Atlas Collapsed - a refutation

This is a very long, social, political and philosophical refutation. You have been warned.

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I found it underneath a pile of books and bags of swimming gear about two months ago. Nice and sunny as it is, there aren’t really enough places to keep all the things Monsterman and I own and regularly use in this little two-bedroom flat. The days when I had my bookshelves organised by genre and the books all alphabetised by author are a dim memory.

I don’t remember buying it or being given or even loaned it, and I certainly can’t imagine what could possibly have inspired me to have it in my possession. And yet there it was, in my hands, the cornerstone of conservative thought: Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. I must have had it for years and I’d never once cracked open it’s twenty-four year old and well-worn covers.

Up until six months ago, I wasn’t even aware the book existed. I don’t mean the book I was holding in my hands, I mean the actual piece of work. I first became aware of it through my unsavoury habit of haunting political discussion boards, where the author and said book were cited as either divinely inspired proponents of truth or as errant purveyors of complete tripe and inhuman drivel with an infrequent frequency. Not long after I came across the first mentions of book and author, it surfaced again in a group discussing literature.

Everything I read about it caused my brain to cringe. And yet at the same time, the insatiable Curiosity Monster that I suspect lurks somewhere between my shoulder blades (a devious lair it has made from whence it can make unexpected assaults on my consciousness, with my only warning being a creeping feeling in the middle of my back) made itself known. Whether said monster wanted to feed on my sense of incredulity, or if it used the tried and true “Know Thy Enemy” gambit, I have no idea, but I was bitten hard enough by it to decide that should I ever come across said book, I’d give it a flick through.

And here it was. In my hands. Next was at work, Monsterman off somewhere with his Pop doing Pop and Monsterman things, all those horrid mundane and necessary domestic things like cleaning and laundry had been done. I had no excuse not to read it.

The Curiosity Monster and the Brain Cringe began a war of attrition, with prevarication and revulsion being the primary weapons of the Brain Cringe. The Curiosity Monster wasn’t so subtle – and had obviously learned the value of patience when it comes to attaining one’s goals.

I opened the book and started to read.

By the time Next came home an hour later, I had hardly progressed at all.

“What have you been doing this morning?”

“Cleaning, laundry, being lazy, drinking coffee, reading.”

“What are you reading? The Generals?”

“Nope. Atlas Shrugged. It’s…it’s really bad. It’s shite. The writing is awful!”

I put the book down having only read thirty-three pages, and wasn’t to pick it up again for two months. There were better things to do and talk about.

There it, it turns out, one thing that can defeat the Curiosity Monster, and that is really bad writing. Maybe two things – ongoing and unremitting stupidity would be another.

And when I say really bad, I mean extremely bad. It takes a special level of bad writing for me not to finish reading a book – sheer bloody mindedness is usually enough to get me through your average poorly written book. This book though was destined to join The Naked Lunch as the only books I have started reading and never finished.

Today, as I was engaged in that rarest of past-times - a quiet and respectful generalised political discussion – the book was suggested to me as a means of understanding what best expressed the underlying principles of conservative and libertarian ideology (particularly of the American variety – though it strikes me that there are echoes of economic rationalism in there as well). Specifically, it was recommended I skip ahead in the book to the chapter, John Galt Speaks.

So I did.

Though that section contained arguably the best writing in the book, it was still profoundly hard to read - though not for the writing style. What I struggled with was subduing my outrage and astonishment sufficiently to keep reading. So I would read a few paragraphs, toss the book aside, fume and digest what I’d read, fume some more and then keep I would pick it up again and continue reading.

So what was it that offended and astonished me so? Simply this: that that long soliloquy was an outrageous offense to my intellect, and my astonishment was that this piece of writing should have sufficient power to be representative of the ideologies – personal, social and political - of such a large number of people.

I can understand part of its appeal. The impassioned and unremittingly emphatic delivery of the speech provides excellent cover for the short-comings of its content and could very easily sway those wanting to be convinced of their individual primacy of place and importance. And it very cleverly sets this up by making repeated statements about the ultimate morality of reason and rationality from the outset – the implication being that every assertion thereafter is the product of that reason and rationality; something that is markedly lacking in the vast bulk of the speech itself.

