Ayn Rand (1905–1982)

Shocking that it made it to the page without being violently destroyed by any passer-by she happened to tell about it--including her publisher. Utterly without merit, both sociologically, politically, and linguistically, as well as in terms of literature. It's as if Ayn Rand envisioned a sort of Übermensch, a sort of sexy, can do no wrong. Everything works out for him because, well, it does. He's John Galt. It's utterly devoid of any sort of tension or worry about what might happen because show more at every turn, everything you think is going to happen does. And it does because that's the only way she can have any sort of defence of the absolute dogshit ideal that is objectivism. show less

There is a lot to marvel at in this 1000+ page novel. It is immense and at times seems like it will just go on forever. Yes, there were moments when I just wanted to throw the book aside and say "so what...I no longer care". But, I persisted.

I get that Ayn Rand was a vehement anti-communist. She is clear about that. I suppose I give her a pass on much of this as she was probably imagining a likely or conceivable outcome of the wrong side perhaps winning the Cold War. She was afraid and show more raised some crimson-red flags.

Ayn is all in with Capitalism and the work-ethic in which it flourishes. Rand believes you should love your work, do it well, do it often and the world will be better for it. She is not a fan of community support. She is not a fan of welfare, food stamps or government assistance. She believes it best if government stays out of the way of the men and women who work. She doesn’t believe in Christian principles of helping your neighbor, a rising tide helping all boats or any other ideas of dependency. The phrase “service to humanity” is an expletive to be deleted. Solo into the world we are born, and solo through the world we must travel. Find yourself a gig and perform max speed, max duration.

As I was reading this book, I was reminded of those old Jack Chick tracts about hell, with burning hellfires and horned, hooved demons. Everything is comic-book like. NYC is like Gotham City in the first Tim Burton Batman movie. Just unbelievable caricatures but sturdy enough to serve as a straw man for Rand’s polemic.

There’s an enormous amount of entitlement in Atlas Shrugged, masquerading as a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps kind of message. Dagny is from a rich family, inherited her position. Francisco as well. Maybe Hank has a rags-to-riches story….maybe John Galt. We don’t get much about that only that they deserve their success and everyone else tries to mooch off of them. It is an unconvincing position. I don’t buy it. At its heart, Atlas Shrugged is an elitist fantasy novel. Galt’s Gulch sounds like a Peter Thiel sea-steading venture and one can sense the disdain for the “demo-“ in democracy from every word from Rand. This world of hers can only exist within an authoritarian structure. If there is more than one national political entity on Earth, there will be conflict and I suppose Rand means for one of these elitist to rise to the top and command.

Rand’s characters are somehow invariable; they are so consistent as to be boring. They don’t change much or vary much and so can seem predictable, even uninteresting. Does Dagny ever NOT look calm and in control? Does Hank ever not look completely in control and level-headed? Does JG? This world that Rand has created is certainly interesting but it is not compelling. Reading Atlas Shrugged is like putting on a virtual headset and being dropped in a static 3D creation of an absurdist artist.

Rand paints this comic-book, Gotham-esque dystopia that has no room for politics as we know it. There will be coal shortages because of bureaucratic mismanagement but no politicians loudly blame bureaucrats or government agencies or try to rally the public. Doesn't anyone want to get elected? No one seems capable of instituting policies to address shortfalls. Rand, as a means of fixing the disintegration, comically introduces this Kremlin-style Politburo of a planning committee, the Unification Board, that we are supposed to fear. To me, it was not authentic. It was convenient plot stupidity.

Having said all this, I followed along for the millennia of pages out of curiosity. I wanted to see how this wrapped up; how does hell become heaven again. I had heard and read enough about this novel to want to make it through. I was never disappointed. The "speech" is a landmark. 3-hours in the novel's world, but probably 3 days in mine. I took my time. I took it in. There are decent missives here and valuable structures for building a personal philosophy that I'll not dismiss; I can see their attraction and their value. But it seems more like a reactionary philosophy that might work in a vacuum but not in most realities. Francisco says “An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.” Yeah, okay, but in the REAL world that won't fly. In the Darwinian only-the-strong-shall-survive world...maybe. But, who wants to live THERE?

So, I liked the book despite my initial prejudices against it. I would have given the book three stars. However, as I was prepared to hate it but didn't, it gets an extra star for that! show less

Osm měsíců uteklo, než jsem se prokousal skrz nejslavnější román spisovatelky a filosofky Ayn Rand. Přečíst “Atlas Shrugged” mi však trvalo bezmála tři čtvrtiny roku nejen kvůli tomu, že je to kniha opravdu dlouhá (moje vydání má necelých 1200 stran a mikroskopická písmena.) Období horlivého čtení následovaly týdny, při kterých jsem o knihu ani nezavadil. Samotný příběh je, jak se o podobně významné knize dá očekávat, opravdu zajímavý. Co mi show more čtení komplikovalo, byl styl Ayn Rand, kdy všechny důležité postavy pravidelně předvádí spontánní desítky minut dlouhé politicko-ekonomicko-filosofické monology, které nejsou ani tak podstatné pro děj, jako pro vylíčení objektivismu, autorčiny filosofické školy. I díky nim jsou postavy “Atlas Shrugged” místy až přehnaně zidealizované. Klaďasové zářivě čistí, záporáci od bláta zamazaní a všichni ostatní neschopní a bezradní.

Rozhodně se nemám potřebu vyhraňovat vůči objektivismu jako takovému, ostatně s většinou jeho tezí bez potíží souhlasím. Problém je, že pro mě “Atlas Shrugged” jako ilustrace jeho aplikace nefunguje. Mohla to být dobrá próza o souboji svobody s totalitou nastupující ve jménu vyššího dobra, či zajímavá filosofická práce. “Atlas Shrugged” však chce být někde mezi, a moc se mu to nedaří. Některé jeho části jsou opravdu dobré, stejně jako některé monology (například monolog Francisca d’Anconia o penězích je naprosto perfektní obhajobou svobodného obchodu). Jako celek mě ale “Atlas Shrugged” nakonec nadchnout nedokázal a například o necelých dvacet let starší a dvanáctkrát kratší autorčina novela “Anthem” ve mně zanechala dojem mnohem silnější.

“The man who tells you that it is possible to value without values, to love those whom you appraise as worthless, is the man who tells you that it is possible to grow rich by consuming without producing and that paper money is as valuable as gold." show less

It is hard to rate this book. It is an epic novel without nuance, written to illustrate a particular philosophical point. It is exactly what the author intended. I have never read another author who succeeded so well at her endeavor, so in that sense it deserves 5 stars. However, the premise of economic Darwinism = heroism is so far from reality that I just shake my head. Dagny Taggart did not get where she is by her own efforts. Neither did half the other characters. Success in a show more capitalistic system requires access to capital. If you don't have access, it doesn't matter how "productive" you are. Rich industrialists like to pretend that "they did it all on their own." In reality, companies piggyback on research funded by the government, infrastructure built and maintained by the government, law and order and emergency services provided by the government, education provided by the government, and also on the health and prosperity of their employees.

(The whole system relies on a consumer base with enough money to buy goods and services. Industrialists to not exist in a vaccuum. If there were ten billionaires and a million poor people in the system, who would the industrialists sell their goods and services to? Capitalism really only works when everyone has enough resources to buy stuff. So it is in a company's best long-term interests to pay their employees well. Unfortunately, no one seems to realize this, because capitalism is based on a scarcity mindset.)

When you start equating poor people with worthlessness, then there is a problem. Economic value and absolute value have nothing to do with each other. One life = one life, period. By Rand's reckoning, a serial killer who also owns a steel mill is more valuable than a poor person who helps others.

The success of any individual organism is tied to the success of the species, and vice versa. A species which destroys its own environment is doomed to be unsuccessful, no matter how "heroic" a particular individual is. In evolutionary terms, it is better for a whole species to thrive than for any particular individual of that species.

Getting back to Rand, her ideas just don't make sense in the real world. Plus, her beliefs about love and sex are creepy AF. show less