BadAtlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

[SLP]

Spoilers ahead; content warning: mention of suicide

I read Atlas Shrugged because my library closed down for coronavirus, and at the little free library at the church near my house, the choices were this or Nancy Drew books. After spending several weeks reading it, I have come away from Ayn Rand’s magnum opus with the sense that no one else has ever actually read it before.

I made my roommates nervous by cackling while reading it, but the truth is that Rand is much funnier and hornier than I could have ever dreamed. The main bones she picks are actually pretty reasonable, and the book ends up being far more critical of capitalism than I expected. In particular, she spends a lot of time making extremely insightful, defensible critiques of government corruption. In this regard, Rand is one cookbook away from Elizabeth Warren.

While I understand the appeal of this novel, Rand’s values are ultimately inconsistent and surprisingly naïve. Even reading generously, the failings of her objectivist ideology are pretty evident. Still, since I’ve already sunk the time into reading 1000+ pages, I hope to help you have a more interesting, nuanced point of view when you pretend to have read it at a party in the future.

II.

Who is John Galt?

This, according to my 50th Anniversary Edition of Atlas Shrugged, is the “immortal query” that Ayn Rand created as the “perfect artistic form to express her vision of existence.” In the novel, this rhetorical question pretty much means “who knows” or “why bother asking questions when you’ll never find out the answer.”

I finished Atlas Shrugged with many questions, but this one I can definitively answer. John Galt is our titular character--the Atlas who held the world on his shoulders, and whose shrug sent the world crashing down around him. A physicist and philosopher of prodigious intellect, Galt became frustrated by the incompetence of the world and decided that he would bring the system to its knees by organizing a strike of all the worthy people. These are mostly industrialists but also include a banker, a judge, a composer, a writer, and a movie star. His stated goal is to “stop the motor of the world,” and he will know this has been achieved when the lights of New York go out.

While Galt is the hero, our protagonist is Dagny Taggart, Vice President in Charge of Operations for Taggart Transcontinental, who splits most of her time between saving the railroad from falling apart in the hands of her brother James and schtupping steel magnate Hank Rearden. She also sometimes stands alone at dinner parties, falls asleep under a portrait of her grandfather and Taggart Transcontinental founder Nathaniel Taggart, or feels conflicted about her childhood friend and former lover Francisco D’Anconia, the heir to a copper fortune who has now turned into an international playboy. Oh, and she’s hot--even (or perhaps especially) when wearing a suit.

Guided by an extremely judgemental narrator (Rand’s insults are truly unparalleled), the book takes the reader on a wild ride to see a giant calendar in the sky, a plane chase, a love triangle, a secret government science project, a marriage between a railroad president and a shopgirl, a 40-page long monologue, a lab that implodes if you force your way in without a key, a daring rescue, and a helicopter ride above New York City as its lights flicker out.

The primary story arc is not fully revealed to the reader until Part III of the book, when Dagny crash lands in the remote Colorado valley. Galt has chosen this valley as the place for his “strikers” to hide in, and they’ve chosen to call it *cue groans* Galt’s Gulch. Here we finally meet John Galt, we and discover that all of those characters Dagny watched disappear, along with some others she had only ever heard of, are here together, building their own community away from the “looters and moochers” who want to take it all away from them.

(The reason she ends up crashing in the first place is that she’s trying to find a young physicist she hired to try to reconstruct a revolutionary motor that harnesses static electricity, which is now used to power the strikers’ whole settlement. This is Galt’s great invention, and is one of a few interesting bits of sci-fi in the novel, including a ray-shield that makes Galt’s Gulch invisible to outsiders and the government’s Project X, which creates a weapon of mass destruction that uses ultrasonic sound. I assume this last one is loosely based on the Manhattan Project.)

It’s actually already pretty obvious what’s going way before you get to the Gulch, but Rand still spends quite a few words explicitly revealing everything and having Dagny be appropriately surprised. The only really surprising thing to happen here is that Dagny’s love triangle with Hank Rearden and Francisco D’Anconia resolves because she falls for John Galt instead, who has beautiful hair that shines like gold and/or copper depending on the passage.

(Have I mentioned that Rand really, really loves Gold? If you didn’t already know, “The code of competence is the only system of morality that's on a gold standard.” The banker in the town is named Midas Mulligan and they have their own currency--gold coins! They make the best cigarettes ever and put a little gold stamp on them! There’s a giant dollar sign made entirely of gold!)

