ideal, it is acceptable to be only smart and not brilliant, as long as one is faithful and hard working, earning one’s keep.

The Galt theory of economics is better than looters taking from the producers. In our current circumstances, this theory is so superior to the legalized theft being forced on us that it is very appealing. But its sterility lifts it, on the Spherical Model, only just above the equator, not above the 45^th parallel. Producers should be free to profit from their work; but for civilization to result, there must also be religious and philanthropic people, giving freely not to looters or moochers, but to those willing but unable to produce for themselves: children, elderly, infirm—non-producers for no fault of their own. To ignore these groups and let them starve is immoral—as immoral as the unrealistic sexual promiscuity Ayn Rand supports. The choice to share must be voluntary, not imposed by guilt or legal theft; but Galt refuses to allow the giving, calling it immoral. He is wrong to prevent it, and so is Rand.

In short, Galt’s oath to “never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine” is seriously inferior to, “I swear to live my life for the sake of God, protecting and providing for my family as He expects of me, and relieving the suffering of his weakest children as I am able, while I accept His redeeming sacrifice for me and try to live worthy of His love.”

Atlas Shrugged and the Sphere, Part II

Today is Part II of our review of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. In Tuesday’s post I introduced what we’re doing this week, and in Part I in Wednesday’s post we covered some of the main characters and a little plot and theme. Today we cover more of the philosophy, including the three factions, as well as John Galt’s oath.

Atlas Shrugged depicts a clash of three philosophical factions. First are the looters, the inane intellectual elites, many of them at that Rearden party that functioned in the plot to give us the opportunity to hear from so many of them; included in this faction are the moochers, those who just receive the results of others’ work and take for granted that they should.  The looters, who take one step after another to limit the ability of producers to produce while pressuring them to do the impossible, are only occasionally beyond believable. We see so much of their philosophy and political behavior in our world this very year. Maybe every time the President speaks, for example. I refer to these two groups in “The Political World Is Round”:

[They] are a symbiotic mix of people demanding that government provide for their needs—health care, education, housing, redistribution of wealth, regulating use of resources, even making jobs: the demanding needy, we could call them—along with the elites who are willing to pander to the demanding needy in order to increase their personal power: the would-be dictators.

These looters are the enemy to the other two philosophical groups.

The second faction is made up of the producers, represented by Rearden and Dagny, who continue to produce in the face of the opposition. There are various smaller characters, industrialists, in similar positions, determined to keep producing, against all odds, as long as possible.

Then there is the third faction, the strikers, to which D’Anconia belongs. It is led by a character named John Galt. We hear his name often in the book; the phrase “Who is John Galt?” is used with a shrug of the shoulders to mean, “Oh well, there’s no explanation or hope for our problems.” Dagny uses the name John Galt for the line of rail built of Rearden metal, as an in-your-face insistence that the rail will work, an ironically anti-defeatist name in the face of doubt. About two-thirds of the way through the book we are introduced to the John Galt behind the legend. The phrase about him began more than a decade earlier following his standing up against an unfair collectivist takeover of the factory where he had been working. Upon leaving he promised that he would fight those ideas until he completely defeated them.

He spent the next decade-plus identifying the brain power in the nation. He recruited two schoolmates, D’Anconia and a Norwegian named Ragnar Danneskjold, to join him. D’Anconia sets out to follow the looter philosophies to the letter in an effort to get rid of his copper fortune—so that the looters, the evil first group, will have nothing to exploit. Ragnar employs himself as a feared pirate. What he is actually doing is stopping the transfer from producers to non-producers, and building up in the form of gold whatever wealth he can identify as the profit confiscated from the producers, so they will have start-up capital when the time comes to start over.

Galt and his key partners have an uncanny knack for turning up at the offices of any producer just as he reaches the end of his rope. Suddenly each producer disappears, leaving nothing behind. When the government looters recognize the pattern of producers disappearing, they make a law against it, of course to no effect.

Dagny and Rearden also recognize the pattern. They believe that someone, a destroyer, is somehow convincing these producers to leave, and it makes life for the remaining producers progressively more difficult. They promise to each other that they will not give in to the destroyer; they will survive and never give up, no matter what.

Much of the book chronicles the steps taken against them by the progressive looters, one government act after another, making inevitable an end when they disappear with the rest of the brain power of the country. (And did I mention that the US is the last producing country because the rest of the world has already succumbed to the looters and therefore are starving?)