To explain why it fails of its own weight, and also why it is a poor work to base a personal or political ideology on, it is somewhat necessary to state the essential virtues and truths of Man as given by the author through her fictional character, John Galt.

To summarise, the prime truth and virtue is that of existence, survival and the success of the animal Homo sapiens as a result of its inherent nature. That leads to the second: reality (A is A), reason, rationality and intellect. The third is that of happiness and joy. The last is ownership of and the freedom to apply and benefit from the first three. Anything that inhibits those is immoral.

On the surface, it seems not all that unreasonable. But it is deeply flawed and fails to meet its own demands of reality, reason, rationality and intellect, and dismantles and negates itself as the details of this philosophy is unveiled in ever more urgent and feverish exhortations. Why? Because it fails to address how individuals are inextricably bound up in systems of inter-dependence. Of course, even by writing that phrase, I am guilty of immorality by the terms given in the book, but it remains a reality that, where it is not simply ignored or avoided, is denigrated with astonishing vehemence.

An ideology or philosophy that neglects that fails to meet its criteria of rationality and reason.

In spite of its surface message of an improbably welded together breed of individualised egalitarianism, and lauding those captains of industry and those individuals of innovation as being people of long vision, the position taken is phenomenally myopic and, to commit another act of Randian immorality, impractical. It ignores the reality of interdependent systems. It ignores history, sociology, anthropology, medicine, biology, ecology, meteorology, geography, evolution, computer technology, chemistry, and physics to name just a few disciplines.

It is rare in the extreme that individual humans can or do exist as pure individuals in a social vacuum free from external influence or imparted skills or knowledge. Those few that do do not fit any social contruct. And yet, this is the only way in which the philosophy of John Galt (and therefore Ayn Rand) can hold any level of legitimacy. In the speech, those individuals of excellence were the sole driving force of their (American) society. Indeed, without them American society crumbled when they removed themselves in protest at restrictions placed on them. What is ignored is that just as there are great numbers of people dependent on them, those individuals have also have a dependence on others to help them achieve their excellence.

They are dependent on parents and family to provide their very existence and genetic makeup as well as for food and shelter for them as they grow, to imbue them with the basic rudiments of language and culturally relevant knowledge. They are dependent on their teachers and/or those sources of knowledge that have gone before them – from whose knowledge base they may build on or adapt or improve. They are dependent on those who provide their food for them – the farmers and primary producers. They are dependent on those who help them maintain their health – doctors, nurses, pharmacists, nutritionists. They are dependent on the knowledge, skills and labour of people who indirectly provide for the raw materials of their great innovations – such as geologists, surveyors, miners, smelters, metallurgists and chemists. They are dependent on those who make their visions a reality – builders, machinists, technicians, labourers. They are dependent on investors and patrons and consumers.

But the systems of interdependence extend much further than that. The achievements of those individuals of excellence are dependent on the culture and society they are born into – and all the steps and faltering stages of history that lead to that point in time.Their excellence is also determined by their physical environment. The geography and climate that might afford them greater natural resources or greater protection from the elements and groups competing for those same resources. Their very existence is dependent upon the viability of the natural environment to support and maintain the quantities of food and material resources – and that can extend down to the smallest phytoplankton in the Antarctic Ocean.

To acknowledge that interdependence is not, as Rand would have it, a form of moral or intellectual cowardice; it is an acknowledgement of reality. And, contrary to the sermonising of John Galt, denying it is the surest way to curtail the very goals Galt and Rand claim to espouse.

The assertion of the complete independence of the individual is an outright fiction. To make that assertion and put it forth as the highest form of rational, reasoned ideology is to deny reality and to claim it actually reflects reality is an offense to my intellect.

The astonishment I felt upon reading it was based much more around those who espouse this as some form of moral, social or political touchstone. Most of these people are, of course, Americans. I guess this is to be expected because they are quite obviously the intended audience – there are frequent references and allusions to America being the greatest society on Earth (and by extension, in history).

We therefore have another reason for the success of this failed philosophy – in addition to the appeal to reason, it also appeals to nationalism. At the same time, it also offers an agent of blame for any and every shortcomings or decline they might see in their own lives or their country. A person who endorses this particular world-view is assured that they are among the most rational and greatest people on the planet, and further, that they as rational, patriotic individuals are free of any responsibility in any falls from grace, personal or national.