Eventually, the world outside crumbles. Dagny is with John Galt and Ragnar and his hot ex-movie star wife and some others are all together planning their future return to the world they abandoned and how they won’t be nice to each other in business deals. As the wind blows through his luscious locks, John Galt traces a dollar sign in the air. Fin.

When I started reading, I thought this book was a philosophical and economic treatise beloved by conservatives, and so it was kind of weird to discover that it's a book about… creating an intentional community? Apparently no one takes this seriously (okay, fine, a few people do, but it seems to fail spectacularly), and her fans like Paul Ryan and Mark Cuban are still out here participating in society. Galt’s Gulch doesn’t hold any water. Still, it remains incredibly popular and incredibly divisive.

What gives?

III.

Part of the answer is that Atlas Shrugged is way more readable than any other primary source philosophy text I’ve read. The book is longer than it needs to be (way, waaayyy longer), but Rand’s prose is accessible and none of her main points rely on obscure terminology. Plus, she repeats herself so many times that even if you skim you’ll still pick up all of her main points.

If you were wondering why I kept mentioning how hot they all are, it's because Rand keeps on mentioning how hot they are. The schtick of this book is that none of the characters are remotely realistic. There are only heroes and villains--people are either strong-willed geniuses with perfect muscle tone and glistening hair or incompetents with hunched shoulders and weak mouths.

Atlas Shrugged is also much steamier than the traditional ivory-tower philosophizing. The sex scenes aren’t particularly pornographic, but everyone knows that sex is cool and the libinidal energy Rand brings holds the story together through some weak moments. Since everyone is a hero/villain from the get-go, there is not much character development or engaging interpersonal drama besides Dagny’s relationships with Hank/Francisco/John Galt, but there's enough intrigue and drama in the romance plotline to string the reader along when the main plot lags. I primarily associate Atlas Shrugged with young men, and it makes sense that this demographic would be particularly interested in an ideology that involves getting laid.

(Unfortunately, there isn’t any crazy sex on a speeding train--if this is your cup of tea, I would suggest you instead watch the Trotsky mini-series which is currently available on Netflix and begins with an absolutely bonkers sex scene on a train speeding through the Russian wilderness.)

Rand’s prose really shines when she’s being mean. Let’s examine a few choice insults:

“Men with gelatin eyes, rubber voices, spiral-shaped convictions, non-committal souls and non-committing hands”
“The face of his attorney, an elderly man of the old-fashioned school, wore an expression that made it look like he longed to take a bath”
“Schoolroom voice and bar room mouth”
“Her voice sounded as if it were falling in drops, not of water, but of mayonnaise”

My key takeaway from reading Atlas Shrugged in 2020 is that it’s a real shame we never got to see the kind of takes Rand would drop on Twitter. She would have had some choice things to say about those pictures of Mark Zuckerberg sucking up to Congress in a too-big suit.

Ayn Rand also understands what it's like to put up with bullshit; watch pretty much any of her interviews and the frustration is palpable. Being competent and dealing with incompetent buffons sucks, and its cathartic to read about a group of people (who are morally righteous and get laid) who stuck it to the powers that be and brought it all crashing down. Atlas Shrugged is revenge fantasy in the vein of The Count of Monte Cristo or Gone Girl or Kill Bill. Aspects that at first blush make the story unrealistic--black and white morality, larger-than-life characters--ultimately contribute to an epic feel that allows it to transcend everyday annoyance to seem exciting and transformative.

Hidden within the revenge fantasy are some interesting kernels of self-help. Dagny’s relationship with Hank Rearden is transformative and compelling not only because she says hot things to him like “You’ll have me any time you wish, anywhere, on any terms” but because she is lonely and misunderstood and with him has found the importance of mutually supportive relationships. Especially when we are given the contrast between Hank’s really shitty relationship with his wife Lillian, the importance of good company becomes unmistakeable.

Camaraderie and companionship make things ok, even when the looters are stealing your intellectual property and passing regulations that makes it practically impossible for you to run your transcontinental railroad. For all his ability as a physicist and inventor, the thing that gives Galt his power is his ability to find and convince like-minded people to join his cause. If you feel like a misfit, it’s because you’re around the wrong people. But don’t worry--they’re out there, even if they’re inaccessible to you because they’re all hiding out somewhere in Colorado.

