I bought this book during my college days. Our lady professor in World Literature class was obviously an Ayn Rand fan. We were required to choose and read one of her books. So, to impress her, I bought 4 of her novels: The Fountainhead (3 stars), We the Living (3 stars) and Anthem (2 stars) and Atlas Shrugged (2 stars). I finished reading the first three during that trimester but I did not even get past page 10 of this book. That was more than two decades ago. My copy of this book languished in my bookshelves since then and I only picked this up in April this year when a friend suggested that we read this together as buddies. To finally put a cap on my Ayn Rand readings, I agreed. However, he lost interest so I stopped reading this again only to decide a month after that I wanted to finally complete my readings of Ayn Rand fiction works, so I better continue and finish this book. So I did.

Unlike when I read The Fountainhead in my twenties, I now found Ayn Rand's Objectivism or the philosophy of ego, too elementary. The way she presented the opposing forces in the society, their effects on economy, is too simplistic as if there is a clear demarcation between good and evil. The way she developed her characters was akin to reading populist novels like those of John Grisham and James Patterson. The characters seem to be artificial and you would feel nothing for them: not even sympathy, not even anger. There's nothing wrong with that if it this is a New York Times Bestseller, but I always thought that, even during my college years, Ayn Rand is an important classic literature writer and she is literary rather than commercial. Maybe because she was my World Lit professor's favorite.

Individualism vs objectivism? I think we are not supposed to choose one over the other. This is a propaganda material, at least in Ayn Rand's mind, as she expressed her objections against Communism during the Cold War. It's been two decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, so the question is whether this philosophy of her still applies. In fairness to her, yes it still does. However, I think we are not as helpless as during the Cold War when everything seemed to be anchored between what US and USSR were doing. You know the feeling that all of us could be blown up when the nukes go off the air and it would be goodbye world for everyone. I think that, because of the age of computers, our voice can be heard and be able to make some difference. In other words, there are some good things about capitalism, there are some good things about socialist government. All we have to do is to have the right mix and that the government should issue relevant and applicable fiscal policies to control or pump up the economy. I know that this is easier said than done but you don't need Ayn Rand to realize this. All you have to do is to read some basic books on Economics. You don't need to spend a couple of months of your dear life to finish this 1,074-page overpraised book.

Still I am happy I finally finished this book. I can now give it away to my enemy and let him suffer in agony staring at the book and figuring out when he'll have the time to start and finish all those gruesome pages.

A Modest Proposal

I'd give this book 10 stars, but it only gets five, because really, Ayn didn't have the courage of her convictions. She wussed out at the end and gave in to EVIL Liberal Blackmail. The problem with Atlas Shrugged is that it doesn't go far enough. And so, to correct that, here's an addendum, a modest proposal to supplement Ayn's book.

We're taxing the wrong people. Why are we taxing rich people more than poor people? Rich people don't need government services. If they want a highway, they'll build it themselves. If they need electricity, they'll build a god damn dam. It's poor people that need the government to build these things for them. So, the tax structure should work this way:
-- Everyone in the bottom half of income earners pays 50% tax.
-- Those in the top sixth decile pay 40%.
-- Those in the top seventh decile pay 30%.
-- Those in the top eighth decile pay 20%.
-- Those in the top ninth decile pay 10%.
-- And those in the top tenth decile pay nothing.

This will encourage those lazy bums at the bottom to slave for rich people. After all, it's by slaving away and working hard for them that they can eventually become rich too. It's coddling them otherwise.

Why this tax structure? It's logical isn't it? It's RICH PEOPLE that create jobs. Ergo, the more money they have, the more jobs they will create. They are the Job Creators! We DEPEND on them for the jobs. Instead of taxing them we should be eternally thankful to them for even Existing.

But even this, EVEN THIS, fails to FULLY recognise how brilliant and innovative and hard working Rich People are. Without them, we'd all be living in mud huts and eating each other to stay alive. Clearly, it's NOT enough to NOT tax them. No, if they are in the top 5% of income earners, we should PAY THEM to stay in our country. Why, just their very presence in a country will mean that its inhabitants will get rich. It's that Well-Documented, Scientifically Proven Trickle-Down Effect.