At best, they have been conned; at worst, they too have abrogated their claim to reason, rationality or connection to reality.

In and of itself that is no great thing - people hold much wilder and even more unreasonable beliefs. When it is put forth as the basis for a political ideology or movement however, it is not only self-contradictory and ignorant of both the realities of the world and its systems and its own philosophy (particularly with regards to the other core essentials of the movements that espouse it), it has the potential to be destructive to individuals, industries, economies and societies.

Remember one of the central tenets of this Randian ideology: A is A? One of those A’s is the reality of the world and society as it is now. Not as it was a thousand years ago, or as it might be in some Utopian future a thousand years hence. As it is now. A very important and central part of nearly all present human societies is that they have grown beyond the level of simple hunter gatherer, and even beyond that of agrarian societies and small city states.

The advent of agriculture enabled humans to being to manipulate their environment by weight of their intellect. Though this is alluded to by Rand, its import is not truly addressed. The rise of agrarian societies enabled greater populations to gather in one place and it necessitated another human construct – that of specialisation. This lead directly to trade and the earliest forms of commerce. Trade and commerce are by their very nature an expression of mutual dependence – an exchange of what one has or is capable of producing for what one hasn’t.

So far, this does not seem greatly at odds with the philosophies of John Galt (of course, at this level of social complexity, neither is it far from the philosophies of Karl Marx). But human society is far removed from such a simple state in the present day (or even of the time when Rand wrote her book). The level of specialisation and the weight of human population have become exponentially greater. Even trade and commerce have become their own semi-detached world of specialisation and near alternate reality – where trade itself is assigned a tradeable value. The knowledge and understanding of the world (including how to manipulate it) is almost incomprehensibly beyond the level of understanding of those early agrarian societies. The level of knowledge and education of the average child in the industrialised nations is greater than that of the majority of adults only a century ago. Health and life expectancy has nearly doubled. Travel between cities and nations is a matter of hours rather than months or years and global communication is near instantaneous.

At each step in that social evolution, there have been the people of vision that Rand deifies – and it must be said, with good reason - but they did not do so in a vacuum. In the present day of near overwhelming specialisation in skills and knowledge, that is even more true. The individual innovators, intellectuals and entrepreneurs are many degrees more dependent on those around and beneath them for their success survival and existence than ever before.

Here we come to another failure of this particular ideology. It presupposes that those with the will and intellect to become such outstanding exemplars of human achievement will, out of self-interest and far reaching vision, be aware of such inter-dependence and of their own volition act in such a way as not to upset that balance. Except that the philosophy itself denies inter-dependence and denies any responsibility to any interest beyond the self and gratification of immediate desires.

Just as it is not an ideology that is aware of systems, it is not an ideology of the long view.

Socially and economically it is instead an ideology of what is often incorrectly termed social Darwinism. This is what is meant when someone claims that markets are self-correcting. Those who abuse the system they are within, work themselves out of the system. Consumers will no longer consume. A parallel meme from the natural world is that of predator-prey balance. Too many predators soon kill off their prey, leaving only those prey animals strong enough to escape predation leading to a reduction in predators until a balance is again attained. To many prey animals and they over consume their resources, leading to a glut of animals for predation or deaths from starvation, once again bringing the system into balance.

The failure to address reality here is two-fold: it assumes that (to continue the parallel) the nature of the predator, prey and their environment remain constant; and that somehow the proponent of this particular ideology will be exempt from the effects of any imbalance or changes. When the necessity to acknowledge interdependence is introduced to the equation, with no other environmental constraints upon them both populations (in this case, the exemplary individuals and, well, everyone else) are destined to extinction.

Those who argue for the self-correcting market overlook the tendency towards rapacious monopolies that can be readily justified in the world according to Rand. Until recently, commerce had the power to influence government. Now, commerce is its own government and one that knows no borders and owes no nation any special allegiance (indeed, it is questionable as to whether commerce has ever known any allegiance other than to itself). When monopolies come into existence unchecked, they have no need for long-term planning or awareness of inter-dependence as they no longer have competition for resources (both natural and their consumers). Monopolies are the cane toad of the economic world. That someone in small to medium sized business can proclaim Rand’s odious work for their own philosophy and not see the potential for their own destruction in it astounds me. There are no words for how astonished I am that paid employees might also advocate it.

