Atlas Shrugged at 50 Rand, today, tomorrow ..........

Today Atlas Shrugged is 50. Published 50 years ago today. Feels like it was written tomorrow. Rand called it, she called it all.

Atlas Shrugged defines me. I read the book in my early twenties when my dearest, singularly closest friend,  whom I respected enormously, casually mentioned it was her favorite book. Bonnie, by occupation the Corporation counsel for the city of NY,  had majored in philosophy (she passed away over 10 years ago, but not going there.)

It was the first thing of Rand's that I read (I have consumed everything she wrote and uttered since.) Why isn't Atlas  mandatory reading in every public school in America? That it is not is yet another stark indication of the choke hold the left holds on our education system.

Atlas Shrugged defined my thinking. It perfectly articulated my epistemology. I was the quintessential "romantic realist" (man as he ought to be in the real - the low state - of the world.) And while it's been over 20 years since I read that tome, it is as fresh and as important and as relevant (if not more so) to me now as it was then.

Atlas Shrugged is a treatise delivered in a fictional novel to better understand Rand's philosophy. Rand is, IMAO, the greatest philosopher in human history. It is man's great failure that it turns away from reason and truth and romanticizes  barbarism, communism, socialism despite the 100 million deaths outside of war under those failed systems. Like Rand, I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

My blog is exemplar of A is A. That's what I deliver here ....A.   

It's purpose is clearly defined by Rand's philosophy.  Evil is made possible by the sanction you give it. WITHDRAW YOUR SANCTION.

A philosophic system is an integrated view of existence. As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation -- or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown. Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

What struck me was when I first read Atlas was living by the coda of moral values. Man's moral value -his value through his work. His value through his  his achievement and the evil that seeks to undermine it and destroy it at every turn.

I live by the  glorification of the rights of the individual. Self reliance. American greatness.

In celebration I shall pick up Victor Hugo and read, perhaps, Les Miserables, as a gift to me from Ayn.

Robert Stacey McCain ran a wonderful piece this morning in the The Washington Times on Atlas Shrugged, Atlas, at last, on the map . It's a must read and yes, I am quoted (which we love.)

That influence has gained a new life on the Internet. Pamela Geller's blog, "Atlas Shrugs" (AtlasShrugs2000.typepad.com), is named in tribute to Rand, whom she calls "the greatest philosopher in human history."

There's more,  go!

I am not alone in my admiration for Rand's work. I find myself in excellent company.

Mr. Greenspan met Rand when he was 25 and working as an economic forecaster. She was already renowned as the author of “The Fountainhead,” a novel about an architect true to his principles. Mr. Greenspan had married a member of Rand’s inner circle, known as the Collective, that met every Saturday night in her New York apartment. Rand did not pay much attention to Mr. Greenspan until he began praising drafts of “Atlas,” which she read aloud to her disciples, according to Jeff Britting, the archivist of Ayn Rand’s papers. He was attracted, Mr. Britting said, to “her moral defense of capitalism.”Ayn Rand's Literature of Capitalism

[...]

Shortly after “Atlas Shrugged” was published in 1957, Mr. Greenspan wrote a letter to The New York Times to counter a critic’s comment that “the book was written out of hate.” Mr. Greenspan wrote: “ ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.”

Rand’s magazine, The Objectivist, later published several essays by Mr. Greenspan, including one on the gold standard in 1966.

Rand called “Atlas” a mystery, “not about the murder of man’s body, but about the murder — and rebirth — of man’s spirit.” It begins in a time of recession. To save the economy, the hero, John Galt, calls for a strike against government interference. Factories, farms and shops shut down. Riots break out as food becomes scarce.

Rand said she “set out to show how desperately the world needs prime movers and how viciously it treats them” and to portray “what happens to a world without them.”

Tracinski over at TIA Daily has posted at Real Clear Politics, The Historical Signifigance of Atlas Shrugged;

In this context, we can see the widest significance of Ayn Rand's literary and philosophical achievement. She was the first thinker and artist to fully grasp the meaning of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution and to give them expression both in literature and in philosophy.

