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My thoughts on Atlas Shrugged

Mr. A

Mr. A

Member
For those that read Atlas Shrugged,

In Galts speech, he specifically speaks at one point to "those who desire to live" (stating on p.1166)
"withdraw your sanction"
"go on strike - in the manner I did" and "let them drown; your sanction is their only life belt."
and
"when the advocates of the morality of sacrifice perish with their final ideal - then and on that day we will return to the world. We will open the gates of our city to those who deserve to enter."

So, the strike is a way of purging the world of said people?
A way of exterminating them?
Recall: "To the gas chamber - go!" from Chambers 1957 review of AS.

Galt speaking earlier in the novel:


"Ever since I can remember, I had felt that I would kill the man who'd claim that I exist for the sake of his need - and I had known that this was the highest moral feeling."

"That night, at the Twentieth Century meeting, when I heard an unspeakable evil spoken in the tone of moral righteousness, I saw the key to it and the solution. I saw what had to be done. I went out to do it."

So, at the meeting, instead of killing the speaker, becoming a shooter, he became a striker.
Recall Chamber's review of AS:"To the gas chamber, go!"
In rethinking this it's really not that far off the mark. Think about it.
In Galts speech he says go listeners "Perish with and in your own void."
The strike essentially created one giant gas chamber all they had to do was close the door of Atlantis behind them, and wait until those in the gas chamber had gassed themselves to death, wait until the "road was cleared", or rather until the air was cleared, wait until they had perished enough by their own code for the strikers to return to the world.

So Galts desire to kill a certain speaker wasn't the solution this was:
Create the chamber step safely outside of it, wait till enough perished and till the air was cleared.

And apparently it didn't take that long either, so not only was that his solution, but it was a brilliant one. He didn't have to take responsibility polity for any of their deaths like he would have if he'd of killed the speaker fulfilling his desire kill a man that said that.

So, the desire to kill a man that said that was th highest moral feeling, then what kind of feeling did this give him?

Instead of killing the speaker he says "I will stop the motor of the world"
Read: I will create the gas chamber, your code will be the gas.


What do you think?
 
More of my thoughts on this:



To me, instead of standing up that night at the meeting and teaching them a lesson, he set out to really teach them a lesson.

To me, instead of Galt killing, he found a creative way to get them to die.


He clearly wanted to bring death and destruction to them, not life; as in, Galt could have tried to speak to the world then about his Morality of Life, of his code, his philosophy, but never did then. Not even a single word of it. For he set out to show. I'll show them. "I propose to show the world who depends on whom[…] who makes whose livelihood possible and what happens to whom when who walks out" I'll show them. I'll show them all the proof around them with the death toll, all the dead bodies of men, women, children, in the amount of destruction that results... "O my brothers, am I cruel? But I say: What is falling, we should still push."* Frisco did. He was explicit about it, "I was out to speed up the destruction." "the destruction of d' Anconia Copper, of Taggart Transcontinental, of Wyatt Oil, of Rearden Metal."

Galt had to have been thinking along this line that night at the meeting, I think: "He whom you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster."* I'll teach them. I'll teach them not with ink on paper, but with blood on ground. And speed up its spilling. And without having to get any of it on my own hands.

Galt was no fly swatter.** Just go where they cannot fly to. And after they die, return.

"I am a prelude to better players, o my brothers! A precedent! Follow my precedent!"*


*quote from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Walter Kaufmann translation.
** Rand wrote: "I am haunted by a quotation from Nietzsche: 'It is not my function to be a fly swatter.'"



(Rand said, "Nietzsche […], as a poet, he projects at times (not consistently) a magnificent feeling for man’s greatness, expressed in emotional, not intellectual, terms.")
 
Further thoughts:

The tramp speaks to Dagny in regards to Galt: “We began to think of him whenever we saw another collapse in the world” “I’d like to think that I am wrong” “that there’s no conscious intention and no avenger behind the ending of the human race.”
Galt in speaking with Dagny, says, “It was the three of us who resolved to avenge this country”
So there was a self-described avenger and a conscious intention:
“Eddie speaks of Dagny: “She thinks there’s a system behind it, an intention, a man. There’s a destroyer loose in the country, who’s cutting down the buttresses one after another to let the structure collapse upon our heads. Some ruthless creature moved by some inconceivable purpose” “She knows nothing about the destroyer. She has no clue to his identity, no evidence of his existence - except the trail of destruction.”
Destruction, indeed. The “economy is collapsing as a result of the mysterious disappearance of leading innovators and industrialists”, so says the book description inside the Centennial edition. So it’s collapsing as a result of said buttresses being watched by Galt and pulls them out at just the right time. So he certainly pushes that which is falling, Frisco was explicit about speeding up destruction, and let me turn now to the 3rd avenger, Ragnar. He, too, speeds destruction up, pushes that which is falling, as he sunk or seized certain ships depending what they had on them and blew things up… here are his own words about it, he “seized every loot-carrier that came within the range of my guns, every government relief ship, subsidy ship, loan ship, gift ship, every vessel with a cargo of goods, taken by force from some men for the unpaid, unearned benefit of others.” He was on his own “personal mission” “I’ve chosen a special mission of my own. I’m after a man whom I want to destroy. He died had many centuries ago, but until the last trace of him is wiped out of men’s minds, we will not have a decent world to live in.” That man would be Robin Hood. He looks forward to the resulting “ruins”, “”When we are free and have to start rebuilding from out of the ruins, I want to see the world reborn as fast as possible.”
Dagny, too, “looked ahead. The earth would be as empty as the space where their propeller was cutting an unobstructed path - as empty and as free. She knew what Nat Taggart had felt at his start and why now, for the first time, she was following him in full loyalty: the confident sense of facing a void and of knowing that one has a continent to build.”