Another argument that might be mounted as a derivation of Randian philosophy (and I have seen it put forth with some regularity) is that trade, as I have acknowledged, is a human constant. Governments, cultures, societies and civilizations however are not. A false premise often arising from this is that uninhibited (or at least minimally restricted) trade and markets is therefore a good thing and government is not. There are a few reasons this should be viewed with a degree of contempt for the lazy thinking it represents. It does not allow for external factors to be part of a societal collapse. Nor does it allow for internal factors. It does not acknowledge advances in thought, knowledge or skills, or systemic imbalances that can lead to a cultural explosion or implosion. And finally, it does not allow for the possibility that an unchecked market has the potential to, in itself, lead to the collapse of an empire or civilization.

America is not immune to this. And there are a many nations also susceptible – some for much the same reasons, some by dint of being inextricably tied to the United States.

I was told that Atlas Shrugged as a novel was an illustrative example of how a great nation can slide into decline. It certainly proffers a great many scapegoats for such a decline – that is, any who would be so immoral as to admit to inter-dependence and any restriction on personal independence. Here is the last part of the book that gives it such a strong support base. It gives people enemies. It gives them someone to blame.

Let me say this; America was a great and powerful nation - and it still is the most powerful nation on Earth. Its creation gave rise to widespread social change and it has helped greatly to shape the world as we know it today. It has been the birthplace of a large number of innovations – technological and social. And it is in decline.

For some, Ayn Rand gives them a prophetic vision of the reasons for that decline. She gives them reason to hate, mistrust, doubt, fear, malign, persecute and evade responsibility for their own deeds and actions. Those reasons, like so much more in that ideology, are incomplete and largely inaccurate. Blame can be laid at the feet of politicians. It can also be laid at the feet of the captains of industry, at the stock markets and at the feet of the consumers. It came be laid at the feet of Democrats and Republicans, at the Moral Right and the politically correct.

But mostly, as with almost all empires, the fall began with an institutionalised belief in unassailable right, might and greatness. And just like those Empires that went before it, the fall is inconceivable to those within it. It began with the fall of Fat Man and Little Boy and it accelerated beyond imagining with the fall of the Berlin Wall. America is being demolished by its own mythologies – the very mythologies that are further extolled in John Galt’s speech.

Why do I say mythologies and why are they bringing America down from its heady heights? Because the myths and misrepresentations of current reality and past history enable America and Americans to coast by on past glories and deeds and act in such a way as to ignore the realities that shaped and sculpt events past and present.

How does this manifest? Primarily among those who espouse conservative values, including the works of Ayn Rand, some examples:

The Pilgrims fleeing Britain to escape religious persecution – completely missing the reasons for their persecution was in large part to considering themselves exempt to the laws of their own country, or that they (cultish mob that they were) were kicked out of the Netherlands as well. This gets used as a means of ignoring any changes in Europe since the 1700’s and is sufficient, along with the next example, to name anything from Europe as being evil or contrary to American ideals.

The success of the American Revolution, of a relatively small group of colonials against the mightiest empire of the day, is seen as justification for behaviours today. And while it was a world changing event and a remarkable feat by the colonials, the madness of King George, the length of supply lines, the fighting of multiple wars at the same time and the assistance of the French is all too often glossed over or even unknown. Equally, many would have it that “no taxation without representation” was the totality of the rationale driving the settlers, and ignore the desire to push west of the Appalachians in breach of a treaty. History is what it is though, and had they not done either, the world would be a very different place. However, to a great number, America isn’t the big kid on the block, the most militarily powerful, the largest economy, the biggest mass media, the third most populated country in the world - it is still the brave little underdog fighting against the oppressors.

