Greed’s Moral Revolution | David Baucom | Spring 2010
For a book whose philosophic axiom is “Contradictions don’t exist,” Ayn Rand’s magnum opus unfolded a legacy culminating in what could seem conspicuous ones.
A popular survey ranked Atlas Shrugged the second most influential book in the country, next to the Bible. Which sounds wrong, since most Americans haven’t heard of Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel of individualism and capitalism. Rand’s philosophical devotee Alan Greenspan, who learned from her a belief in laissez-faire capitalism later came to head the Federal Reserve and was considered an icon of the free market system. But after 2008’s banking collapses, Greenspan surprised many by expressed shaken confidence in free markets. Though market economies retain general support, it is unregulated capitalism, which Rand advocated, that’s over-ridingly condemned as the source of the world’s crisis. And yet despite that condemnation, despite unprecedented failure of industries and growing appeal for sweeping regulations to reign in corporations — the popularity of Atlas Shrugged surges like never before. Its 2009 book sales doubled from 2008. Its mentions in media quintupled. More students than ever are reading it. There is, after many stalled attempts, new promise for a miniseries. Thus it surges, within a society that has, more overwhelmingly than ever, resignedly accepted the book’s antithesis: that capitalism fails.
What do the story and ideas of Atlas Shrugged reveal about the financial crisis? — and vice-versa? What made Rand’s controversial ideas so distinctive and enduring? Are they practical in application? What is the nature of the legacy of her book?
Above all, Rand was an advocate of reason, believing reality and truth were understandable. In Atlas Shrugged, the enigmatic Francisco d’Anconia famously offers: “Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”
Prophet of Profits
Francisco d’Anconia is one of the prodigious industrialist heroes of Atlas Shrugged, the only book in literature to prominently portray businessmen as heroes. It’s the story of railroad executive Dagny Taggart and steel magnate Hank Rearden, who find their companies beleaguered by a society that rewards need over ability, a society of “looters” and “moochers” feeding on the productivity and virtue of the world’s producers — and of John Galt, a mystery character who is either their destroyer or liberator.
I knew its impact, when I read it at 20, would last. It dramatized life in a way I’d never imagined. It transcendently glorified the human mind and the individual spirit. It also challenged my beliefs. Upon beginning, I thought the protagonists were basically good, but too selfish, and that perhaps they’d “soften” and change a bit at the end. By the end of the book, they hadn’t changed. I had. The protagonists had kept their integrity. Mine was galvanized. Atlas is a thrust gauntlet to thousands of years of Judeo-Christian moral tradition that sets self-sacrifice as the standard for morality. Its extraordinary heroes are good, rational, brilliant, honest — and profoundly selfish. Rand viewed principled self-interest as a moral ideal. Atlas Shrugged presents her philosophy and sense of life in a narrative of sweeping drama, profound ironies, and astounding plot.
Philosophy is woven inextricably into every scene, characterization, and point of drama. The philosophical premises of characters are expressed in their words and actions, resulting in unforgettable and dramatic scenes concretizing the connection between reality and morality.
Some readers found it unrealistic. A portion of critics hated it. Most academics dismissed it. But among its detractors, few deny that in ambition and scope it has few rivals.
Its cultural impact was subterranean and profound. Some link it to support for the “less government” trend of the 80’s and for Reagan’s stand against communism. Rand and her book became subcultural icons, admired and scorned.
Rand’s philosophic system, Objectivism, upholds reason, egoism, and capitalism. It advocates that the human mind is the source of all human progress and that man’s nature accordingly requires freedom for its use, unconstrained by the force of others. Politically, this means a system of individual rights, with government’s only purpose as securing those rights: the system of laissez-faire capitalism, which separates economics and government as it separates religion and government.
Rand’s ideal of selfishness is not brutishly violating others, but regarding your own life as your primary responsibility and pursuing your rational, long-term interests, with ethical integrity to others.
Believing America’s two parties reject reason and share the same altruist premises, Rand wrote that “conservatives and liberals are two sides of the same counterfeit coin.” Although some conservatives warmed to her defense of liberty, she generally viewed conservatives as false representatives of freedom, poisoning its philosophic defense with religious faith and self-sacrifice. “If this country is destroyed,” she said, “it will not be by the liberals. It will be the conservatives.”
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