How much should we pay? Obviously, the answer is to let the Market decide: governments should bid against each other in an open auction. Highest bidder wins. And clearly this has to be done as often as the Rich People want to change their country of residence. After all, you can't expect them to just stay in one country all their life. That would be a Fetter on Market Forces! (--booooooo!--)

Countries should COMPETE to attract rich people to their shores. Cypress giving them grief? Why the UK will PAY them GBP1 million to come over. Hell, don't go to the UK! We'll pay GBP1 trillion AND sweeten it with a line of grateful poor people lying down at the landing strip for them to walk over so that they don't soil their gold Gucci shoes on our unworthy soil.

And for those at the top 1%? Well, nothing's too good for them. No point offering them money since they make more than what any country can offer anyway. No, for them, we'll offer money AND a line of poor people AND control of the government. See a law they don't like? Governments will change it for them. See laws that need to be put in place? Governments had damn well vote them in if they know what's good for them.

Oh, and that nonsense about power corrupting doesn't apply to Rich Job Creators. THEY are subject to the Discipline of the Market. That Invisible Hand will come down and smack them upside down if they try anything funny. We don't need governments. Governments are for those rotten horrible poor people. The Invisible Hand keeps Rich Job Creators honest, hardworking, and competitive. They wouldn't dream of selling fraudulent financial instruments, or food that poisons you, or buildings that collapse, or lie about the value of their companies. Nobody would buy their products if they did that you see. It's only when Big Brother Governments intervene that such things happen. It's only when Big Brother Governments that think they know better and force them to obey laws (--booooooo!--) that faulty, dangerous bridges or aircraft get built, or carcinogens get dumped into rivers.

All hail Rich People! Without Them, life would be just shit. Civilisation Would Not Exist! Amen!

Update (20 Jan 2014)

You think this review is just kidding around? Fact is, we already live in an Atlas Shrugged world: In a world of 7 billion and more, 85 people (0.000001% of the world's population) own more than 50% of the rest. Think about it, if YOU became that rich and that powerful, once you got there, why WOULDN'T you do everything you could to make sure the rest would stay there and not pose a threat to your wealth? Why WOULD you let the system that allowed you to get to the top allow someone else to dethrone you? Ayn Rand would be SO proud.

One day I will put up the full fire-spitting essay that the book deserves (pay no attention to almost-teenage ratings), for now a question:

Rand’s famous "hymn to money" from Atlas Shrugged says:

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns or dollars. Take your choice-there is no other."

So Rand, your underlying premise is that the only choice is between direct and indirect relations of domination and exploitation? Be content with the choice of indirect exploitation?

Atlas Shrugged is another of those novels which are classic because they create both an entertaining story, contain philosophical ideas and tie into historical events. Yet for me Atlas Shrugged was a contradictory enigma. It was both a long novel and yet its most basic message could be boiled down to a line such as ”I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine”; it was both exceptionally good and exceptionally poor in places; and it at points seemed to support an ideology and then attack it. Ultimately I liked some of the philosophy, I enjoyed the story (or else I would have quit reading likely) and yet I found that the long philosophical spiels turned out to be far too preachy and hence ruined the entertaining aspects of the story. I feel that George Orwell and Alduous Huxley wrote far better in their balance between story and message.

The plot follows two central characters while also covering several other important individuals. However one of the two characters makes almost no appearance in the first three quarters of the book. Hence the mysterious question on everyone’s lips: ”Who is John Galt?” It could be seen as a dystopian and a semi-science fictional type of novel for Atlas Shrugged is set in a fictional America where the government rules ‘for the will of the people’, seizing the assets of the wealthy in order to do so. The main protagonist Dagny Taggart blindly accepts this system as she tries to become the sole female entrepreneur in the fictional economy. Yet gradually she comes to see that the government is manipulative and self-serving and that she cannot continue to accept that system as proper any longer.

It appears to me that Ayn Rand’s book was very much influenced by the contrast between the governments of Russia and America around the time of writing. Rand left Europe to go to America where Atlas Shrugged was published and therefore it is likely she would have witnessed communism first-hand. Yet it also appears to me that as a result she turns American capitalism into a kind of panacea, believing that because that system was better than Russian communism it was a wonderful system. She certainly argues her philosophy in her novel that those who become rich through work have earned it and deserve to keep their wealth and not have it taken from them. Yet I think she is in many ways too optimistic as any human made ideology has flaws in it: to believe that one is the cure to all ills is a fallacy in my opinion. Even democracy as we have institutionalised it has many flaws. I for one do not get a truly direct say in governing my country.

