Atlas Shrugged
by Ayn Rand
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Book Reviews of Atlas Shrugged
Book Review: A review for young people in their late teens
Summary: 5 Stars
Atlas Shrugged is a captivating novel. The greatest "shortcoming" is that the book is over 50 years old. The heroine is the vice-president of a major railroad company, and most of the plot revolves around her desperate efforts to keep the railroad going. In the 21st century, when the age of railroads is long past, this is certainly dated. Indeed, Atlas Shrugged, although contemporary when written, takes on the feel of a grand masterful allegory perhaps like Dante, Chaucer, or Swift. It is just as much "fun" as Alice in Wonderland or Gulliver's Travels--and just as serious as the Divine Comedy. Yet, if you listen to a hour of local and national news on TV every evening while reading the book--half of the stories will sound as though they were lifted from the book--so timelessness and universal is Rand's story.
This will probably be the most important book (to you) that you read in your lifetime.
What is it about? It is often described as "Capitalism versus Communism", or "altruism vs selfishness"--but both descriptions seriously miss the point. What this book is really about is much more fundamental. It is about the nature of good and evil, and beyond that, the very meaning of life.
"But I'm a good person, so what value is this book to me?"--you may ask. Answer: You have certainly noticed that adult "morality" is full of all kinds of exceptions and contradictions. The truth is, the world of "morality" we adults have constructed is a sham, a fraud. It is no more than "social convention"--which is to say, "what we all more-or-less agree to"--and actually, despite all the "moral" justification, has absolutely nothing to do with morality or right-and-wrong, and often little to do with common sense.
Still, the question remains, "Why isn't simply accepting the current 'social norms' good enough?" "Go along to get along." Answer: To put it bluntly, the greatest evil the world has ever seen has been done by folks "accepting community norms" who thought they were doing good, or at least who could justify their actions as being "socially acceptable".
The truth is, you will be quite surprised when you learn the true nature of evil. Until you have read Atlas Shrugged, evil will remain a hazy mist floating just off your line of vision, which you don't look straight at, because you don't WANT it to exist. After reading Atlas Shrugged, evil snaps into sharp focus--and like a bully confronted--ceases to be a fear, and just becomes something distasteful to avoid.
As Rand richly illustrates: Just as eating too much fat can clog up your arteries, thinking "too much fat" can damage with your mental health. Some mental illness is physiological. But most mental illness is caused by unresolved internal contradictions--caused, for example, by refusing to look at evil because you PREFER to believe that it does not exist. Reality is. You do NOT have the option of living in your own private version of reality. Nevertheless, many, perhaps most, people live lives built on thier own complex lies. That turns smart people crazy, and stupid people mean and crazy.
How do you avoid "unresolved internal contradictions"? By knowing the difference between right and wrong, and never, ever, allowing a rotten board to be used in the construction of your mental house. The problem is the old "slippery slope". Lie to yourself just once, no matter how trivial the lie, and the next one will be easier. Before long, you realize that you can justify ANYTHING--and with the blessings of the popular culture. And before you know it, you've lost your soul.
As Rand preaches, the meaning of life is integrity. Living without compromise. To live a life filled with joy and pride in yourself, made possible by being free of mental conflicts. To know, not merely hope, that your mistakes were honest mistakes. To live with the knowledge that you are the best you can be, while striving to be better. To be a joy and comfort to the people you love. To give generously of your time, wealth, and love simply for the joy of doing so. To be a person who has changed the world for the better when you have gone. That's what Atlas Shrugged is really all about. All ofthe other themes, even Communism vs Capitalism are peripheral supporting themes. It is precisely because the fundamental issues are so basic and primary, that the implications are simultaneously universal--applying to all aspects of life.
The greatest real flaw in Atlas Shrugged is that Rand herself does not quite understand how her philosophy applies to inter-personal relationships. All of the heros in the story are flawed characters, because Rand's characters are based on herself, and are flawed because Rand herself was flawed. That is, Rand had such a horrible youth that her ability to love and trust was damaged. In her own flawed vision, she has largely substituted hero worship for love. Rand's heros are real heros to be admired, but not role models to emulate.