The best part about Rand’s philosophy is her insistence that each individual think for themself and take responsibility for their actions. John Galt speaks of three fundamental values: reason, purpose, and self-esteem. Objectivism gives each individual the authority to determine their own values and worth. Doing things that make you happy is virtuous. The advice to take ownership of your own life is pretty universally recognized as good, and Atlas Shrugged makes a compelling case for the importance of believing in yourself and finding meaning in taking responsibility.

This, I think, is the really beautiful thing about Rand’s philosophy that explains a significant portion of her following. Those other people who are trying to tell you how to live your life, who are making you feel ashamed about the things that bring you joy? Fuck ‘em. At its core, the story of the strikers is about helping you, dear reader, realize that not only do you deserve nice things, you even get to decide what things you think are nice.

IV.

Hence the famous Randian praise of selfishness.

And it is true that Ayn Rand tells us to be selfish. She declares that every man “is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.” This seems pretty straightforward, until we start to look at how the rest of the characters are acting.

The heroes are certainly selfish, but so are the villains. Dagny’s brother Jim, Hank Rearden’s former lobbyist Wesley Mouch, and a whole slew of Washington looters and phonies with silly names like Kip Chalmers and Balph Eubank are all out there looking out for themselves and their bottom lines. Jim uses his connections to advance legislation that crushes his railroad competition in Colorado. Wesley Mouch betrays Hank Rearden to gain influence in Washington. Sure, they talk a big talk about the “public good,” but at the end of the day, everyone is lining their own pockets.

The critique she’s offering is not one of altruism or even socialism. She does discuss foreign “People’s States”, but there are no apparent welfare systems or social services. They’re not even doing this to try to distribute, but rather to double down on industry influence to use the government as a tool to maintain existing systems of inequality.

Let’s take a look at some of the government actions in the novel Rand finds so abhorrent. Directive 10-289 attempts to stave off economic decline by banning change. It is explicitly written to create economic stagnation to benefit existing monopolies. Workers aren’t supposed to change jobs, businesses aren’t supposed to close, nothing new should be invented.

When the Americans lobby their South American friends to nationalize Francisco’s family’s copper industry, they do so because they personally stand to benefit enormously. Even the nationalization of the steel industry, which they do by using government agents to infiltrate the steel mills and insight riots so the state can step in to protect the safety of the mill owners, occurs in order to save the business of Orren Boyle, whose Associated Steel cannot compete with Hank Rearden but has strong enough government influence to save his business with that.

The Anti-Greed Act, Equalization of Opportunity Act, and--my personal favorite--the Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act are all anti-competition, but with the goal of protecting the existing systems and entrenched capitalists. These aren’t acts of redistribution, but are the people already in power consolidating their wealth. Despite her reputation, it’s clear that Rand isn’t just blindly pro-capital all the time. The Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act isn’t even government action--it’s passed by the National Alliance of Railroads because it benefits the more powerful members. These industrialists are choosing to self-regulate using their voluntary associations.

There’s no alternative. All players are acting selfishly, and while they anti-free market, they aren’t socialist. What Rand is truly concerned with the ways in which one individual’s selfish pursuits interfere with another’s ability to be selfish. This appears as corruption, which Rand charmingly calls “pull-peddling.”

The most compelling bits of this novel come in the savage critique of corrupt politicians and trading favors. In Rand’s world, supposed altruism and socialism are really covers for two things: blatant stupidity and justifying use of force.

The first real sin is always incompetence. Some things exist outside of our minds and our social circles. Corn and soybeans will rot if we don’t have the trains to deliver them to consumers. The people Rand describes as looters and moochers don’t have their shit together enough to do basic things like get trains to run on time or produce enough to meet all their orders or generally understand that getting things done. Instead, they are obsessed with relativism and fake news. As a result, they get in the way of everyone else who is trying to accomplish great industrial progress. What Rand really wants is a reorientation away from social games towards the external physical world, putting the objective in objectivism.

Rand is also particularly concerned with corruption in the justice system. Incompetents slide away from various truths that govern the world.

