Atlas Shrugged, bad book, bad theory

The Republican Senator Ron Johnson has claimed recently that the United States is currently living out the plot of the Ayn Rand novel Atlas Shrugged.


It is amazing to me how such a bad sci-fi novel has gained such a following on the right of US politics.


I’ll post more views later but anyone got some thoughts?

 

Why does it matter what some senator most people have never even heard of said?

 

I've never read Rand but heard a fair bit about her novel.Could you fill us in on it's central premise?

 

Here are a few thoughts -


For a start it’s not exactly well written (reviews have called it "Excruciatingly awful.", “bumptious” and “overwrought”) compared to something like Orwell’s 1984 or Animal Farm it is clearly dire.

I suppose someone might read it as science fiction but I think they would be disappointed and if anyone out there is thinking of doing so I’d suggest giving it a miss, there is a lot better and more interesting sci-fi out there.

Although China Mieville has it as one of the Fifty Fantasy & Science Fiction Works That Socialists Should Read with the note “Know your enemy”. While John Rogers has quipped that "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs"

And that is it, the book has come to be seen by many on the right as a work of political thought on which to base there political and economic ideas.

But to me even there this book fails, in the main it has an either or mentality, there are makers and takers, the creators and the looters, the produces and the moochers, the good and the bad. And I’ve noticed that many on the right take this binary mentality to heart often seeing things as black and white, or as a fight between good individualism and evil collectivism.

It the kind of mentality that can lead to an irrational extremist stance seeing only what they believe is ‘good’ and seeing everything else as ‘bad’.
The plot idea Rand had and the thought she was expressing was that if the producers went on strike and removed themselves from society then the society left to the moochers would fall apart, because it couldn’t function without the ‘producers’ input.

But the problem is that there already is a mechanism that removes such people from society is called death. Artists die art doesn’t die, business leaders die there business often carry on, inventers die but inventing doesn’t stop. One of the lessons of history is that things carry on, yes sometimes for the worse but often for the better.

The book also nurtures the simplistic idea that there can be only one set of outcomes. For example the belief that only one person could invent something and without that person it - or something very similar or something doing the same thing - would not happen. But the reality is that we all stand on the shoulder of others while there have been rare geniuses that have taken steps into the unknown, most developments are just that, things that have developed from other earlier things. Yes someone may get the copyright/patent first and get into the history books as the inventor, but that does not mean others were not also close to doing it as well (take the invention of the telephone for example). And these days there often isn’t even a single inventor many developments or new products are team efforts with the copyright/patent going to an entity (corporation, foundation, university etc).

The other myth of outcome is that people in top positions deserve to be there, for example many of the CEO’s of corporations that they drove into the ground were being lauded and been given huge bonuses before the crash reveal just how bad they were running things. I mean maybe the world would have been better if Alan Greenspan that well known supporter and friend of Ayn Rand had disappeared.

To me the problem with it been taken seriously as a political philosophy is that it is way too simplistic, naive, and divorced from reality, to me the only people that would come to believe in it are those that are rather unquestioning or are devoid of rational analysis.

*

 

I bet Sarah Palin keeps a copy of this wretched book on her coffee table. But she's never bothered to read it: She's too busy watching Russia from her kitchen window.

QP

 

I read it years ago, and from what I remember it seems to point out that free enterprise is choked out by government regulations. I can see that happening every day now in the US, and Obama has said "you didn't build it", but I didn't see him or anybody from the government around when I was building my business and working 16 hours a day 7 days a week. Now the government has appeared wanting money, and telling me how to run my business, and I think I will just shut it down, as with all the new regulations, it makes it not worthwhile to work my ass off anymore. In my opinion, she got it right

 

Lafin

Can you clarify?

Can you give examples?

 

that's out of context, and you know it. and i'd like to ask, who built the roads that you drove on to get to work?