You will also find many things with which you will want to disagree, but in your heart, you will know that Rand is right. How you resolve these conflicts will be the most important decision you will make in your entire life. If you choose the truth, simply because it is the truth, then you are on the way to a life of good mental health. If you reject the truth because you PREFER a different vision or interpretation of reality--then you have already begun to lie to yourself, and you will probably have an unhappy life and be a miserable person to live with.
Book Review: Not for the cynics or lazy of mind
Summary: 5 Stars
There are two distinct issues to judge when reviewing a work such as Atlas Shrugged. Since it is a presentation of serious philosophical ideas, particularly in politics and economics, it must be judged on the merit of the ideas espoused. Since it is a novel, it must also be judged on its artistic merit.
The economics and politics presented in Atlas, as well as the underlying ethics, are radical. The book exemplifies time and again that there is no "happy medium" between good and evil, between freedom and tyranny, between truth and fraud. "My truth may be different from your truth", Atlas leaves no room for that. Ayn Rand presents her understanding of the good, and gives no apology. That alone is enough to enrage people in the typical 20th and 21st century mindset, where certainty itself is widely accepted to be impossible and the manifestation of certainty synonymous with unacceptable arrogance.
Certainty, however, is an inseparable part of the philosophy presented in Atlas. That reality is what it is, whether you agree with her or not, is the basic principle Ayn Rand builds her whole system on. If two people disagree, one of them must be wrong - there are no contradictions in reality.
Atlas makes clear that individualism is the only proper form of moral and economic evaluation by showing, in detail, the effects of various public policies enacted for "the common good" on actual people. Whether you agree with Ayn Rand's wider generalizations or not, it is undeniable that the cause-consequence chains she uses to illustrate each point are sound.
The political and economic policy advocated implicitly in Atlas Shrugged, resulting from the ethical and methodological principles mentioned above, were not new even when the book was published. In terms of politics, the Founding Fathers of the United States defended pretty much the same principles in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
In economics, the same sort of policies had been identified as positive by Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations (Bantam Classics)) and others, the fundamental reasons for their validity explained in detail in Carl Menger's Principles of Economics (The Institute for Humane Studies series in economic theory)(also freely available online) and the fundamental errors in thinking that lead to opposing theories scathingly exposed by Frederic Bastiat in works such as Economic Fallacies.
There is less that is new in the policy advocated in Atlas as there are a compelling illustration of those truths in the story and characters, an integrated, structured argument for the validity of the principles underlying those policies, and an unabashed expression of absolute certainty in them. What is groundbreaking is the proof that those ideas are fundamentally right, not simply something that seems to work out.
The ideas, however, remain as true today as they were when the book was originally published. It takes an active mind to identify parallels between the 1950s setting and today - but the parallels are there, and in force.
Artistic judgment must keep that intellectual framework in mind. Atlas is not a novel about balance and compromise, it is about certainty and truth. You will find no "flawed heroes" or "virtuous villains" in this work. It is unsurprising that so many criticize Atlas' characters as "shallow". They do not conform to today's standard of "interesting", but that standard is exactly what Atlas was meant to challenge.
Atlas is also not a novel about moral redemption or forgiveness. It is a novel that illustrates the philosophical fact that reality is causal, not forgiving. Ayn Rand develops her characters, both good and evil, by leading them to the ultimate consequences of their fundamental convictions. Her characters learn and act on their knowledge - but they don't change their essence midcourse.
Most of the negative artistic criticism, therefore, results from not realizing that to make the points Atlas was intended to make its characters could not be "interesting" by current standards. Further understanding shows that those standards are the result of the same intellectual subjectivism and moral relativism that Atlas Shrugged frontally challenges.
Some artistic criticism, however, is valid. The work is very long and some philosophical points are relentlessly hammered on throughout the story. The much mentioned 60 page speech completely disrupts the flow of the narrative. Such are the compromises inherent in presenting philosophical theory by the means of a novel.
Personally, I consider Ayn Rand's other great novel to be her best, artistically. I recommend new readers start with The Fountainhead for that reason. And, if the novels spark an interest in the underlying philosophy, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (The Ayn Rand Library, Volume 6) is the place to look for a complete summation of Objectivism in a non-fiction format.