“What would he be able to prove? To whom? One could prove nothing to a tribunal that had no stated policy, no defined procedure, no rules of evidence, no binding principle--a tribunal, such as the Unification Board, that pronounced men guilty or innocent as they saw fit, with no standard of guilt or innocence”

Ultimately, this devolves into a post-truth system.

“When a court is not bound by any rules, it is not bound by any facts, and then a hearing is not an issue of justice, but an issue of men, and your fate depends not on what you have or have not done, but on whom you do or do not know”

You are who you know, and that determines what you can get away with.

In a chapter hilariously titled “The Moratorium on Brains,” Rand further explores how corruption and scapegoating within the government seeps into the workforce. Following Directive 10-289 and its creation of the Unification Board, employees need to be careful not to step out of line lest they be punished. This prevents independent thinking and promotes compliance above all else.

Politician Kip Chalmers is worried about his train arriving late to a rally, and so forces the railroad to use a coal-burning engine through a tunnel even though this will suffocate them. Dagny is busy repairing a path at a mountain retreat and is not available to save the day from feckless behavior.

While some workers know the danger, they shrink from their duty. They know that if they do not comply they will be punished. Their primary goal is to avoid blame and be allowed to continue to work to support their families. As a result, they willingly abdicate their ability to think for themselves. In this way, a corrupt system of justice leads to ever greater incompetence.Rand is not patently pro-capitalist and anti-worker. I think she honestly just doesn’t like most people at all, regardless of their station in life.

These concerns gain additional significance because the government is empowered to determine legal guilt. They create laws so strict that everyone can be made guilty forces individuals to engage in endless cycles of blackmail and influence peddling.

“‘Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?...We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against—then you’ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted—and you create a nation of lawbreakers—and then you cash in on guilt.’”

Beyond the basic injustice, Rand is concerned that this system of government leads to more direct violence.

“But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law — men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims — then money becomes its creators’ avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.”

The villains use exploitative, forceful means to achieve their ends. This is the ultimate act of evil.

“Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate—do you hear me? no man may start—the use of physical force against others.”

Clearly the use of force is the most dastardly thing imaginable. Except not really, because Rand’s heroes also use violence to achieve their goals.

Nathaniel Taggart is Dagny’s personal hero. She had a portrait of him in her office, she frequently stops to admire his statue in the Taggart Terminal. He represents the best of industry--the man who beat all the odds to create a transcontinental railroad and become absurdly wealthy in the process.

How did he do it? By resorting to violence on multiple occasions.

“It was said that Nat Taggart had staked his life on his railroad many times; but once, he staked more than his life. Desperate for funds, with the construction of his line suspended, he threw down three flights of stairs a distinguished gentleman who offered him a loan from the government.”

It gets better!

“It was said that in the wilderness of the Middle West, he murdered a state legislator who attempted to revoke a charter granted to him, to revoke it when his rail was laid halfway across the state; some legislators had planned to make a fortune on Taggart stock – by selling it short. Nat Taggart was indicted for the murder, but the charge could never be proved. He had no trouble with legislators from then on.”

Now I’m not sure if Middle West is a spin on midwest or if she means the middle within the west, but I am relatively sure this doesn’t pass the self defense sniff test. We’re not given a ton of context, but Rand certainly had no problem with being an asshole, and despite her pronouncements against violence she seems very willing to forgive it.

The real problems arise because the looters are playing the game of the market while also simultaneously playing a game of political influence. Even if a new outsider can outcompete the old guard in the market, they will lose because people in charge of other avenues of power can use external forces to shut them down. But this isn’t anti-capitalist either--this is a possible future of what capitalism looks like when it's allowed to slide from the city on the hill into the swamp.

Rand illustrates how the government has become the ultimate monopoly, and acts as a clearinghouse through which already established corporations can extend their influence. The lines between industry and government blur. Wesley Mouch, originally employed as a lobbyist for Hank Rearden, ultimately turns on him to pass the Equalization of Opportunity Bill, which forces Rearden to sell of many of his companies due to new restrictions on how many businesses an individual can own. In reward for doing so, he is given a cushy government appointment. Voluntary capitalist associations like the National Alliance of Railroads similarly become tools of oppression.