The most radical aspect of Atlas Shrugged is that it is a sweeping, serious novel of ideas that is based in the business world, the last place mainstream intellectuals would have thought to regard as the inspiration for epic drama or profound new ideas. What makes Ayn Rand distinctive is that she found drama, heroism, and profound philosophical meaning in the achievements of the entrepreneurs and industrialists who were reshaping the world.

Atlas Shrugged was written in an age of creeping global socialism. Extrapolating from the trends of the day, Ayn Rand projected a future in which most of the world's nations are collapsing into the poverty and oppression of socialist "people's states," while America itself is collapsing under the weight of increasing government takeover of the economy.

She saw the dramatic potential in asking a single question: what would happen if the innovative entrepreneurs and businessmen—after decades of being vilified and regulated—started to disappear? What if the men condemned as parasites who somehow grow rich by exploiting manual laborers—the whole Marxist view of the economy—what if those "exploiters" were no longer around? The disappearance of the world's productive geniuses provides the novel's central mystery, both factually and intellectually.

[...]

Literarily, she recognized the romanticism in the extraordinary feats of these business innovators. In Atlas Shrugged this is perhaps best capture in repeated references to the legend of Nat Taggart, the swashbuckling young adventurer who founded the railroad for which Dagny Taggart works—a character based, in part, on the real-life swashbuckling of Commodore Vanderbilt's early career.

Or consider this passage, from an early chapter of Atlas Shrugged, in which steel tycoon Hank Rearden reflects on the process by which he invented a revolutionary new metal alloy.

He did not think of the ten years. What remained of them tonight was only a feeling which he could not name, except that it was quiet and solemn. The feeling was a sum, and he did not have to count again the parts that had gone to make it. But the parts, unrecalled, were there, within the feeling. They were the nights spent at scorching ovens in the research laboratory at the mills—

—the nights spent in the workshop of his home, over sheets of paper which he had filled with formulas, then tore up in angry failure—

—the days when the young scientists of the small staff he had chosen to assist him waited for instructions like soldiers ready for a hopeless battle, having exhausted their ingenuity, still willing, but silent, with the unspoken sentence hanging in the air: "Mr. Rearden, it can't be done—

—the metals, interrupted and abandoned at the sudden flash of a new thought, a thought to be pursued at once, to be tried, to be tested, to be worked on for months, and to be discarded as another failure—

—the moments snatched from conferences, from contracts, from the duties of running the best steel mills in the country, snatched almost guiltily, as for a secret love—

—the one thought held immovably across a span of ten years, under everything he did and everything he saw, the thought held in his mind when he looked at the buildings of a city, at the track of a railroad, at the light in the windows of a distant farmhouse, at the knife in the hands of a beautiful woman cutting a piece of fruit at a banquet, the thought of a metal alloy that would do more than steel had ever done, a metal that would be to steel what steel had been to iron—

—the acts of self-racking when he discarded a hope or a sample, not permitting himself to know that he was tired, not giving himself time to feel, driving himself through the wringing torture of: "not good enough…still not good enough…" and going on with no motor save the conviction that it could be done—

—then the day when it was done and its result was called Rearden Metal—

—these were the things that had come to white heat, had melted and fused within him, and their alloy was a strange, quiet feeling that made him smile at the countryside in the darkness and wonder why happiness could hurt.

And in Part II (PAID SUBSCRIPTION ONLY) - Tracinski writes;

The central philosophical theme of Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand's demolition of the intellectuals' dichotomy between the high-minded pursuits of the intellect and the allegedly grubby, un-intellectual world of business and industry. Ayn Rand's answer to this is provided early in the novel by Francisco D'Anconia. A flashback shows us Francisco and Dagny Taggart as teenagers combing through the machinery of a junk yard, to the disapproval of a friend of the family:

Once, an elderly professor of literature, Mrs. Taggart's friend, saw them on top of a pile in a junk yard, dismantling the carcass of an automobile. He stopped, shook his head and said to Francisco, "A young man of your position ought to spend his time in libraries, absorbing the culture of the world." "What do you think I'm doing?" asked Francisco.