Book Review: Juvenile & Unrealistic
Summary: 2 Stars
I first read "Atlas Shrugged" after 9/11. I was 19, scared to death that I might be drafted to go fight and die in a war somewhere in the middle east, and very vulnerable. I saw this book at the store and found the jacket intriguing.
I must have read it a thousand times after that. My favorite bit was when we see John Galt refusing to take part in the welfare program adopted by his employers. I was enthralled by the philosophical passages and attempted to live my life according to the ideas Ayn Rand introduced me to. The next several years were spent studying her novels, essays, and a book written by Leonard Peikoff entitled, appropriately enough, "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand".
You could say that I came under the spell of Rand's thought- I had "Atlas" or "The Fountainhead" everywhere I went. I would constantly recommend them to friends and acquaintances, and viciously argue with anyone who dared to contradict the things I learned from them. I am 27 at the time of this writing; this garbage was my life from 19 to 23, when I started to notice cracks in Rand's thought.
Because she was not a trained philosopher her arguments are all too often speculative, her proofs sophomoric. Memo to 'objectivists': You can use a syllogism to "prove" anything. 'Objectivism' is little more than a patchwork of ideas gleaned from the likes of Aristotle, Milton Freidman, Adam Smith, Nietzsche, Thomas Aquinas and others. It is an artificially contstructed system, not based in reality or on human nature; largely, it is a rationalization of the tendency of the strong to dominate the weak, and Rand encourages them to do so while scolding the weak for not enjoying the bondage they find themselves in.
There is no originality to be found in all of Rand's 'philosophy'. She frequently resorts to 'ad hominem' attacks, especially where Immanuel Kant and other philosophers are concerned. Her grasp of Kant's system is limited, to say the least. Personally, I don't believe she ever actually read what he wrote.
Rand constantly psychologized her (perceived) intellectual opponents (accusing them of secretly hating life, humankind and "the good",etc.), which is a danger one learns to avoid if one wants to be taken seriously by serious people. Maybe Rand never worried about that, as insulated as she became from the rest of the world. I think that between the collective of Peikoff, Alan Greenspan, Nathaniel and Barbara Branden and others that gathered around her in the 1950's and the affair she had with Branden, she truly began to believe in herself as an expression of the new hero myth she worked so hard to build.
The most original aspect of Randian thought is the idea of "measurement-omission" in concept formation; the most current research in this area, however, completely contradicts Rand's theory. (The last time I mentioned this theory to a person with a degree in psychology, they laughed.) Research it. I dare you.
The downfall of Rand's philosophy is her novels. The downfall of her novels is her philosophy.
Both are built around a romanticized version of humankind, lacking in depth, warmth, weakness, flaws, vice and, above all, feeling. The heroes are all blameless, perfect, and perfectly boring; they all speak in a voice that is eerily similar to the one Rand uses to serve up her own ideas in her 'nonfiction' essays. The villains are also rather uninspired, always whining, pleading, begging, crying, screaming- but never speaking. They all have a secret, subconscious desire to destroy the world, and the 'heroes' that built it- and no realistic motivation is ever given.
The whole mess of bad characterization and plot holes resolves itself in a sustained prose-vomit as Rand treats us to John Galt and his 40 or 50 page long rant. When I look over it again this moment, it's truly painful to read. No one ever talked like this! The sentences are awkward and unrealistic as Galt explains his "philosophy" and why he and his fellow industrialists decided to doom millions of people to death by starvation, civil war, diease and famine.
Eventually, I could not inhabit the 'objectivist' mindset anymore. I read Kant, Hume, and many of the other philosophers she abhors, and found that most of what she wrote about them is a complete fabrication. Read the Critique of Pure Reason and show me where Kant unveils the darkness in his soul. Oh, wait. You can't, because it isn't there.
Rand offers us a vision of a world that is wholly unlike our own, filled with people wholly unlike us. They do not grow old and die, they do not have children, they do not get laid off or marry (unless it's a youthful mistake or a way torture the person they really love) or do anything at all, except work (and have affairs, which is kind of weird). When they do fall in love, it's almost a rivalry. As the title of the review says, this is all very juvenile and unrealistic.