Empty of what? The people that would not get the hell out of their way? As if that’s even a question, recall:

Dan Conway to Dagny: “I suppose somebody’s got to be sacrificed.” “The right’s on their side. Men have to get together.”
Dagny, trembling with anger, exclaims, “If that’s the price of getting together, then I’ll be damned if I want to live on the same earth with any human beings! If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive.” “Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best.”

Recall Galt: “when they have no pretense of authority left, no remnant of law, no trace of morality, no hope, no food and no way to obtain it - when they collapse and the road is clear - then we’ll come back to rebuild the world.”

I wonder what the population census was when the strikers went back to work on the rebuilding of the “ruined continent” the “desolated earth.”??

Was the strike, a purge?

Additional questions:
Why didn’t Galt at that meeting that night try educating, instead of depopulating? Did he think that he couldn’t teach them to fly because they simply did not have the wings for it, so he tried pushing them to fall faster?

Professor Akston: “ - in such a world, the best have to turn against society and have to become its deadliest enemies.”
Later, nearing the end of the novel, when speaking to Akston:
“Galt chuckled - in the tone of a student proudly presenting a completed task of homework as proof of a lesson well learned -”
 
"shrugging" to me is nothing more than the businessman's strike. If Rupert Murdoch or someone like that stopped doing what they were doing, would the world truly come to a halt? The world painted in AS is one in which every country is run like North Korea. Yes, that kind of control and government intervention would create a more "inward" world and living conditions that no one would want. As high as taxes are in Europe and some would argue, America, it can hardly be maintained that a person does not control their own destiny and that government restrains them unnecessarily. Yes, government does favor some businesses over others and legislation can be crafted to favor monopolies of some kind. That does not occur with one side trying to violate the other. It occurs when business SEEKS to use government as a hammer against competitors.

So A, is it more profitable to keep toiling against one's peers who seek to use the hammer, or to go on strike and "shrug"?
 
In the states, education is a state authority under the tenth amendment. State legislatures can determine what is to be taught, how it is to be taught, and who is to teach it. Luckily, they delegate such authority to locally elected school boards.

Should Atlas Shrugged by required reading?
 
SFG75 said:
"shrugging" to me is nothing more than the businessman's strike. If Rupert Murdoch or someone like that stopped doing what they were doing, would the world truly come to a halt? The world painted in AS is one in which every country is run like North Korea. Yes, that kind of control and government intervention would create a more "inward" world and living conditions that no one would want. As high as taxes are in Europe and some would argue, America, it can hardly be maintained that a person does not control their own destiny and that government restrains them unnecessarily. Yes, government does favor some businesses over others and legislation can be crafted to favor monopolies of some kind. That does not occur with one side trying to violate the other. It occurs when business SEEKS to use government as a hammer against competitors.

So A, is it more profitable to keep toiling against one's peers who seek to use the hammer, or to go on strike and "shrug"?
Click to expand...

I would take it a step further than just a business man's strike, it was a business man's whine as well. However, it's necessary to understand Ayn Rand's perspective. As a child, her father's business was confiscated by the Bolsheviks and her family became so destitute that she nearly starved to death. She has every right to hate government control and the asinine policies that go along with it.

As boring and rambling as it was, I am mostly in agreement with John Galt's radio address.

Another perspective on communism vs. capitalism is to compare the number of boat people who have drowned escaping from Cuba to the USA to the number of boat people who have drowned escaping the USA for Cuba.

The government, which here in the USA is mostly ourselves elected by each other, should be the provider of certain things so that everyone has an equal shot at the pursuit of happiness. Roads, police, fire, army, navy and water supply should be administered by the government without concern for shareholder value. I also like how the government runs the CDC, just one more thing that the government does well. They should not be in charge of housing and vodka production though, obviously.

I like Atlas enough that I will probably come back to it and read it again someday. I'll skip Galt's radio address though.
 
SFG75 said:
In the states, education is a state authority under the tenth amendment. State legislatures can determine what is to be taught, how it is to be taught, and who is to teach it. Luckily, they delegate such authority to locally elected school boards.

Should Atlas Shrugged by required reading?
Click to expand...