Later, Dagny's observations about the motors of a railroad locomotive provide a deeper explanation of this view of the products of industrial capitalism as testaments to the power of the human mind.

For an instant, it seemed to her that the motors were transparent and she was seeing the net of their nervous system. It was a net of connections, more intricate, more crucial than all of their wires and circuits: the rational connections made by that human mind which had fashioned any one part of them for the first time.

It is a measure of the success of Atlas Shrugged that this message may not seem as radical today as it did 50 years ago. With the discrediting of Marxism and the rise of the "information age," it is now commonplace to recognize that knowledge is the engine of production—that ideas, more than physical labor or raw materials, are the primary source of wealth. Yet Ayn Rand originated this idea during the old industrial age, when the brute muscle power of union workers was still widely put forward as the source of America's industrial might.

It may be easier to recognize the central role of the mind when looking at advances in high technology. But Ayn Rand grasped the role of the mind in all aspect of business. Late in the novel, Dagny Taggart observes the reign of Cuffy Meigs—a kind of railroad czar empowered as chief regulator of the industry—and surveys the havoc that his arbitrary decrees wreak on the rational planning of private businesses.

She knew that no train schedules could be maintained any longer, no promises kept, no contracts observed, that regular trains were cancelled at a moment's notice and transformed into emergency specials sent by unexplained orders to unexpected destinations—and that the orders came from Cuffy Meigs, sole judge of emergencies and of the public welfare. She knew that factories were closing, some with their machinery stilled for lack of supplies that had not been received, others with their warehouses full of goods that could not be delivered. She knew that the old industries—the giants who had built their power by a purposeful course projected over a span of time—were left to exist at the whim of the moment, a moment they could not foresee or control. She knew that the best among them, those of the longest range and most complex function, had long since gone—and those still struggling to produce, struggling savagely to preserve the code of an age when production had been possible, were now inserting into their contracts a line shameful to a descendant of Nat Taggart: "Transportation permitting."

That the central "planning" of government actually consists of the disruption of rational planning by millions of private individuals is a point that had already been made by pro-free-market economists like Ludwig von Mises. Ayn Rand grasped that these economic principle were not dry, academic abstractions, but dramas played out in the real world—that the laws of economics are a matter of life and death, of triumph or tragedy. Here, for example, is one episode of the tragedy that plays out in the novel's later pages:

Six weeks ago, Train Number 193 had been sent with a load of steel, not to Faulkton, Nebraska, where the Spencer Machine Tool Company, the best machine tool concern still in existence, had been idle for two weeks, waiting for the shipment—but to Sand Creek, Illinois, where Confederated Machines had been wallowing in debt for over a year, producing unreliable goods at unpredictable times. The steel had been allocated by a directive which explained that the Spencer Machine Tool Company was a rich concern, able to wait, while Confederated Machines was bankrupt and could not be allowed to collapse, being the sole source of livelihood of the community of Sand Creek, Illinois. The Spencer Machine Tool Company had closed a month ago. Confederated Machines had closed two weeks later.

The people of Sand Creek, Illinois, had been placed on national relief, but no food could be found for them in the empty granaries of the nation at the frantic call of the moment—so the seed grain of the farmers of Nebraska had been seized by order of the Unification Board—and Train Number 194 had carried the unplanted harvest and the future of the people of Nebraska to be consumed by the people of Illinois. "In this enlightened age," Eugene Lawson had said in a radio broadcast, "we have come, at last, to realize that each one of us is his brother's keeper."

Atlas Shrugged is about more than capitalism, and Ayn Rand carried her observation about the role of the rational mind beyond economics into art, family life, and yes, even sex—where she rejected brute materialism just as thoroughly as she did in economics. To understand fully the lessons of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution, she grasped, required that one understand the validity and life-sustaining power of reason in human life.