In the end, I decided that what she advocates- the capitalist, unfettered and unopposed, is at best, misguided and at worst, fascist.
Book Review: REQUIRED reading for understanding the thinking process of the right
Summary: 4 Stars
Why would people like Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan constantly push push push to remove financial regulations that were put in the place after the Great Depression to prevent financial institutions from destroying our economy? Reading this book is ESSENTIAL to understanding the thought process of those on the right. Remember Alan Greenspan was an acolyte of Ayn Rand -- he recently admitted that his belief system (Ayn's Rand's) doesn't work in front of Congress.
Recent events make this book required reading. I think I understand the human condition enough that in a system where the higher the risk, the higher return, people will always maximize risk, no matter how calamitous the results when things go wrong. Why don't some people see that, or if they do see it, discount it? The Great Depression, Long Term Capital Management, S&L Crisis, Bernie Madoff, Enron, Cox Communications -- we constantly are reminded for the need for smart regulation of the private sector but some are always vehemently against this.
In this novel, industrial firms are headed by brave, brilliant entrepreneurs who are very greedy. But, their greed and selfishness is actually good for the country. Interesting that this novel and the saying "what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa." came out around the same time period. In Ayn Rand's world, it is always better to let private industry do whatever it wishes and the government to stay out, because the government always makes things worse, and private industry and pure unregulated capitalism will always produce better results. No exceptions.
Recent events have shown conclusively the failures of her philosophy. Although the mortgage crisis in the United States was certainly exacerbated by some government regulations and institutions, such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the CRA (community reinvestment act), which encourages loans to people who may not be able to pay (the original Carter version didn't do that but it was changed during the less risk averse atmosphere with President Clinton), these problems were relatively small in scope and easily manageable. The main cause of the crisis was the hyper-leveraged and UNREGULATED betting by financial institutions on mortgage securities, which causes a 100 billion dollar problem to balloon into a 10 trillion dollar catastrophe. Individuals in these institutions were simply maximizing their profits, because maximum risk means maximum reward -- isn't that what Ayn Rand would want? The government stayed out of the way of these hedge funds and institutions, President Bush's SEC greatly increased the limits on how much financial institutions could leverage, Phil Gramm created an entirely unregulated marketplace for traders, and pretty soon we have so many derivative contracts between financial institutions that their combined value dwarfs the actual real world economy. Like Long Term Capital Management in the 1990s, the results from failure grow so large that without a massive government bailout our entire system grinds to a halt. Privatize the profits, socialize the losses.
The second flaw in Ayn Rand's book and philosophy is that her utopian world reduces our country to a Banana Republic. At the top are the brilliant genius businessmen and entrepreneurs who create everything of value and are insanely wealthy. Everyone else is not very valuable and lives in serfdom. In her world you are either a creator and richly rewarded, a working peon, or heaven help you if you are disabled in any way and cannot work -- you'll be turned into soylent green presumably. In Ayn Rand's universe there are no blind people, no one is born with Down's syndrome, there are no drug addicts, paraplegic war veterans, etc. -- Note, I'm not implying these people cannot perform useful work in the real world, or even become brilliant creators, however their disabilities may restrict their ability to do certain jobs and therefore they would have much less value in Ayn Rand's world.
I subtracted one star for two things: One, the ridiculous character names she chooses (on purpose I'm sure) to lampoon the buffoonish government characters. Come on, Tinky? It's hard to read it seriously when you're giggling. Second, her TOTAL lack of vision when it comes to the environment: she romanticizes smokestacks in almost a sexual way. When you consider that this book was written in the 1950s, a time when air pollution around industrial sites was very bad, it's a weird point of view. Of course government mandated pollution control goes against her philosophy. I would say, for example, that China, except for the massive corruption, is much closer to Ayn Rand's ideal world than the United States. Industrialists at the top make the most money and are very influential, there is a very large slave class of workers at the bottom, and environmental regulations are either weak or totally ignored. The result: rapid economic growth but also turning a beautiful country into one vast toxic waste dump, with some of the most polluted cities in the world.
