As with Anthem, I experienced Atlas Shrugged as an unabridged audiobook. And, yes, I realize that this is not so much a review of the book as a homily based on it—it’s an easy transition to make with a book so heavily entrenched in the realm of ideas.
I mentioned previously that I have avoided the works on Ayn Rand precisely because I have heard how “life-changing” and “thought-provoking”—generally earth-shattering—they are. In that previous post, I explained how the context in which I heard these accolades shaped my determination not to read them, the assumptions I made about the author and her work based on from whom I had heard these things and the contexts in which I had heard them.
Upon beginning Atlas Shrugged—having heard, yet again, and from what I considered a more reliable source, actually, that Rand’s works, particularly this one, are all of those things—I was pleasantly surprised. Not that I found it earth-shattering in its content, though it certainly has been thought-provoking to me. No, I was surprised in that its ideas precisely did not cause me to question my values and my outlook on the world. Instead, what I found in this massive volume was a believable story that articulated many of my values in a way that I could, likely, never have hoped to.
Up front, as those of you who read here regularly will know, I do not share Rand’s (and her characters’) atheism. I have a religious faith that it profoundly meaningful to me, and I am a fairly spiritual person. Yet I found myself agreeing with Rand’s pronouncements, primarily through the speeches of John Galt, about the inadequacy, one dares say the futility, of religious mysticism as a guiding principle in life. And I found myself agreeing, more vigorously, when those same pronouncements were aimed at the humanistic mysticism that replaces the notion of some god (or God) as the highest good with “society,” “the people,” or some other notion of collective humanity as that highest good.
I found myself cheering for the characters in Atlas Shrugged who realized that the highest good is found in achievement, in personal success, and in happiness. What Rand gives us, here, is the story of best possible world, a world in which libertarian social principles and laissez-faire capitalism govern human interaction. Where ability and effort are rewarded, and (as I said before) Robin Hood would have been seen as nothing more than a common thief.
Atlas Shrugged is a long and complex tale, with a surprisingly simple main arc. The democratic republic coupled with (more or less) laissez-faire capitalism that we know in the United States has been replaced by a socialist democracy which tends, more and more as the story progresses, to socialist hegemony maintaining only the outward appearance of democracy. The main characters are industrialists, with a focus on the industries prominent in the mid-20th century (I think Rand would have been shocked to see what the 1980s, 1990s, and the 21st century have brought about in terms of industry): railroads, steel, oil; moreover, these characters are industrialists of ability—they do not simply manage their concerns, but improve them through their efforts. The simple arc of the story illustrates how, when sociology becomes an unofficial state religion, the fact that individual achievement tends to fuel collective advancement becomes lost in the need to “distribute” all things equitably, and how the people of innovative ability and profound work ethic will, in that time, go on strike—against society at large—rather than see their ability and effort nationalized, hijacked, and outright stolen by the state in order to give everyone and equal opportunity, in order to give those of lesser ability and lesser motivation “a chance.”
Many of the main characters in the story fit this mold. They are brilliant people with thriving businesses and startling innovations: Ellis Wyatt, Henry Rearden, Francisco d’Anconia, Dan Conway, Owen Kellogg, Richard Halley, Dr. Hugh Akston, Midas Mulligan, Quentin Daniels, Ragnar Danneskjöld, and, of course, the mysterious John Galt. Also fitting this class, but fighting it to the bitter end, is the novel’s protagonist, Miss Dagny Taggart.
The reader gets Dagny’s perspective throughout the novel, and she remains divided throughout. She thinks of Galt, without knowing who he is, as “the Destroyer,” as he convinces other men of ability to go on strike, based on her belief that if ever more destructive economic and social policies of the government are ever to be fixed, it is these people who can and must fix them. This reform remains Dagny’s purpose throughout the book.
Not until the very end does she realize that this reform cannot be effectuated until unreasoning, unreasonable mysticism—present in the form of blind adherence to someone’s decree of the common good—has been swept away: reason can never defeat unreason until unreason either gives up or destroys itself in its ever more unreasonable attempts to preserve itself. It is impossible, that is, to reform a corrupt system from within, and only two reasonable options remain: withdraw, entirely, one’s contribution to that system, or work actively to destroy it.
Most of the characters of ability choose the former option, so John Galt works as a railroad track walker, Dr. Hugh Akston works as a fry cook, Francisco d’Anconia becomes a billionaire playboy who (to all appearances) fritters away his family fortune and business. Ragnar Danneskjöld, however, chooses the latter; this heir-apparent to Dr. Akston’s role as the world’s preeminent philosopher, becomes the man of violence, a pirate, taking arms against the system and attempting to hasten its demise.
Atlas Shrugged is a deeply philosophical work, and it is striking to me because, to me, it shows us the end of the road we are on. In our society, we tend, too much, to elide the fact that achievement is more contingent upon effort than on opportunity (and where opportunity is involved in achievement, it is, as often as not, serendipitous and cannot be manufactured and given away), along with the fact that innovation is the product of both effort and ability. If these, effort and ability, are not rewarded, in anyone who both possesses ability and puts forth effort, innovation will cease and the world will decline.
But Atlas Shrugged is about more than effort and ability. It’s about responsibility, as well.
We are each, according to this book, responsible for our own happiness. We are not responsible for the well-being and happiness of others, except inasmuch as we choose and accept that responsibility for ourselves and inasmuch as fulfilling that responsibility brings us happiness. We should not accept responsibility for others from outside ourselves, either as obligation to be fulfilled or as guilt when it goes unfulfilled. We are still human, of course, and we will still love and be loved, care and be cared for, help and be helped. So long as those things are part of and in line with our system of values, they are part of great virtue, but we should accept love, care, and help neither as obligation nor as guilt, but because in loving, in caring, and in helping, we are, ourselves, fulfilled.
It is selfish, in a way, I suppose. But there is no joy in self-denial. And there is no self-denial in serving one’s innermost values. There is no sacrifice involved if we are happy to do whatever it is we do. Much of what we think of as “sacrifice” is, in fact, monstrous, in these terms. When we talk about what we sacrifice for our children, their well-being, and their future, we are indicating that we do not value those children, that well-being, and that future; if we did value them, it would not be a sacrifice, it would be value received in fair exchange for effort—it would be our happiness.
And that’s the message here. We are each responsible to and for ourselves. We must recognize, and should be willing to reward, effort and ability coupled with effort. We must never sacrifice, but always assure that we are receiving value in response to our exercises of ability and our expenditures of effort.
As I’ve said, these are things that I have known, on some level, for a while. And they are things that I have come to know consciously in the past few years. But they are things, as you may have sensed while reading here, that I cannot articulate nearly as well as Rand has articulated them in Atlas Shrugged. For me, I think, it’s best summed up by saying that it is not that we should not be generous with our time, our energy, our efforts, and our abilities, but that we should not be foolishly generous; foolish generosity is, of course, one sort of self-denial; but failure to give generously, give to the full, when we are receiving what we consider fair value in return, is another sort, a more dangerous sort, because it does not deny the self to the benefit of the other, but it denies the self to no benefit at all. And we must always remember that we each control our own notion of fair exchange, of fair value, and your conception of that is not mine to judge, nor is mine yours.
Only I know what is worth my time, energy, effort, and ability—and in that sense, yes, call me selfish. But know that my only question to others, in this regard, will be “is it worth it?”
And, as the title of of Rand’s book suggests, when Atlas no longer finds bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders “worth it,” my advice, along with John Galt’s, will simply be, “Shrug.”
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