The passage I quoted above also hints at a second philosophical theme that remains the novel's most revolutionary idea. Altruism—the notion that "each one of us is his brother's keeper"—is still regarded as practically synonymous with morality. Yet Atlas Shrugged concretizes the destructive impact of a moral code based on sacrifice and shows us the virtues of selfishness.

Throughout most of mankind's history, moralists have warned that individuals driven by "greed" and left free to pursue their self-interest would plunge society into a destructive war of all against all, a system of brutality, plunder, and exploitation—precisely the qualities Marx projected onto the new capitalist system. Instead, capitalism produced a system of freedom, independence, prosperity, and super-abundant creative energy—while the societies most thoroughly dedicated to the sacrifice of the individual to the collective, the 20th century's Communist regimes, were guilty of the greatest crimes ever recorded.

The lessons of this history were not lost on Ayn Rand, who had escaped from the Soviet Union to America in the 1920s, experiencing in a brief span the most complete contrast between opposing social systems. In one of the novel's most powerful metaphors, a character describes the collapse of the 20th Century Motor Company, a once-prosperous firm that descended into rancor, petty tyranny, and economic squalor after its employees voted to adopt a "bold experiment" in egalitarian socialism. The tale's narrator concludes, "This was the end of the 20th Century." Literally, he is referring to the fate of the company; symbolically, Ayn Rand uses the story to sum up the moral catastrophe of 20th century socialism.

As her own answer, Ayn Rand offered a morality of self-interest in which the individual's central moral goal is the pursuit of his own happiness. As one of the novel's philosophical speeches expresses it:

For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors—between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.

Yet Ayn Rand's most radical idea is not merely her defense of self-interest—others have grudgingly accepted self-interest as a necessary evil, a "private vice" that makes for "public virtue"—but rather her redefinition of the moral meaning of self-interest.

Most intellectuals have accepted the old altruist caricature of self-interest as brute criminality, as if the only choice we face is between forms of sacrifice: sacrificing ourselves for the sake of others or sacrificing others to ourselves. Yet this caricature is thoroughly refuted by the history of capitalism, in which the most self-interested men are not looters or vandals, but creators who built railroads, steel mills, and computer networks. The philosophy of altruism gives us a choice between two moral models: Mother Theresa or Al Capone. Yet where is the room in this philosophy for a Bill Gates, a Thomas Edison, or any of the thousands of other figures who populate the history of capitalism, building their own fortunes through the creation of new ideas and products?

For the first time, Ayn Rand recognized the reality and significance of these men and drew a profound moral lesson: that genuine self-interest means, not the short-range conniving of the brute, but the creative thought and productive effort of the entrepreneur.

These philosophical insights were radical and new—but they were the only genuine, honest response to the evidence provided by the achievements of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. Ayn Rand's detractors sometimes dismiss her novels as "unrealistic," but it is today's mainstream intellectuals who seem like they are wandering around in a fog of unreality. Stuck in a battle between two pre-conceived conventional notions—the religious traditionalism of the right versus the secular collectivism of the left—they have missed the monumental lessons of two centuries of history.

The era of encroaching global socialism—the dominant trend when Atlas Shrugged was written—has since given way to an era of global capitalism. But the deepest meaning of capitalism and its achievements has still not been widely understood and embraced. Capitalism is beginning to transform the lives of billions of people across the globe, from Eastern Europe to India to China. But there is no one to help them understand what it is, its deepest personal meaning for their lives and values, and why it is good.

And that is why Atlas Shrugged is, if anything, even more relevant and more necessary today than it was when it was first published five decades ago.

This is a view of the innovative entrepreneur as a kind of crusader, driven by a profound commitment to moral excellence.

More than a century earlier, one of the most honest and insightful observers of America, Alexis de Tocqueville, had recounted the extraordinary exertions and risk-taking of American merchant sea-captains and concluded that "the Americans put something heroic into their way of trading." But Tocqueville never really took this idea seriously or followed its consequences. Ayn Rand did.