I disagree with many of Ayn Rand’s philosophical ideas, for instance when she defines the notion of a sacrifice as being only when we give up something of value. Her example that it is not a sacrifice for a woman to give up food to a child rather than for a hat is false in my view. I think that sacrifices occur in every act of giving something up for another human. I do agree with how she indicates that we must allow creativity and thinking to flourish. As a future teacher this is something I think must be encourages to flower in any democratic and liberated society for education. I also agree with a handful of other points she makes. Yet I personally feel that her major philosophy of objectivity is flawed to the point where I cannot agree. Her idea appears on the whole too materialistic. As she states:

“my philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

This thought is in contrast to many of my beliefs about humanity. I see humanity not as truly noble but more as a flawed being striving to become heroic, to earn salvation. How humans gain that salvation becomes the debate of religions in general. Curiously Rand’s philosophy appears highly selfish and self-serving, making man not the noble being she perceives but a hypocrite. I think she holds an ‘every man for himself’ mentality as he can fit into society. It is up to a man to find what happiness, what enjoyment he wants from life (which is why her characters, even her heroes prove unfaithful to their spouses and to themselves – again no noble characteristics). She also seems to push a message of ‘the wealthy deserve their wealth and no one deserves to use what products they produce.’ Ultimately if this is man’s ultimate aim it seems to me a shallow, egotistical end.

I do recommend reading this, despite its length, as it is an interesting read. Like Orwell and Huxley its great strength is in how it prompts the reader to consider the author’s messages. However unlike those other authors Rand tends far more toward preaching and using unnecessary words and thoughts. I’d never read a 60 page speech in any novel, and now I have. Yet there is an entertaining dystopian novel here which even if you dislike its ideas you may still find worth the read. And if you don’t there should be some reward for slogging through over 1100 pages of writing.

This book just flat-out sucks. There's no other way that I can put it. You would think that in a book over 1,000 pages long you'd have characters that show certain degrees of subtlety, nuance, and growth. Not so with this book. Absolutely everything is in black and white terms, and the result is something closer to a religious text than a novel probing into the mind of man. I came away from this book hating every single character in it. The "dialog" is the flattest I've ever read...it's nothing more than Rand spewing out her philosophy out of characters that might as well be wearing white hats and black hats as in an old Western film, in case the good/bad distinction wasn't made clearly enough for you. There are some decent parts, such as the first run on the John Galt line, but damn near everything is ruined by Rand's literary version of stamping her feet and screaming "if you don't agree with me, then I'm going to take all my toys and go home!" It's a great endurance test, and I do take a certain snobbish pleasure in saying that I finished one of the longest books ever written, but overall this book was a huge waste of time.

I would like to state one last thing: I happen to agree with certain parts of Rand's philosophy, and I've read Anthem and The Fountainhead. Someone responded to a review I wrote of Anthem stating that a historical perspective was important. Yes, it is important, but all the historical perspective in the world isn't going to make this a good book. You don't need historical perspective to enjoy Don Quixote, or Candide, or the works of Shakespeare. You don't even need to like the characters to enjoy a book: Lolita is a great book, but I disliked everyone in it. I also know Rand's background, how her knowledge of Socialism was a lot deeper than most other writers at the time. I can understand why she would feel the way she felt and why she would write the way she wrote. Still, taking everything into consideration, Rand was still a lousy writer, and Atlas Shrugged is still one of the biggest loads of garbage I've ever wasted my time reading.

When I was nineteen, Atlas Shrugged really spoke to me. Which is to say that when I was nineteen, I was a fucking idiot.

Ayn Rand presents some ideas that can appear unique and fresh, going as they do against much of traditional cultural thinking. These ideas are especially compelling to young people who hold a supremely inflated opinion of themselves and who have no idea about how the world operates. She places her cardboard characters into situations so distorted, and makes them act in ways so divorced from reality, that it becomes possible for the naive and gullible reader to be deluded into considering the ideas plausible. However Rand's philosophy of Objectivism is so myopic, narrow and poorly thought out, that even the tiniest leap of intelligent critical thinking will send the thing tumbling into a heap.

Two stars only because actually taking the time to read this garbage is an inoculation against the ideas of extreme libertarians who believe that the invisible hand of the free market would deliver the greatest outcomes for society, if only it weren't hampered by all that pesky regulation.

Excellent comparison using extreme socialism and extreme individualism/capitalism. The socialist side didn't want competition, preferred an even playing field which results in total breakdown of the economic and educational systems. Illustrates the error of a feel-good educational system that yields incompetence.

The extreme capitalist is not only profit driven but pushes self and business to excel at all cost. Doesn't appear to be concerned with responsibilities toward providing for poor. Doesn't allow for compasion towards poor, widows/orphans.
Of course the capitalists here did provide jobs to competent workers and loyalty existed between the owner and employees.
From Rand's atheist perspecitve there is no higher authority than the individual.

As a Christian we should encourage the unemployed/uneducated to be responsible citizens and make the changes in their lives to be productive. Care for widows/orphans and those truly unable to work is our responsibility as Christians. We should insist on an educational system to push students to expand their minds and develop the ability to think clearly, make decisions based on research and reading. eliminate the feel-good mentality and create a self confident student who "feels good" because of success in studies, understanding of history and how societies have been successful and how corruption caused their destruction. Also, develop the ability to sort through the political smoke so often heard or seen in print.

UWAGA: To będzie długa recenzja. Myślę, że mógłbym napisać długi esej o tym jak bardzo ta książka jest zła.
Na liście najgorszych książek z jakimi zetknąłem się ostatnio, wyprzedza ją chyba tylko
n  n
Przy czym Shantaram to tylko zła literatura popularna. Ta książka ma ambicję bycia wiekopomnym dziełem. Niestety wyobrażam sobie, że wielu ludziom mogła zrobić z mózgu kogel-mogel.

Ta gruba na 1200 stron książka jest podobno najczęściej, po Biblii, kupowaną książką w Stanach Zjednoczonych. Podobno pełni również funkcję Biblii wśród libertarian, izolacjonistów i innych szeroko pojętych wielbicieli Donalda Trumpa. Chyba właśnie to mnie zachęciło do jej przeczytania (oraz mój przyjaciel Mirek).

W warstwie fabularnej to dość prosta historia. Mydlana opera ubrana w formę political fiction: dzieje się w ostatnim kraju, który funkcjonuje wg zasad rynkowych. Wokół są tylko Republiki Ludowe, które przymierają głodem. Tylko Stany Zjednoczone utrzymują je na powierzchni. Problem polega na tym, że w USA także do władzy dochodzą ludzie, których celem jest stworzenie sytemu "ludowego"; wyrównanie różnic społecznych, kosztem geniuszy biznesu, którzy tworzą wielkie dzieła przemysłu. W tej książce toczy się wojna między elitą biznesu, która chce tylko zarabiać pieniądze po to, by wszyscy żyli w dobrobycie i antyelitą, która pod płaszczykiem walki o równość chce sama zagarnąć zdobycze biznesowej elity.

W tym sporze nie ma żadnych niuansów. Ze złej strony rząd, który wprowadzając pozornie równościowe regulacje powoli demoluje gospodarkę i doprowadza do powszechnej nędzy. Z dobrej strony jest grupa wspaniałych przedsiębiorców, którzy chcą ciężko pracować po to by się wzbogacić, dzięki czemu gospodarka działa i wszystko jest OK. Tak długo jak wspaniali biznesmeni mogą robić co chcą, wszyscy są szczęśliwi. Gdy zaczyna się ich krępować regulacjami, następuje katastrofa, której zbliżanie się obserwujemy przez całą książkę. Więcej szczegółów fabularnych nie będę zdradzał, poza tym, że po katastrofie następuje jutrzenka swobody, która na ostatnich stronach jest już na horyzoncie. Mam nadzieję, że nie oznacza to, że powstał drugi tom.

Fabuła ma ilustrować warstwę filozoficzną. Podejrzewam, że książka miała być czymś w rodzaju polemiki z New Dealem FDR-a; oraz z powojenną polityką gospodarczą Stanów Zjednoczonych, kiedy podatki były wysokie a rząd mocno ingerował w gospodarkę. Być może wtedy, gdy książka powstawała ktoś mógł się na nią nabrać, ale dziś to jest po prostu głupie i anachroniczne. Dziś już raczej wiadomo, że wielki biznes puszczony samopas nie myśli o tym, żeby dbać o społeczeństwo tylko o tym, żeby mieć coraz więcej kosztem tych, którzy mają mniej, unikać płacenia podatków i wyniszczać tych, którzy naruszają monopol; czego skutkiem jest powiększanie się nierówności społecznych. Wszystko co ta książka proponuje, jako system, jest jedną wielką bzdurą.

I tu dochodzimy do warstwy propagandowej. W tym aspekcie każdy rozdział tej książki był obraźliwy dla inteligencji. Narzędzia literackie użyte do przekazania myśli autorki były łopatologiczne i bardzo proste do rozszyfrowania. Od czytelnika nie oczekuje się żadnej refleksji - zło jest czytelnie złe, kompromitowane słowami bohaterów i konsekwencjami ich czynów. Dobro - wspaniałe i wzniosłe. Dysonans polega na tym, że nie trzeba dużo, by zacząć mieć wątpliwości - to co jest w książce określane jako złe - wcale nie musi być złe a to co dobre - nie jest w tak oczywisty sposób dobre. Za opinią autorki przemawia tylko stworzona przez nią fabuła. Jak trochę ją poskrobać - argumentacja się sypie. Niestety te wątpliwości nie są intencją autorki. Przeciwko jej wizji świata, przemawia jednak rzeczywistość. Świat bardzo podobnie do wizji autorki funkcjonował przez ostatnie kilkadziesiąt lat. No i proszę - jesteśmy na skraju zagłady.

W warstwie propagandowej ważne są postaci. To chyba jeden z najsłabszych elementów tej bardzo słabej książki. Postaci są psychologicznie szablonowe i jednowymiarowe. Ale najgłupsze są charakterystyki fizyczne. Postaci złe są zawsze brzydkie. Zawsze mają jakieś fizyczne felery: krzywy nos, obwisłą wargę, niski wzrost, wysoką potliwość, łysinę, pękaty spinaker - i te cechy zawsze są opisane tak, żeby wzbudzały wstręt i obrzydzenie. Zanim poznamy opinie bohatera o rzeczywistości już wiemy, że to ktoś godzien pogardy - wystarczy na niego spojrzeć oczami autorki. Gdy ktoś brzydki się odezwie, tylko utwierdzamy się, że duszę ma równie brzydką jak ciało.

Postaci dobre są za to piękne: gęste loki spływają im na ramiona, mięśnie delikatnie zarysowują się pod aksamitną skórą, oczy inteligentnie spoglądają i są takie wymowne a paznokcie - zawsze zadbane. Gdy dobra postać coś powie, to w słuchaczach budzi się nadzieja, wiara lub świadomość. Chyba, że dobry mówi do złego; wtedy w złym budzi się strach.

Jeżeli postać zła jest ładna - można mieć pewność, że ostatecznie okaże się dobra. A jeżeli nie okaże się dobra, to znaczy, że ostatecznie jednak stanie się brzydka; wyjdzie z niej brzydota nie tylko moralna, ale także fizyczna. W całej książce takie ewolucje w postrzeganiu postaci były 2 (słownie: dwie).

Cieszę się, że przeczytałem tę książkę, chociaż męczyłem się okropnie. Męczyłem się, bo to nie musiało być takie długie. Wszystko to, co autorka miała do powiedzenia dałoby się upchnąć w 200 stronach łącznie z tą banalną fabułą i dyrdymałami o filozofii gospodarczo-politycznej.

Mam poważne wątpliwości, czy wyznawcom zasad ujętych w tej książce udało się dobrnąć do jej końca. Pewnym ułatwieniem jest umieszczona pod koniec, 50-stronicowa wykładnia całej filozofii - podana jak na talerzu, gdyby ktoś nie zrozumiał przez poprzednie 1000 stron. Ta wykładnia jest nudna jak flaki z olejem, ale pewnie łatwiej przemęczyć 50 stron niż 1200. Pocieszające jest to, że jeżeli takie postrzeganie rzeczywistości utrzymuje się na tak wątłych podstawach, to trudno wróżyć temu wielką przyszłość i może jednak ta zagłada nie jest tak bardzo blisko.

Nikomu nie polecam tej książki, nawet w imię zasady, że warto znać poglądy przeciwnika. Wystarczy poczytać w Wikipedii o autorce oraz znaleźć sobie jakieś streszczenie w internecie.

This really is a thumping good read. And ultimately, we're all on this earth to please ourselves. So hey . . . pass the dessert trolley and make mine a double.

Ayn Rand's sociopath role model....

https://hartmannreport.com/p/american...

========

more on Rand....

https://www.salon.com/2015/10/14/libe...

======

In 1982, Rand died of cancer brought on by her excessive smoking habit. One of the things she was most admired for was the way she stuck to her principles throughout her life . . . or so it seemed. In 2011, it was revealed that Rand had spent the last eight years of her life receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits. At the time of her death, her estate was valued at $500,000 (around $1.2 million in today’s money), suggesting her decision was motivated less by rationality than by the sort of parasitic greed she’d always claimed to despise.

I loved this book and have read it 2 or 3 times. A lot of people can only see the political views of this. It teaches you to think with your mind, rather than your heart. Use your mind instead of expecting to get the rewards of others who do all the thinking.

The book is wordy, but her words are genius in my opinion. I loved the long radio speech. Is the story black and white? Definitely. Authors have different styles - people complain. If every author wrote in the same style, people would complain.
The people in Ayn's story didn't work for money. They loved their jobs. And she wasn't saying you had to be a rich, corporate big shot to hold the world up. There were teachers and stay at home moms in her little world in the mountains.

Ayn has extremely valuable points. If you can't handle looking at imperfections, this book might not be for you. If you have an open mind and are willing to learn something from every book and experience you have and grow as a person, then you will benefit from reading this book. It's not for everyone. It's definitely ahead of it's time but I liked it.

Reading this book is like watching Donkey Kong. Thinly-drawn characters of stoicism and stereotype wielding clunky paragraphs of dialogue like a wooden keg mallet at the heads and shoulders of anyone that takes center screen. Bonk, bonk, bonk. Huge square paragraphs. Pages long. 40 pounds each. Bonk, bonk, bonk.

Characters respond to questions with 1800 words, and then, to a simple “What do you mean?,” they spew another 1800 words. So, if a paragraph could be shorter, so could the book, by hundreds of pages. The book is unwieldy, not only because its width is the size of a keg mallet, but because the message is ponderous, lumbering, interminable.

This is ultimately a story of dystopia, revealed, not delicately, through a panoply of failed moral standards in post-1957 America. The moral standards, murderous by Rand’s accounting, are pushed to their absurd ne plus ultra. And that’s where dystopias live, right, at the absolute end of human endeavors.

People, I think, view Atlas Shrugged as a wicked political treatise. That’s not the full diatribe. Instead, the story uses politics as a vehicle to broadcast moral standards packaged as economic policies. Politics of morality and value, then, is the monolith at which Rand beats her story; objectivity is the hammer. Bonk, bonk, bonk. Interestingly, the politics between the covers eerily resemble our American landscape 55 years later, and because the connection to our diametric political system, GOP v DNC, is so apparent, people quickly assume Ayn Rand is making an 1100 page political jeremiad. (If Rand’s premonition of our current, overbaked entitlement system was something she viewed as inevitable, then she is my idea of a true oracle, because her perspective like an arrow goes right through the politics—specifically the election—of 2012.)

The book has 4 main characters, and, in a book this size, dozens of not insignificant subordinate characters. The 4 main are all powerful industrialists, and they are increasingly hamstrung by a political system that inverts the spirit of entrepreneurialism. Capitalism restrained. Worse, capitalism broken. The many quotes below are enough to represent the main theme that America has perverted the incentive to produce goods for individual gain, and instead puts societal needs before individual gain. Deliverance is eventually—and awkwardly—attained by the mantra “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

In words that presage the 2012 Democratic plank, and the mock horror of Republican ideals, we have these jewels:

-- ”It seems to me that the national policy ought to be aimed at the objective of giving everybody a chance at his fair share of iron ore, with a view toward the preservation of the industry as a whole” (50).
-- “It isn’t fair. It’s discrimination. I’m just as good as the next fellow. I’m entitled to my fair share of that metal” (254).
-- “The steel mills of the country were ordered to limit the maximum production of any metal alloy to an amount equal to the production of other metal alloys by other mills placed in the same classification or plant capacity—and to supply a fair share of any metal alloy to all consumers who might desire to obtain it” (311).

WOW!! Echoes of most of Obama’s campaign speeches circa Jan-Sep 2012. Bonk, bonk, bonk. Here’s some more:

-- ”Disunity, that’s the trouble. It’s my absolute opinion that in our complex industrial society, no business enterprise can succeed without sharing the burden of the problems of other enterprises” (48).
-- “The public can’t remain indifferent to reckless, selfish waste by an anti-social individual. After all, private property is a trusteeship held for the benefit of society as a whole” (50).
-- “Now that you’ve reached college age, you ought to learn something about ideals. It’s time to forget your selfish greed and give some thought to your social responsibilities, because I think that all those millions you’re going to inherit are not for your personal pleasure, they are a trust for the benefit of the underprivileged and the poor, because I think that the person who doesn’t realize this is the most depraved type of human being” (97).

WOW!! Obama’s most important voter demographic in 2008, college-aged kids. Bonk, bonk, bonk.

-- “It is the social impact of a product that must be considered. We are thinking in terms of the country as a whole, we are concerned with the public welfare and the terrible crisis of the present moment” (170).
-- “You know, Mrs Taggert, I don’t think that such a motor should ever be made, even if somebody did learn how to make it. It would be so superior to anything we’ve got that it would be unfair to lesser scientists, because it would leave no field for their achievements and abilities. I don’t think that the strong should have the right to wound the self-esteem of the weak” (330).
-- “It’s their lack of social spirit. They refuse to recognize that production is not a private choice, but a public duty” (495)
-- “It’s a backward, primitive, unenlightened place. They don’t even have a modern government. It’s the worst government in any state. The laziest. It does nothing—outside of keeping law courts and a police department. It doesn’t do anything for the people. It doesn’t help anybody. I don’t see why all our best companies want to run there” (254).
-- “We voted on every claim, and the will of the majority established every person’s need and every person’s ability. The income of the factory was distributed accordingly. Rewards were based on need,, and the penalties on ability. Those whose needs were voted to be the greatest, received the most. Those who had not produced as much as the vote said they could, were fined and had to pay the fines by working overtime without pay” (301)
-- “That money went to men who grow rich by such methods. Such men do not remain rich for long. The money will go into channels which will carry it, not to the most productive, but to the most corrupt. By the standards of our time, the man who has the least to offer is the man who wins” (120).

Whose time? 1957 or 2012? Bonk, bonk, bonk. The keg hammer is working. Not very subtle, huh? Between these quotes and an 80 page radio broadcast from John Galt, you have the whole story in husk. All the rest is bonk, bonk, bonk.

Can you guess what party Ayn Rand may have voted for in 2012? You’re wrong, she would have voted Libertarian.

Faithful to similar dystopias, Rand includes the standard Orwellian bureaucracies that are not only supposed to show how off-track (communistic) America has become, but to scare the bejesus out of GOPers: Friends of Global Progress, Office of Morale Conditioning, State Science Institute, the Emergency Commission, Office of Crucial Supplies, Officer of Consumer Protection, Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources, Fair Share Law, Public Stability Law, Preservation of Livelihood Law. Etc, etc, etc.

I award 2 stars because Rand is trying to forge, in a single work, a total philosophy. However, the story suffers because everything (specifically the dialogue) is subordinated to establishing tenets of the philosophy. Minimize the dialogue and the story is complete in 250 pages, not 1100. At 250 pages the story may have even been compelling, but this story just can’t mesmerize at its full unabridged length. Also, the story devolves so quickly in the last fifty pages that Rand gives us an absurd rescue scene, with gunfights like gangsters and a hidden armada of secret aircraft, better suited to Fantastic Four comics.

Read another review if you want to know who (and what) John Galt is?

One final note, something I found tempting. I believe Ayn Rand is projecting herself into the leading role of Dagny Taggert. Dagny is perhaps the strongest industrialist, is the last to cave, is devastatingly beautiful, and has sex with each of the 3 other leading men. Perhaps a fitting role in fiction for an average looking woman whose real life was surrounded by powerful New York industrialists of the 1950’s.