Poverty, unemployment, and industrial devolution continue apace throughout the book. The worse the government-caused chaos, the more government insists it must control things during the time of crisis (startlingly prescient, or simply a description of the Marxist pattern?)

We learn, about 2/3 of the way through, when Dagny learns it, that the disappearing brains are actually colonizing in a hidden valley in Colorado, building up their own society based on principles of John Galt. He has an oath that he lives by and insists that others who join him must live by: “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.”

Dagny crashes a small plane in the valley. She stays there for a month, enjoying the company of those who have chosen to live by the oath, and hearing their philosophy day and night. But at the end of the month, her love for her railroad and her hope that she can keep it by enduring to outlast the looters, keeps her from taking the oath. So, by the standards of Galt’s colony, she remains an outsider. Since they are the intellect of society on strike against the policies that enslave them, they refer to her as a scab, as crossing their strike line. But they get along well, because their view is that it’s just a matter of time until she understands what they already see.

There are a couple of lectures that reveal Rand’s philosophy more directly than storyline. One is a response, at a wedding party, by D’Anconia to a reference to money being the root of all evil. He spends half a dozen pages soliloquizing (pp. 380-385 in my copy), on the virtues of money. Worth reading. Another is a lecture by John Galt, over radio that they have seized, that covers pages 923-979. If you want a briefer version of Rand’s philosophy of objectivism, without reading the whole of Atlas Shrugged, this might be the place to get it.

We won’t get around to talking about various symbols: a breaking copper wire, a flame that burns in a mountain, among others. But there is a lot of literary richness in the book that makes it worth reading.

As an explanation of why free enterprise, hard work, and self-interest are morally superior to socialism (or state enforced legalized theft), the book is invaluable. So why don’t I give it a ringing endorsement? That’s what we’ll cover tomorrow.

Atlas Shrugged and the Sphere, Part I

Today is Part I of a three part reaction to Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged, in celebration of the movie coming out this Friday. (See yesterday’s post for more about the movie and my intro to this series.) As I said yesterday, the theme isn’t hard to identify: self-interest is a virtue. And the purpose of the book is to lay out a philosophy that contrasts starkly with philosophies of our day that lead to dependence for the weak and enslavement for the able. Here in Part I we’ll introduce the main characters and a bit of the plot as it begins to reveal the philosophy.

Here’s a thumbnail version: It is 1950s US (I believe the film has updated to today). Dagny Taggart is the great granddaughter of Nat Taggart, who started the biggest and best transcontinental railroad. Her brother, James, is the nominal president of the company, but it is Dagny who makes it run. Every problem that comes up, she finds a solution. James claims that his skill is managing the political relationships that will make things right for them, but at each step in a very long story, he agrees with the politicians who make purposeful efforts to make Dagny’s job less possible. He is worse than useless.

Francisco D’Anconia spent the summers of his growing up years with the Taggarts. He is the heir of an Argentine copper mining fortune. But at the beginning of this story, he has been apparently ruining the family fortune while pursuing playboy entertainments. Those who have depended on his uncanny ability to find good fortune everywhere are disappointed, first in a Mexican mining failure, followed by other failures. Dagny has come to hate him, who had been her first love in her late teens.

Then there is Hank Rearden. He worked from the ground up to learn to make steel, building his own corporation, Rearden Steel. And then he improves upon his learned expertise by creating a new stronger metal called Rearden Metal. It is lighter and stronger, and there are great things to be made from it. Dagny Taggart is the first to take a chance on it, building a line of Taggart railway, including a bridge, of the new metal.

Rearden is married to patrician socialite Lillian, and while it isn’t much of a marriage, early in the book (only 120-some pages in) he attends a dinner party she is giving at their house for all the social luminaries. The Taggarts attend, and D’Anconia drops in as well.

This dinner party sets up the philosophical struggles for the rest of the book. The enemies to Rand’s theme, various philosophers, writers, businessmen, politicians, say things like:

·         “I am in favor of a free economy. A free economy cannot exist without competition. Therefore, men must be forced to compete. Therefore, we must control men in order to force them to be free.”—Dr. Pritchett, when asked his response to a piece of legislation called the Equality of Opportunity Act

·         “Reason, my dear fellow, is the most naïve of all superstitions. That at least has been generally conceded in our age.”—Dr. Pritchett again

·         “Our culture has sunk into a bog of materialism. Men have lost all spiritual values in pursuit of material production and technological trickery. They’re too comfortable. They will return to a nobler life if we teach them to bear privations. So we ought to place a limit on their material greed.”—Balph Eubanks, described as a literary leader of the age.