When she followed the consequences of this idea, it led her to two crucial philosophical identifications that Atlas Shrugged introduced to the world.

Running this Wallace interview again. Watch it over and over and over. love the cigarettes.

Kick back and watch Rand with Mike Wallace;
Part I

Part II

Part III

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.

 

Comments

[Yidwithlid]

How Cool!!!
Happy Anniversary Ayn
Your legacy is in Good Hands with Pamela

[Timur]

50?! Pamela, you don't look a day over 19! ;)

[jkp]

I often assert that our culture has suffered for losing its traditional understanding that the mind is more valuable than the body. Rand correctly reminds us to stipulate that by mind we do not only mean high culture; we mean all productive application of thought. Its is not only our culture, but our economy that has suffered by our failure to exalt reason. Either reason rules or we shall starve and be run by despots. Think about it!!

[Vince]

I read Atlas Shrugged in my early 20s too. The first page was mesmorizing. I loved the foreboding mood of her prose.

I grew up in the railroad/trucking industry, so I appreciated that part of the story too.

I loved the bits of a book when each of the strikers would reveal to a person they were recruiting why they were striking.

Religious issues aside, I felt that her philosophy WAS/IS America. Period.

These Euro-wannabes are simply evil. Collectivism is evil. Class envy is evil.

It was right before the 2000 election when I read the book and the things Al Gore were saying sent a chill down my spine.

Back in January when things looked really really dark in this country, I opened the first page and started to cry.... Seeing where the country is today vs when I first read that page 8 years ago, it's tragic. Our culture is ailing and I fear there's no recovery for it.

[2cuteX1/2]

What is amazing is Rands' insight into what would have seemed totally innocent to some, and virtually imperceptible to most. She not only knew the evils of collectivism, she was also aware of the oh so very conscientious forces that were at work to bring it about right here in America, where our self reliance may only be exceeded by our "good intentions". America has ALWAYS given the other guy the benefit of the doubt, even to her own detriment.

Look at what the U.S. gov enforces now -in the name of diversity- in airports, police forces, schools and universaties(no racial profiling) and in legislative bodies where the notion of hate being a part of a criminal act somehow makes that act more evil than a "regular" crime.

There is no doubt, if she were resurrected today, she could hardly reconcile the current state of this great republic with her romantic vision of it. I don't know what kept her going, having lived to see the ravages of creeping socialism all the way up to 1982. I don't know if I like the thought of her having to endure the current breakdown where "conservatives" construct massive entitlements. On the other hand, the fact that millions can instantly exchange ideas and move commerce forward with such ease and innovation would no doubt have pleased her very much.

Bottom line: The Fountainhead had as big an impact on my 19 year old mind as anything did, or would, for many years and stays with me to this day. So much so that I never read her masterpiece for fear that it would have been a let down.

Thanks for linking the video.Started to watch them a few days ago, time to finish. Thank you Ayn Rand, may she rest in peace.

[shmujew]

hahsem is the first and the last,,,,the cause of all things. Although I liked her book, I was not enthusiastic about living in a world without hashem

[Lee]

While I'm still alive and kicking, you'll never be alone in being a fan (I hate using that word as a description of how I feel about the writings of Ayn Rand) of Ayn Rand. I, too, was introduce to Rand when I was in my early twenties. At once I was engrossed, not believing that there was someone else in this world who thought as I thought. At once, I was smitten, and have remained so to this day. I've read "Atlas Shrugged" five times and it has a place of permanence on my bedside table. Back in the seventies I subscribed to "The Objectivist" newsletter and it was sent to me here in Australia through the post. At the time, I also ordered and received a maroon hard-back copy of "Atlas Shrugged", from the US...it took almost six months to arrive, but the wait was well worth it. Through the years, I've given away so many copies of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" to others to read. If I find a copy of a Rand book on the shelves of a bookstore, I feel obligated to buy it, whether I have it or not...I believe Rand should be compulsory reading.

This is a great post...thank you.

[GuyInCT]

Ayn Rand was clearly one of the greatest thinkers of the last century, although I think she grossly overestimated the ability (or inclination) of humans to overcome their emotions.