In the long term, capitalism consolidates power in a way that allows this corruption. There are no political parties in Atlas Shrugged. The bad faith actors aren’t just politicians--they’re also the industrialists. Instead of facing the consequences of the market and taking a hit from making bad bets, they turn to protective regulations and breaking kneecaps. Free markets are only free until tertiary power structures are erected to protect the winners of the first round.

Winners who accumulate capital and private property find that the best way to keep winning is to shut down the system that allowed them to rise. The people in charge are certain their investments will continue to accumulate value because they’ve rigged it to do so. A true free market is a danger to those in power because bets can be lost. This ends up sounding sadly prescient.

Newcomers simply cannot innovate their way out of the system. Ellis Wyatt pioneers a new process to extract oil, but is ultimately crushed by government regulations. Hank Rearden, who came from nothing to run the largest, most successful steel company, creates a new miracle metal known as Rearden Steel, only to have a law passed that forces him to share the intellectual property.

In a scenario where there is no John Galt leading a strike (i.e. real life), Rearden’s only options would be to let his own business be crushed or to hop aboard the pull-peddling party. Before the strike begins to affect the economy in earnest, James is clearly outcompeting Dagny on the whole. Even if he’s worse at running a railroad, he still wins because of his advantages using his influence with the Taggart Transcontinental board and politicians.

Rand does not take up how this system was put into place in the first place. Still, her story clearly illustrates how entwined economic and political oligopolies are created and perpetuated. One way is through familial inheritance--James Taggart is president of Taggart Transcontinental purely because he is a descendent of Nat Taggart. Even if all the spoils of the first round are justly distributed, the incompetent will always end up with the loot.

Rand clearly believed that biological family is not a good indicator of similarity. In several cases, a striker’s abandoned business went to their brother/cousin/other relative who let it fall apart. Hank Rearden could not be more different from his brother Phillip, and boy does he hate his mother. Dagny and James are a textbook example of literary foils.

(Side note: I am driven completely mad by the fact that their parents essentially do not appear to the degree that they are never even named!!! Who are they!! What happened to them!!)

Rand thinks that Nat is perfect and James is evil, but fails to see that the same system that allowed Nat’s wild success twists itself to prop up James and his looting a few generations later. What began as a competition in the market has become a competition in the swamp.

How do we prevent this deterioration? In what ways should we be deciding who gains influence during transitions of power? How do we ensure innovation can break through in the long run? How do we ensure the longevity of an enterprise? These are all interesting, important questions that I found myself asking while reading, and was ultimately disappointed that Rand doesn’t address them at all.

The whole point of Atlas shrugging is that the only way to escape this system is to break it down so you can start over again. The system tends away from a free market. Rand does an amazing job of identifying the inevitable ills that come from uncontrolled political entropy and crony capitalism, but she fails to imagine a way to reboot the system without completely destroying it.

Of course, the dire consequences of incompetence are exaggerated in the universe. The economy only goes downhill as precipitously as it does because Galt and company are encouraging its fall. Friendly neighborhood pirate Ragnar keeps on sinking the ships carrying necessary shipments of copper and other materials.

Rand is surprisingly open to destroying property just to stick it to her enemies, though ultimately this reveals a key aspect in this world that allows the strikers to survive and succeed--boundless resources. The valley they choose for Galt’s Gulch is ridiculously plentiful, offering excellent land for agriculture and a number of natural resources. Without this plenty, we simply don’t have the option to start a standalone colony, or to destroy our world in order to cleanse it for a new beginning.

VI.

Boy does she destroy it.

Perhaps the most interesting question I asked myself while reading Atlas Shrugged was what to do with all those feeble-minded weak-chinned incompetents? The book ends 9 pages after the lights of New York go out, so we see very little of what the world looks like. But even before this, the prospects of most people were pretty grim. A lot of people presumably die, so let’s take a look at a few of the people who definitely die in the aforementioned train crash. Rand gives us a nice long list of passengers and their various sins.

"It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them.

The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 1, was a professor of sociology who taught that individual ability is of no consequence, that individual effort is futile, that an individual conscience is a useless luxury, that there is no individual mind or character or achievement, that everything is achieved collectively, and that it's masses that count, not men.