·         “Only those whose motive is not moneymaking should be allowed to write.”—Eubanks again.

·         “Plot is a primitive vulgarity in literature.”—Eubanks again.

·         “When the masses are destitute and yet there are goods available, it’s idiotic to expect people to be stopped by some scrap of paper called a property deed. Property rights are a superstition. One holds property only by the courtesy of those who do not seize it. The people can seize it at any moment. If they can, why shouldn’t they?”—Bertram Scudder, magazine editor who had written a nasty piece against Rearden but is now socializing in Rearden’s house at Mrs. Rearden’s invitation.

A couple of additional significant things happen at this party:

·         Rearden has given his wife a bracelet, a somewhat crude looking chain, the first product of Rearden metal, symbolizing the success following his decade of hard work. Mrs. Rearden wears it mockingly, among her other jewelry. Dagny Taggart recognizes its value and makes a trade, exchanging her diamond bracelet for it.

·         D’Anconia appears. As for his explanation to James Taggart of the failure of his mine in Mexico, D’Anconia explains, “I don’t know why you should call my behavior rotten. I thought you would recognize it as an honest effort to practice what the whole world is preaching. Doesn’t everyone believe that it is evil to be selfish? I was totally selfless in regard to the San Sebastian project. Isn’t it evil to pursue a personal interest? I had no personal interest in it whatever. Isn’t it evil to work for a profit? I did not work for a profit—I took a loss. Doesn’t everyone agree that the purpose and justification of an industrial enterprise are not production, but the livelihood of its employees? The San Sebastian Mines were the most successful in industrial history: they produced no copper, but they provided a livelihood for thousands of men who could not have achieved in a lifetime, the equivalent of what they got for one day’s work, which they could not do.”

D’Anconia makes it clear that he is acting precisely as the philosophy and pressure of the day require. He is doing it purposely. He is doing it on principle. Eventually we learn why.

Tomorrow we identify the three factions and learn who is John Galt.

Tax Freedom Day and the rest of the week

For some time I’ve been planning something special for my Friday, April 15^th, blog post. Yes, it will tax day (speaking of which, today is Tax Freedom Day, meaning that up until today, the average taxpayer has been an indentured servant to the federal government; he rest of your year’s earnings can go to state and local taxes and your personal choices). But also on Friday is when part I of the film version of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shurgged hits the theaters (trailer here). Eventually maybe I’ll see the movie, and say something about it, if it’s worth commenting on. But I thought this would be a good time to look at the book, which I read summer before last at the urging of my son Political Sphere.

My first reaction was, “I did it!” It’s a marathon read: 1069 pages in tiny type in the paperback 50^th anniversary edition I lugged around for a month. So, while I’d like to say it should be required reading of every educated person, I understand any hesitation to pick it up and give it a try. It’s long, certainly longer than it needs to be. And it’s more philosophy through storytelling than entertainment.

My personal history included graduating as an English major, so literary analysis is something I was actually trained to do. Even at the time I was doing it, I wondered what value there is in writing about someone else’s writing. But as it turns out, not only do I kind of enjoy doing that as part of the reading experience, it also is a vehicle for identifying thought, examining it, and being able to clearly articulate opinions—about many things, not just literature. So I actually assign myself such essays from time to time (and treat myself to a monthly book club as well). It’s better without a teacher assignment or grade hanging overhead while doing it.

Atlas Shrugged was a book that required my writing about it afterward, just to hold some of my thoughts about it. But I’m looking at this reaction now as a blog post, and it’s too long. So I’m serializing it. Starting tomorrow I will have a three-part reaction to the book, which I hope you will find enjoyable and enlightening.

Here’s a head’s up on what’s coming. The theme isn’t exactly hard to identify: self-interest is a virtue. The purpose is to correct philosophical errors that lead to dependence for the weak and enslavement for the able. However, while there are some interesting and arresting ideas in the philosophy within this very long read, from a Spherical Model point of view, there are also some glaring flaws. We’ll spend a day introducing characters and basic plot points, then the three philosophical factions, and finally where the philosophy fits on the Spherical Model and why.