However, to me the most interesting part was how she shot down every single argument of that proto-Stalinist, Mike Wallace. If possible, Wallace has become more socialist in his views as he has gotten older

[john jay]

friends:

i have always like what h.l. murcheson, the texas wildcatter, said of money. "money," he said, "is just like horse shit. if you pile it in one spot, it just stinks. if you spread it around, it makes things grow."

this is a most astute summation of the laws of capital.

this is a most astute summation of the function of the "horse shit" spreader, the person of enterprise, who by the use of capital makes things grow, and makes them available to all via markets for use and consumption. (this is implicit. no use growing things if no one is to buy, use or consume it.)

it is also a telling description of the virtues of the free exchange of ideas, and decentralized decision making. think about it.

john jay

p.s. god bless you pamela, for your beliefs, and for your efforts to preserve democracy and the free flow of ideas. h.l. murcheson would have liked you, as would ayn rand, ... , trust me on that.

[john jay]

shmujew:

i do not think rand advocated a world without hashem. she only wanted us to achieve fellowship and love via virtue, proudly and resolutely, and not by manipulation or the use of sentiment.

i think her a passionate person. deeply. profoundly. personally. naked, as the rest of us, but clothed in reason.

john jay

[Underzog]

How can they make "Atlas Shrugged" into a movie? It would have to be 15 hours. There was an "Atlas Shrugged" mini series in the works (a far better idea), but Freddie Silverman canned that idea when he took over NBC.

I also think Ayn Rand's measurement omission in terms of concept formation a more useful idea than her selfishness.

"There's no need to fear. Underzog is here!"

[Rebel Radius]

I find it absolutely splendid to have been alive at the same time this beautiful woman existed. I can watch this interview over and over again.

What truly intrigues me, is how anybody could follow religion and objectivism? I would consider Ayn Rand to be the voice of reason, not mysticism.

[Recluse8747]

"How can they make "Atlas Shrugged" into a movie?"

Underzog-

Judging by the people involved in the "Atlas" film I'm getting the impression that it will be about as much of an adaptation as "Starship Troopers".

Robert Heinlein's wonderful pro-military novel of interstellar war is on the reading lists of four of the five major US military academies. The novel, written in the late 50s, was noteworthy for it's concept of a volunteer army. If I'm not mistaken some of the military structures Heinlein wrote about were even incorporated into our own Armed Forces when we made the transition to an all-volunteer army.

In the hands Hollywood it was turned into a cheap "Aliens" knockoff that attempted to equate military culture to Nazism. Director Paul Verhoeven claimed that his 'adaptation' was actually a critique of Heinlein's 'fascist' views.

I sense the adaption of "Atlas" is being envisioned as a 'critique' or a 'reimagining' of Rand's radical ideas in Hollywood. In other words, it's an attempt to tear down a cultural icon that doesn't toe the Marxist world view Hollywood has succumb to.

[kingronjo]

At the risk of sounding like a rube, I never read Atlas Shrugged until I found Pam's blog and started reading her for awhile. I decided I agreed with her neo-con, Israeli lobby backing, warmongering ways (most of the time)so I thought I would read it. Too bad many of our countrymen believe the opposite of President Kennedy and think our country and other people owe them a living.

PS- This post talks about the novel being 50 years old today, not Pam. Pam said she read it 20 years ago in her early 20's. That would make her 29!! Hey what do you want out of me, I am a product of the NYC public schools in the '60's with the 'new math.'

[rickl]

I never knew Atlas Shrugged was published on 10/5/57. The Soviets launched Sputnik I the day before, ushering in the dawn of the Space Age.

Like it or not, Sputnik I was a watershed moment in human history. The Russkies deserve kudos for that.

But I never realized that Rand was upstaged by the Commies. Talk about irony. Life is funny sometimes. ;)

Meanwhile, the idea of Hollyweird making a movie out of her book makes me deeply suspicious, if not outright nauseous.