REVIEW - Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged is the story of the talented and industrious of the world going on strike against the government and unproductive mobs who exploit them for their (intellectual) labor. The author, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum in the imperial Russian city of Saint Petersburg, escaped the Bolshevik revolution, so her views on profit by merit are sometimes cold. It is no small irony she died of heart failure and was buried under a six-foot floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign.
I liked Atlas Shrugged more as a young, healthy man who had his whole career ahead of him and didn’t see much farther than himself. Conversely, I view it as a sign of my growth as a human being that I recognize it for the dystopian dumpster fire its author didn’t intend it to be.
Atlas Shrugged is capitalism that has been raised to the level of religious zealotry. It glorifies the good and noble entrepreneur who is trying to earn an honest wage while advancing the course of progress. It advocates for holding real value in the form of gold, not government IOUs, and it believes the unproductive leeches of the world should be left to burn and/or devour themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t disagree with some of these things in moderation. There is great value in getting things done. Progress—whose purpose is to increase the potential, diversity, and survival of humanity, mind you—is something to be pursued by those who can as they are able, and they should be both enabled and rewarded for it. Gold is a joke. Seriously. We’re one asteroid-mining operation from it being worthless. And as for the inflationary theft of future growth by governments printing money, I don’t think anyone is arguing. Kim Stanley Robinson just did it better in both his Mars series and, later, in the Ministry of the Future.
What pushes Atlas Shrugged into the dystopian are the assumptions of absolute correctness. All the “men of the mind” supposedly agree with each other. It’s a wonder they haven’t banded together to conquer the world before. The female lead is clearly a write-in by the author, who obviously believes she belongs with the talents, not the leeches. The book radiates an eerie sense that somewhere, just out of sight, there are people marching in step to a loud brass band.
That being said, I think it’s part of the development of good critical thought to read disagreeable texts and try to find ways to handle those worldviews and extract value from unpleasant philosophies. Then, go play Bioshock because we all know Rapture is the inevitable end that Atlas Shrugged deserves.
