Atlas Shrugged Review and Philosophy

Left-wingers and anti-capitalists are all getting their knickers in a twist over the rise in sales of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" a book that preaches no social conscious, the ascendance of free-markets and the morality of greed. Should they be worried though?

The first thing to notice before you even open the book is its length - in my copy 1186 pages long. So to maintain any form of attention it has to be riveting - it isn't. Also note that I refer to it as a "book" rather than as a "novel" the reason for this I hope will become obvious if I try to review it as a novel.

In essence a novel is a work of fiction detailing events, we read it because we want to enjoy it; this is difficult for Rand's book. The characters are two-dimensional and don't talk to one another, they preach, they lecture, but they don't talk and they don't talk a lot. Although possible to understand what the characters are going through, for me the spark of connection just didn't happen; I simply did not care what happened to them, I did not care if they won (as inevitable) or lost.

Events within the novel are repetitive; an event of a type will occur here, then the same event of the same type will occur there. In fact nothing other than talk really happens until the latter part of the novel. It's much like an avalanche a lot of small movements leading to half a mountain coming at you at breakneck speed. It's possible to argue that without the majority of the book the end would not have the same impact, if the majority of the book wasn't so repetitive and the point before the climax sums up all the points already made over and over again in a 60-page 3-hour monologue.

However this isn't a novel, it's a philosophical work which is what's got so many twisted.

So with that we can forgive the two-dimensionality of the characters as they serve as archetypes, we can forgive the lectures as that is their purpose. The repetitiveness is there to underscore the inevitable points before the climax. And so all the arguments that this isn't a good novel fall away. But just because they have doesn't make this a good work.

Removed from the shackles of a novel and bound in philosophical clothing you now have to question the arguments presented and to do so is more than Rand does herself. I mentioned the characters preach and lecture, what I did not say was that they debated.

The reason I didn't becomes obvious when you examine the archetypes used, Rand splits everyone up into two types - those who can, and those who can't. Debate can only occur between those on opposite sides and it is rare that Rand allows "those who can't" to debate "those who can" without telegraphing the point that she herself takes the position of "those who can"; the others gain no chance, their arguments demolished with little examination other than the hammering home of Rand's creed, which is obviously right from her point of view.

So what is Rand's pet cause? Simply that "those who can" be allowed to do whatever they want, to act out of pure selfishness, because it is this selfishness that creates and truly powers society. Some limits are applied regarding ownership in terms of intellectual and physical property, but that's about it.

And in the work this holds to be both true and correct, however we reach a problem because we don't want to apply this philosophy to the world within the book we want to apply it to the world outside and this is where that lack of true debate starts to show.

To illustrate I'll tender my own model - that of a pendulum composed of a pivot, a bar, and a weight. To illustrate its motion I'll use the current increase in food prices; capitalists say these are good because as the prices rise the profits become more tempting, more money will be invested, and to gain more returns new processes will be created that in turn will produce more food. That is a swing to the right of my pendulum.

However once more food is produced competition will start to reduce prices, those who invested will see less profit and reinvest their money elsewhere. This is a swing of my pendulum to the left.

To add one final ingredient to the model the pendulum depends from a length of cord and moves forward with each swing. This is to illustrate that despite the swing from the right (less food more investment, high prices) to the left (more food, less investment, low prices) we are still left with the new processes that swung it back.

So my pendulum swings back and forth and edges forward with each swing, so what? Well all the major characters that Rand deals with directly are those sitting at the pivot point. They are the ones that cry that the swings of the pendulum are perfectly natural consequences of a good economy and again in my model they are correct. However this misses the point that they are at the point of the pendulum that moves the least; they're not the ones hanging on to the bottom for dear life as it whips back and forth so it's much easier for them to say this.

This is not to say that the other characters who want to bring the weight up to the top of the pendulum are right either, to do so will bring a halt to the economy.

The next point Rand glosses over is the rote following of instruction, she deals with it simply by dismissing those who act in this way without taking into account the full realisation of the industrial revolution.

This is illustrated clearly in one of heroes' profession that of Rearden Steel with the eponymous Hank Rearden in charge of his steel mills. The workers are despised by the other mills as they are part of a company rather than trade union; but said workers don't care, they have no dispute as Readen pays the best wages. Hank does this because he wants the most skilled workers to make his steel.

So Rearden pays more than others to keep the most skilled workers, the workers provide their best because Rearden pays more than the others and they want to keep their jobs. An excellent example of Rand's selfishness in action. Until you examine the fast-food industry.

Imagine a small diner gets popular and opens up another branch to deal with the demand, but customers still go to the original one because the food there is better; it has a better chef. Ah says Rand you need to hire a better chef for the other branch, except then people start to go to that one. Back comes Rand telling us we need to hire an even better chef. However at this point we are in actuality competing with ourselves let alone everyone else and that's plainly stupid.

The way out of this dilemma is simple, have the food at Diner A identical to Diner B. You can't accomplish this with individual chefs so what you do is itemise everything the best chef does then repeat it at the other Diner. But now I don't need a chef at the other diner I just need someone who can follow the instructions on the list.

At this point the Rearden example falls apart. No skill is required to follow the list, therefore those who do so have no value to me the owner, the number of unskilled outweigh the number of skilled so each member becomes interchangeable. I don't need to pay them well because I can replace them at any point in time, in return I won't get the best performance out of the workers as they see no need to promote my business.

In my pendulum point of view Rearden at the pivot acknowledges that it is the weight that also keep the pendulum moving; in my fast-food example the owner at the pivot only sees themselves as providing the motive power. Rand provides nothing other than distaste for this view and by doing so does not address it.

Her next problem deals with selfishness, or to precise doesn't; this shows up in another of her businesses d'Anconia Copper. As we're getting used to to Rand doesn't deal with the nitty gritty of business and so we never discover how d'Anconia gets the copper out of the ground; we hear of workers, explosives and machinery, but nothing explicit.

So imagine instead of copper they were extracting gold. One of the methods of extracting gold is through the use of arsenic, however doing so leads to the arsenic seeping into the water table. This poisons the wildlife, the water supply and possibly other people. But taking Rand's viewpoint what do I care if it's lets me get my hands on gold? I'm not into fishing and my skilled workers are protected against the effects of arsenic. If it contaminates an entire town's water supply then they should move or get in clean water for themselves; I'm not forcing them to drink the stuff.

If they want to protest they can do so by not buying my gold, and as they're not my direct customers I don't care. How many people are going to go to the trouble of questioning their retailers as to the origin of the gold in their products. How many under Rand's philosophy would even care about a poisoned town they've never heard of?

The final nail in the coffin is where Rand even contradicts herself. Our protagonist Dagny Taggert retreats from the world to a cabin near a failed town. She looks at how they can barely scrape together a living and how they could have revitalised the area using the orchards and bringing in a railway line. Not once does she consider that the occupants may have no knowledge of skill to tend such things and that by the philosphy she aspires by they should have realised the dead-end nature of where they were and left for better prospects. Of course they haven't which is handy for Dagny otherwise she wouldn't be able to retreat to her cabin unless she carted a lorry full of provisions along for herself too.

So some of the points she makes are well and good, but she's just a bit too zealous about them and doesn't allow herself to deal with anything that could contradict her.

Read it if you want to know what everyone's bleating on about, but as with any such type of work do so with a critical eye.