The man in Roomette 7, Car No. 2, was a journalist who wrote that it is proper and moral to use compulsion 'for a good cause' who believed that he had the right to unleash physical force upon others - to wreck lives, throttle ambitions, strangle desires, violate convictions, to imprison, to despoil, to murder - for the sake of whatever he chose to consider as his own idea of 'a good cause',which did not even have to be an idea, since he had never defined what he regarded as the good, but had merely stated that he went by 'a feeling' -a feeling unrestrained by any knowledge, since he considered emotion superior to knowledge and relied soley on his own 'good intentions' and on the power of a gun.

The woman in Roomette 10, Car No.3, was an elderly schoolteacher who had spent her life turning class after class of helpless children into miserable cowards, by teaching them that the will of the majority is the only standard of good and evil, and that a majority may do anything it pleases, that they must not assert their own personalities, but must do as others were doing.

The man in Drawing Room B, Car No. 4, was a newspaper publisher who believed that men are evil by nature and unfit for freedom, that their basic interests, if left unchecked, are to lie, to rob and murder one another - and, therefore, men must be ruled by means of lies, robbery and murder, which must be made the exclusive privilege of the rules, for the purpose of forcing men to work, teaching them to be moral and keeping them within the bounds of order and justice.

The man in Bedroom H, Car No. 5, was a businessman who had acquired his business, an ore mine, with the help of a government loan, under the Equalization of Opportunity Bill.

The man in Drawing Room A, Car No 6, was a financier who had made a fortune by buying 'frozen' railway bonds and getting his friends in Washington to 'defreeze' them.

The man in Seat 5, Car No.7, was a worker who believed that he had "a right" to a job, whether his employer wanted him or not.

The woman in Roomette 6, Car no. 8, was a lecturer who believed that, as a consumer, she had "a right" to transportation, whether the railroad people wished to provide it or not.

The man in Roomette 2, Car No. 9, was a professor of economics who advocated the abolition of private property, explaining that intelligence plays no part in industrial production, that man's mind is conditioned by material tools, that anybody can run a factory or a railroad and it's only a matter of seizing the machinery.

The woman in Bedroom D, Car No. 10, was a mother who had put her two children to sleep in the berth above her, carefully tucking them in, protecting them from drafts and jolts; a mother whose husband held a government job enforcing directives, which she defended by saying, 'I don't care, it's only the rich that they hurt. After all, I must think of my children.'

The man in Roomette 3, Car No. 11, was a sniveling little neurotic who wrote cheap little plays into which, as a social message, he inserted cowardly little obscenities to the effect that all businessmen were scoundrels.

The woman in Roomette 9, Car No. 12, was a housewife who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing, to control giant industries, of which she had no knowledge.

The man in Bedroom F, Car No.13, was a lawyer who had said, 'Me? I'll find a way to get along under any political system.'

The man in Bedroom A, Car No.14, was a professor of philosophy who taught that there is no mind - how do you know that the tunnel is dangerous? - no reality - how can you prove that the tunnel exists? - no logic - why do you claim that trains cannot move without motive power? - no principles - why should you be bound by the laws of cause and effect? - no rights - why shouldn't you attach men to their jobs by force?- no morality - what's moral about running a railroad? - no absolutes - what difference does it make to you whether you live or die anyway?. He taught that we know nothing - why oppose the orders of your superiors? - that we can never be certain of anything - how do you know you're right? - that we must act on the expediency of the moment - you don't want to risk your job do you?

The man in Drawing Room B, Car No.15, was an heir who had inherited his fortune, and who had kept repeating, 'Why should Rearden be the only one permitted to manufacture Rearden Metal?'

The man in Bedroom A, Car no. 16, was a humanitarian who had said, 'The men of ability? I do not care what or if they are made to suffer. They must be penalized in order to support the incompetent. Frankly, I do not care whether this is just or not. I take pride in not caring to grant any justice to the able, where mercy to the needy is concerned.'

These passengers were awake; there was not a man aboard the train who did not share one or more of their ideas. As the train went into the tunnel, the flame of Wyatt's Torch was the last thing they saw on earth."

I think if we asked Rand about this she would roll her eyes, and say something about how they hadn’t really been alive in the first place because they weren’t thinking for themselves. I guess her argument is that for these people, life as they’re living it is no better than death.

This doesn’t do it for me morally, and even if you’re a monster, it doesn’t work out economically either. It’s not only horrific, it’s stupid. This enormous loss of life is also a huge loss of labor. The massive death tolls surely incurred by the breakdown of society would make it impossible to rebuild, especially since all their copper is now at the bottom of the ocean. How many people will be left in New York by the time the lights come back on? Who will the new trains they’re planning serve when millions have already died because they were unable to get food or fuel?