Book Review: More Interesting In Concept Than In Execution--And In Dire Need Of A Blue Pencil
Summary: 2 Stars
Born in Czarist Russia, Ayn Rand survived the Soviet revolution and, after studying philosophy and history at the University of Petrograd, emigrated to the United States in 1926. She originally sought work as a screenwriter; having only minor success in this area, she turned to other venues and in 1943 and 1957 produced the two works that established her reputation, THE FOUNTAINHEAD and ATLAS SHRUGGED. Although novels, both works exist primarily as platforms from which Rand describes the form of philosophy she developed: Objectivism.
No philosophy can be condensed to a few simple statements, but at its center objectivism is characterized by the belief that man is an end to himself. In the process of making this statement, Rand takes several controversial positions, most of which revolve around the notion that an extreme of individualism is always positive; that industrialization is always positive; that the state's involvement in business is always negative; that atheism is the only rational position; and that those who are primarily motivated by altruism are intrinsically flawed and ultimately dangerous. The overall result of these thoughts is a sort of uber-capitalism in which financial success is equated with self-worth.
Rand's critics point out that she is very inconsistent in the application of her ideas and that, while claiming to eschew any standard morality, actually has a tendency to conform to precisely that--and that while she claims to be proponet of capitalism it is just as easy to use her concepts to justify fascism. Rand's philosophy also has an extremely black-or-white quality; something is either entirely bad or entirely good, a stance which allows no room for shading of any kind. Although she certainly inspires a hysterical devotion among followers, Rand is not considered a philosopher by the vast majority of contemporary philosophers, and Objectivism is generally considered superficial at best.
At the time she wrote ATLAS SHRUGGED, Rand had reached a point at which she construed her concept of personal individuality to mean that she should not seek any sort of editorial comment regarding her work. When advisors suggested she cut the work for readability and clarity, she refused--and the result is an extremely long book that runs to 1069 fine-print pages in paperback alone, enough to intimidate even the most determined readers. It is also a very, very repetitive book in which the characters and situations restate the same fundamental issues over and over and over. And to add a final nail in the coffin, the conclusion is profoundly ironic, for it tends to undercut Rand's philosophic stance, a fact that she seems to have missed.
Reduced to its bare essentials, Rand presents us with two pivitol characters, Dagny Taggart and John Galt. Taggart is a rail road executive who finds herself beset by union demands inspired by socialist-leaning leaders in both government and society, demands which threaten to destroy both her ownership of the company and the company itself. She gradually drifts into a circle influenced by John Galt, a heroically-styled industrialist who seeks to end such situations. Galt forms a group of mighty industrialists--and brings the socialist demands to an end by having these leaders stage a strike. The irony involved, if one hasn't noticed, is that while Galt and his supporters are very anti-union (as was Rand herself), their solution to unionization is... unionization.
Over the years, ATLAS SHRUGGED has been described as among the most influential books published. I find that difficult to believe and for several reasons--but most particularly because I cannot imagine that enough people have read it for it to have any great hold on the thoughts of the population at large. Certainly people have bought it; it has never been out of print and sales are consistently solid; and I myself cannot count the times that I have seen it residing in various bookcases. At the same time, however, I seldom meet any one who has actually read it from start to finish. When I do, they tend to describe the novel as "interesting" rather than inspiring or empowering.
The underlying problem with ATLAS SHRUGGED is that it is a philosophical dissertation presented as a novel instead of being a novel that presents philosophical positions. The characters, settings, and situations are important only as vehicles to Rand's thoughts--and as such are as dry as dust. Even without taking into account its length and repetitive nature, ATLAS SHRUGGED is a horrifically uphill read and about as enjoyable as attempting to cross Death Valley at high noon without a drop of water.
My own sentiment: if you are interested in Rand's philosophy, read THE FOUNTAINHEAD, which encompasses the same ideas but actually works as a novel (and a gutsy and exciting one too) or simply go with an abstract of the main concepts of objectivism--which will run considerably less than a hundred pages.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer