Confession: I’ve read “Atlas Shrugged” several times. If you can stand Ayn Rand’s tendentious prose and rape sex fantasies, it’s got some relevant bits for our times, if not the ones the Koch Brothers and their ilk celebrate.
The book’s villains look like nothing so much as what passes for Republicans these days: corrupt, politicized science deniers, self-dealing grifters, etc. The way they try to market themselves out of failed policies, flip-flop in panic — it’s all there. Donald Trump would fit right in.
Rand’s revelation at the big denouement in the book — that behind all their proclaimed ‘values’ is a desire to inflict pain and death — is of a piece with contemporary GOP policies: the cruelty is the point.
As for her libertarian ‘objectivist heroes’, [SPOILER ALERT] the big plan created by super-genius John Galt is to crash the economy, retreat to their secret mountain hideout, let society collapse, and wait for civil disorder, plagues, starvation, and open violence to kill off millions of Americans. Once all those inconvenient people are out of the way, they plan to return to pursue their business visions unburdened by government regulation or concern for the public good. Selfishness is a virtue; Greed is good.
That’s their happy ending. That’s their idea of utopia. It’s the Shock Doctrine — Disaster Capitalism on steroids. Any resemblance between that and what’s happening now is purely a coincidence, right? Right?
Kung Fu Monkey’s take on Atlas Shrugged is still spot-on:
-- 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.
Here's some snapshots of how free market capitalism is working for the common good and riding to the rescue during the pandemic, NOT!
This doesn’t excuse failures of government of course — after all government is supposed to have the public welfare as the primary concern; that’s job one. Business is supposed to be all about profits and shareholder value; the public good is not its primary responsibility. (All the more credit to companies that are stepping up in this time of crisis.)
Government and business are tools, only as good as the workmen wielding them, with differing strengths and weaknesses. When things go bad, don’t blame the tool before looking at who was using it, and if they made the right choice for the task at hand.
Expecting business to automatically solve all problems more efficiently than government is to ignore a fundamental truth. You can’t fit the world within a balance sheet; not everything can be understood in terms of profits and losses, or as an exchange of goods and services. But those whose only concern is power, money, and fear don’t care, and this is the world they’ve been working to create.
Too bad the coronavirus doesn’t care about their beliefs or how much money they have.
UPDATE: Apparently through the magic of Google, a couple of die-hard Rand fans found their way here and were appalled at the heresy of challenging Ayn and her heroes. One of them made a special effort to register his displeasure.
Rather than engage in an extended pie fight, I direct them and any Rand followers to a website suggested by thumbsupcecil where an extensive deconstruction of Rand and “Atlas Shrugged” is available. It’s a project of Adam Lee, someone who has put a lot of thought and effort into pursuing atheism under the umbrella of Freethought.
Atheist author Adam Lee defines freethought as thinking which is independent of revelation, tradition, established belief, and authority,[5] and considers it as a "broader umbrella" than atheism "that embraces a rainbow of unorthodoxy, religious dissent, skepticism, and unconventional thinking."[6]
However you feel about Lee’s body of work, his chapter by chapter dissection of “Atlas Shrugged” and the comments on it is worth taking a look. For those who reject atheism, it’s worth noting that Rand herself also had problems with religion.
Enjoy!