 

Excellent point. Plus let's not forget public libraries, public transit, and free schools for our children. Hell, there's even financial aid for college - for those that have very low income. Not too shabby. Rand was a shameless elitist (IMO). Orwell had a better grasp on reality and economics. I read Atlas Shrugged once. I've read 1984 more times than I can count.

QP

 

The roads I drive on were built with tax money that all people who actually earn a living in this country pay. How about yours?

 

All of those require taking money from others. There is no such thing as "free" when it comes to government spending.

 

To suggest roads wouldn't be built without government is dishonest. Either way, without people like Lafincoyote, those roads wouldn't get built by government.

 

i didn't say that roads wouldn't be built without government, just that the roads he uses ARE built by the government.

not really understanding the second point you're trying to make.

 

Are they? Not all roads are built by government. Odds are the ones in question were though, I'll grant that. Still, to use roads in support of "You didn't build that" is asinine.

Where do you think government, be it local, state, or federal, gets the money to build roads?

 

The environment was being ruined before governmental regulation on businesses that pollute. Not to mention - providing safe working conditions for workers, providing breaks, a minimum wage, vacation and sick days, benefits, protection against discrimination and harassment.

Workers would have no rights and would still be working in sweat shop conditions without government regulation.

 

I think I'll watch the movies instead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W07bFa4TzM"]Atlas Shrugged Trailer - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF9QT43uDQU"]Atlas Shrugged Part II Trailer - YouTube

Looks like a good episode of Dallas to me : /

 

sig

You can only say it is dishonest if you have another planet where public money was not used and the roads were built privately. Just because you believe something could have happened is NO proof that it would have happened.

The prosperity of the US was in part built on easy access to previously untouched resources. I’m not saying that was the only factor but it was in my opinion the major factor and a lot of the problem in the early period was a lack of infrastructure by which it could be tapped. This was often realised by governance which often used public money or enacted ways of raising money to construct the roads bridges, canals and later railways that were needed to bring prosperity for example the Erie Canal that brought such economic benefits to New York and other cities on the eastern seaboard.

The railways opened up the Midwest and allowed goods and materials access to the Pacific and Atlantic and the roads carried that on, I mean Eisenhower’s Federal Aid Highway act of 1956 has been called the "Greatest Public Works Project in History".

Then there is the thing we are talking on - the internet and the World Wide Web.

Also public works are about spreading the benefits of prosperity, infrastructure does not just help businesses but also families and individuals. For example sewage system have done a great deal to improve the lives of people in 1950’s America (some 50% in rural areas) had no plumbing or flushing toilets while today only a few go without those things.

 

Also I’d point out that when the US was doing well economically and there was a huge rise in the number of the middle class was in the period from the end of WWII to the rise of neoliberal ideas. During that period the top tax rate was much higher (94% in 1945 70% in 1970) and the national debt was reduced from the war time high of 117% of GDP to a reasonable 32.5% in 81.

But in the thirty odd years of neoliberal ideas there was a huge increase in the wealth of a few while the real term incomes of those below have either stagnated or fallen. While the policies pursued have also caused a ballooning of the national debt and brought about a social and political system where wealth have great (and in my opinion too much) power and influence.

The problem I see with the right wing libertarian ideas of Ayn Rand is that they have and would increase the power and influence of wealth while making life worse for most people in society.

 

Lafin

Sorry but beyond unsubstantiated assertions you have still not made the case for your belief that “she got it right”.

 

You're committing a logical fallacy there. Your fallacy is, basically, thus: "Government built those roads, therefore only government can build roads." That is what you are saying here in response to my post. Still, you must bear in mind, that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Just because government funding is overwhelming used to construct roads doesn't mean that without government funding, roads wouldn't get built.

I am certainly not trying to say there is no place or benefit to public (government) spending. After all, I am not a disciple of Ayn Rand. I am simply saying that it is foolish to think that government is the sole entity capable of funding and building infrastructure projects. On top of this, I was also attempting to correct the mistake that some other posters were making in thinking that such public projects are "free" to you and me.