I am an abolitionist, not a reformationist, in regards to public education:

The ARC Speaker Series: The Separation of School and State - The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights
The New Abolitionism: Why Education Emancipation is the Moral Imperative of our Time - The Objective Standard

Also I have been engaged elsewhere in talk about my thoughts on AS. I will gather more of them up and share in this thread sometime.
 
Hugh
The government, which here in the USA is mostly ourselves elected by each other, should be the provider of certain things so that everyone has an equal shot at the pursuit of happiness. Roads, police, fire, army, navy and water supply should be administered by the government without concern for shareholder value. I also like how the government runs the CDC, just one more thing that the government does well. They should not be in charge of housing and vodka production though, obviously.
Click to expand...

Hugh, I believe this is the MAJOR reason why libertarianism hasn't taken off in the states. While Americans don't want the government running everything, they do want the government running major services and the like. "Get your hands off my social security" is a key in point.:whistling:

Mr. A.-You do know that the system of public education was based on the Puritan colonial model and Benjamin Franklin's writings right? The 10th Amendment which libertarians love, gives states the rights to set up and run schools and they in turn, graciously allow LOCAL school boards to call the shots in a given school district.
 
The problem that I see with the link is that it advocates a kind of system that flourished in the antebellum south. A system of tutoring and the like leads to huge gaps of achievement as those who can afford it will get the best teachers for their children. Those without considerable resources, well, yeah. Literacy rates improved considerably after Horace Mann and others like him helped to establish public schools in many states. We have a long ways to go in regards to excelling, but installing a system of public education raised the bar considerably, across the American population.
 
I see very little parallel to the culture of the U.S. in Atlas Shrugged. The book is a "feel good" story for those who imagine that the world wants more of them than they should give.

And I do not truly understand it, but many of the wealthiest capitalists are also among the most liberal, politically, socially, and fiscally.

After reading the book, consider Tesla and Edison...
 
Perhaps some here might consider some basic research into the raving , egomaniacal tyrant known as Ayn Rand.
 
I've always seen Atlas Shrugged as a comic book entrance into libertarian thought. I think it's best to think of the book in it's broad strokes (especially since that's really the only brush Rand ever really used). It's more of a simple morality play acted out over a thousand pages.

If asked by a younger person (I wouldn't hand the book over to someone over the age of 22 or 23), I'd say read it and then immediately read Milton Friedman, Adam Smith, Frederick Bastiat (probably Bastiat first).

Get the fire and brimstone, and then follow it up with some simpler and easier to swallow parables (Bastiat), and then head straight into the serious explanations (Smith and Friedman).
 
Bastiat's The Law is an interesting read on political theory. I have read his other minor works and when it comes to Libertarian thought, you're right, they are very succinct and to the point. I would definitely have someone start with him. The "dismal science" that is economics, most deifnitely earns its sobriquet with the likes of Friedman and Smith.
 
SFG75 said:
Bastiat's The Law is an interesting read on political theory. I have read his other minor works and when it comes to Libertarian thought, you're right, they are very succinct and to the point. I would definitely have someone start with him. The "dismal science" that is economics, most deifnitely earns its sobriquet with the likes of Friedman and Smith.
Click to expand...


Hmmm , in actuality the place to begin as regards " libertarianism" would be with Dejacque and Pierre Joseph Proudhon and of course John Locke , Thomas Paine , William Godwin , though Dejacque was more correctly an anarchist with a libertarian communist approach and Proudhon was basically a mutualist.

And the inherent rub lies in how the individual defines libertarianism , the anarchist versus minarchist arguement has gone on for a 150 years at least , as has the consequentialist versus natural rights arguement and that socialist approach versus the propertarian approach.

Keep in mind that the second wave of socalled libertarian thought was heavily influenced by Nietzche , Fichte , Max Stirner and all the aforementioned , this of course includes Lysander Spooner , Tucker , Ingalls , Greene etc.

Josiah Warren was directly influenced by Robert Owens and the failure of his co-operative movement in the 1820s which indeed offers the anecdotal proof that demands for conformity and a uniform society are in opposition to natures law of diversity.

As it stands , libertarianism as common in America is closely akin to *classic* liberalism , which of course is far , far removed from how the word ( or epithet nowadays) " liberal" is utilised and defined with our current version of society and the attendant sociopolitical structure.
 
The best Lysander Spooner website out there.:D My favorite piece that he wrote was the constitution of no authority. I would definitely agree with you in regards to American libertarianism being *classical* liberalism. It's amazing how terms can sometimes have radically different meanings over time. The anti-federalist and federalist names also bear that out through time, interestingly enough. We do have some Nietzsche threads on the forum, but it's hard to have a good conversation about his works. The will to power reeks of fascism, especially in his rants about "weakness." The Antichrist was definitely the work of a neurotic.

As for contemporary libertarianism, Murray Rothbard has some interesting books on the history of the Federal Reserve. Herbert Spencer was another good theoretician. The right to ignore the state always catches my eye from time to time
 
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