The Constitution and Bill Of Rights and the creation of “the first true republican representative democracy.” Being the first is often talked of as being the best and even the only. It ignores the thinkers that came before and influenced the thinking of those who drafted those fine documents, and it ignores those, individuals and nations alike, who were in turn inspired by them. It is often linked with the first two to discuss all non-Americans as erstwhile “slaves” of their nations rulers – especially if there happens to be a monarch. Never mind that most of those nations actually have constitutional democracies, they weren’t first, and they aren’t the same, so they don’t count. Once more, a sense of adversarial superiority is fostered. And let’s not forget those who favour a cast in stone interpretation over that of a living document – in spite of the evidence of the latter in the amendments.

We won all the wars since, like, forever. It is undeniable that the U.S becoming involved in the big two was hugely influential and important. What it ignores is the reluctance to become involved in the first place while other nations fought and died and held the Axis at bay, and it ignores that the American mainland remained for the duration of the big two, completely untouched – protected as it was by two big oceans – and was able to continue its manufacturing and lifestyle unimpeded. This one is used to enforce a sense of obligation on all others, and to assert the age old right of the conquerors. It is also a manifestation of might equals right.

We are the best at everything – even when reality can demonstrate that that is not always the case, and sometimes, the complete opposite can be true.

The outstanding success of the end of the Second World War and the end of the Cold War bolstered this sense of invulnerability and with it, the assumption that might did in fact equal right and the U.S could do no wrong. That the American way, in particular, that of unbridled capitalism and convoluted interpretations of people like Rand, was the way – the proof of the pudding was in the fall of Communism. And in part, like everything else before, it was in part true, and in part incomplete.

Even here, there are some aspects of Rand’s philosophy that are antithetical to the things that lay at the very core of modern American (particularly conservative) mythology - such key things as the Bill of Rights. When Rand states that all people start from a zero state of having no rights beyond existence, someone who then takes up her banner is also stating that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are meaningless (with the exception of one phrase, “…the pursuit of happiness”). It denies “One nation under God,” and “In God We Trust,” and any claim that America should aim to be in any way considered a Christian nation, for such things are crimes against reason in the Gospel of Galt. It denies “…all men are created equal,” because it places a higher value to a certain group of people. And while it allows that the only time force against another individual is in self-defence, it does not of itself support the Second Amendment – for if you start with zero rights and the only right thereafter is existence, you have no right to own a gun. Though there is an unequivocal right to ownership of one’s own thoughts and labours, there is no protection of free speech - again, your only right is existence. There is no provision or requirement for military, defence, police forces or emergency services and especially not for armed militia as any of these could be viewed as infringement upon individuals.

It is a philosophy of anarchy, and though it is often said in jest, it might truly see its ultimate expression in present day Somalia and Victorian era mills and mines. It is a blue-print for sweatshop owners, irresponsible financial speculators, monopoly holders, and for unthinking gangsters, brutes, bigots, tyrants and dictators. It is an ideology for those lazy of thought and, regardless claims to the contrary, for those who wish to avoid responsibility, consequence, causality and reality.

It has been this mindset and glorification of incomplete and contradictory and self-negating ideologies, insufficient and inaccurate history and current affairs that has allowed America (and nations like it – for of course America is not alone in this attitude) to coast on their past success, ignoring the accident of their birth and their state of interdependence, to drown themselves in a tidal wave of consumption, complacency and inanity – to the point where innovation and original thought are almost completely lost and the willingness or desire to change or adapt to reality is almost viewed as treason.

The one area I found myself in agreement with Rand and Galt was in the favouring of reason, rationality and reality over superstition, and the tendency of mysticism to stifle human potential. And yet at the same time it does that, it sets up an ideology that denies reality just as readily as any purveyor of mysticism.

The philosophy espoused by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged was not just an offense to my literary sensibilities; it offended my intellect, my intelligence, my reason and my rationality. As a book of social and political insight, it falls far short of writers and thinkers much greater and more intellectually honest and rigorous in their work and thinking. Writers such as Orwell, Huxley, Marx, Freud, Debord, Wilde, Adams, Rousseau. Or the many great scientists, thinkers and visionaries throughout history and in the current day - on the back of whose revealing of the nature of our reality so many of Rand’s leaders and exemplary men stood to achieve their ends. The list is near endless, and the fact that people would eschew such minds as well as their own in favour of the contradictory and incomplete premises put forth by Rand is beyond me.