The basics of comparative advantage also illustrate the problems with this strategy. Even if the unthinking masses were doing almost nothing before, the loss of their productive capacity would still be a hit to the overall economy, and the survivors will need to replace this lost work. While Dagny enjoys working as John Galt’s maid/cook for a brief period, ultimately they will want other people to fill these roles if they’re going to achieve their industrial dreams.

Birthing the system anew doesn’t even ensure it will work out better in the long run. Since family is poor insurance of competence, the same process will likely repeat itself. How will this new world guard against just deteriorating back to a world of pull-peddling looters?

It gets even more depressing when we look at three characters who begin on the side of the looters, yet show promise to be more: Eddie Willers, Cherryl Brooks, and Rearden’s Wet Nurse.

Eddie Willers is the very first character we meet. His parents and grandparents worked for the Taggarts before him, and he grew up spending summers with James and Dagny. He works in Dagny’s office, and while he’s no genius, he is generally competent. The last time we see him he has collapsed and is sobbing in front of a broken down engine, feeling “like the captain of an ocean liner in distress, who preferred to go down with his ship rather than be saved by a canoe of savages taunting him with the superiority of their craft.” The other passengers have joined a roving caravan and while his status is ambiguous at the end, it’s hard to imagine this ending any way other than his eventual death.

We know that there are some regular people (read: non-geniuses) who are invited to Galt’s Gulch and allowed to live there. When Hank Rearden joins Galt’s strike we know that Rearden’s secretary and several of his other employees get to go with him. But for whatever reason, Eddie doesn’t make the cut.

Cherryl Brooks is the shopgirl who marries James. She only appears three times: her initial meeting with James at the dime store where she works, her wedding, and the final night of her life, which gets an entire chapter to itself (very unusual). Realizing all the things she had admired in James were actually achieved by Dagny, she goes to Dagny to apologize for misjudging her. Dagny attempts to make her feel better, but after they part, Cherryl wanders off through the streets of New York, slowly unravelling until she ultimately flings herself off a bridge to her death.

Rearden’s “Wet Nurse” has a similar fate. His name is actually Tony, but this isn’t revealed until the scene where--guess what!--he dies. He was originally sent by the government to keep a close eye on Rearden (hence the Wet Nurse nickname), but slowly comes to understand the evils of the people he works for and eventually begins to side with Rearden. He is injured helping protect the steel plants from the government agents trying to incite a strike and redeems himself before he dies in Rearden’s arms.

Normally it’s misleading to read too much into the trajectories of fictional characters, but Atlas Shrugged is a piece of propaganda in a way most novels are not, and its carefully choreographed plot is designed to give us lessons. All of these characters, who straddle the chasm between striker and looter ultimately realize the errors in their ways, and are redeemed as they...die?

There is no possibility of redemption. Nothing can be repaired or righted or restored, only pruned away.

VII.

When asked for the shortest possible summary, I told a friend that it’s like Ayn Rand took too many amphetamines and asked “what if the capitalists went on strike” and then wrote 1,000+ pages about it. The things that people like about Atlas Shrugged (fun story with ~~sexy times~~, encourages self esteem, and validates your frustration) and don’t like about it (long and rambly, seems like its advocating genocide by neglect) are all true.

I ended up in a weird situation where I found the first ¾ of every paragraph interesting and engaging only to wind up in the final ¼ being told that the answer is to be a huge jerk all the time to everyone. Which…doesn’t quite land for me. I also think this instinct to be cruel made her life far sadder and lonelier than it needed to be. Ultimately, Rand’s interpersonal failings dampen her intellectual contributions.

The fantasy is based not only on direct and indirect violence--it also relies on a deeply American phantasm of inexhaustible natural resources that allows her to disregard the value that existing institutions and infrastructure hold. Maybe this read differently in 1957, but in 2020 it's more depressing than inspiring.

Today, I hope we can read Atlas Shrugged and take her advice to focus on reason, purpose, and self-esteem without feeling beholden to the more twisted aspects of her ideology. For now, I will work on finding a scenario in which I can appropriately compare someone’s voice to mayonnaise.